On 29 December 1983, Commodore Dieter Gerhardt, former Commanding Officer of the Simonstown Naval Base, and his second wife Ruth Gerhardt, were sentenced to life imprisonment and ten years’ imprisonment respectively, being found guilty of high treason on charges of spying for the Soviet Union.
Dieter “Felix” Gerhardt was born 1 November 1935 and joined the South African Navy after his father successfully persuaded Naval Chief Hugo Biermann to take the troubled teenager under his wing to try and instil some discipline in him. He graduated from the Naval Academy in Saldanha Bay in 1956, winning the Sword of Honour. In 1962 he attended the Royal Navy mine school in Portsmouth and completed the parachute training course at RAF Abingdon.
After his training in Britain, he was seconded to the Royal Navy. He started his spying career in his late twenties, while still a junior naval officer, by offering his services to the South African Communist Party (SACP) leader, Bram Fischer, who referred him to the Soviet Embassy in London. Immediately the “walk-in” was recruited into the GRU (Soviet Military Intelligence), and he was instructed to continue his career in the South African Defence Force (SADF).
As part of his service in the Royal Navy, he trained at HMS Collingwood and served on HMS Tenby, and passed classified information about the weapons systems there to the Soviets. Among the systems he compromised through these activities were the Sea Cat and Sea Sparrow m
