Wilfrid Woods
Royal Navy admiral (1906-1975)
Admiral Sir Wilfrid John Wentworth Woods, (9 February 1906 – 1 January 1975) was a Royal Navy officer who served in the Submarine Service in the Mediterranean.
Early life
Wilfrid Woods was born on 19 February 1906 at Southsea in Hampshire to colonial administrator Sir Wilfrid Woods KCMG, KBE and Ethel Maud Palmer. He attended school at Seabrooke Lodge at Hythe before going to the Royal Naval College, Osborne and the Britannia Royal Naval College.
Royal Navy
Pre-war service
Woods was commissioned into the Royal Navy as a sub-lieutenant in 1926 and specialised in submarines. His first submarine command came in 1935 as a lieutenant in HMS Seahorse before promotion to lieutenant-commander in HMS Nelson a year later. He then attended the Royal Navy Staff College in 1939.
Second World War
With the outbreak of the Second World War, Woods was serving on the staff of the Sixth Submarine Flotilla in UK waters before moving to the Mediterranean theatre in HMS Triumph in 1940. For his work in Triumph he was awarded the DSO and bar as well as the White Eagle of Yugoslavia. Woods moved to become staff officer (operations) on the staff of the Commander in Chief, Mediterranean.
Leaving the Mediterranean to participate in Operation Overlord he was appointed to command HMS Centurion.
The public source identifies “Wilfrid Woods” as royal Navy admiral (1906-1975). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Wilfrid, Woods and Royal.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q8002002. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1906, 1975, 1926 and 1935.
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This entry incorporates text from “Wilfrid Woods” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.