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

by H J Weaver

  Between these two visits I flew to Kirkwall and, by pure coincidence, booked into the Royal, the hotel from which Robbie Tullock picked up his passengers shortly before midnight on the night of October 13–14, 1939. The choice was dictated simply by the fact that the Royal was the first hotel I came across with a bar which had a direct entrance to the street. Barmen are always useful allies for strangers seeking information: they meet a lot of people in the course of a day, particularly in the Orkneys where the indications are that nobody has yet died of thirst.

  The loss of Royal Oak is not a matter of dusty history in Kirkwall. Shops keep a stock of books on the subject; summer visitors hire boats and make a pilgrimage to the site of the wreck; and if you come across a group of men engaged in deep discussion it is an even chance that they are arguing about whether or not Lt. Prien ever saw the inside of Scapa Flow.

  Inside 800-year-old St Magnus Cathedral, a plaque commemorates the disaster. It reads: ‘In memory of the 833 officers and men of HMS Royal Oak who lost their lives when their ship was sunk in Scapa Bay by U-47 on the 14th October, 1939.’ I went to take a look at it before making my way down to St Mary’s after lunch. Beneath the plaque lay two wreaths, one from the Kirkwall branch of the British Legion, the other anonymous with the simple message: ‘To old shipmates. We remember.’

  At St Mary’s, I walked through the village, along the coastal road and out onto the Churchill Barrier which was built before the war ended to seal off Kirk Sound and the other eastern entrances. I took some photographs and, back in the village, asked a passer-by if it was possible to make one’s way along the top of the cliffs to a point opposite where Royal Oak lay. ‘It’s heavy going because of the thick heather,’ he said. ‘You’d be better taking the road and cutting across the fields just before you come to the old Radar station. Funny you should mention the Royal Oak. We were just having an argument down at the garage about what really happened to her. If you’re interested, the man to see is Ronnie Aim at the post office. It’s early closing day, but he’ll be there.’

  It was good advice. Ronnie Aim’s family have lived on the shores of Kirk Sound for most of this century and he has been a dedicated Prien-watcher since 1939. ‘I was down at Scapa Pier at around 10.30 on the Friday night,’ he told me. ‘I could see the silhouette of Royal Oak quite distinctly. It was a shock next morning to hear that she’d gone. I couldn’t believe it.’ On this and a subsequent visit of mine, Mr Aim was generous with his time and conversation; provided meals and cups of tea; drove me around in his Volkswagen van; produced Warden Flett and the brothers Park; made a number of valuable inquiries on my behalf; and pointed the way to the driver of the car on the shore.

  That particular stroke of good fortune began when I asked if the telephone kiosk outside the post office had been there in 1939 because it would seem more logical for a car driver, if he had seen a U-boat, to look for a telephone rather than drive off into the night. ‘There was certainly a public telephone here in 1939,’ said Mr Aim, ‘but I think it was inside the post office. 36

  ‘But about the car. Around here they say that, if there was a car, it didn’t come from Kirkwall and turn around and drive back again when it reached the coast road. It came down the incline at the side of the post office and stopped before turning into the coast road. The building at the top is now a Community Centre, but it was a Drill Hall in 1939 and there would almost certainly have been a dance there on a Friday night at the start of the war.’ The next morning I checked the files of the local newspaper, The Orcadian, but could find no advertisement for a dance and no report of a dance having taken place.

  In the afternoon I went to see Bill Sabistan, who commanded the last Royal Navy vessel in Scapa Flow, the Fleet tender Loyal Proctor, used for RNR training and for ceremonial occasions. I had been fortunate enough to receive an introduction to him from a friend, Derek Hall, who uses one of his boats when he goes fishing in the Orkneys each year.

  After making a telephone call, Mr Sabistan’s advice was: ‘If you want to know about the Royal Oak, go and see David Gorn, the outfitter.’ That proved later to be the consensus of the clientele in the Royal Hotel bar.

  David Gorn, whose hobby is scuba diving, has the remains – still in good condition, still joined together – of the propeller, gears and electric motor of G7e torpedo no. 2874. He discovered them beside the wreck of Royal Oak on Sunday, May 20, 1973. ‘I just noticed a gleam,’ he said, ‘and as soon as I began to scrape the sand away I realised what I had found.’ It took two more Sundays to excavate his discovery completely and haul it to the surface on the end of a rope. A week later, his friend Eric Kemp, who has a Kirkwall sports shop, found similar remains of another torpedo, no. 2597, buried near the midships section of the wreck. The gears of both torpedoes, having been cleaned up, still function perfectly. ‘But,’ said Mr Gorn, ‘the chromium plating on the propellers was in much better shape after 33 years on the seabed than it is now after being exposed to fresh air.’

  He has a simple explanation for the failure of naval divers to find the torpedo parts in 1939: ‘In those days they clumped around on the seabed in heavy boots and made the water murky.’ Mr Gorn and his friend, who had been granted permission to dive in the vicinity of Royal Oak providing that they did not take any underwater photographs, enter the wreck or remove anything from it, took the precaution of having their discoveries authenticated. They sent the German Embassy in London a detailed description, plus photographs and the information that one of the propellers bore the inscription ‘BMAG/VLS’. As a result they received the following letter, dated July 20, 1973, from Rear-Admiral Werner Schunemann, the naval attache:

  Following examinations by German torpedo experts I am now in a position to furnish you with the information required in your letter of June, 1973. Dr Mayer [note: one of the experts] confirms that the fragments are in all probability stern pieces of German torpedoes, type G7e. It is most likely that they are torpedoes fired against HMS Royal Oak by submarine U-47 (Commanding Officer: Kapitänleutnant Prien) on October 14, 1939. Dr Mayer proves this with the facts that U-47 fired torpedoes produced in pre-war time and that your findings show, among others, the following characteristics of pre-war production:

  – Only torpedoes G7e have double-bladed propellers.

  – The mark “BMAG/VLS’’ stands for: Berliner Maschinenbau Aktiengesellschaft vormals L. Schwarzkopf, which means the producer.

  – The brass plates 2874 and 2597 belong to G7e torpedoes produced in pre-war time only.

  There are further characteristics, but their listing would go too deep into technical details. However, they have been checked with original diagrams. Let me congratulate you on your finding,which has a historical meaning, too, as far as it might help to disprove doubts about the truth of Kapitänleutnant Prien’s ship’s log . . .

  The torpedo parts were an unexpected bonus, but nobody I talked to knew anything about a dance or anything about a driver of a car on the shore . . .

  I contacted a number of Royal Oak survivors and, through the 1939 Navy List and Who’s Who, a number of officers who were serving aboard ships in Scapa Flow on the night Royal Oak was lost. The editors of Navy News, the Royal Marine newspaper Globe and Sceptre and the Gordon Highlanders’ regimental publication were kind enough to publish letters asking for personal reminiscences, and Gerry Meyer, editor of The Orcadian, carried a letter asking specifically for any information about visibility in Scapa Flow on the night of October 13–14, 1939, and whether there had been a dance at St Mary’s.

  The first envelope I opened contained a note which read:

  Dear Sir, In answer to your request in our local paper for the following information about the Royal Oak (14/10/39), as a garage proprietor I was driving a taxi and I dropped some young people at St Mary’s dance hall about 12.20 a.m. As I made my way from the back of the village, I stopped the car and noticed my one masked headlamp was piercing its light into the waters of Kirk Sound. The tide was very high and it was
bright moonlight,37 so I switched off the headlight and, with only sidelights, I drove along at full speed until I got past the Radar station when it suddenly began to rain and became dark. I remember switching on the headlight and windscreen wipers. I arrived home at Kirkwall at 12.40 a.m. Yours truly, R. Tullock.

  I caught the night sleeper to Inverness and the morning plane to Kirkwall.

  Mr Tullock told his story in a perfectly straightforward manner, but it contained one puzzling feature. When I asked him why he had kept his identity secret all these years and never mentioned his trip to St Mary’s to anyone outside his family, he replied that he did not think his experience was ‘of any interest’. This was clearly evasive in view of the fact that, in the Orkneys, the loss of Royal Oak is as immediate as if the event happened yesterday, and his explanation made me inclined to think he might be volunteering for a place in history.

  However, there was definitely a dance. On my first visit I had met James McDonald, a member of the maintenance staff at Kirkwall Hospital, who as a boy had helped to lay the blockship Soriano in Kirk Sound and later served on the Scapa Flow boom defences. It was his suggestion that the matter of the dance might be verified by consulting ‘Jean Petrie at the electrician’s. She lived in St Mary’s in 1939 and was known as a great dancer.’

  Miss Petrie said, yes, there had definitely been a dance but she, for once, had been unable to attend. ‘I had been invited to a wedding on one of the islands,’ she said. ‘But I remember quite clearly missing the dance because of the wedding and that the wedding took place on the same day that the Royal Oak was sunk. Everybody was talking about it when I came home on the Saturday night.’

  That still left the mystery of Mr Tullock’s long silence. I eventually discovered Mr Willie Irving, the Water Board engineer in Kirkwall, a relation who was living with Mr Tullock in the autumn of 1939 because his own parents were abroad, and explained my difficulty. Did he remember when Mr Tullock had first mentioned his trip to St Mary’s?

  ‘The very next morning, as soon as we heard the news that the Royal Oak had been sunk,’ he said. ‘As for his silence, that’s very simple. He didn’t want to be involved – people are like that around here – and he was also afraid it might be suggested that his headlight helped the U-boat in some way. But his main concern was about the three soldiers at the door of the dance hall. He thought perhaps they should have been down by the shore and, if he came forward and told his story, they would get into trouble.’

  That seemed an adequate explanation, and, of course, the map published subsequently in The Royal Oak Disaster confirmed the presence of three guards on the shore at the same time as the car.

  The General Register and Record Office of Shipping and Seamen in Cardiff, part of the Department of Trade, produced the log and crew list of the Bosnia from which – another unexpected bonus – the General Council of British Shipping, which deals with Merchant Navy pensions, was able to provide the address of Mr Denis Bird.

  Lt. Prien has been subjected to some criticism over an incident I have not dealt with in the main text – his claim to have torpedoed the cruiser HMS Norfolk on November 28, 1939. This claim was promptly inflated by the German Propaganda Ministry into a positive sinking.

  Sir Winston Churchill recorded in The Gathering Storm, the first volume of his history of the second World War, that this claim caused ‘lively distress’ until it was proved to be false, and also quotes a description of the damage to Norfolk, taken from U-47’s log: ‘The upper deck is buckled and torn. The starboard torpedo mounting is twisted backwards over the ship’s side. The aircraft is resting on the tail unit.’ The log of Norfolk carries the more laconic statement: ‘1340 Torpedo exploded port beam. Action stations.’ and there is no mention of any damage.

  However, after two days on patrol, the cruiser spent 12 days in Harland and Wolff’s shipyard at Belfast. Her Ship’s Book, still covered by the 30-year secrecy rule but produced by Mr Robin Little of Defence Secretariat 16, showed that Norfolk’s visit to Belfast had nothing to do with the torpedo attack. The work consisted of examining her keel for possible storm damage; inspecting underwater fittings, which were found to be satisfactory; lightly welding or caulking some butts which were leaking; replacing some loose rivets in the forepeak; and testing one boiler.

  Later it transpired that Lt. Prien had apparently once again been the victim of circumstances. A detailed report of the supposed damage to Norfolk is attached to the log of U-47, now back in Freiburg. It is signed by Lt. Endrass, who presumably made the observation, admittedly in atrocious weather conditions.

  I must also thank Wren First Officer Jenny MacColl for information about how the Royal Navy recorded the weather in 1939; Lt.-Cdr. John Dempsey, RN, of HMS Mercury for details of visual signalling procedures in 1939; the Naval Historical Branch (Ministry of Defence); Mr Alex Bruce of the Commissioners for Northern Lighthouses for information about the switching on of lights during the war; Captain Ö. Dannevig Hauge, head of the Maritime Department of the Bergen Steamship Co., and Captain Fritjof Qvigstad, chief officer in 1939 of the steamship Meteor on the Bergen–Newcastle run; Messrs. Barr and Stroud Ltd. and Carl Zeiss (Oberkocken) for helpful information about binoculars; Alan Hedgeley, public affairs manager for Harland and Wolff, Belfast; the library staff at Lloyd’s of London and Greenwich Maritime Museum; and Graham Griffin, a neighbour who served in the Royal Navy during the war, checked some of the navigation in this book and listened to most of the arguments.

  Initially, I did not have much success with inquiries in Germany, perhaps understandably. Admiral Dönitz did not reply when I wrote to him. Gerhard Hänsel, one of two ratings on U-47’s bridge throughout the Scapa Flow action, did not reply when I wrote to him. Ernst Dziallas, the other rating, did answer, asking what struck me as a curious question: Did I want information out of private interest or for publication? I repeated what I thought I had already made quite clear, that the information was required for publication. I did not hear from Herr Dziallas again.

  But things went rather better in the latter stages. Fräulein Christina Adlung of Verlag Ullstein was particularly helpful in answering preliminary questions about Mein Weg Nach Scapa Flow and putting me in touch with Herr Cyrill Soschka; and, when I ultimately went to West Berlin, the library staff of Die Welt were kind enough to make ‘a special case’ and allow me to read their cuttings on Paul Weymar.

  The Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte in Stuttgart made their contribution and the Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv at Freiburg could not have been more co-operative, preparing a pile of relevant documents before my arrival with the result that research which might have taken days was completed in a matter of hours.

  Finally, my most profound thanks are due to everyone quoted in the text. Perhaps I may be forgiven for selecting two of them for special mention – David Lees, always liberal with time and information, and kind enough to read the manuscript of this book before publication; and Lt. Prien’s widow, Frau Sturm.

  Before going to see her in Cologne, I asked if I might bring my 10-year-old son in order to disabuse him of the notion, gathered from TV, that everybody in Germany wears a long raincoat and carries a gun. She readily agreed. While we were having a drink before lunch, her present husband said: ‘Excuse me a moment. I have something to show your son.’

  He went away and came back a couple of minutes later wearing a long raincoat. Over each shoulder was slung a hunting rifle, and in his right hand he carried a Luger air pistol.

  Appendix B

  Flaws in the Scapa Defences

  The Royal Oak Board of Inquiry listed the following 11 means by which a U-boat could have penetrated Scapa Flow on the night of October 13–14, 1939:

  1) Passing through the gap at the Flotta end of the Hoxa boom on the surface or trimmed down. This gap is (?) feet wide with a least depth of water of 15 feet at high water and considerably more over the greater part. There was no lookout on the shore at the gap. One drifter was pat rolling the whole entrance,
which is one and a half miles wide. Approaching this gap would take the submarine within five cables of the battery on Stanger Head.

  2) Passing submerged through the gate in the Hoxa boom while it was opened to allow vessels to pass. No hydrophone or asdic watch is maintained at or inside the entrance when the gate is open. Entry here would be a difficult operation, but is possible.

  3) By passing under the Hoxa boom. The foot of the net at this boom is 25 feet above the sea bottom at low water and approximately 35 feet above the bottom at high water springs. In these circumstances we think it would be quite possible for a small submarine proceeding very close to or scraping the bottom to get through without much disturbing the boom.

  4) Passing through the gap at the Flotta end of Switha boom on the surface. There was no lookout on shore at this gap and no patrol vessel at the boom.

  5) Passing through the gap at the Hoy end of Hoy boom on the surface or trimmed down. This gap is 500 feet wide with a depth of water of 30 feet. There was no lookout stationed on shore at this gap. One drifter was patrolling this boom, which, with the gap, is 1.7 miles long.

  6) Passing through the opening in Kirk Sound south of ss Thames on the surface. This opening is 400 feet wide with a depth of four to four and a half fathoms (24–27ft.) at low water. There is another opening about 200 feet wide with a depth of 15 feet or more at high water. Note: An additional blockship has been placed in this entrance since October 14.

  7) Passing through the opening in Skerry Sound on the surface. This opening is 240 feet wide with a depth of 15 feet or more at high water.

  8) Passing through the opening in East Weddell Sound on the surface. This opening is 460 feet wide with a depth of 15 feet or more at high water. The depth in the centre is three to four fathoms (18–24ft.) at low water.