Ken Perkins was in many ways unusual. In the postwar period when reputations were made — or lost — in the British Army of the Rhine, he sought active service in the Far East and further shunned the career mainstream by training as a pilot, although apparently without any wish to make flying his career. He was not particularly tidy in appearance, spoke bluntly to the point without fear of the consequences, and — almost certainly — was the first man from a working-class background to command the smartest Gunner regiment: 1st Royal Horse Artillery.

His unconventional attitude to army life became apparent at the climax of his officer cadet school passing-out parade. The young officer in charge of his squad, perhaps overwhelmed by the majesty of the moment, gave the order to turn left instead of right. The squad did as it was told except for Perkins who, on the extreme left of the front rank and believing that mistaken orders are best disregarded, turned right and threw everything into confusion.

He was commissioned into the Royal Artillery in 1946 and joined 7th Field Regiment RA in Egypt but, after service in Palestine and Tripolitania, volunteered to train as an army pilot. He completed training in time to join 1903 Independent Air Observation Flight in Korea, then in the third year of the war, when the lines between the Chinese and North Korean invaders and the American-led United Nations force had largely stabilised. Spotting artillery targets and direction of fire was a significant part of maintaining the UN Force initiative. Perkins flew 214 such sorties, engaged 470 targets over a period of nine months, commanded the flight for six weeks after his flight commander was killed and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.

Anxious to avoid a peacetime station, he arranged to complete his three-year flying tour with 656 Air Observation Squadron in Malaya, where the communist insurrection was still giving serious anxiety. Based on Kuala Lumpur, the squadron’s task was to fly low over the tree canopy of Selangor and the adjacent states trying to find guerilla camps or cultivations in deep jungle. This, plus the subsequent direction of artillery fire onto suspicious areas, called for exact navigation over difficult and dangerous terrain. At the end of his tour, Perkins was awarded the Sultan of Selangor’s Distinguished Conduct Medal and appointed MBE.

With three decorations and three campaigns under his belt and pronounced views on many military matters, it was not long before he acquired the reputation of being an “angry young man”. This did not prevent him from being selected to attend the Pakistan Staff College at Quetta, commanding a battery of 1st RHA in Germany or becoming an instructor at the Staff College, Camberley.

At Camberley, he was not alone in questioning the practicability of the “trip-wire” and nuclear strike response to a Warsaw Pact attack in Central Europe, but the Staff College can be a tricky venue for criticising current doctrine or launching radical ideas. He did both, with a laconic “Rubbish in, rubbish out” comment on the value of computer war games, and rewrote the major defence exercise at the Commandant’s invitation.

Eighteen months later he was appointed to command 1st RHA and, having successfully completed that, was selected to command 24 Infantry Brigade. As part of the UK-based Strategic Reserve, this formation was responsible for developing amphibious warfare techniques, but this did not preclude its deployment onto the streets of west Belfast in June 1972.

All this and his relentless intellectual energy proved ideal preparation for the job which, given the choice, he and any British soldier of his generation would have had above all: secondment to command the Sultan of Oman’s Armed Forces. Sultan Qaboos faced a rebellion begun as a popular call for modernisation of the state during his father’s reign but, by 1975, exacerbated into a communist-inspired insurrection by the People’s Republic of South Yemen (previously Aden and the Protectorates) supplying arms, money and indoctrination across the common frontier. The tide was already turning against the rebel leadership, thanks to his predecessor’s policy of persuading the tribesmen that their long-term advantage lay with switching allegiance to the Sultan’s side, yet the war had still to be won.

Served by several outstanding subordinates, also on secondment from the British services, he was able to concentrate his efforts on the strategic level and in integrating the substantial Iranian and Jordanian contingents of troops and aircraft into the force as a whole. Aside from a few minor flutterings in the diplomatic dovecotes when Perkins let slip an over-frank comment from time to time, he successfully wound up the war, returning the increasingly oil-rich Sultanate to peace and prosperity — just over two years after his arrival.

He was rewarded by the Order of Oman and appointed CB but, thereafter, his promising and highly successful career petered out. His next MoD appointment, as Assistant Chief of Defence Staff Operations, was, in his day, rather less influential than that of any of the three single service operational directors whose work he co-ordinated. The small number of lieutenant-general posts was the ultimate limiting factor. He undertook the itinerant role of Director of Military Assistance Overseas, from which he clearly drew greater satisfaction in accomplishment than he did in an excursion into business as military adviser to British Aerospace on retirement from the Army.

Kenneth Perkins was the only son of George Perkins, a gardener, and his wife Sarah. He was educated at Lewes County School for Boys, to which he won a scholarship, and took the six-month wartime university short course at New College, Oxford, before military service.

After leaving British Aerospace, he devoted his energies to painting and writing. His amusing and modest autobiography A Fortunate Soldier was published in 1988. He also wrote Khalida, a novel that was published in 1991.

His first marriage, to Anne Barry, was dissolved in 1984. His second marriage was to the Hon Celia Sandys, daughter of the Rt Hon Lord Duncan-Sandys, in 1985. She survives him, together with their son and daughter and three daughters of his first marriage.

Major-General Kenneth Perkins, CB, MBE, DFC, Commander of the Sultan of Oman’s Armed Forces 1975-77, was born on August 15, 1926. He died on October 23, 2009, aged 83