Sinking of Royal Oak

14 October 1939, Scapa Flow, Orkney

German success; Royal Oak sunk at anchor

Scapa Flow, the Home Fleet's anchorage in both wars, was thought safe behind its blockships and booms. In the night of 13–14 October 1939 Günther Prien took U-47 on the surface through a gap beside the blockships in Kirk Sound, at high tide and under the northern lights. Most of the fleet was away; he found the old battleship Royal Oak at anchor in the north-east of the Flow. His first torpedoes did little and the crew thought there had been an internal explosion. Twenty minutes later Prien fired again, and three hits rolled her over in thirteen minutes. 835 men were killed, more than a hundred of them boy sailors under eighteen. U-47 slipped out the way she had come, and Prien came home a hero. The Admiralty closed the eastern sounds with the causeways now called the Churchill Barriers.