laterwork branch death_date awards honorific_suffix rank article_title name
author and historian royal navy 1976 commander of merit of the order of the british empire legion cbe acting captain d. v. peyton-ward
 dudley vivian peyton-ward
d. v. peyton-ward

dudley vivian peyton-ward cbe -lrb- - 1976 -rrb- was a royal navy officer who served in both the first world war and during and after the second world war .
` p.w. ' to those that knew him , he was most famous for his work as naval liaison officer to raf coastal command .
the work he performed in this capacity was of utmost importance to the smooth functioning of coastal command operations , tactics and weapons -lrb- see : coastal command weapon development .
among other things , he personally championed and facilitated the increased use of very long range aircraft , such as the consolidated b-24 liberator .
these aircraft allowed continual air cover over the atlantic and closed the notorious mid-atlantic gap , where axis u-boats could freely operate against allied convoys .
it was said of him that he was the only person of lower than air marshal rank whose portrait appeared in the mess at coastal command .
after the war he wrote an eight-volume internal history for the royal navy , entitled `` the r.a.f. in the maritime war '' , a copy of which resides at the national archives in kew , london .
the preface to the british official history of the raf in the second world -lrb- a supplemental work to the `` history of the second world war '' -rrb- says `` our debt is especially heavy to the air historical branch : to its narrators -- among them captain d. v. peyton-ward , c.b.e. , r.n. -lrb- retd . -rrb-
, perhaps more than any '' .
