"WW1: The letter that reveals a brutal day at Scapa Flow" Topic

An interesting BBC Magazine article on the scuttling of the German fleet at Scapa Flow in June 1919 before the signing of the Treaty of Versailles:

link

There was a programme on BBC.TV a few weeks back called Scotland's War at Sea and the 2nd programme covered this action and mentioned British sailors being ordered to fire on German sailors in lifeboats waving white flags. I thought the programme mentioned 26 Germans being killed but they might have been talking about total casualties.

I remember a documentery many years ago I saw on PBS called 1919 All Flags Flying or something to that effect and it was about the Scuttling of the German High Seas Fleet at Scapa Flow it was very good.

I also have 2 books on the subject one is Scapa Flow 1919 by Ian Allen and the other is called The Grand Scuttle I've not seen any other books on the scuttling but I assume there are others.

Afaik the British opened fire because they feared some sort of German assault, with all sailors jumping boats at the same time. More panic then atrocity, though the odd indiviual may have taken the opportunity to kill a Kraut.

There was an even greater fall out with the scuttling. The US navy used the ships it did get to test the effect of gunnery and bombs on the ships. If more of the ships had survived (and Billy Mitchell hadn't grandstanded his attack on the battleship they did get) the US Navy could have tested it's newest torpedoes more thoroughly (they were supposed to get the battleship to test on). If the problems in the torpedoes had been detected and fixed many a Japanese ship could have been sunk.

Actually, the torpedo problem that the USN faced in WWII had more to do with the new Mk 6 Exploder and the depth keeping system of the Mk 14 torpedo. Neither would have benefited from having old. pre-WWI design BBs to shoot at (and, in any case, the USN had many decommissioned BBs of its own to conduct tests).

The Mk 6 Exploder problem was due to the fact that the torpedo was supposed to go under the ship and detonated by the magnetic field so the depth and contact detonator were not tested. The only test ship used was a tug boat which was appropriately sunk by the magnetic detonator. Strangely enough, the secret magnetic detonator was developed independently by the British, Germans and US and failed and was shut down by all of the powers.

The German ships that were to be given as war prizes were to be sunk while US old warships were broken up. With more test ships the contact warhead should have gotten tested. The officers who were in charge of the torpedo tests did not think out of the box so no additional tests were made.

The problem with the testing of the Mk 6 Exploder and the Mk 14 torpedo was budgetary (not the lack of German war prizes). A decision was made to limit the testing due to lack of money and over confidence in the design. It wasn't until wartime experience exposed the problems that any comprehensive testing was done. If the decision had been taken to properly test the exploder and torpedo pre-war, the navy would have had more than enough decommissioned hulls for the effort. The scuttling of the High Seas Fleet had absolutely no impact on that.