David Hart Dyke

Captain David Hart Dyke (born 3 October 1938) is a retired Royal Navy officer, former aide-de-camp to Queen Elizabeth II, and former commanding officer of , which was sunk during the Falklands War. Background and education Hart Dyke, a member of the Hart Dyke family, is one of four children born to the Reverend Eric Hart Dyke (1906–1971) and Mary Alexander (1915–2010). He has two sisters, Jane (b. 1936) and Sarah (b. 1946), and had a twin brother Robert, who was killed in a car crash in 1963. He was educated at St. Lawrence College, Ramsgate, Kent. His father served as a commander in the Royal Navy, before being ordained in 1953. Naval career Hart Dyke was conscripted for National Service in 1959, and served as a midshipman in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve on . He then joined the Royal Navy and was trained at the Britannia Royal Naval College at Dartmouth, and served aboard the frigate , based in the Far East and Persian Gulf. He was commissioned as a sub-lieutenant on 1 September 1961, and was promoted to lieutenant on 1 January 1962, to command a Gay-class fast patrol boat based at Plymouth. He served aboard the Lanton during the Indonesian Confrontation in 1963, then as navigating officer aboard the frigates on fishery protection duties in 1963–1965, in the Persian Gulf, 1965–1966, and in the Dartmouth Training Squadron, 1966–1968, before being appointed an instructor at the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, where he was promoted to lieutenant commander on 1 January 1970. He attended a year-long staff course before being promoted to commander on 30 June 1974 and appointed first lieutenant and executive officer of the guided missile destroyer . From 1976 he served on the staff of the Royal Naval Staff College, then from 1978 as the commander of the Royal Yacht . He was made a Member of the Royal Victorian Order (4th class) (MVO) on 1 January 1980. On 31 December 1980 Hart Dyke was promoted to captain, and appointed to command of the Type 42 destroyer , seeing active service during the Falklands War. On 25 May 1982 Coventry was stationed north-west of Falkland Sound with , providing radar cover for the ground troops in San Carlos Water, when she was attacked by four Argentine A-4 Skyhawks. Hit by two bombs, she capsized within 20 minutes, with the loss of 19 men.