Posting this here as he flew in the Palembang raids. I daresay some of the Kiwis mentioned on this thread were known to him.
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=3RPQAPGBGGFKNQFIQMFSFFWAVCBQ0IV0?xml=/news/2007/12/26/db2602.xml
Vice-Admiral Sir 'Gus' Halliday
Vice-Admiral Sir 'Gus' Halliday, who has died aged 84, had a first taste of intelligence work as a naval assistant to the Chief of Naval Intelligence in the 1960s, then served as a liaison in Washington before becoming head of Defence Intelligence for 10 years until 1984.
His task, at the height of the Cold War, was to assess Soviet capabilities, using intelligence gleaned from intercepted signals, reports from attachés, spies and aerial photography.
Working closely with the US Navy, Halliday struck up a lasting friendship with Rear-Admiral Bobby Inman, whom President Clinton later wanted to head the CIA. As Inman progressed through the ranks of the US intelligence world, Halliday served as naval attaché and Commander, British Navy Staff, in Washington.
Although his task was outwardly a diplomatic one, he continued his intelligence liaison with the Americans and, uniquely for a foreign national, had an office in the Pentagon.
During this time Halliday escorted the Queen on her State visit during the bicentenary of the War of Independence in 1976. He also arranged a lunch between Admiral Hyman Rickover and Lord Mountbatten where the two men, calling each other Rick and Dickie, interspersed personal insults with an exchange of vital information needed for the British nuclear submarine programme.
Halliday returned to London in 1978 to become Deputy Chief of Defence Staff (Intelligence) and a member of the Joint Intelligence Committee. Then, following one of the MoD's periodic reorganisations, he retired, but was immediately reappointed an under-secretary of state and Director General of Intelligence.
His principal duty was to assess information from a military, economic and political perspective; to make assessments; and to brief Margaret Thatcher on urgent matters. Usually these briefings were made in the Red Book, which went every week to Chequers; but Halliday was regularly summoned to Downing Street for personal meetings.
Roy William Halliday, always known as "Gus", was born on June 27 1923 and educated at William Ellis and University College schools in north London before volunteering for the Royal Navy in 1939.
When his call-up papers were delayed he worked in the Lowestoft trawler Breadwinner, hauling the nets every four hours for six days and spending watches gutting fish on deck - all for 10 shillings a week. His abiding memory was of having to borrow a wooden seat which hung from a hook in the galley and sitting on it over a barrel in the lifeboat.
Halliday then trained as an ordinary seaman at HMS Royal Arthur at Billy Butlin's Skegness camp, before being sent to Gros Ile, Detroit, to learn to fly. The failure rate was 35 per cent, but Halliday attained his solo in 10 hours.
After earning their wings at Pensacola, Florida, his fellow American students were awarded diplomas at an elaborate parade; but the RN liaison officer summoned Halliday to his office, where he produced gold-braid Fleet Air Arm wings from an old Oxo tin.
Shortly afterwards Japan attacked Pearl Harbour and Halliday, who had worn plain clothes throughout his training, was able to don the uniform of a sub-lieutenant, RNVR.
He first flew anti-submarine patrols in Grumman Avengers from the carriers Chaser, Illustrious and Victorious over the Atlantic, and then bombing sorties against the Japanese on Java and Sumatra in support of General Slim's Fourteenth Army in Burma.
On January 24 1945 he was hit in a dogfight by a Japanese Zero over the oil refineries at Palembang, and nursed his burning aircraft over the mountainous jungle to ditch in the Java Sea.
After scrambling into his dinghy, he waited calmly to be rescued by the destroyer Whelp, whose first lieutenant, Prince Philip of Greece, lent him a uniform and then accompanied him on a "run ashore" when they arrived at Fremantle 10 days later.
When Halliday later returned to Victorious he was upset to learn that his cabin mate, sub-lieutenant Ken Burrenston, who had also been shot down over Palembang, was one of nine flyers beheaded by his captors at Changi, Singapore, two days after the Japanese surrender.
While coming back home in the troopship Rangitiki, Halliday turned down an invitation from his squadron commanding officer, the Anglo-American David Foster, to join him "in soap". Instead he accepted a permanent commission in the Navy while Foster went to become president of Colgate-Palmolive.
Halliday became a test pilot at Boscombe Down, then commanded 813 Naval Air Squadron, flying Westland Wyvern torpedo bombers from the carrier Eagle.
He next attended the Army Staff College, where he learnt the broader aspects of naval policy before commanding HMS Diligence, near his parents' home in the New Forest.
From 1961 to 1962 Halliday was senior officer of the 104th Minesweeping Squadron in the Far East, where he swept left-over Japanese mines and chased pirates in the Celebes Sea. The piracy soon stopped when news spread that the culprits, whether Filipino or Indonesian, would be tried on Halliday's evidence and hanged by the judiciary on North Borneo.
He then became naval assistant to the Chief of Naval Information at the Admiralty, and discovered how information reached the press when it was revealed that Colonel Sammy Lohan, secretary of the "D" Notice committee, had been lunching regularly with Chapman Pincher of the Daily Express.
In 1964 Halliday learned to fly helicopters in order to give him status as Commander (Air) amongst the youthful Wessex pilots of the commando carrier Albion. The crews took part in operations in the Radfan and the evacuation of Aden; later they flew supply sorties to British and Commonwealth troops fighting the Indonesian Konfrontasi.
After a spell back at the MoD at a time when the Navy was losing the bitter battle for a new generation of aircraft carriers, he helped to secure as a stopgap, the Phantom fighter from the United States. He was then sent to sea in the frigate Euryalus as Captain, 3rd Destroyer Squadron.
From 1971 to 1973 Halliday commanded UK Amphibious Forces, and took part in Nato exercises in the Caribbean, the Norwegian Sea and the Mediterranean. He also carried out some trials with the prototype Harrier jump jet flown by his old Boscombe Down friend, Bill Bedford.
In retirement Halliday became a do-it-yourself enthusiast and threw himself into parish affairs in the New Forest. He worked with the Mountbatten Centre for International Affairs at Southampton University and was president of the Burma Star Association.
Gus Halliday, who died on November 23, was awarded the DSC in 1944 and mentioned in dispatches twice. He was appointed KBE in 1980.
In 1945 he married "Polly" Meech, who survives him.
