Anthony Ditcham was born on July 25 1922, the son of Vivian Ditcham. In 1956 he married Janet Mary Bateman in Nigeria, having a son and a daughter. The marriage ended in 1979, and there was a brief second marriage (1988-91) to Ann Hilton.

Ditcham was trained in HMS Worcester, the Thames Nautical Training College, then joined the Royal Naval Reserve and as part of the crew of the battlecruiser HMS Renown, took part in Operation Hats, the first military convoy to Malta, in May 1940.

After serving in 1941 and 1942 in HMS Holderness, Ditcham briefly sailed on HMS Reading before joining the new destroyer HMS Scorpion in the 21st Destroyer Squadron. There Ditcham took part in the Battle for North Cape against the German battlecruiser Scharnhorst, on December 26 1943. Not long afterwards, Ditcham took part in the D-Day landings, as Scorpion guarded the eastern flank of Operation Neptune, the allied landings in Normandy.

Ditcham's final posting was aboard the destroyer HMS Finisterre in the Far East. After the war he studied at Cambridge and London universities before joining the overseas civil service in Nigeria, where he contracted polio. In 1961 he took a job in the British motor industry until his retirement in 1982. Ditcham died on October 2 2024.