Warspite

by Iain Ballantyne

  Thirty-eight men managed to escape from the U-boat. I learned after the war that it was lucky anyone got out at all. Fortunately they had her watertight doors shut. She sank with her stern sticking out of the water – those that were in the front compartments didn’t make it.

  At 12.25p.m. one of the enemy destroyers the Swordfish sighted earlier emerged out of the mist ahead of the British warships. Immediately doing an about-turn, this vessel – the Hermann Kunne – was fired on by HMS Foxhound but escaped back into the mist unharmed. The Swordfish now saw the Koellner tucked behind a corner of the Ofotfiord at Djupvik, preparing to torpedo whatever came around it next. Forewarned by the spotter aircraft, which circled above, Bedouin and Eskimo came past Djupvik with their guns and torpedo tubes trained to starboard. Their weapons soon turned the Koellner into floating wreckage while the German ship’s own shells and torpedoes found no target. Not long after Warspite’s great bulk nosed around the corner, her 15-inch turrets also trained to starboard, guns at minimum elevation. Some foolish members of Koellner’s crew who had stayed behind now fired her remaining torpedoes. Arthur White, a junior rating on HMS Eskimo’s A turret gun crew, saw Warspite’s devastating response:

  There was rushing noise just like a bloomin’ express train. It put the fear of Christ in us. We wondered what the hell it was. All of a sudden this destroyer and the cliff behind blew up.2

  Two full broadsides of eight 15-inch guns and four 6-inch salvos slammed into the unfortunate German warship. Royal Marine gun layer Arthur Jones, who had been switched to No3 gun in the starboard 6-inch battery got a good view:

  One of our 15-inch shells ricocheted up the side of the mountain and, through my telescopic range-finder, I saw it hit this line of German sailors who had abandoned their ship after the earlier fight.

  As a member of the A turret gun crew, Able Seaman Banks was partly responsible for this carnage and recalled:

  Warspite had immediately turned to starboard, suspecting the enemy’s intention would be to torpedo us as we passed. As we did so we saw the enemy torpedo tracks but, due to us turning towards them and presenting a much smaller target, they missed. In the next few seconds all hell was let loose. Both A and B turrets fired and we couldn’t miss from that range. Imagine if you can, four 15-inch shells each weighing a ton, packed with high explosive, hitting a thin skinned destroyer.

  The Koellner was ripped asunder, her remains rapidly sliding beneath the cold dark waters.

  As Warspite and her destroyers approached Narvik, the rest of the German warships were either raising steam or unable to move due to damage sustained on 10 April.

  With the Kunne retreating after her brief encounter with the British force, and the frightening sound of Warspite’s heavy guns bouncing off the fiord side, the most battle-worthy German destroyers – Ludemann, Zenker and von Arnim – made haste to leave Narvik port. The four German destroyers made a charge, weaving back and forth, while the British twisted to and fro, the surface of the water erupting with shell fountains and crisscrossed with launched torpedoes. Frost on the sights together with the swirling snow and mist made aiming difficult and, although there was much sound and fury, no projectile made an impact. Now, from around three miles behind her own destroyers, the Warspite’s big guns fired again, the fiord trembling to their mighty roar. Terrifying as it was for the Germans to find themselves retreating while dodging and weaving to avoid 15-inch shells, again no hits were scored. Warspite’s aiming difficulties were compounded by her own guns enveloping the gunnery director tower with thick cordite smoke. According to Signalman Auffret, the battleship was causing more damage to herself with the back blast of her own guns than the enemy could inflict.

  We were firing directly over the bow, the turrets were trained almost fore and aft and consequently all the blast was coming back aboard. One of the forward hatches was blown off and all the blast was actually going down into the cable deck where it caused quite a considerable amount of damage.

  The battleship was forced to take evasive action when torpedoes fired at her screen of destroyers came dangerously close, one exploding right underneath but causing no damage. According to Able Seaman Banks it was around this time the old steering gremlin made its presence known.

  She gave a repeat performance of the Jutland problem. However, this time it was in the confines of a fiord, not the open sea. But it was remedied quickly enough to prevent us running ashore.

  The Germans were running out of space and their ammunition was nearly all gone. It would be pure slaughter once they were hemmed in at Narvik and Warspite closed to point-blank range. Into all this mayhem came Swordfish from HMS Furious, gamely trying to emulate the bombing success of Warspite’s floatplane. Diving in from 2,000ft, they managed near misses on Kunne and Arnim but suffered two of their number shot down. The Thiele, von Arnim, Zenker and Ludemann tried to buy more time for themselves by retreating up the Rombaksfiord which ran off to the east. The Kunne headed north up the Herjangsfiord.

  Another painting of HMS Warspite and her destroyers at Narvik, with HMS Cossack depicted leading the battleship into action. US Naval Historical Center/E. Tufnell.

  The Giese struggled to raise enough steam to leave Narvik harbour while the von Roeder was unable to move at all. The Kunne was hotly pursued by HMS Eskimo and, after the German vessel was beached and her crew fled, the Tribal Class destroyer blew her up with torpedoes.

  Back at Narvik, the Giese now tried to make a run for it and was badly knocked about by the guns of the British destroyers. Meanwhile the Warspite was lobbing shells into Narvik at the von Roeder, but failing to score any hits. The battleship’s gunners now got a target they couldn’t miss – the mortally wounded Giese drifting into their path. The Warspite swiftly demolished the German destroyer which was abandoned by her crew. Turning her guns back to the von Roeder, Warspite scored a hit but had to break off fire when Cossack, Kimberley and Foxhound stormed into Narvik harbour guns blazing. The defiant von Roeder managed to hit Cossack with four 5-inch shells before being silenced, leaving the British destroyer in such a bad way she ran aground. As Foxhound approached the von Roeder to put a boarding party aboard, the German destroyer exploded, blown up by her own crew.

  In the Rombaksfiord, the other German warships were being run to ground with ruthless efficiency. Eskimo led the chase, plunging into a smokescreen laid by the retreating Germans, closely followed by Hero, Bedouin, Icarus and Forester. With all their shells now gone, the Germans made one last desperate bid to stave off the inevitable. The Thiele ran herself aground as she turned to launch torpedoes at Eskimo, one of them managing a lucky hit which spectacularly blew off the British destroyer’s bows. Arthur White on Eskimo’s A turret saw it coming:

  As we went through, the chap that gives me the shells says ‘here Knocker look at those lines of bubbles coming’ and I said ‘you so-and-so bloody fool they’re bloody torpedoes’. There were four lines of them and there was another one coming along, a fifth one with his nose out the water and he’d gone mad, he was a maverick and he was going all over the place.

  The remaining three German destroyers ran themselves aground at the head of the Rombaksfiord and were abandoned by their crews after scuttling charges were set. The Warspite nosed into the Rombaksfiord but found her services were not needed.

  Her Swordfish was now recovered. Petty Officer Rice found his plane had sustained damage from U-64’s anti-aircraft gun:

  When we landed alongside my air gunner says ‘we’re sinking, that German must have pierced one of the floats’. Fortunately we managed to get swiftly over to the crane and were picked up right away.

  The din of battle suddenly died away, except for the crack of a German mountain howitzer on the shore trying to hit the stranded Cossack.

  Admiral Whitworth could have put ashore landing parties from his ships, but, even with the heavy guns of Warspite behind them, they would have found it difficult to hold Narvik against 2,000 elite German mountain troops. The enemy troop
s were for the moment demoralized and in total disarray, but it wouldn’t take them long to rally and any land battle would be very much on their terms. British troops were on their way, but were at least two days away. Any fierce battle in Narvik would also inevitably lead to heavy civilian casualties. Most alarming for the British Admiral was the revelation, from a captured German naval officer, that U-51 had been at Narvik when the attack began. This vessel had dived and managed to sneak away. Even now she might be preparing an attacking run against the Warspite. In addition German aircraft were seen nosing around and, in the confines of the fiord, the battleship would have been unable to manoeuvre to avoid bombs. Warspite withdrew with a protective screen of destroyers gathered around her. She returned several hours later to take aboard the wounded from the crippled British destroyers, and additional German prisoners. Throughout this delicate overnight operation Warspite’s gunners and lookouts were at maximum alert for either aircraft or submarine attack. But she was lucky and nothing materialized.

  Black smoke rises from German shipping ablaze in Narvik Harbour. Taylor Library.

  Carrying 200 wounded and eight German prisoners of war, the Warspite’s crew got to meet their enemy face to face for the first time. Able Seaman Banks remarked:

  They didn’t have two heads, nor had they horns or cloven hooves. They were just seamen like ourselves, doing a job they had been ordered to do.

  But the ordinary sailors and marines on Warspite had been specifically ordered not to consort with the enemy. ‘The six German ratings were in the cells and the two officers were kept in officers’ cabins,’ said Marine Arthur Jones.

  We were warned against fraternization with the enemy. So, naturally, there were hordes of matelots giving cigarettes and nutty to the Germans locked in the cells. They were just ordinary sailors and they seemed alright.

  Some of them were, however, the picture of Nazi arrogance, as Signalman Auffret recalled:

  Our cell place was directly underneath the cable deck and they looked at the damage and had a sort of look on their faces. They thought they’d inflicted it. They were very cocky. The feedback we got from the sentries guarding them was that they thought this defeat at Narvik was only a temporary thing. Germany would win in the next six months anyway so they weren’t too bothered about being taken prisoner. I was amazed at that because it never occurred to me that my side could lose the war.

  German prisoners after the Second Battle of Narvik, waiting to be taken to HMS Warspite against a background of sunken German naval vessels in Narvik Harbour. Wyles Collection.

  ‘The One That Got Away’. While U-64 was sunk by Warspite’s Swordfish, U-51 managed to slip away from Narvik unharmed. Specially commissioned painting by Dennis C. Andrews.

  Warspite was lucky throughout the whole Narvik operation for she made an easy, and very tempting, target for a U-boat.

  In The German Navy in World War Two Edward P. von der Porten reveals that Lieutenant Commander Herbert Schutze, one of the German Navy’s top submarine commanders, had Warspite at his mercy as she left the Vestfiord after the Narvik battle.

  ‘Two destroyers and the battleship itself were saved when the torpedoes failed again.’ Von der Porten also wrote that, on 19 April, Gunther Prien – the legendary killer of the Royal Oak – ‘found the Warspite and fired two torpedoes at her.’

  They failed to hit but one exploded near the battleship, bringing a swarm of depth-charging destroyers down on Prien. In all, von der Porten reports in his book, thirty-nine attacks on British and Allied warships and merchant vessels during the Norway campaign were failures. According to von der Porten the Warspite was subjected to a total of four U-boat attacks.

  Of German U-boat torpedo problems, Macintyre observes in Narvik:

  The magnetic pistols in the warheads were failing to function correctly owing to the differences in the earth’s magnetic field in those northern latitudes from that in German waters. Furthermore the depth-keeping mechanism of the torpedoes themselves was unreliable.

  All in all the capture of Norway in May 1940 was not a happy experience for the German Navy. While it might have managed to sink the old British carrier Glorious and her escorting destroyers, the Kriegsmarine’s losses were heavy; five cruisers in addition to the destroyers sunk at Narvik. Throughout the war the German Navy was to be badly handicapped by a lack of destroyers. Warspite and her hunting pack can be held directly responsible for that.

  Warspite stayed on in Norwegian waters to act as flagship for a task group sent up to Narvik to carry out a bombardment. This was meant to soften the Germans up before the British launched their own amphibious assault on the area. Joining Warspite in this bombardment were the cruisers Effingham, Enterprise and Aurora, with the carrier HMS Furious launching her aircraft to make another spirited, if lame, attempt at area bombing. The bombardment was conducted in atrocious weather conditions, with visibility obscured by snow storms. Very few of the German positions could be seen and firing on the town itself was barred to prevent civilian casualties. Hopes that the enemy might even surrender were, to say the least, forlorn.

  After returning to Scapa Flow, Warspite made a brief stop at Greenock to load up provisions. Narvik was a famous victory and, by the time Warspite reached the United Kingdom, news had been released to the British public, as Signalman Auffret discovered when he went on leave.

  Map: John Pearce.

  The day after we arrived back I went up to Glasgow. In those days you still had the full name of your warship on your cap rather than just H.M.S. I was sat in this train carriage and these Scottish civilians passengers were nudging each other and pointing and remarking at the name Warspite on my cap tally.

  The name Warspite was on everybody’s lips but even more glory lay ahead of her as she headed south to the Mediterranean to become Admiral Cunningham’s flagship again.

  Notes

  1 Sound Archive, Imperial War Museum.

  2 Sound Archive, Imperial War Museum.

  Chapter Seven

  CALABRIA, TARANTO & MATAPAN

  Point Blank in Alexandria

  With Italy so far electing to stay out of the war, and the German fleet firmly focused on waters nearer to home, Warspite was able to sail back to Alexandria via Gibraltar and a safe west-east passage across the Mediterranean.

  Italy entered the war on 10 June 1940, when it was becoming clear France would soon fall to Germany. Admiral Cunningham took his fleet to sea the following day, with Warspite leading a sweep along the southern coast of Crete and then off the coast of Libya. There was no sign of Italian warships or aircraft but, when the British returned to Alexandria on 14 June, they were warned that mines had been laid off the port in their absence.

  The final capitulation of France on 22 June left the Royal Navy’s strategy in ruins. The western end of the Mediterranean was no longer under the safeguard of an ally and French warships operating alongside the Royal Navy from Alexandria also ceased cooperation. The balance of naval power in the Mediterranean had, at a stroke, been tipped decisively in Italy’s favour.

  Admiral Cunningham, who used HMS Warspite as his flagship during the battles of Calabria, Taranto and Matapan. Goodman Collection.

  HMS Warspite pictured in the early part of the Second World War. US Naval Historical Center.

  Not only was the Royal Navy’s Mediterranean Fleet lacking in destroyers, submarines, minesweepers and fighter aircraft, its major ships were slow and old. The British had one key advantage as Admiral Cunningham noted:

  Our ships might be old, and there was much that we lacked. Nevertheless we had our personnel, and, through them were able to forge a weapon that was as bright and as sharp as highly-tempered steel.1

  But, even if the mettle of British sailors was undoubtedly superior to Italian matelots, the enemy fleet had fast and powerfully armed modern ships, and plenty of them. Italy’s two Andrea Doria Class battleships were nearing the end of extensive reconstructions in the summer of 1940 and by August two formidable Lit
torio Class battlewagons – armed with 15-inch guns – would enter service.

  Italian confidence was boosted by the notion that the French fleet would soon be in Axis hands and British naval power in the Mediterranean would collapse once Hitler struck across the English Channel. If the Italians had acted swiftly and aggressively with their fleet between June and November 1940 they could have used superiority in numbers and their more modern warships to deliver a killer blow. However, a series of ill-judged political appointments in senior ranks of the Italian Navy (passing over more daring and skilled naval officers) was combined with a rigid diktat that the fleet had to be kept intact ‘at all costs’ to create a crippling caution. Meanwhile the German Navy, in contrast to the timid Italians, and despite having its hands full fighting the Royal Navy in the Atlantic, was putting forward wild schemes including the capture of Gibraltar and the Suez Canal. They were plainly beyond its resources and would have needed significant participation and sacrifice by the Italians, which was unlikely.

  Admiral Cunningham realized as he contemplated the challenges facing him that taming Italian naval power could only be attempted after neutralizing the vexing question of the French vessels at anchor in Alexandria. How could the British fleet embark on offensive operations against the Italians and leave behind warships which might switch sides? On 29 June Cunningham was instructed by the Admiralty to seize the French ships at Alexandria. This operation was required to go ahead on 3 July, at the same time as the Royal Navy’s Gibraltar-based Force H, commanded by Vice Admiral Sir James Somerville, moved on Oran in North Africa to demand the surrender of other major units of the French Navy. The French Squadron at Alexandria – Force X – was under the command of Vice Admiral Godfroy who seemed an honourable man. He would probably have liked to carry on the fight were he not under orders to obey the terms of the Armistice to the letter. After tense discussions aboard Warspite, the French finally agreed to discharge oil from their warships and disarm their weapons. This agreement was secured, and held, despite great bitterness over events at Oran where Force H bombarded the French warships and killed 1,297 sailors.