ORP Orzeł (1938) - History - World War II - Scotland

Scotland

Since Orzeł's navigational charts had all been removed by the Estonian authorities, Captain Grudzinski resolved to stop a German ship and take her charts. However, the only German vessels encountered were warships rather than merchantmen. The submarine's sole remaining navigational aid was a list of lighthouses, and using these as a reference, Orzeł followed a course along the Baltic coast, around Denmark, and out into the North Sea where she came under attack by British as well as German forces, since without her wireless equipment she had no means of identifying herself.

Forty days after she had originally sailed from Gdynia, Orzeł made landfall, off the east coast of Scotland. She lay on the bottom until emergency repairs were made to the radio, then surfaced to transmit a message in English. A Royal Navy destroyer then came out and escorted her into port, much to the surprise of the British who had thought her long since sunk.

Orzeł sank no enemy vessels during her journey from Estonia to Britain, although Soviet authorities blamed her for sinking the Soviet tanker Metallist in Narva Bay on 26 September, the incident being used as a pretext for the Soviet invasion of the Baltic states.