HMS Royal Oak was a Revenge-class battleship of the British Royal Navy. Launched in 1914, Royal Oak first saw action at the Battle of Jutland. Attempts to modernise Royal Oak throughout her 25-year career could not fix her fundamental lack of speed, and by the start of the Second World War, she was no longer suited to front-line duty.
On 14 October 1939, Royal Oak was anchored at Scapa Flow in Orkney, Scotland, when she was torpedoed by the German submarine U-47. Of Royal Oak's complement of 1,234 men and boys, 833 were killed that night or died later of their wounds. While the loss of the battleship did little to affect the numerical superiority enjoyed by the British Navy and its Allies, the sinking did have considerable effect on wartime morale. The raid made an immediate celebrity and war hero of the U-boat commander, Günther Prien, who became the first German submarine officer to be awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross. Before the sinking of Royal Oak, the Royal Navy had considered the naval base at Scapa Flow impregnable to submarine attack. U-47's raid, however, demonstrated that the Germans were capable of bringing the naval war to British home waters. The shock resulted in rapid changes to dockland security and the construction of the Churchill Barriers around Scapa Flow.
The wreck of Royal Oak, a designated war grave, lies almost upside down in 100 feet (30 m) of water with her hull 16 feet (4.9 m) beneath the surface. In an annual ceremony to mark the loss of the ship, Royal Navy divers place a White Ensign underwater at her stern.
German Propaganda Postcard – Depicting an artist's impression of the sinking of HMS Royal Oak by German Submarine U-47. It also carries a photograph of Kapitainleutnant Günther Prien, the commander of U-47 wearing his newly-awarded Knight's Cross.
U-47 was one of the most successful U-boats, carrying out 10 wartime patrols and sinking 30 Allied ships totaling 164,953 tons. She was eventually lost in March 1941, on an Atlantic patrol between Iceland and Ireland, circumstances unknown, with the loss of all 45 crew, including Prien.
There was little attempt to suppress the news of the loss of HMS Royal Oak. News of the tragedy was broken to the British public by BBC broadcast on the morning of the 14th October, 1939. By the evening, American papers such as the Boston Evening Transcript were carrying the full story of the battleship's loss.
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