Major-General George "Gus" Brian Sinclair (21 July 192817 May 2020) was a British Army officer. After the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst Sinclair joined the Royal Engineers in 1948. He served in Korea during the aftermath of the Korean War and was quickly appointed adjutant of his regiment. Sinclair served as adjutant of the British garrison on Kiritimati for the Operation Grapple thermonuclear weapon tests. From 1969 he was Commander Royal Engineers Near East Land Forces, based at the Sovereign Base Areas of Akrotiri and Dhekelia and was responsible for recovering buildings from a British training base abandoned in the aftermath of the 1969 Libyan coup d'état.
Sinclair served as head of the general staff of I Corps, British Army of the Rhine in the late 1970s. He was Engineer in Chief (Army) from 1980 to 1983. During this time Sinclair served on the Falkland Islands in the aftermath of the 1982 war and was responsible for persuading the government to construct a new runway (that became RAF Mount Pleasant) rather than improving the existing Stanley airfield. Sinclair retired in 1983 but retained a connection to the military through honorary appointments with the Corps of Royal Engineers, the Airfield Damage Repair Squadrons, Royal Engineers (Volunteers) and the Engineer and Railway Staff Corps. In civilian life he worked for Tarmac Group on the construction of the Channel Tunnel and was a member of the Smeatonian Society of Civil Engineers.
Early life and career
George Brian Sinclair was born in Shirley, Warwickshire, (now in the West Midlands) on 21 July 1928 to Thomas Stoddart Sinclair, a civil engineer and businessman, and his wife Blanche. He attended Christ's College, Finchley and, from 1945, the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst to train as a British Army officer. Whilst there Sinclair acquired the nickname "Gus" in unclear circumstance, but by which he became best known. Sinclair was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Royal Engineers on 21 October 1948 and spent the next two years in a training regiment. He was promoted to lieutenant on 21 October 1950 and given command of a troop of 25 Field Squadron, which was then a sub-unit of 27 Field Engineer Regiment with the British Army of the Rhine. Sinclair afterwards served as intelligence and signals officer of the regiment.
Sinclair was posted to Korea in 1953, though he queried his orders as they had been sent after the Korean War had ended in a ceasefire. Upon reporting to his unit, 28 Field Engineer Regiment, he found his arrival was unexpected and, with no military tasks requiring his attention, he was put to work designing a sewerage system for a civilian village. Sinclair found more conventional military employment after his appointment as adjutant when the previous incumbent was dismissed for unsuitable behaviour. Sinclair was promoted to captain on 21 October 1954 and left Korea the following year.
Operation Grapple
In 1956 Sinclair was appointed a staff officer to Major-General John Woollett, the chief engineer of Operation Grapple, the first attempted detonation of a British-made thermonuclear weapon (hydrogen bomb). In this role he was responsible for constructing an airfield and air-conditioned bomb-storage facilities at Malden Island in the British colony of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands. The tests in May and June did not reach achieve megaton equivalence and were regarded as failures; a series of additional tests were ordered at Kiritimati, some to the north. Sinclair was appointed adjutant of the Royal Engineer regiment supporting these tests. He disputed orders from the Ministry of Defence (MoD), requiring him to arrange for the island's entire coastline to be patrolled against landings by Soviet spies. Sinclair considered that five infantry battalions would be required to achieve this; this was disputed by the MoD who sent out a Royal Air Force group captain to investigate. This officer agreed with Sinclair's assessment and the patrol orders were subsequently rescinded. Operation Grapple successfully delivered a megaton-level explosion in November.
Sinclair directly witnessed a number of nuclear tests during Operation Grapple, and in the late 1970s was asked to provide evidence in the case of a sergeant who died from leukaemia. The sergeant's widow claimed he had contracted the cancer as a result of his official duties of photographing the tests. Sinclair supported the widow and provided evidence that the sergeant had been in close proximity to the test sites, despite pressure from an MoD permanent under-secretary not to become involved in the case.