Wilfrid Woods

Vice-Admiral Sir Wilfrid John Wentworth Woods, CB, DSO (and bar), DL (9 February 1906 – 1 January 1975) was a Royal Navy officer.

Woods was born at Genoa Villa, Southsea, Hampshire, the only child of Sir Wilfrid Wentworth Woods (1876–1947), a colonial civil servant, and his wife, Ethel Maud, née Palmer (c.1875–1942). Woods was educated at Seabrook Lodge Preparatory School at Hythe, Kent, before attending the Royal Naval College at Osborne and Dartmouth from 1919 to 1923. In 1927, he joined the submarines and served on HMS "L19" on the China Station. On 27 January 1930, he married Murray Auriol Ruth Inglis (1907/8–1956), daughter of Charles Stuart Inglis, a retired Royal Navy paymaster. They had one son (who predeceased them) and a daughter. In 1957, he married Joan Bridget Constance Eden, an officer in the Women's Royal Naval Service.

Woods' first command was the modern submarine HMS "Seahorse" in 1935. At the outbreak of World War II, he was Staff Operations Officer for the sixth submarine flotilla at Blyth, Northumberland, before taking his second submarine command, HMS "Triumph", to the first flotilla in the Mediterranean, arriving at Alexandria, Egypt in December 1940. Woods time there saw him savaging Axis supply vessels and warships, including damage to the cruiser "Belzano", as well as landing or recovering military personnel and agents off enemy-occupied shores. In June 1941, he was appointed to the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) for engaging the Italian U-boat "Salpa" in a gun duel and then sinking her with a torpedo.

Woods was decorated with Yugoslavian and Greek orders in recognition of special operations, and a bar to the DSO was for 'daring, enterprise and devotion to duty'. He was promoted to commander in June 1941 and to captain four years later. In 1955, he was appointed flag officer of submarines as a rear-admiral and appointed a CB in 1957. As a vice-admiral, he was Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic, from 1958 to 1960 in Norfolk, Virginia, where he cemented Anglo-American ties. He was made a Knight Bachelor in 1960. Warm relationships with NATO continued when he was Commander-in-Chief, Home Fleet in 1960–63, and in his final naval post as Commander-in-Chief, Portsmouth in 1963–5.

In retirement, Woods was a Deputy Lieutenant of Hampshire and, for four years, Chairman of the RNLI. He died on 1 January 1975 at the Royal Victoria Hospital, Bournemouth, Dorset.

ource

*Richard Compton-Hall, "Woods, Sir Wilfrid John Wentworth (1906–1975)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/65606, accessed 18 Aug 2008]