Nightmare at Scapa Flow: The Truth About the Sinking of HMS Royal Oak

by H J Weaver

  At the time of the attack it has been said that the bows of Royal Oak were pointing north-east, south-east, south, east and north, the last heading leading one writer to the interesting conclusion that Lt. Prien must have fired his torpedoes from a point one and a half miles inland; and the relative position of Pegasus has been given as half a mile (or up to two miles) to the north (or maybe north-west, west or south-west) of Royal Oak.

  Most of this confusion might have been dispelled with the publication in 1976 of The Royal Oak Disaster by Gerald S. Snyder, an American who set out to tell ‘the full story . . . from both sides’ with ‘no axe to grind, no particular case to argue’. Mr Snyder had the advantage of access to a vital piece which had always been missing from the jigsaw – the Admiralty documents, released for public scrutiny in 1971 when the 50-year secrecy embargo was reduced to 30 years.

  Unfortunately, he appears to have ignored nearly all of these documents and concentrated for the British version of events in Scapa Flow almost entirely on the evidence given to the Royal Oak Board of Inquiry and the Board’s findings. It is not possible to tell the ‘full story’ if you rely mainly on these two sources. The Board did not deal at all with certain aspects of the exploit (what ships of the Royal Navy were in Scapa Flow at the time, for example); the evidence was frequently general rather than specific (there is no indication of the precise time at which a hunt for a suspected U-boat began, what ships were involved, when the first depth charges were dropped); and the evidence was not always accurate (the Admiralty, having lost Royal Oak, proceeded to mislay the wreck: it is not in the position indicated in the Board of Inquiry files).

  Consequently, The Royal Oak Disaster gives no answer, or the wrong answer, to the questions at the beginning of this chapter. It also contains a number of serious inconsistencies and, in some respects, manages to add to, rather than dispel, the confusion which surrounds the exploit. No useful purpose would be served by an exhaustive analysis of the book, but the following points illustrate the validity of these criticisms.

  Of Lt. Prien’s autobiography, The Royal Oak Disaster says that ‘as a general chronicle of the major – and minor – events as they relate to Prien and his Scapa Flow mission, it can be relied upon.’ These major and minor events include presumably the destroyers and U-boat chasers hunting for a submarine immediately after the second attack on Royal Oak, the challenge by a destroyer which mysteriously turned aside, and the weeyum of the first depth charges as U-47 finally made her escape. Elsewhere, however, Mr Snyder says: ‘Admiral French did send his destroyers out. But by the time they arrived Royal Oak was gone, U-47 had made her exit - never was there a race between U-47 and her pursuers, not a depth charge was dropped on U-47 . . .’

  The text of The Royal Oak Disaster describes how the car on the shore was seen as U-47 passed St Mary’s on her way into Scapa Flow. However, the book also reproduces a map, drawn by Wilhelm Spahr, U-47’s navigator, which indicates that the car and the three guards were seen as U-47 was leaving Scapa Flow.3

  Lt. Prien stated in his log that, although the tide was falling, he had to fight his way out of Scapa Flow against a 10-knot current. The Royal Oak Board of Inquiry made the point that, if he had escaped immediately after the attack which sank the battleship, the force of the current against him would have been ‘perhaps as much as eight knots’. But according to The Royal Oak Disaster both Lt. Prien and the Board were mistaken: ‘. . . he had the current, he didn’t have to fight it – the Tide Tables for the night of 13 October show he had a strong outgoing tide . . .’ It is not possible, however, to deduce from tide tables the flow of currents in complicated channels like the Orkneys.

  The Royal Oak Disaster also says it is ‘surprising . . . in view of the proof of negligence contained in the records . . . that no one in the Navy received so much as a reprimand for one of the worst disasters in its history’. This is not the case. A well-respected and well-liked officer was placed on the retired list, quite harshly and unjustly, over the loss of Royal Oak.

  One of the difficulties in writing about Lt. Prien is that he gave his life for his country when U-47, with a somewhat changed crew, was sunk by the destroyer HMS Wolverine on March 8, 1941.4 As a result, any suggestion that a statement made by him, or supposed to have been made by him, is less than accurate tends to be regarded as an unwarranted attack on a dead man who cannot answer for himself. This book was never envisaged as an attack on, or defence of, Lt. Prien. It began – although that is not where it ended – as an attempt to establish, after the passage of nearly four decades, the facts about the night on which Royal Oak was lost.

  The simplest way is to tell the story as it happened.

  2

  Wrong-way Charlie

  Lt. Prien sailed from Kiel on the sunny morning of October 8, the sixth Sunday of the war, to fulfil an old dream of the German Navy, an attack on ships of the Home Fleet while their crews thought themselves safe in an enemy-proof anchorage.

  For 19-year-old Leading Seaman Herbert Herrmann, one of U-47’s torpedo mechanics who now lives in a council house on the shores of the Solway Firth and works for ICI as an engineer, it was his first mission, and, once he heard where he was going, he felt fairly confident that it would be his last.5 ‘There are about 15 of us left now from the 1939 crew of U-47 and we often disagree when we talk about the trip’, he told me at his home in his soft Borders accent. ‘Some remember one thing, some another. But it’s not true that the skipper revealed where we were going just before we went in. He told us the first time we were bedded down on the bottom of the North Sea, and he added that we needn’t make the trip if we didn’t want to.’ He laughed, which is something he does readily. ‘It wasn’t much of an offer when we were already at sea.’

  In addition, Lt. Prien gave his crew the depressing news, according to Mr Herrmann, that ‘everyone had more or less given up hope of our coming back alive’. That was not an unreasonable assumption: two similar missions in the first World War had ended in disaster. However, Lt. Prien made it clear that he did not share the pessimism at U-boat headquarters. He said confidently: ‘I’m determined to get you in there, do what they want me to do and get you out again.’

  The mission had been planned in person by Commodore Dönitz. In his memoirs he reveals that he looked upon it as ‘the boldest of bold enterprises’ and that he worked in the belief ‘that the entrances to Scapa, the most important of all British Fleet anchorages, would be so well protected by nets, minefields, booms, guardships and patrols that the Admiralty, with all its great experience in these matters, and the Commander-in-Chief of the Home Fleet, must have complete confidence in the effectiveness of the measures taken and felt quite sure that the British warships were perfectly secure in their anchorage’.

  At the time there were seven recognised entrances to Scapa Flow. To the east an approach through Holm Sound gave access to three entrances, Kirk, Skerry and East Weddel Sounds, and there was another separate entrance, Water Sound. To the south were two entrances, Hoxa and Switha Sounds, both guarded by booms, and to the north-west Hoy Sound, also guarded by a boom.

  In the first World War the Admiralty had relied upon blockships to seal the eastern entrances. This policy had created such fierce currents that in the years of peace, and of neglect, some blockships had partially disintegrated or shifted from their original positions. Despite being warned of the dangers, the Admiralty had adopted a vacillating attitude towards strengthening the defences of the eastern entrances. Another blockship, the Soriano, had been sunk in Kirk Sound on March 15,1939, followed by the Cape Ortegal in the adjoining Skerry Sound on September 8, 1939. Nevertheless, none of the four eastern entrances was completely sealed and the Admiralty relied mainly on the speed of the currents, which ran one way or the other for most of the day at up to 10 knots, to protect Scapa Flow against penetration by a U-boat.

  By September 26, largely on the basis of aerial reconnaissance, Commodore Dönitz had come to the conclusion that Kirk Sound was vul
nerable to a submarine of U-47’s type, capable of 17 knots on the surface. In the U-Boat Command War Diary he noted that it appeared to be blocked ‘by two merchant ships, apparently sunk across the channel of Kirk Sound, and by another a little more to the north. South of them, up to Lamb Holm, there exists a gap 550 feet wide with a depth of water of 22¾ feet up to the shallows. North of these wrecks there is also a gap, but narrower. On the two shores the coast is almost uninhabited. Here I think it would certainly be possible to penetrate – by night, on the surface, at slack water. The main difficulties will be navigational.’

  The ideal date had an air of Wagnerian doom about it – Friday, October 13. There would be one of the highest tides of the year; high water, and the slacks on either side of it that night, would be at a time when most people could be expected to have retired to bed; and the moon would not only be new, but rise and set in the hours of daylight.

  All that remained was to select the right man for the task. He chose Lt. Prien: ‘He, in my opinion, possessed all the personal qualities and professional ability required. I handed over to him the whole file on the subject and left him free to accept the task or not, as he saw fit. I added that I wanted him to think it over for at least 48 hours before giving me his answer.’

  Lt. Prien was 30, the son of a judge. After qualifying as a merchant navy officer, he accepted a German Navy commission when Hitler came to power and, a few months before the outbreak of war, was given his first and only command, U-47. September 3, 1939, had found him conveniently placed in the Bay of Biscay, near the main shipping lanes, and he was rewarded with three quick successes, all British – the merchant ships Bosnia (2,407 tons, September 5), Rio Claro (4,086 tons, September 6) and Gartavon (1,777 tons, September 7). U-47 arrived back in Kiel on September 15 and was being made ready for her next patrol when Lt. Prien was given the opportunity to undertake, or refuse, the Scapa Flow mission. He willingly accepted the challenge.

  According to Lt. Prien, Commodore Dönitz asked him if he had considered all the facts carefully, not to mention the fate of the two commanders, von Hennig (captured) and Emsmann (killed), who had failed to return from similar missions in the first World War. Lt. Prien replied that he had. ‘Very well, get your boat ready,’ said Commodore Dönitz. ‘We will fix the time of departure later.’ He walked round from behind his desk and the two men shook hands.

  And then the German Navy proceeded to mount a separate operation whose ultimate effect was to sabotage U-47’s mission and rob Lt. Prien of far more important targets than the venerable Royal Oak. Twenty-four hours before U-47 sailed to attack the Home Fleet inside Scapa Flow, the battlecruiser Gneisenau, the cruiser Köln and an escort force of nine destroyers were despatched north to the Utshire Light, off the south-west coast of Norway, to lure the Home Fleet out of Scapa Flow.

  This foray had two purposes. It was meant to divert attention from two German pocket battleships, Graf Spee and Deutschland, operating in the Atlantic. In addition, if the Home Fleet accepted the bait, they were to be received on the other side of the North Sea by a welcoming force of 127 Heinkels, 21 Ju88 dive-bombers and four U-boats.

  Initially, the plan worked perfectly. Gneisenau and the rest of the German force were spotted by a Hudson of RAF Coastal Command. At the Admiralty it was assumed that the German battlecruiser was making an attempt to break out into the Atlantic. On Sunday, October 8, as U-47 emerged from the Kiel Canal and set course for the Orkneys, the Humber Force sailed from Rosyth and the Home Fleet from Scapa Flow – the battlecruisers HMS Hood and Repulse, the battleships HMS Nelson and HMS Rodney, the aircraft carrier HMS Furious, the cruisers HMS Aurora, HMS Sheffield and HMS Newcastle and their escorts. Nelson flew the flag of Admiral Sir Charles Forbes, C.-in-C. of the Home Fleet, already known, rather unkindly, to the lower deck as ‘Wrong-way Charlie’ because of his failure to make contact with any units of the German Fleet in six weeks of war.

  Behind the main force wallowed Royal Oak, an old ship with a smart crew but few memories, too slow now even to keep station when the Fleet was at sea and not expected to survive the scrapyard for long. In the action that might lie ahead she had been cast very much in the role of an outfielder and sent with an escort of two destroyers to patrol the Fair Isle channel.

  Royal Oak had been built at Devonport in the first World War at a cost of £2.5 million and commissioned in May, 1916. On May 31 she took part in the Battle of Jutland, fired seven salvoes at 14,000 yards and was credited with two hits. Her other main claim to distinction was to have been the setting for a sequence of events which led to rumours of mutiny in the Mediterranean Fleet, two of the Royal Navy’s more memorable courts-martial, the dismissal of a Rear-Admiral, international headlines, confident predictions that the collapse of the British Empire could not be far away – and, for newspaper readers, a rare glimpse of the inner workings of the Silent Service, the old Royal Navy, the same Royal Navy which sailed to keep the seas in 1939.

  It all began in the Grand Harbour at Malta on the eve of another Friday the 13th – January 13, 1928 – when, it was said, Rear-Admiral Bernard St George Collard called Bandmaster Barnacle of the Royal Marines ‘a bugger’. (See Appendix C.)

  During that second week of October, 1939, the weather was terrible. In U-47, Herbert Herrmann spent most of his nights, when the U-boat surfaced, being violently seasick. Conditions were, if anything, worse 400 miles to the north where Royal Oak was patrolling the Fair Isle channel. ‘Taffy’ Davies remembers it as ‘one of the worst trips I’ve ever known at sea. Both batteries were awash and you couldn’t have manned a 6-inch gun if your life depended on it.’ Nearly all the life-saving Carley floats were smashed.

  From everyone’s point of view, the Gneisenau foray proved an almost total fiasco. A force of 12 Wellington bombers failed to locate the German ships, which slipped back through the Kattegat to Kiel. The German bombers failed to find the Home Fleet, made contact with the less important Humber Force, bombed it, but did not score a hit. The waiting U-boats did not enter into the action at all. On the afternoon of October 9, Admiral Forbes learned of the withdrawal of Gneisenau and ordered his own ships back to port.

  The verdict on the lower deck was, naturally enough: ‘Wrong-way Charlie has done it again’. But Admiral Forbes made one vital decision which was to have far-reaching consequences for the success of Lt. Prien’s mission. Although the Humber Force returned to the Forth, he ordered the dispersal of the Home Fleet, a decision dictated largely by fears about the vulnerability of Scapa Flow to air attack.

  He sent the battleships Hood, Nelson and Rodney to Loch Ewe on the west coast of Scotland, where they arrived on Wednesday, October 11. The cruiser Sheffield remained at sea. Royal Oak, the battlecruiser Repulse, the aircraft carrier Furious, the cruiser Newcastle and the Destroyer Command cruiser Aurora returned to Scapa Flow with their escorts, arriving at various times on October 11. First was Royal Oak at 0705 when she took up her usual station in the north-east corner of the Flow: she always anchored there so that her guns could be used to protect the RDF (later Radar) station at Netherbutton in the event of an air attack.

  But in his Report of Proceedings Admiral Forbes noted: ‘Repulse to Scapa, then Rosyth to dock.’ Even that prize, far richer than Royal Oak, was to be removed beyond Lt. Prien’s grasp.

  3

  The Car on the Shore

  As U-47 approached the Orkneys, an entirely false, but enduring, impression of the scene in Scapa Flow was being created back in Germany. It is still part of the Lt. Prien legend that Fate robbed him at the eleventh hour of far greater success than he actually achieved. Two reconnaissance flights are said to have caused a stampede of the Home Fleet out of Scapa Flow and left the anchorage as empty as a ballroom after the band has gone home.

  This entirely inaccurate assessment of the situation stems largely from an entry in the U-Boat Command War Diary, which reads in part: ‘11th October. Without having received orders, an aircraft of the 2nd Air Fleet flew over Scapa Flow at low
altitude. On the 12th October at 1500 hours an aircraft of Group A (S/Lt Newe, with Warrant Officers Bohme and Wolff) carried out an excellent reconnaissance which showed the exact position of an aircraft carrier, five heavy ships and ten cruisers. This reconnaissance was commented upon verbally during the night by S/Lt Newe at Wilhelmshaven. A message was sent to U-47, which did not receive it, for the submarine was, at that moment, lying on the bottom . . .

  ‘According to the observations of the listening service, a large number of ships got under way. It is possible that they did so because the appearance, on two occasions, of aircraft above Scapa Flow made them begin to fear an attack on the base. These nights would appear to have had a regrettable result . . .’

  The confidential Pink List, which gave the whereabouts of ships of the Royal Navy at 1600 hours each day, checked against the logs of ships of the Home Fleet, shows that there were 63 naval vessels in Scapa Flow at the time of the reconnaissance flight on the Thursday afternoon. The largest and/or most important were the aircraft carrier Furious, Repulse, Royal Oak, and Iron Duke, moored at C buoy off Lyness naval base; three heavy cruisers Newcastle, HMS Southampton and HMS Glasgow); and five light cruisers (Aurora, HMS Cardiff, HMS Caledon, HMS Calypso and HMS Dunedin).6

  Between the time of the aerial reconnaissance and dawn on the morning of Friday, October 13, nine naval vessels sailed from Scapa Flow. The first, as planned, was Repulse at 1734, to dock at Rosyth, accompanied by the destroyers Fame and Foresight.7 As the belief still exists widely in Germany that Repulse was Lt. Prien’s ‘northern ship’, it is worth giving the battle-cruiser’s movements in some detail to put matters beyond doubt.