This was followed by the newly built but ill-fated Umpire which sank in the North Sea after a night time collision in July 1941 with an armed British trawler, the Peter Hendriks.

From September 1942 Wingfield commanded the submarine Taurus which, after a patrol to Norway, was based first in Algiers, enforcing a blockade of Marseilles, then in Malta, operating in the Aegean, and finally in Beirut, attacking enemy shipping and landing agents on Greek islands.

In the ensuing counterattack Taurus was damaged by depth charges but surfaced and the well-trained 4-inch gun crew surprised and disabled the Japanese submarine chaser.

In May 1944, she departed the Indian Ocean and Wingfield took the submarine home via Aden, Port Said, Malta and Gibraltar to Holy Loch, Scotland for a refit after twelve war patrols in two years.

Promoted to Captain in 1953, his first role was at HMS Jupiter on the Gare Loch, West Scotland, before appointment as Naval Attaché in Athens and Tel Aviv during the Suez crisis.

Before the war he had served on the China station; in the war he commanded three submarines, Umpire, Sturgeon and Taurus, survived a collision in the North Sea, spent a winter in the Arctic, penetrated the Norwegian fjords submerged through a minefield, surfaced off St Nazaire in view of German guns to act as a navigation marker for the raiding force, fought cavalry in the northern Aegean, and later, off Penang, was the first to sink a Japanese submarine – and barely survived the subsequent, vicious counterattack after Taurus was severely damaged and became stuck in the mud at the bottom.