Walter Couchman

The son of Malcolm Edward Couchman, a civil servant in British India, and Emily Elizabeth Ranking, Walter Couchman was born in Madras in 1905.[1] Educated at the Royal Naval College, Osborne, Couchman joined the Royal Navy and specialized in naval aviation,[2] after training at the Britannia Royal Naval College, Dartmouth.[1]

Couchman attended staff college at the Royal Naval College, Greenwich in 1928 and qualified as a naval pilot in 1935.[1]

He served in the Second World War as Commander in the Air Materials Division and then as Commanding Officer of the destroyer HMS Veteran.[2] In 1941 he was appointed Staff Officer (Plans) for the Mediterranean Fleet.[2] Later in the War he became Naval Assistant (Underwater Weapons) and then Chief Staff Officer to the Flag Officer Air (Home).[2]

After the War he became Captain of the aircraft carrier HMS Glory and then, from 1947, Director of Naval Air Organisation and Training at the Admiralty.[3]

He went on to be Flag Officer, Flying Training in 1951,[3] in which role he led the Fleet Air Arm flypast of 327 aircraft at the Coronation review of the fleet, flying a de Havilland Sea Vampire.[4] He was then appointed Flag Officer, Heavy Squadron in 1953, Flag Officer, Aircraft Carriers in 1954 and Deputy Controller of Supplies (Air) at the Ministry of Supply in 1955.[3] He became Flag Officer, Air (Home) in 1957 and Vice Chief of the Naval Staff in 1960.[2] He retired in November 1960.[2]

He married Phyllida Connellan;[5] they had a son and two daughters.[1] Following the dissolution of his first marriage, he married Hughe Thelma Hunter Blair née Reid in 1965.[6] After the death of Hughe in 1972, he married Daphne Harvey, the widow of a naval captain.[1]

• "THE ROYAL NAVY IN THE POST WAR PERIOD". www.iwm.org.uk. Imperial War Museum. Retrieved 27 June 2021. - photograph of Couchman on promotion to admiral in 1959, seated in the cockpit of a Hawker Sea Hawk.