Captain Bill Owen, who has died aged 96, was a key figure in the establishment of the Royal Australian Navy’s modern submarine arm.
In 1967, Owen transferred to the RAN from the Royal Navy in the rank of acting commander, and took command of the British 4th Submarine Squadron, based in Sydney and composed of British boats manned by a mixture of British personnel on exchange service and Australians. Owen oversaw the transformation of this force into the Australian 1st Submarine Squadron, predominantly manned by Australians, and equipped with Oberon-class diesel-powered boats.
In subsequent years he was the Australian submarine-training commander, and then, in Canberra, director of submarine policy. He introduced several projects which enhanced the war-fighting capability of the Oberons, and argued successfully for increasing the size of the squadron to six boats.
Owen’s submarine weapons update program (SWUP) ensured that these boats fulfilled their potential as strategic assets for Australia; it thus provided the confidence, many years later, for Australia to embark on its own new-construction Collins-class boats.
Promoted to captain in 1976, Owen returned to command the squadron and one of his last duties, in December 1978, was to welcome the new submarine HMAS Otama, in which his son, Frank, was serving.
William Lloyd Owen was born in Aberystwyth on December 16 1927. As a child of empire, young Bill spent most of his prep-school years in England and his summer holidays in Khartoum, where his father was the chief justice, until he entered Dartmouth in 1941.
He completed his training at sea as a midshipman in the cruisers Frobisher and Glasgow, and was promoted to acting sub-lieutenant in 1947, with four and a half months’ seniority for the first-class passes he had earned under training.
In 1948 he learnt to fly in a Tiger Moth biplane at the Royal Naval Air Station, Gosport, but that experience caused him to volunteer for “the Trade” instead, and his first submarine was the veteran wartime boat Tantalus. He progressed rapidly by appointment to the submarines Springer, Totem, Scorcher, Sanguine, Trump and, as first lieutenant, of Tiptoe.
By 1954 he was on the naval staff course at RNC Greenwich; he also qualified as a German interpreter.
He passed the submarine commanding officers’ qualifying course, the “Perisher”, the following year, along with his fellow student the future Admiral of the Fleet Lord Fieldhouse; he was promoted to lieutenant commander and to command Subtle, followed by two years from 1959 in Sydney in command of Anchorite, part of the 4th Submarine Squadron.
While in command of Anchorite, Owen collided with an uncharted rock in the Hauraki Gulf, east of Auckland. No one was injured, but Anchorite spent several weeks in Calliope Dock, in Devonport, Auckland, for repairs.
Owen was acquitted at the subsequent court-martial, but when, in the time-honoured tradition of the sea, he claimed the right to call the rock after himself or his ship, he chose the name, “Owen’s Knob”, only to be overruled by a po-faced hydrographer who placed the name “Anchorite Rock” on the chart.
In 1964-65 he commanded the submarine Opossum, first while building at Cammel Laird’s yard in Birkenhead; later he took Opossum under the Arctic ice cap, claiming a record for the furthest north by a conventionally powered submarine.
While surfaced in a polynya (an area of unfrozen seawater within otherwise contiguous ice) to play cricket, the officer of the watch reported what appeared to be glow-worms flying past the conning tower. When Owen ordered a Geiger-counter “swipe”, this gave off loud crackling noises, and he concluded that the “glow-worms” must be fallout from a Soviet nuclear test.
His last uniformed appointment was as Naval Officer Commanding Queensland, 1980-83. He settled in Brisbane, where he remained active in the defence sector as a consultant to industry.
In 1954 he married Ann Nicholson, daughter of Major-General F L Nicholson CB, DSO, MC, with whom he had two sons and four daughters. His wife and two daughters predeceased him.
