BIRTHDAY LUNCH FOR VETERAN IN HMS VICTORY
The oldest Royal Navy veteran and member of the WW1 Royal Naval Air Service(RNAS) Mr Henry Allingham is to celebrate his 111th birthday on board HMS Victory at Portsmouth on Wednesday, June 6.
Mr Allingham was present at the Battle of Jutland in 1916 and became a founder member of the Royal Air Force when it was formed from the RNAS and the Army’s Royal Flying Corps in 1918.
It is planned that at HMS Victory Mr Allingham will be serenaded by a Royal Marines Band before witnessing a flypast by aircraft of the Royal Navy’s Historic Flight as well as by current aircraft of the RAF.
HMS Victory is the flagship of Vice Admiral Adrian Johns, Commander-in-Chief Naval Home Command and Second Sea Lord, and Mr Allingham will join the admiral and a small number of friends and guests – including MOD Veterans’ Minister Mr Derek Twigg - for lunch in the ship’s Great Cabin.
Mr Allingham was born in 1896, seven years before the Wright Brothers flew their flimsy aircraft at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. And another historical quirk is that Mr Allingham’s lifetime so far is twenty years longer than the time span between his date of birth and Vice Admiral Nelson’s last meal in the Great Cabin of HMS Victory before the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805.
