Chris Parry (Royal Navy officer)

Parry was educated at The Portsmouth Grammar School, Jesus College, Oxford, where he read Modern History, and the University of Reading (PhD).[1]

Parry joined the Royal Navy as a seaman officer in 1972 and then became an observer in the Fleet Air Arm in 1979. He was mentioned in despatches for his actions during the Falklands War for his part in rescuing 16 SAS troopers from Fortuna Glacier in South Georgia and for the detection and disabling of the Argentinian submarine Santa Fe.[2] He commanded the air defence destroyer HMS Gloucester and the Maritime Warfare Centre.[1] He became commanding officer of HMS Fearless in January 2000.[3] As a commodore, he was Director Operational Capability in the Ministry of Defence (2000–2003) and then Commander Amphibious Task Group, from September 2003.[4] He was promoted to Rear Admiral in January 2005 when he became Director General, Development, Concepts and Doctrine, a role he held until 2008.[5][6]

Since June 2008, Parry has worked in the private sector and as a writer, broadcaster and speaker.[7]

On 12 June 2010, in an interview on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, he described the planning for the UK's 2006 deployment of 3,300 troops to Helmand Province in Afghanistan as flawed, relying too much on lessons from Borneo, Malaya and Northern Ireland. The subsequent BBC News article quotes him as saying that senior commanders had obdurately resisted "ditching the lessons from the past", preferring these to the "radical and progressive ideas" which were needed.[8]

• Parry, Chris (2012). Down South: A Falklands War Diary. Viking. ISBN 978-0241959626.
• Parry, Chris (2014). Super Highway: Sea Power in the 21st Century. Elliott & Thompson. ISBN 978-1908739841.