The Battle of the Barents Sea

On the last day of 1942, in the half-light of the polar night, one of the most remarkable naval battles of the war was fought in the sea north of the North Cape. A German force made up of the heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper, the pocket battleship Lützow and six destroyers attacked convoy JW 51B, which was carrying supplies to the USSR. The opposition was far weaker: five escorting destroyers, none of which could match 203 mm and 280 mm guns, and two light cruisers that arrived only after two hours of fighting. Even so, the Germans withdrew without sinking a single merchant ship. It was a strategic victory for the British, and Adolf Hitler’s fury after the battle led to the dismissal of the head of the Kriegsmarine and a shift of the German navy towards submarines – although the big ships were not, in the end, sent to the scrapyard.

Convoys in the polar night

After the disaster of convoy PQ 17 and the heavy losses of PQ 18, the Arctic convoys to the USSR were suspended in the autumn of 1942: the ships of the Home Fleet were needed for the landings in North Africa, and attempts were made instead to send single, unescorted ships to Murmansk and Archangel. Supplying the Red Army, which was then fighting at Stalingrad, was nevertheless a political commitment of London and Washington. In December the convoys resumed under the new designations JW (to the USSR) and RA (on the return). The Commander-in-Chief of the Home Fleet, Admiral John Tovey, pushed through his own concept: instead of one large convoy, two smaller ones, easier to hide in the darkness of the polar night, which put the German air force – the main weapon against PQ 17 and PQ 18 – out of action.

The first section, JW 51A, sailed from Loch Ewe in Scotland on 15 December and reached the Kola Inlet on Christmas Day, unnoticed by the Germans. The second, JW 51B, left Loch Ewe on 22 December. Its fourteen ships carried, according to British returns, more than 200 tanks, more than 2,000 vehicles, about 120 aircraft, fuel and tens of thousands of tons of other materiel. The close escort, which joined off Iceland, consisted of six destroyers – Onslow, Obedient, Obdurate, Orwell and Oribi (new ships of the O class) and the older Achates – together with two corvettes, the minesweeper Bramble and two armed trawlers. It was commanded by Captain Robert St Vincent Sherbrooke in Onslow. Rear Admiral Robert Burnett’s Force R, the light cruisers HMS Sheffield and Jamaica, armed with 152 mm guns, was cruising in the Barents Sea. Distant cover was provided by the battleship Anson and the heavy cruiser Cumberland, too far away to take part in the fighting.

On 28 and 29 December a gale scattered the convoy. Five merchant ships, the destroyer Oribi and the trawler Vizalma lost contact with the rest; the minesweeper Bramble was sent to search for them. Three of the ships rejoined, while the others sailed on independently. On 30 December the convoy was detected and shadowed by the submarine U-354.

Operation Regenbogen

Since the spring of 1942 the Kriegsmarine had kept its heavy ships in the fjords of northern Norway – after the loss of the Bismarck and the Channel Dash they were considered too valuable to be risked in the Atlantic. They were to act as a deterrent against an expected invasion of Norway and to attack the Arctic convoys, but only “in favourable circumstances”. Hitler, who had no faith in the fighting value of big ships and feared yet another spectacular loss, stipulated that they must not be exposed to an encounter with a stronger enemy. So when U-354 reported a weakly escorted convoy, the naval command – backed by Grand Admiral Erich Raeder, who was anxious to prove the usefulness of the surface fleet – set in motion the previously prepared Operation Regenbogen (“Rainbow”). Success would also count on the Eastern Front: every tank sunk on its way to Murmansk was a tank that would not reach Stalingrad, where the German relief attempt had just collapsed.

On the evening of 30 December Vice Admiral Oskar Kummetz’s force put out from the Altafjord. The plan was sound: Kummetz, in Admiral Hipper with three destroyers, was to strike the convoy from the north and draw off the escort, while Lützow with the other three destroyers approached from the south and destroyed the defenceless merchant ships. Shortly after putting to sea, however, Kummetz received a reminder from headquarters that he was to exercise caution even against an enemy of equal strength, since it was undesirable for the cruisers to take major risks. According to German documents he was also to avoid fighting at night and, above all, to protect Lützow, which was to break out into the Atlantic as a raider after the operation. These restrictions shaped the whole course of the battle.

Destroyers against a cruiser

On the morning of 31 December the main body of the convoy – twelve merchant ships and eight escorts – was steaming east some 120 nautical miles off the coast of Finnmark. It was the twilight of the Arctic day, snow was falling and visibility changed every few minutes. Between 8.20 and 8.40 a.m. (the sources differ on the times) the destroyer Obdurate sighted three destroyers astern of the convoy; at first it was thought they might be Soviet. At about 9.30 a.m. they opened fire, and soon afterwards Admiral Hipper emerged from the darkness and engaged Achates.

Sherbrooke did what escort commanders had been trained to do: Achates laid a smokescreen over the convoy, which turned south, while Onslow, Orwell, Obedient and Obdurate headed straight for the German cruiser. Their 120 mm and 102 mm guns could do her no harm, but their torpedoes could. The British feinted torpedo attacks, deliberately holding their torpedoes, because once fired they would have lost their only real threat. The ruse worked: Hipper, bound by her orders to avoid risk, repeatedly turned away, came back and withdrew again. At about 10.20 a.m., however, her shells hit Onslow. Seventeen men were killed and fire broke out, and Sherbrooke, badly wounded in the head by a splinter, continued to command for a while before handing over to Lieutenant Commander D. C. Kinloch in Obedient. He lost his left eye.

Bramble, Achates and the arrival of the cruisers

Circling north of the convoy, Hipper came upon the lone minesweeper Bramble, still searching for stragglers, at about 10.36 a.m. A few salvoes turned her into a blazing wreck, and the German destroyers finished her off. Her entire crew of about 120 men was lost; in German reports the minesweeper was listed as a sunken destroyer. Hipper then turned south and at about 11.15 a.m. badly damaged Achates with several hits; listing and with flooded compartments, the destroyer went on laying smoke to screen the merchant ships. She sank some time after 1 p.m.; the trawler Northern Gem rescued 81 men, and 113 were lost. Obedient was also slightly damaged.

Force R was at that time far to the north: Burnett, according to most accounts misled by a radar contact with one of the stragglers, did not at first head for the convoy; only the gun flashes and Sherbrooke’s reports drew him to the scene of the battle. At about 11.30 a.m. Sheffield and Jamaica, unseen, opened fire on Hipper at a range of a few miles and quickly hit her with three 152 mm shells. One of them flooded a boiler room and reduced her speed to 28 knots. Kummetz at first thought he was being fired on by another destroyer; when he realised that he was facing cruisers, at 11.37 a.m. he ordered all his ships to break off the action and withdraw westwards – even though Hipper was stronger than either of her opponents individually.

In the confusion the destroyers Friedrich Eckoldt and Richard Beitzen mistook the British cruisers for their own flagship and tried to join them. Sheffield opened fire at close range; Eckoldt broke in two and sank with all hands, together with the commander of the 5th Destroyer Flotilla, Captain Alfred Schemmel – some 340 men were killed. Beitzen escaped under cover of smoke.

Lützow’s wasted chance

Meanwhile the second part of the German plan unfolded almost exactly as intended. At about 11.40 a.m. Lützow was east of the convoy, whose escort had been drawn off by Hipper. The pocket battleship, with six 280 mm guns, had before her merchant ships protected at that moment by a handful of small warships. Her captain, Captain Rudolf Stange, decided, however, that in the snow squalls and smoke he could not identify his targets, and waited for a long time for visibility to improve. Her fire at a range of a few miles damaged only one ship. Orwell, Obedient and Obdurate once again used the threat of a torpedo attack. Heading north-west to join Hipper, Lützow ran into Sheffield and Jamaica. There was a brief exchange of fire, and shortly after noon both sides – each fearing the other’s destroyer torpedoes – broke contact. Burnett continued to shadow the Germans at a distance until he was sure they were heading back to base.

The convoy re-formed and sailed on. All fourteen ships reached Soviet ports without loss in the first days of January 1943. About 250 British sailors were killed (from Bramble, Achates and Onslow), and more than 340 German, almost all of them from Friedrich Eckoldt.

New Year’s Eve at the Wolf’s Lair

On the way back Kummetz kept radio silence, and his brief reports reached headquarters late. At the Wolf’s Lair Hitler waited all through New Year’s Eve for news of a success – according to members of his entourage, an earlier report from U-354, which had watched the battle from a distance and signalled that it could see “nothing but red”, had been taken as a sign that the convoy was being destroyed. Instead, the first concrete information came from news agency dispatches and British radio, which announced that a weak escort had driven off the German cruisers. The navy’s representative at headquarters, Vice Admiral Theodor Krancke, found himself in an unenviable position.

On 1 January 1943 Hitler flew into a rage. He declared that the big ships were useless, that they swallowed men and steel needed elsewhere, and that their guns would be better employed in coastal batteries; the decision was presented as irrevocable. On 6 January, in the presence of Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, he subjected Raeder to a long monologue (lasting, according to various accounts, from an hour and a half to more than two hours) presenting the history of the German navy – from 1864, according to the admiral’s memoirs – as a catalogue of wasted opportunities, and demanded that the heavy ships be paid off. For Raeder this meant the destruction of his life’s work – the building of a fleet dating back to the Z Plan – and he asked to be relieved. On 30 January 1943 he was succeeded as Commander-in-Chief of the Kriegsmarine by the commander of the U-boat arm, Karl Dönitz, who was promoted to Grand Admiral.

From the British point of view the battle was above all a triumph for the escort. Admiral Tovey emphasised that five destroyers had for almost four hours kept away from the convoy a force that included at least a heavy cruiser and a pocket battleship. Sherbrooke was awarded the Victoria Cross; he later said that it belonged to the whole of Onslow’s crew. He returned to duty and retired with the rank of rear admiral.

Its place in the war

The often repeated statement that after the battle Hitler largely abandoned surface raiding in favour of the U-boats is accurate, but it needs to be filled out. Dönitz, who for years had demanded that everything be staked on submarines, did indeed present a plan to pay off the heavy units after taking command, but he himself soon persuaded Hitler to keep the strongest of them in Norway as a threat to the convoys. Admiral Hipper and several older ships were placed in reserve and work on the aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin was halted, but Tirpitz, Scharnhorst and Lützow remained in service. Their mere existence tied down the Home Fleet and, in 1943, together with the demands of the Battle of the Atlantic, contributed to the renewed suspension of the Arctic convoys in the spring and summer. The only major sortie by the German surface fleet against the convoys thereafter was Scharnhorst’s attempt in December 1943, which ended with her sinking off the North Cape.

The real consequence of the battle, then, was a change of men and priorities: from now on the Third Reich’s shipbuilding industry concentrated almost exclusively on U-boats, and the Battle of the Atlantic entered its hardest phase. For the British, the action of 31 December confirmed the effectiveness of a bold escort, the polar night and radar; for the USSR it meant that the tanks and aircraft of JW 51B arrived in time, as the Red Army was going over to the offensive at Stalingrad and on the Don. So ended a year in which, on every front, the initiative had begun to pass to the Allies.