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SS Oakcrest
The SS Oakcrest was a 5,047-ton, London-registered ship owned by the Crest Shipping Line. It was little more than a coaster built in 1929 by R Duncan Ltd of Port Glasgow, as SS Korana for Premorska Plovdivdba DD (Overseas Navigation Co Ltd) of Gunduliceva Ulica 3, Zagreb, Yugoslavia. It was 403ft long overall, 52ft 5in beam, 24ft 6in draught, driven by a single-screw triple-expansion engine with a maximum speed of ten knots.

Records indicate that SS Oakcrest had never been sold or transferred in her life, remaining a Premorska Plovdivdba DD ship. It sported the company's black hull livery with black funnel, blue six-point star on a red band, engaged in Mediterranean, UK and River Plate trades.

Its maximum speed was probably a good deal less than ten knots by the middle of 1940, when it was hired by the British Ministry of War Transport and administered for them by Crest Shipping Co of Stone House, Bishopsgate, London. It was pressed into long trans-ocean service only by generous government insurance cover and the fact that Britain was losing to enemy action over a quarter of a million tons of shipping a month. In peacetime, SS Oakcrest would probably have been quietly rusting away in some backwater, too small and old to be venturing profitably anywhere.

Instead, with a single, probably pre-Great War gun to ward off surfaced German U-boats, a civilian crew and a single RN DEMS (Defensively Equipped Merchant Ship) Gunner, she plied her way across the Atlantic.

On her final journey, SS Oakcrest was torpedoed a few hundred miles off the coast of Scotland at position 53掳 north 17掳 west on 22 or 23 November 1940. SS Oakcrest was part of the convoy OB-244 with a total of seven ships en route from Liverpool to New York when it came under attack from the German submarines U-123 and U-103.

The other ships in the convey OB-244 that were lost along with SS Oakcrest were Cree, King Idwal and Tymeric, all sunk by U-123 captained by Karl-Heinz Moehle, while U-103, captained by Viktor Sch眉tze, claimed Daydawn and Victoria.

U-123
The captain of U-123, which fired the fatal torpedo at the SS Oakcrest, Karl-Heinz Moehle, was born on 31 July 1910 in Norden, Ostfriesland. He joined the pre-Nazi German Navy, the Reichmarine in 1930 and served in surface vessels before shifting to the Nazi-era Kriegsmarine's illegally developing U-boat arm in 1936.

He had commissioned a new small coastal Type 11B in 1937, after serving as a warrant officer in two smaller training boats. He had a good war by late 1940, sinking eight ships in six wartime patrols, mostly in the North Sea, before the prestigious commission on U-123. U-123 was to be his last front line command, and with it he sank the remainder of his 22 ships, totalling 95,416 tons.

In June 1941 he was posted to command the 5th U-boat flotilla at Kiel and then the whole U-boat base. He was promoted to korvettenkapitan in March 1943.

He was arrested in June 1945 and tried at Nuremburg for passing on to his subordinates the infamous 'Laconia Order', which led to the sinking of the Laconia. He served five years and was released in November 1949. Karl-Heinz Moehle died on Sunday 17 November 1996; he lived a full life.

As for U-123, it was one of the most famous U-boats in the war. A Type IXB, it was laid down on 15 April 1939 at AG Weser, Bremen and commissioned 30 May 1940. It took part in 12 patrols that included two very successful patrols on the US East Coast. U-123 sank 46 ships for a total of 229,393 tons and sustained damage to another six ships at 53,568 tons.

Taken out of service at Lorient, France on 17 June 1944, it was scuttled there on 19 August 1944. Finally surrendered to France in 1945 and became the French submarine Blaison until 18 August 1959.

-- Read the story of how the survivors of the Oakcrest made it to Barra Island in Scotland

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