Cunningham of Hyndhope, Admiral of the Fleet: A memoir

   MILITARY NAVAL GENERAL Royal Navy

• ix, 301 p. front., 17 plates (incl. ports., map) facsim. 22 1/2 cm. #150823 First Edition
• Cunningham, Andrew Browne Cunningham, 1st Viscount, 1883-1963
• Admirals — Great Britain — Biography
• Great Britain — History, Naval — 20th century
• Name on fep

Andrew Browne Cunningham, (born January 7, 1883, Dublin, Ireland—died June 12, 1963, London, England), British naval officer who was an outstanding combat commander early in World War II and served as first sea lord of the Admiralty from 1943 to 1946.

Cunningham became a naval cadet on HMS Britannia in 1897, rose steadily through the ranks in the following years, and commanded the British destroyer HMS Scorpion during World War I. He was promoted to vice admiral in 1936, and he was serving as commander in chief of the Mediterranean fleet when World War II began in September 1939. Though his forces were heavily outnumbered by the Italian navy from June 1940 (when Italy entered the war), Cunningham set out to establish British naval supremacy in the Mediterranean. With France knocked out of the war, he was able to secure the disarming of Admiral René Godfroy’s French squadron at Alexandria, Egypt. Cunningham then went on the offensive against the Italian navy. His air attacks on the Italian fleet anchored at Taranto (November 1940) put three Italian battleships out of action, and in the Battle of Cape Matapan (March 28, 1941) his forces sank three of Italy’s largest cruisers.

With British dominance over the Italian navy firmly established by 1941, Cunningham’s principal opponent became the Luftwaffe (German air force), which inflicted heavy losses on his ships in operations around Crete and Malta and on British convoys bound for North Africa. After spending several months (June–October 1942) in Washington, D.C., as the Royal Navy’s representative to the Anglo-American Combined Chiefs of Staff Committee, Cunningham returned to combat command as naval commander of the Allied expeditionary force in the Mediterranean. Acting as General Dwight D. Eisenhower’s naval deputy, Cunningham commanded the large fleet that covered the Anglo-American landings in North Africa (Operation Torch; November 1942) and then commanded the naval forces used in the joint Anglo-American amphibious invasions of Sicily (July 1943) and Italy.