by David Wragg
The next day, the remaining Sea Hurricanes and the Swordfish were again in the air, with the former breaking up further attacks. It was not until 16 September, that the Swordfish were relieved of their patrolling by shore-based RAF Consolidated Catalina flying-boats of No210 Squadron operating from Russia. The break was short-lived. Later that day, the convoy passed the homeward convoy, QP14, with the survivors of the ill-fated PQ17, and Avenger, with her aircraft and some of the other escorts transferred to this convoy. The interval had been used by the ship’s air engineering team to assemble five Sea Hurricanes, more than replacing the four lost on the outward convoy. All in all, the Sea Hurricanes had accounted for a total of five enemy aircraft and damaged seventeen others out of a total of forty-four enemy aircraft shot down. It was fortunate that the three Fairey Swordfish remained serviceable as no replacement aircraft were carried.
During the convoy, Avenger’s commanding officer, Commander Colthurst, changed the operational pattern for the Sea Hurricanes in an attempt to get the maximum benefit from his small force, having a single aircraft in the air most of the time rather than having all of his aircraft, or none of them, airborne at the same time.
Clearly, even an escort carrier with a mix of fighters and Swordfish was hard pressed to provide adequate air cover. Indeed, such a convoy could have done with two or more escort carriers, or one of the larger ships such as Nairana or Vindex, with up to fourteen Swordfish and six Wildcat fighters, a much better aircraft than the Sea Hurricane. As PQ18 approached its destination, there was no sign of the promised Red Air Force air support. The problem was that while the escort carrier had proved itself beyond any doubt, these did not become more generally available until 1943, so there were to be many more convoys without any real attempt at air cover.
The escort carrier and its aircraft would have offered little resistance to a German aircraft carrier with a decent mix of Messerschmitt Bf109 fighters and Junkers Ju87 Stuka dive-bombers, which could also have used torpedoes. The existing German aerial superiority over the convoy would have been strengthened, and HMS Avenger would have been vulnerable, not least because of her lack of armour protection and relatively low speed. The Sea Hurricanes and the Hurricane launched from the CAM-ship would have been no match for the Bf109s, although the heavy seas often found on the Arctic convoys would have made landing a Bf109 aboard a carrier difficult because of the aircraft’s weak tail section.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Conclusion
Plan Z was a dream, perhaps even just one man’s dream, Karl Dönitz. Yet, as with so much else, it had its origins in the days before the First World War. One should not be surprised by this. Governments and even systems of government may change, and even national boundaries, nations often do not. Just as Russia always wanted to extend its frontiers and gain a warm water port, regardless of whether the Tsar or the Communists held power, Germany wanted to be not just a continental power, but a maritime power, so that she could become a world power, regardless of whether the Kaiser or the Fuhrer ruled. There is no substitute, even with air power, for boots on the ground or hulls in the water, but while boots on the ground can give continental power, the hulls in the water are essential to world power, and most of all, to power projection.
Nevertheless, plans can be laid, but without the financial means and the industrial capacity to implement them, they are just so much scrap paper. There also has to be the political will to implement them. This was probably the greatest weakness in German naval planning during the Hitler era. Hitler knew first hand about armies, albeit from the viewpoint of a very junior and non-commissioned member of the Kaiser’s armies. He was seduced by air power and influenced by his friend Hermann Goering. On one occasion, after the invasion of Poland, he was treated to a private air show with wonderful aircraft and weapons, all ready to enter production. That was so much rot. The Germans lacked the means to put their ideas into production, so apart from a few significant developments such as the Messerschmitt Me262 jet fighter and Me163 rocket-powered interceptor, they had to make do with updates of aircraft which for the most part had been in service in 1939. To meet demand and avoid wasting materials, strict standardisation was enforced. Even the new technology for the U-boats came too late and in insufficient quantities.
Had a measured and balanced programme of expansion of the armed forces been started in 1933 or 1934, the German Navy would have been stronger in 1939 than was in fact the case. Nevertheless, it would still not have been the Plan Z Navy. Such progress would also have meant a smaller army and air force than did in fact exist in 1939 and 1940. After all, measured and balanced also means that other demands on the economy would not have been neglected, and indeed, the economy itself would have been a priority for the governing party at a time when the world economy itself was fragile.
That would also have meant resisting demands for territory and avoiding upsetting the neighbours, or at least deferring aggressive and unrealistic demands until, perhaps, the mid or even late 1940s.
Such policies would have been sane and practical, but Hitler was neither of these things. Even before the war, and long before the Third Reich found itself under threat and facing inevitable defeat, he refused to listen to his advisers. Policy was made almost on the trot, switching one way and then another. He was satisfied with the Sudetenland in October 1938, but wanted the rest of Czechoslovakia the following March. In January 1939, he authorised the massive programme of naval construction that was Plan Z, even denying the Army the materials it needed for its own expansion plans, and in September, Plan Z was scrapped. Sometimes, as with the balance between exports and the programme of military expansion, it was one message one day, and the direct opposite a week or two later.
This was a regime that worked on hatred. In its policies towards the Jewish population, it denied itself talent and even patriotism, for many had been Germans for generations. It even wasted scarce resources and manpower in the so-called final solution.
Had Plan Z been stripped of the inessentials and instead a programme of mainly U-boat construction proceeded with, Germany could have entered the war with a more potent and dangerous fleet than was in fact the case, but could the U-boats alone have delivered all that was expected of the Kriegsmarine? As the war progressed, increasingly it became the case that they could not. Raeder was unduly pessimistic about the value of asdic and its impact on submarine operations, but Dönitz was equally over-optimistic. As elsewhere in 1930s Germany, objectivity was lacking.
In fact, the real surprise must be that efforts were not made earlier to seize the French fleet, or encourage or bribe senior French naval officers to join the war against the British Empire. This is not so farfetched. After all, Darlan was known for his anti-British attitudes, a true Anglophobe, and there were those in France who wanted the country to change sides and ally with Germany. What was it? Suspicion about French intentions, racial superiority or even a determination to go it alone and to hell with the consequences that made Hitler reject French approaches. Certainly, they wanted the French to understand that they had been defeated, and here again the resentments of the First World War defeat probably carried more weight than reason. France as an ally might have been unreliable, as many Frenchmen wanted no truck with the Germans, but she would have offered a substantial fleet and a worldwide network of bases, second only to those offered by the British Empire.
If this seems to have been a missed opportunity, one must also take into account that at no time did anyone try to make the Axis a truly significant and workable alliance. Mussolini did as he wished, as did the Japanese, but so too did the Germans, concluding a secret pact with the Soviet Union on the eve of war, even though this was bound to anger and alienate the Japanese.
APPENDIX I
Comparison of Commissioned Ranks
Reichsmarine/Kriegsmarine and Royal Navy
Normally, new appointments were announced during the summer and appointments or reorganisations took effect on 1 October each year when a new Rangliste o
r rank list was published, but given the upheavals of the 1920s, sometimes this was not possible.
These ranks would have been suffixed with the following specialist designations:
Different titles were used for doctors.
Chronology of the Reichsmarine/Kriegsmarine
It is clear that even at the moment of defeat and the armistice, elements in the Imperial German Navy were planning its resurrection, and planning for a new service was in hand even during the days of the Weimar Republic.
The term ‘total war’ was an accurate description of the war at sea. There has been much written since about what the British called the ‘phoney war’, and the Germans called the Sitzkrieg or ‘sitting war’ between the outbreak of war in September 1939 and the German invasion of Denmark and Norway in April 1940, but at sea there was no such period, with the first loss being on the first day of war, the British liner Athena. In just a fortnight of war being declared, the first major warship to be lost was the aircraft carrier HMS Courageous, torpedoed by U-29 in the Western Approaches.
1918
11 November – an armistice ends the First World War.
21 November – all remaining German warships surrendered. As a last act on abdication, the Kaiser awards all men who served in the light cruiser Emden, which had an exemplary war record, the right to add the name of the ship to their surname, even though he was not legally entitled to do this at the time.
1919
31 March – Admiral Adolf von Trotha appointed Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Kaiserliche Marine or Imperial Navy.
21 June – Seventy ships of the German fleet interned at Scapa Flow in Orkney with skeleton maintenance crews aboard scuttled.
1920
8 August – Foundation of the National Socialists’ Workers Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiter Partei, NSDAP), which became known as the Nazis because the Socialists were nicknamed Sozis.
30 August – Admiral Paul Behncke appointed Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Kaiserliche Marine.
1921
1 January – Imperial Navy, Kaiserliche Marine, is renamed State Navy, Reichsmarine.
11 April – Reichsmarine standard hoisted for the first time.
21 July – Senior United States Navy officers angered when the United States Army Air Corps sinks the former German battleship Ostfriesland using just six bombs dropped from an aircraft.
13 December – The Washington Naval Treaty is signed and takes effect in 1922.
31 December – Imperial Navy ensign lowered for the last time, but hoisted annually on 31 May to commemorate those who died in the First World War.
1924
January – Light cruiser Berlin, commanded by Fregattenkapitan Paul Wolfgang von Ditten, left Kiel for a two month cruise to the Azores, Madeira, Canaries and Spain – the first post-war cadet training cruise to go beyond the Baltic.
October – Admiral Hans Zenker appointed Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Reichsmarine.
Squadron of battleships visits Spain while Berlin embarks on her second cruise in Atlantic waters.
1925
7 January – Light cruiser Emden launched in Wilhelmshaven – Germany’s first major warship built after the First World War.
April – Admiral Konrad Mommsen appointed as Fleet Commander, a position left vacant since the end of the First World War.
- Survey ship Meteor commanded by Fregattenkapitan Fritz Spiess left on South Atlantic survey that lasted until May 1927.
26 April – General Paul von Hindenburg, victor against the Russians at Tannenberg in 1914 and a former Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the General Army Staff, elected President. He wanted to restore the Kaiser.
August – Light cruiser Hamburg, commanded by Fregattenkapitan Groos departed Wilhelmshaven for first German post-war circumnavigation.
September – Light cruiser Berlin under Kapitan zur See Ernst Junkermann departed on a cadet training cruise around South America.
1926
14 November – The new light cruiser Emden under command of Kapitan zur See Richard Foerster departed Wilhelmshaven for a world tour cadet training cruise.
1927
December – Light cruiser Berlin commanded by Kapitan zur See Carl Kolbe departed for a training cruise to the Far East and Australia.
1928
1 October – Admiral Erich Raeder appointed Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Reichsmarine.
December – Light cruiser Emden, commanded by Kapitan zur See Lothar von Arnauld de la Periere departs for world cadet training cruise.
1929
13 May – Light cruiser Emden returns from world cruise and entire company of cadets is transferred to the new light cruiser, Karlsruhe, Kapitan zur See Eugen Landau, for shakedown cruise through Mediterranean and then around Africa.
1930
December – Light cruiser Emden, commanded by Fregattenkapitan Robert Witthoeft-Emden, departed for cruise to Africa and Far East.
1931
31 May – Panzerschiff (‘pocket battleship’) Deutschland launched. November – New light cruiser Karlsruhe, commanded by Kapitan
zur See Erwin Wassner, departs on cadet training cruise to South America and Alaska.
1933
January – German embassies in London, Paris and Washington have naval attaches for the first time since the end of the First World War.
30 January – Hindenburg appoints Hitler as Chancellor.
14 March – Black, red and gold striped jack inset in the naval ensign removed by order of Reich President Hindenburg.
1934
3 June – Panzerschiff Admiral Graf Spee launched.
1935
16 March – Hitler rejects treaty of Versailles and reintroduces conscription.
21 May – Reichsmarine renamed Kriegsmarine.
18 June – Anglo-German Naval Agreement signed in London. Also known as London Naval Agreement.
29 June – U-1, the first new submarine since the end of the First World War, commissioned.
27 September – Karl Dönitz appointed chief of the First U-Boat Flotilla with effect from 1 October. Flotilla named after First World War U-boat commander Otto Weddigen.
7 November – New naval ensign incorporating swastika hoisted officially for the first time.
1936
7 March – Rhineland reoccupied by the German Army.
30 May – First phase of the Naval Memorial at Laboe, near Kiel, completed and officially opened by Adolf Hitler, who laid the first wreath in the Hall of Commemoration.
18 July – Spanish Civil War begins.
3 October – Battlecruiser Scharnhorst launched.
1937
6 February – Heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper launched.
8 June – Heavy cruiser Blucher launched.
1938
4 February – Hitler appoints himself Supreme Commander-in-Chief of all of the armed forces, and servicemen of all ranks swear an oath of allegiance to him personally.
13 March – Austria incorporated into the Reich.
28 March – Spanish Civil War ends with victory for the Nationalists.
21 May – Battlecruiser Gneisenau launched.
22 August – Heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen launched.
September – Plan Z formulated.
29 September – Munich Agreement signed allowing Germany to incorporate the Czechoslovak territory of the Sudetenland into the Reich. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain returns home proclaiming ‘Peace in our time.’
8 December – Aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin launched.
1939
27 January – Hitler formally approves Plan Z.
14 February – Battleship Bismarck launched.
15 March – German troops march into Czechoslovak regions of Bohemia and Moravia.
1 April – Battleship Tirpitz launched.
- Erich Raeder promoted to Grossadmiral (Grand Admiral or Admiral of the Fleet), the first officer to hold this rank since the end of
the First World War.
28 April – Hitler renounces Anglo-German Naval Agreement.
22 May – Treaty of mutual military support signed by Germany and Italy.
18 August – German Naval High Command orders emergency war programme to begin.
19 August – First U-boats leave German ports to take up wartime stations in the North Atlantic.
21 August – Panzerschiff Graf Spee leaves Germany to take up her position in the South Atlantic.
22 August – A mutual non-aggression pact signed between Germany and the Soviet Union – the von Ribbentrop-Stalin Pact.
24 August – Panzerschiff Deutschland leaves Germany to take up war position in North Atlantic.
1 September – German troops reoccupy Polish territories that had been removed from Germany and granted to the new Polish Republic by the Treaty of Versailles.
3 September – Britain and France declare war on Germany after an ultimatum expires.
13 September – U-boat badge reintroduced with up-dated design with the old imperial crown replaced by the swastika.
17 September – Aircraft carrier Courageous torpedoed by U-29 and sunk.
- Soviet forces invade the eastern regions of Poland without opposition from Great Britain or France.
26 September – Dornier Do18 flying-boat shot down by Blackburn Skua from Ark Royal, the first German aircraft to be shot down in the war.
14 October – Battleship Royal Oak torpedoed by U-47 at Scapa Flow and sunk.
November – Panzerschiff Deutschland renamed Lutzow on orders from Hitler, fearing the effect on morale if she is sunk.
23 November – Armed merchant cruiser Rawalpindi sunk by German battlecruisers Gneisenau and Scharnhorst while protecting convoy off Iceland.
13 December – Battle of the River Plate in which cruisers Ajax, Achilles and Exeter inflict serious damage on the ‘pocket’ battleship Admiral Graf Spee, which seeks refuge in Montevideo, but returns to sea and is scuttled on 17 December.
1940
