ROYAL OAK – 1939

It was “a remarkable exploit of professional skill and daring.” The reluctant admiration of Winston Churchill as he announced to the world that the battleship HMS Royal Oak had been sunk by U-boat was obvious. But, behind the words, Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, was devastated at what occurred in Orkney in the early hours of October 14, 1939.

Not only a battleship, and more than 800 lives, had been lost, but Scapa Flow – Orkney’s great secure anchorage that had been believed to be impenetrable – had been breached and a mortal blow struck against the pride of the Royal Navy. The blow to morale was huge; the suffering of hundreds of bereaved families adding a human dimension of tragedy that was unimaginable.

Built at a cost of £2.5 million, the 27,000 ton Royal Oak had been presumed unsinkable by submarine attack within Scapa Flow – but the unsinkable became the unthinkable as German U-boat commander Lt Gunther Prien evaded the flimsy defences in the submarine U47 and attacked at the heart of the British Navy.

After firing three torpedoes, Prien stated in his log: “After three tense minutes comes the detonation on the nearer ship. there is a loud explosion, roar and rumbling. Then come columns of water, followed by columns of fire and splinters fly through the air. The harbour springs to life . Destroyers are lit up, signalling starts on every side and on land, 200 metres from me, cars roar along the roads. A battleship has been sunk, a second damaged and the other three torpedoes have gone to blazes. All the tubes are empty.”

A memorial plaque to the men of the Royal Oak was erected in Kirkwall’s St Magnus Cathedral. It was unveiled on October 14, 1948 – the ninth anniversary of the tragedy – by Rear Admiral W. G. Benn, who was captain of the warship on the night she sank in just ten minutes, at a service attended by several other survivors of the terrible events of war back in 1939.

In 1949, it was reported that a private individual, astonishingly, had offered the Admiralty £50 for the salvage rights to the Royal Oak. This was rejected, and though the Admiralty did consider a survey of the sunken ship to assess the possibility of salvage, the site was to be declared an official war grave – still marked today by a buoy in Scapa Flow.

The first German bomb to hit British soil hit Hoy as air attacks disabled HMS Iron Duke – and Orkney gunners brought down the first enemy plane to be felled by anti-aircraft fire from the ground.

The Churchill Barriers...