Rear Admiral Guy Griffiths, Australian survivor of the 1941 sinking of HMS Repulse – obituary
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Rear Admiral Guy Griffiths of the Royal Australian Navy, who has died aged 101, is probably the last survivor of the sinking of the battle cruiser Repulse in the Battle of the South China Sea on December 10 1941.
Griffiths was a teenage midshipman still under training when he was appointed to Repulse, and in 1941 the ship was dispatched to the Far East to deter Japanese aggression. There, off the east coast of Malaya, she and the battleship Prince of Wales were overwhelmed by land-based air power, with great loss of life.
Griffiths recalled: “It was a dark day, a very dark day for the Royal Navy. The Prince of Wales had 1,612 people on board and lost 327, but in Repulse we had 1,309 and we lost 513.
“We were hit by five torpedoes in short time and the old lady listed to port and then she rolled over and sank stern first, so people didn’t have much time to get on deck. I was down below but lucky in coming up to get through a scuttle [porthole] and then slide down the ship’s side into the water, which was warm.
“People have asked me, over a number of years, ‘Was I worried about sharks?’ My response was it wasn’t a thought in my mind at the time. Survival was closer to the point.”
After rescue by escort destroyers and landing in Singapore, Griffiths completed his training in the battleship Revenge and was promoted to sub-lieutenant in 1942. He served briefly in the destroyer Vivian before joining his first Australian ship, the cruiser Shropshire, in 1943.
During the next two years he saw fighting in the South West Pacific, notably at Leyte Gulf, Surigao Strait and Lingayen Gulf. Promoted to lieutenant in 1944, he was awarded the DSC in 1945 “for gallantry, skill and devotion to duty as an Air Defence Operator while serving in HMAS Shropshire in the successful assault operations on Luzon Island.”
Guy Richmond Griffiths was born on March 1 1923 in Sydney and grew up in the Hunter Valley, a descendant of pioneering wine-producing families. But after a drought and the Great Depression in the 1920s, the family were impoverished and his enthusiasm to follow his father into viniculture was dampened.
In 1937 Guy joined the Royal Australian Navy as one of 17 13-year-old cadets, selected from nearly 500 applicants. He excelled as a sportsman, gaining colours for rugby, hockey, rowing and athletics, and became Chief Cadet Captain of the naval college in 1939.
After passing out in 1940 he was appointed for further training to HMAS Australia, which was then in the North Atlantic, but by the time he arrived in England the ship was somewhere between Cape Town and Fremantle on her way home. The British Admiralty decided that he should complete his training in Repulse.
Post-war, Griffiths specialised as a gunnery officer at the training establishment HMS Excellent in Portsmouth, and he spent two years on exchange service in the Royal Navy before returning to Australia. In 1950-52 he was gunnery officer in the aircraft carrier Sydney and then in the destroyer Anzac during the Korean War.
He was a student at the Royal Naval Staff Course in Greenwich in 1954 before serving in the Australian carrier Melbourne in 1955-56. Promoted early to commander, he held important desk jobs in Australia before commissioning the destroyer escort Parramatta in 1961.
In 1964 he was promoted, again early, to captain, and the following year took command of the American-built guided missile destroyer Hobart, when he saw action in the Vietnam War and was awarded the Distinguished Service Order for devotion to duty in the presence of the enemy.
The citation read: “Throughout this intense period of operations Griffiths’ coolness under fire, prompt manoeuvring, fine example and excellent leadership inspired his ship’s company to perform the tasks assigned to HMAS Hobart with maximum efficiency and outstanding effect.”
In the late 1960s he served as naval adviser to the Chief of Naval Staff, Royal Malaysian Navy, attended the Imperial Defence College in London and returned to Australia as Director-General Operations and Plans.
In 1973-75 he commanded the carrier Melbourne, flagship of the Australian fleet, during Operation Navy Help Darwin after Cyclone Tracy destroyed Darwin in the Northern Territory on Christmas Day 1974, and a task force sailed from Sydney, the crews having been recalled from leave, carrying several hundred tonnes of equipment, and additional personnel.
Promoted to rear admiral in 1976, Griffiths held two appointments, Chief of Naval Personnel and Flag Officer Naval Support Command, before he retired in 1980 after 43 years’ service. He was made an Officer of the Order of Australia.
In retirement he sought a better work-life balance and served for 24 years as national president of the Australian Veterans’ and Defence Services’ Council, a director of the Australian Vietnam War Veterans’ Trust for 18 years, and the inaugural CEO of North Shore Heart Research Foundation.
He was also president of the Naval Historical Society of Australia, as well as patron of the HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse Survivors’ Association, the HMAS Canberra-Shropshire Association and the HMAS Hobart Association.
Griffiths grew from country boy into a highly respected naval officer. In his early years he had been rather stern towards his subordinates, and his ambition was all too transparent, but as he matured he saw promotion more as an opportunity to challenge himself professionally and to achieve reforms for the Navy which he loved.
In later life he enjoyed speaking to young people, to historical societies and to the media about his war service. In 2019 he travelled from Australia to England to attend the commissioning of the new HMS Prince of Wales in Portsmouth.
His biography The Life and Times of an Australian Admiral, by his friend Admiral Peter Jones, was published in 2001.
In post-war Hong Kong, Griffiths met Carla Mengert, who was working for the German consul. The daughter of two German doctors, she had been born in Java, and spent the war years interned with her mother in Japanese-occupied Shanghai, while her father was interned in India, and a brother died fighting in the German army on the Eastern Front. They were married in 1959; she predeceased him and he is survived by a son and a daughter.
Rear Admiral Guy Griffiths, born March 1 1923, died March 5 2024
