Ships
- HMS Formidable (67) Captain from 23 September 1943 · Relieved on 13 February 1946
Philip Ruck-Keene was born on 7 November 1897, the son of a clergyman. He joined the Royal Navy by the special-entry route at the Royal Naval College, Keyham, in September 1915, and was rated midshipman on 1 February 1916. His first seagoing appointment was to the battleship Vanguard. By the summer of 1917 he had been lent to the submarine depot ship Lucia. He was clear of Vanguard when she blew up at Scapa Flow just before midnight on 9 July 1917. He was promoted sub-lieutenant that September.
He was promoted lieutenant on 15 February 1919 and remained a submariner. In 1923 he and Lieutenant Bernard William Galpin devised a graphical method for keeping track of a submarine battery. He commanded H 34 from August 1924 to July 1925, was promoted lieutenant-commander on 15 February 1927, and commanded Oswald from October 1928 to June 1931. He became a commander on 31 December 1931 and a captain on 31 December 1936.
Before the carrier, his commands were submarine depot ships. He had Maidstone from January 1938, Cyclops from November 1939, Maidstone again from May to August 1940, and Titania for a few weeks after that. In April 1942 he took command of Medway, depot ship of the 1st Submarine Flotilla in the Mediterranean. The Birthday Honours of 11 June 1942 made him a Commander of the Order of the British Empire. Medway was torpedoed and sunk off the Egyptian coast on 30 June 1942, the last day of his appointment, and nearly all of those on board were saved. In January 1943 he was mentioned in despatches for leadership in the flotilla’s attacks on Axis supply bases.
On 23 September 1943 he became captain of the armoured fleet carrier Formidable. Two days later she was exercising aircraft off Gibraltar. He brought a submariner’s habits to a flight deck and drove the ship hard. During a refit at Belfast late in 1943 he decided that time alongside the dockyard was loosening the ship’s company, sent away men he would not keep, and insisted on a high standard from officers and ratings alike. Those who served with him remembered a very loud voice and an exacting captain. The carrier that left the yard was run to fight.
In 1944 Formidable worked with the Home Fleet, and her aircraft joined the carrier strikes against the German battleship Tirpitz in the fjords of northern Norway. In January 1945 she sailed for the British Pacific Fleet, reached Sydney in March with Corsair fighters and Avenger bombers embarked, and then flew in support of the Okinawa campaign. The Distinguished Service Order of 23 October 1945 recognised the results of that flying, including the strikes of 3 April 1945.
In May 1945, while those operations continued, kamikaze aircraft hit her. On 4 May a Japanese fighter came in low over the sea, dropped a bomb, and struck the flight deck abreast the island. The blast blew in the bridge windows as Ruck-Keene stood there. The armoured deck was dished and pierced, steam pipes in a boiler room were cut, and speed fell to about 14 knots. Two officers and six ratings were killed, and fifty-five men were wounded. The fires were in hand within about twenty minutes. Aircraft were operating again before evening, and the ship worked back up to 24 knots. Ruck-Keene took the American liaison officer, Lieutenant Commander Ben Hedges, by the arm and shook his fist, a blunt judgment on what the armoured deck had absorbed. Another kamikaze hit Formidable within the week and started a serious fire among the aircraft in the hangar. She returned to operations. Rear Admiral Philip Vian, who commanded the carrier squadron, later praised the way Ruck-Keene and the air group fought the ship.
On 9 August 1945, in the last week of the war, Corsairs from Formidable attacked Japanese warships in Onagawa Wan, on the coast of Honshu. Lieutenant Robert Hampton Gray of the Royal Canadian Naval Volunteer Reserve led them in very low, through fire from shore batteries and from the ships, and scored at least one direct hit that sank a destroyer. His own aircraft was already in flames, and he was killed. The Victoria Cross was awarded to him after his death. Ruck-Keene stayed in Formidable until he was relieved on 13 February 1946.
He was promoted rear-admiral on 5 July 1946. The United States made him an Officer of the Legion of Merit for his service to the Allied cause through the war. Greece appointed him a Commander of the Royal Order of George I, with swords, for services to the Royal Hellenic Navy during the war in Europe. The Birthday Honours of 10 June 1948 made him a Companion of the Bath. On 3 August 1949 he retired with the rank of vice-admiral. He died on 28 May 1977.