AT SEA: Scapa & Forth

I have often wondered why the Germans did not make greater efforts to reduce our strength in capital ships by destroyer or submarine attacks on our bases in those early days. They possessed, in comparison with the uses for which they were required, almost a superfluity of destroyers . . . and they could not have put them to a better use than in an attack on Scapa Flow during the early months of the 1914-15 winter.—The late Admiral Earl Jellicoe.

What another generation of Britons wondered last week was why the defenses of Scapa Flow, notoriously weak at the beginning of World War I, could possibly have been left vulnerable to a submarine which slipped in and sank Royal Oak last fortnight. The London Times called it “grave matter for investigation by the Naval Court of Inquiry which is now sitting.” The Daily Express snorted: “… a disgrace . . . inexcusable.”

First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill’s preliminary report on the disaster was remarkable for its similarity to the jubilant account presently published by Germany. Mr. Churchill explained that, by “a remarkable exploit of professional skill and daring,” the U-boat got through net and mine barriers and “fired a salvo of torpedoes at Royal Oak, of which only one hit the bow. This muffled explosion was, at the time, attributed [by Royal Oak’s officers] to internal causes, and what is called the inflammable store, where the kerosene and other such materials are kept, was flooded.

“Twenty minutes later the U-boat fired three or four torpedoes and these, striking in quick succession, caused the ship to capsize and sink.” Final figures from the Admiralty put the dead at 810, survivors 424.

Mr. Churchill said that Scapa Flow was being searched carefully, that any U-boat hiding on the bottom must rise or perish. He insisted that the anchorage’s defenses were modern and believed impassable.

On the heels of Mr. Churchill’s statement, a flash came from Germany that Lieutenant Commander Günther Prien and the boyish crew of his U-boat, safely back at Kiel, were congratulated by Grand Admiral Erich Raeder for smiting not only Royal Oak but also Repulse. A. Hitler sent his personal plane, Grenzmark, to fetch them to Berlin for an ovation in which Propaganda Minister Goebbels managed to share the spotlight.

Hero Prien, 31, is a onetime Hamburg-America Line cabin boy who entered the Navy in 1933, saw service in Spain. On the third, fourth and seventh days of World War II he sank the British merchantmen Bosnia, Rio Claro and Gartavon respectively. Adolf Hitler received him and his men at the Chancellery, hung on Prien the Ritter Cross (oversized Iron Cross), the highest German military decoration today. Crowds outside yelled: “Prien, the deed was wonderful!” That night the heroes were regaled at the Wintergarten (vaudeville) where Goebbels presented them each with a book of news clippings and the audience sang: “We are off to England!”

Prien’s story was that he had “wormed and twisted” his way into Scapa Flow on the surface (mines and nets are 30 ft. down) on a night when there was “the most extraordinary display of Northern Lights I have seen in 15 years at sea.” He said: “I was lying in very close to shore and several cars passed. One stopped for a moment, then turned about and rushed back at full speed. . . . These people must have seen me—nobody else could have in the shadow of the shore line.”

Members of Prien’s crew seemed to be suppressing amusement as he continued what sounded like a set recitation: “The British ships could not be seen distinctly, but one could determine the location by dimmed lanterns at the anchoring buoys. Repulse was partly covered by Royal Oak. Nevertheless her two forward turrets protruded. So I first aimed in their direction, then sent a second torpedo into the very heart of Royal Oak, then another, and another. I saw distinctly how water first spurted high before Repulse and then was followed by high red flames.

“On Royal Oak, water and fire rose even higher. We saw one waterspout after another followed by a series of huge explosions—white, red and green lights in a fireworks display such as I never had seen before. Pieces of deckwork, masts and smokestacks flew up into the air, giving the impression that the entire ship was blown completely to smithereens.

“The whole thing was over in 30 seconds. After that only a dark cloud of smoke was visible. Royal Oak had disappeared, while Repulse listed heavily forward.”

Searchlights of other ships immediately scraped the sky, said Prien, looking for airplanes. At first the British could not believe a U-boat had penetrated Scapa Flow. Then they swept the water, and depth charges thudded everywhere. But no light, no charge found Prien’s raider and he wriggled out of the harbor as he had come, after executing perfectly a feat to rank with Stephen Decatur’s burning of the frigate Philadelphia in Tripoli (1804), William Barker Cushing’s torpedoing of the Albemarle in Plymouth, N. C. (1864), Commander M. E. Nasmith’s penetration of the Dardanelles with the submarine E11 (1916), Commander Luigi Rizzo’s sneak shot from a motorboat with a torpedo into the Austrian battleship Szent-Istvan at Trieste (1918).

Fiercely, repeatedly the British denied their Repulse was hit. Seaman Vincent Marchant, who managed to get overside from Royal Oak and swim ashore through the tons of oil which cloyed and dragged down others, tended to corroborate Prien’s 30-second version as against the Admiralty’s 2O-minute one. Marchant’s story seemed to refute Prien’s belief that he hit Repulse. Marchant told of four hits on Royal Oak. After the first explosion, he just had time to get from his hammock to the deck. Then followed the second, third and fourth blasts. Evidently Prien’s first torpedo, which he thought hit Repulse (or some other ship*), did not go past Royal Oak’s bow but hit it.

Jubilation in Germany last week was the greater because Scapa Flow is the harbor in which the German High Seas Fleet, surrendered to the Allies on Nov. 22, 1918 in the Firth of Forth, was interned until June 21, 1919. That day its British guardians put to sea for maneuvers and Rear Admiral Ludwig von Reuter issued the order: “Paragraph 11, acknowledge” (i. e., open all seacocks, scuttle the Fleet). Fifty of the 74 German vessels, led by their flagship, Friedrich der Grosse, gurgled to the bottom before the British could intervene. Last week old Admiral Reuter (retired) telegraphed Hero Prien: “I am happy that I have been allowed to live to experience the revenge.”

Flagship of the British Grand Fleet in 1914 was Jellicoe’s Iron Duke. She lay anchored last week in Scapa Flow at almost the exact spot near the Calves (rocks) of Cava where Reuter’s ships went down. Four days after Prien’s U-boat raid, Nazi planes in five waves swept over the Flow plunking bombs. They approached from the north over the central port of Kirkwall, where 60 neutral ships waiting to be searched for contraband saw them, and from the south over Duncansby Head and John O’Groat’s, where British fighters engaged them. Two of their bombs hit close to Iron Duke, damaging but not sinking her. British fighting planes and anti-aircraft fire drove off these raiders, downing five. Britain saw that in this war Germany is not going to repeat the omission that so puzzled Admiral Jellicoe last time. The great battle bases of the British Fleet—Scapa Flow and Rosyth in the Firth of Forth (bombed last fortnight—will, doubtless be prime targets for Germany all this winter.

Scapa Flow is considered one of the world’s most defensible war anchorages. Its 120 square miles of deep water are accessible only by four narrow inlets. In the last war Hoy Sound on the northwest was used only by beef boats (and occasionally by Beatty’s fast battle cruisers) until the Hampshire (with Lord Kitchener aboard) was sunk by a German mine outside it. Then it was closed by mines, as it doubtless is again this time. Hoxa Sound on the south is the deepest and widest approach. Here are a “boom” and submarine net barrier* as well as hundreds of mines, doubtless of the controlled type operable by electric switch ashore. Infrared “electric eye” detectors for surface craft are also believed installed at Hoy and Hoxa. To pick his way through such barriers, Prien would have needed a map furnished either by spies or by aerial reconnaissance cameras. Another theory of how he got in is that he disguised his superstructure to resemble a British submarine and boldly followed in the wake of a returning British ship, copying her recognition flash signals as they passed guardian destroyers. Or Prien may have picked out a channel, perhaps through Switha Sound, so close to shore that it was deemed by the British unthinkably dangerous and not worth mining or netting. But his own account of the adventure pointed most strongly to the eastern entrance of Scapa Flow, through narrow Holm Sound, where rocks and wrecks block all but a narrow gut close up to the main Orkney Island of Pomona.

Prien spoke of Royal Oak as lying at the “far end” of the Flow. That would mean at the northeastern end of the Fleet’s battle line, strung out at its usual anchorage parallel to the Flow’s northern shore. He spoke of the ship which he took for Repulse as lying “southward” of Royal Oak. If he were sneaking along the Flow’s north shore from the. east, the vessel just beyond Royal Oak would be in just such position.

Firth of Forth. Defense of Rosyth in the Firth of Forth, primarily a cruiser base, is simpler than the defense of Scapa Flow. Knocking down the bridge would not bottle up Rosyth: the water is too deep. For submarines there is only one approach from the sea. Against airplanes, the narrowing shoulders of the Firth afford ideal anti-aircraft-gun positions. On either side of the Firth are airfields from which interceptors can buzz up at the first alarm from the outer headlands. In last fortnight’s attack they intercepted 14 Nazi raiders as far out as the Isle of May.

The Mohawk, which German bombs damaged, is one of the “Tribal” class of destroyers specially armed for anti-aircraft work. She carries a pom-pom or “Chicago piano,” an eight-barreled gun firing a 37 mm. (1.5 in.) shell from each barrel every two seconds. For shooting at dive bombers they give an advantage like that of shotgun over rifle in shooting “Archies” or “Ack-acks,” which go up to 24,000 ft. and are used against high-flying flat bombers. The “Tribal” destroyers mount a 4.7-in. dual purpose gun, good for surface firing as well as anti-aircraft and capable of twelve shots a minute. With eight of these mounted on one ship, all controlled by one switch in the firing station, two salvos (16 shots) can be in the air at once.

Most fliers are scornful of anti-aircraft fire, but Britain’s “pianos” apparently at least rattle the German dive bombers. Though they dived on the Firth of Forth bridge and the naval base, the only things they hit were the Admiral’s barge and a pinnace moored to the cruiser Southampton. Bomb splinters caused some casualties on the cruiser Edinburgh. Bombs plopped on both sides of the bridge while a passenger train chuffed stolidly across it, the passengers reputedly preferring to ride on rather than get off and have to pay another fare. Other Scots were reported to have put out in rowboats to salvage fish bombed to the surface of the Firth.

Last week the R. A. F. matched the chivalry of the Germans at Wilhelmshaven —who buried with full military honors the British airmen shot down in the war’s first base raid—by laying to rest two Nazi airmen, with kilted troops at attention, by the Firth at Portobello. The R. A. F. also sought to return the compliments received at Scapa and Forth by a return raid on Emden, Germany’s minesweeper base. Apparently this effort met with small success, being beaten off by ground fire. The R. A. F. thought it damaged two submarines during the week, one in the Atlantic, one in the North Sea. When they got one more Nazi plane over Scapa Flow during a reconnaissance or “harassing” flight, the British checked up 16 as their week’s total.

Greatest single factor favoring Britain’s defense against aerial attack is that Germany’s weather is made in Britain. Prevailing northwest winds enable British observers to foretell what days will favor German flying. To overcome this disadvantage, Germany was reported by Berlin grapevines last week to be attempting to run an aircraft carrier up into the North Sea, to attack Scapa and the Forth with mass flights.

*Repulse, which belongs to the 2nd Battle Cruiser Squadron, would not likely be lying next to Royal Oak, which as flagship would be at the end of her 2nd Battle Division if they were there in full force. That they were in force was suggested by the fact that aboard Royal Oak was Rear Admiral H. E. C. Blagrove, who was lost with the ship. * Since World War I, Britain has evolved and built two net-layers, Guardian and Protector. Three types of nets are used: 1) linked bars 2½ in. in diameter kept erect by buoys just under the surface; 2) chains and wires dangling to foul a submarine’s propeller; 3) nets with electric contacts to signal if a submarine gets caught, when controlled mines in the top of the net are exploded from shore.