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The UK's Freedom of Information Act is a fairly recent law of course, and it allows people to ask for (and get) information held by authorities and government bodies. But it is mostly pertaining to things such as, if you want to know whether a local library, or government organisation has your address, bank details, social security number etc on a computer record somewhere; trivial stuff like that. So, generally speaking, that act is not really to do with more serious matters, especially when you note that there are numerous exceptions to it, and as you can probably guess, most of the exceptions concern information gathered by, or held by the military.
Additionally, most people working in or with the military, or for companies in the UK that deal with the military, get asked to sign the Official Secrets Act, and that usually covers them talking about stuff; making it a criminal offence to do so. I had to sign it myself a few years ago when working on those ski-jump ramps that Royal Navy Harrier jets fly up at the front of their aircraft carriers, and was again asked if I had signed it some years later, when I was doing some artwork for the stickers that were applied to the access covers for radars on RAF aeroplanes. It was by no means what you would call top secret stuff; a big long ramp for a plane to drive up, and a few stickers for a radar panel is hardly the stuff of international intrigue, but me having signed that Act meant that until it was public knowledge, I was not supposed to say anything about it, and although one can hardly imagine the authorities hauling me off to prison for saying I made a sticker for a radar, they could theoretically have done so. For a more serious matter such as the sinking of a ship in wartime, one can imagine military personnel taking the mentioning of it a bit more seriously than I did when making a few stickers, so that might be why some people said little about it.
But a more likely reason for the tale remaining hidden, is the fact that when things get declared 'secret' in the UK, there is often a statute period of years before the documentation is released or declassified (the length of time varies). For example, earlier this year in the UK, there were a stack of files made available to the public relating to reports UFO sightings years ago over the UK (on that occasion 20 years after the info having been declared classified). Of course most of these reports were just nutters mistaking aeroplanes at night or whatever for alien spaceships after too many spliffs in the 1960s, and it was the source of much mirth for stand up comics in the UK when the info was made public. But the point is, despite it being harmless information, it had been stamped as secret for 20 years, so that's how long it remained shut away. The same thing probably occurred with files relating to the Rohna, with a specific 'classified until' rubber stamp on the file, which was in all probability an arbitrary figure that bears no relation to the need to keep it secret for that length of time. Just the way official things tend to work.
Al
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