The sinking of the Scharnhorst

On Boxing Day 1943, in the darkness of the polar night and in a gale in the Barents Sea, British ships of the Home Fleet cornered and sank the German battleship Scharnhorst. She had sailed from Norway to destroy a convoy carrying supplies to the Soviet Union, and ran into a trap laid by the Commander-in-Chief of the Home Fleet, Admiral Bruce Fraser. She sank on the evening of 26 December; of almost two thousand men aboard, the British pulled only 36 from the icy water. The engagement, known in the literature as the Battle of the North Cape, was the last duel between capital ships in Europe and also the last attempt to use the Kriegsmarine’s heavy ships against the Arctic convoys.

The sinking is usually placed “off the North Cape”. The name is a convention: the fighting took place on the open sea, far to the north and north-east of the North Cape, and the wreck, found in 2000, lies some 170 kilometres from the headland itself.

The Arctic convoys and the German fleet in Norway

From August 1941 the Western Allies sent convoys from Iceland and Britain to Murmansk and Archangel. They carried tanks, aircraft, lorries, fuel and food for the Red Army, and their route ran along occupied Norway, within reach of German aircraft, U-boats and surface ships. The mere presence of big ships in the Norwegian fjords was enough to bring about disaster: in July 1942 a false alarm that Tirpitz had put to sea led the Admiralty to scatter convoy PQ 17, which then lost most of its merchant ships.

After the Battle of the Barents Sea on the last day of 1942, in which the heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper and Lützow failed to break through the escort of convoy JW 51B, an enraged Adolf Hitler ordered the big ships to be paid off. Grand Admiral Erich Raeder resigned, and his successor Karl Dönitz, although first and foremost a U-boat commander, persuaded Hitler to let him keep the strongest units and use them against the convoys. In March 1943 Tirpitz in northern Norway was joined by Scharnhorst, the ship that a year earlier had broken through the English Channel from Brest in Operation Cerberus.

In September 1943 the two ships bombarded Spitsbergen, and a little over a week later British midget submarines badly damaged Tirpitz in Kåfjord in Operation Source. Scharnhorst, which was out on exercises at the time of the attack, became the only serviceable German heavy ship in the north. When in November 1943 the British resumed the convoys – suspended in the summer because of the long polar day and the needs of the fleet in the Mediterranean – it was clear that sooner or later the Germans would try to use her.

Fraser’s trap

Bruce Fraser had taken over the Home Fleet from John Tovey in May 1943. A gunnery officer by training, he was a proponent of radar-directed night fighting and from the start wanted not merely to beat off attacks on the convoys but to destroy Scharnhorst. He concluded that the best bait would be a convoy itself. In mid-December he personally escorted convoy JW 55A all the way to the Kola Inlet in his flagship, the battleship HMS Duke of York, and before the next operation he gathered his captains and set out his plan: get between the convoy and the Norwegian bases, close the enemy at night to about 11 kilometres, illuminate her with star shell and open radar-directed fire. The ships were to rehearse this beforehand.

On 20 December convoy JW 55B – 19 merchant ships with a close escort and eight Home Fleet destroyers – sailed from Loch Ewe in Scotland. Meanwhile the homeward convoy RA 55A, of 22 ships, was leaving the Kola Inlet in the opposite direction. Two covering forces watched over both. Force 1 under Vice Admiral Robert Burnett consisted of the cruisers HMS Belfast – the same ship that in November 1939 had broken her back on a German mine – Norfolk and Sheffield. Fraser’s Force 2 was made up of Duke of York, the cruiser Jamaica and four destroyers: the British Savage, Scorpion and Saumarez, and Stord of the Royal Norwegian Navy in exile.

On 22 December a German reconnaissance aircraft spotted JW 55B and began shadowing it. For Dönitz this was the opportunity he had been waiting for: at a conference with Hitler on 19–20 December he had announced that Scharnhorst would attack the next convoy. The battle group was commanded by Rear Admiral Erich Bey, commander of destroyers, standing in for Admiral Oskar Kummetz, who was on leave; the ship herself was commanded by Captain Fritz Hintze, in post only since October. Bey and Naval Group North had their doubts – in December at that latitude there was less than an hour of daylight, and the Germans knew that British gunnery radar was better than their own. Dönitz, however, decided that with the army retreating on the Eastern Front the navy could not stand idly by while supplies for the Red Army sailed through the Arctic.

On 25 December, after a U-boat reported the convoy’s position, the decision was taken to launch Operation Ostfront. At about 7 p.m. Scharnhorst and five destroyers of the 4th Flotilla (Z29, Z30, Z33, Z34 and Z38) left Langfjord, an arm of the Altafjord. Dönitz’s instructions were ambiguous: Bey was to attack resolutely but break off if he met superior forces. The British knew of the German squadron’s sortie almost at once – the codebreakers at Bletchley Park were reading signals enciphered on Enigma, and during the night the Admiralty informed Fraser that Scharnhorst was probably at sea. Fraser sent RA 55A further north, out of harm’s way, ordered JW 55B to reverse course for a few hours to gain time, and detached four destroyers from the homeward convoy – Musketeer, Matchless, Opportune and Virago – to join the covering force.

The morning clashes with the cruisers

On the morning of 26 December a south-westerly gale was raging over the Barents Sea. The Luftwaffe could not send out reconnaissance aircraft, and the German destroyers were struggling to make headway into the seas. Bey failed to find the convoy; believing he had passed it, he sent his destroyers off to the south-west in a search line, and from that moment lost contact with them. Scharnhorst was on her own.

At about 8.40 a.m. Belfast’s radar detected the German ship, and shortly after nine Burnett’s three cruisers opened fire at a range of about 11–12 kilometres. The Germans, who had switched off their own radar so as not to give away their position, were taken by surprise. Two shells hit Scharnhorst; one destroyed the forward aerial of her Seetakt radar, which in the thickening snowstorm all but blinded the ship. Bey, convinced that he was facing a battleship, turned away to the south and then to the north-east, intending to work round the cruisers and fall on the convoy from another direction. Scharnhorst was faster, and in the heavy seas the cruisers could not catch her.

Burnett then took a decision that some of his officers criticised: instead of chasing the enemy, he placed himself between her and the convoy. Fraser backed him, and he was proved right. Shortly after midday the cruisers’ radar again picked up Scharnhorst, which was indeed trying to close JW 55B. In the second exchange of fire the German ship hit Norfolk twice with 280-millimetre shells, knocking out her after turret and her radar; seven sailors were killed. Bey decided that he could not reach the convoy and set course south, towards Norway, ordering the destroyers to attack the convoy on their own. Because they had been given an out-of-date position, they missed it and took no further part in the battle.

For several hours Scharnhorst ran south. Norfolk and Sheffield developed defects and fell behind, so for a time the only pursuer was Belfast, which, despite the enemy’s great superiority, kept within radar range and continuously reported the German’s position. Bey did not know that Fraser’s force was heading straight across his course from the west.

The Scharnhorst’s last battle

At 4.17 p.m. Duke of York’s radar picked up the target at more than 40 kilometres. When the range had fallen to about 11 kilometres, Belfast fired star shell. At about 4.50 p.m. Scharnhorst, her guns still trained fore and aft, found herself lit up by the flares, and the first salvo from the British battleship’s 356-millimetre guns scored a hit. One of the first hits jammed the forward turret, Anton, and propellant gases flooding turret Bruno through a damaged ventilation shaft hampered its crew’s firing. The German ship returned fire, turned east and, using her superior speed, began to draw away. At 5.24 p.m. Bey signalled to headquarters: “Surrounded by heavy units.”

For more than an hour and a half a gunnery duel went on in the darkness and the snowstorm. Scharnhorst’s shells passed through Duke of York’s mast, cutting aerials and toppling the aerial of her gunnery radar; Lieutenant Harold Bates climbed the icy mast in the gale and set it back in place, so that within minutes the British battleship could once again fire under radar control. At about 6.20 p.m. a shell from Duke of York, fired at long range, pierced Scharnhorst’s side and exploded in No. 1 boiler room. The ship’s speed dropped briefly to a few knots; emergency repairs restored about 22 knots, but her advantage in speed was gone. A few minutes later Bey sent his last signal: “We shall fight to the last shell.”

At 6.42 p.m. Duke of York ceased fire after 52 salvoes, of which – according to a British analysis – 31 had straddled the target. Now the destroyers went in. At about 6.50 p.m. Scharnhorst turned to engage Savage and Saumarez, exposing her other side to Scorpion and the Norwegian Stord, which fired torpedoes at close range; moments later Savage and Saumarez attacked as well. Accounts differ on the number of hits, but at least three or four torpedoes struck the German ship, and her speed fell again. Saumarez, hit by Scharnhorst’s secondary armament, lost 11 killed. Fraser closed to about 9 kilometres and, together with Jamaica and then Belfast, smothered the enemy with shells. The cruisers fired their torpedoes, and finally Opportune, Virago, Musketeer and Matchless fired more than a dozen more.

At about 7.45 p.m. Scharnhorst capsized and sank bow first, her propellers still turning. Her after turret, Caesar, kept firing to the end. British destroyers began picking up survivors but soon broke off for fear of U-boats, although cries for help could still be heard out of the darkness. Scorpion rescued 30 men and Matchless six. According to the most commonly accepted figures there were 1,968 officers and men aboard, including cadets, so about 1,932 died; some studies give slightly different figures for the crew. Not a single officer was among the survivors; Rear Admiral Bey and Captain Hintze, reportedly seen in the water after the ship went down, were lost. British losses were light: according to British returns about 20 sailors were killed, mainly in Saumarez and Norfolk, and one Norwegian was washed overboard from Stord.

After the battle

Fraser’s report to the Admiralty was brief: “Scharnhorst sunk.” The reply from London read: “Grand. Well done.” That same evening, aboard Duke of York, the admiral addressed his officers in words that are often quoted. He told them that the battle against Scharnhorst had ended in victory, and added: “I hope that if any of you are ever called upon to lead a ship into action against an opponent many times superior, you will command your ship as gallantly as Scharnhorst was commanded today.” In his reports he also stressed the part played by Stord, whose attack the captain of Duke of York, Captain Guy Russell, later called the boldest of the whole action. The force sailed to Murmansk to refuel, and both convoys reached their destinations without loss.

In Germany the news was received grimly. Dönitz later admitted that surface ships could no longer fight without effective radar – and indeed the outcome was decided by Britain’s technical superiority: the cruisers’ radar found Scharnhorst again and again, Duke of York’s radar tracked her in the darkness, and the German ship fought almost blind from the first minutes. Intelligence, too, played its part. On the German side, air reconnaissance failed, there was no coordination with the destroyers, and ambiguous orders left Bey to choose between attack and flight at a moment when he did not know what he was up against.

Place in the war

Scharnhorst had been one of the most active ships of the Kriegsmarine. In November 1939, together with Gneisenau, she sank the armed merchant cruiser Rawalpindi; in June 1940 she sank the aircraft carrier Glorious and two destroyers; in 1941 she hunted merchant ships in the Atlantic; and in 1942 she broke through the English Channel. Her sinking was one of the last great episodes of the surface war in the Battle of the Atlantic and its Arctic extension.

After 26 December 1943 only the damaged Tirpitz remained in the north. In 1944 she was still the target of raids by aircraft from British carriers, and on 12 November 1944 RAF heavy bombers sank her near Tromsø. The Arctic convoys sailed until the end of the war with almost nothing more to fear from heavy ships; the only threats left were U-boats and aircraft. The Admiralty, for its part, could release some Home Fleet ships – for the invasion of Normandy and for operations against Japan, where Fraser soon took command of the fleet. The battle was the last engagement between capital ships in European waters and one of the few great surface actions of the war fought without aircraft. For this victory Fraser was created Baron Fraser of North Cape in 1946.

The wreck of Scharnhorst was found in 2000 by a joint expedition of the BBC, the Norwegian broadcaster NRK and the Royal Norwegian Navy. She lies upside down at a depth of about 290 metres and is the war grave of nearly two thousand men.