Black Saturday: Tragedy At Scapa Flow

by Alexander McKee

In the early hours of Saturday, October 14th, 1939, just after the outbreak of the War, the Royal Navy suffered a stunning loss. The battleship Royal Oak, stationed inside the main base of the Home Fleet at Scapa Flow, was shaken by a number of explosions. She became a furnace, rolled over and within minutes, had gone to the bottom, with nearly 800 men trapped inside. This daring feat of arms was eagerly seized upon by the Nazi propaganda service and they acclaimed Lieutenant Prien of U-47 as their first hero of the War. Hero because he had penetrated the defenses of ‘Impregnable Scapa’, where every previous attempt had failed.

Genres: History, War, Nonfiction, World War II

160 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1959

About the author

Alexander McKee was no "yes-man", he dared to criticise many military, political, economic, media and academic icons and he always kept an open mind. He was fanatical about making his works as accurate as he possibly could. He was ever alert to plain-wrong, biased, distorted or sloppy reports and hidden agendas; wickedly delighting (the more so as a self-educated man) in criticising and exposing assertions that did not fit the evidence. Among his targets were those who tended to emphasise media-image-managment, the accumulation of personal wealth and career progression over both personal integrity and respect for other people's contributions. He gleefully highlighted all the many lapses of integrity that he found. Equally, many established experts, often highly educated people and indeed experts regarding the theoretical aspects of their disciplines, but whom he considered scandalously remiss when they complacently failed to complement such theoretical understanding with practical knowledge as a way to test their theories empirically. Consequently, some of them came in for some harsh criticism on occasion. One gets the impression from his work that some of them appeared reluctant to venture outside the academy at all; out into the "real world": let alone to mix with ordinary people. Implicitly, he urged them to converse with the fishermen, the builders, the soldiers, the doctors, the nurses, the shipwrights and the firemen to glean practical understanding from these practical people, who had to be willing and able to carry out the ultimate tests on their theories to provide demonstably working solutions in order to fulfill their typical working roles. Then he urges such experts in the theory to re-test their theories against the empirically derived knowledge gleaned from their excursions among the working classes, and to do so conjunction with their own senses, out in the "real world": rather than limiting themselves and risking their reputations on the results of thought experiments alone. He dug deep into eye-witness testimonies and spent countless hours searching libraries and museums for the documentary evidence surrounding each his-story. One may find this slightly comical that viewed against the background of established caricaturisations, when the elevated "pillars of wisdom", went "building castles in the air" around about the "ivory towers" and he found strong contradictory "real world" evidence he often lambasted them mercilessly, although it does sometimes seem to be overdone. In contrast, he made the point that some of the sloppy documentary historical works such as that of Sir Robert Davis, that temporarily led his own research astray (and much to his annoyance caused him to repeat untruths in public lectures) while causing the propagation of serious errors until he uncovered them, were nevertheless probably a consequence of the pressures of work, owing to the high quality of the rest of the publication.

Reviews

[Len Benko · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is a very puzzling question as to what exactly happened to this ship.
There is far to much in the history of such a large warship and to many actions that can't be
finalized with so many men and things that may have happened in the diaries
and German naval history at that stage of the start of world war 2.
This is beyond real history by so many things that could contribute to settling the real story.

[Robert John · Rating 5 out of 5]

More questions

A very good and detailed book about a truly horrible incident at the beginning of ww2. However I thought it left one with more questions about the sinking and the u boat involved. Personally I believe it was u47 that sank the royal oak and the nazi regime milked it for what it was worth. Propaganda is used by all world powers for maximum effect. A great book very well written and researched. If you have an interest in naval history. Then this is a book for you.

[Chuck · Rating 3 out of 5]

The personal accounts of the Royal Oak survivors was very exciting to read, highlighting the confusion as to the cause of the initial explosion and the trauma of trying to escape to the upper decks before the ship capsized and sunk (within 13 minutes).
The British author was obviously bias, giving Prien (U47) actual credit for sinking the Royal Oak. But rathe claim a conspiracy that sabotage or other means sunk the battleship. Claiming that the U-47 log that was confiscated at the end of the war was fake.

[Terence Blowfield · Rating 3 out of 5]

Harrowing account of the sinking of the Royal Navy Battleship HMS Royal Oak in Scapa Flow in 1939. I read this book so that I could then read the account by the U-boat commander Gunther Prien who the Germans state sunk the battleship. Both accounts do not tie up. It would seem to me that sabotage caused the battleship to sink and not the sinking by a U-boat.

[arthur e roberts · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting book

A thorough investigation of the sinking of the Royal Oak with a lot of first hand reports.
Not a definite conclusion of what Uboat sank the ship but plenty to think about.

[Ted · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating read made even more so by the author's suggestion that the Royal Oak was destroyed by sabotage, not sunk by a German U-Boat.