history
| The Scapa Flow
Words by JOHN MILES
How the U-boat campaign essentially began and ended in Scotland
T ABOVE: Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands RIGHT: U-47, which sunk HMS Royal Oak at Scapa Flow, approaches the German battleship Scharnhorst
66 Scotland
he Second World War German U-boat campaign posed a major peril to the Allies. Great Britain, being an island nation, was the one most threatened. Since most supplies needed to keep the United Kingdom functioning had to be shipped in, U-boats sinking that transport was a serious concern. Scapa Flow is a body of water in the Orkney Islands, Scotland. Its waters are sheltered by six islands, and it has played an important role in travel, commerce, and conflict throughout the centuries.
Vikings anchored their longships in Scapa Flow more than a thousand years ago and it became the UK’s chief naval base during the First and Second World Wars, until its closure in 1956. The British naval base at Scapa Flow was established in 1914 as its location was almost directly in the path of German naval traffic coming out of the North Sea. After the First World War Armistice was signed, it was the place where the German High Seas Fleet was interred while the Allies debated what to do with it. Once the German Fleet Admiral learned that the victorious Allies had decided to take
© COLIN KELDIE/VISIT SCOTLAND/CORBIS/GETTY IMAGES
UNDER ATTACK
