Clarence Johnston

Rear-Admiral Clarence Dinsmore Howard-Johnston, (13 October 1903 – 26 January 1996) was a British Royal Navy officer and inventor. He specialised in anti-submarine warfare during the inter-war years, later heading the Anti-Submarine Division at the Admiralty. In 1953, he was promoted to rear-admiral and served on the NATO staff.

Early life Born in St George Hanover Square, Westminster, Clarence Johnston was the son of John Howard Johnston (1850–1913), an American from New Hampshire, and his wife Dorothy Florence Baird, of Scottish origins. Both the Johnston and Baird families were in engineering. He was brought up in Nice, France, and later adopted the name Howard-Johnston, appending his father's and his own middle name to his surname.

Howard-Johnston's father died in 1913, and his mother remarried, becoming Comtesse Pierre du Brevil de St Germain.

In 1940, Howard-Johnston joined the anti-submarine warfare division at the Admiralty, and later the same year was detached to set up an anti-submarine training unit at Quiberon and then to organise anti-submarine operations in Norway. although not for anti-submarine duties: instead, for the evacuations at Andalsnes and Molde. A month later, he was ordered to demolish the port facilities at St Malo, and received a Mention in Dispatches for this work.

Howard-Johnston was then transferred to command on the north Atlantic convoys, for which he received another Mention in Dispatches – and then in January 1941 the DSO, "for skill and enterprise in action against Enemy Submarines", referring to the sinking of U-651. He was then transferred to Liverpool, to train others, before being promoted to captain in June 1943, and had been made director of the Anti-Submarine Division at the Admiralty.

In 1945, he was given command of the light cruiser HMS Bermuda, and then from August 1950 to October 1952 was Captain of the HMS Vernon Torpedo School. In 1951, while at Vernon, he had to organise the unsuccessful search for , on which his son was serving. In 1953, he was promoted to rear-admiral, and served on the NATO staff before finally retiring.

Personal life Howard-Johnston was married three times. In 1928, he married Esme Fitzgibbon. In 1941, he married secondly Lady Alexandra Henrietta Louisa Haig, a daughter of Field Marshal Earl Haig, with whom he had a daughter and two sons, including the historian James Howard-Johnston, before that marriage also ended in divorce. His final marriage, which was childless, was to Paulette Helleu,