HMS Royal Oak was one of five s built for the Royal Navy during the First World War. Completed in 1916, the ship first saw combat at the Battle of Jutland as part of the Grand Fleet. In peacetime, she served in the Atlantic, Home and Mediterranean fleets, more than once coming under accidental attack. Royal Oak drew worldwide attention in 1928 when her senior officers were controversially court-martialled, an event that brought considerable embarrassment to what was then the world's largest navy. 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 suitable for 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 . Of Royal Oaks complement of 1,234 men and boys, 835 were killed that night or died later of their wounds. The loss of the outdated ship—the first of five Royal Navy battleships and battlecruisers sunk in the Second World War—did little to affect the numerical superiority enjoyed by the British navy and its Allies, but it had a 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, but U-47s raid demonstrated that the German navy was capable of bringing the war to British home waters. The shock resulted in rapid changes to dockland security and the construction of the Churchill Barriers around Scapa Flow, with the added advantage of being topped by roads running between the islands.
The wreck of Royal Oak, a designated war grave, lies almost upside down in of water with her hull beneath the surface. In an annual ceremony marking the loss of the ship, Royal Navy divers place a White Ensign underwater at her stern. Unauthorised divers are prohibited from approaching the wreck under the Protection of Military Remains Act 1986.
Design and description
The Revenge-class ships were designed as slightly smaller, slower, and more heavily protected versions of the preceding s. As an economy measure they were intended to revert to the previous practice of using both fuel oil and coal, but First Sea Lord Jackie Fisher rescinded the decision for coal in October 1914. While under construction the ships were redesigned to employ oil-fired boilers that increased the power of the engines by over the original specification.
thumb|left|Illustration of , the sister ship of Royal Oak, as she appeared in 1916|alt=Illustration of HMS Revenge
Royal Oak had a length overall of , a beam of and a deep draught of . She had a designed displacement of and displaced at deep load. She was powered by two sets of Parsons steam turbines, each driving two shafts, using steam from 18 Yarrow boilers. The turbines were rated at 40,000 shaft horsepower (30,000 kW) and intended to reach a maximum speed of . During her sea trials on 22 May 1916, the ship reached a top speed of only from . She had a range of at a cruising speed of . Her crew numbered 909 officers and ratings in 1916.
The Revenge class was equipped with eight breech-loading (BL) Mk I guns in four twin gun turrets, in two superfiring pairs fore and aft of the superstructure, designated 'A', 'B', 'X', and 'Y' from front to rear. Twelve of the fourteen BL Mk XII guns were mounted in casemates along the broadside of the vessel amidships; the remaining pair were mounted on the shelter deck and were protected by gun shields. Their anti-aircraft (AA) armament consisted of two quick-firing (QF) 20 cwt Mk I guns. The ships were fitted with four submerged 21-inch (533 mm) torpedo tubes, two on each broadside.
Royal Oak was completed with two fire-control directors fitted with rangefinders. One was mounted above the conning tower, protected by an armoured hood, and the other was in the spotting top above the tripod foremast. Each turret was also fitted with a 15-foot rangefinder. The main armament could also be controlled by 'X' turret. The secondary armament was primarily controlled by directors mounted on each side of the compass platform on the foremast once they were fitted in March 1917. A torpedo-control director with a 15-foot rangefinder was mounted at the aft end of the superstructure.
The ship's waterline belt consisted of Krupp cemented armour (KC) that was thick between 'A' and 'Y' barbettes and thinned to towards the ship's ends, but did not reach either the bow or the stern. Above this was a strake of armour 6 inches thick that extended between 'A' and 'X' barbettes. Transverse bulkheads 4 to 6 inches thick ran at an angle from the ends of the thickest part of the waterline belt to 'A' and 'Y' barbettes. The gun turrets were protected by of KC armour, except for the turret roofs which were thick. The barbettes ranged in thickness from above the upper deck, but were only 4 to 6 inches thick below it. The Revenge-class ships had multiple armoured decks that ranged from in thickness. The main conning tower had 13 inches of armour on the sides with a 3-inch roof. The torpedo director in the rear superstructure had 6 inches of armour protecting it. After the Battle of Jutland, 1 inch of high-tensile steel was added to the main deck over the magazines and additional anti-flash equipment was installed in the magazines.
The ship was fitted with flying-off platforms, mounted on the roofs of 'B' and 'X' turrets, in 1918; from which fighters and reconnaissance aircraft could launch. In 1934 the platforms were removed from the turrets and a catapult was installed on the roof of 'X' turret, along with a crane to recover a seaplane.
Major alterations
thumb|right|Royal Oak at anchor after her 1936 refit|alt=Black and white photo of Royal Oak at anchor
Royal Oak was extensively refitted between 1922 and 1924, when her anti-aircraft defences were upgraded by replacing the original three-inch AA guns with a pair of QF Mk V AA guns. They increased her beam to , reduced her draught to , and all the changes to her equipment increased her crew to a total of 1,188. Despite the bulges she was able to reach a speed of . About 1931, a High-Angle Control System (HACS) Mk I director replaced the high-angle rangefinder on the spotting top. Two years later, the aft pair of torpedo tubes were removed.
The ship received a final refit between 1934 and 1936, when her deck armour was increased to over the magazines and to over the engine rooms. In addition to a general modernisation of the ship's systems, her anti-aircraft defences were strengthened by replacing the single mounts of the AA guns with twin mounts for the QF 4-inch Mark XVI gun and adding a pair of octuple mounts for two-pounder Mk VIII "pom-pom" guns to sponsons abreast the funnel. The forward pair of submerged torpedo tubes were removed and four experimental 21-inch torpedo tubes were added above water forward of 'A' turret.
Construction and service
Royal Oak was laid down at Devonport Royal Dockyard on 15 January 1914. She was launched on 17 November, and after fitting-out was commissioned on 1 May 1916 at a final cost of £2,468,269. Named after the Royal Oak in which Charles II hid following his defeat at the 1651 Battle of Worcester, she was the eighth vessel to bear the name Royal Oak, replacing a pre-dreadnought scrapped in 1914. Upon completion Royal Oak was assigned to the Third Division of the Fourth Battle Squadron of the Grand Fleet, under the command of Captain Crawford Maclachlan.
First World War
Battle of Jutland
thumb|upright=1.5|Maps showing the manoeuvres of the British (blue) and German (red) fleets on 31 May – 1 June 1916|alt=The British fleet sailed from northern Britain to the east while the Germans sailed from Germany in the south; the opposing fleets met off the Danish coast
thumb|Watercolour of Royal Oak at Jutland, by [[William Lionel Wyllie|William L. Wyllie|alt=Watercolour painting of Royal Oak under war conditions. Smoke issues from her barrels and water spouts from a near miss from an enemy shell.]]
In an attempt to lure out and destroy a portion of the Grand Fleet, the German High Seas Fleet, composed of 16 dreadnoughts, 6 pre-dreadnoughts, 6 light cruisers, and 31 torpedo boats, departed the Jade early on the morning of 31 May. The fleet sailed in concert with Rear-Admiral Franz von Hipper's five battlecruisers and supporting cruisers and torpedo boats. The Royal Navy's Room 40 had intercepted and decrypted German radio traffic containing plans of the operation. The Admiralty ordered Admiral John Jellicoe, commander of the Grand Fleettotalling 28 dreadnoughts and 9 battlecruisersto sortie the night before to cut off and destroy the High Seas Fleet. The initial action was fought primarily by the British and German battlecruiser formations in the afternoon, but by 18:00 the Grand Fleet approached the scene. Fifteen minutes later, Jellicoe gave the order to turn and deploy the fleet for action.
The German cruiser had become disabled by British shellfire, and both sides concentrated in the area, the Germans trying to protect their cruiser and the British attempting to sink her. At 18:29, Royal Oak opened fire on the German cruiser, firing four salvoes from her main guns in quick succession, along with her secondary battery. She scored a hit on Wiesbaden aft with her third salvo. In return, Royal Oak was straddled by a German salvo at 18:33 but was undamaged. German torpedo boats attempted to reach Wiesbaden shortly after 19:00, and at 19:07, Royal Oaks secondary guns opened fire on them, believing they were instead trying to launch a torpedo attack. By 19:15, Royal Oaks gunners had observed the German battlecruiser squadron and opened fire at the leading vessel, . The gunners overestimated the range initially, but by 19:20 had found the correct distance and scored a pair of hits aft, which did not inflict serious damage. Derfflinger then disappeared in the haze, so Royal Oak shifted fire to the next battlecruiser, . She scored a hit at 19:27 before Seydlitz too was lost in the mist.
While Royal Oak was attacking the battlecruisers, a German torpedo boat flotilla launched an attack on the British battleline. Royal Oaks secondary guns were the first to open fire, at 19:16, followed quickly by the rest of the British ships. Following the German destroyer attack, the High Seas Fleet disengaged, and Royal Oak and the rest of the Grand Fleet saw no further action in the battle. This was, in part, due to confusion aboard the fleet flagship over the exact location and course of the German fleet; without this information, Jellicoe could not bring his fleet to action. At 21:30, the Grand Fleet began to reorganise into its night-time cruising formation. Early on the morning of 1 June, the Grand Fleet combed the area, looking for damaged German ships, but after spending several hours searching, they found none. In the course of the battle, Royal Oak had fired 38 rounds from her main battery and 84 rounds from her secondary guns.
Later actions
Following the battle, Royal Oak was reassigned to the First Battle Squadron. On 18 August, the Germans again sortied, this time to bombard Sunderland; Vice-Admiral Reinhard Scheer, the German fleet commander, hoped to draw out the British battlecruisers and destroy them. British signals intelligence decrypted German wireless transmissions, allowing Jellicoe enough time to deploy the Grand Fleet in an attempt to engage in a decisive battle. Both sides withdrew after their opponents' submarines inflicted losses in the action of 19 August 1916: the British cruisers and were both torpedoed and sunk by German U-boats, and the German battleship was damaged by the British submarine . After returning to port, Jellicoe issued an order that prohibited risking the fleet in the southern half of the North Sea due to the overwhelming risk from mines and U-boats. In late 1917, the Germans began using destroyers and light cruisers to raid the British convoys to Norway; this forced the British to deploy capital ships to protect the convoys. In April 1918, the German fleet sortied in an attempt to catch one of the isolated British squadrons, though the convoy had already passed safely. The Grand Fleet sortied too late to catch the retreating Germans, although the battlecruiser was torpedoed and badly damaged by the submarine .
On 5 November 1918, in the final week of the First World War, Royal Oak was anchored off Burntisland in the Firth of Forth accompanied by the seaplane tender and the light battlecruiser . A sudden Force 10 squall caused Campania to drag her anchor, collide with Royal Oak and then with Glorious. Both capital ships suffered only minor damage, but Campania was holed by her initial collision with Royal Oak. The ship's engine rooms flooded, and she settled by the stern and sank five hours later, without loss of life.
Following the capitulation of Germany in November 1918, the Allies interned most of the High Seas Fleet at Scapa Flow. The fleet rendezvoused with the British light cruiser , which led the ships to the Allied fleet that was to escort the Germans to Scapa Flow. The fleet consisted of 370 British, American, and French warships. The High Seas Fleet remained in captivity during the negotiations that ultimately produced the Treaty of Versailles. Konteradmiral Ludwig von Reuter believed the British intended to seize the German ships on 21 June 1919, which was the deadline for Germany to have signed the peace treaty. That morning, the Grand Fleet left Scapa Flow to conduct training manoeuvres, and while they were away von Reuter issued the order to scuttle the High Seas Fleet.
1920s
The peacetime reorganisation of the Royal Navy assigned Royal Oak to the Second Battle Squadron of the Atlantic Fleet. Modernised by a 1922–24 refit, she was transferred in 1926 to the Mediterranean Fleet, based in Grand Harbour, Malta. In early 1928, this duty saw a notorious incident which the contemporary press dubbed the "Royal Oak Mutiny". What began as a simple dispute between Rear-Admiral Bernard Collard and Royal Oak<nowiki>'</nowiki>s two senior officers, Captain Kenneth Dewar and Commander , over the band at the ship's wardroom dance, descended into a bitter personal feud that spanned several months. Dewar and Daniel accused Collard of "vindictive fault-finding" and openly humiliating and insulting them before their crew; in return, Collard countercharged the two with failing to follow orders and treating him "worse than a midshipman".
When Dewar and Daniel wrote letters of complaint to Collard's superior, Vice-Admiral John Kelly, he immediately passed them on to the Commander-in-Chief Admiral Sir Roger Keyes. On realising that the relationship between the two and their flag admiral had irretrievably broken down, Keyes hurriedly convened a Board of Enquiry, the outcome of which was to remove all three men from their posts and send them back to England. The Board sat on the eve of a major naval exercise, which Keyes was obliged to postpone, causing rumours to fly around the fleet that the Royal Oak had experienced a mutiny. The story was picked up by the press worldwide, which described with some hyperbole what became known as "the Royal Oak affair". Public attention reached such proportions as to raise the concerns of the King, who summoned First Lord of the Admiralty William Bridgeman for an explanation. In a pair of highly publicised courts-martial held aboard HMS Eagle at Gibraltar, both were found guilty and severely reprimanded, leading Daniel to resign from the Navy. Collard himself was criticised for the excesses of his conduct by the press and in Parliament, and on being denounced by Bridgeman as "unfitted to hold further high command", was forcibly retired from service. He retreated to private life and never spoke publicly of the incident again. On the retired list, he was promoted from Rear- to Vice-Admiral on 1 April 1931. Daniel attempted a career in journalism – notably a prominent anti-noise campaign, conducted through the Daily Mail, for whom he worked as correspondent – but this was unsuccessful and, after a number of other jobs, his health deteriorated and he died in South Africa in 1955. Of the three, only Dewar escaped with his career, albeit a damaged one: he remained in the Royal Navy, but in a series of more minor commands. His promotion to rear-admiral took place in the year following the court martial, after which he was forcibly retired.
The scandal proved an embarrassment to the reputation of the Royal Navy, then the world's largest, and it was satirised at home and abroad through editorials, cartoons, and even a comic jazz oratorio composed by Erwin Schulhoff. One consequence of the damaging affair was an undertaking from the Admiralty to review the means by which naval officers might bring complaints against the conduct of their superiors. The British chargé d'affaires protested about the incident to the Republican Government, which admitted its error and apologised for the attack. Later that same month, while stationed off Valencia on 23 February 1937 during an aerial bombardment by the Nationalists, she was accidentally struck by an anti-aircraft shell fired from a Republican position. On this occasion the British did not protest to the Republicans, deeming the incident "an act of God".
thumb|upright|alt=Aerial photograph of the ship. Both the Norwegian flag and White Ensign are visible|Royal Oak returns the body of Queen Maud to Norway, flying both the Norwegian flag and the [[White Ensign at half-mast, about 24 November 1938]]
In May 1937, she and escorted SS Habana, an ocean liner carrying thousands of Basque child refugees, to the Southampton Docks. In July, as the war in northern Spain flared up, Royal Oak, along with her sister rescued the steamer Gordonia when Spanish Nationalist warships attempted to capture her off Santander. She was unable on 14 July to prevent the seizure of the British freighter Molton by the Nationalist cruiser while trying to enter Santander. The merchantmen had been engaged in the evacuation of refugees.
This same period saw Royal Oak star alongside fourteen other Royal Navy vessels in the 1937 British film melodrama Our Fighting Navy, the plot of which centres around a coup in the fictional South American republic of Bianco. The Royal Navy saw the film as a recruitment opportunity and provided warships and extras. Royal Oak portrays a rebel battleship El Mirante, whose commander forces a British captain (played by Robert Douglas) into choosing between his lover and his duty. The film was poorly received by critics, but gained some redemption through its dramatic scenes of naval action.
In 1938, Royal Oak returned to the Home Fleet and was made flagship of the Second Battle Squadron based in Portsmouth. On 24 November 1938, she returned the body of the British-born Queen Maud of Norway, who had died in London, to Oslo for a state funeral, accompanied by her husband King Haakon VII. Paying off in December 1938, Royal Oak was recommissioned the following June, and in 1939 embarked on a short training cruise in the English Channel in preparation for another 30-month tour of the Mediterranean, for which her crew were issued tropical uniforms. As hostilities loomed, the battleship was instead dispatched north to Scapa Flow, and was at anchor there when war was declared on 3 September. The search was ultimately fruitless, particularly for Royal Oak, whose top speed, by then less than , was inadequate to keep up with the rest of the fleet. The mission had underlined the obsolescence of the 25-year-old warship. Concerned that a recent overflight by German reconnaissance aircraft heralded an imminent air attack upon Scapa Flow, Admiral of the Home Fleet Charles Forbes ordered most of the fleet to disperse to safer ports. Royal Oak remained behind, her anti-aircraft guns still deemed a useful addition to Scapa's otherwise scanty air defences. was surrounded by a ring of islands separated by shallow channels subject to fast-racing tides. That U-boats still posed a threat had long been realised, and a series of countermeasures were installed during the early years of the First World War. Blockships were sunk at critical points; and floating booms deployed to block the three widest channels, operated by tugboats to allow the passage of friendly shipping. It was considered possible, but highly unlikely, that a U-boat commander might attempt to race through undetected before the boom was closed. and was detected by hydrophone and destroyed with the loss of all hands on 28 October 1918.
Scapa Flow provided the main anchorage for the British Grand Fleet throughout most of the First World War, but in the interwar period this passed to Rosyth, further south in the Firth of Forth. Scapa Flow was reactivated with the advent of the Second World War, becoming a base for the British Home Fleet.
Special Operation P: the raid by U-47
thumb|alt=Map of the route taken by Prien when infiltrating Scapa Flow, firing his torpedoes and fleeing the harbour. There are many twists and turns avoiding the islands and blockships, and while trying to find a target.|Infiltration of Scapa Flow by U-47
Kriegsmarine Commander of Submarines () Karl Dönitz devised a plan to attack Scapa Flow by submarine within days of the outbreak of war. Its goal would be twofold: first, displacing the Home Fleet from Scapa Flow would slacken the British North Sea blockade and grant Germany greater freedom to attack the Atlantic convoys; second, the blow would be a symbolic act of vengeance, striking at the same location where the German High Seas Fleet had scuttled itself following Germany's defeat in the First World War. Dönitz hand-picked Kapitänleutnant Günther Prien for the task, Prien initially mistook the more southerly Skerry Sound for the chosen route, and his sudden realisation that U-47 was heading for the shallow blocked passage forced him to order a rapid turn to the northeast. On the surface, and illuminated by a bright display of the aurora borealis, the submarine threaded between the sunken blockships Seriano and Numidian, grounding itself temporarily on a cable strung from Seriano. an announcement was made over Royal Oaks tannoy system to check the magazine temperatures, but many sailors returned to their hammocks, unaware the ship was under attack.
Prien turned his submarine and attempted another shot via his stern tube, but this too missed. Reloading his bow tubes, he doubled back and fired a salvo of three torpedoes, all at Royal Oak. The explosions blew a hole in the armoured deck, destroying the Stokers', Boys' and Marines' messes and causing a loss of electrical power. Cordite from a magazine ignited and the ensuing fireball passed rapidly through the ship's internal spaces.|group=lower-alpha She soon rolled further onto her side to 45°, hanging there for several minutes before disappearing beneath the surface at 01:29, 13 minutes after Prien's second strike. 835 men and boys died with the ship or died later of their wounds. The dead included Rear-Admiral Henry Blagrove, commander of the Second Battle Squadron. 134 of the dead were boy seamen, not yet 18 years old, the largest ever such loss in a single Royal Navy action.
Rescue efforts
The tender Daisy 2, skippered by John Gatt, had been tied up for the night to Royal Oaks port side. As the sinking battleship began to list to starboard, Gatt ordered Daisy 2 to be cut loose, his vessel becoming briefly caught on Royal Oaks rising anti-torpedo bulge and lifted from the sea before freeing herself.
Many of Royal Oaks crew who had managed to jump from the sinking ship were dressed in little more than their nightclothes and were unprepared for the chilling water. A thick layer of fuel oil coated the surface, filling men's lungs and stomachs and hampering their efforts to swim. Of those who attempted the half-mile (800 m) swim to the nearest shore, only a handful survived.
Royal Oaks port side pinnace was manoeuvred away from the sinking ship and paddled away using wooden boards as there had been insufficient time to raise steam. The boat became overladen and capsized 300 metres from Royal Oak, throwing those on deck into the water and trapping those below.