Lieutenant-Commander Don Ridgway

Lt-Cdr Don Ridgway was a Fleet Air Arm observer who helped cover the Arctic convoys and survived the sinking of the carrier Dasher




Lt-Cdr Don Ridgway, who has died aged 92, flew with 816 Naval Air Squadron and after the war led a revolution in the retail industry.

The Swordfish of 816 NAS operated from small escort craft known as “Woolworth” carriers in order to fill the gap in air cover between Europe and North America. But when the squadron was ready for action in September 1942 its designated carrier, Dasher, was taking part in Operation Torch, the Allied landings in North Africa.


As a result Ridgway and his squadron undertook night operations in the English Channel, laying mines in the harbours of Cherbourg and Le Havre and attacking enemy shipping. The toll was heavy. Within a few weeks the squadron had lost half its aircrew; however, one early success came after Ridgway identified a German convoy which was then attacked and sunk by surface forces.


In February 1943 the squadron embarked in Dasher and escorted convoy JW53 from Iceland to Russia, but the ship and her aircraft were so badly damaged in stormy weather that she was forced to return to the Clyde. The squadron re-embarked a month later, but on March 27, while an aircraft was being refuelled, Dasher blew up and sank within a few minutes. Ridgway and six other 816 NAS aircrew were among the 149 (of 538 in the ship’s company) who survived.


Within six months Ridgway had joined the redoubtable Lt-Cdr Freddie Nottingham and a score of new aircrew in a re-formed 816 NAS at Machrihanish. The squadron started by searching for and attacking German E-boats in the English Channel in May, and in June moved to the Fearn peninsula

Equipped with six Swordfish and six Seafires, the squadron then embarked in the escort carrier Tracker to conduct anti-submarine operations in conjunction with Captain Johnnie Walker’s 2nd Support Group in the North-West Approaches. Walker’s tactics were to use the aircraft to keep the U-boats below the surface so that they could only move at slow, submerged speed, making them easier targets for escorts. The tactics worked better than expected, and no merchant ships were sunk in the gap between August and December 1943.

By January 1944 Ridgway was senior observer of 816 NAS when it embarked in the escort carrier Chaser to cover the Arctic convoys. On the 42-ship JW57, he helped drive off shadowing aircraft and keep U-boats submerged, allowing the convoy to reach Murmansk without loss. On the return, 816 NAS’s rocket-armed Swordfish played havoc with the U-boat group Werewolf, sinking three (U-472, U-366, and U-973), and damaging several others. This success led to all future Arctic convoys being protected by escort carriers.

James Donald Ridgway was born on April 29 1921 at Stockport, where his father was sales manager for Cheshire Sterilised Milk Company. Educated locally, he volunteered for the Fleet Air Arm and was commissioned as an observer in 1941

He was immediately appointed to the heavy cruiser Berwick off Iceland to help hunt down German vessels from her catapult-launched Walrus amphibian biplane.

By August 1944, 816 NAS, which had lost more than four in five of its aircrew in two years, was disbanded. Ridgway had risen from sub-lieutenant to lieutenant-commander. He flew briefly from merchant aircraft carriers (oil tankers with minimal aircraft-handling facilities) and became an air navigation instructor.

In 1946 he read Microbiology and Dairy Science at Aberystwyth before joining a large private dairy which manufactured sterilised milk and Cheshire cheese. Subsequently he worked for Unigate, Model Diaries in Australia, and Associated Dairies. He worked on trials to produce UHT milk in 1953 and at the first milk tetra-pack plant in Britain.

When Associated Dairies founded Asda, Ridgway became the company’s technical director and planning expert, and by 1970 he had built the company’s first eight out-of-town shopping centres. Next he devised the concept of district centres, with individual shops clustered around an Asda “magnet store”. Between 1973 and 1983 Ridgway oversaw the building of 29 district centres, from Aberdeen to Plymouth. When he retired in 1984 to care for his wife, Ridgway had built 69 large Asda stores. He was particularly proud of the store on the Isle of Dogs, which anticipated the redevelopment of the Docklands.

Donald Ridgway married, first, in 1945, Margaret Adshead. After she died in 2000, he married his son’s mother-in-law, Muriel Breaks (née Naylor), who survives him with a son and daughter of his first marriage. Twin daughters predeceased him.


Lt-Cdr Don Ridgway, born April 29 1921, died October 22 2013