CHAPTER 6
The Battle of 20° East
The Wolfsschanze, East Prussia, 4 July 1942
Goring was riding high. If this had been anywhere else, he would have ordered the best champagne to celebrate the Luftwaffe’s unparalleled successes in what was to be called the Battle of Bear Island. But Hitler was a puritanical teetotaler, and you would wait a long time to see anything more interesting than a glass of water at his table.
Hitler might as well have had a bottle or two, though, so high was he on the roll of victories that were flowing into his communications centre. The convoy was all but destroyed and a large flight of planes from an aircraft carrier shot out of the sky. ‘See, Goring, See! I foretold how dangerous the aircraft carriers would be. If it had not been for my admonition, they would have sunk every one of our ships!’1
He was rubbing his hand at the booty that Carls’s ships were taking among the wreckage of the convoy. The admiral had detached the light cruiser Nürnberg and three destroyers to finish off what was left of the convoy escort and take the surrender of the remaining ships that could not outrun them. Incomplete reports indicated a dozen or so ships had been sunk or were sinking. A half dozen more scuttled themselves when it looked like the Germans would capture them. The rest were being rounded up and boarded by prize crews. The biggest prize was the oiler Aldersdale. Only one ship had put up a fight to the very end, the Soviet tanker Azerbaijan. It continued to attempt to outrace the German destroyer sent after it and, when overtaken, its largely female crew depressed their antiaircraft guns to fight it out. The destroyer’s 12.7cm guns settled the matter quickly, and when the prize crew came on board, there was no one alive except a few very badly wounded women. Before the German sailors could inspect the ship, it shuddered from an internal explosion, its hull burst open, and a river of bright yellow linseed oil gushed into the sea.2
Hitler just shook his head, ‘Such racial filth to use women to fight.’ Goring thought to himself that it was actually an example of defiant courage at its best. This flicker of chivalry was all that was left of the gallant WWI fighter ace, now a morphine-addicted brute.
But Hitler had not lost the thread of the operation. He was speaking to Dönitz on the phone at the Admiralty in Berlin. ‘What is Carls doing, now? There are still carriers out there, are there not?’
‘Yes, mein Führer, but according to the JG 26 report, they destroyed almost all of the British planes. Victorious is without any aircraft. It might as well be sunk as far as this battle is concerned.’
‘Well, what about the American carrier?’3
Five miles due east of Bear Island, 4 July 1942
Yes, what indeed about the American carrier? Carls’s ships had turned about after arriving at the scene of the convoy’s destruction and headed back the way they had come to rescue Lützow and Scheer in their battle with Hamilton’s cruisers. He had been surprised by the air attack that Priller had just barely intercepted. The American carrier, with twice as many planes as Victorious, was still out there. But where? He had ordered Meyer’s group to patrol in the direction that the British planes had come from on the assumption that the American planes would follow the same flight path. He was now racing in that direction in any case to come to the aid of his two hard-pressed cruisers. That would put him within cover range of Meyer’s planes, but they could not linger long. He must see off the British cruisers and sail for home. By then the third group from JG 26 should be in the air to cover his ships. A lot of assumptions, he thought to himself.
Still, it was an immensely successful operation in general, though disappointing in that the one light cruiser and three destroyers he had left behind were the only part of the surface fleet that had done anything, and in the end that was nothing more than sweeping up after the Luftwaffe and the U-boats, who would be insufferable in boasting of their laurels. If anything the reputation of the surface fleet would diminish with this victory.
There was still time to pluck a few of those laurels for his big ships if he could sink those enemy cruisers.
A hundred miles to the southwest, instead, it was the U-boats that saw another chance to gather laurels. U-boat Flotilla 10 fresh from Lorient, France, was patrolling in wolf packs of six boats the approaches to Bear Island along the path most likely to be taken by the Home Fleet. Their positioning was astute, and the Home Fleet sailed right into the patrol screen of the wolf pack, consisting of U-155, U-166, U-172, U-506, U-509, and U-514. The signal of the sighting went out and included the information that one carrier’s deck was full of aircraft.4
The Allied destroyers quickly detected the Germans and pounded on them in a furious depth-charge attack before any of them could lay a good firing plot. Antisubmarine aircraft launched from both carriers to join the hunt. The first kill went to the British. Depth charges burst open U-506 sending the telltale huge oily bubbles, debris, and the ultimate sign of a kill — bodies — to the surface. Leaving three destroyers behind to keep the U-boats occupied, the Allied capital ships continued on at 28 knots sweeping past the slower submarines and screened by the remaining escorts still throwing depth charges. They were going somewhere fast.5
Ten miles due east of Bear Island, 4 July 1942
That somewhere was southeast of Bear Island across the expected path of the German ships returning to their bases in Norway. The frantic radio messages in the clear from the convoy begging for help had stopped. Tovey realized that disaster had overtaken the merchant ships. There was only one chance to retrieve something from this debacle and that was to do just what Churchill had demanded — put the Germans on the bottom.
He had hoped that the two carrier strike groups might find Tirpitz and the other ships and hurt them enough to give his own battleships and cruisers an advantage. But now he was getting news of the decimation of the British strike group. It was going to be up to the Americans.
Wasp’s strike group had come in on a longer, different route than Victorious’s ill-fated planes. A few miles ahead they could see the German ships steaming south in two parallel columns. The sixteen Vindicators climbed to dive-attack altitude as the fifteen Devastators dropped to run above the water. There were only a half dozen F4F fighters because Tovey had no knowledge that the Fw 190s had joined Luftflotte 5. The naval Enigma remained unreadable, and the Luftwaffe Enigma had nothing to say about it. In any case, events were moving faster than messages could be decoded.
Carls, on the other hand, was by now completely aware that there was another swarm of planes out there. The Luftwaffe reconnaissance aircraft shadowing the convoy had been directed to cover the German ships to the west and southwest. One of them, a lumbering Focke Wulf 200 Condor reconnaissance bomber, sighted the incoming American strike force and radioed it immediately to Carls as well as the patrolling group from JG 26.
Tirpitz had been repeatedly briefed to the American crews as the prime target. Now the huge ship with its long guns was easily picked out, heading south at high speed. Heavy cruiser Hipper followed. The Americans attacked with torpedo-bombers first to pull German attention to the deck and then the dive-bombers. The lessons of Midway where just such an approach, albeit entirely by accident, had devastated the Japanese carrier force, had not been lost on the crews of the American carrier wings.
Carls had already pulled in his destroyer screen tight around his big ships to mass their antiaircraft fire. Every antiaircraft gun on every ship was fully manned and ready for action. Every man was at his defence against air attack or battle damage station. So it was when the Americans pounced they were met by well-aimed and concentrated fire. The slow Devastators were the first to feel it. Their limping speed attracted the fire of the escorts, and here and there they began to fly apart and crash into the water, spewing debris. The crew of the destroyer Karl Galster cheered as one of the Devastators skimmed right over it in flames to crash on its port side. The crew of the Friedrich Eckoldt were also cheering as another torpedo-bomber burst into flames several hundred yards to starboard.
Their cheers turned to panic when they saw that the explosion that had killed the plane had also released its torpedo to bounce into the sea, submerge and run. There was no time to escape, and the torpedo struck Eckoldt amidships. Its engines crippled, it caught fire and fell away from the battle group.
Seven torpedo-bombers survived to get close enough to Tirpitz to drop their fish. Three were badly aimed and simply missed. Tirpitz’s captain pulled his ship hard to port to dodge another two which left their white wakes streaking just past the ship’s turning bow. He was not fast enough to dodge a third torpedo which struck the stern.
The dive-bombers had lined up 4,000 feet above Tirpitz and wheeled over one by one to dive into the attack. The trick worked just as it had at Midway. No one on the ships saw them coming. The first Vindicator, piloted by the squadron commander, made a perfect hit on the deck ahead of A turret. The bomb crashed through the thin deck armour and exploded in the storage spaces below, sending a cloud of debris and flames a hundred feet into the air. The second bomb fell immediately to the port side and exploded. On any riveted ship, that would have split the armour belt and hull plates, but Tirpitz’s welds held.6
The third Vindicator pilot never got to find out if he would have hit the ship. A Fw 190 caught him with a burst of fire just as he was about to release his bomb. Dead at the controls, he fell into the sea. Meyer’s group had arrived, drawn immediately to the defence of Tirpitz by the Condor’s warning. The Americans did not have a chance. Galland did not hang back and quickly found one of the four Wildcat fighters flying in to protect the dive-bombers. He deftly got on the enemy’s tail, closed up, and fired. The Wildcat flamed and went down. He looked about for another target, but the feral Fw 190s had hunted everything out the sky it seemed; only three Vindicators and two Devastators were to survive that action of the thirty-one aircraft that had begun the attack.
They too would have been shot out the sky had not Meyer’s group also been short of fuel. Meyer called them back as the Americans fled southwest. As his group departed, they flew past Tirpitz, and each Fw 190 shook its wings in salute. Galland brought up the rear, elated with the performance of his old command, but looking down on the battleship he was unsettled to see fire burning from a gaping hole in its forward deck and oil trailing from its stern.
Five miles southwest of Bear Island, 4 July 1942
Tirpitz and its companions continued sailing to the sound of battle. Carls could see the smudge of smoke from the stricken Lützow and another smoke cloud beyond. The cruiser was making only 5 knots and still absorbing round after round from the two American cruisers.
Scheer’s fight against the two British cruisers was going better. Norfolk was out of action and listing from holes smashed in its hull by the German’s 11-inch shells; fires sent their smoke upwards for Tirpitz to observe. Scheer had turned all its attention now to London, which kept closing the distance.
Hamilton had that pugnacious English battle sense that propelled him to come to grips with the enemy. He would destroy Scheer if he had to ram it. Suddenly his ship was straddled by enormous geysers of water. A 15-inch salvo from Tirpitz 14 miles away found his range. The bridge was blown into fragments that fell like hail into the surrounding sea. Another round plunged through the deck and into the engine room smashing everything and killing everyone. Fires leapt from severed fuel lines. It would not be long before the fires reached the magazines, but there was no one left to order them flooded. The men on the bridge of the Tirpitz watched as they saw the strike of each round glow orange and red on its victim. There was that almost but not quite restrained pleasure of a well-struck blow. Then the magazines blew.
Wichita and Tuscaloosa were now alone against the entire German surface fleet. They had pounded Lützow into a flaming wreck that was not long for the surface, but with Tirpitz and Hipper coming down from the northeast and Scharnhorst, Gneisenau and Prinz Eugen coming down on a parallel course four miles away, they were about to become the meat in a German sandwich. Captain Hill’s big moment had come.
As the senior of the two American cruiser captains, he ordered Tuscaloosa to follow and swing hard to port until they were heading straight for the Germans. A signalman rushed up to the bridge to hand him a message. It was from Tovey to HMS London; the communications room had deciphered it. It read: ‘Proceed southeast to 72° 30′ North, 20° East. It is imperative you delay enemy as long as possible.’
Hill could only think that as long as possible was only minutes away. Splashes from Scharnhorst‘s guns were already leaping from the water around them as the German ship ranged in on them. Scharnhorst and its sister Gneisenau were in effect battleships with 11-inch rather than 15-inch guns. While Hill had been able to pound it out with Lützow because of its thin armour, he would have no chance at all against their 14-inch belt and turret armour. At best he could sting them. And that’s what he did by his rapid turn. He crossed the ‘T’ of the German Battlegroup 3 coming towards him line ahead and concentrated the fire of his two ships on Scharnhorst. Eighteen guns roared as their almost 400-pound projectiles converged on the German ship. Three struck. Yet, the 32,000-ton behemoth just kept coming. Its forward turrets fired, and their shells straddled Wichita. They had the cruiser’s range; the next salvo would hit.
Hill had sent the two remaining destroyers, HMS Somali and USS Wainwright, on a desperate torpedo run at the oncoming German ships. Already Scharnhorst was turning its column to present its guns broadside as the destroyers closed at 32 knots, their engines straining for everything they could give. Their torpedoes splashed and ran towards the Germans as the destroyers turned away. The battleship turned quickly aside to let the torpedoes pass but in doing so was unable to train its guns for the killing salvo on Wichita.
But the attack sacrificed Wainwright which was struck repeatedly by 12.7cm shells from the German destroyers. One shell hit at the waterline, flooding forward compartments. Another cut through to an ammunition storage area and exploded starting a fire. Others burst on the starboard boat davit, the port motor whaleboat, in the galley, scullery, engine room, after crew’s berthing compartment, and the forward stack. Fires raged through the sinking ship among the dead and wounded. Its own little 5-inch aft turret kept firing as long as the gun could bear. The captain, Lieutenant Commander Thomas L. Lewis, was the last man alive on the bridge as the destroyer went under.7
Gneisenau‘s guns joined the fight, then Prinz Eugen’s. Lieutenant Fairbanks on Wichita‘s bridge had a ringside seat for everything that was happening, his chronicle for now forgotten. He saw Gneisenau’s first round hit on Tuscaloosa that smashed its aft battery. Then the sea around Wichita erupted as Tirpitz and Hipper joined in. Only the cruiser’s swift manoeuvring was able to make it dodge every hit. Tuscaloosa was not so nimble or lucky. Two of Tirpitz‘s 15-inch shells struck amidships and exploded. The cruiser gushed flames and black smoke, slowed and began to list. Where the shells had hit was a gaping red inferno that was spreading beneath decks. The captain ordered the magazines flooded, then ‘Abandon Ship!’ The lifeboats had all been shattered, but desperate men leapt into the frigid water. Others tried to help the wounded who filled the companion ways. Now shells from the other German ships struck home one after another until Tuscaloosa turned over and sank.
Captain Hill got the last hit in. One of Wichita‘s shells struck Scharnhorst’s bridge, a perfect shot through the armoured viewing aperture, wiping out the entire command group, including Admiral Ciliax. It was the resulting confusion from the now leaderless Battlegroup 3 that allowed Wichita to flee at top speed southeast to rendezvous with brave Somali.8
Carls took a moment now to reassess the situation. His fleet had succeeded in its mission. At least fifteen of the Allied merchant ships had been captured and were sailing to Narvik in convoy with Nürnberg and three destroyers. The rest of the convoy was on the bottom or burning and about to sink. His surface fleet had destroyed three of the enemy’s heavy cruisers and two destroyers compared to the loss of his own
heavy cruiser Lützow and one destroyer, and moderate damage to Tirpitz and Scharnhorst.
He watched as Lützow burned and finally capsized. His destroyers had transferred the surviving crew as well as scouring the surrounding water for the crews of the sunk British and American cruisers. His staff urged him to leave the destroyers behind to do this or simply abandon the enemy survivors as the British had done to the Bismarck‘s crew, of whom all but 114 out of 2,200 had perished. Most died of hypothermia. A U-boat and a trawler were only able to find three men still alive. The British had claimed that they had spotted a U-boat and thus could not risk their ships while stopping to pick up German survivors. That excuse had stunk to high heaven the Germans thought. Carls put a firm stop to that line of thinking. ‘Meine Herren, may I remind you that the German Kriegsmarine fights a knightly war. We will save these men, and let it be a reproach to the English.’9
72° 30′ North, 19° 45′ East, the Norwegian Sea, 4 July 1942
Just to prove that life is unfair, Carls’s chivalry was going to cost him dear. After the fight with the cruisers, the time it took to rescue survivors proved costly. It was as if, by lingering at the site of his victory, he was trailing his coat past both the Royal and US Navies. It was time that Tovey used to position the Home Fleet right across Carls’s way home. Tovey had calculated the most direct route from the last sighting of the German fleet as it sank Hamilton’s cruisers and then marked just where he wanted to be to intersect it — right on the meridian of 20° East.
Carls’s staff and the captain of the Hipper, Karl Topp, remonstrated with him but to no avail about the dangers of remaining in the area. Topp was outspoken, ‘With respect, the enemy carriers have not been accounted for. They are still out there and able to launch more strikes.’
Disaster at Stalingrad Page 11