Overview
- The East Sussex Branch of the Royal Navy Association announced his death and called him “one of the last of our greatest generation.”
- Waddingham became the UK’s oldest surviving veteran after 110-year-old Donald Rose died in 2025.
- He joined the Royal Navy at 16 in 1932 and served as a gunner and physical training instructor on six ships including HMS Mendip.
- He survived the torpedoing of HMS Wakeful during the Dunkirk evacuation and was pulled from the sea by another destroyer.
- His granddaughter, actor Hannah Waddingham, honored him at the Royal British Legion’s Festival of Remembrance with “We’ll Meet Again.”