It happened on this day in 1939....

[Tessa]

Originally Posted by K-61

What Prien accomplished was a terrific feat of daring, especially when you take into account the torpedo difficulties he encountered. That he lived to return to base is partly fortune, partly the skill of a courageous Kaleun and partly due to British laxity early war with respect to their security measures. Sadly, the game makes port raiding too easy, wherea feats like Prien were very few and far between. I am not aware if any U-boats ever repeated Prien's success.

Donitz did try another similar mission in 40' to get into Gibraltor (remember reading about it few weeks ago in the CB Books) put the mission failed. A destroyer out in the channel got lucky and caught the boat early (can't recall which one, its life was ill fated) before it could even get to within long range of and kind of chance of attacking. While the channel itself is pretty deep the waters get really shallow about 2km outside the enterance.

The British were really lucky that all that was lost was the Royal Oak, just a few days earlier a good chunk of the main fleet was moored there. Had the raid gone down on the 8th Prien would have had the Hood, Nelson, Rodney, Repulse, and Furious as targets instead of just the Royal Oak and Pegasus being the only large ships there. Even though, he still got to sail back home with one badass pennant flying from his scope: