One panelist chooses Royal Oak's loss as the Royal Navy's greatest wartime blunder because a known gap in Scapa Flow's defenses admitted a submarine. Clarke disputes assigning the whole failure to the Navy, recalling four requests during the 1920s and 1930s for concrete barriers and suggesting that Churchill rejected two. The counterargument is that the Navy knew the gap remained and still had to secure the anchorage. The loss also removed what the panel describes as the most extensively refitted R-class battleship. It is credited with encouraging U-boats to attack warships more confidently.
Notable Point · 1:48:03-1:49:46
Royal Oak and the dispute over responsibility for Scapa Flow
The Royal Oak discussion separates a known security gap from the political refusal to fund permanent defenses.