Commander John McGregor obituary: Falklands commander

On the evening of May 23, 1982, during the Falklands conflict, Commander John McGregor “watched in fascinated horror” after an unexploded bomb detonated while being defused on the frigate HMS Antelope, which was anchored 300 yards away in San Carlos Bay, East Falkland.

One of the bomb-disposal engineers working on Antelope lost his life; another was badly injured.

The frigate burnt throughout the night. In the morning, McGregor saw Antelope’s “bow and stern sticking up in a V-sign before they sank and disappeared from view”. The ship had been part of the task force that was attempting to retake the Falkland Islands, a British Overseas Territory that had been invaded by the Argentinians on April 2.

When McGregor, a naval engineer based on the amphibious assault ship HMS Fearless, was asked the next day to help deal with unexploded bombs on two other stricken ships, he was, as he said later, “not best pleased”.

The ships were the fleet auxiliaries Sir Galahad and Sir Lancelot, which had been attacked by Argentinian bombers. Both vessels carried equipment and hundreds of tonnes of ammunition urgently needed on shore, where British troops had landed on May 21 and established a bridgehead on San Carlos Bay.

The burnt-out remains of Sir Galahad ALAMY

Survivors are hauled ashore by colleagues at Bluff Cove, East Falkland ALAMY

By May 25, seven British warships had either been sunk or badly damaged, but several bombs that hit their targets had failed to explode because of problems with the Argentinian fuses.

After their failure to disarm the bomb on Antelope, the British decided to stop “fiddling with fuses” and to lift the unexploded bombs out of Galahad and Lancelot and dispose of the ordnance at sea.

The reasoning was simple. McGregor said: “If the bomb could be lifted out very carefully and without changing its attitude or touching the fuse, then it shouldn’t explode after having rattled around inside a ship.”

Renowned for his work on nuclear reactors in submarines, McGregor had joined HMS Fearless as engineer commander just before the outbreak of hostilities in the Falklands. On May 25, he raised an engineering team — all volunteers from Fearless — with the welding skills necessary to burn through metal plate on Galahad and Lancelot. He also decided to lead the team himself.

“I would never be able to forgive myself if something happened to them,” McGregor said, “and I felt that my years in nuclear submarines had taught me how to tackle complex engineering problems with proper regard to safety.”

McGregor and his team approached Galahad, which was deserted, in a landing craft carrying a large assortment of tools. The 1,000lb bomb was lying with its nose pointing upwards at an angle of 30 degrees under a large pile of debris in the ruins of Galahad’s battery shop two decks down. The area reeked of sulphuric acid, which had leaked from the batteries.

“About four feet long and 18 inches in diameter, the bomb looked grey, battered and evil,” said McGregor.

Lieutenant “Bernie” Bruen, a bomb-disposal officer from a different team, assured McGregor that “if it blew up, we wouldn’t feel a thing!”

McGregor later wrote: “The problem was rather similar to lifting out a car engine, but we had to be very careful not to tilt it. If we could move it sideways 10ft then it could be plumbed from a crane on the upper deck.

“My team rigged a system of chain blocks, strops and beam clamps and, working as silently as possible, opened up a large cargo hatch and moved a heavy steel ladder out of the way.”

Once their work was complete, McGregor and his men left the ship while Bruen and his men raised the bomb and lowered it over the side into a dinghy, where it was placed on a pile of cornflake packets with its nose pointing upwards and taken further out to sea. The next morning, a circle of cornflakes marked the position where it sank.

The unexploded bomb on Sir Lancelot rested precariously on a film cannister labelled The Seven Per Cent Solution, a 1976 Sherlock Holmes mystery starring Laurence Olivier and Vanessa Redgrave, under an accommodation ladder. The bomb was removed by Bruen’s team only after McGregor and his men had spent three days and nights cutting holes through the deck and dismantling a sleeping cabin and a number of bulkheads.

Essential supplies were removed and taken ashore. Both ships were quickly back in service with the task force, although Sir Galahad was attacked again and sunk at Fitzroy a week later. McGregor was appointed OBE.

Rear-Admiral Jeremy Larken, who was the captain of Fearless in 1982, said: “John was a modest man whose contribution to the Falklands conflict was impressive. He showed great leadership.

“He inspired very ordinary members of the ship’s company to assist many other ships on the way to the Falklands and others to volunteer and cheerfully undertake very dangerous work supporting stricken ships and bomb-disposal experts — and all this plus the highest personal courage on his own account.”

McGregor simply regarded it “as the most exciting and thrilling time of my life”.

On the passage south, Fearless had stopped in mid-Atlantic at the British island of Ascension, where McGregor was co-opted as a senior aide to Commodore Michael Clapp, the head of amphibious warfare. Clapp was responsible for getting British ground forces to the Falklands and then ensuring that they were properly supplied.

Over a period of three weeks, McGregor — now leading an engineering staff of 150, with Fearless serving as a fleet support vessel — visited every ship that arrived as they prepared for the invasion. All the merchant ships had been assembled at breakneck speed in Britain and every one of them needed McGregor’s help.

While the surface fleet benefitted from McGregor’s engineering skills in 1982, his background had been in submarines. He served in five vessels — Truncheon and Olympus, Dreadnought, which was Britain’s first nuclear-powered submarine, and Revenge and Repulse, which carried the Polaris nuclear deterrent.

As senior engineer on Repulse in the early 1970s, he served on three Polaris patrols, and oversaw the fastest refit, including refuelling of the reactor, ever undertaken. The job was done in 13 months at Rosyth Dockyard to maintain continuous Polaris patrols. “The whole engineering department worked in shifts throughout the refit,” he said. “It was crucial to get the job done quickly.”

McGregor was chairman of the Reactor Test Group at Chatham Dockyard for three years, and, for two years, Base Engineer Submarines at Devonport, where he was in charge of more than 100 engineering and electrical staff, including a nuclear repair team.

According to Jeremy Larken, “McGregor was a remarkable example of a great period in the Royal Navy, marked by the extraordinary achievements of the UK nuclear submarine propulsion programme.”

John McGregor was born in Midhurst, Sussex, in 1937, the son of Commander John Harvey McGregor, a naval officer, and his wife, Audrey. John had a younger brother, Richard.

The family moved to Bishopsteignton in Devon during the Blitz in 1940, but Audrey lost her husband a year later. His ship, the cruiser HMS Neptune, was lost off Tripoli on December 19, 1941. All but one of Neptune’s crew of 765 men were lost.

After the death of his father, John was educated at the New Beacon Preparatory School in Sevenoaks and won a scholarship to Christ’s Hospital, Horsham, before entering the Royal Naval College Dartmouth in 1953. He passed in fourth from more than 100 applicants. He excelled at maths and enjoyed all sports — rugby, cricket, golf and squash — as well as sailing. He later shared a yacht with a fellow engineer, “cruising around France and up the Baltic”.

McGregor qualified as a member of the Institute of Marine Engineers after studying for three years at the Royal Naval Engineering College and gained a master’s degree in nuclear science and technology at the Royal Naval College, Greenwich.

He married Margit Lauder in 1966 after meeting her in Plymouth. The couple had two children: Lisa, who lives in Madrid, and Robert; they are both teachers. The marriage did not last and they were divorced in 1994. McGregor married Patsy Clarke in 2007; his stepson, Jonathan, is an architect. His wife and children survive him. Margit died in 2008.

Aware of the great grief his mother had suffered in 1941 after receiving the telegram informing her that her husband was “missing presumed drowned”, McGregor quietly nurtured an interest in the fate of his father, who had been paymaster commander on Neptune.

After her death in 2001, he found the official report into the ship’s sinking, which had been filed with the National Archives, and started to piece together the truth about an action that had embarrassed the Royal Navy and been withheld from the public for many years.

With the support of the one survivor, Petty Officer Norman Walton, who had been rescued by an Italian torpedo boat after spending five days in the water, plus the sons of six other men who had perished with Neptune, and the work of several researchers, McGregor was able to disclose the truth about one of the biggest, but least known, British naval disasters of the Second World War.

His father’s ship, which led “Force K”, a raiding squadron harassing German convoys supplying Rommel’s troops in north Africa, had sailed into an uncharted minefield 15 miles off the coast of Tripoli. Neptune’s hull was ruptured by four mines. A destroyer, HMS Kandahar, which attempted to rescue survivors, was also lost with 73 crew. The disaster was blamed on “confusion” among the commanders.

Using his naval contacts, McGregor established the Neptune Association, with Walton as its president, and persuaded the Admiralty to explore the site where he believed the wreck of Neptune — and his father’s last resting place — would be found.

In 2016, the naval survey ship HMS Enterprise confirmed McGregor’s findings. A memorial now stands, listing the names of the 838 men who perished with Neptune and Kandahar, at the National Memorial Arboretum at Alrewas in Staffordshire.

Commander John McGregor OBE, naval engineer, was born on June 1, 1937. He died on August 12, 2025, aged 88

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