Admiral of the Fleet Sir Philip Louis Vian, GCB, KBE, DSO & Two Bars (15 July 1894 – 27 May 1968) was a Royal Navy officer who served in both World Wars.

Much of Vian's Second World War service was in the Mediterranean, where he commanded a cruiser squadron, defended several critical convoys and led naval support at the Allied invasions of Sicily and Italy.

[1] On passing out from Dartmouth in 1911, Vian and his term[2] sailed for the West Indies on the training cruiser HMS Cornwall[3] but the cruise was ended by grounding on an uncharted reef off Nova Scotia.

[5] Dissatisfied by the lack of action in Argonaut, Vian used a promise of help from William Fisher and subsequently received an appointment to HMS Morning Star, a modern Yarrow-built M-class destroyer, in October 1915.

[5] On his return to the Royal Navy, Vian was given a series of appointments as gunnery officer, first, in January 1923, to the battleship HMS Thunderer, then serving as a cadet training ship.

[11] For the two years up to January 1933, Vian had a "shore" appointment at the Admiralty in London, with the Director for Staff Training and Development (DTSD), analysing practice gunnery statistics.

[12][13] Two incidents occurred during this command for which Vian was held to be at fault: damage to Active while going astern alongside a depot ship in Malta[14] and the loss of a torpedo from HMS Anthony.

[5] However, Vian's commander-in chief, William Fisher, had remained well-disposed towards him,[14] and these incidents had no ill effect on his career: he was promoted to captain on 31 December 1934.

[15] On his return to the UK in early 1935, he was told to expect to spend time on half-pay,[16] but the Abyssinian crisis intervened and he was given command of the 19th Destroyer Flotilla (on board HMS Douglas), which had been activated from the reserve to reinforce Malta.

[5] Vian returned to the UK in July 1935 at the end of the crisis and attended a Senior Officers Technical Course before rejoining the 19th Destroyer Flotilla.

[17] During a period at the Royal Naval College, Greenwich, Vian was unexpectedly offered an appointment as Flag-Captain to Rear-Admiral Lionel Wells in HMS Arethusa, flagship of the 3rd Cruiser Squadron, then part of the Mediterranean Fleet.

This flotilla had been recently activated from reserve and consisting of seven old V and W-class destroyers plus his own ship, HMS Mackay,[19] based first at Plymouth then at Liverpool, with the role of escorting Atlantic convoys.

for outstanding ability, determination and resource in the preliminary dispositions which led to the rescue of 300 English prisoners from the German Armed Auxiliary Altmark, and for daring, leadership and masterly handling of his ship in narrow waters so as to bring her alongside and board the enemy, who tried to blind him with the glare of a searchlight, worked his engine full ahead and full astern, tried to ram him and drive him ashore and so threatened the grounding and loss of Cossack.

[24] From 15 to 17 April, Afridi assisted and protected British troop landings at Namsos (Operation Maurice), which were a part of a planned pincer movement to seize Trondheim.

[28] On 22 May 1941, Vian, in HMS Cossack, with several destroyers, provided additional escort to troop convoy WS8B en route from Glasgow to the Indian Ocean.

On 25 May, Vian's destroyers (HMS Cossack, Maori, Sikh, Zulu and ORP Piorun) were detached from the convoy to join the search for the German battleship Bismarck.

They failed to score a hit in the darkness, but their activities fixed the German's position and denied the crew much-needed rest before the main battle on 27 May.

During July and August, 1941, Vian was involved in liaising with the Soviet Navy to assess their readiness and to investigate the practicalities of a British naval force being based at Murmansk or nearby.

Secondary tasks included the supply and artillery support of Allied military actions in north Africa and elsewhere, such as a successful bombardment of Derna in December.

The naval action was portrayed as a tactical success against a greatly superior enemy, although the convoy's progress was sufficiently delayed to leave it vulnerable to air attacks and all four transports were sunk and the bulk of the supplies were lost.

Despite this, Vian received a personal letter of congratulation from Winston Churchill and he was appointed a Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (KBE).

In January, he was mentioned in despatches for "outstanding zeal, patience and cheerfulness and for setting an example of wholehearted devotion to duty without which the high tradition of the Royal Navy could not have been upheld".

Probably much to his relief,[5] however, this shore job was pre-empted by his return to the Mediterranean to command (from HMS Glengyle) an amphibious force for the Allied invasion of Sicily in July 1943.

[5] In September 1943, he commanded Force V, a flotilla of escort aircraft carriers providing air support for the Allied landings at Salerno, Italy.

These served to damage the enemy's capabilities, distract his attention from events elsewhere and provide experience for the British and Commonwealth crews in the procedures that they would use while working with the Americans in the western Pacific.

[5] After the Japanese surrender, Vian returned finally to the UK and became Fifth Sea Lord in charge of naval aviation from 1946 until 1948,[8][47] when he was promoted to admiral.