HMS Royal Oak (1914)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Career

Laid down:	15 January 1914
Launched:	17 November 1914
Commissioned:	1 May 1916
Status:	Sunk on 14 October 1939
General Characteristics
Displacement:	29,000 tons
Length:	189 m
Beam:	32 m
Draught:	33 feet 7 inches (10.2 m)
Propulsion:	4 shaft Parsons geared turbines, 18 Yarrow boilers, 40,000 shp (30 MW)
Speed:	20 knots (37 km/h)
Range:	4,000 nautical miles (7,400 km)
Complement:	1,040 to 1,146
Armament:	Eight 15 inch (381 mm) guns Twelve 6 inch (152 mm) guns Eight 4 inch (102 mm) guns Sixteen 2 lb (900 g) anti-aircraft guns Four 21 inch (533 mm) torpedo tubes.

HMS Royal Oak was a Revenge-class battleship of the Royal Navy, sunk early in World War II.

She was laid down at Devonport on 15 January 1914 and launched on 17 November of that year. She was commissioned on 1 May 1916 having cost almost £2.5 million, the eleventh Royal Navy vessel to bear the Royal Oak name, replacing a pre-dreadnought that had been scrapped in 1914. She fought in the Battle of Jutland, in line behind the Iron Duke of John Jellicoe.

She was refitted from 1922 to 1924, the main changes being the removal of torpedo tubes and a general upgrading of her anti-aircraft defences. She was modified again in 1934 at a cost of £1 million, much of the money being spent on upgrading her hull armour and torpedo bulges. She was assigned to the Mediterranean for most of the inter-war period and was accidentally struck by an anti-aircraft shell in February 1937 off the coast of Spain. She returned to the Home Fleet in 1938 and was made the flagship of the Second Battleship Division. She was preparing for another 30 month tour in the Mediterranean when World War II began. She was assigned to Scapa Flow and took part in a fruitless search for the German battlecruiser Gneisenau in October 1939; in heavy seas her poor top speed left her out of contact for much of the time.

She was the first of the five Royal Navy capital ships sunk in World War II (the others being Hood, Prince Of Wales, Repulse and Barham). On 14 October 1939 she was moored within the defences of Scapa Flow. In a daring operation, the German U-boat U-47, commanded by Günther Prien, entered the anchorage through Kirk Sound at high tide, passing over the sunken block ships with barely 1.5 m to spare. Most of the fleet was out to sea, and Royal Oak was the only capital ship present. U-47 attacked her twice. The first salvo, fired at 01:04, did no damage, as all of the torpedoes failed (the German torpedoes at the time suffered serious malfunctions with their magnetic detonation and depth control systems). Prien reloaded and fired a second salvo of three torpedoes at 01:22, and this time he was successful. Royal Oak, struck amidships, rolled onto her side and sank in around 15 minutes, killing 833 sailors. The tender Daisy 2 rescued another 386 crew members.

Initially the Royal Navy believed that sabotage was the cause of the sinking. When they realized that it had been a submarine attack, the anchorage was sealed, but U-47 had already escaped and proceeded safely back to Germany. Despite having warned of the paucity of anti-submarine defences, Sir Wilfred French, Admiral Commanding Orkney and Shetland, was blamed for the loss and forcibly retired. The eastern approaches to Scapa Flow were sealed with extensive concrete walls, the Churchill Barriers, linking Lamb Holm, Glimp Holm, Burray and South Ronaldsay to Orkney Mainland. Anti-aircraft defences were also significantly strengthened.

The wreck has been designated a War Grave; all diving or other forms of exploration are prohibited as a controlled site under the Protection of Military Remains Act.

See HMS Royal Oak for other ships of this name.