Plan Z

by David Wragg

  Two U-boats, U-601 and U-716 were now tailing the convoy, and had failed to notice the turn to the north. Thus it happened that, as the Scharnhorst approached the expected position of the convoy, and Kapitan sur See Hintze broadcast the message from Dönitz that a successful attack would relieve the situation on the Eastern Front before sending the men to action stations, there was a massive anti-climax as nothing was found. Frustrated, Bey turned his force south-west and spread his destroyers at five mile intervals. At around 09.40, the northernmost destroyer passed the southernmost escort of the convoy at a distance of around fifteen miles, both completely unaware of the other’s presence in the poor visibility. As the weather worsened, and the destroyers suffered as ice built up on their decks and superstructure, with frost and snow covering the optical gunnery control instruments, Bey was forced to order speed reduced first to 12 knots and then to 10 knots. This put the battlecruiser at risk of attack by Allied submarines, so he took the ship on a zig-zag course astern of the destroyers.

  Force One had gone to action stations shortly before dawn, at around 08.30, and shortly afterwards, Norfolk picked up radar echoes of a single ship seventeen miles to the west-north-west. Belfast, Burnett’s flagship, then picked up the same echoes. At 09.21, the lookouts on the third cruiser, Sheffield, spotted a large ship on the horizon seven miles to port. Immediately, Belfast opened fire with star shell, but these fell short. At 09.29, Burnett ordered the three ships to open fire with their main armament, 6-in for Belfast and Sheffield, 8-in for Norfolk. Force One turned to port to close the range, but this gave difficulties and all three cruisers could not bring their guns to bear fully on the German ship. Using radar control, however, Norfolk succeeded in sending six broadsides towards the Scharnhorst, with three 8-in shells exploding on the battlecruiser, destroying her main radar scanner and her port high angle (anti-aircraft) gunnery director, while a fourth shell went through the upper deck but failed to explode.

  One of the German destroyers was off course, and the others assumed that this meant that the enemy was approaching. Their leader signalled Scharnhorst, only to receive a reply that she was being engaged by British cruisers.

  As the shells exploded aboard Scharnhorst, Bey had her turn south-east and make smoke while speed increased to 30 knots. At 09.40, Force One ceased fire and gave chase, but as the distance between the hunters and the hunted widened, Burnett realised that they had no chance of catching the battlecruiser in such weather as her greater size meant that she could cope with a heavier sea than any of the cruisers. Force One turned back towards the convoy.

  The Germans were not running away, but simply playing for time. Bey intended to attack the convoy from the north, with the destroyers attacking from the south. The destroyers’ 5.9-in guns were almost a match for those of Belfast and Sheffield, while torpedo attack would also threaten the cruisers, leaving Scharnhorst free to savage the convoy.

  Fraser again ordered the convoy onto a northerly course and had the four destroyers from the homebound convoy RA55A diverted to reinforce the screen around Force One’s cruisers. At the same time, Belfast found the Scharnhorst on her radar again. Burnett’s concern for the convoy was well founded, as the battlecruiser had steamed in an arc and reappeared forty miles to the north. At 12.20, the battlecruiser came into sight and Burnett ordered his cruisers to open fire and his destroyers to mount a torpedo attack.

  Fearing a torpedo attack, Kapitan sur See Hintze opened fire and started to take evasive action to avoid the destroyers. The range shortened to four-and-a-half miles, while his gunnery direction officers concentrated fire on Norfolk, whose 8-in guns were not using flashless cordite and so allowed her range to be established easily. The heavy cruiser was soon taking fire, with an 11-in shell knocking out ‘X’ turret aft, and her radio sets were also disabled. Sheffield was showered in shell splinters. In return, just one shell from the British cruisers hit the German ship, landing on the quarterdeck and failing to explode. Then, disappearing at 12.41 almost as quickly as she had appeared, Scharnhorst raced off to the south-east. The high seas had meant that the destroyers had been unable to get into position for a torpedo attack before the battlecruiser disappeared from sight. This time the cruisers gave chase at 28 knots, using radar to maintain contact, while the destroyers did their best to keep up. By 14.00, the battlecruiser, instead of homing in on the convoy was some thirty miles ahead of it, desperately seeking to return to the Altenfjord. Force One was now in the happy position of driving the German ship towards the 14-in guns of Duke of York.

  Meanwhile, those aboard the British battleship had been through moments of despair, feeling at first that their prey had evaded the cruisers, then Force Two was spotted by a Blohm und Voss Bv138 flying boat, which could not have failed to notice the significance of the ships. They were not to know that the aircraft simply reported ‘one big and several smaller ships’, which aroused no suspicions at all. He signalled that unless contact could be regained by Force One, he had no chance of finding Scharnhorst. At the back of Fraser’s mind was the real possibility that the battlecruiser was not in fact interested in the convoy, but instead was seeking to break out into the wider Atlantic, packed with convoys and the large fast passenger liners now acting as troopships bringing American and Canadian troops for the forthcoming invasion of Europe. He turned Force Two to west-south-west. His change of course caused a ripple of disappointment to run through his squadron, as it was clear that their high hopes of catching the German ship were to come to nothing. The mood changed almost as abruptly, as Fraser received news of the fresh contact, and ordered Force Two to turn back to its previous course.

  Meanwhile, the German destroyers had found that the convoy was not where it had been expected, thanks to the changes of course taken and misleading reports from the U-boats. At 14.18, when he had finally decided to return to the Altenfjord, Bey also signalled to his destroyers to return.

  Aboard the ships of Force Two, at 15.30 everyone went to action stations and they closed up for combat, closing all armoured hatches and watertight doors. They had not too long to wait. At 16.18, the trace of the Scharnhorst appeared on the Duke of York’s radar, and soon afterwards a cluster of smaller traces showed Force One still on the chase. At 16.32, the battlecruiser appeared on the fire control radar at a distance of eleven miles, but Fraser decided to hold fire until the distance closed further, although he ordered his destroyers to prepare for a torpedo attack, but to await the go-ahead.

  Force Two and the Scharnhorst were less than seven miles apart at 16.50, when Fraser changed course to allow all of his guns and those of the cruiser Jamaica to come to bear on the battlecruiser. The secondary armament of 5.25-in guns aboard the Duke of York fired four star-shells which exploded above and behind the Scharnhorst, illuminating her against the dark night and showing that she was completely unprepared for action with her guns aligned fore and aft. Fraser ordered a full broadside, with all ten 14-in guns firing at once, with the 6-in guns of Jamaica following. The radar-controlled guns were spot on target, and the green glows of shell hits could be seen, having taken just 15 seconds to travel the 6.8 miles separating the opposing ships. The German’s ‘A’ turret forward was wrecked. Kapitan sur See Hintze swung his ship away to the north, only to find himself facing the pursuing cruisers of Force One, although Sheffield was dropping back. The other two cruisers opened fire, causing Bey to order a turn eastwards.

  Scharnhorst was now outpacing Force One, although her actual progress was reduced by Hintze swinging the ship from time to time to allow her ‘B’ turret to return fire. At 17.00, Force Two’s destroyers were still attempting to overhaul the German so that they mount a torpedo attack, a penalty for Fraser’s refusal to allow them to start earlier. Two shells from the German battlecruiser passed harmlessly through the British battleship’s tripod mast. At 17.13, the destroyers were ordered to launch their torpedoes, but while they could still hang on to the battleship, they were in no position to launch as they pitched and rolled in
the heavy seas. Jamaica was also falling behind, and it looked as if the faster German battlecruiser would also outrun the British battleship. It now looked like a gunnery duel between the two ships, with the 14-in guns of Duke of York capable of hitting a target at eighteen miles. Unfortunately, the massive broadsides had wrecked the gunnery radar, and visual gunnery was being made difficult by smoke being made by the Scharnhorst.

  Once again, events on the German side at first unknown to the British were to change the position. One of the 14-in shells had penetrated the starboard boiler room and the Scharnhorst’s speed fell to 10 knots, although fast work in appalling conditions by her engine room personnel saw the steam supply reconnected and speed increased again to 22 knots, and the range opened up to eleven miles. While this was happening, the British destroyers had closed on the battlecruiser, and while two on the Scharnhorst’s port quarter attracted the fire of her secondary armament, the star-shell from the destroyers also hid the approach of two more on the starboard side until they were two miles away. Scharnhorst turned abruptly to starboard to comb the tracks of any torpedoes, but the two destroyers Scorpion and Stord fired sixteen torpedoes at 18.52, and one of them struck home. The change of course gave the destroyers Saumarez and Savage their chance, and a dozen torpedoes were fired at the battlecruiser, with one of them wrecking a second boiler room and another distorting a propeller shaft. The speed of the wounded ship again fell to 10 knots.

  While the four destroyers withdrew, having attacked under fire and taken damage and casualties, the Duke of York’s gunnery radar had been repaired, while Jamaica was catching up as the German ship had changed course. Force Two now opened fire, with both ships quickly finding their range, steaming past the battlecruiser and repeatedly hitting her with armour-piercing shells. The Jamaica detached to give the Scharnhorst another torpedo attack as she slowed and her guns fell silent. Then Force One appeared, with Belfast and Norfolk ready for torpedo attack, which came at 19.18, while Force One’s destroyers were also sent into action, with two of their torpedoes striking on the port side where the bilges were already exposed. Damaged voice pipes meant that the torpedo crews aboard the destroyer Matchless missed the order to fire, but Musketeer’s torpedoes struck home. The German ship was now listing heavily to port with her crew mustered on deck ready to abandon ship. Kapitan sur See Hintze ordered them to slide into the water on the port side and not to forget to inflate their lifejackets.

  Yet, no one on the British side saw the end of this great ship, as smoke hanging over the scene obscured their view, and even when a radar operator reported that the blip was fading, he was told to retune it. More than half an hour passed before Belfast was able to confirm that the Scharnhorst had indeed been sunk. A single raft contained frozen survivors. The destroyer Scorpion picked up just thirty survivors, while Matchless picked up a further six, but 1,767 officers and men had lost their lives, including the Konteradmiral and the Kapitan sur See. The loss of so many suggests that her final moments must have seen a traumatic capsizing that trapped many of those on the port side as she rolled over, but, of course, the freezing seas would have accounted for many within minutes, especially the lightly clad men from below decks.

  The shadowing U-boats who were hoping to attack were sent on a fruitless search for survivors from the Scharnhorst.

  Had the Germans had an aircraft carrier to operate with the Scharnhorst, the outcome could have been different. It would have been far more difficult for the British cruisers to have tailed the German battlecruiser while under attack from torpedo-carrying aircraft and dive-bombers, and even the heavily armed and armoured Duke of York would have been threatened by aerial attack. Perhaps most important of all, however, would have been the intelligence available to Bey and Hintze if good aerial reconnaissance patterns had been flown. Here again, it becomes a question of experience and having sufficient aircraft, and fuel, available to fly the correct reconnaissance patterns. Even the Japanese, with all of their carrier experience, failed to fly thorough reconnaissance patterns before the Battle of Midway, and as a result missed the American carriers, with the result that they lost four of their own in just one day.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The Convoy War

  The first three years of the Second World War were characterised by Allied weakness in the North Atlantic, where there existed what was variously known as the ‘Atlantic Gap’ or the ‘Black Gap’, a stretch of sea amounting to some 850 miles, over which air cover was not available. The advent of the merchant aircraft carrier, or MAC-ship, and then the escort carrier, ended the Atlantic Gap, and the work was completed with the advent of ever longer-range maritime-reconnaissance aircraft, and most notably the Consolidated Liberator, the longest-range bomber of the war years. Aircraft fitted with radar could hunt down submarines and force them to remain submerged, making it difficult for them to track convoys effectively and virtually impossible for them to get into position ahead of a convoy.

  An aircraft carrier operating in the North Atlantic would have made it far more difficult to close the ‘Gap’. The MAC-ships would have been vulnerable as they were unable to carry any fighter aircraft to provide air cover, and even the escort carriers had such limited capacity that their fighter strength was usually small and, of course, always at the expense of a corresponding number of antisubmarine aircraft.

  As in the Battle of the North Cape, the other important role of the aircraft carrier would have been improved reconnaissance and intelligence. When convoy commodores ordered a change of course to avoid the U-boat packs, carrier-borne aircraft offered the chance to detect such changes and relay them to the U-boat commanders.

  At the same time, there would have been a risk of a ‘blue on blue’ or friendly fire incident. Aircraft carriers such as the Graf Zeppelin, would have looked similar to the British Courageous and Glorious until these were sunk.

  Supporting an aircraft carrier in the open sea would not have been an easy task, and the support vessels would also have needed protection. German plans were for four aircraft carriers initially, to be joined by four smaller ships later. The smaller ships would no doubt have been engaged in protecting the supply lines for the larger ships. A German aircraft carrier loose in the Atlantic would have been such a threat that it is likely that a carrier to carrier battle on the lines of the Battle of the Coral Sea or the Battle of Midway would have resulted. If Hitler’s promises that war would not break out until 1943 or 1944 had been fulfilled, it would not have been a case of elderly British ships or the vulnerable Ark Royal with her thin flight deck engaging the German ships, but of a fast armoured carrier such as Illustrious and her sisters engaging the German ship, which, we must bear in mind, was of dated design. The big question would have been whether, without the bitter experience of the early years of war, the Royal Navy would have procured high performance fighters for their ships.

  Basing the German carrier would have been another problem. The French ports used by the German battlecruisers would have ideal for operations in the Bay of Biscay and out into the mid-Atlantic, but vulnerable to British bombing. The Norwegian fjords offered far better protection, but again, we are comparing battlecruisers and battleships with aircraft carriers. Would a German aircraft carrier have been as safe in a Norwegian fjord as the Tirpitz? The answer is probably not, as the bombs that bounced off the Tirpitz would have damaged a carrier’s flight deck.

  On the other hand, a carrier operating out of Norway would have made the Arctic convoys to Russia even more difficult than was in fact the case. Changing course to the west to minimise the chance of attack by the Luftwaffe would have been of little value with a carrier waiting out to sea. The Germans could even have practised shuttle bombing, with aircraft flying from the carrier to shore bases and then back again, mounting an attack in each direction. Nevertheless, the reaction by the Royal Navy would have been to make use of the fleet carrier in the distant escort to counter the threat from the German carrier.

  What would have been the
fate of some of the more famous, or perhaps notorious is a better description, of the Arctic convoys?

  CONVOY PQ17

  PQ17, the convoy to the Soviet Union, sailed from Reykjavik on 27 June 1942. This was both the most famous and infamous of all the many convoys fought through the long and hazardous passage from Scotland and Iceland, on which the weather was as much a threat as the Germans. At the time, the British strategic assessment was that the situation was entirely in Germany’s favour, with naval forces operating close to their bases and supported by land-based aircraft and with a screen of U-boats. While the weather could be expected to be more benign in June than for much of the rest of the year, the long summer days and short Arctic summer nights meant that German attack could be constant.

  In the event of the Germans deploying their major surface units, the Home Fleet plan was for the unfortunate convoy to sail to the west to a position 10 degrees east, hopefully to lure the Germans on to the guns of the Home Fleet, sitting beyond any effective German aerial attack. In command of the Home Fleet, Admiral Sir John Tovey hoped that the Germans would give chase, but realised that they might well suspect a trap and return to harbour, or instead opt to hang around off the coast waiting for the convoy to return to its course, during which time they could be prey for the Allied submarines off the Norwegian coast.

  The Admiralty did not agree with Tovey’s logic, and instead proposed that in such circumstances any convoy should scatter. The logic was that many ships spread across the ocean would be far more difficult for the Germans to track down than a concentrated group of ships. Tovey’s view was that this would be ‘sheer bloody murder’, not least because in keeping together there was a degree of unity that boosted strength, since the merchantmen had shown themselves increasingly competent at contributing to the convoys’ AA defences, and also improved morale. In the end, a compromise was agreed. The Home Fleet would give its usual distant or heavy cover, while the cruiser squadron would provide a supplementary escort as far as 10 degrees east, but would be allowed to proceed beyond Bear Island to a point no further east than 25 degrees east if the convoy was threatened by ‘the presence of a force which the cruiser force could fight.’ In other words, the cruisers could face German cruisers and destroyers, but not battleships or battlecruisers, or what the British press termed ‘pocket battleships’, officially known at the outset of the war as a Panzerschiff, armoured ship, but which the Germans had by this time reclassified as heavy cruisers. Tovey’s alternative suggestion that the convoy should be split in two was also rejected, largely because the Admiralty was caught between American irritation that supplies were building up in the UK and USA, and Soviet anger that their demands were not being met.