Nightmare at Scapa Flow: The Truth About the Sinking of HMS Royal Oak
Page 18
31. Cadet Bird was the cocky Cockney cabin boy of Mein Weg Nach Scapa Flow. Actually, he lived at 164 Priory Road, Old Green, Birmingham, and was the son of the managing director of a Midlands firm. The skinny, starving stoker was Fireman James Woods of 31B St Andrews Gardens, Liverpool. Fireman Woods was built like a heavyweight boxer, as you would expect of someone whose daily task was to shift several tons of coal.
32. Fireman James Woods of Liverpool was already dead when picked up by U-47 and Mr Bird believes this was the cause. In his log, however, Captain Poole suggests that the cause was heart failure resulting from ‘immersion in cold water when coming direct from the stokehold’.
33. At the time this was written, U-boat logs were still held in Britain and not available for scrutiny, except for U-47’s log of the Scapa Flow mission. They have since been returned to the German Military Archives at Freiburg. The log of Lt. Prien’s first patrol shows that in all salient respects Cadet Bird’s account of the sinking of the Bosnia is the correct one.
34. ‘A ghost writer, somebody who writes a book for somebody else, is known in German publishing as a Neger, or Negro’ – Herr Cyrill Soschka, head of production at the Deutscher Verlag in 1940 when Mein Weg Nach Scapa Flow was written, prepared for the presses and published.
35. David Lees, who rarely fails to astonish me, says: ‘According to the French Maquis agent responsible for the surveillance of U-boat commanders in Lorient Dockyard in 1940, Lt. Prien did not return to Germany until he went home on Christmas leave. At one time he had more than enough to drink on successive nights in port. It was thought he might be cracking up under the strain of too much time at sea, but he appeared to pull himself together.’
36. The postal authorities in Kirkwall were unable to clarify this point.
37. This was not the case.
The U-47 sailing from a French port. Prien is on the right.
HMS Royal Oak during the First World War at full speed showing her guns at full elevation. (Imperial War Museum)
Construction of the Churchill Barriers. This is number 4 Barrier, between South Ronaldsay and Burray. The Lower arm in the centre of the photograph now blocks Kirk Sound which U-47 used to enter Scapa Flow. (SCRAN)
HMS Royal Oak at anchor in Scapa Flow in 1939. The torpedoes struck amidships and aft. (Imperial War Museum)
The U-47.
Land was only 1000 yards away but few survivors reached its safety. The plaque on the buoy reads: ‘This marks the wreck of HMS Royal Oak and the grave of her crew. Respect their resting place. Unauthorised diving prohibited.’
Günther Prien and Oberleutnant Hans Wessel receiving congratulations from the builders of U-47. (SCRAN)
Günther Prien being honoured by Hitler, October 1939. (SCRAN)
Günther Prien being greeted by Vice Admiral Dönitz on 13 December 1939. (Imperial War Museum)
Part of one of the torpedoes which hit HMS Royal Oak on 14 October 1939. (SCRAN)