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John Sinclair (British Army officer)

British Army general

Summary

British Army general

Field	Value
honorific_prefix	Major General Sir
honorific_suffix
name	John Sinclair
image	Sir John Alexander Sinclair.jpg
caption	Major General Sinclair in 1944.
allegiance	United Kingdom
branch
rank
awards	KCMG, CB, OBE, Commander of the Legion of Merit, Commander of the Order of the Crown
birth_date
birth_place	Fulham, London
death_date
death_place	Funtington, West Sussex
nationality	British
occupation	Intelligence officer
successor1	Freddie de Guingand
office	Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service
order	4th
office1	Director of Military Intelligence
predecessor	Stewart Menzies
successor	Dick White
predecessor1	Francis Davidson
termstart1	1944
term_start	1953
term_end	1956
termend1	1945

Sir John Alexander Sinclair, (29 May 1897 – 22 March 1977) was a British Army general who was head of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) from 1953 to 1956.

Career

Sinclair was the second son of a Church of England priest, John Sinclair. He was educated at West Downs School, Winchester, and the Naval Colleges at Osborne and Dartmouth. He served in the Royal Navy during World War I but had to leave the Navy due to ill health. At the end of the war he transferred to the army and after training at Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, was commissioned into the Royal Field Artillery. In 1938 he was appointed an instructor at the Staff College, Camberley. By 1941 he was Deputy Director of Operations at the War Office and then in 1942 he became Commander Royal Artillery for 1st Division.

Following his retirement from the military in 1952 as a Major-General, "instead of accommodating the risk-takers". He also introduced reforms to recruitment and conditions of service designed to introduce a professional career structure within SIS suited to post-war conditions. His personal integrity was recognised not just by colleagues, but also by opponents.

Sir John's retirement coincided with a failed frogman mission to investigate the Ordzhonikidze that had brought the leader of the Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev, and Prime Minister Nikolai Bulganin on a diplomatic mission to Britain, resulting in the death of frogman Lionel Crabb. The Prime Minister had not approved this mission and some accounts incorrectly claimed that Sir John had been forced to resign. The "Authorized History of MI5" confirms that the decision that the head of that service should succeed Sir John at his planned retirement date in 1956 had been taken by the Prime Minister in 1954.

References

Bibliography

SINCLAIR, Maj.-Gen. Sir John, Who Was Who, A & C Black, 1920–2016 (online edition, Oxford University Press, 2014)

References

{{London Gazette. (30 December 1952)
{{London Gazette. (8 June 1945)
{{London Gazette. (9 July 1940)
{{London Gazette. (11 November 1947)
{{London Gazette. (11 May 1948)
{{London Gazette. (21 January 1919)
"Biography of Major-General Sir John Alexander Sinclair (1897–1977), Great Britain".
(24 March 1977). "Sir John Sinclair". [[The Times]].
West, Nigel. (2016). "At Her Majesty's Secret Service: The Chiefs of Britain's Intelligence Agency, MI6". Frontline Books.
West, Nigel. (2016). "At Her Majesty's Secret Service: The Chiefs of Britain's Intelligence Agency, MI6". Frontline Books.
Philby, Kim. (2002). "My Silent War". Modern Library Paperback Edition.
West, Nigel. (2016). "At Her Majesty's Secret Service: The Chiefs of Britain's Intelligence Agency, MI6". Frontline Books.
Andrew, Christopher. (2009). "The Defence of the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5". Allen Lane.

Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

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