Admiral of the Fleet Sir Alfred Dudley Pickman Rogers Pound (29 August 1877 – 21 October 1943) was a Royal Navy officer. He served in World War I as a battleship commander taking part in the Battle of Jutland with notable success, contributing to the sinking of the German cruiser Wiesbaden. He served as First Sea Lord, the professional head of the Royal Navy, for the first four years of World War II. In that role his greatest achievement was his successful campaign against German U-boat activity and the winning of the Battle of the Atlantic but he was blamed for letting the battlecruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau slip into the English Channel undetected in February 1942 and criticised for ordering the dispersal of Arctic Convoy PQ 17 in July 1942. He died shortly after resigning from offi