Castles of Steel (32 page)

During the fifty-two months of the Great War, only two German U-boats actually attempted to penetrate the anchorage at Scapa Flow. The first of these efforts occurred on the morning of November 23, 1914. The previous night, Captain Heinrich von Hennig, commanding
U-18,
was passing eastward off the Orkneys when he saw that the Pentland Skerries navigation light was lit and decided to make the attempt. He used the light as a guide to cruise on the surface as far as the Skerries where, his batteries fully charged, he dived. By 11:00 a.m. on the morning of the twenty-fourth,
U-18
was moving up Hoxa Sound. There, however, her periscope was sighted by a patrolling trawler, which promptly rammed the intruder. The wounded submarine managed to crawl away to the east, but Hennig was finally forced to scuttle his craft near the Pentland Skerries. He and his crew were rescued by British destroyers.

Four years later, on October 25, 1918,
UB-116
sailed from Heligoland. Technology had advanced enormously since Jellicoe’s anxious days in the autumn of 1914. Hoxa Sound, which the submarine’s captain intended to enter, was defended by hydrophones that picked up the sound of all approaching ships, by seabed cables that caused the needle of a galvanometer to flick when an electric current was induced by the magnetic field of any crossing vessel, and by mines that could be detonated electrically from the shore. The hydrophones gave first warning of
UB-116
approaching Scapa Flow after nightfall on October 28. No friendly ship was expected. The mine-field was activated and searchlights swept and probed the waters. The submarine’s captain, apparently believing that as long as he remained submerged he could not be detected, continued forward. He was not actually sighted until 11:30 p.m., when he came up to periscope depth, probably to check his position. He was seen near the boom entrance heading straight for it. Two minutes later the submarine’s magnetic field activated the needles on shore. A button was pressed. The mines detonated and
UB-116
was instantly destroyed, leaving oil on the surface and a mass of crushed, twisted metal on the seabed. There were no survivors.
UB-116
was the only submarine destroyed by a shore-controlled minefield during the Great War, and the last U-boat sunk during that war.

Twenty-five years passed and, in a new war between Great Britain and Germany, the main British fleet once again was based at Scapa Flow. Winston Churchill had returned to the Admiralty as First Lord. And, once again, a German submarine attempted to penetrate the great anchorage. The operation was carefully planned by the supreme German submarine commander, Admiral Karl Doenitz, who selected
U-47,
commanded by Captain Gunther Prien, to perform the mission.

At 7:00 p.m. on October 13, 1939, Prien surfaced near Scapa Flow. High tide that night on the eastern side of the Flow was at 11:38 p.m. At 12:27 on the morning of October 14,
U-47
entered Kirk Sound. The tide was unusually high, but it required all of Prien’s skill to maneuver the 100-foot-long
U-47
through the swirling waters and past the old block ships in the sound. On the surface and hugging the northern shore, he edged the submarine past the sleeping village of St. Mary’s. No one saw him, although the shore was close and a man on a bicycle was seen pedaling home along the coast road. Prien rounded a point and suddenly he was in the open Flow. There, against the land to the north, he could see the huge shadow of a battleship with its tall mast rising above it. Just before 1:00 a.m., remaining on the surface, he closed to 4,000 yards and fired three torpedoes from his bow tubes. No result was seen from
U-47,
but on board
Royal Oak,
people heard a muffled explosion near the bow. So incredible did it seem to the admiral and captain on board that a torpedo could have struck them, safe in Scapa Flow, that they attributed the explosion to some internal cause, possibly in one of the forward storage rooms. Twenty minutes passed while
U-47
reloaded her tubes; then she fired a second salvo. Three torpedoes, striking in quick succession amidships on the starboard side, ripped the bottom out of
Royal Oak.
At 1:30 a.m. the battleship rolled over and went to the bottom, taking with her more than 800 men of her crew of 1,400.
U-47
crept away. Running on the high tide, Prien successfully navigated the unblocked channel on the south side of Kirk Sound, almost scraping the side of the sunken block ship
Thames.
An hour later, he was out of the Flow, heading for Germany.

The impossible had happened: a battleship of the Royal Navy had been torpedoed and sunk inside its main war harbor. Churchill, who years before had boasted that no German submarine “ever penetrated the lair of the Grand Fleet,” was not held responsible this time; he had been in office only six weeks, and he survived to become prime minister. Immediately after the sinking, he ordered all smaller entrances to Scapa Flow permanently barricaded with massive concrete blocks dropped from overhead wires running on pulleys across the channels. Now these tumbled-together “Churchill Barriers” are a permanent part of the Orkneys landscape. So also is a large buoy marking the position in Scapa Bay where
Royal Oak
rests on the bottom.

CHAPTER 9
Prince Louis Departs

By early October, many people in Britain believed that something was wrong with the navy. August had provided the bright moment of victory in the Bight, but also the escape of
Goeben.
September had produced the loss of the three
Bacchante
s. The navy’s positive contributions—the passage of the BEF, the establishment of the North Sea blockade, and the throttling of German overseas commerce—were either unglamorous or unrecorded. Even within the navy, officers were disgusted with the defensive strategy of the distant blockade. “We are only playing at war,” groaned Beatty. “We are as nervous as cats, afraid of losing lives, losing ships, and running risks. Until we risk something, we shall never gain anything.”

Someone at the Admiralty must be guilty, the British public decided. Churchill was the obvious target. He was young, brash, flamboyant, famous, hated by some, mistrusted by many. It was said that the First Lord was a brilliant but erratic amateur, whose energy and arrogance had led him to interfere in technical and strategic matters beyond his competence. Even Beatty, who had been the First Lord’s naval secretary and who owed to Churchill his leapfrog promotion to command the Battle Cruiser Squadron, repeatedly criticized Churchill in letters to his wife: “Winston, I hear, does practically everything and some more besides.” “If he would either leave matters entirely alone at the Admiralty which would be the best thing to do, or give it his entire and complete attention, we might get forward, but this flying about and putting his fingers into pies which do not concern him is bound to lead to disaster.” “If we only had a Kitchener at the Admiralty we could have done so much more and the present state of chaos in naval affairs would never have existed. It is inconceivable the mistakes and blunders we have made and are making.”

For those already disparaging Churchill’s performance at the Admiralty, his October adventure in Antwerp provided fresh ammunition. When the German army swept through Belgium and northern France, it left the great port of Antwerp far behind. As a port and a symbol, Antwerp, the last remaining stronghold of the Belgian nation, had great significance. Positioned on the far left flank of the Allied front in the west, it might—if it could be held—become a sally port from which the Allies could thrust into the flank of the German army in France.

British responsibility for helping in the defense of Antwerp lay with the War Office, and Churchill’s involvement came on Kitchener’s initiative. On the night of October 2, the First Lord left London for a weekend visit to Dunkirk, where a squadron of British naval airplanes was based. At 11:00 p.m., with London twenty miles behind, Churchill’s special train to Dover was suddenly halted and returned to the city. A car rushed the First Lord to Kitchener’s house in Carlton Gardens, where he found the war secretary, Sir Edward Grey, and Prince Louis of Battenberg, the First Sea Lord. (Asquith was in Wales making a speech.) Churchill was told that the Belgian government intended to evacuate Antwerp the following day; the fall of the city, which must follow, would pose a threat to the French Channel ports and to cross-Channel communications. Bound for the Continent in any case, the First Lord offered to go to Antwerp to survey the situation. Kitchener accepted. Churchill returned to Victoria Station and arrived in Antwerp the following afternoon. That morning, the British Cabinet had met and approved the dispatch of the Royal Marine Brigade to bolster the city’s Belgian garrison. Encouraged by this evidence of British support, the Belgian government postponed its evacuation and Churchill threw himself into the city’s defense. The Royal Marine Brigade arrived in Antwerp on October 4; the following day, the First Lord summoned as additional reinforcement the raw reservists of the First and Second Naval Brigades; combined, the three British infantry brigades were combined into the new, 10,000-strong Royal Naval Division. Awaiting their arrival, Churchill commandeered an open Rolls-Royce and toured the front lines. The mammoth German siege howitzers that had destroyed the fortress of Liège had now been trundled up before Antwerp and were belching one-ton shells at the Antwerp forts, which were being pulverized one by one. As pieces of shrapnel screamed across the flat, boggy countryside, Churchill, wearing a broad smile, and “waving his stick . . . would walk a few steps and stare towards the enemy’s direction.” By October 5, Churchill had convinced himself that Antwerp’s continued resistance depended on his remaining in the city. That morning, he took the extraordinary step of telegraphing Asquith, suggesting that he resign from the Admiralty and the Cabinet in order to “undertake command of the [British] relieving and defensive forces assigned to Antwerp. . . . I feel it my duty to offer my services.” Churchill’s telegram, read aloud to the Cabinet by the prime minister, brought a roar of incredulous laughter. Kitchener, however, did not think Churchill’s offer risible; he was ready to commission the former lieutenant of hussars as a lieutenant general in the British army and give him command of British troops in Antwerp. Asquith, annoyed, declared that Churchill could not be spared from the Admiralty and telegraphed him to return immediately. The First Lord was back in London on October 7.