by David Wragg
14 February – Destroyer Cossack sends boarding party onto German supply ship Altmark within Norwegian territorial waters and releases 303 British prisoners from merchant ships sunk by the Graf Spee.
31 March – First German auxiliary cruiser Atlantis, converted merchantman, commanded by Kapitan zur See Bernhard Rogge, leaves Germany for the longest cruise of the war, 622 days.
6 April – Second auxiliary cruiser, Orion, commanded by Kapitan zur See Kurt Weyher, leaves German waters.
8 April – Britain begins to mine Norwegian waters.
9 April – Germany occupies Denmark and begins invasion of Norway.
- British submarine Truant torpedoes and sinks light cruiser Karlsruhe off Norway, while heavy cruiser Blucher sunk in Oslo Fjord by Norwegian artillery.
- British battlecruiser Renown inflicts serious damage on Gneisenau putting main armament put out of action.
Mid-April – British and French troops land in Norway, Furious covers the landings and afterwards acts as an aircraft transport, Ark Royal joins her. Glorious recalled from Mediterranean.
10 April – Luftwaffe attacks Home Fleet south-west of Bergen, sinking a destroyer and causing minor damage to the battleship Rodney and the cruisers Devonshire, Glasgow and Southampton.
- First destroyer action in Narvik Fjord, with British destroyers sinking two German destroyers and several merchantmen, but two British destroyers are sunk.
- Skuas of Nos 800 and 803 Naval Air Squadrons flying from Sparrowhawk, RNAS Hatston on Orkney attack and sink the German light cruiser Konigsberg at Bergen, the first operational major warship to be sunk by naval aircraft.
11 April – Submarine Spearfish torpedoes Panzerschiff Lutzow but fails to sink her.
13 April – Second destroyer action at Narvik, often referred to as the ‘Second Battle of Narvik’, with the battleship Warspite and nine destroyers sinking the remaining eight German destroyers.
10 May – Germany invades Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Belgium and France.
15 May – Dutch forces surrender.
26 May – Operation Dynamo, the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk, begins under the command of Admiral Ramsay at Dover, continues to 4 June..
4 June – War Badge for German destroyers introduced.
8 June – Aircraft carrier Glorious caught and shelled by Gneisenau and Scharnhorst during withdrawal from Norway. Carrier and two escorting destroyers Acasta and Ardent sunk, although Acasta scores torpedo hit on Scharnhorst.
10 June – Italy declares war on France and the United Kingdom.
- Great Britain completes withdrawal from Norway.
13 June – Aircraft from Ark Royal attack Scharnhorst at Trondheim, but only one bomb hits the ship and this fails to explode.
17 June – French seek armistice, meaning that the Royal Navy is on its own in the Mediterranean.
- First U-boats refuelled in French ports.
22 June – Armistice signed by France.
27 June – Great Britain announces blockade of continental Europe.
30 June – Germany begins occupation of the Channel Islands.
3 July – Battle of Mers El-Kebir, attacking Vichy French warships near Oran after French admiral refuses to surrender. French battleship Bretagne blows up, while battleship Provence and battlecruiser Dunkerque crippled.
8 July – Aircraft from Hermes accompanied by two heavy cruisers attack Vichy French fleet at Dakar, damaging the battleship Richelieu.
19 July – U-boat sunk by 830 Squadron aircraft.
August – Great Britain allows USN use of Caribbean bases in exchange for fifty First World War-vintage US destroyers, commissioned into Royal Navy as the Town-class.
17 August – Germany announces blockade of the British Isles with unrestricted U-boat warfare.
24 August – Battleship Bismarck commissioned.
30 August – Plans for invasion of Southern England postponed.
31 August – War Badge introduced for German minesweepers, submarine hunters and naval security forces.
23–25 September – Second attack on Dakar, with heavy damage suffered by both navies. Submarines Persee and Ajax sunk by British, and destroyer Audacieux put out of action by cruiser HMAS Australia, but submarine Beveziers torpedoes Resolution while battleship Barham and cruiser Cumberland both damaged by shellfire, as are two destroyers.
17–20 October – Nine U-boats attack convoys SC7 and HX79 with a total of 79 ships, and this develops into a four day battle in which 32 ships are lost without any losses by the U-boats, who simply expend all of their torpedoes.
5 November – Armed merchant cruiser Jervis Bay sunk by heavy cruiser Admiral Scheer, but her sacrifice limits the losses in the convoy she is escorting to five ships, and earns her CO, Capt E. S. F. Fergen, RN, a posthumous VC.
11/12 November – Twenty-one aircraft fly from Illustrious to attack the Italian fleet at Taranto, putting three battleships out of action and damaging several other ships and shore installations for the loss of two aircraft. Hitler is reputedly furious at such losses without a naval battle.
1941
10 January – Illustrious attacked by Luftwaffe and badly damaged during Operation Excess, the handover of a convoy from Gibraltar to Alexandria off Malta. Ship puts into Malta for emergency repairs.
11 January – Luftwaffe attacks cruisers Gloucester and Southampton escorting four merchantmen, with Southampton having to be abandoned.
16 January – Illustrious provokes an intensified blitz during her stay in Malta for emergency repairs, reaching a peak on this day.
8–11 February – Convoy battle off Cape St Vincent after U-37 sinks two ships in convoy HG53 and also alerts the Luftwaffe, which sends five aircraft which each sink a ship. U-37 then sinks another ship, and guides in the cruiser Hipper to sink a number of stragglers before moving on to convoy SLS64 and sinking seven ships.
25 February – Battleship Tirpitz commissioned.
17 March – U-99 and U-100 sunk by British destroyers after being detected by radar, the first engagement in which radar played a vital role.
1 April – Germans introduce war badge for blockade breakers.
6/7 April – German troops attack both Yugoslavia and Greece, while the Luftwaffe bombs Piraeus blowing up a British ammunition ship that takes ten other ships with her and damages many more, putting the port out of action.
13 April – British submarine Spearfish cripples German Panzerschiff Lutzow (ex-Deutschland) in the Baltic.
23 April – Greek Army surrenders, and British Mediterranean Fleet helps in the evacuation of British forces to Crete.
24 April – Germans introduce war badge for auxiliary cruisers.
30 April – Auxiliary cruiser Thir, Kapitan zur See Otto Kahler, returns to Hamburg after a successful cruise lasting 329 days.
- Fleet war badge introduced.
8 May – HMS Cornwall sinks armed merchant or auxiliary cruiser Pinguin, the German auxiliary cruiser that sank or captured most British shipping.
9 May – U-110 captured by Royal Navy with its Enigma code-machine and books intact, giving the British access to German signals traffic.
18–27 May – Battleship Bismarck escorted by the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen makes her maiden sortie, causing the battlecruiser Hood
and the new battleship Prince of Wales to intercept. They are soon followed by the battleship King George V, the battlecruiser Repulse and the aircraft carrier Victorious. The cruisers Suffolk and Norfolk sight the German ships and proceed to track them on radar. Hood and Prince of Wales engage the German ships, but after five minutes Hood blows up. Prince of Wales is badly damaged and breaks off the fight, but Bismarck is also damaged with a fuel leak and has to divert to Brest. Late on 24 May, Swordfish from Victorious attack Bismarck. On 25 May, Force H with Renown, Ark Royal and two cruisers leaves Gibraltar. The following day, Swordfish from Ark Royal score two torpedo hits, while that night destroyers make an unsuccessful torpedo
attack. The next day, King George V and Rodney plus two cruisers engage Bismarck, and after ninety minutes she is dead in the water and on fire, later sinking.
20 May – German airborne landings on Crete leaves the Royal Navy to disrupt the follow-up seaborne invasion.
21/22 May – The cruisers Ajax, Dido and Orion with four destroyers destroys a German convoy carrying troops and munitions to Crete.
22 May – Luftwaffe attacks Mediterranean Fleet, sinking cruisers Fiji and Gloucester as well as a destroyer, damaging Warspite and cruisers Carlisle and Naiad.
26 May – Battleships Queen Elizabeth and Barham with carrier Formidable and nine destroyers attack Axis airfields in the Dodecanese, but shortage of aircraft limits the effect and the Luftwaffe seriously damages the carrier. This leaves the Royal Navy with the task of evacuating 17,000 British, Commonwealth and Greek troops from Crete.
30 May – Motor torpedo boat war badge introduced.
4 June – Kaiser Wilhelm II dies in the Netherlands.
22 June – Germany invades the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa.
24 June – Naval artillery war badge introduced.
22–25 July – To help the USSR, invaded by Germany in June, aircraft from Victorious and Furious attack Petsamo and Kirkenes north of the Arctic Circle with little success, losing fifteen aircraft.
23 August – Auxiliary cruiser Orion, commanded by Kapitan zur See Kurt Weyer, docks in France after a successful war cruise of 511 days.
28 August – U-570, Kapitanleutnant Hans Rahmlow, surrenders to an aircraft in mid-Atlantic.
September – The United States Navy starts to escort convoys as far as the mid-ocean meeting point, easing the pressure on the Royal Navy.
October – Axis losing more than 60 per cent of supplies sent from Italy to North Africa. Two light cruisers and two destroyers based at Malta as Force K.
November – Axis Mediterranean convoy losses reaches 77 per cent.
9 November – Force K from Malta, two cruisers and two destroyers, follows aerial reconnaissance report of an Italian convoy and using radar makes a surprise attack, sinking all seven merchantmen in the convoy and one out of the six escorting destroyers. By this time, the flow of men and materiel between Italy and North Africa is effectively stopped.
13 November – U-81 torpedoes Ark Royal, crippling the ship and she sinks the following day.
15 November – First purpose-built supply U-boat, U-459, Korvettenkapitan George von Wilamowitz-Mollendorf, enters service.
22 November – Devonshire sinks German armed merchant cruiser Atlantis, Kapitan zur See Bernhard Rogge, which has been at sea for 622 days.
25 November – U-331 torpedoes Barham off the coast of Libya, and as she rolls over and sinks, the battleship blows up.
29 November – HMAS Sydney sinks German armed merchant cruiser Kormoran, Kapitan zur See Theodor Detmers, which has been at sea for 350 days.
30 November – Auxiliary cruiser Komet, Konteradmiral Robert Eyssen, returns to Hamburg after 516 days at sea.
7 December – Aircraft from the Japanese carriers Akagi, Kaga, Shokaku, Zuikaku, Hiryu and Soryu send 353 aircraft in two waves to attack the US Pacific Fleet in its forward base at Pearl Harbour in Hawaii, bringing the United States into the war.
10 December – Battleship Prince of Wales and battlecruiser Repulse, with four destroyers, attacked by Japanese aircraft as they steam for Singapore, with both ships sunk.
11 December – Germany declares war against the United States.
14–23 December – A convoy battle develops off Portugal as convoy HG76 on passage from Gibraltar to the UK is attacked by twelve U-boats. The thirty-two merchantmen have Britain’s first escort carrier, Audacity, three destroyers and nine smaller warships, but the carrier’s aircraft and the escorts together manage to sink five U-boats for the cost of three merchantmen, a destroyer and the carrier herself.
1942
14 January – Auxiliary cruiser Thor leaves the Gironde estuary in France on her second war cruise.
7–15 February – Japanese forces take Singapore with its major naval base.
12/13 February – Gneisenau, Scharnhorst and Prinz Eugen leave Brest for the ‘Channel Dash’, but are detected by the British too late due to technical and organisational failures. Attacks by MTBs and destroyers are beaten off, while all six Swordfish sent to attack are shot down, for which Lt-Cdr Eugene Esmonde receives the Fleet Air Arm’s first VC posthumously.
23 February – Submarine Trident torpedoes Prinz Eugene, putting out of service for the rest of the year.
26/27 February – battlecruiser Gneisenau put out of action by bombing while at Kiel.
6 March – German attempt to attack convoy PQ12 to the USSR using the battleship Tirpitz and three destroyers is foiled by bad weather. Later, an attack by aircraft from Victorious is beaten off.
13/14 March – Auxiliary cruiser Michel successfully breaks through English Channel on the start of her first war cruise.
27 March – British commando raid on St Nazaire puts out of action the only dry dock in France capable of accommodating German battleships.
April – Heavy attacks by the Luftwaffe throughout the month see three destroyers and three submarines sunk, as well as a number of smaller vessels.
8 April – The cruiser Penelope escapes from Malta to receive repairs – she has been so badly damaged by shrapnel that she is nicknamed ‘Pepperpot’.
20 April – USS Wasp flies off forty-eight Spitfires to Malta, of which forty-seven arrive, but twenty destroyed and twelve badly damaged by air attack within minutes of landing.
- Motor torpedo boats given their own autonomous command under Kapitan zur See Rudolf Petersen.
5–8 May – British forces invade Madagascar with an initial landing at Diego Suarez, supported by the battleship Ramillies, aircraft carriers Illustrious and Indomitable, cruisers and eleven destroyers, finding weak opposition.
9 May – Eagle and USS Wasp fly off sixty-four Spitfires to Malta, of which sixty-one arrive.
- Auxiliary cruiser Stier leaves Germany on war cruise.
11 May – The Luftwaffe sinks three out of four destroyers attempting to attack an Axis convoy from Italy to Benghazi.
12–16 June – Convoy Operations Harpoon and Vigorous attempt to lift the siege on Malta, sailing from Gibraltar and Alexandria respectively. Heavy attacks are mounted by E-boats, U-boats and aircraft, so that after the loss of two merchantmen the Alexandria convoy is recalled. Four out of the six merchantmen on the Gibraltar convoy are sunk, but two get through to Malta at a cost of the cruiser Hermione and five destroyers, while another three cruisers are damaged. The Italians lose a cruiser, Trento, and the battleship Littorio is hit by bombs and torpedoes.
2–13 July – Convoy PQ17 to the Soviet Union includes thirty-four merchantmen, thirteen escorts and three rescue ships, plus a close support force of four cruisers and three destroyers, while the Home Fleet is at some distance on long-range protection with two battleships, an aircraft carrier, two cruisers and fourteen destroyers. After a Luftwaffe attack sinks three ships on 2 July, the Admiralty learns that the North Sea Combat Group with the Tirpitz and the cruisers Hipper, Lutzow and Scheer is at sea and orders the convoy to scatter. The Home Fleet prepares to intervene, but the German ships turn back. Over the next few days, heavy submarine and air attack develops, with twenty-three merchantmen and one rescue ship lost for five aircraft.
10–15 August – Convoy Operation Pedestal sees a fourteen ship convoy from Gibraltar to Malta with a heavy escort including the aircraft carriers Eagle, Furious, Indomitable and Victorious and the battleships Nelson and Rodney, seven cruisers and twenty-seven destroyers. Shortage of fuel keeps the Italian fleet in harbour, but E-boats, U-boats and the Luftwaffe attack continuously. Eagle is sunk by U-73, while the cruisers Manchester and Cairo and a destroyer are also lost, along with nine merchantmen. The cruisers Nigeria and Kenya are badly damaged. The convoy effectively lifts the siege of M
alta.
12 September – U-156, Korvettenkapitan Werner Jartenstein, sinks the troopship Laconia, but discovers that Italian prisoners of war are on board so a rescue operation is launched.
12–18 September – Convoy PQ18 to the Soviet Union is the first Arctic convoy to have an escort carrier, Avenger, with another twenty warships, to escort forty-one merchantmen. Ten merchantmen are lost to aerial attack, another three to U-boats, but the Germans lose three U-boats and forty aircraft.
27 September – Auxiliary cruiser Stier scuttled after being damaged by the US auxiliary cruiser Stephen Hopkins.
4 November – Axis defeat at El Alamein marks end of German and Italian advance in North African.
8 November – Operation Torch, the Allied landings in North Africa, supported by the United States Navy and Royal Navy. Overall command of naval forces is with Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham, and the Royal Navy covers two of the three task forces. Centre Task Force has two escort carriers, three cruisers and thirteen destroyers, while Eastern Task Force has the carrier Argus, an escort carrier, three cruisers and sixteen destroyers. The eastern flank of the invasion forces is covered by a reinforced Force H which is deployed in the western Mediterranean with the battleships Duke of York, Nelson and Rodney, the aircraft carriers Formidable, Furious and Victorious, plus three cruisers and seventeen destroyers.
31 December – Action off Bear Island as German heavy cruiser Hipper and Panzerschiff (now reclassified as heavy cruiser) Lutzow, each with an escort of three destroyers, attacks Arctic convoy JW51B, escorted by five destroyers and five other Royal Navy vessels. The escorting destroyers mount a determined resistance until reinforced by cruisers Jamaica and Sheffield, forcing the Germans to break off. Hipper hit three times and both navies lose a destroyer each.
1943
January – Hitler proposes scrapping the Kriegsmarine’s surface fleet following successive defeats.
30 January – Grossadmiral Erich Raeder resigns and is succeeded as Supreme Commander in Chief of the Kriesgmarine by Karl Dönitz.
1 February – Fast minelayer Welshman lost off Tobruk with half of her ship’s company.
2 February – Battle of Stalingrad ends with the surrender of the final pocket of German resistance, but surrender by Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus had been on 31 January.
