All language subtitles for BBC.Scotlands.War.at.Sea.2of2.The.Battle.of.the.U-Boats.720p.HDTV.x264.AAC.MVGroup.org

One hammer. One bag.

In the years before the Great War,
Britain had devoted little effort

to the threat that might one day
emerge from German U-boats.

Submarine counter-measures were
somewhat less than sophisticated.

Small boats were to
patrol the coast.

In the event that
they saw a submarine,

or rather saw a
submarine's periscope,

they were to follow one of
two suggested strategies.

Strategy number one - smash the
periscope's lens with their hammer.

Strategy number two -

cover the periscope's
lens with their bag.

Early submarines were
not taken seriously.

One British Admiral
called them "playthings".

The coming war, it
was widely believed,

would never be won
by submarines.

It would be won by big
battleships and big guns.

But after the Battle of Jutland,

by the first week of June 1916,
the battleship war was over.

The surface warships of
the Imperial German Navy

would scarcely leave
harbour again.

But as the dreadnought war ended,
the U-boat war intensified,

dramatically.

Germany's growing
fleet of submarines

was ordered to wipe
out British shipping.

We were losing 12 ships a day.

And we couldn't possibly
replace 12 ships a day.

Britain was forced
to develop devious

and deadly strategies
to defeat the U-boats.

The German U-boats were
no-one's "playthings".

They brought Britain to
the brink of surrender.

Ten weeks into the war, at midday
on the 18th of October 1914,

the cargo ship Glitra departed
Grangemouth harbour on the River Forth.

She headed east, under the
famous bridge and out to sea,

bound for Stavanger in Norway.

On board she carried a cargo
of coal, iron and oil.

Two days later and 14 miles
off the Norwegian coast,

she was ordered to stop by
a surfaced German U-boat,

the U17.

The Germans came on board

and ordered the crew to
get into their lifeboats.

Then they went below decks
to open up the seacocks,

to begin scuttling the ship.

Finally, and amazingly,

the Germans began to
tow the lifeboats

towards the Norwegian coast.

The ship and its cargo lay
at the bottom of the ocean,

but no-one, absolutely
no-one, had been hurt.

It was all very gentlemanly,

but the Glitra had just become
the first British merchant ship

to be sunk by a German U-boat.

This was the first European
submarine conflict,

and the international rules of
war were struggling to keep up.

The laws of war were written
in the late 19th century

to protect civilians. It
made a big distinction

between those in uniform
who were warriors,

and those who were civilians
and could not be attacked,

in which case the submarine
had a duty to come up,

make itself apparent,

warn the merchant ship that
it was going to be attacked,

give the merchant ship time
to get the civilians off -

the crew and the passengers -

so that when they sunk the merchant
ship, no lives would be lost.

I believe they were
called prize rules.

They were called prize rules -
that was the laws of war rule.

They were called prize
because the ship is a prize.

If you look at it
historically, of course,

they're a prize because you want
to take the cargo on board.

Two weeks after U17 had sunk
the Glitra and her cargo,

Britain's First Sea Lord made a stark
announcement to the international press.

On the 2nd of November 1914,
Admiral Fisher stated

that the Royal Navy was
assuming military control

of the entire North Sea.

The Germans reacted of course
with outrage and shock,

as if all Britain was doing was making
clear the state of naval play at the time.

When it came to the surface of
the oceans, the British Navy

had won the naval race from
before the First World War.

It could say what could travel

on the top of the seas.

If the Royal Navy controlled
the surface of the ocean,

is that what prompted the Germans
to develop their submarine fleet?

The submarine was actually developed
by the Germans relatively late.

I mean, they weren't the first
people to develop the submarine.

The submarine comes out of
the American Civil War,

when it's developed
by the South,

but it's the weapon of the smaller naval
power against the larger naval power.

That's the way to understand it.

The larger naval power, Britain, had
moved its navy to east coast bases.

From there, it could
patrol the North Sea,

and seize cargos bound
for German harbours.

For their part, the German
U-boats would attempt to evade

those British patrols and hunt for
incoming British cargo ships.

In 1914, Britain imported two
thirds of her food supplies.

Also cotton for uniforms, timber for
trenches and iron ore for guns.

If the U-boats could sink
enough British merchant ships,

Britain could not remain at war.

Germany's U-Boat fleet was
small but its threat was real,

and deadly.

U-boats cruised on the surface.

They could stay at
sea for five weeks,

and would attack undefended
ships with their forward gun.

They dived to attack bigger and
better defended ships with torpedoes.

Each U-boat carried
at least six.

Ironically, the early inspiration
for these hunter-killer submarines

had come from Germany's
future enemy.

It was the British who made
popular the submarines

all over the world, in the first
years of the 20th century.

Who used small coastal
submarines as defensive weapons,

as cheap defensive weapons, for
coastal and harbour defence.

But the development of the motor,
especially the diesel motor,

gave this new weapon a much longer
range, so the submarine changed

from coastal defence to a
long range offensive weapon.

What was life like aboard
a German submarine?

The submarine was full of
machinery, of weapon systems,

torpedo tubes, diesel electric
motors, ammunition, and so on.

It was smelling all the
time, diesel, gas.

The boat was wet inside so there
was always some water coming in,

when it was surfaced and so on.

It was quite a stressing
life for people on board.

U-boats began the war following
the gentlemanly prize rules.

Rules that had saved the
crew of the Glitra.

But on the 4th of February 1915,

at the naval base here
in Wilhelmshaven,

the German leader Kaiser Wilhelm

signed an executive order
that tore those rules apart.

In translation it read,

"From the 18th of February
onwards, all enemy merchant ships

"in the waters surrounding
Great Britain and Ireland

"will be destroyed, irrespective
of the impossibility

"of avoiding in all cases
danger to passengers and crew."

The polite war was over.

The U-boat war had begun.

It would be called unrestricted
submarine warfare.

Now, the men and boys who
crewed British cargo ships

and British liners were placed
directly in the line of fire.

And just three months after
the Kaiser's announcement,

British crewmen and British civilians
would pay the ultimate price.

On the 7th of May 1915,

the Imperial Germany Navy
had six U-boats at sea.

Five in the waters
around Scotland.

And one, the U20,
south of Ireland.

Her captain, Walter Schweiger,
had three torpedoes remaining.

At 1.20pm,

Schweiger saw a large
four-funnelled passenger ship.

What happened next would
generate international revulsion

against German U-boats,

and would be felt in communities
all across the world.

So, Oliver, who are these
individuals in the photographs?

Well, this is James
Aitken as a young man.

Chrissie, who was the
daughter, a 17-year-old,

- was on deck with friends.
- Is this Chrissie here?

This is Chrissie, yes.

Oliver Russell is a distant
cousin of Chrissie Aitken.

The family had emigrated
to Canada in 1912,

but when Chrissie's
father fell ill in 1915,

they headed back to the
family farm at Innerleithen.

They booked a ticket. I gather
they booked a ticket in Chicago,

so they probably travelled
by train across Canada.

They booked a ticket
on the Cameronian,

which was due to sail
from New York on May 1st.

In New York, the Cameronian
was requisitioned

by the British Government.

The Aitkens were transferred
to another liner.

The Lusitania.

Built in Clydebank in 1906,

she had once been the
biggest ship in the world.

On the 1st of May, she
departed for Liverpool

with almost 2,000 people aboard.

Passengers had been warned by German
notices in American newspapers

that they were
sailing into danger.

Six days out of New York,

at 3:10pm in the afternoon
of the 7th of May,

at a distance of 765 yards,

Captain Schweiger targeted
the ship in his periscope

and fired a single torpedo.

Chrissie was on
deck with friends,

whereas the others,
the three others,

were downstairs
finishing their lunch.

The torpedo hit the ship.

There was an explosion, there was
a lot of smoke, a lot of dust.

Chrissie rushed down from the
deck to try and find her family,

couldn't find them, and came up again
to try to find what next to do.

Chrissie sounds to me a remarkably
quick-witted young woman.

- Very brave.
- Those are acts of great courage

from someone so young
- a 17-year-old girl.

Chrissie didn't find her family.

She abandoned ship
and made it ashore.

The next day she was asked to
identify her father's body.

Captain Schweiger's single
torpedo claimed 1,198 lives.

including Chrissie Aitken's father,
brother, and his infant child.

128 of the victims were
from neutral America,

and American outrage forced the
Kaiser to end his campaign

of unrestricted U-boat warfare.

But sinking the Lusitania had
been a deadly demonstration

of the potential of Germany's
tiny U-boat fleet.

So for the British, new techniques
for anti-submarine warfare

had to be developed,
and quickly.

Cruising on the surface
as they generally did,

U-boats could be
shelled, or rammed.

Hitting them underwater
was more difficult.

In 1915, the Royal Navy introduced
depth charges - underwater bombs.

But the question remained of how
to detect submerged submarines

in the first place.

In search of an answer,
in the summer of 1915,

the Admiralty established
a research station

here at Aberdour on the Forth.

To develop what became a
precursor to modern day sonar -

the hydrophone.

A hydrophone attempts to
listen to sound underwater.

it's a receiving microphone

in a waterproof casing, so that
they can put it underwater.

When a noise - a sound - comes,

a sound wave will
hit the diaphragm.

It will cause it to vibrate, and
the vibrations turned into a sound

that you will be able to hear.

So they picked up the
pulse and the throb

- from the engines of the submarines?
- Yes, yes.

In charge of the hydrophone research
at Aberdour was Captain Cyril Ryan.

He assembled an unlikely team
that included top scientists,

Nobel Prize winners, and...

soprano singers.

The hydrophones were used
in pairs on the boats

so that they could be used
by a trained ear to locate

where the enemy submarine
might have been.

They wanted to put them so
that it was low for port

and high for starboard, and so
they thought the best people

to do that, and I'm sure the
musicians were delighted,

were the top musicians
of the day.

So they had a Hamilton Harty,

who was in charge of
the Halle Orchestra,

and his wife, who was Agnes Nichols,
and she was a famous singer.

And they sat amongst all the
hydrophones here - probably here -

and they had to get
them into piles,

low for port and
high for starboard,

and they used a hammer
to tap the diaphragms

and they got them
into pairs that way.

In the war against the U-boats,
no idea could be dismissed,

however eccentric,
however underhand.

The Admiralty demonstrated
precious few scruples.

Painted in tribute to the
"dazzle ships" camouflage

of the Great War, this ship
is the last surviving example

of a dastardly form
of British warfare

that all began in 1915.

Built in Renfrew, HMS
President was a Q ship,

a class of vessel designed to
look like an unarmed cargo ship,

and to trick U-boats
to the surface,

where a Royal Navy crew
would be lying in wait.

They would disguise themselves
as a merchant ship crew.

Of course, they would get rid
of any idea of naval uniform,

any idea of naval discipline.

They would be unshaven, untidy.

They might even have some
people disguised as women,

to pretend to be the
captain's wife and family,

patrolling about
the deck as well,

and they would look as
shambolic as possible,

nothing like a naval crew.

And I've read that some of
them would wear dressing gowns

on board the deck, or they'd
carry budgerigars in cages

and things like that. Yes, I think
they did do things like that.

I think it reflects the Royal
Navy's opinion of the merchant navy

as much as anything else!

They thought that was what
the merchant navy was like.

This 1928 film, The Q Ships,

offers a dramatized portrayal
of a Q ship in action.

On sighting the periscope of
a U-boat, the ship's crew

behaved in a rehearsed panic
and took to the lifeboats.

All to convince
those on the U-boat

that the ship was
perfectly harmless.

They would hope the German
submarines would surface

and try to sink them by gunfire.

Torpedoes were very expensive things.
It was much simpler

to get up on the surface and
sink the ship by gunfire.

As the U-boat approached,

a hidden crew remained
waiting on board the Q ship.

At the last moment, the crew hoisted
the white ensign of the Royal Navy.

The innocuous cargo ship was
officially, if a little belatedly,

transformed into a
Royal Navy gun boat.

You would hide the guns
between barricades,

you would drop these
when the U-boat appeared

and then you would
fire on the U-boat.

The war that had begun with the
gentlemanly prize rules had,

within a year, descended into
the horrors of the Lusitania

and the deceit of the Q ships.

The next year, 1916, began with
the Kaiser's second campaign

of unrestricted
submarine warfare.

A campaign that ended in
international outrage

when the ferry Sussex
was torpedoed by UB-29.

50 passengers were killed.

1916 would be better remembered

for the epic but inconclusive
Battle of Jutland.

Then just three days later

for an infamous trap
laid by one U-boat, U75.

On the 4th of June, the
Secretary of State for War,

Lord Kitchener,
arrived at Scapa Flow

en route to a top secret
meeting in Russia.

He was applauded on
board HMS Iron Duke.

He met and had lunch
with Admiral Jellicoe,

the commander in chief
of the Grand Fleet.

Kitchener was a national icon,
Britain's favourite soldier.

That afternoon, aboard the Iron
Duke, the weather closed in.

Jellicoe suggested to
the Secretary of State

that he delay his journey,

but Kitchener was
having none of it.

Soon after 4pm, Kitchener returned
to the deck of the Iron Duke.

The moment was recorded in this
- his last known photograph.

At 5pm, his ship, the Hampshire,

set out with an escort
of two destroyers.

Jellicoe had ordered that they
sail to the west of Orkney,

to shelter from the storm.

But unknown to the British,

submarine U75 had
already paid a visit.

The sea condition and wind
were such that the destroyers

couldn't keep up, so the Hampshire
reluctantly sent them back to Scapa.

So she was steaming on her own.

And she reached here just
before 8 o'clock at night

and ran into a string of
mines that had been laid

by a U-boat, the U75.

And she hit at least one mine,
more likely two chained together.

They set off at least two explosions
on board the ship, possibly three.

Keeled over fairly quickly
and sank within 15 minutes.

She managed to get
three life rafts away

and nearly 200 mostly young, fit
sailors scrambled on board,

before the ship went down.

Some of them managed
to reach up the beach,

and basically that's as far as they
got before they died from exposure.

- Did the lifeboat take to sea?
- No, the Stromness lifeboat

was manned, and the
crew were ready to go

and asked permission from the navy
to do so, and it was refused.

- Do you know why?
- The navy's view was that they had plenty

of boats of their own and that
they would do it themselves.

They sent out an armed
yacht and a trawler,

followed 15 minutes later
by four destroyers,

including the two that had
left the Hampshire before.

These ships never
picked up anyone.

By then, the rafts had
been driven down the coast

and nobody was picked up
directly from the sea.

Amazingly, two young English sailors
made it ashore at this farm.

Inside were Jim
Sabiston's grandparents

and his 20-year-old mother.

It was quite dramatic, this
bedraggled sailor at the door,

and then she shouted
on her man to come

and her daughter, my
mother, shouted on them.

They got up and got
the fire going,

and boiled a kettle. There were no
electric kettles in those days.

They boiled a kettle and got
tea and something to eat

and got them to bed.

They got some of my grandfather's
clothes to put on, I think,

and put to bed, and they
were there till morning.

But in that time, my
grandfather had gone out

and gone to the next
door neighbours'.

They came down to
the shore here,

and they had ropes with them
and my grandfather went down

with a rope round his waist and
they took up three more survivors.

He went down on a
rope over the cliff?

Yeah, and they took up one at a time
till they got three of them up.

Jim's grandfather and his
neighbours had saved three lives.

But, for reasons that
remain unclear to this day,

they were ordered to stop.

Conspiracy theories
have persisted,

and in particular that the naval
authorities valued the secrecy

of Kitchener's papers more than they
valued the men of the Hampshire.

My grandfather and them

were stopped from
doing anything more.

To try and rescue any more.

- Who stopped them?
- I think it was navy.

Officials came up from
Stromness or somewhere.

And stopped the local people
going to help the survivors.

Yes.

So were there a lot of dead
bodies swept onto the beach?

Yes, yes. They carted
them off in lorries.

The next day, they were
carrying them up in lorries.

No sympathy at all. They were
just thrown on the lorries,

just the bodies.

Terrible. Terrible story.

From Hampshire's crew of
over 700, only 12 survived.

Kitchener's body
was never found.

One U-boat and two mines
had sunk the Hampshire

and placed Britain in a
state of national mourning.

One thing was clear.

Britain's warships needed even greater
protection from German U-boats.

Built in Birkenhead in 1914,

the British light cruiser HMS
Caroline is the only ship

still afloat that saw action at
the Battle of Jutland in 1916.

Back then, her first
line of defence

was the poor soul keeping watch
on top of the tripod mast.

Now, I'm about to climb up to
the lookout point way up there.

I've got a safety harness on.

Can you imagine doing it in freezing
cold weather, out on the high seas,

when the boat is rocking?

Not a lot of laughs.

As the Great War began, getting
to an elevated position

was the still the best way of spotting
enemy ships and surfaced U-boats.

A technique that hadn't changed
much since Nelson was a boy.

Can you imagine what it'd have
been like, during the Great War,

you're part of the
British Grand Fleet,

you're fighting the
German High Seas Fleet.

Shells exploding all round you,

crashing around in
20-foot-high waves.

You don't know whether you are
going to live or going to die.

There's smoke and mayhem.

Torpedoes coming at you.

It must have been truly,
truly terrifying.

Not for wimps like me.
That takes real men.

From 100 feet up,

a lookout could see for a
distance of around 12 miles.

But from 1,000 feet up,

an airman could see a
distance of almost 40 miles.

And so, to protect
British ships,

a fantastic assortment of primitive
aircraft took to the skies.

At Scapa Flow, over
1,000 men were involved

in the aerial defence
of the Grand Fleet,

now under the command
of Admiral Beatty.

On patrol, Beatty's ships were
accompanied by powered airships,

or blimps, based at Caldale,
just west of Kirkwall.

Caldale was also the base for an even
more terrifying form of early aviation.

Unpowered two-man kite balloons
attached by a single lifeline

to the deck of a warship.

They could go up to
about 3,000 feet

and be towed along
at about 20 knots.

It's quite hazardous, of course,

because they were
subject to weather,

and there were one or two lightning
strikes, and there is one report,

that I don't think
is apocryphal,

of a balloon that simply snapped
and was never seen again.

Dear Lord.

- That's a really scary occupation,
isn't it? - Yes. - Very hazardous.

There is one very telling photograph
of the crew of a kite balloon,

and we have a close-up
of the main observer

and he is looking
extremely nervous.

THEY CHUCKLE

In modern day aviation, Orkney
is world famous for this.

The world's shortest
scheduled flight.

About two minutes from
Westray to Papa Westray.

But Orkney has another
claim to aerial fame.

A year after Jutland, 25-year-old
Squadron Commander Edwin Dunning

climbed into his tiny Sopwith
Pup biplane, and took off.

Aircraft had long been able to
operate from moving warships.

After their flight, they would
touch down on the sea, or on land.

Landing back on the warship itself
presented a monumental challenge.

Over Scapa Flow, Commander
Dunning manoeuvred his aircraft

towards HMS Furious, and
her 220 foot runway

designed for taking
off - not landing.

- It was doing something like 25, 26 knots.
- Pretty fast.

Into a headwind. Commander Dunning
faced considerable difficulties

avoiding the entire
superstructure of Furious,

and having to drop his
Sopwith on to this

forward deck, with very
little room to spare.

This is a photograph
of that famous attempt

by Commander Dunning to
land on HMS Furious.

And it looks one of
the most dangerous

and scariest adventures ever,
not only for Commander Dunning

but also for the officers
and men of HMS Furious,

who attempted to grab hold
of his flying aircraft.

The second photograph

is just after he'd
completed his landing,

surrounded by men. It must have
been a wonderful moment for him.

The congratulations of
the men all around him,

because he had done
something that no-one else

had ever done in
the world before.

And the third photograph
is taken five days later,

when unfortunately he slipped
off the front of HMS Furious

and into the water. Now
the ship would have been

steaming ahead at 26 knots. By
the time they turned around

and got back to where the Sopwith Pup
was, Commander Dunning was dead.

Days later, in a letter to Dunning's
mother, the Admiralty paid tribute

to his bravery, and stated that
Dunning's pioneering landings

at Scapa Flow would make aeroplanes
indispensible to the fleet.

On the 31st of January 1917,

Germany announced a new campaign
of unrestricted submarine warfare.

Her third.

But now she had over 100
long-range U-boats.

This would become known
as the killing time.

From the very next day,
the 1st of February 1917,

all ships suspected of
carrying goods to Britain

were to be sunk on sight.

Without warning, without mercy.

For the men of Britain's
merchant navy,

the next few months would
be the most terrifying yet.

For Germany, unrestricted U-boat
warfare was the only chance

to take Britain out of the war.

Her surface fleet had missed
its chance at the inconclusive

Battle of Jutland
the year before.

The German war effort
and the German people

were both being starved by
the British naval blockade.

Jutland had proved to the Germans that they could
not challenge the Royal Navy in the North Sea.

Therefore they could not break
through the economic blockade,

therefore they had to find other
means of knocking Britain

out of the war.

The navy high command promise that
they can sink about 600,000 tonnes

a month of Allied shipping.

In April, they exceed
that, by some margin.

They sink nearly 850,000 tonnes of
Allied shipping in one month alone.

- In one month.
- That's a huge number.

April 1917 was the
cruellest month,

with a staggering 516
ships lost to U-boats.

Henning von Holsendorf was
the commander of the navy,

and was really the driving force
behind the submarine campaign.

He's made a very rough calculation.
If the German U-boats

sink about 600,000 tonnes
of Allied shipping,

that exceeds Britain's
capacity to rebuild ships,

and he reckons that within the first
six months, he would have sunk

about 39% of British shipping,
and that would be the point

when the British would simply not
be able to carry on in the war.

In April 1917, in a letter
to the war cabinet,

Britain's First Sea
Lord, Jellicoe, stated,

"We are carrying on this war as if we
had the absolute command of the sea.

"We have not and have not
had for several months."

He underlined, "Our present policy
is heading straight for disaster."

In June 1917, Jellicoe told
the war policy committee

that owing to the
shortage of shipping

it would be impossible for Britain
to carry on the war into 1918.

The British crisis became
German propaganda.

This 1917 documentary,

The Enchanted Circle, chronicled the
successes of a single German U-boat

operating against British
shipping in the Mediterranean.

The film in all is 40 minutes,

and 25 is sinking English
ships one after the other.

It was shown in Germany
in Autumn of '17.

It was not a big success
because the public got bored.

One ship sinking after the
other and always the same.

I think there are a dozen filmed
scenes about ships sinking here.

Yes, that's nice propaganda.

The commander gets
Lloyd's book of ships

and he strikes out another English
one - one after the other.

Very impressive for
the home front.

This boat alone sank over 200
British and neutral ships.

Good Lord.

This is nice film music.

It's really adapted
to each shot.

This is heartbreaking
for ship lovers,

it's a nice sailing
ship going down.

So sad.

Miss Morris, English ship.

Why if she wasn't
carrying anything?

Or just because...

Carrying olive oil, wine,
or something like that.

Some cargo which was
not really urgent.

Coal, even. Coal ships.

For British merchant sailors, these
were truly terrifying times.

For every four British
merchant ships that set out

on a return international journey,
only three would return unharmed.

We were losing 12 ships a day.

A day!

To U-boats, and we couldn't
possibly replace 12 ships a day.

And we were down to three
weeks' food supply,

and Jellicoe couldn't
see a way round it.

The answer, of course, was the 18th
century solution of convoying.

But Jellicoe was dead
against convoying,

A, because it was a historical
thing that he didn't think

could apply in the 20th century,
B, there were technical reasons

why merchant ships can't keep
station in a compact fleet.

They are not designed
to sail in company.

Also there was an
element of snobbery,

that these merchant ship captains
were usually rather scruffy men

in ill-fitting suits
and bowler hats.

"They can't behave like
naval officers, can they?"

A convoy has tremendous advantages,
mathematical advantages,

over a U-boat.

And if convoys are escorted, U-boats
can't attack on the surface,

using their guns - much more
cheap than using torpedoes.

After the introduction
of convoys, in May 1917,

the number of cargo ships lost
to U-boats fell dramatically.

Indeed, the biggest casualty
of the new convoy strategy

was the man who had opposed
it, Admiral Jellicoe.

Chosen by Churchill to command
the British Grand Fleet

in the first days
of August 1914,

Jellicoe was effectively
sacked on Christmas Eve, 1917.

A lot officers in the
Navy were scandalised

because he was their hero, but quite
a few breathed a sigh of relief -

"Now we can get on with
winning this war."

And from April 1917, Britain
would have a new ally.

Frustrated at the loss of her
ships to the German U-boats,

the United States
entered the war.

Her dreadnoughts
sailed to Scapa Flow,

and in the seas east of Orkney,

American naval engineers laid out
plans for one of the most ambitious

and grandiose projects
of the entire campaign.

This was a truly
amazing scheme -

a minefield, hundreds
of miles long,

between Scotland and Norway.

In 1917, planners here
at the US Naval Academy

estimated it might
cost 200 million -

the equivalent of
£10 billion today.

You have to realise what the
United States was in 1917 -

it was the place where
things were mass produced.

So when we thought of a contribution
to the war, we thought numbers.

And very early in our
entry into the war,

someone said, "Well, look, you
want to deal with these subs,

"seal off the end
of the North Sea

"so that they can't get
out into the Atlantic."

Part of it is we're going
to be running troop ships

across the Atlantic with the army -
that's our biggest contribution.

How do you protect them?
Put in a gate.

Now I believe one of the
most passionate advocates

of the barrage was a
future US President.

Roosevelt was Assistant
Secretary of the Navy.

That means he was responsible
for procurement.

It wasn't invented by Roosevelt,

it was invented by someone
in the Bureau of Ordnance,

who went to Roosevelt and
said, "Look at this."

And Roosevelt said, "Yes, yes!"

And then he becomes the main
advocate, and he sells it

internally in the US Government.

They also sell it to a British
Admiralty that believes it's idiotic.

How did he manage to sell it?
I mean, I've read estimates,

conservative estimates, that
it was going to cost a minimum

of 200 million. That's a hell
of a lot of money, isn't it?

Once we get in the war,
there's a lot of money.

And there's also a
very strong desire

to do something decisive
that will end things.

And if it's 200 million,
we had the money.

We were a very rich
country at that time.

The plan called for the
production of 70,000 mines,

of which 50,000 would be
manufactured in the United States.

There was a naval gun
factory in Washington

that did most of the ordnance work. I
suspect that they did the mechanisms.

The casings were probably
out of Detroit -

that would have been where
you got mass production.

- In the car factories?
- Yeah.

You convert the car
factories to other things.

That was a major American
resource, and we used it.

Components were delivered
to the Norfolk Navy Yards,

then shipped across the Atlantic
and along the Caledonian Canal.

The mines were finally assembled
in converted whisky distilleries

in Inverness and Invergordon.

We also modify a fair number
of ships to lay the mines.

The Royal Navy covers the
minelaying operation,

but the minelayers are American.

The finished minefield comprised
multiple overlapping layers.

It ran from the east of
Orkney across the North Sea

to a position just north
of Stavanger in Norway -

an approximate
distance of 270 miles.

Under the surface, mines were sown
at three depths down to 240 feet -

well below the maximum
operating depth of a U-boat.

Each mine contained 300
pounds of explosive.

And the deeper mines had
new, top-secret antennae

that would detonate on
contact with a U-boat.

In total, 70,263
mines were sown.

The project was completed
in the Autumn of 1918,

just as the German war effort
was finally collapsing.

So there's a real question as
to how much sense it made.

In the US Navy of that era,
you're looking at a navy

that hasn't quite matured
to the point where

people automatically think
about these things.

The Royal Navy is a much more mature
navy, obviously, and that shows.

A lot of the effect of
World War I on the US Navy

is we thought we were
really good before the war.

We were sure we were
just right up there.

And we discovered we weren't.

And that was a very
salutary thing.

For all the cost - the equivalent
to £10 billion today -

only six German U-boats
have been confirmed

as casualties of the minefield.

The first casualty was U92.

On board was Assistant
Engineer Wilhelm Koerver,

Hans Koerver's great uncle.

The boat has been found
south of the Orkneys

in 80 metres depth, with...

I saw some nice sonar
pictures of the boat -

it's quite intact. I contacted some
divers who had gone down to there.

They say the hull is nearly intact,
so I assume it had been hit

in the distance by a mine which
had destroyed the diving tanks

so it went down. And
it's still intact,

so all the crew, my great
uncle and his comrades,

are still lying there since
nearly 100 years, now.

Hans, when we think...

Well, certainly when I think
of the First World War,

you have very brutal, visceral
images of men dying in the trenches,

in the most horrific circumstances,
and we very rarely think about

the submariners and
the sailors who died

in probably equally horrific
circumstances at sea.

About two thirds of the
submarines were sunk in the end.

I think half of the submariners,
around 6,000, 8,000 men,

that served on board the submarines
were drowned with their boats.

I found a story of a submarine
which was sunk into the ground

but the crew was still alive and
the water was rising inside,

and the first ones
got out pistols

and tried to shoot themselves,
but the pistols had gotten wet.

Others were trying to
suffocate themselves

by throwing something
in their mouth.

The eyewitness who
had seen this,

later he was able to escape
by the torpedo tubes,

so never anybody
talked about this,

but there seems to have been
some kind of consensus -

"So, what will we do in the case our
submarine is lying on the ground,

"will never go up again?
We will slowly suffocate."

I think there was a consensus,
there were weapons on board,

pistols, to shoot themselves.

The German U-boats had their final
shot at glory in October 1918.

UB116, carrying 11 torpedoes,

headed into Scapa Flow.

Since 1914, this had
been the primary base

of Britain's Grand Fleet,
her mighty dreadnoughts,

commanded by Admirals
Jellicoe then Beatty.

At Hoxa, the southern
entrance to Scapa Flow,

the engine noise of UB116
was detected by hydrophone.

Technology pioneered at Aberdour

by Captain Ryan's team of
scientists and singers

fixed the exact location
and depth of the U-boat.

EXPLOSION

UB116 was destroyed by
an electronic mine.

Her target, the British Grand
Fleet, was 200 miles to the south.

Their new commander,
Admiral Beatty,

had transferred the entire
fleet to the Forth,

so this final U-boat attack had been
a deadly and pointless failure.

At Wilhelmshaven, the sailors of
the High Seas Fleet mutinied.

Their revolution spread
across the country.

The Kaiser abdicated.

On the 11th of November 1918,

the land war ended with the
Armistice of Compiegne.

The sea war would end four
days later - in Fife.

The representative of the Imperial
German Navy, Admiral Meurer,

arrived on the Forth on board
the German cruiser Konigsberg.

Accompanied by his staff officers,
Meurer was taken to Rosyth Dockyard,

where they boarded
HMS Queen Elizabeth,

Admiral Beatty's flagship.

Her modern namesake
now dominates Rosyth.

In Admiral Beatty's cabin on board
the old HMS Queen Elizabeth,

Beatty met Meurer and
the German officers.

They sat opposite each
other at a long table,

while Beatty dictated the
terms of the naval armistice.

There's a very famous painting
of this by Sir John Lavery,

and the British actually had Sir
John Lavery in naval uniform

so he could sit in the room
without the Germans knowing

there was an artist in there
to record this moment.

And essentially
Beatty read the terms

under which the German
fleet was to be interned.

The victorious allied
navies each had a right

to a share of the ships
of the German Navy.

That share had to be
determined, and until it was,

the vessels would be
kept in British waters.

The first to arrive were
the German U-boats.

On the 20th of November 1918,
they sailed into Harwich.

As they arrived, British crewmen

were ordered not to
cheer in victory.

The crews were dispatched
back to Germany,

leaving their submarines behind.

At the end of four years
and three months of war,

the German U-boats had
sunk over 5,000 ships.

The German surface fleet
surrendered the next day,

the 21st of November.

HMS Queen Elizabeth headed out
to meet the German ships.

Admiral Beatty
acknowledged the cheers.

Way out at the mouth of the Firth,
40 miles off the Isle of May,

the German surface fleet steamed in,
and the allied fleet - which was

the British Grand Fleet, there
was an American battle squadron,

there were some French
representatives -

370 ships in two lines, waiting.

And the Germans came and
steamed in between them.

Initially the atmosphere
was very tense.

The German ships had
been de-ammunitioned

and the breechblocks had
been removed from the guns -

that was part of the
terms of the armistice.

The British ships - the
guns weren't loaded,

but they were ready to load and the
crews were at action stations,

because no-one really knew.
There was a possibility,

there was a risk, that there may
be some gesture of defiance.

And they anchored
below Inchkeith,

which is the island you can just see
silhouetted on the horizon there.

People came out. People
came out in boats.

I was going to say,

- it must have been quite a spectacle...
- Extraordinary

sight. - ..for the
local people to watch.

This is the dramatic
downfall of German power,

so people came out
for a closer look.

There was no sense of honour
between foes, either.

There was a sense of contempt
for the German Navy,

that they had stayed in harbour, they
had relied on submarine warfare,

which was considered to be
dishonourable, ungentlemanly warfare.

So the British had sense of
disgust, almost, at the Germans.

So Admiral Beatty said that
he ached, they all ached,

to give them a dose of what
they had intended for them.

Beatty's signal officer described
the scene as being like

attending the funeral of some very
sordid person who had been murdered.

HE LAUGHS

And then Beatty sent the
signal out that at sunset

the German ships should lower their
flags and not raise them again,

and that was the finish.

Over the next few days,

the German surface fleet was
escorted to Scapa Flow.

The great natural harbour where the
British fleet had begun the war

was where the German fleet
was ordered to end the war.

Under the command of
Admiral von Reuter,

the frustrated, hungry and
ill-disciplined sailors

on board the 74 German ships

awaited the outcome of
the Paris peace talks.

And after seven months, the
Admiral's patience ran out.

At 11:20am on the
21st of June 1919,

Reuter sent a signal from
his flagship, the Emden.

The flags read: "Paragraph 11.
Confirm."

That was the cue to
scuttle the entire fleet.

At 12 noon, as they settled
lower and lower in the water,

each ship hoisted the colours
of the Imperial German Navy.

It's a matter of your
honour as an officer.

You don't hand over your ships.

You either go down
fighting with your ship,

or you make sure that your
enemy doesn't get it.

As German crewmen took
to the lifeboats,

flying white flags of surrender,

some were confronted by
British sailors and marines.

As the events unfolded,
a British war artist,

Bernard Gribble, looked on.

So it looks like there are
three white flags of surrender

on these small boats, and
you've got British sailors

and an officer up there,
training guns on them.

Gribble recorded his
eyewitness account

in both painting and prose.

He had stuck this description
onto the back of the painting,

so there's no doubt about
what's going on. He says,

"In a few moments the
vessel began to sink,

"and our men were ordered to open
fire on the approaching crews

"as they refused to
return to the ship.

"The German officers
were very daring,

"actually coming
alongside our boat,

"and arguing their right
to be taken on board.

"They smoked cigars and wore yellow
kid gloves all through the incident.

"They suffered losses among their
men, as several were shot down."

This picture does not
portray our finest hour,

if you have British seamen
ready to fire on unarmed,

white flag of
surrender-waving Germans.

It wasn't publicised
that this had occurred.

There's some confusion
- I mean, accounts vary,

but Gribble is quite clear,

and he was quoted in the press
internationally afterwards,

that the men in the
boats were fired upon.

So it's not something
that the Admiralty

and the British
Government dwelled on.

But this was an act of war, the
armistice terms had been violated.

By scuttling the ships, they
were breaking the armistice terms.

Absolutely. I mean,

they raised their ensigns. They were
considered to be a legitimate target.

The Germans killed in the
summer of 1919 are buried

alongside more than
400 British sailors

here at Lyness Cemetery
on the island of Hoy.

These gravestones mark the final
casualties of the Great War,

seven months after
the armistice.

To this day, the
waters of Scapa Flow

are home to remnants of
the Imperial German Navy.

For their deadly
enemy, the Royal Navy,

this great natural harbour had
been home for four years.

But by the end of 1918, the
Royal Navy had returned

to the home comforts of
Portsmouth and Plymouth.

But the battle had
been won here.

From Scottish harbours,
and on northern seas.