Obituary: Hugo Biermann: chief of SA navy and army

Admiral Hugo "Boozy" Biermann, who has died in Fish Hoek at the age of 95, was chief of the South African Navy and head of the SA Defence Force.

He served on minesweepers in the Mediterranean during World War 2 before being promoted to lieutenant- commander.

He was in command of the salvage vessel HMSAS Gamtoos, which played an invaluable role clearing key Mediterranean ports, including Marseilles, after the Allied landings in the south of France in 1944.

Biermann was awarded the OBE (Order of the British Empire) for his role.

After the war he played a small role in helping to build the SA Navy, which until then had only existed as part of the Royal Navy, into an independent entity.

His promotion as head of the navy in the 1950s was seen as an affirmative action appointment by the National Party.

It was controversial and opposed by fellow officers and sections of the English press in South Africa, notably the Sunday Times, because it was felt he was not the most qualified man for the job.

He was appointed over the heads of more senior and deserving officers because he was an Afrikaner and they were English speakers.

Once appointed, however, Biermann resisted political pressure from defence minister Frans Erasmus to promote Afrikaners at the expense of more qualified English-speaking officers.

In the mid-1950s Biermann went with Erasmus to London to persuade the first lord of the admiralty to hand control of the Simon's Town naval base to South Africa.

They had to overcome a strong argument from the Royal Navy that the South African Navy was not yet ready to assume responsibility for defending the sea route around the Cape.

This was the origin of the so-called "defence-of-the sea-route" doctrine which stressed the strategic importance to the West of the route around the Cape during the Cold War.

Even when the British used the argument in the 1950s as a justification for keeping Simon's Town, serious strategists had already begun to discredit it.

By the 1970s it was little more than a propaganda tool used by the apartheid government to convince the West that it couldn't do without South Africa.

But Biermann, through a combination of being out of touch with modern thinking and a sense of loyalty to his political masters, continued to be one of its strongest champions.

In 1974, by which time Biermann had succeeded General Rudolph Hiemstra as chief of the SADF, he went to Washington for a series of secret meetings with the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff in a futile effort to persuade them that a closer US military alliance with South Africa was essential if SA were to continue protecting this supposedly vital sea route.

Biermann was born in Johannesburg on August 6 1916.

His family moved to Cape Town, where he decided on a naval career after visiting Union-Castle passenger liners in Cape Town harbour.

He left Jan van Riebeeck High School after completing his junior certificate - Grade 10 - and joined the navy training ship General Botha.

His fellow cadets called him "Boozy" because of his surname Biermann (beer man), and the nickname stuck.

After two years at the General Botha, he joined the British Merchant Navy.

In 1938 he became a sub-lieutenant in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, SA division.

After the war he attended the British Naval Staff Course at Greenwich and was appointed as naval attaché in South Africa House, London, with the rank of commander.

Shortly before the SADF invaded newly independent Angola in 1974 he said he saw "no reason" why South Africa would send forces into that country. He retired in 1976.

He is survived by two children. His wife, Peggy, who was Scottish but spoke fluent Afrikaans, died in 2008.