Word: oak
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Next most important claim of last week was that the British Home Fleet was not in Scapa Flow; had not been there, in good probability, since before Royal Oak was sunk by Lieut. Commander Günther Prien's submarine raid. Testator to this probability was First Flying Lieutenant Hermann von Bülow of the German Air Force, who explained in Berlin that the air raid on Scapa Flow, three days after Royal Oak was torpedoed, was a "cleanup job" left to his crowd by the Nazi naval arm. Said...
...testimony (he also said no British warship had, to his knowledge, been sunk by a Nazi bombing plane) was the more impressive when corroborated by no less a warrior than First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill. For four weeks an Admiralty commission had chewed its cud over Royal Oak's sinking in Scapa Flow. Last week Churchill stood up, with even more than his usual show of nimble-wittedness, and admitted for himself and the Admiralty that...
...They were being strengthened, but the last "blockship," which was to have been sunk athwart a channel to complete the Flow's blockade, did not arrive until the day after Royal Oak was torpedoed...
...When the first torpedo struck, most of Royal Oak's officers & men scurried to battle stations beneath the ship's armor, thinking a plane must be bombing; a submarine attack was unthinkable...
...talkingest of them all was Britain's First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill, who, having given a full explanation of how Royal Oak came its cropper (see p. 20), held a pep session on BBC. It contained easily the week's liveliest name-calling...