One of the most daring submarine attacks in all of military history was launched by a German U-Boat in the early part of Second World War against Scapa Flow, the home of the British Naval Fleet. Scapa Flow is a land-locked anchorage in the Orkney Isles measuring roughly 15 miles in length and 8 miles wide. German aerial reconnaissance had revealed that on the northern side of Kirk Sound, the eastern entrance to the naval base, there was a gap. The entrance to Scapa Flow was thought to have been blocked by intentionally sunk blockships, but the British left a fifty-foot wide passage between them. A daring commander could slip a submarine through this gap on the surface at night, and then submerge to attack a battleship or an aircraft carrier. The main problem would be getting out of the harbor, but that was a risk Doenitz was willing to take. Doenitz, the German submarine fleet chief, picked Lieutenant Guenther Prien for this operation. Prien was the first U-Boat captain to sink a cargo ship and became an ace only two months into the war. Prien was not ordered, but he volunteered himself and his submarine. Before sailing, Prien ordered fuel and supplies to be off-loaded indicating that the voyage would be a short one. His crews were told nothing about the mission until they arrived off the entrance to Scapa Flow on October 13th, 1939. Into the Flow At 1915 on October 13th, Prien surfaced his U-47 and began conning the submarine with the tidal waters propelling him through the blockships. U-47 was a Type VIIB Boat with twin rudders fitted to improve turning capability and a range of 6,500 miles with fourteen torpedoes. Twenty-seven minutes after midnight, the U-47 was inside Scapa Flow only to find that most of the British fleet was not there. The Royal Navy was expecting a Air Attack by the Luftwaffe and thus had gone to sea. But the British battleship Royal Oak was at anchor at Scapa Flow with most of her crew of 1,264 officers and men asleep. The Royal Oak was completed in 1916 at a cost of 2.5 million pounds and displaced 33,500 tons when fully loaded. It had eight 15-inch guns with a operational speed of only 22 knots. Prien recognised the Royal Oak and at 0058 hours, his first watch officer, Lieutenant Englebert Endrass, who later became an ace U-Boat commander, fired a salvo of four torpedoes at the ship at a range of 9,000 feet. One torpedo was jammed in its tube, and the two missed. The third crashed into the bow of the Royal Oak. Prien then ordered the stern tube fired but this torpedo missed or malfunctioned. Now there was a gaping hole in the Royal Oak, but all the damage was above the waterline. This lead Royal Oak's captain, William Benn, to believe that the hole was caused by an internal explosion. Also, it was simply unthinkable that an enemy submarine could be loose inside of Scapa Flow. Prien had turned south to make his escape, but then realized that Royal Oak had been undamaged and still afloat. So he reversed course and went in to attack the battleship again. Closing to within 4,800 feet, Endrass fired three more torpedoes -- all of which hit Royal Oak. The battleship exploded with a blast that shook Scapa Flow and sank within fifteen minutes, with 833 men of her crew killed. Now the harbor defenses became active with British destroyers dropping depth charges and searchlights moving from one corner to another. U-47 fought the current and slipped out of Scapa Flow after 0200 hours on October 14th. Before reaching Wilhelmshaven, U-47's crew had painted a bull on the conning-tower of their submarine and from then on Prien was referred to as "The Bull of Scapa Flow". Immediately after docking, Prien received the Iron Cross, First Class and every man on the crew received the Second Class Iron Cross. Later, in Berlin, Hitler himself awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross, which was a very high honor at the time, to Guenther Prien. He thus became the first submariner to be awarded this award. In addition to the Royal Oak, Prien would go on to destroy 34 Allied ships totalling over 200,000 tons in 15 months of active wartime service. On the morning of March 8th, 1941, his U-47 was caught by destroyers which heavily depth-charged him. U-47 surfaced then dove causing a massive internal explosion within U-47 killing Prien and his gallant crew. Bibliography Boyne, Walter: CLASH OF TITANS: WORLD WAR 2 AT SEA: Rockefeller Center, New York, 1995. Keegan, John: THE SECOND WORLD WAR: Penguin Books, New York, 1989. Back to Table of Contents -- World War Two Newsletter September 2002 Back to World War Two Newsletter List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 2002 by Shahram Khan. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com