U-Boat Attack Logs: A Complete Record of Warship Sinkings from Original Sources 1939–1945

1    HMS COURAGEOUS

Capt. W. T. Makeig-Jones, RN†

Sunk by U29 (Type VIIA), Kptlt Otto Schuhart, 17 September 1939

Western Approaches, 190 nm WSW of Bolus Head, Kerry (Ireland)

Courageous under way before the war. Tactical misuse by the Admiralty and two torpedoes from U29 brought a premature end to her career. Wright & Logan

Career

Laid down in March 1915 as the first in a class of light battlecruisers, HMS Courageous and her two sisters were the ultimate expression of Admiral Lord Fisher’s obsession with the primacy of speed and gunpower afloat. In particular, the class was designed as the spearhead of Fisher’s Baltic Project which proposed an amphibious landing on the Pomeranian coast followed by a thrust to Berlin that would end the war. However, Fisher’s departure from the Admiralty in 1915 and the disaster that befell the British battlecruisers at Jutland the following year greatly diminished the role this increasingly preposterous trio might play in the fleet. Launched at Armstrong Whitworth’s Walker yard in February 1916 and completed with four 15-inch guns in January 1917, Courageous served with the 3rd Light Cruiser Squadron and then the 1st Cruiser Squadron of the Grand Fleet. In November of that year she was involved in an engagement with German forces in the Heligoland Bight, emerging with slight damage. In 1919 Courageous was reduced to the role of gunnery training ship and her future left uncertain but the signing of the Washington Treaty in 1922 and the allowance contained within its terms for 135,000 tons of British aircraft-carrier construction provided the necessary reprieve. The last member of her class to undergo reconstruction, Courageous was paid off into dockyard control at Devonport in June 1924 and did not emerge until February 1928. Briefly assigned to the Mediterranean Fleet, in 1929 she was allocated to the Atlantic Fleet (renamed Home Fleet in 1932) with which she remained until 1935. A year’s detachment to the Mediterranean from 1935 to 1936 was followed by a major refit at Portsmouth which lasted until June 1938. Apart from a few months in the Reserve Fleet in 1939 the rest of her career was spent with the Home Fleet based on Devonport.

Background of the attack

Despite having only thirty-nine operational vessels at the outbreak of hostilities, the U-Boat-Waffe immediately made its presence felt, U30 sinking the liner Athenia within hours of the declaration of war on 3 September. The Admiralty, which had an exaggerated confidence in the efficacy of the Asdic submarine-detection apparatus, had yet to establish a coherent strategy for combating the submarine threat. At the instigation of the aggressive new First Lord, Winston Churchill, the Admiralty deployed Ark Royal (39) and Courageous in ‘Hunter Killer’ groups to seek out and destroy U-boats in key approaches to home waters while a large number of unconvoyed ships were still making for British ports. It was to prove a disastrous tactic. With Ark Royal already at sea off the Orkneys, on the evening of 3 September HMS Courageous sailed from Plymouth to patrol the Western Approaches for enemy submarines with the destroyers Inglefield, Intrepid, Ivanhoe and Impulsive as close escort. On 14 September Ark Royal was attacked by U39 whose torpedoes exploded in her wake. This early indication that the role of hunter and hunted might easily be reversed did not have time to be heeded, while the sinking of U39 and the capture of her crew by Ark Royal’s escort only enhanced the Admiralty’s misplaced confidence in its anti-submarine capability. Three days later it was an older carrier’s turn to be tested when Courageous was sighted by U29 shortly after 1800 while zigzagging back to Devonport. Already at 1545 her destroyer screen had been depleted by the dispatch of Inglefield and Intrepid to investigate a U-boat attack on the freighter Kafiristan 130 miles to the west, leaving her with just Ivanhoe and Impulsive for company. However, it took two hours’ pursuit and an obliging alteration of course from his quarry just as she seemed to be escaping him before Kptlt Otto Schuhart was presented with one of the greatest targets ever to fill the lens of a U-boat periscope.

The sinking

Schuhart’s log covers the sinking in unusual detail, from U29’s sighting and tracking of Courageous on the afternoon of the 17th through to the attack and then the immediate counter-attack by her escorts that continued long into the night. The British were unaware of any danger until the two torpedoes struck Courageous in quick succession on the port side abaft the bridge. The detonations and the ensuing flooding had two immediate consequences: the destruction of one of the ship’s main dynamos which plunged her into almost total darkness, and a rapid heel of twenty degrees to port. Communications were not only limited to word of mouth but greatly hampered by the activation of the steam siren which both deafened the crew to verbal orders and sapped the morale of those trying to save the ship. Together this meant that many steps to limit flooding, including the sealing of internal ‘Y’ doors, were never fully taken. Meanwhile, the ship’s uneven topweight and the displacement of aircraft and heavy equipment in the hangars accentuated the list and soon brought the port side of the flight deck to within a few feet of the sea. When after ten minutes the list had increased to forty-five degrees Capt. Makeig-Jones reluctantly conceded that ‘those who wish to leave the ship may do so’. Shortly afterwards great ‘cracking noises’ were heard, an indication that bulkheads were collapsing. Sinking by the bow, Courageous was in her death throes and it was not long before she slipped beneath the waves altogether, only nineteen minutes after the attack.

While accepting that the speed of the sinking was probably due to uncontrolled flooding, the Board of Enquiry found that ‘a possible catastrophe of this magnitude was either not foreseen or not provided for’. The Second Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Charles Little, inferred an unacceptable lack of preparation against underwater attack and recommended that the carrier’s Executive Officer, Cdr C. W. G. M. Woodhouse, share some of this responsibility and be informed of the Board’s displeasure. This was rejected by Churchill who, mindful no doubt of his own responsibility in the affair, took the wider view that the Navy as a whole had much to learn from the incident. Neither was he prepared to make a scapegoat of a man whose spinal injuries, sustained during the sinking, had forced to him to request being invalided out of the Service. The Board of Enquiry concluded that ‘We consider the behaviour of both Officers, and the ship’s company in general, in circumstances which could hardly have been worse, was very good.’ Meanwhile, any expectation that the offending U-boat had been destroyed by Courageous’s escort evaporated in the fanfare surrounding U29’s return to Wilhelmshaven on 26 September.

For his part, Konteradmiral Karl Dönitz took the sinking of Courageous as a propitious sign of his enemy’s vulnerability to U-boat attack. Asdic, it turned out, was by no means infallible. As he made plain in a report following U29’s cruise, It is not true that England has the technical means to neutralise the U-boats. Their experience so far confirms that the English anti-submarine apparatus is not as effective as they claim it to be.

Courageous a few minutes after taking two hits from U29, already listing heavily but still with way on. She sank within twenty minutes of the attack. IWM

Not for some time would he have cause to reassess that judgement.

Fate of the crew

Why the order for Abandon Ship Stations was never given remains something of a mystery. When asked why Capt. Makeig-Jones had refrained from doing so Cdr Woodhouse suggested that he may have been reluctant to harm the morale of the ship’s company while still uncertain as to the extent of the damage. As word gradually got round that every man should decide as he saw fit increasing numbers abandoned ship, many admitting afterwards that they simply followed the rest. A number of submissions to the Board testified that this had been carried out cheerfully and without panic, many Royal Marines in particular distinguishing themselves by their discipline and bearing as the disaster unfolded. However, as this general exodus reached a climax as Courageous entered her death throes many swimmers found themselves sucked down with her, only those lucky enough to grab onto flotsam returning alive to the surface. Matters were not helped by a shortage of lifejackets while many Carley floats were found to be stuck down by layers of peacetime paintwork. Further ordeals awaited many who managed to get clear of the ship. The water was covered in a thick layer of oil which coated all who swam through it. A number of men were knocked out and subsequently drowned as a result of flotsam bursting up from the depths at speed. Others struck out towards the accompanying destroyers but Admiralty orders that escorts give priority to finding and attacking the enemy meant that many were killed by the depth-charge patterns directed against U29. Some had to swim for almost an hour until they were rescued, but for others ten minutes in the water brought them to safety. They were rescued by the steamers Dido and Collingsworth, together with the Holland-America liner Veendam which closed after witnessing the disaster. The survivors were eventually transferred to HM destroyer Kelly (commanded by Capt. Lord Louis Mountbatten) and rushed to Devonport where fleets of ambulances and doctors awaited them. A Devonport ship, news of Courageous’s loss brought an anxious crowd to the main gate of the naval barracks to scan lists of survivors.

Some 518 were lost out of a complement of 1,216 men, a figure which reflects both the speed of the sinking and the number of elderly members of the Royal Naval Reserve among the crew. Capt. Makeig-Jones was not among the rescued. The product of an earlier generation, he remained on the bridge saluting the ensign as his ship went down.

U29 and Otto Schuhart

Built by AG Weser at Bremen and commissioned in November 1936, U29 served with five different flotillas during the war, though as a Type-VIIA boat she was on frontline duty only until December 1940. She sank eleven ships in nine cruises under Otto Schuhart but none approached the significance of this her first war patrol, which began before the outbreak of hostilities. The attack on Courageous, the first major naval sinking of the war by the U-Boot-Waffe, was described by Hitler as ‘a wonderful success’ and earned Schuhart the Iron Cross First Class with the Second Class being awarded to the rest of the crew, these conferred by the Führer himself when U29 berthed at Wilhelmshaven on 26 September. Following an extensive refit, U29 was transferred to training duties in January 1941, remaining in this capacity until being scuttled in Kupfermühlen Bay on the Baltic coast of Schleswig-Holstein in April 1945.

Schuhart seen on the casing of U29 later in 1939 or 1940. DUBMA

Otto Schuhart was awarded the Knight’s Cross in May 1940 before being assigned to shore duties in early 1941, first as an instructor in the 1st Unterseeboots-Lehr-Division and then as Commander of the 21st Flotilla. He joined the post-war Bundesmarine, retiring in the rank of Kapitän zur See in 1967. He died in February 1990.

Sources

Admiralty, Board of Enquiry into Loss of HMS Courageous Following Submarine Attack: Court of Enquiry (TNA, ADM 156/195)

Brittain, Lt Norman, RNVR, letter to P. E. Russell, Southampton, 15 November 1939 (manuscript, Bruce Taylor collection)

Court-Hampton, Lt Edgar Arthur, letter to his family, 1 October 1939 (manuscript, IWM, 99/75/1)

Anon., ‘Sinking of Courageous: British Admiralty Releases Pictures’ in Life (12 February 1940), pp. 28–9

Brook, Peter, Warships for Export: Armstrong Warships, 1867–1927 (Gravesend, Kent: World Ship Society, 1999)

Gibbings, Peter, Weep for Me, Comrade (London: Minerva Press, 1997)

Hughes, Terry, and John Costello, The Battle of the Atlantic (London: Collins, 1977)

Jones, Geoffrey, U Boat Aces and Their Fates (London: William Kimber, 1988)

Lamb, Cdr Charles, War in a Stringbag (London: Cassell, 1977); extracted in Max Arthur, ed., The Navy: 1939 to the Present Day (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1997)

Poolman, Kenneth, The British Sailor (London: Arms and Armour Press, 1989)

Roskill, War at Sea, I, pp. 105–6

Rotherham, Capt. G. A., It’s Really Quite Safe! (Belleville, Ont.: Hangar Books, 1985)

Winton, John, ed., The War at Sea [vol. I of Freedom’s Battle, 1939–45] (London: Hutchinson, 1967)

War career of HMS Courageous: http://www.naval-history.net/xGM-Chrono-04CV-Courageous.htm

Sinking of HMS Courageous: http://www.uboataces.com/battle-courageous.shtml

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1 Actually HMS Courageous, though Ark Royal had also been deployed on anti-submarine duty; see above.

2 British sources are unanimous that Courageous had only two destroyers escorting her at this juncture, Ivanhoe on the port bow and Impulsive on the starboard bow. The rest of Courageous’s close escort, Inglefield and Intrepid, had been dispatched to chase down a U-boat contact at 1545.

3 The original has ‘270°’ crossed out with ‘XXX’.

4 Schuhart’s decision to have a minimal differential between torpedoes of this salvo is plainly dictated by the lengthy range of his target at this juncture. The Type-VII U-boats could fire a salvo of up to four torpedoes from the forward torpedo compartment at intervals of 2.3 seconds, the angle of dispersion being entered manually for each salvo. However, it should be noted that no torpedoes were fired by U29 until over an hour later at 1950, by which time the range was down to approximately 2,000 metres. ‘Eto’ was Kriegsmarine shorthand for the electric G7e torpedo as distinct from the compressed-air G7a torpedo known as an ‘Ato’.

5 On 13 September a salvo of torpedoes armed with magnetic pistols had failed to detonate on the hull of the British minesweeper Neptunia requiring Schuhart to despatch her with gunfire. Having lost confidence in magnetic detonators Schuhart this time selects contact pistols.

6 U29’s Chief Engineer (Leitender Ingenieur), Obit (Ing.) Lauf.

7 Schuhart is correct in attributing the change of course to aircraft rotation, Courageous having turned into the wind to land aircraft and thereby given U29 her chance.

8 Asdic. Schuhart’s account was no doubt of great interest to B.d.U. since this was among the U-boat arm’s first operational exposures to the Royal Navy’s submarine echo-location technology.

9 Manuscript addition in pencil.

10 The break in the chronological sequence here reflects the original.

11 This and succeeding entries so denoted indicate blanks in the original.

12 The break in the chronological sequence here reflects the original.

13 Manuscript addition in pen.

14 The S-Gerät (Such-Gerät – ‘search apparatus’) was a new form of active sonar technology which enabled U-boats to detect minefields or targets.

15 See n. 8.

16 By ‘group listening apparatus’ – Gruppenhorchgerät (GHG) in the original – Schuhart is referring to U29’s hydrophone. The rating of Oberfunkgefreiter equates to Leading Telegraphist in the Royal Navy and Radioman 3rd Class in the US Navy.

17 Manuscript addition in pen.

18 This point 1 has been set down over three lines of text which have been blacked out. ‘Eto’ was Kriegsmarine shorthand for the electric G7e torpedo.

19 A submission to the Board of Enquiry on 27 September by Cdr Basil Jones, commanding HMS Ivanhoe, estimated that there was a ‘60% chance’ that the offending U-boat had been sunk, a point reiterated by the Commander-in-Chief Western Approaches, Admiral Sir Martin Dunbar-Nasmith. Evidently, these statements were made in ignorance of Schuhart’s return to Wilhelmshaven the previous day.

2    HMS ROYAL OAK

Rear-Admiral H. E. C. Blagrove, RNt, Capt. W. G. Benn, RN

Sunk by U47 (Type VIIB), Kptlt Günther Prien, 14 October 1939

Scapa Flow, Orkney (Scotland)

Royal Oak in 1938 or 1939. The prominent anti-torpedo bulge seen along her hull availed her not on the night of 14 October when Günther Prien registered four hits on the starboard side. IWM

Career

The fourth unit of the Revenge class, the battleship HMS Royal Oak was laid down at Devonport Dockyard in January 1914, launched in November of that year and completed in May 1916. The Revenges were the last British battleships designed with provision for coal firing, though Lord Fisher’s return to the Admiralty in 1914 caused all boilers to be fitted with oil burners prior to completion. Commissioning for the 4th Battle Squadron of the Grand Fleet in May 1916, Royal Oak appeared soon enough to participate in the Battle of Jutland on the last day of that month, scoring several hits on the battlecruiser Derfflinger and emerging unscathed from the encounter. Subsequently assigned to the 1st BS, in 1919 she joined the 2nd BS of the Atlantic Fleet on the dissolution of the Grand Fleet. Here she remained until passing into dockyard hands at Portsmouth in September 1922 during which she was fitted with anti-torpedo bulges. This completed, Royal Oak recommissioned for the 1st BS, Mediterranean Fleet in July 1924 and it was on this station that she provided the backdrop for the so-called ‘Royal Oak affair’, a farcical dispute between senior officers which originated in the musical accompaniment to a ship-board dance in January 1928. Service continued in the Mediterranean until May 1934 when Royal Oak paid off for a major refit at Devonport which saw improvements to her underwater protection, armour and anti-aircraft armament. The entire Revenge class was in fact in need of complete reconstruction but in view of design strictures and their slow speed the Admiralty decided that the limited funds and dockyard facilities available would be better applied to rebuilding more capable vessels, especially the preceding Queen Elizabeth class. Though more work was done on her than any of her sisters, it was as a somewhat obsolete unit that Royal Oak recommissioned with the 2nd BS, Mediterranean Fleet in August 1936. She saw service off Spain in the first half of 1937, coming under attack from Republican aircraft in February, but left the theatre on being assigned to the Home Fleet in July. In November 1938 Royal Oak was given the honour of conveying the body of Queen Maud of Norway from Portsmouth to Oslo and recommissioned for service with the Home Fleet in June 1939. The outbreak of war found her with the 2nd BS at Scapa Flow. Little can her crew have imagined that the Navy s greatest anchorage would prove her final resting place.

Background of the attack

The audacious plan to penetrate the Royal Navy’s main anchorage at Scapa Flow was conceived by Kommodore Karl Dönitz himself as head of the U-boat arm in conjunction with his staff officer for operations, Kptlt Victor Oehrn (see 16). Despite two failed attempts to breach its defences during the Great War, aerial intelligence gathered in September 1939 together with a detailed reconnaissance of the approaches to Scapa Flow by U14 and reports by U16 on prevailing currents (which were usually stronger than the maximum speed of a submerged U-boat) persuaded Dönitz and Oehrn that the operation was worth another try. Their choice for the mission was Kptlt Günther Prien, commander of U47, who was given all the necessary charts and reports at the beginning of October and instructed to think over the operation for forty-eight hours, accepting or declining it as he saw fit. Prien accepted. To maintain secrecy only Grossadmiral Erich Raeder, commander-in-chief of the German navy, was informed, and he solely by word of mouth from Dönitz who left no stone unturned in his efforts to facilitate Prien’s task. As the War Diary of F.d.U. West recorded, ‘To lessen suspicion, five U-boats operating around the Orkneys were withdrawn from these waters on 4 October in order to avoid potential disturbances in the Orkney sea area and thus potentially alert the English. Everything was being staked on the one card.’

The night chosen for the attack was that of 13–14 October when it was hoped that slack water and a full moon would provide favourable conditions for the attempt. Prien sailed from Kiel on the morning of 8 October and after an uneventful crossing of the North Sea found himself off Scapa Flow on the afternoon of the 13th. The previous afternoon a German reconnaissance plane had reported the presence of an aircraft carrier, five heavy ships and ten cruisers in Scapa Flow, including the exact positions of Royal Oak and the nearby Repulse. This intelligence was relayed to the U-Boot-Waffe as a matter of course and immediately transmitted by Dönitz to U47, though as it turned out Prien did not receive it until after the operation. In any case, the bulk of the Home Fleet including Repulse sailed from Scapa Flow that night and with it most of Prien’s would-be targets. However, one rich prize remained and after some hair-raising obstacles of navigation U47 entered the flow to find herself confronted with the silhouette of HMS Royal Oak lying peacefully at anchor, together with another vessel partly obscured beyond. Assigned the duty of Anti-Aircraft Guard Ship to add her firepower to the permanent defences ashore, the danger to Royal Oak was to come from quite another quarter.

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1 The chief navigator, usually a warrant officer.

2 Prien’s description of a well-illuminated anchorage is contradicted by British reports which record the 13th–14th as a dark night though the Northern Lights were noted by both sides.

3 Prien, who had long since cleared Holm Sound, is almost certainly referring to Hoxa Sound here.

4 The question marks are manuscript additions in pencil, possibly by the civilian archivist Walther Pfeiffer who was brought to Britain to work on the logs post-war.

5 Royal Oak was the only capital ship in Scapa Flow on the night of 13–14 October and there were no destroyers nearby; see the discussion below. That said, it is unclear how HM seaplane carrier Pegasus (3,300 tons and partly obscured by Royal Oak) could be mistaken for the battlecruiser Repulse (32,000 tons) or the drifter Daisy II (alongside Royal Oak) likewise for a destroyer in what is earlier described as a well-illuminated anchorage (see n. 2). In fact, the evidence is that visibility was much worse than the log marginalia suggests and silhouettes no doubt hard to distinguish against the darkened hills. More to the point, aerial reconnaissance the previous day had placed Repulse in the vicinity of Royal Oak. In any event, Pegasus emerged unscathed from the attack.

6 These entries, added in manuscript by a German hand other than Prien’s (possibly Walther Pfeiffer; see n. 4), include the log’s only reference to HMS Repulse, for which see the discussion below. It is also possible that they were added by B.d.U. staff, not least since the phrase ‘According to map’ may refer to the aerial reconnaissance on the 12th which identified Repulse in the vicinity, or indeed Prien’s own plot of the attack. Whatever the case, Repulse’s continued and undamaged existence would soon invalidate Prien’s claim.

7 ‘Eel’ (German = Aal) was U-boat slang for torpedo.

8 Prien is presumably referring to his entry of 2307 on the 13th in which he records both periscopes as being out of action.

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9 No evidence has ever emerged to confirm this suspicion.

10 Should read Skaildaquoy Point. Prien exited the flow by the same route he had entered it, Kirk Sound, though taking the southern as against the northern channel past the blockships.

11 None did before U47 made Wilhelmshaven on the 17th.

12 Kptlt Karl-Heinz Moehle.

13 This is not a holograph signature but simply typescript.

14 The position of these entries in the columns concerned reflects the original.

15 This is presumably from a British radio broadcast or decrypted signal; the figure for survivors is only five short of the actual number.

The sinking

As the war diary indicates, Prien’s first attack, aimed at two separate targets, failed to have the desired effect. The torpedo fired at Royal Oak struck her at 0104 on the starboard side forward but without any dramatic explosion. The effect was likened by Paymaster Lt Cdr E. G. S. Maclean, then watching the Northern Lights on deck, to a ‘muffled gong […] which shook the ship from stem to stern’. This Maclean attributed to a detonation in the Inflammable Store, others to bottles of carbon dioxide exploding in the refrigerated compartment. Making his way towards the Inflammable Store with his Chief Petty Officer (Supply), Maclean found smoke issuing from the hatch leading down to it, the effect of floodwater reacting with the calcium flares kept in that compartment. Though both the commander and the captain appeared and asked various questions, the possibility of submarine attack was never entertained and as late as 0116 Capt. Benn was quoted as saying that he had ‘no uneasiness about the safety of the ship’. The flooded compartments were sealed and many of those woken by the shudder of the first torpedo returned to bed. However, there was nothing ambiguous about the next salvo of torpedoes which struck the ship on the starboard side amidships at around 0120 (the precise time is unclear in both British and German official sources). All three detonated, the effect on Royal Oak being described by the Board of Enquiry as ‘immediate and catastrophic’. Hits were registered abreast ‘A’ and ‘B’ shellrooms, the Forward Boiler Room and the Starboard Wing Engine Room which examination of the wreck later discovered to have been ruptured by holes approximately fifty by forty feet in each case. Listing immediately, Royal Oak was swept by fire, fumes and smoke. With all power lost and lights extinguished there was no opportunity to issue formal instructions to abandon ship. Shaken by a series of internal explosions, she capsized and sank bow first at 0129, twenty-five minutes after the first hit and approximately ten after the second salvo.

The triumphant press conference held in Berlin on 18 October together with the overblown (and apparently much regretted) account of the sinking scripted by the Propaganda Ministry in Prien’s name (see below) gave rise to suspicions that he had exaggerated events. The published account, which omits certain elements such as the torpedo duds, refers to a chase by a destroyer which never took place, and enlists his First Watch Officer, Oblt.z.S. Engelbert Endrass (see 8 and 17) in asserting a positive identification of Repulse – this despite the fact that she was then at sea with the Home Fleet. It reiterates Prien’s comments in Berlin where he declared that ‘Although the ships merged into the black background of the landlocked harbour, I am quite certain that one was Repulse because she and Renown are the only ships of the type with two funnels.’ Although these statements might be taken as providing a clearer case for imperfect warship recognition than for fabrication (Repulse and Renown being battlecruisers rather than battleships and Hood having a similar two-funnel silhouette – one funnel more than the vessel actually spotted, HM seaplane carrier Pegasus), examination of the log and surviving documentation indicates otherwise, not least since the log proper makes no reference to Repulse, which is mentioned only in a manuscript addition in a hand other than Prien’s (see note 6). The question remains as to when Prien settled on the identity of the ships struck. That he did so before returning to Germany is evident from his signal of 2300 on the 15th (see above), nearly two days after the attack, in which Repulse is reported as damaged and Royal Oak sunk. It must be supposed that in the interim Prien had received the information – accurate on the afternoon of the 12th but invalidated within hours by the exodus of ships from Scapa Flow that night – that Repulse and Royal Oak had been sighted lying abeam of each other and made the corresponding inference.

Exaggerated or not, there can be little doubt that Prien’s was, in Churchill’s words, ‘a feat of arms’ and indeed one of the greatest exploits in the history of submarine warfare. Equally, no amount of exaggeration could disguise the fact that the manner of the sinking was a huge embarrassment to the Admiralty and accusations of negligence and complacency were rife. Ironically, the blockship designed to obstruct the very passage through which U47 had penetrated Kirk Sound, the Lake Neuchâtel, reached Scapa Flow the following day. A victim of the subsequent enquiry was Vice-Admiral Sir Wilfred French, Flag Officer commanding the Orkneys and Shetlands, who was placed on the retired list.

Fate of the crew

The death toll from the Royal Oak was very high. The eventual figure was 836 men – more than two thirds of the ship’s company – the majority of whom perished within the space of a few minutes. The tragedy was made the more poignant by the loss of over 100 Boy seamen under the age of eighteen, the largest such attrition in the history of the Royal Navy. Aside from the devastating impact of Prien’s second salvo, which detonated abreast the Stokers’, Boys’ and Marines’ mess decks and prompted a complete loss of electrical power, the scale of the disaster can in part be attributed to a general conviction that Scapa Flow was invulnerable to underwater attack. Only this can explain why the initial detonation was never suspected as having been the work of an enemy submarine. To this was added an assumption in some quarters that Royal Oak was the target of an air attack, many heading below deck to take cover. Others simply returned to bed, leaving most of the crew ill-prepared to react to the mortal damage inflicted by Prien’s subsequent attack. Moreover, this found the ship in a poor state of watertight integrity, to which her rapid capsize can partly be attributed. Lying at Air Defence Stations, many hatches, doors and ventilators were open that would have been sealed under different circumstances. Cases of cordite ignited in the magazines causing an immense deflagration that seared through the ship, incinerating everything in its path, and few if any members of the engine and boiler room watches can have survived the explosions and fumes. Loss of life was also heavy on deck as the ship rolled over, those attempting to abandon ship to starboard being hampered by falling debris and many were killed by equipment breaking free from its fastenings. Debris from the foretop destroyed a launch full of men about to cast off while others were sucked into the funnel when it met the water. Those who made it into the Flow did so mainly from the port side where Rear-Admiral Blagrove was last seen urging men to jump overboard further forward and away from the propellers. There they spent up to two and a half hours in waters whose coldness was mitigated only by the large quantities of oil that had leaked into it. Surgeon Lt Dick Caldwell paints a vivid picture of Royal Oak’s final moments and the predicament of those left in the water in words that might attach to almost any ship treated this book:

Prien presents his crew to Hitler in the Reich Chancellery in Berlin on 18 October 1939 as Raeder looks on on the left. The entire crew was awarded the Iron Cross 2nd Class with the exception of Prien who received the Knight#x2019;s Cross. BK

The ship suddenly increased her list more and more rapidly. We were now on the ship’s side and as she slid over, turning turtle, I lost my footing, fell, tried frantically to scramble up and dive clear and was thrown headlong into the sea. (‘I’ll be sucked down – that’s what they say happens – what a fool I was not to jump sooner.’) I seemed to go down and down and started fighting for breath. Then, as I came to the surface, the stern and propeller soared above me, then slipped slowly into the water and disappeared. A rush of water swept me head over heels, it seemed, and I went under again and came up in oil, thick black oil. I gulped it and retched at the filthy taste of it in my throat; oil, thick black oil smarting in my eyes. I swam and floundered about, hoping to find some support in the darkness. None of us had lifebelts. I heard cries round me, saw black heads bobbing, and I swam frenziedly again. I tried to wriggle out of my jacket, but found it heavy and slimy with oil. I repeatedly went under until quite suddenly I gave it up and thought, ‘I’m going to drown.’ Perfectly dispassionately ‘I’m going to drown and in a way which I cannot explain I wondered how to. And I thought of all the people I wanted to see, and things I wanted to do – that was all I thought of – and then I saw a group of heads and then threshed my way towards them.

Some made it dry-shod into one of the ships picket boats but this was twice capsized by the crush of men attempting to find a berth in her and eventually it joined Royal Oak on the bottom. The majority of the survivors were picked up by the Royal Oak’s own drifter Daisy II and by the seaplane carrier Pegasus. The former had been moored alongside Royal Oak but raised steam after the first explosion and managed to cast off after being caught on her torpedo bulge as she capsized. She then steamed the length of the ship picking up oil-soaked survivors while Pegasus lowered her boats to render assistance. Daisy II was responsible for rescuing most of the survivors and her skipper John Gatt RNR given the Distinguished Service Cross, the only award made in connection with the disaster. A number of men struck out for the shore but only a handful survived the 850-yard swim to make their way to Kirkwall. The dazed survivors, accommodated either in Pegasus or in an assortment of ships about the Flow, were put through further ordeals in the form of heavy bombing raids over the next few days before Capt. Benn succeeded in applying sufficient pressure for them to be transferred to the safety of Thurso on the mainland.

The Navy, meanwhile, was left to deal with consequences. Within a day of the sinking nets were spread over the ship to catch floating bodies. Divers descending to inspect the wreck were greeted with the horrific sight of suspended corpses and men found jammed in portholes in a vain attempt at escape. HMS Royal Oak lies capsized at an angle of forty degrees from the vertical in twenty-five metres of water. Her upturned hull, only five metres beneath the surface, is visible as a shadow in the water in good light. Although the ship is classified as a war grave and the ban on approaching her strictly enforced beyond the annual remembrance dive conducted by the Royal Navy, permission was granted for two weeks of diving in September 2000 from which a complete picture of her condition has emerged. Seventy years on, a grim reminder of the ship continues to rise from the depths in the form of fuel oil leaking from her tanks although steps have been taken to drain these since 2006. Apart from the wreck itself the principal memorials are to be found in St Magnus’s cathedral in Kirkwall where the ship’s bell and one of her nameplates have been preserved, together with a Garden of Remembrance at Scapa