U-47 Strikes Britain: The Raid on Scapa Flow and the Sinking of HMS Royal Oak, 1939 

I never miss a video Thank you for making these videos, I like historians and I also like this type of animation.

What a story!

Endrass met his fate, too, in late '41 when he tried to cross the Gibraltar Strait in order to operate in the Mediterranean. He was by then one of the top U_Boat commanders.

It's in Silent hunter 5 as well

UBOAT also has a Scapa Flow raid mission and rewards your officers with a unique perk for accomplishing it.

Yeah see videos of silent hunter and there were so much named big ships. I watched from one that played the game and in scapa flow was Hood and Nelson/Rodney. Don't know which was it from the last 2.

Well speaking of that you can do that in Silent hunter 5

@@tacticalcalebgaming7264 yes but not in a Type VIIB. In SH 5 u can only sail in one particular the type VIIC. SH3 you can be in a Type IIa, IIB, VIIB, VIIC, IX and the XXI. Imo SH3 is the superior game to SH5

I have done exactly that but with Silent Hunter 5 and the wolfs of steel mod spanning the whole length of the war from August 31st 1939 to May 8th 1945 it literally took me a couple of months to complete but survived the whole war.

@@HerrLindstrom yes I know but you are not wrong because I do remember correctly it is very fun but I couldn’t figure it out how to mod a silent hunter 3

What a terrible loss of lives, with 100 boys among them...Considering they were anchored at a home base, it's hard to understand such a huge loss of lives.

Actually, Admiral Forbes had dispersed his fleet to other ports, principally Loch Ewe, because of intelligence that an air raid on Scapa Flow was imminent. HMS Royal Oak remained behind because of superficial damage caused by a storm which had washed away many of her Carley Floats, and because her AA armament was considered a useful addition to Scapa's defences.

Or they would have gotten detected and sunk without doing any/much damage. As far as i read they had to enter and exit above water especially because of the currents situation... And in the article it was also stated that in WW1 two german submarines were sunk in a similar attempt. (for this reason and that it was more heavily defended)

They failed to sink two out of two and had two misses in the first salvo at stationery targets. And they had up to 14 torpedoes only. No way they would be able to sink "several" ships.

​@@user-vo8ss2bm3p In a crowded anchorage if the target is missed there is a good chance of the torpedo hitting another ship.

@@dovetonsturdee7033 I heard there was a Luftwaffe component to the naval sortie.

As noted from the vid,Prien and his U-boat were later all lost,when sunk by HMS Wolverine,so how could Jeffries have met him,later on !?! 🙄

@@MrSinclairn oh bugger you're right, I read the book in which that was referenced a couple of years ago and must have misremembered

​@@MrSinclairn transfer prior to its sinking?...

It was incredible seamanship

If GB was defeated in 1940-41, it would of allowed the Wehrmacht to field 6000 extra tanks on the russian front, plus the additional fuel not being consumed by the Kriegsmarine anymore, adding some more thousands of tons of diesel

Get your head out the gutter

Seamen filled submarines

Great to have worked with you guys - love your documentaries!

@@HoH Thank you, we feel the same!

Didn't you know Da Vinci sketched it?

My mistake - slight typo. Should obviously be 1944.

Well there was different version s of the Type VII, U47 was a VII B, as well as U99 and some others, the most numerous was the VII C, followed by the VII C/41 from July 1943-to early 1945. The last version had no deck gun anymore, instead a lenghtened aft part of the conning tower for more AA guns as well a thicker pressure hull, which allowed to reach depths up to shy of 300 meters

@@arnonym5430 /woooosh

@@HoH No worries

by what authority was he brought back if he had ordered abandon ship?

Did he survive ?

I'm sure that you have an impeccable source for your claim? What? You haven't? How sad. Actually, there was a Board of Inquiry, which determined that "Captain W.G. Benn and his officers did all that was possible to save their Ship. Captain Benn remained in the ship until the last possible moment, until in fact the ship left him, and his behaviour was in the best traditions of the service." He became captain of a cruiser, HMS Fiji, from December, 1939. You are, of course, simply a liar.

@@raresaturn'by what authority was he brought back if he had ordered abandon ship?' He wasn't. The original post is a simple, straightforward, lie. I have never understood why such people do such things.

Models who show a ships or tanks interior are also more fun to assemble and paint, after 3 or so tank models of mine i was already better at it than many colleagues who were building them for years.

Appreciate it!

Good shout, I will fix the bridges. Re. the Berlin skyline - it is quite difficult to mimic the pre-war skyline 😅

It is difficult to find correct OG WWII era footage, many archives are still not fully open today.

Thanks for the suggestion!

When did that happen ?

Im from aroudn there and that sums up the university to be honest 😂😂

I just finished writing a script about Convoy PQ 17. I hadn't thought of doing a video on Convoys HX 229/SC 122, but I will have a look...

Woops 😅

That isnt, quite true. The Romans established 'Marinus' units or naval infantry during the first Punic war 264-241BC. The first organised marine Corp was created by the Doge Enrico Dandolo of Venice. They took part in the conquest of Byzantium 1203-1204. King Carlos 1 established the Spanish Marines 1537......Marines were well established by Medway

I bought a book about this recently... so who knows.

@@jonrivers7779 That alsp isn't true since the trglodiers in the Eemian employed them in there Hamburg siege.

Typical nationalist lies 🇳🇱🤡🇳🇱🤡

Considering HMS Iron Duke was still beached due to previous air attacks in the last year or so from the germans, this is definitely a false statement

Perhaps you should look at a map of Scapa Flow? Iron Duke was nowhere near Royal Oak. The only warship even close to her, but still well out of sight, was the old seaplane tender HMS Pegasus.

​@@dovetonsturdee7033Yes, aber erst nachdem die Briten die "Iron Duke" auf Grund gesetzt hatten!

@@grossadmiral1 Nonsense. Royal Oak was sunk on 14 October. Iron Duke was bombed by Ju88s on 16 October. She had been stripped of her armour when converted into a gunnery training ship in the late 1930s. She began to flood, and developed a list. As a result, she was beached in Ore Bay, where she remained as a depot ship for the rest of the war. If you must invent things, at least try to make them vaguely credible.

​@@dovetonsturdee7033Ein Glück für euch Briten das unsere Luftwaffe nochmal zugeschlagen hat, so konnte der Vorschifftreffer Priens kaschiert und damit ein weiterer Prestigeverlust vermieden werden. Das einzige was die Briten konnten, war deutsche Schiffbrüchige zu masakrieren!

That's a very valid point, thanks for mentioning it. I'll make sure to do better in the future.

I was looking to see if anyone else spotted this. I thought submarines torpedo tubes shoot from the front and rear, not broadside like destroyers.

Why ? I have always read in lots of books and vids that the Gneisenau and her sister Scharnhorst were battlecruisers, NOT battleships.

@@juansintierra2590 They are pocket battleships, too big to be heavy crusisers, not big enough to be battleships or battlecrusiers. By big i mean either armament or armour

@@WilkyTheFlyingScotsman - You don't know what you're saying..."Pocket battleships" were the Deutschland-Graf Spee-Scheer class, 12.000 tons and armed with 6 11 inch guns. Heavy cruisers were the Hipper. Prinz Eugen, etc class : 15.000 tons with 8 8- inch guns. The Gneisenau and Scharnhorst were battle cruisers of 32.000 tons with 12 11- inch guns. Bismarck and Tirpitz were battleships of 50.000 tons with 8 15-inch guns.

Awesome, thank you!

Do you feel better now that you wasted internet traffic getting that off your chest?

@@Wot50202 wasted?

Not yet, but I see if I will come across some information on it in a book.

@@HoH there is a rly good book about the ijn navy with focus on submarines

Perfectly noted

Looks like history Will repeat it soon if regional war in Middle east getting more hotter than already is.

Im not saying your opinion is a wrong because it is a opinion (Most definitely not a fact) but by just saying your a historian doesnt mean other people should just believe yours or take it as fact, there are many historians who would disagree with you and the fact is everyone has the right to make there own opinion about things where information is well sketchy. I know of many historians (and me although im not a historian i just like reading and researching it) that disagree compete with you, Germany sunk over 50 passenger liners many if which were American and im not saying they didnt have military equipment onboard or not but just because they might of done isnt grounds to sink the ship, the international rule for this was to board the ship and check during WW1 which germany ended up violating with a massive loss of life. As for why the USA joined WW1, it was because of the loss of many civilian and merchant lives of neutral countires along with the Zimmerman Telegram which was germany offering mexico US's land. I will say this part again - Just because you are a historian does not mean what you are saying is fact.

If you are an historian then I am Holy Roman Emperor. Lusitania was sunk because Germany had instituted a policy of unrestricted submarine warfare from February, 1915. It was promply abandoned after US protests about the sinking. The ship, by the way, was carrying neither troops nor anything not permitted by the regulations in force. Nothing not declared on the manifest, duly authorised by USA customs, has ever been found at the wrecksite. As Germany became increasingly desperate, it was re-introduced two years later. The sinking of neutral US merchantmen without warning, combined with the idiotic Zimmerman telegram, was sufficient to push the United States into war. Feel free, however, to provide your 'sources.'

@@dovetonsturdee7033 Guy isnt a historian, your comment made me come back and re-read this thread which has just made me laugh tbh.

And unfortunately Wehrmacht has become interchangeable with the Heer.

Their number plates showed it WH=Wehrmacht Heer, WL=Wehrmacht Luftwaffe, WM=Wehrmacht Marine

As a native german speaker i have to admitt, it's hard to say without knowing or any relatives of him or having heard him say his own name. At first glance i would be with you on the "preen" thing, because in german "ie" is an elongated "i" which makes it the same sound as the english "ee" like in need, feet, Lee... But then again there are some who do pronounce ie in their names like he did in the video, even when there is no sign above the e to mark it as being a seperate vowel to pronounce. (former austrian racing driver Christian Klien is such a case where he and the journalists don't make it an "ee" sound but pronuce the i and the e seperately) So, who knows... If you can find an audio of the radio messages of back then mentioning him, you could find out. But i don't think there will be much of that on the internet.

I think I should have gone with "Preen", but it was just an oversight. 5 years ago I made a video where I mispronounced "reconnaissance" and some viewers haven't let me live that down since... 😅

@@nirfz thanks for that insight! 😎👍

@@HoH I had and have interest in giving you a hard time over it mate. I’m just curious as to the correct pronunciation. Regardless of all that, I enjoy your material and am greatful for your efforts.

@@DeaconBlu I didn't mean you specifically! I think you asked a very valid and good question.

At this point Wehrmacht and Heer have become interchangeable.

They even called foreign armies wehrmacht during the time, that was common back then, even the bundeswehr was first called Neue Wehrmacht from 1950-56, when it was established under Adenauer and Blank

If you want more free content, you have to understand these videos take a long time to make and I need to be able to earn a (very modest) living from it.

You mean it's a battleship ? with just 11 inch guns and light armor ?

@@juansintierra2590 it had battleship grade armor and the guns were a compromise for time given that Germany didn’t have anything modern that was larger. Its armor was without a doubt battleship level, and though its guns were somewhat small, neither of those two factors make it a battlecruiser

@@dallastexas2641- Nonetheless, the Hood is always defined as battlecruiser, in spite of being armed with 15 inch guns...So, what factors would make a ship a battle cruiser ?

@@juansintierra2590 HMS Hood is a textbook example of a battlecruiser. She had battleship caliber guns, was quite a bit faster than her contemporary Royal Navy battleship counterparts, and had cruiser level armor plating, in so far as she was designed to withstand large cruiser caliber ammo at range but nothing more. The battlecruiser doctrine and design dictates the most speed, and largest guns, to fit within the basis of “kill what you can’t outrun (ie: smaller ships with smaller guns that you can withstand fire from) and run from what you can’t outgun (ie: rn from heavily armored battleships and/or even other battlecruisers that can severely damage you)”

@@juansintierra2590 also,the “panzerschiffe” Deutschland-class being referred to as “pocket battleships” by the presses globally, having the same caliber main guns as the Scharnhorst Class battleships, only few in number and shorter in length. While those were definitely oddities in terms of classification, they used the battlecruiser doctrine, just, oddly. But the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were laid down as battleships, used as battleships, and sank as battleships. They never were anything other. There were even plans drawn up to improve them to 15” twin mounts x3…would you still consider them battlecruisers if they had been updated?

Thanks, I think that's a great suggestion. These videos take ages to make - I did add your suggestion to my (ever-expanding) list of topics I'd like to cover. Feel free to post more recommendations and I'll add them to the list as well.

@@HoH so approximately after how many more videos will you make that ?

@@lilboy3102 No idea yet..

No it doesn't. The prelude towards the actual mission is just as interesting.

Only some ships that sank in shallow water were salvaged. The larger ships remain on the sea bed.

Todays Globalism would of made the actual soldiers from both sides end the war by their own, quicker than in a blink of an eye

What do you mean?

extremely rare

Ironically, DaVinci already draw sketches of a wooden submersible back in the late 1400s