Draft:Charles Richard Vernon Pugh (Royal Navy officer)

Captain Charles Richard Vernon Pugh, CBE (8 January 1903 – 12 September 1979) served in the Royal Navy as an aircraft pilot, commanding officer of an aircraft carrier, and Captain Superintendent of the Royal New Zealand Navy's dockyard in Auckland.

Early life
Charles Richard Vernon (Dick) Pugh was one of seven children of Charles Vernon Pugh and Frances Mary Pugh (nee Smith).

Naval career
Having entered the Royal Navy as a midshipman in 1921, he was promoted to lieutenant on 15 August, 1925.

On 3 October 1931 a single-engine Simmonds Spartan G-AAML light aircraft piloted by Lieutenant Pugh crashed into a tree on final approach at Croydon Airport in Surrey, England. Pugh was slightly injured while his passenger Miss Inez Alston, his fiancée aged 24, was killed. The Coroner's report concluded that: "The crash was in no way due to Lieut. Pugh, the pilot, who behaved with the greatest resource in the face of instant death when trying to save his passenger and his machine."

Throughout the 1930s the Fleet Air Arm was an organisational unit of the Royal Air Force, which accounts for Pugh’s entries in The London Gazette recording promotions in ranks as an officer in both the RAF and the Royal Navy. The London Gazette of 21 March 1933 records him as being promoted from flying officer to flight lieutenant. He was promoted to lieutenant commander on 15 August, 1933 while still serving with the RAF, where he was promoted to squadron leader on 1 July 1936.

He was promoted to commander on 30 June, 1939, in which rank he was mentioned in despatches on 4 May 1943 for services rendered during the combined Allied amphibious landing in Morocco and Algeria on 8 November 1942 (Operation Torch) while serving on the aircraft carrier HMS Indomitable.

He was promoted to captain on 30 June, 1944 and from then until April 1945 he served as commanding officer of HMS Jackdaw (RN Air Station, Crail, Fife, Scotland), following which he was appointed Naval Officer-in-Charge Oslo, Norway in May 1945, later being awarded the King Haakon VII Freedom Cross by the King of Norway in recognition of services connected with the liberation of Norway.

On 23 October 1945 he was appointed commanding officer of the Escort carrier HMS Ravager, shortly afterwards being made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire, on 11 December 1945, then mentioned in despatches a second time in the 1946 New Year Honours.

He was lent to the Royal New Zealand Navy and appointed as Naval Officer-in-Charge, Auckland, and Captain Superintendent, Auckland on 19 June 1946.

Pugh retired from the Royal Navy on 30 January, 1951.