Captain Frederick Michael Alexander Torrens-Spence, DSO, DSC, AFC (10 March 1914 – 12 December 2001) was a Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm pilot in the Second World War.

Whilst serving on Illustrious, which had been dispatched to the Mediterranean in September 1940, he took part in the attack on Italian battleships in the Battle of Taranto as a Swordfish torpedo bomber pilot.

Her aircraft were disembarked in Malta, and Torrens-Spence flew to Eleusis, near Athens, Greece, with elements of 815 and 819 Squadrons for an active anti-shipping campaign which later earned him the Distinguished Service Order.

After observing an attack by aircraft from the carrier HMS Formidable achieve no result, he found a hole in the enemy smokescreen and was confronted with the Pola, which he torpedoed from close range.

The cruiser immediately slowed to six knots and the Italian admiral decided to divide his force, leaving a large detachment to escort Pola and sail for home.

[1] From 1942, Torrens-Spence was posted to the UK to become a leading Admiralty test pilot at RAF Boscombe Down where he remained for the next three years, and worked closely with fellow former HMS Glorious and 819 Naval Air Squadron pilot Lieutenant Roy Sydney Baker-Falkner in developing and test flying the Fairey Barracuda aircraft prior to its operational service in the Fleet Air Arm.

[1] When the Specials were disbanded in 1970 and replaced by the Ulster Defence Regiment, Torrens-Spence took control of the County Armagh Battalion (2 UDR), as a lieutenant colonel, to get it up and running.

[1] In 1981, he became Lord Lieutenant of Armagh, after Norman Stronge was killed by the Provisional Irish Republican Army in an armed assault on his home, Tynan Abbey.