Word: scapa
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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...
...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...
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...
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...
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...