KAHLA Plate KORVETTENKAPITAN GUNTHER PRIEN “DER STIER VON SCAPA FLOW” Made GDR

Description

KAHLA Collectors Plate 7 1/2” KORVETTENKAPITAN GUNTHER PRIEN The Bull “DER STIER VON SCAPA FLOW” Made in GDR. This vintage collectors plate depicts the battle from 7/3/1941. This place has a gold leaf rim and a mother of pearl button hanging hook. This vintage plate is in excellent condition. Please check out photos. It ships to the United States only.
(March, 5, 2021) Eighty years ago, this week, U-47 commanded, by Günther Prien, was attacked and sunk in the North Atlantic, west of Ireland, by destroyers HMS Wolverine and HMS Verity. This happened not long after Prien was promoted to the rank of lieutenant commander.
Prien, nicknamed the Bull of Scapa Flow, was one of the most daring U-boat commanders, and, by many accounts, probably the most daring submarine commander of any navy in World War II.
In 1939, he and his U-47 became famous for his audacious sinking of the British battleship HMS Royal Oak in the heavily defended British Home Fleet main harbor at Scapa Flow on Oct. 14.
Even Winston Churchill described the attack on Scapa Flow as, “a remarkable feat of professional skill and daring.”
He was one of the best submarine officers in the German Navy. He was born on Jan. 16, 1908 and joined the German merchant navy in the summer of 1923. He transferred to the German Reichsmarine (the Navy) in 1933 and served on board the light cruiser Königsberg before entering the U-boat service in 1935.
At the end of his training, he was assigned First Officer of the Watch on U-26, in which capacity he served under Capt. Lt. Hartmann patrolling Spanish waters during the Spanish Civil War.
The talented Prien rose steadily in the ranks until he was given command of the new Type VIIB submarine, U-47, when she was commissioned on Dec. 17, 1938 and was promoted to the rank of Kapitänleutnant on Feb. 1, 1939. He continued to command U-47 during the war.
He departed Kiel on Aug. 19, 1939 for a patrol lasting 28 days. On Sept. 5, he sank the British ship Bosnia, the second U-boat sinking of the war. Two more British vessels were sunk by U-47 over the next two days. It returned to Kiel on Sept. 15.
On Oct. 14, 1939, Prien accepted the mission to attack the Royal Navy Primary base at Scapa Flow. In the base were some of the Royal Navy’s best warships.
The best defense of Scapa Flow was its shallow waters and tricky currents. Although most of the home fleet was at sea, Prien sank the battleship HMS Royal Oak and returned home where he became a celebrity.
He was awarded the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross personally by Adolf Hitler, and was the first sailor of the U-boat service and the second member of the Kriegsmarine to receive this award.
The mission into Scapa Flow called for volunteers only. He had no hesitation in accepting the mission. In a token to the dangerous and risky mission, Prien spoke to his crew while U-47 was lying off Scapa Flow, and having briefed them, he announced that anyone not wishing to volunteer could leave the boat immediately.
Unsurprisingly, no one accepted the offer to disembark in the middle of the North Sea. After maneuvering U-47 through the risky currents, Prien was able to position his boat in a favorable position and fired his torpedoes, hitting the Royal Oak and sinking her with the loss 833 sailors.
After he received the nickname,”The Bull of Scapa Flow,” the emblem of a snorting bull was painted on the conning tower of U-47 and soon became the emblem of the entire 7th U-boat Flotilla. Two members of the Scapa Flow crew earned the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross during World War II: the chief engineer Johann-Friedrich Wessels and 1st watch officer Engelbert Endrass.
Kept secret by the German naval command was the fact that Prien had fired a total of seven torpedoes at his target, of which five failed because of long-standing problems with their depth steering and their magnetic detonator systems.
These problems continued to plague the German submariners for a long time, particularly during the German invasion of Norway, when the U-boats were unable to keep the Royal Navy at bay.
On Dec. 5 1939, U-47 spotted 12 merchant vessels escorted by three destroyers. It fired three torpedoes, sinking the British steamer Navasota from Convoy OB 46 on its way to Buenos Aires, killing 37 sailors. The next day, U-47 sank the Norwegian tanker Britta, with six of her crew lost, followed by the Dutch steamer Tajandoen, on Dec. 7, 1939.
The next day, Chief Engineer Wessels reported that the boat only had sufficient fuel to make the return trip. The German Naval Command then ordered U-47 to return to port. It returned to Kiel on Dec. 18, 1939, having sunk 23,168 tons of merchant shipping and damaged the Royal Navy heavy cruiser HMS Norfolk.
One of the most controversial patrols by U-47 was when Prien sighted and attacked the SS Arandora Star, carrying over 1,200 German and Italian civilian internees and 86 German prisoners of war to captivity in Canada. Over 800 lives were lost. In spite of everything, Prien was awarded the Oak Leaves to the Knight’s Cross in 1940.
During the next 14 months, U-47 completed a total of 10 war patrols, spending 238 days at sea. In his last patrol, begun on February 20, 1941, he left the U-boat base in Lorient, France, bound for the North Atlantic. During this patrol, Prien attacked and sank six ships of almost 45,000 tons.
On March 7, 1941, his luck ran out. After sighting and attacking convoy OB-290, no radio messages were ever heard again from U-47 after she reported her position south of Iceland.
The sinking of U-47 and the death of Günther Prien is mired in controversy. The common story that is accepted today is the destroyers Wolverine and Verity attacked U-47 after Prien decided to dive to escape, and, in a fierce depth charge attack, dropped patterns of depth charges until U-47 rose almost to the surface, before sinking and then exploded with an orange flash visible from the surface.
But there are other stories circling on how U-47 sank. It is now suspected that U-47 may have been hit by one of her own circling torpedoes, and possibly a later attack that did not confirm any kills by the corvettes HMS Camellia and HMS Arbutus.
Prien’s death was kept secret until May 23, 1941. Churchill had personally announced it to the House of Commons, and propaganda broadcasts to Germany had repeatedly taunted listeners with the question “Where is Prien?” until Germany was forced to acknowledge his loss.
Although he was at sea for less than two years, his record stands high among the U-boat aces during the Second World War. He spent 238 days at sea and sank 31 enemy ships for a total tonnage of 191,919 tons and damaged eight more for a total of 62,751 tons. These ships were mostly British, but others came from Denmark, Panama, Holland, Greece, Belgium, Norway, Sweden, and Portugal.
Ten days after the death of Prien, Otto Kretschmer, the highest scoring U-boat ace in World War II, was captured by the British, and Joachim Schepke in U-100 was also killed. So, in the first two weeks of March 1941, Germany lost three of her top scoring U-boat commanders.
Prien was survived by his wife, Ingeborg, who he married in 1939. He had two daughters, Birgit and Dagmar.