NAVAL APPOINTMENT

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22481, 27 July 1936, Page 10

NAVAL APPOINTMENT

CAPTAIN COSMO GRAHAM AIR DIVISION AT ADMIRALTY [from our own correspondent] LONDON, July 8 Formerly in command of the cruiser Diomede on the New Zealand station, Captain Cosmo Graham has been appointed deputy-director of the Naval Air Division at the Admiralty. The Naval Air Division was constituted in January, 1929, in place of the former Naval Air Section. It then included one captain as director, one other captain, and threp commanders. A wing commander was added in 1933, and in 1935 the number of commanders, Boyal Navy, was increased from three to five. With the appointment now of a deputy director the staff of the division will include nine officers, instead of five as originally. Captain Graham's official connection with naval aircraft goes back to 1926, when he became executive officer of the aircraft carrier Furious. He served on the staff of the Naval Air Division in 1928-31. Captain Graham assumed command of the Diomede at Auckland in August, 1933, and commanded the ship during her special service in the Bed Sea and Mediterranean, for which purpose she sailed from Auckland on October 20, 1935, The Diomede then returned to England and will be replaced in NewZealand by the Achilles. Engineer-Commander R. P. Chapman, who recently completed three years in the cruiser Diomede, is to join tho Admiralty for duty in the department of the engineer-in-chief. Commander Chapman went to sea from Dartmouth in August, 1914, as midshipman in H.M.S. Hannibal, and subsequently served in the Benbow. In October, 1910, he joined the sloop Mignonette as sub-lieutenant, and in May, 1917, the destroyer Christopher as lieutenant. Early in 1920 he went to tho Hoval Naval College, Greenwich, to specialise in engineering, passing on to Keyhain in May, 1920. He was promoted to commander in December, 1929, and was afterwards in charge ox gun mountings' and sighting gear at Chatham Dockyard.