The sinking of HMS Charybdis

In the darkness of the early hours of 23 October 1943, off the north coast of Brittany near the Sept-Îles archipelago, five German torpedo boats surprised a British force made up of the light cruiser HMS Charybdis and six destroyers. Two torpedoes struck the cruiser, which sank within about half an hour; a third blew the bow off the escort destroyer HMS Limbourne, which then had to be sunk by her own side. More than five hundred British sailors and Royal Marines were killed, while the Germans withdrew without loss. It was one of the Royal Navy’s heaviest defeats in the waters of the English Channel during the whole war.

A few days later the sea began washing the bodies of the dead ashore on the Channel Islands, occupied by the Germans since 1940. Twenty-one came ashore on Guernsey. The German occupation authorities buried them with full military honours, and the funeral turned into the largest demonstration of the islanders’ loyalty to Britain during the occupation.

The ship and Operation Tunnel

HMS Charybdis was a relatively new ship. Built by Cammell Laird at Birkenhead, she entered service at the end of 1941 as one of the Dido-class anti-aircraft cruisers. Because of a shortage of 5.25-inch (133 mm) guns, she was given eight older 4.5-inch (114 mm) guns. She served in the Mediterranean, covering convoys to Malta – in August 1942 she took part in Operation Pedestal – and in September 1943 supported the Salerno landings. In October she returned to Plymouth; the leave promised to her crew was soon cut short and the cruiser was assigned to patrols in the Bay of Biscay and the western Channel.

The British regularly carried out operations there under the code name Tunnel: groups of warships sailed from Plymouth at night to intercept German coastal convoys moving along the Breton coast. This time the target was the blockade runner Münsterland, which had left Brest and was creeping eastwards up the Channel under the protection of minesweepers. Distant cover was provided by the 4th Torpedo Boat Flotilla under Korvettenkapitän Franz Kohlauf: according to British and German studies, the boats T22, T23, T25, T26 and T27, large Type 1939 torpedo boats that were in practice small destroyers. The same flotilla had already surprised British destroyers in the same area on the night of 3–4 October.

The British force was a scratch one. Alongside Charybdis, commanded by Captain George Voelcker, sailed the fleet destroyers HMS Grenville and HMS Rocket and four Hunt-class escort destroyers: Limbourne, Wensleydale, Talybont and Stevenstone. According to later analyses, the ships had never operated together before, and the cruiser, assigned to the operation only on 20 October, had no experience of night actions close inshore. The commanding officer of Grenville, Lieutenant Commander Roger Hill, had earlier raised objections to planning operations in this way, but they were not taken into account. The force put to sea on the evening of 22 October.

The action

Shortly after midnight the hydrophones of T22 detected the British ships, and Kohlauf set his flotilla on an intercept course before the enemy could reach Münsterland. At around 1.20 a.m. the wireless operators on Limbourne overheard German radio traffic and warned the rest of the force, but Charybdis, sailing at the head, did not pick up the signals. At around 1.30 a.m. her radar detected unidentified ships at a range of roughly seven nautical miles. The cruiser fired star shell, which revealed nothing, while she herself stood out clearly against the lighter horizon. The Germans saw her first. Kohlauf ordered all his boats to fire torpedoes.

A few minutes later two torpedoes from the spread fired by T23 and T27 struck Charybdis on the port side. The cruiser heeled over, lost power and began to sink; after about thirty minutes she disappeared beneath the water at 48°59′N 3°39′W. A few minutes later a torpedo fired – according to British and German studies – by T22 hit Limbourne near her forward magazine. The explosion blew off the destroyer’s bow. The remaining British ships, deprived of their commander and with no common plan, failed to make contact with the enemy; the German torpedo boats withdrew undamaged. Towards morning HMS Rocket sank the disabled wreck of Limbourne to prevent her falling into German hands.

According to British figures, 462 of Charybdis’s crew were killed – some sources give 464 – among them Captain Voelcker. Four officers and 103 ratings were rescued. More than forty men died on Limbourne. In all, the Royal Navy lost more than five hundred men, a cruiser and a destroyer that night – and Münsterland continued eastwards.

The funeral on Guernsey

Over the following days the currents carried the bodies of the dead towards the Channel Islands and the French coast. The bodies of 21 sailors and Royal Marines were washed up on Guernsey, and more on Jersey. The German occupation authorities, observing the customs of naval warfare, arranged a funeral with full military honours; the coffins were draped with British flags. It took place on Wednesday 17 November 1943 at the Foulon Cemetery in St Peter Port.

For the people of Guernsey it was their first chance in three years to show publicly whose side they were on. The island had lived under occupation since the summer of 1940. Part of the population had then been evacuated to England, and the rest were subjected to ever harsher restrictions: a curfew, the confiscation of wireless sets in 1942, and in September of that year the deportation of more than two thousand British-born Channel Islanders to internment camps in Germany. According to accounts, some five thousand people attended the funeral – roughly one in five of the island’s inhabitants. Around 900 wreaths were laid, and many mourners wore British colours. The Germans found the demonstration too eloquent and no longer admitted civilians to subsequent funerals of Allied servicemen.

The other dead whose bodies were recovered were buried on Jersey at St Helier and in cemeteries in Brittany – most of them at Dinard, where Captain Voelcker also lies, and at Saint-Brieuc. Most of the dead have no grave; according to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, nearly three hundred sailors from Charybdis are commemorated on the Plymouth Naval Memorial.

Place in the war

The sinking of Charybdis was a painful reminder that in 1943, when the Allies were already winning the Battle of the Atlantic against the U-boats, the German surface fleet could still bite hard in the coastal waters of France. The Admiralty drew its conclusions: subsequent operations off the Breton coast were carried out by well-practised destroyer groups, better trained in night fighting and fitted with newer radar. Revenge came quickly. On 28 December 1943 in the Bay of Biscay, British cruisers sank the destroyer Z27 and two of the torpedo boats that had fought off the Sept-Îles, T25 and T26. In June 1944, on the eve of and during the Normandy landings, Allied destroyers, Polish ones among them, smashed what remained of the German surface forces at the western end of the Channel. Münsterland, which had continued eastwards on 23 October, ran aground off Cap Blanc-Nez in 1944 and was destroyed by the fire of British coastal artillery.

On Guernsey the memory of the November 1943 funeral survived as one of the symbols of the islanders’ conduct under an occupation that ended with the surrender of the German garrison in May 1945. Every October a ceremony is held at the Foulon Cemetery in honour of those who died on Charybdis and Limbourne, attended by survivors – while they lived – their families, the Royal Navy and the islanders. The wreck of the cruiser was found in 1993 at a depth of about 83 metres.