In Passing
Lieutenant Commander Jock Moffat, who has died aged 97, was the last surviving Swordfish pilot of the brave naval aviators whose attack on the German battleship in May 1941 led to the fulfilment of Winston Churchill's order: "Sink the Bismarck!"
On May 26, 1941, the Bismarck was about 800 kilometres north-west of Brest and in less than a day it would have reached the protection of U-boats and the Luftwaffe based in occupied France. The only forces capable of stopping it were the Swordfish torpedo bombers of 810, 818 and 820 Naval Air Squadrons embarked in the aircraft carrier Ark Royal, and at 7.10pm 15 aircraft were launched into an Atlantic gale.
From the cover of I sank the Bismark by Jock Moffat.
They found Bismarck after 1½ hours of flying and a co-ordinated approach from different directions was intended. But the strong winds, low cloud and driving rain resulted in individual aircraft making their own attacks.
At 8.47pm when the first Swordfish began their dives through the clouds, Bismarck manoeuvred violently and her anti-aircraft batteries threw up a wall of flak. The torpedo bombers were pressed in, said the British commander-in-chief's report, "with a gallantry and determination which cannot be praised too highly". Over the next half hour 13 torpedoes were fired, and two hit Bismarck.
Lady Elizabeth Longman, who has died aged 92, was a childhood friend of the Queen and one of her eight bridesmaids – of whom now only two survive – at her wedding to the Duke of Edinburgh in 1947.
Elizabeth Lambart spent much of her childhood at court, where she was a friend and companion to Princess Elizabeth. Both girls learnt to dance at Madame Vacani's studio, were taken on outings together and were members of the Buckingham Palace Girl Guides troop, which met at a summerhouse in the garden of Buckingham Palace.
Like many other daughters of courtiers, Elizabeth was educated at Miss Faunce's School in Queen's Gardens, but when war broke out the Fauncites (and their nannies) were evacuated to St Giles House, Wimborne St Giles, Dorset, the ancestral home of the Earls of Shaftesbury.
On November 18, 1947, she was one of only two non-royal attendants at Princess Elizabeth's wedding, an occasion about which she rarely spoke publicly, although she did once describe how Prince Philip gave each of the bridesmaids art deco silver compacts embellished with a gold crown and the bride and groom's initials. "He dealt them out like playing cards."