Hunt the Bismarck

by Angus Konstam

  This has sometimes been portrayed as a lost opportunity, as the odds still favoured the Germans.27 However, the fleet commander’s orders were clear: on no account was he to engage an enemy of equal strength. Thus, he had no choice. Fortunately for Lütjens, the British only spotted Scharnhorst, and incorrectly identified her as the Admiral Hipper. So, the British remained unaware that Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were at large in the North Atlantic.

  The two German battlecruisers regrouped and two days later Lütjens began searching for another convoy. However, a fuel contamination problem on Gneisenau and the worsening weather meant a contact was becoming increasingly unlikely. In response, he pulled back north again, to another tanker rendezvous area code named Point Blue. There, on 14 February, the Schlettstadt and the Esso Hamburg refuelled the two warships, and once more Lütjens turned south.

  The next few days were frustrating for him. Single ships were spotted, but at first Lütjens kept his distance from them, hoping to fall on an entire convoy. As it turned out, on reaching a point off the Canadian coast, that westbound convoy scattered and the ships continued on to their destination ports, which meant that the Germans were too far west.

  Nevertheless, on 20 February they came across a cluster of unescorted ships to the west of Newfoundland, and sank five of them.28 One, however, the Kantara, managed to send off a sighting report, which meant the British now knew where the Germans were. Having been told by German naval intelligence that British battleships were out looking for him, Lütjens decided to move well out of the way. He steamed away to the south and west, heading across the Atlantic towards the African coast. On 27–28 March he refuelled at another prearranged rendezvous point, then continued on to the south-east. His objective was the Sierra Leone Route, a sea lane leading from West Africa to the Western Approaches. By 8 March, Lütjens was 350 miles north of the Cape Verde islands, and lying astride the convoy route. It was there that his lookouts spotted a lone aircraft – a Walrus floatplane. This could only have come from a sizeable British warship, which meant a convoy was close by, and it was well protected.

  In fact, the Walrus belonged to the battleship Malaya, which was escorting the northbound Convoy SL67 from Freetown. Later that day, the lookouts on the British battleships saw the two German battlecruisers almost 20 miles away to the north-east.29 Lütjens saw the convoy too, and her powerful escort. Once again, his orders forced him to turn away. Within half an hour, contact had been lost. The only consolation prize for the Germans was that the next day, 9 March, they came upon a lone British merchant ship, which they sank as they steamed past. Two days later, they reached another rendezvous point and refuelled from the two tankers waiting there. This time, Lütjens took them with him, to help him widen his search area. His plan was to have another go at the sea lanes off Newfoundland, hoping that by now the British battleships had moved somewhere else.

  He was only half right. The battleships Ramillies and Revenge were still based in Halifax, and were protecting eastbound convoys as far as the mid-Atlantic, where cover could be provided by land-based aircraft and the rest of the Home Fleet.30 The battleships Rodney and King George V had also been sent to the area, and were patrolling the area off the Newfoundland Banks. Further to the north, the Home Fleet commander Admiral Tovey was in Rodney’s sister ship Nelson, waiting off Iceland in case Lütjens tried to make a run back through the Denmark Strait. So, if Lütjens made one wrong move, his ships could easily sail into a trap. At first, everything went his way. On 15 March, he came upon another dispersed westbound convoy and sank six merchant ships. The following day, he encountered more of them, and ten more freighters were sunk.

  These actions attracted the attention of the battleship Rodney. She appeared just as dusk was approaching, and Lütjens immediately turned his two battlecruisers away. Rodney carried nine 16in. guns, and so had the firepower to wreak havoc on the German force. Once again, though, Lütjens ordered his ships to turn away, and contact was lost as night fell. So, for the third time in five weeks, the German battlecruisers avoided a fight. It was now clear that the British were throwing a lot of resources into protecting their convoy routes. Lütjens duly headed away to the east, hoping to have better luck in the mid-Atlantic. Then, on 17 March, SKL ordered him to break off his cruise and make for Brest.31 Clearly, Grossadmiral Raeder had fresh plans for both the battlecruisers and the fleet commander. On 18–19 March, the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau refuelled at sea for the last time, and Lütjens detached his two tankers so they could make their own way home when the chance arose. Then he set a course for Brest.

  Initially, everything went smoothly. Then, on 20 May, the two German warships were spotted by a Swordfish biplane flying an air search mission from the British aircraft carrier Ark Royal. She was part of Vice-Admiral (V. Adm.) Somerville’s Force H, which was normally based in Gibraltar. Somerville was ordered north to join in the search for the German task force, and set off in the battlecruiser Repulse, accompanied by the Ark Royal and two cruisers. The sighting was made when Lütjens was roughly 750 miles west-south-west of Brest, and 600 miles from Cape Finisterre, at the north-western tip of Spain. That meant the German battlecruisers were a little over a full day’s sailing from their destination. Somerville’s Force H was 160 nautical miles to the south-east, which was just too far away to launch an air strike. Only by increasing speed could his carrier get into position to launch her planes before dark.

  The trouble was, the Swordfish that spotted the two German ships had a broken radio.32 This meant that it had to fly back to the Ark Royal before it could report the sighting. In the meantime, the wily Lütjens turned away to the north to try to fool the airmen into thinking that he was actually heading back to the Denmark Strait. Then, under cover of the night, he turned east towards Brest. The British, however, weren’t prepared to give up the chase. Force H thundered northwards at top speed, while off Iceland Admiral Tovey in Nelson, now reinforced by the battleship Queen Elizabeth and the battlecruiser Hood, set off to the south, hoping to meet Lütjens somewhere to the west of Ireland.

  By then, it was too late. The Germans were just out of reach. On the evening of 21 March, a Lockheed Hudson of Coastal Command’s 220 Squadron confirmed the worst: the German battlecruisers had been spotted just 170 miles west of Brest, heading towards the French coast. They were now well within range of German land-based air cover, and any chance of intercepting them had evaporated. The following morning, 22 March, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau arrived in Brest, as German fighters circled overhead. So, Operation Berlin came to an end. It was the most successful Kriegsmarine commerce-raiding operation of the war. In the two-month cruise, the two German warships had sunk or captured 22 Allied ships, displacing 115,622 tons.33 It was a remarkable achievement, and Lütjens was feted as Germany’s new naval hero.

  Looking to the future

  If this weren’t achievement enough, the operation also achieved its main strategic goal. For those two months, the British had been forced to divert convoys, or keep hundreds of merchant ships waiting in friendly ports until the German threat had been dealt with or went away. These Atlantic convoys were like a giant conveyor belt, transporting vital war supplies, foodstuffs and troops along the sea lanes. Everything worked according to a tight schedule and, like modern air travel, any delay had a knock-on effect on other passages. So, as convoys were held back or diverted, the whole gigantic system began to falter. As a result, hundreds of thousands of tons of supplies never got through, and troops bound from Canada to Britain or from Britain to the Middle East had to remain cooped up in their troopships. This was ‘sea denial’ in action. Operation Berlin had done exactly what Grossadmiral Raeder wanted. Now, if he could repeat the operation, and this time add the new battleship Bismarck to the Atlantic task force, then he might cause irreparable damage to that maritime conveyor belt.

  To do so, however, relied on several elements falling into place. First, it presupposed that Bismarck could successfully break out into the North Atlantic, ideal
ly with at least one other warship sailing in consort with her. The heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen was the obvious choice.34 This sister ship of the Admiral Hipper was ready for operations, and while her range was less than that of the battleship, she would still prove a useful addition to the force. The next element was that the German warships in French ports – most notably the Scharnhorst and the Gneisenau – were ready for action. The Admiral Hipper was another possible addition to the force. Then, once Bismarck and any consort successfully reached the North Atlantic, the two battlecruisers would also have to break out from Brest and then rendezvous with Bismarck at a prearranged spot somewhere in the Atlantic. The one element that was already decided was the name of the fleet commander: there was absolutely no question that Günther Lütjens was the man for the job.

  It was clear that fortune had smiled on the fleet commander. The sighting by Naiad might easily have led to the bulk of the Home Fleet catching the German force before the operation had properly started. Then, at every turn, Lütjens seemed to second-guess the British moves, and managed to keep out of harm’s way. Even the three encounters with battleship-armed convoys could have ended in damage to one or more of his battlecruisers, but in each case his swift reaction by turning away avoided any such outcome, while the sighting by the Swordfish from Ark Royal might under different circumstances have resulted in the launch of a carrier strike. Instead, a faulty wireless set meant this never happened. Finally, thanks to Lütjens’ expert planning, the system of placing tankers at key points around the North Atlantic worked to perfection. Now it was time to repeat the operation on a larger scale.

  Soon, however, the grand plan began to unravel. The Admiralty asked the Royal Air Force for their help in neutralising the threat posed by this assemblage of German warships. While Bismarck and Prinz Eugen were in the Baltic, and therefore out of range, Brest was only 160 miles from airfields in the south-west of England. The Kriegsmarine was acutely aware of this, and although both battlecruisers needed a refit before they were ready for sea, the Germans were keen to send them as soon as possible, and if necessary to return them to Germany by way of the Denmark Strait. It turned out, though, that Scharnhorst needed a more extensive refit than previously thought, and so it would be June before she could leave the French port. Gneisenau, by contrast, would finish her refit in early May, and so would be available for the next big sortie.

  RAF Coastal Command had tried and failed to hit the battlecruisers when they first arrived in Brest. Then, reports from the French Resistance indicated that they were both undergoing refits, and so would be there for several weeks.35 This bought the RAF time to plan the operation properly. If they’d known, they would have been heartened by the news that although the Kriegsmarine had requested extra air defences and fighter cover for the port, the Luftwaffe had done nothing about it. So, while the flak there was heavy, and Luftwaffe fighter squadrons were based nearby, a bombing attack was dangerous, but not wholly suicidal. Thus it was that from late March, heavy nightly raids were launched with the intention of ‘carpet bombing’ the harbour, but none of these resulted in a direct hit to either battlecruiser, which had been moved into dry dock for extra protection. Despite this, the bombing raids caused a chain of events that would completely disrupt the Kriegsmarine’s plans.

  During one of these attacks, a bomb landed in the dry dock next to Gneisenau, but failed to explode. The next morning, the dock was flooded, causing the battlecruiser to move 1,300ft out into the harbour, leaving her vulnerable to attack by aircraft-launched torpedoes. On the evening of 6 April, four twin-engined Bristol Beauforts of 22 Squadron of Coastal Command launched an attack on the battlecruiser.36 Only one of the four planes was able to make a torpedo run, but it struck the Gneisenau on her starboard side, resulting in heavy flooding. Moments later, the Beaufort was shot down, but the damage had been done and Gneisenau now had to limp back into the dry dock for urgent repairs. The pilot, Flying Officer (Fg Off.) Ken Campbell, was later awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross for his efforts.

  As a result, it was now unlikely that Gneisenau would be ready in time to take part in any joint operation with the Bismarck. In fact, four nights later she took four direct bomb hits in another bombing raid, and this time the damage was so severe that it was clear she would be out of action for months. Common sense might have dictated that any new joint sortie would best be left until these repairs had been completed, but didn’t take into account the vulnerability of Brest to air attacks. Accordingly, the OKW decided that once the battlecruisers had been repaired in Brest, they would then make a break for a German port together with Hipper.

  Meanwhile, Raeder was left with Bismarck and Prinz Eugen. Should any venture wait until Tirpitz was ready to join them, and possibly even the two battlecruisers and second heavy cruiser? Or, should he seize the initiative and launch another Atlantic sortie right away, to maintain pressure on the British sea lanes? Thanks to Fg Off. Campbell, his options were now limited.

  Chapter 3

  The Home Fleet

  Scapa Flow

  The Orkney Islands lie off the north of the British mainland, separated from the rest of Scotland by the dangerous tide-ripped waters of the Pentland Firth. The largest of this archipelago of islands is simply called the Mainland, where the main town of Kirkwall is situated, a place of charming streets dominated by a beautiful Viking-age cathedral. The Mainland lies in the middle of the archipelago, dividing the North Isles on one side and the South Isles on the other. The South Isles form a sort of natural circle, enclosing a large natural anchorage about 10 miles across and 8 wide. This virtually land-locked body of water is known as Scapa Flow. With only two navigable entrances to the west and south, it forms a large and readily defensible anchorage. Elsewhere, the low brown-and-green islands enclose it, like a protective mantle.

  Shortly before World War I, Scapa Flow was chosen by Admiral ‘Jackie’ Fisher as the wartime base for the British Grand Fleet.1 It was ideally placed to coordinate the distant blockade of the German coast, and as a base from which the fleet could sortie if its German counterpart put to sea. It was from Scapa that Admiral Jellicoe’s dreadnoughts steamed off to fight the Battle of Jutland, and it was there in 1919 that the vanquished German High Seas Fleet was brought, and interned. While peace ended this major naval presence, a small naval base was retained there during the inter-war years. Then, in 1939, as the clouds of war were gathering, the British Admiralty ordered the Home Fleet to Scapa, as the naval strategy employed in the last war was considered just as effective in a new one. So, once again, Scapa Flow became a major wartime anchorage, and a home to hundreds of ships and tens of thousands of men.

  Some of them loved the place – the tranquillity, the natural beauty and the mellow landscape are easy to fall in love with.2 Others found Scapa a living hell. To them, it was the end of the earth, a bleak and cold spot where the wind always blew, and winters were often cold, wet and stormy. Jellicoe’s successor, Admiral Beatty, called Scapa ‘the most damnable place on earth’, vastly preferring the gaiety of a big city and a lively social scene. Most of the sailors who served on ships based in Scapa during the two world wars probably agreed with him. The shore facilities there were limited – the navy supplied a theatre, a cinema, a few bars or canteens and sports fields, but it was nothing compared to Portsmouth, Plymouth or Chatham. There were few women, and most of them were wearing uniforms. There was little else to do but stay cooped up on your ship and wait for something to happen. In May 1941, that wish was granted.

  When the war began, this battle fleet swinging at anchor in Scapa Flow had been christened the Home Fleet in 1932, and was the direct successor of the Grand Fleet of World War I. The defences of Scapa Flow were woefully inadequate – a point driven home early on 14 October 1939 when the U-boat U-47 penetrated its makeshift defences and sank the old battleship Royal Oak – an attack that claimed the lives of 834 of her crew, many of whom were boy seamen.3 The fleet decamped to the West Coast of Scotland until March 1940, by
which time Scapa’s defences had been put in order. At first, this meant protecting the navigable entrances using torpedo nets and underwater listening equipment, and the smaller ones with new blockships. Next came coastal batteries, radar stations, flak defences, airfields and fighter aircraft. By early March, Churchill could tell the War Cabinet that Scapa was ‘80% secure’.

  With its base thus reasonably secure, the Home Fleet was free to set about maintaining its distant blockade of Germany, by obstructing German egress from the North Sea. Then, in April 1940, the whole situation changed. The German conquest of Norway rendered the blockading line between Shetland and the Norwegian coast untenable. Instead, the Home Fleet had to maintain its patrol line between Greenland, Iceland, the Faeroe Islands and Shetland. In the Cold War, this would be known as the GIUK gap – the route by which Soviet submarines could reach the Atlantic. In 1940, it was merely the redeployment of the distant blockade. This time, though, the rough seas and harsh conditions meant that cruisers formed the mainstay of the patrol line, rather than smaller warships.

  The German occupation of Norway also placed Scapa within easy range of German bombers.4 Intermittent air attacks first started in October 1939, but by April 1940 the ‘Orkney barrage’ was in place, a wall of flak designed to protect the anchorage, using land-based anti-aircraft batteries and the air defence firepower of the Home Fleet. It was first to be put to the test on 2 April, when it proved a resounding success.5 By June, all of Scapa’s defences were complete. As a result, the anchorage remained immune from German attacks of any kind for the rest of the war. This went some way to neutralising the advantage handed to the Germans by their conquest of Norway. So, from that summer, and for the rest of the war, British reconnaissance aircraft and submarines routinely patrolled the Norwegian coast, looking for German warships.