On Christmas Day 1940, a German Junkers Ju 88 came down in a Sandwick field after being intercepted over Orkney by fighters from the Fleet Air Arm’s No. 804 Squadron. The aircraft was on a reconnaissance sortie tied to the defences of Scapa Flow, and the crew ended the day not in Norway, but instead in captivity, with one man badly wounded.
It is an episode that sits neatly at the junction of three wartime stories that do not often meet in the same paragraph: Orkney’s very practical home defence, the Royal Navy’s growing air arm, and an American-built fighter scoring what is widely described as its first combat victory in the European theatre.
Why Scapa Flow mattered, and why the Luftwaffe kept coming back
By late 1940 the Home Fleet’s anchorage at Scapa Flow was still one of the Royal Navy’s key assets and, therefore, a recurring problem for German planners. Orkney’s wartime defences were layered, ranging from anti-aircraft batteries and barrage balloons to coordinated fire plans and fighter cover from airfields in the islands and on the mainland.
This was not theoretical. The islands had already seen air attack and loss. A well-known early-war incident saw anti-aircraft guns on Hoy hit a Ju 88, often described locally as the first German aircraft shot down on British soil by anti-aircraft fire (there is also the Humbie Heinkel to consider here). Raids in March and April 1940 underlined that Orkney was not too far north to be touched, and that the defences would be tested repeatedly.
By Christmas 1940, the Luftwaffe’s need was not only to strike Scapa Flow but to look at it: to photograph, to assess changes, to learn where guns, balloons, nets and boom defences were placed, and to see what ships were present.
The Junkers Ju 88: fast enough to get there, vulnerable once caught
Online sources record that a Junkers Ju 88 was shot down at Sandwick on 25 December 1940 while on a reconnaissance mission connected with Scapa Flow’s defences.
The aircraft brought down is usually identified in loss records as a Ju 88A-5 coded 4N+AL, with a Werknummer given in Luftwaffe compilations, assigned to 3.(F)/22, part of Aufklärungsgruppe 22. That unit operated Ju 88 reconnaissance aircraft from bases in Norway, making northern Scotland and Orkney reachable across the North Sea.
Whatever the exact track that day, the broad shape of the mission is consistent across Orkney and squadron-focused accounts: a lone Junkers Ju 88, engaged in photo-reconnaissance off the north of Scotland, was detected and fighters were sent up to deal with it.
The intercept: six Martlets scrambled, two got in
The most detailed narrative attached to named airmen describes a little after 2pm as the key moment. Six Grumman Martlets of 804 Squadron were scrambled over Orkney to pursue the Ju 88. Two pilots, Sub-Lt (A) T. R. V. Parke and Lt (FAA) Rodney H. P. Carver, made the interception and put rounds into the German aircraft.
The damage described is telling because it reads like a fight that was decided by systems and aerodynamics rather than instant destruction: the starboard radiator was hit; a port engine oil pipe was damaged; the tailplane took strikes. With cooling compromised, oil leaking, and the airframe no longer clean, the Ju 88 was forced into a crash landing rather than being able to run for the sea.
Crash-site summaries place the landing near Flotterson, just south of Loch Skaill in Sandwick. The air gunner is described as badly wounded, which matches the aircrew accounts.
There is an important point here that gets lost when people retell it as a neat “shot down” story. This was not a mid-air break-up and a smoking plunge into the sea. It ended with a survivable forced landing on farmland, which is why the next part of the story belongs to local men on the ground as much as to pilots in the air.
On the ground: stopping the burn, taking prisoners
German crews were trained to deny the enemy intelligence and equipment where they could. A Ju 88 sitting intact on a Scottish field was both a prize and a risk: a prize for anyone wanting cameras, films, maps, radio gear, and codes; a risk if the crew managed to set it alight.
The account most often repeated in connection with this crash is that armed local farmers, Thomas Harcus and his son Leslie, both in the Home Guard, prevented the crew from setting fire to the aircraft. The Germans were then taken into custody, with the wounded man receiving treatment, before the survivors were moved on for interrogation.
The crew was:
- Lt K. Schipp (pilot)
- Fw H. Schreiber
- Uffz H. Spörtl (the name is sometimes rendered Johann or Johannes in compilations)
- Obgefr K. Rotter (the wounded gunner)
Loss records broadly support the outline: the aircraft was lost at Sandwick on 25 December 1940, the crew were taken prisoner, and Rotter was wounded.
The Martlet angle: an American-built fighter makes its mark over Britain
There’s more to the story though. Yes, it was Christmas Day, a solitary intruder, and a clean outcome that leaves a crashed aircraft on British ground with prisoners beside it.
However, it also carries a technical footnote that has grown into a popular “first”. The Grumman Martlet, the British name for early Wildcats, was an American-built fighter. It is widely believed to be a US aircraft’s first combat victory in the European theatre when a British pilot in an American Martlet destroyed the Junkers Ju 88 over Scapa Flow.
We can assume this to be the first combat victory by a US-built fighter in British service during the war.
Who were Parke and Carver, and what happened next
Rodney Harold Power Carver was a pre-war naval officer who had lived through the Fleet Air Arm’s shifting arrangements with the RAF and was with 804 Squadron at RNAS Hatston from late 1939, becoming ‘A’ Flight Commander in 1940. After Orkney he went on to command another fighter squadron and was awarded the DSC for his part in Operation Pedestal, later receiving a CBE and retiring as a Captain.
Thomas Robert Verner Parke’s story is shorter. He entered the Air Branch of the Royal Navy in May 1939, joined 804 Squadron at RNAS Hatston in July 1940, and was killed on 7 July 1941 when his Fulmar failed to return after being launched from HMS Pegasus in poor weather, crashing into high ground on the Mull of Kintyre.
Knowing that does not change what happened over Sandwick, but it does change the tone. The Christmas Day fight was not a neat “first” in a display case. It was a moment in the working life of two young naval aviators doing an unglamorous job: guarding an anchorage at the edge of the map.
A short note on why this little story lasts
People remember it because it has shape. A dark winter, a holiday, a lone aircraft crossing the sea, a scramble, damage that forces a landing rather than a disappearance, and then farmers with rifles stopping the crew from torching the evidence.
It is also a reminder that “defending Scapa Flow” was not just concrete, guns and paperwork. It was pilots at short notice, Home Guard on wet ground, and a strand of American industry arriving in British service months before the United States entered the war.
