Early Life and Career
Ian Leslie Trower Hogg, the son of an Indian Army colonel, was born in India on 30 May 1911. His mother died at Dehra Dun two months after his birth. He was educated at Cheltenham College and joined the Navy in 1929 as a Special Entry — or ex-public school — cadet, earning a first-class certificate on graduation from the training ship HMS Erebus.
He subsequently served in the battleships HMS Barham and HMS Valiant and the cruiser HMS Effingham on the East Indies Station. His aptitude for navigation was shown early when a lieutenant in the destroyer HMS Acheron in the Mediterranean in 1934 and the dispatch vessel HMS Bideford in the Persian Gulf. His confidential reports during this period describe a capable leader, with a markedly beneficial influence over junior officers and the ship’s company.
Qualifying as a specialist navigator in 1937, he was appointed to the cruiser HMS Southampton. His war started in the obsolete light cruiser HMS Cardiff on the arduous northern blockade patrol that deprived Germany of imports, and it continued briefly in the cruiser HMS Penelope where his “somewhat casual manner” was perceptively diagnosed as “liable to mislead”. His war career showed that he was clearly able to differentiate the important from the unimportant and to “bear an even strain” under testing circumstances.
Read more about this topic: Ian Hogg (Royal Navy Officer)
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