Albert Riddle
In 1938, Albert Riddle tried to join the British Royal Navy at age 14, but the recruiters rejected him because of his youth and diminutive size. He tried again the following year, and at age 15, the 5 foot 5-inch teenager was accepted. Sent for training in Plymouth, he was eventually assigned to the brand new battleship, HMS Prince of Wales, which entered service in March of 1941.
The new pride and joy of the Royal Navy saw combat before she was even launched, having survived a German bomber attack in August of 1940. She sustained damage while still in drydock, being outfitted for service. Albert’s first taste of combat came in May of 1941, when the Prince of Wales traded salvoes with the German battleship Bismarck, and the teenager was fortunate to survive a 15-inch shell that killed other sailors nearby.
Later that year, Albert’s ship was sent to the Far East. There, Albert had the misfortune to be aboard the Prince of Wales when it, along with the battlecruiser HMS Repulse, became the first capital ship to be sunk in the open sea solely by enemy airplanes. That came about on December 10th, 1941, two days after they sailed northward from Singapore, accompanied by four destroyers, in a foolhardy sortie without aerial protection to challenge Japanese landings in the Malay Peninsula. The Japanese were alerted when the task force was sighted by a submarine, and the first wave of Japanese air attacks came at 11 AM.
By noon, the Prince of Wales was sinking, after taking a Japanese torpedo that damaged propulsion and caused uncontrollable flooding. Albert barely survived the explosions, which blasted his uniform off. As men abandoned ship, a naked Albert rushed below decks to check on two friends, teenaged twins. One was too badly injured to be moved, and the other refused to leave his brother’s side despite Albert’s pleas that he save himself.
Forced to leave them to their fate, Albert jumped into a sea black with oil. After treading water for two hours, he was fortunate to get picked up by a destroyer, and was returned to Singapore, suffering shellshock. He recuperated in Singapore until it fell to the Japanese in early 1942, and from there, was posted to Sri Lanka, and then to the Maldives in the Indian Ocean.
He returned home at the war’s end, and was sailing in the Bay of Biscay when Japan surrendered – on his 21st birthday. He stayed in the Royal Navy until 1952, married and had a daughter, lost his wife to cancer, remarried, and had a son with his second wife. As of 2014, Albert Riddle was a spry 90-year-old, living in Cornwall near his children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.