Summary
On the 70th anniversary of the sinking of HMS Royal Oak, relatives get ready to travel to Orkney to mark one of the greatest wartime losses, when 833 men were killed in Scapa Flow, writes John Ross
DAVID Turner was a nine-year-old schoolboy in Plymouth when wartime tragedy paid a personal visit. Returning home from school one day he found his mother crying; her favourite brother, his favourite uncle, was missing after his battleship had been torpedoed by a German U-boat in Scapa Flow. It was another week before it was confirmed that Commander Ralph Lennox Woodrow-Clark was among the 833 servicemen who died when HMS Royal Oak was sunk, just six weeks after the start of the Second World War. Distraught, David vowed he would visit his uncle's grave on Orkney. It took him 64 years to fulfil the promise but since then it has been an annual pilgrimage.See the full content of this document
Extract
The Fall of the Mighty Oak
In a few days he will make the journey again to take part in a series of events to mark the 70th anniversary of one of the greatest wartime losses. In the intervening years he has written books and helped make documentaries on the Royal Oak sinking. His latest, Last Dawn, is a dramatic reassessment of the attack, which took place on the night of 13-14 October 1939, created using decla...
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