Ships
- HMS Caledon (D53) Captain from 10 December 1943 · Relieved on 11 November 1944
Reginald Frederick Nichols had Caledon from 10 December 1943. Unithistories.com ends the command on 11 November 1944. Uboat.net ends it on 21 November 1944. The command line uses 11 November. He was in command for the attack off Cape Bengut and for the landings in the south of France. He is not the Charles Alfred Godfrey Nichols already in other records. The careers are different.
Unithistories says he was born on 9 September 1900 in the East Preston district of Sussex, and that he died on 7 August 1984 at View Royal, on Vancouver Island, British Columbia. Uboat.net gives the same dates and places the birth at Worthing, which lay in that registration district. The page says he married Eileen, and it does not give her surname.
Uboat.net lists midshipman on 1 May 1917, acting sub-lieutenant on 15 September 1919, sub-lieutenant on 15 May 1920, lieutenant on 15 December 1921, lieutenant-commander on 15 December 1929, commander on 31 December 1934, and captain on 31 December 1942. He retired on 8 January 1952. Unithistories agrees the lieutenant's date, the later promotions and the retirement, and it marks him as a graduate of the Royal Naval Staff College. He was mentioned in despatches on 1 January 1946. Unithistories also records the Order of Orange-Nassau for the visit of the Queen of the Netherlands to London in November 1950.
Unithistories gives him navigating duties in Stuart, Bluebell on the China Station, Danae on the America and West Indies Station from 1930 to 1933, and HMNZS Dunedin from 1933 to 1935, then the staff course and, from March 1937, executive and navigating officer of Southampton. From 6 July to 14 October 1939 he was executive officer of Royal Oak, which the page notes was torpedoed and sunk. He was then in the Plans Division. From 7 August 1940 to 27 September 1943 he was lent to the Royal Australian Navy, and from 25 May 1942 to 19 September 1943 he was Deputy Chief of the Naval Staff.
He took Caledon on 10 December 1943, the week uboat.net says the anti-aircraft conversion finished. Mason has her in the Mediterranean in 1944. On 11 May, off Cape Bengut, she was attacked by 62 Ju 88s and shot down ten. On 15 August she was in Task Group 88.2 for the landings in the south of France. Unithistories ends him on 11 November 1944. Uboat.net keeps him until 21 November, when John Ronald Stewart Brown starts. The Navy List date is the one in the command line. After a blank in January 1945, unithistories lists him, with a question on the date, in command of the minesweeper Ready, and it then shows gaps until he became Director of the Minesweeping Division on 15 April 1946.
From 19 November 1947 he was Captain of the Dockyard, Deputy Superintendent and King's Harbour Master at Chatham. The fetched portion of the entry also has him as a naval aide-de-camp to the King from 7 July 1951 until he retired on 8 January 1952. He died at View Royal on 7 August 1984.