Just Finished Reading: Nightmare at Scapa Flow – The Truth About the Sinking of HMS Royal Oak by H J Weaver (FP: 1980) [140pp] 

A mere 6 weeks after war had been declared, a lone German submarine U-47 commanded by Kapitanleutnant Gunther Prien, entered the supposedly secure anchorage of the British Home Fleet and sank the battleship HMS Royal Oak. After sending her to the bottom with the loss of 800 lives, U-47 exited the port and safely returned to her base in Germany to a hero's welcome. So, how exactly had he managed it and what, after the publication in English of Prien’s account, was the real story? This was the author’s intention – to find out exactly that. 

Surprisingly, that endeavour wasn’t as easy as you might imagine. Prien’s book was, it seemed both full of obvious errors (including the bizarre misspelling of crew members names!) and equally obvious falsehoods. Initially published during the war as a German propaganda piece, this was understandable, but the English translation was published much later yet still contained those same errors. Newspaper reports at the time, both in Germany and the UK, were written under wartime restrictions so contained a mixture of fact, conjecture and propaganda so couldn’t really be trusted. Even the UK Admiralties official investigation – much later made public – left out salient facts and failed to follow certain lines of enquiry. But what it did show was just how unprepared the anchorage was for wartime duty. This was, remember, during the earliest phase of the war known, rather erroneously to be honest, as ‘Phony’. The security of the fleet base was still very much on a peacetime footing with wartime elements seemingly bolted on when time, attention and money allowed. The reputation of the base being impregnable – derived from several failed German attempts during WW1 – was seen as sufficient deterrent in the interim whilst adequate defences were being put in place (as so often, too little and too late). Indeed, the crew of U-47 were fully expecting not to return from their mission that night. 

With interviews from survivors from the Royal Oak, senior staff at Scapa Flow and even from the U-boat crew itself, this was an interesting look into one of the earliest defining moments of the war and a serious wake-up call for the Royal Navy that it needed to get its act together. On that dark October night, the war came to Scotland and the feeling of rather smug complacency and invulnerability ended in explosion and death. It was a night that the survivors and the attackers would never forget. Recommended for anyone interested in Royal Navy history or in the opening months of the global conflict. More to come...  

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