Atlantic War: No Phoney War At Sea (Part 1)

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Speaker 5 There, quite far from the shore, some dark shapes can be seen with a few flickering lights. They're tankers, auxiliary supply ships of the home fleet.

Speaker 5 Unmistakable with their aft chimney and their solid grotesque appearance. Suddenly blood rushes to my temples and the arteries beat rapidly, increasingly the pace of my heart.

Speaker 5 The imposing silhouette of a battleship stands out precisely, revealed by the large chimney, the bridge, the gun turrets, and the signal mast.

Speaker 5 It looks like a sleeping giant, and the portholes, pometically sealed without letting in the slightest ray of light, give the effect of eyes closed in sleep.

Speaker 5 I think it's a battleship of the Royal Oak series, I whisper to Andras. But behind it, the silhouette of another appears, as large and as imposing as the first.

Speaker 5 This time, I identify it without any doubt. It's the Repulse.
Seconds turn into hours and minutes into centuries as we approach to position ourselves for the best possible launch.

Speaker 5 At every moment, we seem to hear the sound of some surveillance boats passing over us, and that's why I activate the operation as much as I can, even at the risk of revealing my presence of my ship.

Speaker 5 The essential thing is to launch the torpedoes safely and then whatever God wills. Attention tube one, I order.
Fire!

Speaker 5 And that was Capitain Leutnant Gunther Preen, commander of the U-boat U-47.

Speaker 1 Alaam alaam! Welcome to Wave Ways to Make You Talk, where Jim and I, we've gone navy.

Speaker 5 We've gone navy with bells on, haven't we? Let's face it, we're both really into this at the moment. Yeah, this is an amazing story.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and it's the story, of course, of the Atlantic War, but not the entire thing, because it goes on for six years. We're not going to eat all our chips in one go are we Jim?

Speaker 1 So welcome to episode one of the Atlantic War.

Speaker 5 We're going to do the decisive first phase up to the end of May 1941.

Speaker 5 But there is one episode in May 1941 that we're going to leave off, which is obviously that takes place in the last week of that vital decisive month in the war.

Speaker 5 And that's because that, of course, is the battle of HMS Hood and the Bismarck and the Prince Juygen and the King George V and the Norfolk and the Suffolk and the Stringbads in the Atlantic.

Speaker 5 It is of course the story of the uh pursuit of the uh giant german battleship the bismarck we were going to tack that on to the end of this but we're not we're going to have a separate series on it it's that good a story yeah and you could say the sinking of the bismarck i think people know that how it ends right okay but but our job is to is to is to keep up the tension and the jeopardy right to the last minute because that's certainly how i was feeling when i was reading up on all this it's such an amazing story but so is the war at ste at the beginning and i think there's a lot of kind of dnkts in this uh this is an acronym that stands for did not know that.

Speaker 5 I mean obviously there's a large number of people out there who of course know their naval history and know their naval history of the Second World War.

Speaker 5 But I suspect there's quite a few people who don't, not at least because we've never really covered it very much. And documentaries and stuff tend to be a little bit superficial.

Speaker 5 And you could be forgiven for being slightly misled by the film Greyhound about the U-boats and stuff. And Ditto, you know, Das Boot and all the rest of it.

Speaker 5 But anyway, we're going to go into this in some detail.

Speaker 5 We're calling it the Atlantic War because Mark Milner, who's one of the great chroniclers of this, and our great friend of the show, Steve Prince, don't really feel it ought to be called the Battle of the Atlantic because it's not really a battle.

Speaker 5 It's an ongoing campaign which lasts the duration of the Second World War.

Speaker 5 It is arguably the most significant and decisive campaign of the entire Second World War because, of course, all shipping flows through the Atlantic to Britain and to Europe.

Speaker 5 And without the Atlantic, you're not going to win

Speaker 5 against the Nazis. So it's incredibly important.
And so we're calling it the Atlantic War. And episode one, tentatively titled No Phony War at Sea.
And nor was there.

Speaker 1 Well, and of course, this is the point, isn't it? Right from the start, right from the moment hostilities are declared, it starts, doesn't it? It gets underway at sea.

Speaker 5 With bells on.

Speaker 1 Exactly. And the thing is, if there's any way I would probably not want to go, it's in the icy waters of the North Atlantic, clinging onto a life raft.

Speaker 5 Apparently, Painless death, though, so they say. Oh, great.

Speaker 5 I think your final moments as you slip below the waves would be very lonely, wouldn't they? And you'd just be thinking, oh my God, I'm going to be fishbait. I think that would be hard to reconcile.

Speaker 1 Yes. So we start with the sinking of the SS Athenia.
This is an extraordinary story that begins right at the commencement of hostilities, the 3rd of September 1939.

Speaker 1 The Athenia is steaming from England to Toronto with 1,100 passengers on board, including more than 300 Americans, a large number of Canadians, British people, and European refugees.

Speaker 1 By the evening of the 3rd, she's off Hebrides. It's a cold, strong westerly wind.
I mean, plus achange in that part of the world.

Speaker 1 The ship's pitching, the ship's rolling, and aboard is Jimmy Goodson, who's an 18-year-old Canadian who's returning home from study in France.

Speaker 1 Born in the USA, but to British parents, but brought up in Canada. So it's kind of typical, really.

Speaker 1 And he's just climbed a staircase to the dining room where the ship lurches and he hears a loud crack. Moments later, the lights go out.
People start screaming.

Speaker 1 The Athenio comes to a halt and starts listening. Water's pouring in in a huge gap in a wooden staircase because he's traveling third class.

Speaker 1 He helps pull as many women as clear as he possibly can from the chaos, the calamity that's ensuing.

Speaker 1 He throws off his jacket, kicks off his clothes and dives down to help those unable to swim get out onto the broken companionway. Hoists out children and others one by one.

Speaker 1 He asks the crew for help, but they all say, I can't swim, mate. Sorry.
He managed to get everyone out of his immediate area and then is asked by the crew to help search in the upper corridors.

Speaker 1 The ship's now listing badly. He's wading, he's swimming, he finds no one alive.

Speaker 5 Do you remember those sequences in the Titanic film of Leo kind of swimming through the... It's just like this.

Speaker 5 It's clearly where they've obviously read Jimmy Goodson's book, book, Tumut in the Clouds.

Speaker 1 And all he finds is a dead Scotsman who'd been singing ballads in the lounge earlier.

Speaker 5 That's poignant, isn't it? Yeah.

Speaker 1 And this is the 3rd of September 1939. Put all of your phony war stuff aside is the thing.
It's being fought tooth and nail in the Atlantic from the very beginning.

Speaker 5 There's no phony war at sea. Exactly.

Speaker 1 He's cold. He's soaked.
He gets onto the deck. He's about to get into a lifeboat, but it's already full.
And then one of the ropes on the davit slips and everyone's tipped, screaming, into the water.

Speaker 5 Because it's being lowered down, kind of like just

Speaker 5 can you imagine?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, the thing is, this is all absolute fingernail stuff, isn't it? The last boat's being loaded on the other side, and he spots another lifeboat 100 yards out to sea.

Speaker 1 So, using one of the ropes, he climbs down into the sea and then swims as hard as he can for the lifeboat.

Speaker 1 Several passengers tried to push him away, banging on his knuckles, but a young woman comes to his rescue and helps.

Speaker 5 So, you're on the edge of the edge of the lifeboat and you're trying to clamber aboard, and someone's knocking your knuckles. I mean, bastards.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I think there's a little bit of selfish survivor instinct kicking in on some of those. A tiny bit.

Speaker 1 But he's rescued. He's pulled aboard.
They get a blanket around him and he collapsed exhausted. The woman, and she's only wearing her underclothes, obviously stripped off and gone swimming.

Speaker 1 Or, you know, it's his, after all, late.

Speaker 5 But she's dressing for dinner. She's dressing for dinner.

Speaker 1 There we are. Yeah.
They row hard. They sing songs.
Obviously, they need to get away from being sucked down into the sea by the sinking ship. This is extraordinary.

Speaker 1 They're rescued the following morning at 4.30. on the 4th of September by a Norwegian tanker called the Knut Nelson.
They're taken to Ireland. Crowds come to greet them.

Speaker 1 These crowds have obviously, you know, they're rubbernecking a bit, aren't they? Like, oh, there's this ship been sunk. He's asked by a brother and sister who are both aged about 12.

Speaker 1 They ask him whether they've seen their parents. And he's overcome by fury.
There and then, he decides to do something. And this is, I mean, this is just a movie, isn't it?

Speaker 1 Jimmy Goodson, there and then, decides to do something about it, about what's happened.

Speaker 1 He goes back to Canada, he joins the Royal Canadian Air Force, then he joins 43 Squadron, 416 Squadron, and eventually 133 Eagle Squadron, later the bedrock of the Mighty Eights 4th Fighter Group, and he's a leading ace.

Speaker 1 And that could set up his story, couldn't it? That event?

Speaker 5 Well, yes. And in actual fact, in the new year, we're going to be doing a series on the 4th Fighter Group of which Jimmy Goodson will be playing a very, very large part.

Speaker 5 So we're going to park his story there. His story is amazing, by the way.
Very, very cool guy. Tumor on the Clouds is one of my favorite all-time memoirs of the air war.

Speaker 5 It's just completely brilliant. Great friend of the show and great personal friend, Roland White republished it some years ago.
Anyway, that's that. So park Jimmy Goodson right now.

Speaker 1 I mean it's interesting isn't it? Jimmy Goodson's war begins with the with the war in the Atlantic and as you said Jim it runs from the start to the end of the war.

Speaker 1 The theme has been something like U30 which is already patrolling the Atlantic already out sniffing about looking for targets.

Speaker 5 Yeah, so of course because U30 is commanded by Fritz Julius Lemp and

Speaker 5 he's not one of the one who survives.

Speaker 5 He gets killed in May 1941, that month of months. But we'll be coming on to that later on in this series.

Speaker 1 But the thing is, it's worth

Speaker 1 looking at the contenders as the Atlantic War begins. And the Royal Navy, James, the senior service, the pillar of the British establishment.

Speaker 1 Treat the Royal Navy with the decorum and respect it deserves.

Speaker 5 Who is the new head of the Admiralty? Of course, it's Winston Churchill. Brought back into the cabinet on the Declaration of War.

Speaker 1 Winston is back.

Speaker 5 He's back. Winston's back.
That day, that very day, that very Sunday. And he has his first meeting of the Admiralty Board on the evening of 3rd of September in historic rooms in the Admiralty.

Speaker 5 I mean, this is where the naval defeat of Napoleon is plotted. It's where Churchill and Admiral Fisher quarreled over the Dardanelle, for example, back in, you know, 1915.

Speaker 5 First Sea Lord is Admiral Sir Dudley Pound, who is a problematic figure, I think it's fair to say.

Speaker 5 He's not well. He's actually got, I think he's got cancer at this point already, but it's one of those sort of slow-lingering ones.
So he's often tired.

Speaker 5 He's in that position because he's not a kind of an ABC, Admiral Cunningham, Cunningham, Admiral Forbes, Admiral Fraser kind of, or even Admiral Tovey who we'll be getting on to.

Speaker 5 He's not one of those sort of dynamic types. He's a solid kind of pen pusher, very experienced, seen as amenable, an enabler, a kind of an operational rather than a tactical chief.

Speaker 1 Well, and also the thing the Navy's come to terms with between the wars is that the big battles, the big encounters, the decisive naval encounters are probably not the way things are going to be won.

Speaker 1 That it's about increments, it's about attrition, it's about chipping away at the other side, it's about

Speaker 1 scale. It's about scale, and you could, and you could only do all those things with scale.

Speaker 1 It's about cranking the Germans down to the point where they have no options left and not giant climactic naval battles in the Nelsonian style.

Speaker 1 So pound very much represents this sort of the navy coming to terms with this, you know, new way of war that a lot of the admirals that you've named, they do not like this.

Speaker 1 They want to have their climactic battle.

Speaker 5 They like the Nelsonian touch.

Speaker 1 They want their battles of the Nile. They want their Copenhagens.
They want their Trafalgars. But they're not going to happen, right? You never get a thing on the Jutland scale again.

Speaker 1 And everyone, everyone as a result is resigned to the fact that that's over. And a pound represents that, doesn't he? As an appointment.

Speaker 1 And also represents, you know, the Chamberlain government's mood, which is to back the assets you've got, spend deep on some of it, you know, because after all, capital ships are really, really expensive.

Speaker 1 And also, Chamberlain's a former Chancellor of the Exchequer. He also understands if you build capital ships, you keep people in work and all this stuff.

Speaker 5 There's many, many, many reasons for investing in capital ships between the wars, it has to be said. I think the main thing is, you know,

Speaker 5 he's lacking the RIS, isn't he? He's not a particularly charismatic person, but the Royal Navy in 1939 is the world's largest by a margin.

Speaker 5 And, you know, we do an awful lot of sort of, you know, very well alone, Britain in 1940, you know, David against Goliath and all this kind of stuff.

Speaker 5 But, you know, the Goliath of of world navies is the Royal Navy in 1939.

Speaker 5 And that puts it in a in a very, very good position to do what it needs to do, which is supply its war effort and keep its waters secure and keep its supply lines secure. And the Royal Navy is...

Speaker 5 Britain's senior service and for a reason. And it's a military foundation of the empire, but also a large number of extra imperial assets.

Speaker 5 And, you know, I mentioned this a couple of times before, but, you know, there's a very, very famous map of world shipping in 1937 where you can see the ant lines of trade routes all emanating out of London and out of the UK.

Speaker 5 And one of the strongest ones is going down to South America and to Argentina, which is frankly mostly owned by British companies.

Speaker 5 You know, nearly all the ports are, the railways are, most of the big farms are, et cetera, et cetera. A lot of the shipping is, and so on.
And so what does the world's largest navy look like?

Speaker 5 Well, it's 15 battleships. These are beasts.
You know, these are 270 meter long vessels. Yeah.
We talk about bristling with firepower. It's these.
I mean, these are absolute beasts.

Speaker 5 There's seven aircraft carriers. There's no other country that's got seven aircraft carriers.
15 heavy cruisers.

Speaker 5 Now, a heavy cruiser is a very well-armed battleships, heavy cruisers, and battle cruisers. There's not a lot in it.

Speaker 5 And your battle cruiser, heavy stroke, heavy cruiser, is basically a battleship which is faster. So it is sacrificing armor for speed.

Speaker 5 But in terms of firepower, it's right up there with the battleships.

Speaker 1 Well, and a lot of this is the product of the treaties that follow the First World War, where basically weight and armament and so on are the things that diplomats have thrashed out that navies are then fudging.

Speaker 1 So, yeah, it'll be more lightly armed, but that means you can have it quicker or if it's heavy. And they're all playing with

Speaker 1 these restrictions. But the British are still far ahead.
There's 49 light cruisers, 192 destroyers, 73 escort vessels, nine patrol vessels, 52 minesweepers.

Speaker 1 And obviously, those who are familiar with the podcast and about how many minesweepers there will be later in the war, where the incredible proliferation of all of these assets.

Speaker 1 But the Royal Navy starts from a very, very strong position. 62 submarines.

Speaker 5 Which is more than the U-boat arm in the Kriegsmarine, incidentally.

Speaker 5 Only the US navy has anything like this number of warships and of course it's not in the war it's neutral so you know don't worry about that and there's plenty more shipping under the way so under construction in the many shipyards around the country in september 1939 are 19 further cruisers 52 destroyers six further battleships six further aircraft carriers and 11 further subs and you know there has been a huge amount of criticism in the royal navy at the start of the war for being aging and stuck in the past and all the rest of it and it's true that many ships date back to the first world war but that's not an issue what one has to understand is that doesn't mean it's it's old hat.

Speaker 5 I mean, the U.S. Missouri, for example, on which the surrender of the Japanese was signed in September 1945, was used, you know, in the First Gulf War in 1992.
These are huge investments.

Speaker 5 So when you're saying, you know, they're built in the First World War, what that means is the hull is laid down, the structure is laid down, but you're constantly refining and adding, you know, changing the guns, changing the, you know, radar on it, updating it with its electronics and its, you know, navigation aids and all sorts of stuff.

Speaker 5 Gun laying radar, blah, blah, blah. So just because it's built in the First World War doesn't mean it's out of date and it hasn't.

Speaker 5 And what Sandy Baldwin and then Chamberlain as Chancellor Second and then subsequently as Prime Minister have very sensibly emphasized is that capital ships are the most expensive and time-consuming things to do.

Speaker 5 So you might as well do these in a time of peace. And of course it provides jobs as well, as you rightly pointed out.

Speaker 5 So you want to refit your your warships, your capital ships, and you want to build new ones while you've got the chance.

Speaker 5 And once you're in a war, then you want to be building smaller stuff for the most part, you know, destroyers, corvette, sloops, you know, blah, blah, blah, minesweepers.

Speaker 1 I mean, the other thing that that springs to mind here is is very often you say well you know they're from the first world war well the first world war is what in 1939 it's only 21 years ago how far away are we from the second gulf war now well further and yet we would expect roughly the same ships and aircraft tanks having been refit and all that sort of thing it's very interesting because the first world war sits in people's imaginations as stodgy stark the last victorian war general melt shit yeah exactly and then the second world war is the beginning of the modern age so to say oh ships from the first World War, well, naval technology in the First World War was cutting edge.

Speaker 1 Because after all, the other thing is the Royal Navy is a fundament of technological innovation and spending.

Speaker 5 And of course, as everyone knows, how, you know, Chamberlain was just interested in appeasing and he wasn't interested in rearming.

Speaker 5 Despite the fact that the Royal Navy was, you know, shipbuilding and warship building out producing every other country on the planet, including the US, including Japan.

Speaker 1 Because all those naval treaties we touched on a moment ago, they all favor the Royal Navy. The Royal Navy comes out on top in all of those treaties.

Speaker 5 Yeah. Because Britain is a force for good globally.
Everyone knows that.

Speaker 5 But it's not just a navy, it's a merchant navy. So it has the largest merchant fleet in the world, 12,500 merchant vessels.
Just imagine what that looks like.

Speaker 5 You know, so that's around 33% of the world's shipping. And on top of that, they have, at various points in the war, they will have access to around 50% of the world's shipping as well.

Speaker 5 So, you know, Greece, Norway, Holland, other major players. They don't have access to that in 1939 because they're still neutral and independent countries.

Speaker 5 But once the swastika is fluttering over Amsterdam and Oslo and Copenhagen, those fleets are coming over to Britain.

Speaker 5 And, you know, in June 1940, the whole, all those ports in Britain are just awash with foreign merchant vessels. And good, they can help the Allied war effort.

Speaker 1 As unanticipated consequences of defeating countries, they're seizing these countries to get hold of their stuff. You seize Belgium to get hold of the Belgian economy.

Speaker 1 You seize France and all the shipping then buggers off because they don't get what they want. All these unintended consequences that are built into German conquest.

Speaker 1 The first one is the merchant fleets of the world sail to Britain.

Speaker 5 Well, we will be getting on into this, into this series, but I think one of the things that's really, really interesting about the German war effort is they never really understand, crack, properly plan.

Speaker 5 for their naval war. They just don't get it.
And that's because they're continentalists and land lovers for the most part and Hitler's very much so.

Speaker 5 We've talked over and over again about Germany missing opportunities in the Second World War. And you can argue that one of the greatest areas of missed opportunities is in the naval war.

Speaker 5 What this means is that strategically, when Churchill takes over as head of the Admiralty in 1st of September 1939, he's heriting a pretty comfortable position, frankly.

Speaker 5 I mean, the Imperial Japanese Navy is quite large, but that's busy with China and Soviet Union at the present, and it's certainly not a threat to Britain in 1939 or even in 1940.

Speaker 5 The Italian fleet is definitely the most modern part of its own armed services, but it's not yet at war.

Speaker 5 And it has the most subs of any submarines of anyone in the world, any navy in the world, 106, but it doesn't have any carriers, has only four battleships. It has no radar at all.

Speaker 5 It's modern in terms of its ships are quite new, but it's not modern in terms of its equipment. And what this means is that in 1939, the Royal Navy could quite comfortably do the following.

Speaker 5 It can keep the Mediterranean fleet in going, can keep presence on the China station and in the Pacific, and it can keep the whole fleet at Scupper Flow, which is this bay in the Orkneys, north of Scotland, and deploy forces all around around the UK and impose an economic blockade against Germany in the North Sea.

Speaker 5 And, you know, there is this other crucial advantage because the Royal Navy is really large and it's about to get larger.

Speaker 5 But what it means is there's a huge amount of experience and knowledge within its ranks.

Speaker 5 So, this is the failing of having a small army because suddenly when you need to expand it, where do you get your superstars from? Where do you get that absolute backbone of experience?

Speaker 5 You've got to learn it on the job.

Speaker 5 And that goes a long way to explaining some of the failings on on land in the first part of the war whereas in the navy there's a huge amount of experience so when you suddenly need to expand again you've got that really firm foundation and you can augment it by a lot of people who already know about ships and their knots and read the tides and the wind because we're an island nation so there's lots of people who know about yachting and sailing and that's a huge advantage you know it's the yachtsmen go to war it's it's it's a well-known phrase you know they all join the royal navy volunteer reserve and the the number of people that are joining the royal navy volunteer reserve for the duration of the war on short service commissions or in the ranks or whatever they've already got that kernel of knowledge so you're not starting from scratch and that makes a huge huge difference so in 1939 do not underestimate the power and clout that our operations at sea have But also don't underestimate the Germans' ability to strike civilian targets as soon as the war begins.

Speaker 1 So this is the thing that's shocking about the Athenia is she's supposed to be exempt from attack under the prize rules, which are conditions of the Hague Convention, which Germany is a signatory to.

Speaker 1 And you're not meant to sink passenger ships. And merchant vessels can only be sunk once the crews have safely been rescued according to the rules.

Speaker 1 You know, the Athenia is a direct and flagrant breaking of those rules and of that convention.

Speaker 5 But I thought it was a troop ship, boss.

Speaker 1 Yeah, of course you'd say that. Who's to tell, actually, through a periscope, bobbing around and so on.

Speaker 1 And obviously the U-boat arm, the German U-boat arm wants to strike a blow because they want to show that they're relevant and important and they have something to offer and they're in first, best dressed, they're showing willing and all these all these things.

Speaker 1 And the Athenia is the, unfortunately, the on the receiving end of that enthusiasm.

Speaker 5 Well, we should get onto the onto the German side of things because where are they at with the Kriegsmarina and what are their plans?

Speaker 5 And, you know, it is amazing, really, that there's no question that the greatest fear that the British have is from the threat of U-boats, which after all in 1917 caused huge amount of alarm in the Atlantic and certainly went some way to crippling Britain's sea lanes and supply lines during the First World War.

Speaker 5 To me, it is still absolutely astonishing that you wouldn't, from a Nazi point of view, that if you're going to build up a naval force, submarines is where it's going to be at, surely.

Speaker 5 But no.

Speaker 5 Which is one of the reasons why Fritz Julius Lemp doesn't get his knuckles wrapped at all by Admiral Dernitz, who is the commander of the BDU,

Speaker 5 the U-boat command, because he's absolutely delighted that the U-boats have struck first, just as you point out.

Speaker 1 Yeah, well, yes, because to be honest, you can overemphasize this. It's inter-service rivalry, right?

Speaker 5 And it's inter-inter-service rivalry.

Speaker 1 So it's into inter-service rivalry, which is also a thing the British aren't immune to.

Speaker 1 You know, the aircraft Garrio boys have got a point to prove versus the battleship boys versus the submarine lads. And it's the same in Germany.

Speaker 1 But what's happened in Germany is because conspicuous consumption in defense has been part of the Nazi political program.

Speaker 1 You buy big battleships, build big battleships to look potent on the world stage and to show your population that you're potent on the world stage in the way that U-boats, they don't have that glamour, do they, politically?

Speaker 5 Well, and we know that Hitler likes big.

Speaker 1 He likes it big, man.

Speaker 5 Yeah, but liking something big and wanting to show the German population that you're going to kick butt is not a good reason to focus on surface vessels and warships.

Speaker 5 And completely obvious that Britain is utterly dependent on seaboard trade.

Speaker 1 It being an island.

Speaker 5 So clearly the role of the Kriegsmarina is to sever those sea lanes. And as we've already pointed out, you know, the days of huge great battles like Jutland and Cape St.

Speaker 5 Vincent and Trafalgar are long gone. So Admiral Carl Dernitz, who's not even an admiral in summer of 1940, it's not until the start of the war that he becomes a rear admiral, I think.

Speaker 5 He's in charge of the U-boats. And the fact that he's not an admiral in charge of the U-boats tells you all you need to know.
And he has been since 1935.

Speaker 5 Clearly, he's a U-boat man, so he thinks they held the key to defeating Britain. But I would argue that he's right on this.

Speaker 5 He might have been a delusional idiot idiot by the end of the Second World War, but at this point, he's absolutely bang on the money.

Speaker 5 And, you know, and submarines are much more developed than they were in 1918. The Mark 7B is a pretty good boat.
They can dive much quicker. They're faster on the surface.

Speaker 5 They've got more sophisticated weaponry and communications equipment, of course. Torpedoes that they've developed are now weightless, so they're harder to detect.

Speaker 5 There's improved radio technology, means that the U-boats can also hunt together in pack should they want to, and Donet certainly wants them to do that.

Speaker 5 And also, anti-submarine measures have improved. So there's lots of good reasons for backing your

Speaker 5 U-boat arm. But Dunnets, it has to be said, is pretty much a lone voice in this in the Kriegsmarina.
Everyone else in the Kriegsmarina is all over surface vessels.

Speaker 5 And the idea is, there's no question about it, that if you can get a fast cruiser and a couple of destroyers out into the Atlantic, you can wreak absolute havoc on merchant vessels.

Speaker 5 And if you want a kind of a proof of concept of this, think about the Malta series we did and Force K cause absolute mayhem.

Speaker 5 The problem is, of course, is they're much easier. They're easier to detect because they're larger.
And they've also got to be supplied at sea.

Speaker 5 And if you haven't got any overseas bases, that's problematic because you've then got to have following you around.

Speaker 5 You've got to have lots of supply ships, which are also very vulnerable because what do you do? Do you protect those as well? There's a whole host of problems.

Speaker 5 Goering, of course, is now the head of the four-year plan and has instigated, this is in the late 1930s, from 1938 onwards he's instigated this massive rearmament program um the luftwaffe is to increase five-fold to nearly 22 000 aircraft for example but the kriegsmarina is going to launch what it calls the z plan and this is prepared over the summer of 1938 by a team headed by capitain zer z

Speaker 5 helmut hayer who is the head of the operations department at the naval wallstaff and hayer makes the assumption that if britain imposes a naval blockade germany wouldn't be able to overcome it except on occasional temporary basis, of which he's absolutely spot on, by the way.

Speaker 5 The only solution is to disrupt Britain's overseas trade. This is the Kriegsmarina's prime objective, but it has to be done beyond the blockade.

Speaker 5 So disrupting Britain's trade, but by escaping through the net of the economic blockade, you know, the naval blockade which is imposed on Germany.

Speaker 5 And of course, the start of the war, that's quite easy job for the British to do because you're talking about the narrows of the Baltic Sea and then as it bursts out into the North Sea, which is, you know, not a very wide stretch of water.

Speaker 5 So it's comparatively straightforward. So far, so good.
That all seems quite reasonable. And obviously U-boats are the best way to do this because they're the easiest to dodge a blockade.

Speaker 5 There's no such thing as an economic blockade if you're a U-boat,

Speaker 5 basically.

Speaker 5 But Haya is a surface vessel man, and he believes that a cruise of war is the way to go at long-range, powerful cruisers and what he calls pocket battleships, which are heavily gunned, smaller, faster vessels supported by tankers.

Speaker 5 Yeah. But I mean, it's bonkers, isn't it?

Speaker 1 Well, it certainly is a leap of faith, right, as a strategy and not a particularly realistic one. I mean, the thing is, the Royal Navy is amply equipped to deal with the surface threat.

Speaker 1 And what they're not doing here is factoring in air power. And the air is going to change everything.
in naval encounters.

Speaker 1 Battleships are going to be revealed to be incredibly vulnerable to air attack, aren't they? So he's wrong twice over.

Speaker 1 He's wrong on his own terms in terms of what the situation is right now.

Speaker 1 And he's wrong in terms of how things are going to pan out as new technology enters the picture. They're only going to be able to make that work if they've got overseas colonies is the thing.

Speaker 1 If they're going to have these fleets marauding, they're going to need overseas colonies.

Speaker 1 And I think it's quite interesting, isn't it, that the commander-in-chief of the fleet, Admiral Rolf Carls, says, A voice against Britain means a voice against the Empire, against France, probably also against Russia, and a number of countries overseas.

Speaker 1 In other words, against one half or two-thirds of the whole world. He's absolutely right.

Speaker 1 They can see the problem. They've identified the problem.
And now they're going to solve it by exacerbating the problem.

Speaker 5 Yeah, so this is amazing, isn't it?

Speaker 5 So Admiral Carls' solution for this is, he goes, well, what we need to do is we need to have large-scale overseas conquests and the rapid development of a huge fleet to achieve the dream of global naval domination.

Speaker 5 But it is mad.

Speaker 5 Everyone's getting very, very carried away by kind of, you know, scenes from Nuremberg rallies and sort of how mighty they are.

Speaker 5 There's huge problems with this because huge fleets require vast amounts of steel.

Speaker 5 They require huge shipyards. They require huge workforce.
They cost vast amounts of money and they take a long time to build. None of those things Germany has in its favor.

Speaker 5 I mean, you know, it just doesn't have it in its ledger.

Speaker 1 Could you argue though that this is the Navy going, well, we can have a war. Yes, my Fuhrer, we can have that war you want, but just not yet.

Speaker 1 And that actually what they're doing is creating an opportunity to stall, that they're creating an opportunity to go, you know, yeah, jam tomorrow, you know? Do you know what I mean?

Speaker 5 Yes, I suppose.

Speaker 5 But that feels spurious to me. The big flaw is that you're going to build this huge, great surface fleet, which is going to break through the British blockade, which is the largest navy in the world.

Speaker 5 And to support that breakout, you've also got to have... tankers breaking out and supply ships with more fuel and food and ammunition and everything, which is also going to break through the blockade.

Speaker 5 I mean, the whole point about the blockade is it stops ships from going through.

Speaker 5 so how is this going to happen and you know the z plan when it's when it's announced in october 1938 calls for 10 battleships wow aren't we brilliant but it's still a lot less than the british 15 pocket battleships whatever they are five heavy cruisers 24 light cruisers 36 small cruisers eight carriers and 249 u-baits well the last bit yeah okay that sounds good um why don't you crack on with those because they're the cheapest and easiest because they're the smallest thing to build the zed plan is total la-la-land i mean it it is absolutely fantasy.

Speaker 5 It has, you know, realizable at some point in the far off future, maybe by kind of 1959,

Speaker 5 assuming that all goes well, but not anytime soon.

Speaker 1 Well, I go back to my proposition that this is the Kriegsmarine finding a way to put everything off.

Speaker 1 It's a clay pigeon of an idea. Someone's supposed to go, no, don't be so stupid.
And they don't. So they've got to see it through.
I mean, it's...

Speaker 5 Well, because everyone knows that Hitler wants war, right? You know, he wants to go to war. He's made it absolutely clear.

Speaker 5 One of the first things he says in 1933 is we are going to go to war and the economy is going to be turned is going to be largely turned over to the manufacture of weapons so that we can go to war but it's always not yet eventually at some point down the line we'll be ready in we'll be ready in three years time it's always that isn't it but this is it is absolutely batshit crazy it's batshit crazy and dernitz is there in those meetings around the board table puts up his hand and goes uh can i just put in a plea for more u-boats for you someone goes yeah yeah get back in your box dernitz and and you know he he is continually pressing for more U-boats.

Speaker 5 And in July 1939, he urges Hitler via Abel Reder, who is the commander-in-chief of the Kriegsmarina, to authorize a construction of more than 249 U-boats of the Z-Plan, claiming that he needs at least 300 to make any impact because...

Speaker 5 You need 100 operational at any one time. And just hold that thought, by the way.

Speaker 5 This is Dernitz in summer of 1939 saying, to be successful in the Atlantic, we're going to need 100 operational at any one time.

Speaker 5 And so it's the rule of thirds, you know, a third going to and from the patrol area, a third having refit and training, and a third on operations.

Speaker 5 So that's why 300 gives you 100 operating at one time. Dernitz doesn't get the reply he wants, of course.

Speaker 5 Instead, Rader conveys the Führer's answer, and Hitler says he would ensure that in no circumstances would war with Britain come about, for that would mean Finis Germanier. There we go.

Speaker 5 Says that in July 1939. But he is going to have war, isn't he? Because he's about to invade.
He's about to invade Poland.

Speaker 1 But he also doesn't expect the British and the French to honour their guarantee, do they? He thinks, well, they haven't come through so far, so they're not going to now.

Speaker 5 Yeah. And in September 1939, he tears up the Zed Plan.
That's that. Going to be no carriers.
There's not going to be a fleet of battleships.

Speaker 5 Rather, there's going to be two large battle cruisers, the Scharnhorst and the Gneisenau, and two fully-fledged battleships only, the Tirpitz and the Bismarck.

Speaker 5 And none of them have been completed at this point. So work's going to continue on both, but there won't be any more than that.
So, the Z plan in September 1939 is absolute toast.

Speaker 5 And instead, Hitler now orders U-boat construction to be the priority.

Speaker 5 Why haven't you done this beforehand? I mean, thank goodness, but you can see why Dernitz is feeling frustrated. You know, and Dernetz points out that it's far too little, too late.

Speaker 5 He goes, Seldom indeed has any branch of the armed forces of any country gone to war so poorly equipped. And he's got a point.

Speaker 5 So, this means that Dernitz has only 18 he can deploy in the Atlantic at at this time, you know, at the beginning of September 1939. It's not a lot out of his 57.

Speaker 1 This does raise the question of why Dernitz is so loyal to Hitler.

Speaker 1 Right from the start, Hitler's making terrible decisions that directly affect Dernitz and Dernitz' area of expertise, his purview. And he's still, well, the Fear is the man, he knows what he's doing.

Speaker 1 It's quite interesting, isn't it? He should remain so doggedly loyal, given he's been screwed by the guy quite comprehensively.

Speaker 5 Well, you know, I'm not a fan.

Speaker 5 Oh, nor am I. Nor am I.

Speaker 1 But it d it adds another it adds a further riddle to the sort of uh the bag of Dernitz riddles.

Speaker 5 It really, really does. Anyway, he's got his 18 U-boats in the Atlantic already, which have been deployed in August, which is why Fritz Julius Lemp in U-30 is there to fire torpedoes at the Athenia.

Speaker 5 To be fair, most of the passengers and the crew are rescued. So 98 of 1,418 passengers are killed.
19 crew are lost as well.

Speaker 5 50 are killed when one of the lifeboats hits the propeller of the Knut Nelson. Oh, ouch.
And Nafina actually takes 14 hours to sink. Finally goes under the surface at 10.40am on the 4th of September.

Speaker 5 So, you know, that meant that there was time to launch the rescue missions and so on. But even so.
But it's important to understand that the BDU, the Bethel-Saba de U-buten,

Speaker 5 is only 3,000 men strong. So the point we were making about the strength and depth of the Royal Navy, the...

Speaker 5 absolute reverse is the case of the BDU of the U-boat armies really not a lot they've got some very experienced people at the core,

Speaker 5 but nothing like enough for rapid expansion.

Speaker 5 And too much is being placed in the hands of a handful of very, very highly competent, highly skilled U-boat skippers who, frankly, in this early stage of the war are going to be papering over a lot of cracks with that skill and experience.

Speaker 5 Skill and experience who cannot be replicated later on in the war.

Speaker 5 Anyway, early September, all U-boats are then recalled to base because Dernitz wants a rapid refit and then to deploy a number in the Atlantic for not a single hunt, but a massed hunt.

Speaker 5 And traditionally, up until this point, submarines have been operating singly, but he's now devised this new plan of operating them together.

Speaker 5 He wants to test his theories and these collected U-boats are going to be called

Speaker 5 a wolf pack.

Speaker 1 Because they just can't help themselves, can they? The Germans just can't help themselves. We'll call it a wolf pack.
Oh, you will, will you? Okay. All right, fine.
I'll tell you what we'll do.

Speaker 1 While we ponder that, we'll take a quick break and then we will return with Britain's naval system and how that's going to operate.

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Speaker 1 Welcome back to Weird Ways of Making You Talk. It's just childish calling it a wolf pack.
Let's be honest now. It's the the thing a 13-year-old boy would do.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's going to be called like a wolf pack.

Speaker 5 Fatty,

Speaker 5 I want to call it a wolf pack. Oh, yeah, this is so good.
All right, my boy. All right, my boy.
That's very good. Well done.
Pat, pat, pat.

Speaker 5 What is it with wolves?

Speaker 1 I don't know.

Speaker 5 You know, I mean, you know, you keep asking why being eagles isn't enough. Why they need to scream.

Speaker 5 You could pose the same question to the Germans.

Speaker 1 You could see why you'd call an airborne soldier a screaming eagle because he descends from the sky, right?

Speaker 1 Obviously, you're calling them because they're going to hunt in a pack like wolves, but like they're in the water. Call him a shark pack.
You know, what is wrong with you?

Speaker 1 It shows the extent. Walker pack.
Exactly. They're land lobbers, right? They can't even think of the right fish.

Speaker 1 Of course.

Speaker 5 They're that bad they can't think of the right fish.

Speaker 1 Now, the Royal Navy may be enormous, but you can't have a... big navy without the gigantic infrastructure that will sit around it.

Speaker 1 So during the First World War, British have set up a thing called Naval Control of Shipping, NCS, as well as all sorts of intelligence systems.

Speaker 1 In 1918, since the end of the war, the First World War, there have been all these upgrades and improvements and enhancements by the Operational Intelligence Centre at the American in 1937.

Speaker 1 So that they're drawing this all together. You've got at the government cipher encoding school at Bletchley Park.
The Navy's one of their clients.

Speaker 1 The system is that you have the school that's decoding stuff and then the Navy, the Army and the Air Force come to them as clients and ask what have you got for us.

Speaker 1 They've also got a radio intercept station, a system network all over the world, and it's under secure underwater telegraph cables, which the Royal Navy think are impossible to cut, but they will discover later on that they are entirely cuttable.

Speaker 1 And this is an Intel exchange system known as the Vesca system. Also, there's aerial reconnaissance by RAF Coastal Command and the Fleet Air Arm, the Roanoke Fleet Air Arm, which is brand new.

Speaker 1 It's just been wrested out of the hands of the Royal Air Force in 1938.

Speaker 1 When finally the Navy takes control of its air assets again because formation of the REF is the Royal Flying Corps and the Naval Air Service are merged together to form the REF and all their naval flying expertise goes into the REF.

Speaker 1 And so things remember about the Fleet Air Arm is it's brand new when the war starts and has all the all the issues of something that's brand new.

Speaker 1 So it's full of people who are terribly enthusiastic, but also people are making up as they go along and has yet to prove its point, to prove a reason for its existence.

Speaker 1 As you said earlier, Jim, in a royal navy that's regarded as quite conservative and old-fashioned you'll get to hear all about that when we talk about string bags in other episodes i i just just to add actually i think i think the only other other nation in the world to have a have a um a naval air service is the americans well yes exactly well the japanese um imperial navy is is running aircraft as well oh yes of course it's yeah yeah yeah but the germans aren't french aren't no one else is no no no no no no no no no one else has got around because it's very expensive and it's new and it's difficult it might appear obvious with hindsight but the

Speaker 1 absolute frontier What this means is, in theory, the British know where any ship is at any moment on any given day.

Speaker 1 This network of information, this network of comms, which then means, in theory, you can keep them away from danger. Yeah.

Speaker 5 So, yeah, the NCS and the OIC are really, really important. The naval control of shipping and the operational intelligence centre, they are really, no one else has this.

Speaker 5 These are huge advantages. It's not just enough, of course, by 1939 to have a large navy.
You have to have the means of controlling the shipping. And the British have got that.

Speaker 5 So these are huge advantages. And these are advantages that most people just might not be aware of.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And then, of course, the other great lesson of the First World War and the decision to be made to keep merchant vessels safe is do you reinstitute the convoy system?

Speaker 1 And it's a thing they've experienced from the last year of the First World War, which is, of course, prompted by free-reigning U-boat action on the part of the Germans, attacking all sorts of shipping.

Speaker 1 And the idea is it's a formation of ships escorted by armed warships because that's harder for a U-boat to take on than an unescorted ship toddling along by itself.

Speaker 5 However, safety numbers, but there's all sorts of problems with convoys, which is that you've got to form them all up, you've got to plan them, you've got to prepare them, you've got to then get your escort fleet sorted out as well.

Speaker 5 You've then got, suddenly, you've got to rush on at the port in which you're delivering.

Speaker 5 So the stevedors, the dockyards workers, are all idle for 10 days, and then suddenly a convoy comes in, and it's, you know, everyone's going absolutely crazy, trying to unload everything.

Speaker 5 So, it's not a very efficient way of doing things, but it's a it's a much more efficient way of getting ships safely across the ocean.

Speaker 5 And safety has to be weighed up with the inconvenience logistically. And what that does mean is, yes, there are convoys, but there are also a hell of a lot of independent sailings as well.

Speaker 5 Um, and that continues throughout the war. So, the idea that they're all in convoys is not the case.
There are lots and lots and lots of independent sailings. Um, so just make that point there.

Speaker 1 There is so much merchant shipping that, in a way, that the U-boat arm, in a way, can't ever tackle all of it. It's impossible.
There's just the sheer scale of merchant shipping.

Speaker 1 It's a big task for Dernitz's guys to actually bring this to a halt.

Speaker 1 Even though they're desperate to prove that they can, and even though it's the thing they actually need to do, it's going to be really difficult for them.

Speaker 1 And you've the Ministry of Shipping, which is set up in mid-October,

Speaker 1 which oversees exports and imports, incorporates the Mercantile Marine Department and the Board of Trade.

Speaker 1 But obviously, once convoys get underway in the opening months of the war, you get this real distortion in imports. They drop dramatically.
The meds close temporarily.

Speaker 1 Because the thing the Royal Navy could do is basically shut the Mediterranean down. It controls both ends, both entrances.
It could just sort of turn it off at will. And it does so for safety.

Speaker 1 So, I mean, as well as the Navy, these are the sort of levers that the British Empire can pull. And I think what this really underlines is how this is a global imperial effort.

Speaker 1 on the part of the British from the off that very well alone, but very well alone globally. The sinews run literally everywhere.

Speaker 5 It's very well placed to fight this global war because it's got the navy, it's got the merchant shippings, it's got the access to ports, it's got the resources, it's got the relationships all around the world to get all the materials that it wants to get.

Speaker 5 So, you know, it's very well placed and it has the experience, you know, so all these things put it in a very good position because the problem is if you get knocked out very quickly, then this is no good.

Speaker 5 But if you're in a long drawn out war where logistics and supplies are absolutely key, then suddenly Britain is in a much better position to go the distance and say Germany, because it's not a continental power.

Speaker 5 It's it's an island nation and it's got this huge global trading empire and it's not just the empire it is it is this global trading empire which is extra imperial on top of the imperial assets and that's huge and that puts you in a very very good good situation but I think it's fair to say in the opening months of of this non-phony war it doesn't all go Britain's way by any stretch of the imagination no in fact they make some terrible mistakes, some howling errors.

Speaker 1 There's a degree of overconfidence, isn't there? Because as we said, the British are leading the way in carrier operations, and it's the Royal Navy have been doing all the thinking.

Speaker 1 But at the same time,

Speaker 1 they have no, like everyone else, they've no actual experience in how to deploy an asset-like an aircraft carrier.

Speaker 1 So, on the 17th of September, HMS Courageous, most of these carriers are ships that have been turned over to the role, and she's part of a hunter-killer group, Courageous, with four destroyers, looking for U-boats.

Speaker 1 And they've got two squadrons, fleet air arm squadrons of Swordfish, 811 and 8822.

Speaker 1 And she's struck by three torpedoes at a very close range by U-29 commanded by Capiten Leutnant Otto Schuhart

Speaker 1 and she goes down in 20 minutes with 519 crew including the skipper. So yes, you've got these incredible assets at your disposal, but ships sink.

Speaker 1 And I think one of the interesting things is when you look at say Pearl Harbor, Pearl Harbor is a daring strike, but if you attack ships in shallow water in a port, you plug the hole, you pump the water out, you refloat them.

Speaker 1 If you sink an aircraft carrying open seas like this, it's gone. There's a very clear lesson here, isn't there? You deploy these things, they are instantly vulnerable.

Speaker 1 You've got to get your submarine warfare together.

Speaker 1 These are moments where the Royal Navy, for all its power and its assets and its experience, shows it still has plenty to learn because Preen, who we met earlier, most amazing story this.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I know, it's really good. So this is the second big blow, and this is on the home fleet when it's at anchor at Scappa Flo.
This is, you know, this is the bastion.

Speaker 5 This is supposed to to be untouchable. And in October, Gunther Preen is on shore leave and he's ordered to go and see Dernitz.
And Preen is Dernitz's favourite.

Speaker 5 And Dernitz asks him to consider undertaking a special mission. I mean, so like Guy Gibson, isn't it? Being summoned saying, just before you go on leave, I want one last mission for you.

Speaker 5 It's the same kind of thing. And this is to sneak into Scappa Flow.
And he says, look, you know, I know this is a big thing to ask you and it's extremely dangerous.

Speaker 5 So I'm going to give you 24 hours to accept or decline the mission. But he accepts on the spot.
He goes, yeah, of course we're going to do it. So he's 31 years old.

Speaker 5 He's joined the Merchant Navy in 1923, age 15, then joins the Rijksmarine in 1931. He attends U-boat school in 1935.

Speaker 5 So he's one of the most experienced men in the BDU, the Bethel Schaber der U-boaten, and one of Dernitz's leading U-boat commanders. And let's face it, there's not very many of them after all.

Speaker 5 So he agrees, but he doesn't fancy his chances. To be perfectly honest, he thinks this is quite a big ask, but he's going to go for it.

Speaker 5 He leaves port in U forty-seven on the morning of the 8th of October, nears Orkney on the evening of the 13th of October, and then settles the boat on the seabed at 30 meters.

Speaker 5 And he calls his entire crew together and he goes, Tomorrow we will enter Scupperflow.

Speaker 5 For now, everyone should retire to sleep except for the reduced depth watch, which will wake the cook at two o'clock so that the meal can be served at four.

Speaker 5 After that, and as long as the operation is ongoing, there will be no more hot meals, and only rations of bouidroads with butter and chocolate will be available in the various compartments.

Speaker 5 All unnecessary lights will be turned off to conserve battery power, and no one will make movements that are not necessary in order to conserve the supply of oxygen.

Speaker 5 During the operation, no one should speak, not even to repeat the order I give. Understood? Yes, Commander! They all chorus.
I mean, just wow. Anyway, so Preen can't sleep at all.
You know,

Speaker 5 he's so on edge, he's so nervous about what he's about to do. I mean, you're absolutely going into the heart of the beast's lair.
Eventually, he nods off, but he has nightmares.

Speaker 5 And of course, it's a long, old day, but at 7 p.m. on the 13th of October, Preen orders the operation to begin.

Speaker 5 There's a familiar sound of compressed air being injected into the tanks, and slowly they inch their way off the seabed and climb.

Speaker 5 And the electric motor is humming monotonously, and the helmsman is only voice they can hear calling out the depth readings. And then at five meters, Preen raises the periscope and all is clear.

Speaker 5 And he orders the tanks to be blown and they surface.

Speaker 1 I mean, what is the Royal Navy doing?

Speaker 5 It's my

Speaker 1 first thing.

Speaker 5 Snapping.

Speaker 1 How is this going on? This guy's got in. He's surfacing, for heaven's sake.
This is completely ridiculous. Then Preen and his officers, they go up into the conning tower.

Speaker 1 They turn off the electric motors. They start the diesels.
They can see the silhouette of the coast very clearly. In they go.

Speaker 1 There's a brightness in the sky, which is the they realize is the northern lights.

Speaker 5 Because it's cloudy. It's cloudy.
So it's so all they can see is this sort of pale purple twilight glow. And, you know, of course, it's supposed to be moonless and pitch black.

Speaker 5 And so, so as he, as he notes, you know, pre-notes, he goes, fatal for us who have every interest in acting in the thickest of shadows. And, you know, so this is not good.

Speaker 5 And he actually considers whether they should settle back on the bottom for another 24 hours, but he realizes that, you know, the crew's just going to go berserk if they do that.

Speaker 5 You know, everyone's so revved up. So on,

Speaker 5 so on, yeah, so keyed up. You just can't it.
So he thinks, no, it's on it. Vival act today.

Speaker 5 They inch forwards towards Scappa Flow, and, you know, way away, he spots a shadow moving. Alarm! Dive!

Speaker 5 You know, so down they go, and now they're at periscope depth, and the wind has whipped up, and clouds have gone, revealing the full array of the northern lights. It's like freaking daytime.

Speaker 5 You know, and everyone wants to see the northern lights, but maybe not when you're trying to do a stealthy attack on the british home fleet in the in the heart of its um you know home base a magnificent backstroke to sings the final aria of this dangerous opera his memoir wasn't ghostwritten was it

Speaker 1 yeah knock it off mate exactly there's i think there's some pulverizing dynamism in this book jim i think that's what we're looking at here i think there really really is some pulverizing dynamism i mean they inch forward and he keeps raising and dropping the periscope it feels like the cliffs are loop closing on either side of them and then they're into the immense bay at scupper Scappaflow.

Speaker 5 They come in on the on the eastern side of Scappa Flow, and this little island, and they go through this narrow channel. So they really are kind of, you know, surrounded by these cliffs.

Speaker 1 Yes. And they basically

Speaker 1 feel their way in. And as he said in the opening description, they see these shapes.
They think it's the pulse.

Speaker 5 He's absolutely convinced it's the repulse. I know for a fact it's the repulse.

Speaker 1 Yes, he says that, doesn't he? Yeah, it isn't. No, it's a seaplane tender.
Got that wrong, but also, you know, there's lots to choose from in Scappaflow, right?

Speaker 1 There's plenty of things to mistake for the repulse. There's Royal Oak looming behind, and they get cracking, don't they?

Speaker 1 At two minutes to one in the morning, 0058, on the 14th of October, they fire three torpedoes and they count them down. They get to 19 when an explosion shakes the water.

Speaker 1 White column of water on what he reckons is repulse. Two of the torpedoes are missed.
This isn't Wanklin level shooting, by the way.

Speaker 1 But one has struck home.

Speaker 1 And at 1.04, this is all all very slow tense process isn't it that ship is not really badly damaged and it severs the anchor chain and most sailors on board you know like probably woken up rocked in their hammocks but that's about the extent of it but now royal oak comes more clearly into line and they fire three torpedoes into royal oak which strike at 1 16 a.m and they hit her amidships and again it's this same nerve-wracking wait i mean go on jim because i think you're capturing capturing the essence of Guntaprina before I before I go any further before Jim reads this I just want everyone to know he's one of the bad guys okay this is terribly exciting and

Speaker 1 he's a thrilling episode but he's a baddie okay so so go on Jim

Speaker 5 and suddenly before my eyes glued to the periscope an unforgettable spectacle unfolds forever etched in my mind.

Speaker 5 First it's a large curtain of water that completely obscures the view and then a series of terrifying explosions, like those of a colossal fireworks castle, unfolding in lights of various colors, ranging from bright red to orange-yellow, passing through intense green.

Speaker 5 Black shadows fly through the air to fall into the water again, producing large fountains.

Speaker 5 We've probably hit an ammunition magazine, and now chimneys, turrets, and pieces of deck are thrown into the sky like a volcanic eruption.

Speaker 5 It's as if I've been allowed to take a peek through the slightly open door of hell.

Speaker 1 Well, wow. I've definitely been someone on this.
Yeah. But they've blown a hole in the armoured deck.
They've destroyed the Stokers Boys and Marines' messes. They've killed electrical power.

Speaker 1 Then the magazine ignites and there's a fireball which goes right through the internal structure of the ship. She turns, immediately lists to 15 degrees, rolls then to 45 degrees.

Speaker 1 And then at 129, 13 minutes after Prinus sent the torpedoes home, she sinks.

Speaker 1 And the cost is 835 men and boys are killed, including Rear Admiral Henry Blaygrove, who's the commander of the 2nd Battle Squadron. 134 of the dead are boy sailors, all under 18.

Speaker 1 It's the largest loss of boy sailors in any action in British naval history. 386 men are pulled from the water, including Captain William Benbert.
I mean, this is an extraordinary blow.

Speaker 1 Obviously, the crew on U-47, they're delighted, but they've obviously Preen knows he's got, they've now got to calm down, concentrate, and they've got to get out. They've got to escape.

Speaker 1 And, you know, Scappaflo wakes up, starts to look for them. They carefully take a 180-degree turn.
There are death charges all around them, but he manages to get away.

Speaker 1 Preen and his crew managed to escape. And the sound of searching British vessels disappears and they lose them altogether.
It's an extraordinary, audacious story.

Speaker 1 It also raises the question of, what if it were for U-boats, doesn't it? If they'd had mass. So many of these great naval raids in history.

Speaker 1 that succeed you think well if you'd applied more force to the affected area you'd have think of what you'd have been able to achieve you know they could have struck a real I mean the prestige blow is very difficult.

Speaker 1 Churchill's back at the Admiralty, of course. He has to go to the Commons and announce the loss on the 17th.
It's a massive propaganda coup for the Germans.

Speaker 5 Preen is hailed as a bull of Scappa Flow, and the snorting bull becomes the logo on the Conning Tower and of the 7th U-boat flotilla, of which U-47 is a part.

Speaker 5 And the 7th Flotilla, by the way, is you know, that's the daddy. This is where all the kind of the big guns are part of that.

Speaker 5 And so these are two great blows for the Kriegsmarina, but it doesn't make much difference in the big scheme of things.

Speaker 5 You know, it did show that a single comparatively inexpensive submarine can sink great warships, but the U-boats don't have it all their own way.

Speaker 5 I mean, you know, three boats are sunk in October, and of course, that's a big loss of experienced men from a very tiny force.

Speaker 5 And also, of course, in December, the Graf Spey manages to break out of the economic blockade, chase down the Atlantic to Argentina and into the mouth of the River Plate.

Speaker 5 Yes, Bit has sunk three merchant vessels before being hunted down by a force of two heavy cruisers and two light cruisers.

Speaker 5 And and the captain of the grafschpey then scuttles the ship rather than surrender and the british obviously make as as much of the battle of the river plate as the germans have of the courageous and the royal oak so much so that post-war they even make a film about it but 1939 ends with the royal navy having learned many many important lessons and the germans ruining i think a number of missed opportunities you know they just don't have a big enough force you know they've backed the wrong horse in surface fleets and they don't have enough U-boats is the truth of it.

Speaker 5 But anyway. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But this war is not phony.

Speaker 5 And nor is it boring.

Speaker 1 Nor is it boring.

Speaker 1 And for all the thumb twiddling going on in the BEF and, you know, using turnips for grenades because they haven't got any kit, this is a very real war in the Atlantic that is this endless pursuit of cutting-edge lessons, technological development, right on the edge of what the technology of the time and the industry of the time is capable of delivering.

Speaker 1 And I think that's

Speaker 1 one of the really fascinating things about this. And it is, as you said at the start of the episode, Jim, the most important front in the Second World War.

Speaker 1 And let's see in the next episode how the Germans get on so if you want to listen to that episode right now without um commercials advertisements or endorsements then become a patron and catch maybe a live cast or two and other bits and pieces from the we have ways independent company community thanks very much for listening uh down periscope jim dive dive dive dive dive see you next time cheerio cheerio