Posted on March 17 2010 at 07:52 AM
The eagle from the stern of WW2 German battleship Admiral Graf Spee, scuttled on December 17, 1939 off the coast of Montevideo after a fierce battle with three British battlecruisers in what is known as "The battle of the River Plate", is recovered from the depths of the estuary in 2006.
The Admiral Graf Spee, the German "pocket battleship" scuttled here in 1939, is caught in the middle of a struggle between the businessman salvaging it and the German government, which wants to prevent its commercialization.
"We always proposed a serious historical and cultural destiny" for the remains of the Graf Spee while "contemplating fair compensation" for the work and investment made to recover its remains, Alfredo Etchegaray, the businessman, told AFP.
During a visit to Montevideo this week, German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said his desire was "to prevent the remains of the symbols of the Nazi regime from becoming commercialized."
"What we want really is to reach a constructive deal," he said, adding that Germany was prepared to support the presentation of the remains "in a historical context, like a museum."
In 2006, divers hired by Etchegaray recovered an imposing Nazi bronze eagle measuring 2.8 meters (nine feet) wide by two meters high and weighing 350 kilograms (770 pounds) from the stern of the Graf Spee.
Two years earlier, they had come up with a 27-ton rangefinder used to direct the ship's cannons. And in 1998, a 155 millimeter (six-inch) gun from the ship's secondary armament was salvaged.
The underwater salvage group planned to bring up more cannons and other pieces of the Graf Spee, but were barred from doing so by an Uruguayan government decree.
After the recovery of the Nazi eagle, with its outspread wings and swastika, Germany sent a note to the Uruguayan foreign ministry claiming ownership of the Graf Spee and opposing continuation of the salvage work.
Etchegaray, who had received permission from the Uruguay government to undertake the salvage work, has spent 2.5 million dollars over the past 25 years scouring the Rio de la Plata estuary for sunken ships.
The Graf Spee was scuttled by its captain just outside Montevideo harbor where it had gone for repairs after the first major naval battle of World War II.
The Nazi warship was used to raid commercial shipping in the Atlantic until it was intercepted by two British cruisers and one from the New Zealand navy off Montevideo.
Etchegaray claims the wreck was sold in 1940 by the then German ambassador Otto Langmann to Uruguayan Julio Vega Helguera, who concluded the deal as an undercover agent for the British government for the sum of 14,000 pounds.
The sale is recorded in the diplomatic dispatches preserved in the Public Record Office in London, a copy of which was provided to AFP by Etchegaray.
"The British took only eight items from Graf Spee" to examine their technology and design, he said.
Etchegaray said that in 1973 Uruguay issued a decree claiming ownership of all shipwrecks in its waters.
"For the past four years I have been proposing a museum... or an auction with a prequalification of interested parties and a guarantee of a historic-cultural destination for the (eagle)," he said.
"We all want a deal that is constructive and sensitive for the remains of the Graf Spee," he said.
The Graf Spee, halfway between a battleship and a heavy cruiser, was designed to outrun larger ships that might have sunk it, and outgun smaller but faster vessels.
But after capturing and sinking nine British cargo ships without loss of life following the outbreak of war, Captain Hans Langsdorff allowed himself to be trapped by the British force on December 13, 1939.
In the ensuing Battle of the River Plate, Graf Spee's 11-inch guns crippled the British heavy cruiser Exeter but the German ship suffered irreparable damage from the other two cruisers, the Ajax and Achilles.
Taking refuge in Montevideo, the Graf Spee was ordered to leave within 24 hours by the Uruguayan authorities. Facing destruction by the British ships waiting off the mouth of the Plate, Langsdorff blew up his vessel in the middle of the estuary on December 17.
Langsdorff, praised as a considerate gentleman by the crews of the British ships he had captured, shot himself two days later in a hotel room in Buenos Aires, after laying the flag of the old imperial German navy on the floor.
Posted on January 15 2010 at 07:50 AM
WOLFGANG FRANK
from the book THE SEA WOLVES
Out of every hundred boats that put to sea after the crisis of May, 1943, thirty-five might never return. Although the rate of loss showed a slight decline at the beginning of 1944, life in the U-boats had by then become predominantly a struggle for survival against an enemy who ruled both sea and sky. It took from ten to twelve perilous days, creeping slowly through the Bay of Biscay, usually submerged—sometimes for twenty hours on end—before they reached the Atlantic battle zone; and the crews knew that only three or at the most four boats out of every five could expect to return.
The chances of success had steadily decreased since the day when the search-group tactics were abandoned, the wolf packs were dissolved and the boats were sent out singly, each to its own independent area. As long as they had no adequate protection against radar location, their chances of survival must decrease still further.
In January, 1944, a new radar device which operated on a medium wave length had been recovered from a crashed enemy bomber. It was essential to provide a radar detector that could operate on this wave length, and in March the U-boats began to receive an apparatus with the code name of "Midge." This was only one of a long series of radar search receivers which were produced in the desperate race to keep abreast of new enemy techniques. The series had begun with the Metox or Grandin of unhappy memory, had continued with the "Bug I" and "Bug II," the Hagenuk, Bor-kum, Naxos, "Fly" and "Midge" to the combined Tunis and Gema. Finally there was the Hohentwiel—a search radar of the kind suggested by Captain Meckel as far back as 1942; this was eventually installed in U-boats in March, 1944.
The struggle was becoming more and more a test of nerves, in which the U-boat men had only their own high morale to make up for the inadequacy of their technical equipment. They could not be sure of a respite even when traveling submerged, for nearly every week the enemy added something new to his nerve-shattering collection of acoustic devices. Apart from the "Foxers," which emitted their own peculiar sound, there was the pinging and howling of the sonar impulses, tapping blindly round the hull, now fading away, now increasing to menacing strength. There was the "circular saw," which began with the deep hum of a bumblebee and rose to the thin high-pitched whine of a mosquito, then steadied on a metallic note which jarred the nerves of the men in the depths who, lying in their bunks to conserve oxygen, wondered what new sort of deviltry this noise could signify.
Whenever the boats returned to port, the commanders had new experiences to relate. One of them reported that the enemy was using a new type of noise-making buoy which imitated propeller sounds and sonar impulses. It looked, he said, like a black box with a spike on top and was obviously designed to scare U-boat men. Another reported a new type of explosive locating device, while a third told how he had been attacked by an aircraft using rockets. The enemy's latest sound gear was clearly much more powerful than the earlier models, for one U-boat had been located at a range of between 10,000 and 15,000 yards; the new and bigger depth charges, too, had damaged one U-boat's pressure hull at a depth of 650 feet. It was later established that this was the "killer" depth charge, which contained 1,000 pounds of explosive.
The U-boats now used their radio only when absolutely essential or when directly ordered to do so. As a result the U-boat Command, now transferred to a new headquarters code-named Koralle at Bernau near Berlin, received only the briefest reports and was often better informed by the radio intercept service than by its own boats. For the first time since 1939, it was really difficult to form an accurate estimate of the situation at sea; for days on end headquarters would remain ignorant of whether a boat was still "alive," because she had had no chance of reporting or of answering signals.
The boats were now widely scattered over the Atlantic, for the enemy must be kept aware of their presence, so as to compel him to expend his forces on convoy-escort work. The chances of attacking were becoming rare and since it was vital to conserve their numbers, they were told to avoid operating in areas where enemy patrols were known to be particularly strong. There was good reason for conserving strength at this time. A considerable number of VIIc boats had been dispatched to the Mediterranean since the previous autumn; and since January, 1944, thirty boats had been diverted from the Atlantic for operations against the Murmansk convoys; while from February onward there was growing evidence that the enemy was mounting a large-scale invasion of the Continent, and precautionary measures had to be taken accordingly.
[Between September, 1943, and May, 1944, twenty-three U-boats attempted to enter the Mediterranean; thirteen succeeded, six were lost in the attempt and four abandoned the attempt.]
But where would the enemy land? The U-boat Command ordered a score of boats under Commander Schütze to Norway, as a precaution against a possible invasion of Jutland. When the tension heightened in March, fifteen Type VIIc's were ordered to stand by in the Biscay ports as the "Landwirt Group," which was strengthened by all boats arriving from home ports and those which had completed repairs in the Western dockyards.
At about this time the boats began to receive a new type of extensible snort to replace the earlier folding model. The object of fitting this equipment was not to restore the aggressive powers of the existing boats but to increase their chances of survival, and to relieve their feeling of helpless insecurity at sea. The installation of snort in the boats was, however, a slow process, for the overworked yards were no longer capable of meeting these new demands. Due to the bombing of supplies in transit and the growing disruption of communications in France, only about ten of the Atlantic-based boats could be so fitted during the month of May.
The experiences of the early snort boats hardly inspired confidence. The very first, U 264 commanded by Lieutenant Looks, was sunk by a British destroyer in February, and the captain and chief engineer of a second which was also lost had been very critical of the device; although a special snort school was formed at Horten in the Oslo fjord, the commanders still regarded it with the deepest suspicion.
The snort head was fitted with a covering of foam-rubber
intended to absorb the enemy radar impulses, and also with a
search radar aerial for use while "snorting"; but all in all,
there was not much fun in "snorting." If the snort dipped under
in a seaway, the valve closed automatically and at once the
diesels would suck all the air out of the boat, the consequent
vacuum unpleasantly affecting eyes and ears. If the snort
stayed under too long and the water pressure in the air pipe
exceeded the pressure of the diesel exhaust gases, these gases
were blown back into the boat, where their high content of
carbon dioxide brought on every sort of symptom among the crew,
from headaches, exhaustion and aching limbs to vomiting and
even total collapse. It was Schröteler
in U 667 who eventually found the answer; he claimed to have
spent nine days submerged on the homeward run without once
surfacing. The important thing, he said, was to cut off the
diesels immediately when the boat dipped, thus avoiding the
danger from the exhaust gases. It was also essential to adjust
routine in the boat to the requirements of "snorting"; if this
was done, all would be well.
There were still a few boats operating in distant waters, and these accounted for most of the successes that were still attainable. U 66, under her third commander, Seehausen, sank five ships in the Gulf of Guinea. But when three more boats were dispatched to the same patrol area, they found the seas empty of traffic. Since the Allies had opened up the route through the Mediterranean, the alternative way round the Cape of Good Hope had lost much of its importance.
Some startling intelligence was now received which indicated that the enemy was endeavoring to locate submerged U-boats by means of buoys dropped by aircraft, called "Sono buoys." It appeared that these buoys automatically transmitted the result of their sonar impulse return to the aircraft. Soon after the first report of this device was received, a decrypted signal was picked up from an enemy aircraft in the Caribbean, which reported "sound contact" with a U-boat. This could only have been achieved by an intermediary device such as a sono buoy, as aircraft had no means of directly locating a submerged U-boat. U-boat commanders at once received orders to withdraw at high speed upon locating any such buoys.
No matter how far afield the U-boats ranged, their appearance was soon followed by a reinforcement of the enemy's A/S forces; there was evidently no area which he could not swiftly cover with a tightly drawn net of patrols. On March 12, Pich in U 168, Junker in U 532 and Lüdden in U 188 were due to rendezvous between Madagascar and Mauritius, to refuel from the tanker Brake. The secret meeting place lay well away from the shipping lanes—yet scarcely had U 188 interrupted her refueling owing to the approach of bad weather, when her lookouts sighted an aircraft followed by a smoke cloud. The U-boat crash-dived and lay for forty long minutes soundlessly in the depths, while faint propeller noises could be heard in the sound gear on the same bearing as the smoke cloud. Then salvos of shells began to fall around the tanker and the U-boat men counted 148 explosions mingled with 14 heavy detonations, some of which shook U 188 herself. For nearly an hour the noise went on, to be followed suddenly by the sounds of cracking and groaning as the Brake sank, and then another half hour of lesser bangs. At last all was still again, and Lüdden came cautiously to the surface. All he could se« was a broad odoriferous streak of oil, a few pieces of floating wreckage, and in the distance the tanker's boats, heavily laden with survivors. The sun had gone down and night came with tropical swiftness as Lüdden hastened to pick up the survivors; later he handed them over to Pich in U 168.
In April, 1944, three boats bound for West Africa together with U 66 were due to refuel from U 488, the last of the U-tankers; her captain, Studt, had last made a report on March 30, but in those days there was nothing abnormal in a boat remaining silent for three weeks. U 66 was due to refuel on April 26, and Seehausen brought her to the meeting place on the twenty-fifth; finding strong patrols of carrier-borne aircraft, he stayed deep. That night he heard the sudden crash of several depth charges, followed by sinking noises; the next day U 488 failed to appear. U 66 slowly began her homeward run, surfacing for only a few hours at night to charge batteries. Her fuel tanks being almost empty, replenishment was essential. On April 29, Henke in U 515 was sent orders to steer toward U 66 but Henke failed to acknowledge the signal. As was learned later, his boat had been sunk by four destroyers and aircraft from the carrier U.S.S. Guadalcanal, he and some of his crew being taken prisoner. Thereupon Lauzemis in U 68 was ordered to go to U 66; U 68 failed to reply. U 288 was then ordered to the rescue, for U 66's position was getting desperate. The following night, Lüdden in U 188 heard heavy depth-charging close to the appointed rendevous; the next day he waited in vain for U 66 to appear.
Because of these bitter experiences it was decided to initiate trials in the Baltic with underwater refueling between U-boats.
In the north a few U-boats were beginning to creep in, one at a time, to the English coast. No boat had been seen there for many a long day and their sudden reappearance would, it was hoped, upset the enemy's calculations. At the same time, four or five weather-reporting boats were stationed to the west of Britain, in the same waters where, a few years previously, the great U-boat "aces" had fought their nightly battles with the convoys. Now the U-boats could barely hold their own against the overwhelming number of hunters.
At the end of May the first snort boats returned to their bases after a week's patrol in the English Channel. Although they had no sinkings to report, they had at least achieved something which could be reckoned a success; they had proved that they could remain right under the enemy's nose in the shallow coastal waters—and at the moment that was more important than any victory, for it foreshadowed the possibility of the Wolves being able, with the help of the snort, once again to harry the enemy's lines of communication.
The sinking figures so far were certainly very disappointing. According to British statistics, thirteen ships totaling 92,000 tons had been sunk in January, eighteen of 93,000 tons in February, twenty-three of 143,000 tons in March, nine of 62,000 tons in April and only four ships of 24,000 tons in May; altogether sixty-seven ships totaling 414,000 tons in all operational areas from the North Cape to the Indian Ocean, from the Bay of Biscay to the Caribbean, as well as a couple of destroyers—an average of thirteen ships, or little over 80,000 tons, per month. That meant that during these five months, only one ship had been sunk every other day; it was painfully clear that the enemy was easily gaining in the race between new construction and losses of merchant ships, whereas the U-boat losses, though less than in the summer of 1943, were still very high.
Posted on January 08 2010 at 06:51 AM
The battle of the Heligoland Bight had degenerated into a confused melee in which British light forces were being worsted, when Beatty took a bold gamble by intervening with battlecruisers in heavily mined waters. The resulting rout was greatly damaging to German morale.
In July 1914, even before his appointment, Jellicoe had concluded in a lengthy memorandum to the First Lord that 'it is highly dangerous to consider that our ships are superior or even equal [to those of the enemy]'. Had he known that British projectiles would be liable to break up harmlessly on striking German armour, he would have been even more circumspect.
On 28 August 1914 Commodore Tyrwhitt's Harwich Force forayed against German light forces active in the Heligoland Bight. In uncertain visibility and in the face of rapid German reinforcement, the British were soon hard-pressed and Tyrwhitt called for assistance from the two battlecruisers that comprised his deep cover. Jellicoe had not been able to inform him that he had reinforced them with three more battlecruisers under Vice Admiral Sir David Beatty. The impetuous Beatty did not hesitate to sweep in with all five capital ships. He sank three enemy cruisers but risked his big ships to mines and to uninformed friendly submarines. While the victory was due to overwhelming force rather than good planning, it boosted British morale and caused the Kaiser to think even more defensively.
Unsuspected by the Germans, the British had obtained several of their naval codebooks. Used in conjunction with a chain of radio intercept and direction-finding stations, these proved a valuable indicator of German activity and intentions. The hub of this service was the Admiralty's later-famous 'Room 40', loosely controlled by Captain William R. ('Blinker') Hall, the Director of Naval Intelligence.
To popular disappointment, the Grand Fleet did not seek a second Trafalgar but adopted a policy of containment. The Germans responded by endeavouring to erode its superiority. By using Vice Admiral Franz von Hipper's battlecruisers to bombard English east coast towns it was hoped that Royal Navy squadrons would be goaded into pursuit, to be led into minefields or submarine traps, or into ambush by superior German forces.
Still lacking experience, Room 40 failed to warn of Hipper's first such foray when, on 3 November 1914, he shelled Great Yarmouth for twenty minutes while a cruiser mined the coastal shipping lane. In accordance with his Kaiser's instructions, von Ingenohl brought his two supporting battle squadrons no further than the Bight.
Admiral Fisher, the First Sea Lord, predicted further such provocations and was proved correct when Room 40 discovered one due for 16 December. As Hipper's force alone was specifically identified, only Beatty's battlecruisers and one battle squadron were directed to intercept, with the Harwich Force also at sea. Von Ingenohl, too, was out in support with the battle fleet and his scouting forces clashed with those of the British in the pre-dawn darkness. Fearing that he was risking an action with the whole Grand Fleet, he broke away Beatty, unwittingly let off the hook, and still assuming the enemy to be Hipper alone, actually pursued this enormous quarry until, at 8.54 a.m., he received word that Scarborough was being bombarded. Within half an hour, unaware of Beatty's approach or von Ingenohl's retreat, Hipper withdrew. He was contacted by British light cruisers but these lost the scent due to an ambiguous signal from Beatty.
Although the raids held no military significance, the Admiralty was stung by vehement press opinion and its own inability to guarantee intervention.
Posted on October 15 2009 at 08:41 AM
LZ 11 2 (L 70) The first 'x' type airship, an improved 'Height-Climber', was used by Strasser as his flagship during what turned out to be the last strategic raid of the war on the night of 5-6 August 191 8. Note the difference between the matt-black underside, for camouflage purposes, and the lighter-coloured top. The ceiling of some 7,000m obviated the need for defensive armament on top of the hull, although the airship was destroyed by a DeHaviland DH-4 while at an altitude of some 5,000m during the raid. The entire crew, including Strasser, was lost.
The first strategic raid of 1918 on Britain was on 12-13 March, using five of the latest airships: LZ 99 (L 54), LZ 100 (L 53), LZ 106 (L 61), LZ 107 (L 62) and LZ 110 (L 63). The raid was rendered ineffective by the weather - not winds on this occasion, but rather thick cloud that obscured the ground. Another five-ship raid on 12-13 April was notable for the airship gunners hitting an aeroplane that was attempting to close with their ship, LZ 107 (L 62), and forcing it to break off and land. This successful instance of defensive gunfire is believed to have been unique, but an experiment that might have afforded a greater defensive capability had taken place on 26 January. The airship LZ 80 (L 35) took off with an Albatross D-111 fighter suspended beneath it, which was, successfully dropped from a height of some 1,200m, and flew safely away. Rationale behind this experiment is clear enough, but the project was not explored further.
The airship as a combat weapon was becoming obsolescent, though the advocate of both the weapon and its strategic use, Peter Strasser, continued to deny this, and on 5-6 August himself led a five-ship raid to bomb London. Strasser 's 'flagship' for this operation was the LZ 112 (L 70), the first 'x' type which had reached an altitude of some 7,000m during tests, whilst the other four ships, LZ 100 (L 53), LZ 103 (L 56), LZ 110 (L 63) and LZ 111 (L 65), had 6,000m ceilings. However, the defenders now deployed the two-seater DeHaviland DH4 aeroplane, which had a ceiling greater than 6,000m. In any event, and for unknown reasons, three of the airships, L 53, L 65 and L 70, chose to approach the British coast at heights of some 5,00Om, where they were intercepted by three of the aeroplanes. The report of one pilot, Maj. E. Cadbury, graphically describes what happened: 'The [explosive bullets were] seen to blow a great hole in the fabric and a fire started which quickly ran along the entire length of the Zeppelin. The Zeppelin raised her bows as if in an effort to escape, then plunged seaward, a blazing mass. The airship was completely consumed in about 3â4 of a minute.'
The downed airship was L 70, and there were no survivors. Strasser had perished in Imperial Germany's newest airship on what was to be the last strategic raid of the war. L 70 was not the last airship to fall victim to British fighters, however. On 11 August, while carrying out reconnaissance work over the North Sea, LZ 100 (L 53) was successfully intercepted by a Sopwith Camel launched from a lighter towed behind a destroyer. Despite operating at near maximum altitude, it taking the aeroplane an hour to climb anywhere near it, the airship was ignited by gunfire from some 100 metres below, and plunged into the sea.
The airship as a weapon of war had clearly been neutralised, and in any event the defeat of German arms of all kinds was acknowledged within three months by the signing of the Armistice.
Posted on October 09 2009 at 07:25 PM
The Vickers Wellington GR.Mk XIV was the final version of this able aircraft used by Coastal Command. This example is a Mk XIV issued to No. 304 (Polish) Squadron in 1944.
PB4Y-1 Liberator of VPB-110, US Navy based in Devon, during the winter of 1944. Such US units provided a much-needed back-up to the Coastal Command squadrons.
Sunderland III with No.228 Squadron Coastal Command. Sunderlands equipped no fewer than 28 RAF squadrons the world over. Very early in the war this fine aeroplane had earned the German nickname Stachelschwein (porcupine) on account of its ability to defend itself with its bristling machine-guns, and indeed the Sunderland gained an impressive war record, often having to engage U-boats on the surface (and sinking many of them), and being engaged by enemy fighters and other aircraft. Yet for all its spectacular achievements, the Sunderland's real contribution to the war at sea lay in the long, monotonous patrols far out over the oceans in company with the UK's shipping convoys, when the mere presence of the big 'boat was enough reason to discourage many a U-boat commander from launching an attack.
"10 November 1943/Time 0910/U-boat near Cape FerroI, Spain under attack by Liberators from VB-103, VB-105, and VB-110. Flak from U-boat intense. One Liberator hit and returning to Dunkeswell air base with one engine out. U-boat remaining on surface and fighting back."
The record of the U.S. Navy's aviation force in the Pacific in World War II is voluminous and well-documented, while the Navy's aviation effort in the European side of the global conflict is much less heralded. It became, in its last and most effective stage, an intense fight over a two-year period against the German U-boats, using Very Long Range (VLR) B-24 aircraft, designated PB4Y-1's, operating from southern England over the Bay of Biscay. In 1940, the fall of France had allowed the German Navy to gain use of the ports of western France for their highly effective war against Atlantic shipping bound for England. Continuous patrols by Allied aircraft, many of them U.S. Navy patrol aircraft of Fleet Air Wing 7, kept the U-boat on the defensive from early 1943 on, and destroyed many of them. As I studied the intriguing aspects of this U.S. Naval Aviation effort, knowing that my father had served with Fleet Air Wing 7 in 1943 and 1944, this entry in his war diary, of a desperate battle long ago in the Bay of Biscay, caught my attention:
I had found my father's diary, lost for years under a bookcase in our summer cottage in New Hampshire. As Senior Air Combat Intelligence Officer (ACI) for Fleet Air Wing 7 in Plymouth, England, he had kept detailed records in this diary. There were entries about German Ju-88 fighter attacks against the U.S. Navy PB4Y-1's in the Bay of Biscay and the western approaches to France and England in late 1943 and 1944. There were many mundane entries also about the common wartime problems of poor flying weather and mud that bogged down the planes on the southern England airfields. The U.S. Navy's Fleet Air Wing 7, attached for patrol operations to the 19th Group of the Royal Air Force, Coastal Command, was doing its best to cope with the frustrating and dangerous conditions presented to it by the elements, the, British, and the Germans all at the same time.
The diary entries of 10 November 1943 made it clear that this particular U-boat wasn't dying in the usual way. If they were caught at all, the U-boats usually went down with all their crew and left little evidence on the surface that brave men had fought and lost the final battle in their young lives. There were many entries in my father's diary also about the losses of Navy aircraft, to weather, enemy fighters, fuel exhaustion, and engagements with the U-boats, which had a surprisingly effective anti-aircraft defensive armament arrays by that time in the war. The diary entry of 10 November indicated that this battle took place over nine hours with seven different aircraft-three U.S. Navy and two Royal Air Force PB4Y-1 Liberators, one Wellington bomber, and one Sunderland flying boat. All the returning U. S. Navy Liberator crews reported "U-boat still on the surface, fighting back." Not one crew claimed a definite kill. Their depth charges dropped close to, but didn't kill, a U-boat that was evidently maneuvering hard and shooting back with everything it had. Aircraft were returning to their bases with damage to engines and airframes. The last aircraft to see the U-boat, a British Sunderland flying boat from 228 Squadron, reported it to be approaching Spanish territorial waters near Cape Ferrol, Spain. Just after sending this message back to Coastal Command, the Sunderland made two low passes over the damaged U-boat and dropped a life raft but was shot down by three Ju-88 fighters. This German aerial victory was witnessed by the struggling survivors who "From Headquarters 19 Group: It is now known that the U-boat attacked on 10 November by five Liberators of VB-103, 105, 110, and 612 and 311 Squadrons sank off Punta De La Estaca, Spain. 39 unwounded, 3 wounded, and 3 dead of the crew got ashore." were swimming for their own lives to the rocky shoreline about 300 yards from where the U-boat had grounded on a reef. It was damaged extensively from the long fight but was still afloat as the crewmen jumped into the frigid water for their desperate swim. The survivors took little joy in watching this crash of the Sunderland, which had passed over them in a non-aggressive way and appeared to be investigating the U-boat's condition. The crashing surf, oil ingestion, and exposure were taking a heavy toll on the German crewmen but they had fought ferociously on the surface and had apparently all but escaped the sting of the potent aircraft arsenal arrayed against it.
As I continued to read the diary I came to an entry of 15 November 1943 which jumped off the yellowed paper.
What U-boat was this that had fought so gallantly?
Might some veterans of it still be found alive in Germany in 1996? U-boat sailors were young men, like the crews of the Liberators who hunted them. I supposed that a good number of this German fighting crew of 1943 would still be alive and eager to talk about their struggle to survive.
A search at the Armed Forces Staff College library in Norfolk found the definitive German U-boat history of the Second World War, German Naval History: The U-Boat War in the Atlantic, 1939-45. It confirmed that the U-boat in question was U-966, a Type VIIC Atlantic Class submarine of 712-ton displacement.
German records also confirmed a near match on their casualties with the British Admiralty figures-42 survivors, three of these wounded, and 8 dead.
An exchange of letters with the founder and curator of the U-boat Archive in Cuxhaven, Germany followed in the months after my discovery. Horst Bredow, the meticulous caretaker of German U-boat histories and memorabilia kept at the U-boat Archive, became an enthusiastic help and put me in touch with Herbert Komer, the reunion coordinator for U-966 and its wartime chief engineer onboard at the time of the battle. Shortly after my introductory letter to Komer I received an invitation to attend the 21st annual reunion of the U-966 crew in Dresden-Pima, Germany, on the Elbe River. In the years that have followed my first reunion with the surviving veterans of U-966 I have attended three more of their reunions. My hope is that this summary of their story will do justice to the gallantry of the men who served on both sides of this naval battle. U-966 was launched at Kiel, Germany in March, 1943. The newly designated commander, Oberleutnant Ekkehard Wolf, was not yet 25 years old, but already he was a veteran with experience on two previous U-boats. The crew gradually came up to a full strength of 50 men and the boat cruised initially for training in the Baltic Sea and then north into Norwegian waters. Wolf drove his men hard in countless diving and torpedo attack drills, often telling them, "At this rate you will never be the sailors you can be-maybe lumber for bowling pins, but not good sailors!" This cry of the Commander inspired the creation of the U-966 emblem: a ball knocking down a wooden bowling pin and the words "Gut Holz" (Good Timber). The crewmen rose to Wolf's challenge and loved him all the more for his drive and determination. They knew his pressure in training would be the key to survival on the unforgiving Atlantic patrols. Wolf cared deeply for his crew, frequently taking men aside and asking about their families and helping in small ways to dispel the stress and apprehension of their circumstances. This affection for Wolf, and for his wife Ali, is a common sentiment expressed even today by the veterans.
Wolf was a hard driving but compassionate commander.
Like him, the entire crew was young. They ranged in age from 18 to 30 years old, with the majority being between 19-22. The oldest man in the crew, Karl Grauthe, who would celebrate his 30th birthday in August, 1943, had already survived 7 Atlantic patrols on two other U-boats, a career that had already beaten the survival odds by a wide margin. The crew was a close-knit group. There was no privacy in the cramped U-boat and everyone was cross-trained in many critical jobs. They had a special affection, expressed frequently even today at their reunion, for the cook, Helmut Thfonicke, age 20, who worked so hard under impossible conditions to make excellent meals for them. On September 24, 1943 U-966 began its North Atlantic patrol from Trondheim, Norway. It made the passage through the heavily patrolled Iceland/Faeroe Islands choke point undetected in a heavy storm but was soon thereafter attacked by British destroyers. An emergency dive to 150 meters saved U-966 from the depth charges exploding around and above it. 87 detonations were recorded by the fearful crew during this attack. When U-966 surfaced the destroyers were gone but the crew soon realized that their radio was damaged. There was no capability to transmit messages or respond to inquiries. U-boat Command in Germany apparently gave up the boat as lost after several days of not hearing from it. This was indeed a frustrating and dangerous development. Orders to rendezvous with other boats or to stay clear of dangerous areas or enemy antisubmarine patrols could not be received. U-966 was deaf and blind but it continued its patrol, hoping to somehow fix the problem or run across its prey by sheer luck. After this initial attack the crew fully realized how desperate their patrol would be. The Captain drilled them daily on diving and battle station drills but soon realized the boat urgently needed repairs if it was to survive and be effective later. He ordered "Course toward home!" and made the decision to make best speed for the west coast of France, through the Bay of Biscay, a dangerous killing ground of U-boats. It was the only possible salvation for U-966.
In the early morning of 10 November 1943, just after the U-966 on-deck watch had changed at 4AM, a British Wellington bomber from 612 Squadron, Royal Air Force, detected the boat on the surface, using its high-power Leigh Light illumination. The bomber's pilot in command, Warrant Officer L. D. Gunn, soon realized that the bright moon and phosphorescent wake created by the U-boat made it possible to begin his attack run with the light turned off, making him less of a target to the now alerted deck gunners. The first indication of the attack to most of the U-boat crew was the exploding depth charges. The detonations were heard and felt by everyone. Years later Herbert Komer wrote of the attack that day. "It was as if an invisible hand grabbed and shook the boat. Complete darkness came over us and in a moment the emergency lights came on. There was total chaos! Everything not tied down went flying and broken glass was everywhere." The boat's antiaircraft guns began firing rapidly and soon there was evidence, from smoke and electrical odor, that the right side electrical engines were shorting out. Two men on deck had been wounded in the gunfire exchange and as soon as they were brought inside, the Captain ordered an emergency dive to 150 meters. None of the crew's training had prepared them for the hellish conditions that now prevailed onboard. The boat was making strange noises, like a wounded and desperate animal. There were no comforting or familiar smells or sounds of smoothly running machinery or warm glows of lights where they should be. Few of the pressures and temperatures were in normal ranges. There was disorder, noise, and wrong readings on many critical gauges. Fear was an emotion shared by everyone, but still the crew functioned as it had been trained to do. This was not the U-boat they knew so well! It would not level in its dive and continued to 200, then 220, then 240 meters before it stabilized. The left main engine bearing began to overheat and the situation became extremely dangerous. Some small comfort came to the crew when the boat began to respond to commands and held together far below its certified depth of 180 meters. Purposeful work to clean up shattered debris and survey what still worked began to put hopeful faces on the men. At 9AM, after nearly 5 hours under water and low on battery power, U-966 surfaced in bright sunlight and fair seas. This fair scene was a very dangerous place and the Captain of the U-966 knew that any U-boat on the surface could expect detection and rough handling there within minutes from the ubiquitous long-range patrol planes. Today would be no exception. Within 30 minutes of breaking the surface, U-966 was again under attack from the air. Lieutenant Leonard Harmon of the U.S. Navy's VB-105 squadron found U-966 on the surface in the extreme southwest comer of his patrol sector. He had just made the decision to begin his inward patrol track back to the Dunkeswell air base. He maneuvered his PB4Y-1 Liberator to attack the U-boat out of the sun but heavy antiaircraft fire from the U-boat damaged the depth charge release doors and the heavy bombs would not drop. He made two strafing runs on the surfaced U-boat and turned back toward base with damage to the airplane. As he departed the scene he called in other aircraft which soon arrived to continue the fight. At 1140AM Lieutenant Ken Wright from VB-103 squadron made radar contact with the U-boat and attacked shortly thereafter. He dropped five depth charges and one homing torpedo in two attacks on U-966, causing some damage to the U-boat. Harmon reported the U-boat to be firing and maneuvering in a highly effective manner.
The U-966 crewmen wrote in later years that they fired almost 12,000 rounds of 20 and 37 millimeter antiaircraft ammunition that day. This fire was definitely getting the respect of the attacking aircraft. In one instance the gunfire destroyed an engine on one aircraft and blew out the Captain's side window on another. The aircraft crews reported the U-boat would quickly maneuver to face each diving airplane and thereby present the narrowest frontal aspect possible to its attacker. The intense gun tasks on the U-boat took its toll also. One of the overheated guns on the 20-millimeter mount blew up from overheating and struck down the gunner with a mortal head wound. He was quickly replaced on the guns and the firing continued. This was combat seamanship at its finest, but the odds were starting to become overwhelming against U-966. By 1PM U-966 had been under intervals of attack for about 7 hours. The crew was as alert as ever and fighting back with every skill and bit of energy they had left. The previous airplanes had been quick to radio exact position reports and each one departing was relieved on the scene by a fresh attacker. Lieutenant William Parish, piloting a Liberator from VB-110 squadron, arrived at about this time and delivered his six depth charges close to the U-boat, inflicting some undetermined damage that slowed the boat's speed by about 4 knots and caused it to begin leaving a trail of light oil. Making its erratic course toward the Spanish coast, U-966 was now about 10 miles from the rocky shoreline. Crewmen later wrote about seeing white homes with red tile roofs and a tall church on the cliffs overlooking the sea. It was a vision of hope and salvation. Shortly after Lieutenant Parish delivered his attack, a white Liberator from the Free Czech 311 Squadron, piloted by Flight Sergeant Zanta, arrived and pressed home two attack runs with rockets. The second on these runs did some damage to U-966. It was about this time that U-966, now very close to the shoreline, struck a submerged reef. Since the U-boat was now inside Spanish territorial waters, the circling aircraft stayed off at a safe distance. Captain Wolf, who some time earlier had given the order to bum all secret documents and prepare to abandon ship, now gave his crew the actual order to leave the boat and scuttle it. It was 2PM and U-966 had been under attack for over nine hours in the furious fight for its life. Life rafts were deployed but were soon whipped away in the rising wind and pounding surf. Without the life rafts, each man made the decision to swim for the shore about 300 yards away. Eight out of the fifty crewmen did not make it and drowned in the surf or were pounded unconscious by the crashing waves. Of the eight who died, five were recovered to the shore and later buried in a nearby cemetery. One of these dead was the oldest crewman on board, 30 year old Karl Grauthe. As the crew was abandoning their boat, a British Sunderland flying boat arrived on the scene to report, and also film, the action. Some of the surviving crewmen of U-966 later recalled that the Sunderland aircraft flew over the U-boat and dropped a life raft nearby. This aircraft, from 228 Squadron, Royal Air Force, was piloted by Flying Officer Arthur Franklin and had eleven other men in the crew. Three German Ju-88 fighters arrived on the scene about this time and shot the Sunderland down, in full view of the struggling U-966 crewmen. All on the Sunderland were killed as it crashed in flames and continued to bum on the water for ten minutes or more. Only six of the dead crew were found by Spanish fishermen and returned to England. As the crewmen were swimming toward shore some of them took grim satisfaction when the on board demolition devices exploded on their sinking U-boat. It isn't clear today if it was the on board charges kept for the purpose of self destruction or a depth charge that had been dropped earlier by an attacking airplane. That depth charge had become lodged in the outer hull vent ports. Depth charges were not supposed to hit their targets. They were designed to be dropped near the target and explode so close that hydraulic pressure from the underwater blast would crush the hull. Preset to detonate at a 35 foot depth, this deadly parasite had remained dormant but still attached, waiting for the boat's next dive. U-966 had fought on the surface all day and only now, in a death ritual administered by its own crew, did it slip below 35 feet. Spanish fishermen and local citizens had been watching the battle for some time and now came to the aid of the struggling survivors. Two fishing boats from Kap de Bares soon arrived and began rescuing the crew as well as the bodies from the crashed Sunderland. The arrival of the German Navy combatants in Spain caused great excitement and they were given food and clothing by the local inhabitants. They were soon bused to EI Ferrol where they were initially put up in hotels while negotiations continued regarding their status. Under the rules of the Geneva Convention a judgment of Shipwrecked could have given the crewmen passage back to Germany immediately. The other possibility was designation as Combat Casualty, which meant internment in the neutral country in which refuge had been found. On 12 December 1943 the Spanish foreign ministry ruled that A-Combat Casualty was the status of the U-966 crewmen and they were sent to an internment camp at La Grana. While the crew was awaiting the ruling on their status they had heard British radio read the names of 32 of the crew. They realized that the names of ten survivors among them had not been read. In the middle of the same night that the British radio announcement was heard, five of the crewmen whose names had not been read were put into cars and driven quickly to the French border. The second group of five, to which Heinz Maslock belonged, were picked up on 15 December 1943 by the German consul, declared Shipwrecked, and sent with new passports to Brest, France. Heinz Maslockwas subsequently assigned to duty on two other U-boats, U-1277 and U-3504. When the war finally ended he wrote, "I didn't know what the future would bring or how things would continue, but I was alive!" Three other crewmen who left Spain with Heinz Maslock would die in other U-boats before the end of the war. Fritz Dietrich Adenstedt would go down with U-709 on 1 March 1944 and Hans Auerbach and Wilhelm Schnier would die when U-1055 was sunk on 30 April 1945, only 8 days before the end of the war. These men were the last combat casualties from the original crew of U-966.
For the remainder of the group interned in Spain life seemed to be pleasant and their strong memories of that time continue to this day. The crew of another interned U-boat, U-760, was also at the same camp all together they held track and field meets and received periodic visits from the German attachĂŠ in Madrid. An allowance of 240 pesetas a month to each man from the Spanish Consulate, in addition to their normal pay sent from Germany, made life relatively rich for the interned crewmen. At their reunion in May in Pima, surviving crewmen told me happily that Spanish wine was 2 pesetas a liter and the finest cognac was only 6 pesetas a liter. This fact of life, combined with nightly permission to visit the local town unsupervised until the 10PM curfew and spend their available money, was a formula that formed close bonds of friendship which is still evident today at the reunions. In 1974, Herbert Komer was on vacation in Spain and decided at the last moment to visit the area near where he had spent almost two years of his young life as an interned crewman. Asking the local people if they remembered a wrecked German U-boat, he found that many of them did recall that event. They also told him that another German gentleman was there at a local hotel asking the same questions. Herbert Komer went quickly to the hotel where he found, to his delight and total surprise, his old Commander Ekkehard Wolf. On that night, plans were made for the U-966 reunions, which began in 1975 and have continued every year since.
Captain Wolf died on 26 March 1978. Following his wishes, his ashes were dropped over the wreck of U-966.
The rusting tower of U-966 can still be seen at low tide during rare moments of tranquil sea states off the rocky northwest coast of Spain. The few surviving veterans of U-966 often visit the wreck, a silent tribute to the brave men on both sides who fought on that bright November day 64 years ago.
By Lieutenant Colonel Buck Cummings, USMC (Ret.)
Buck Cummings is a retired Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel. He has been a military and commercial pilot for 44 years and flew the A-4 Skyhawk, AV-8 Harrier, and other types of jet and prop aircraft. He flew 87 missions in Vietnam combat but admits his real interest is in writing living history from World War II, as told by the veterans themselves.
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Posted on September 21 2009 at 09:37 PM
KMS Prinz Eugen
KMS Scharnhorst
Although Scharnhorst and Gneisenau posed a considerable threat to the British while lying at Brest in 1941 and the repeated raids by the Royal Air Force were far too inaccurate to do any serious damage, Hitler felt the two units were too exposed, and ordered them to return. Operation 'Cerberus', the daylight dash through the English Channel in February 1942, was probably the Kriegsmarine's greatest success, for it took the British completely by surprise, the two battle-cruisers and the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen slipping past ineffectual air and sea attacks. Apart from slight damage to Scharnhorst from a magnetic mine during the final phase it had been a humiliation for the British and proof that audacity pays.
The two great grey ships appeared off the entrance to the French Atlantic port of Brest just after dawn. They were Germany's 32,000-ton battleships, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau returning from marauding raids against Allied shipping in the Atlantic.
They had sailed from Kiel at the beginning of 1941. Evading the British Home Fleet based at Scapa Flow, they had broken through the Denmark Strait into the Atlantic. For the next two months like gigantic pirates they roamed the Atlantic shipping lanes sinking more than twenty ships totalling over 100,000 tons. It was the first-and last-successful foray by German battleships against Allied merchant shipping in the Second World War. Then in early March they seemed to disappear into Atlantic mists.
At 7 a.m. on 22 March 1941, as sullen French dock workers watched, they tied up at the quai Lannion in Brest. It was nearly a year since France had fallen and the French Naval base had been taken over by German dockyard workers from Wilhelmshaven. They had returned to Brest because they were badly in need of repairs. The two-months' cruise had revealed serious defects in Scharnhorst's boilers. The tubes of the super-heaters, especially, had given constant trouble threatening a major breakdown. German dockyard engineers who examined her estimated ten weeks would be needed for repairs. When her Kapitän, Kurt Hoffmann, reported this news to Grand Admiral Erich Raeder, head of the German Navy in Berlin, the German Admiralty staff were shocked at the extent of the repairs necessary.
Her sister ship Gneisenau was also in need of minor repairs. The refit of both battleships went ahead quickly but no Frenchman was allowed to work on them, for French workmen in the repair depots ashore went as slow as they dared to hold up the work of the German conquerors. Throughout the dockyard and in the town, the inhabitants were not only surly and hostile, but some of them were in touch with French underground agents, who would pass the information about the repairs to Britain.
After the ships' arrival eight depressing days passed with unceasing rain and frequent false air-raid alarms. Then on the evening of 30 March came the real thing. The wail of sirens was followed by the crash of bombs. The flak gun crews poured up a curtain of fire but their shells could not reach high-flying planes.
Ashore, many officers of the German Naval Staff were killed when the hotel where they were accommodated was hit and caught fire. The ships were undamaged but when the fragments of bombs were examined by German experts next day they made an important discovery. The RAF had dropped 500-lb armour-piercing bombs specially made to crash through the armoured decks of the warships. The Germans then knew that this was no routine dock raid. These bombs were direct evidence that the RAF knew they were there. Now the raids would never cease. They were right. The RAF started to come day and night when weather permitted.
At dawn on 6 April a RAF torpedo-bomber suddenly dived out of the clouds. It was a Coastal Command Beaufort from St. Eval in Cornwall, piloted by Flying Officer Kenneth Campbell, who made a most courageous and determined attack upon Gneisenau. She was tied up to the buoy against a wall at the north end of the harbour, protected by the curving mole. The little hills all around the harbour bristled with clusters of guns and moored near the mole as extra protection were three flak ships.
The battleship's position appeared to be impregnable. Even if an aircraft managed to deliver a low level attack it would not be able to pull out in time and must crash into the high ground surrounding the harbour.
But Kenneth Campbell dived down to deck level and flew steadily past the blazing muzzles of the flak ships' guns. He skimmed over the mole and dropped his torpedo at point-blank range towards Gneisenau's stern. As he did so, the German flak gunners hit him and he crashed in flames into the water.
But he had done his job. Seconds later his torpedo exploded against Gneisenau on the starboard side aft. Water rushed in and she began to list heavily. A salvage vessel which came alongside to pump tons of water from her scuppers had difficulty keeping her from sinking.
The bodies of Campbell and his gallant aircrew, Sgts. Scott, Mullis and Hillman, were fished out of the harbour and brought on board the battleship. Their bodies were draped in flags and placed on the quarterdeck, where a guard of honour was mounted as a mark of respect.
While this chivalrous ceremony was taking place, the salvage crews managed to pump enough water out to right her, since she could not remain in danger at the buoy. RAF spotter planes were now informing the British about every move of the battleships. Another attack like Campbell's on Gneisenau would probably sink her.
The following morning Gneisenau again entered dry dock where inspection confirmed that Campbell's torpedo had wrecked the starboard propeller and shaft tunnel. This would need six months to repair. She would be out of action twice as long as Scharnhorst.
When the British heard about Campbell's heroic act he was awarded the highest decoration for gallantry, the Victoria Cross. The citation said: "Despising heavy odds Flying Officer Kenneth Campbell went cheerfully and resolutely to his task. By pressing home his attack at close quarters in the face of withering fire on a course fraught with extreme peril, he displayed valour of the highest order."
As a result of Campbell's torpedo both battleships were now due for a long stay so the German Navy decided to put their static fleet to some use. A detachment of a hundred midshipmen were sent from Germany to the Brest battleships to complete their training. They were posted equally to both ships and, as anti-aircraft defence was most vital, this was their main task. It became a brutal battle training for these budding officers. For some it was very short.
On the night of 10 April, the sirens again wailed and the first bomb explosions could be heard above the roar of the flak guns. Suddenly there came a series of tremendous flashes and explosions and a red glow lit up Gneisenau's superstructure. She had been hit by three bombs and was on fire. The bombs killed fifty and wounded ninety of her crew, the heaviest casualties being among the flak crews and the young midshipmen. At the time of the raid many of the off-duty midshipmen were in their quarters between decks. Most of them were killed by fragments of other big bombs exploding on the quayside.
As ambulances drew up at the ship's gangway and long rows of stretcher cases were taken to hospital, Captain Hoffmann went across from Scharnhorst to offer help. He ordered a working-party to fight the fires on the mess decks, but they had to flood one magazine before the fires were controlled and Gneisenau out of danger.
The Germans' main concern was to conceal the extent of the damage from the French, but each battleship could only make ten coffins, and this meant tiiey would have to call in French carpenters to make many more. When the order was given the news of the German dead spread rapidly among the inhabitants of Brest.
After this they arranged for most of the crews to sleep ashore in barracks, leaving only flak gunners and a duty watch in the ship. This raid also decided the authorities in Berlin to step up the A.A. defences of Brest. They increased the number of 4-inch guns to 150 and smaller flak guns to 1,200, to make a murderous concentration of fire. Also the two battleships were moved closer together. The lock gates were closed and protected by nets against torpedoes fired by either intruding submarines or wave-skimming planes.
In Scharnhorst's old berth, Hoffmann built a wooden and sheet-iron replica of her on the hull of an old French cruiser, Jeanne d'Arc. Nets hung from the battleships' masts to the dockside with paint sprayed over them to make them resemble clumps of trees. On the roofs of the Naval College the surviving midshipmen erected wooden huts to make it look like a village.
A network of artificial smoke-generators which could shroud the port under a thick fog within a few minutes was installed around the harbour. This last precaution aroused protests from the Luftwaffe who maintained that the dense smoke would endanger their fighter operations. This artificial fog also nearly caused a collision between the two battleships when they came to leave harbour.
The flak and the fighters gave them protection during the day but in darkness it was a different story. As the RAF's heavy bombing continued nearly every night it looked as though not only would the ships be damaged but most of their crews endangered. Although many of them were taken at night in lorries to barracks in Brest, many were still being killed ashore so it was decided to move them farther out to avoid the raids.
They were moved at night to La Roche fifteen miles from Brest near the sleepy little Breton town of Landerneau. Both places were on the main line to Paris and the railway was used a lot to move crews about.
Hidden in a small forest of birch trees near Landerneau, barracks were built for the crews of each ship. It was also planned to build extra ones for the crew of another German battleship, Bismarck, due in for a refit after her own Atlantic merchant shipping forays. Outside the dockyard at Brest the large buoys swung at their moorings awaiting her arrival.
While the other two German battleships were being repaired in Brest, Bismarck was sheltering in the German-occupied Norwegian port of Bergen. But on a moonless night-20 May 1941-she slipped out, escorted by the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen. At noon next day, when the news reached the Admiralty in Whitehall, the Home Fleet was ordered to sail from Scapa Flow to intercept the German ships south of the Denmark Straits.
At dawn on 24 May the two German ships were in action with the British fleet, which included the veteran battle-cruiser Hood and the battleship Prince of Wales on her maiden voyage. The Royal Navy had the worst of the battle. Hood, hit by Bismarck and Prinz Eugen, blew up. Prince of Wales was so badly damaged that she took no further part in the action. But smaller Royal Naval ships still shadowed the fast-steaming Bismarck.
In the afternoon the new aircraft-carrier Victorious was detached from the main force to attack her. When 825 Squadron of Swordfish rose from her flight deck to make a night attack on the German battleship, the leading plane was piloted by Lt.-Cdr. Eugene Esmonde.
At 11:30 p.m., when they were 120 miles from the carrier, Esmonde's Swordfish squadron sighted Bismarck. Flying 100 feet above the waves in the darkness, they let go their torpedoes from less than 1,000 yards. As they banked away there was a roar followed by a flash and a curling plume of flame.
The Bismarck had been hit amidships.
The torpedo slowed her down, and after a three-day chase the Home Fleet again brought the Bismarck into action. This time she was alone. Four hours before the battle the Prinz Eugen had slipped away. The Bismarck sank under the guns and torpedoes of the Royal Navy.
It was on the night of 7 May that German naval officers at Brest, surreptitiously listening to the B.B.C. news, heard: "At 10:37 G.M.T. the German battleship Bismarck was sunk."
The German Navy in Brest took the news of Bismarck's sinking gloomily. Equally depressing was the lack of news of her escorting cruiser, Prinz Eugen. Had she too been sunk? Or had she escaped and was preserving radio silence in case her calls were intercepted by the pursuing Royal Navy? For five days there was silence. Then at dawn on 1 June a buzz of excitement went round the battleship crews. Prinz Eugen had appeared at the entrance to Brest Harbour.
She brought grim news. When her captain, Helmuth Brinkmann, made a report to Grand Admiral Raeder in Berlin about the fate of the Bismarck, he stated that the British battleships now had such good radar equipment that it could not be evaded.
The rest of the situation was also depressing. Despite German precautions, day and night raids on Brest docks became a familiar part of their daily life. Almost every day, the B.B.C.'s nine o'clock news reported that bombers had visited Brest to attack the German warships.
The British realized that this constant bombing might eventually cause the Germans to make a desperate dash home. A series of conferences was held between Admiralty and Air Ministry planners. As a result Coastal Command was ordered to establish three separate dusk-to-dawn radar reconnaissance patrols off Brest and along the Channel. They became known as "Stopper," which covered from Brest to Ushant, "Line SE" from Ushant to Brittany and "Habo" from Le Havre to Boulogne. Fighter Command also organized daylight Channel sweeps known as "Jim Crow."
On 29 April 1941 an Air Ministry letter to the three RAF Commands-Fighter, Bomber and Coastal-said: "Scharnhorst and Gneisenau may attempt to reach a German port up the Channel route during the period April 30th to May 4th inclusive. It is considered probable that the Straits of Dover will be navigated in darkness. It is considered unlikely that the enemy would attempt the passage of the Straits in daylight. But if this should be attempted, a unique opportunity will be offered to both our surface craft and air striking force to engage the enemy ships in force whilst in the Straits of Dover." Bomber Command was instructed to have strike forces in readiness for the Germans leaving Brest.
At this stage, the RAF were well ahead of the Germans in their tactical appreciation. It was not until 30 May-a month after the Air Ministry had considered the possibility of a Channel break-out-that the German Naval Command West in Paris sent a memorandum to Grand Admiral Raeder in Berlin suggesting a contingency plan: "The possibility of bringing heavy ships through the English Channel should be carefully examined. The route is shorter than the Iceland passage. There are good escort possibilities, both air and sea. Enemy radar could be jammed. Superior enemy units would not be present and the passage would be in the close proximity of our own harbours to which ships could be taken in the event of breakdowns."
Raeder reacted strongly against this suggestion. He drew up a formidable list of hazards: "1. The difficulty of navigation in narrow waters. 2. The battleships must be seen by the British. 3. The danger from mines, torpedo boats, torpedo-carrying aircraft and dive-bombers."
But Raeder's principal objection was that mine-sweepers could not clear a wide enough path for the ships to take avoiding action in the event of torpedo attack. He concluded, "The naval war staff therefore consider an unobserved and safe escape through the Channel to be impossible." This view entirely coincided with that of his opposite number in London, First Sea Lord Sir Dudley Pound.
Raeder had good reasons for being cautious. For he had only five battleships-including the "pocket" battleships-to the Royal Navy's fifteen. He had no aircraft-carriers, although the Graf Zeppelin was under construction-but never completed-whilst the British had six operational carriers.
Raeder, one of the ablest and most professional naval officers Germany has ever produced, nursed his ships like a duck with ducklings. During the fourteen years in which he was its Commander-in-Chief no one had guarded the honour of the German Navy more jealously than he.
When Raeder rejected the Channel plan it was generally felt among the admirals in Berlin that this was the end of the matter. For Hitler trusted Raeder's judgement and had promoted him to Grand Admiral, second only to Goring as Hitler's adviser for the prosecution of the war.
It came as a surprise when Admiral Krancke, Raeder's personal representative on Hitler's Supreme Staff, was summoned to the Führer's headquarters and, standing stiffly to attention, listened pale-faced to the tirade of abuse concerning the German capital ships and their officers which Hitler hurled at him.
Hitler, at war with Russia since June, was becoming alarmed at the numerous small British commando raids on the coast of Norway, starting with the Lofotens in March 1941. He considered the Norwegian coastline to be the most vulnerable section of his Western Wall. The news had also reached Hitler that British convoys were bringing tanks, aircraft and guns to the Eastern Front. He decided that Norway, where in any case he had always thought the British intended to open a second front, had now become even more strategically important.
Meanwhile the RAF continued to keep up their non-stop bombing attacks on Brest. A month after Raeder had rejected the Channel plan-on the morning of 1 July-it was Prinz Eugens turn. While she lay alongside the eastern basin of the commercial dock, a RAF bomb smashed the ship's armour-plating and exploded in the most vulnerable compartments- the plotting room and transmitting station. It killed forty-seven men, including her first officer, Cdr. Otto Stoos, and wounded thirty-two. It also put Prinz Eugen out of action for three months.
On the other hand, Scharnhorst was refitted and on the morning of 23 July left for La Pallice, 250 miles to the south, for trials to test her super-heaters and practise firing her guns. Captain Hoffmann chose the shoal-dotted waters around La Pallice because they afforded the best protection against submarines and he needed only a few patrol boats to keep watch.
A tanker took her place in the dock as a decoy and was covered with netting. To disguise the direction of her departure, the Germans put out false oil trails leading north from Brest. In spite of this careful camouflage, the ever-watchful RAF spotted the move and reported that Scharnhorst was moving south from her berth. Was she about to break out into the Atlantic? As spotter planes watched her, the opinion grew that this might be the long-awaited escape.
Unaware of the British suspicions, the battleship performed perfectly, reaching a speed of thirty knots without difficulty. She returned to La Pallice that evening, expecting to remain there for several days while minor adjustments were made.
Before dark a group of Stirling heavy bombers attacked her and made one direct hit with a heavy armour-piercing bomb. More heavy bomber attacks during the night damaged La Pallice docks. At dawn a RAF photographic reconnaissance plane was over La Pallice. As it revealed little serious damage it was decided to mount the most massive daylight raid on both battleships.
Ninety-nine RAF bombers took off, arriving over the battleships at 2 p.m. Three Flying Fortresses, sixty-three Wellingtons and eighteen Hampdens attacked the Gneisenau in Brest while eight Halifaxes bombed the Scharnhorst in La Pallice.
This was the first time Fortresses, fitted with the new Sperry bombsight for high altitude bombing, had taken part in a raid on the Brest battleships. They had arrived in England just three months before and the attack that hot July afternoon on the German battleships was only their third operation.
Because of the height at which they operated they carried special aircrews-none of them over 24 years old. The pilots of the three Fortresses, Wing-Cdr. Macdougall, Sq. Ldr. MacLaren and Flt.-Lt. Mathieson, were told to concentrate on the Gneisenau. At eight minutes past two they started bombing from a height of 30,000 feet, each aircraft dropping four 1100-lb. bombs which burst on the quays and docks. Although accurate flak was seen following them a thousand feet below they were too high for the German defences. After they had released their bombs three Messerschmitts climbed steeply towards them but the Fortresses turned away and lost them.
At the same time Wing-Cdr. Maw led the low-level British-built bombers down to 6,000 feet, their bombs bursting among the dockyard buildings. Pilot Officer Payne went down to 3,500 feet and as his bombs straddled the Gneisenau both he and his front gunner, Sgt. Wilkinson, were wounded by flak.
The Halifaxes attacked the Scharnhorst at La Pallice from 12,000 feet. She was easily identified by the high-flying bomber pilots from a cloudless sky, and a row of five bombs hit her. Thick smoke began to pour from her as terrific explosions shook the ship. Two bombs exploded on deck, causing a great rent. Yet she was lucky. The three heavy bombs that penetrated the armoured upper deck and smashed through the hull failed to explode, although they caused her to take in 6,000 tons of water.
The ship began to settle with a heavy list. But the efficient repair-parties quickly righted her and the damage was promptly repaired. A signal went to the port authorities for divers, who found the impact with Scharnhorst's deck had torn the steel off one of the bombs and had helped to prevent it exploding. The holes in Scharnhorst's hull were soon patched up.
Good luck was still with her for, miraculously, there were no casualties. She returned to Brest at twenty-seven knots.
The autumn of 1941 was the beginning of bad times for the German war machine. Hitler's blitzkrieg against the Soviet Union was slowing up at die onset of the savage Russian winter. Hitler was personally conducting the campaign from his headquarters at Rastenburg in East Prussia, known as Wolf's Lair.
Since the start of the Russian campaign Admiral Raeder had heard nothing from his preoccupied Führer. But on 17 September, as the Admiral was preparing plans for using his battleships in the Atlantic shipping lanes again, he was summoned to a conference with Hitler at Wolf's Lair.
Hitler did not want to hear about the Atlantic plan. He was convinced the British were going to invade Norway and interrupted to say, "The Atlantic can be left to the U-boats. Your battleships, all your major units, must be stationed along the Norwegian coast. They can be of some use in guarding Norway against invasion. They will be safer there from air attack than in Brest."
He called Norway the "zone of destiny." Hitler, who had referred to himself to Raeder as "a land animal," said to him, "Battleships are not good for anything. The big guns would be more useful and less vulnerable in emplacements ashore. I have plans for disarming these steel monsters and using them for the defence of the Norwegian coast."
There was a second conference in November when Hitler produced a marked map of the Norwegian coast with areas shown from which the two battleships and Prinz Eugen could operate against the British. He was impatient with Raeder. What was the major part of German sea power doing bottled up and being bombed in Brest? He ended by inquiring harshly, "What solution does the Navy have?"
To placate him, Raeder brought out a contingency plan by Naval Group West in Paris which had been pigeon-holed. It suggested that, while awaiting completion of repairs to the battleships, an attempt might be made to send Prinz Eugen on a lone dash through the English Channel to a German port. Hitler, who had appeared uninterested, even bored, suddenly looked up and commented, "Why only the Prinz Eugen? Why not all the ships?"
Raeder, who was not expecting even the Prinz Eugen plan to be taken seriously, was astonished. He replied, "A dash through the Channel by a solitary cruiser is a very different matter, mein Führer, from a movement by a whole fleet."
Hitler was the last person on earth to be put off by such a statement. "The issue of war will be decided in Norway," he said. "Unless the British are fools they will attack us there."
As he said this, he looked directly at Raeder and gave the Nazi salute in dismissal. Raeder flew back to Berlin and sent a signal to Admiral Saalwächter, Chief of Naval Group West in Paris, asking how soon the battleships could put to sea. He was not displeased when he received a reply that the two battleships would not be ready until December. It was just as well. By then Hitler, obsessed with the Russian front, might have forgotten this hare-brained idea.
At first Raeder tried to gain time saying he must have discussions with his staff. He explained the position to his Chief of Staff, Admiral Fricke, in Berlin and also to Admiral Wagner, head of the Operations Section directing the war at sea, saying, "Hitler wants the ships back in home waters, for he believes there might be an attempt at a British invasion in the Norwegian area."
As the Berlin naval chiefs studied the basic aspects of the plan their first objection was the state of crew training. The better trained the crews were, the more chance they had of pulling off a daring operation like this. Yet through no fault of Captain Hoffmann and his fellow commanders, the crews' training and morale was very much below standard. Brest-bound as they were, always under the threatening shadow of the RAF, they were only able to carry out restricted exercises and drills. But the greatest obstacle to the plan would be the need for the strictest secrecy. Except for the most senior officers at Brest, no one could be allowed to know what was to happen. This would mean the crews could not be inspired by their training instructors with a promise of glory.
Yet the more Admiral Wagner studied the Führer's plan the more he found he was not against the operation. This was because the entire world naval situation had changed suddenly on 6 December 1941, when America had come into the war. He considered the days were now over when the Germans could keep the ships in Brest as a constant Atlantic threat.
In his view, to do this indefinitely would be to invite disaster. The situation seemed quite plain; on one side there were the British with the increasingly destructive power of their bombing raids; but on the other side there was the menacing voice of the Führer. "You will remove the ships where I can employ them in the Norwegian theatre. Otherwise you will give me their guns and I will mount them in shore batteries. Make your choice, meine Herren."
Was there an alternative to a break-out through the Channel? They could bring the ships north of Britain round by the Iceland route. But in their path in Scapa Flow lurked the might of the British battle fleet which was bound to intercept-and send them to join Bismarck at the bottom.
However, his intelligence reports revealed that the English appeared to have very little in the Channel.
His chief, Admiral Raeder, still did not like the plan. Like First Sea Lord Dudley Pound in the Admiralty in London he feared for his capital ships. If the ships were put out of action by the RAF or Royal Navy, it would be the virtual end of the German Navy as a force. Feeling that the ships would be too like sitting ducks on the narrow waters of the Channel, he told Wagner, "I cannot make this proposal to Hitler that we break through the Channel."
Wagner argued the risk might have to be taken. He said, "If the ships are dismantled we will present the British with a bloodless victory. The German Navy will never hold up its head again. To concede victory to the enemy without a fight is to sentence the German Navy to death."
Faced with these views, and the Führer's fanatic insistence, Raeder began to give way a little-but he was still not convinced.
On 29 December, he had a stormy meeting with Hitler when the Führer persisted in his plan. When Raeder said that, after being in port for so long, his ships could hardly be expected to face the powerful British Home Fleet without some preparation, Hitler once again raved about "the uselessness of the battleships." He refused even to allow the time for lengthy "shake-down" sea-going exercises and firing practice which Raeder wanted. For as he pointed out quite reasonably, they might easily be bombed and sunk while on these practices.
Raeder flew back to Berlin and passed the whole matter over to Naval Group West in Paris. Although the operation would be under the immediate command of Vice-Admiral Otto Ciliax who commanded the Brest ships flying his flag in Scharnhorst, Naval Group West in Paris was responsible for all operational directions.
The Commander-in-Chief of Naval Group West was 59-year-old General-Admiral Alfred Saalwächter. Fair-haired and blue-eyed, he had an exceptional mind. Although smallish in height, he was regarded in the German Navy as riesengross- "gigantic in stature."
A Prussian, born at Neusalz on the River Oder, he had been a submarine commander in the First World war, but although he had been awarded the Knight's Cross in 1940, he was no friend of the Führer, with whom, like so many German admirals, he had had differences.
Between wars, Saalwächter had gone round naval ports inspecting establishments and training personnel. He wrote a standard book on naval warfare for the German Navy, Seekriegsanleitung, which became the textbook for all officers.
His headquarters-Naval Group West-were in the Avenue Maréchal Faijolle, near the Bois de Boulogne. It was a large, four-storied mansion of Napoleon III period. The only indications of its naval importance were two striped sentry boxes at the entrance, each with a German sailor in blouse and gaiters carrying a rifle.
Saalwächter had a staff consisting of about fifteen high-ranking naval officers, with several hundred petty officers and technicians. On the upper floors of the mansion were the "cabins" where the staff officers lived and took their meals. In the basement was a big garage with a fleet of staff cars. The drivers were civilians, mostly white Russians. Their leader, ironically enough, had been a Russian admiral in the First World war.
As there were few German troops in metropolitan Paris at that time Saalwächter's staff led a strange isolated life. They worked so hard they often did not go out for days at a time but they always had seats at the Paris Opera House because their chief liked opera. The only time Saalwächter appeared relaxed was when he was stealing an evening from his headquarters at the Opera.
At the end of 1941 Admiral Otto Ciliax, commander of the Brest squadron, was away on Christmas leave in Germany. He was not due back until the New Year. Ciliax-a product of the German: Naval Academy at Flensburg-was a tall, brusque black-haired man. He was a former captain of the Scharnhorst and was not very popular. He was a notorious martinet and nick-named "The Black Czar." When a staff officer saluted him and his hand did not travel to his brow with regulation agility, a frown would come on Ciliax's face as he returned his salute. A little bit later he would send a petty officer over to him with a message, "The Admiral's compliments, mein kapitän, but he would like to speak with you." Ciliax would say angrily, "I just wanted to tell you I did not like your salute!" As the Germans put it, he was a "starker Mann!"
Another reason he was not popular was that he could not delegate authority. In Scharnhorst, he and his staff had an admiral's bridge immediately above Captain Hoffmann's navigational bridge, and he was several times snubbed for giving orders on the running of the ship literally over the captain's head.
If Ciliax met an officer whom he did not like the Admiral made him miserable. He suffered from stomach trouble and was frequently in some pain, which may have played a part in his irascibility. But with all his rough mannerisms he had dignity.
His Chief of Staff, the calm 41-year-old, pipe-smoking Captain Hans Jürgen Reinicke, had heard about his reputation before he joined him-so he was prepared. He swallowed what Ciliax said to him in public but later sought him out privately and told him if things continued in this manner he would put in for a. transfer. He had no more trouble and Reinicke became one of the few officers who could handle him.
On 30 December just after dinner an urgent signal was brought to Reinicke aboard Scharnhorst. It was from Naval Group West in Paris ordering him to report there at 10 a.m. on New Year's Day. As the message said Admiral Ciliax was also being ordered to report in Paris, he realized it was more than a routine matter.
It was too late to catch the evening train to Paris so he took one the next morning. It was evening when he arrived at the Gare Montparnasse and crossed Paris to the Gare de l'Est to meet Admiral Ciliax recalled from home leave in Germany by the same cryptic message from Group West. It was not surprising that Ciliax, never noted for his good temper, came off the train in one of his blacker moods.
"What's this all about, Reinicke?" he growled more than once. But his Chief of Staff could not enlighten him. They would both have to wait for their appointment next morning.
It was New Year's Eve. They had a meal, split a bottle of champagne, and went to bed early.
The next morning they went to Group West headquarters and waited in a conference room for Alfred Saalwächter. He soon appeared with Admiral Schniewind, the new operational commander of the German Navy. Saalwächter briskly told Ciliax and Reinicke the news-the Führer wanted the three ships to leave Brest, proceed to their German home ports and then to Norway for operations there.
But Admiral Saalwächter revealed he was worried about the fate of his great ships. After he told them of the Führer's demands he asked for their frank opinions. He was trying to organize expert opposition to dissuade the Führer. When Ciliax raised many objections against Hitler's scheme, he told him to go away and put them in writing. After Ciliax had written his detailed objections, Saalwächter forwarded them with his own report to Raeder.
He wrote: "I submit herewith conclusions for the comprehensive scrutiny that has been ordered into the question of the withdrawal of the Brest Group eastwards through the Channel.
"The hazards applicable to a voyage of battleships through the Channel eastwards are summed up at the end of the outline.
"I view these hazards as being very great. I must for this reason alone give an urgent warning against it being carried out.
"On the 12 November I commented that one single surprise move to the west by one or by several battleships was feasible. But conversely, a move eastwards of the battleships is one combined with too great a peril. Subsequent navigation through the Channel would be rendered impossible because the element of surprise would have departed.
"It can be executed only during the period of the longest nights. It must be accompanied by control of the mine situation and air preponderance in the Channel.
"I do not take the view that the new experiences in the East Asian theatre of war can be taken as proof of the uselessness of battleships to abandon our warfare in the Atlantic.
[The sinking of the Repulse and Prince of Wales by Japanese aircraft.]
Our opponent does not think so, as the unchanged characteristics of his heavy forces show.
"I advocate, as I have always done, the conception that the essential tasks of our battleships lie in the Atlantic.
"Our numerical inferiority affords us opportunities for success only by surprise offensive sorties directed at the enemy's weak points which are to be found in his long Atlantic supply routes, and not by continually facing with defensive action a greatly superior enemy.
"At this time the best possibilities of success for the Brest Group lie in surprise action against north to south convoys. The Brest Group's achievements already go to show that the enemy feels and fears this threat and straightaway tries by air attacks to rid himself of it.
"This pressure can only be made permanent if our battleship strength actually goes to sea. Yet even during the long period of repairs the enemy can hardly foretell with exactitude when one or several of the ships are able to pounce. Withdrawal of the Brest Group from the Atlantic means releasing the enemy from this strategic pressure.
"The plan for tying down his heavy naval forces in the Atlantic falls apart. Maintenance of pressure on other theatres of war such as East Asia and the Mediterranean must also stop. A perceptible strengthening of English sea power in East Asia will follow, thereby impeding Japan.
"In addition to actual strategic prizes, there is great prestige for our enemy. On the other hand there would be a great loss of prestige for us which would be made far worse if the ships were lost by the voyage through the Channel. Political consequences very damaging to us and our allies are inevitable.
"If our ships disappear from the Atlantic or from the Atlantic position people would rightly talk about a 'lost battle'. Naval actions from Norway would not make up for such a move.
"We do not stand there on the Atlantic just for raiding possibilities against the enemy supply routes. We threaten Scotland, Iceland, the North Arctic and Russia.
"In the Norwegian harbours the aerial danger and with it the stresses for the Luftwaffe would hardly be less. The enemy at all times could by choice of place and time have greater superiority. Liaison with any battleships in the Atlantic would be impossible.
"I am convinced that the problem of the Atlantic position as it is at present cannot be gone back upon later. In any case, it is clear that a "bringing back again" of the ships would be enormously difficult.
"Finally, there are indications that if our ships withdrew from the Atlantic after a lost battle, to appear again in home waters and remain there it would be injurious to the psychology of our own ships' companies, of the entire Navy and of the German people.
"I am therefore convinced that it would now be a very serious mistake by us at this time to withdraw the ships from Brest in their Atlantic position.
"I consider their remaining there, even though with heavy damage and lengthy repair times, is the correct course.
"There remains for consideration only the slight relief of the Luftwaffe which would come about in Brest.
"If the withdrawal plan of the Brest Group to the East is adhered to, then examination might be made as to whether Prinz Eugen should take part. By the cruiser remaining at Brest, at least a portion of the present strategic operations of the Brest Group would remain in being to confront our enemy.
"I submit with this report extracts from three letters of C-in-C of the ships (Ciliax), corresponding to my point of view, which he sent me after the first conference on the matter in Group West.
"Should the question be put through the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Wehrmacht to the Navy: 'Break-out or Disarm?' then I would say with a heavy heart that against the 'Break-out' with its enormous risks, I would prefer temporary disarmament. For when the fortunes of the day change the ordnance could be restored, whilst a loss of these valuable ships and their crews could only bring damage without benefit."
It was a gloomy and defeatist document and Hitler was to have none of it. He was concerned that the constant BAF bombing was slowly fraying the fabric of crew morale.
Although unaware of Hitler's plan and Saalwächter's strong objections, the BAF bombing of Brest increased in December. And for the first time photographic planes revealed that all three ships seemed to be preparing for sea.
On Christmas Eve the Admiralty ordered seven submarines to form an "iron ring" around the approaches to Brest.
The navigator of Scharnhorst, 42-year-old Helmuth Giessler, was on Christmas leave. When he went off, neither he nor any other naval officers at Brest had any inkling that Hitler was holding a pistol at Baeder's head demanding the ships leave Brest. At that time not even Admiral Ciliax had the faintest suspicion of their fate.
Giessler came back from his leave on the same day as Vice-Admiral Ciliax returned from the New Year's Day conference with Admiral Saalwächter at Naval Group West in Paris. That evening Ciliax summoned him to his cabin. As navigating officer of the flagship he was responsible for the whole squadron so he had to be one of the first to be told about the plan. Ciliax informed him in his usual brusque way about the proposed operation. He added crisply, "Consider your needs and requirements, Giessler, and what preparations you consider necessary. You have until morning!"
With these words the Admiral dismissed him. That night Giessler climbed into his bunk but did not get a wink of sleep. He tossed about all night with the information racing through his brain.
A voyage of these great battleships through the narrow English Channel had been so improbable that he had hardly looked at the Channel charts-he had never considered them as waters where the Scharnhorst might sail. Now the problem was how to obtain these charts without arousing gossip and suspicion.
Next morning he called Chief Petty Officer Wehrlich to his cabin and handed him a list. "I require these charts, of the Mediterranean and these charts of Icelandic waters," he said. "Also these of the West African coast." He also demanded pilot books of the Mediterranean and everywhere else he could think of. Wehrlich kept bringing so much navigational material that towards the end of the day he could hardly enter his cabin for papers and books. Among this pile of material were his charts of the English Channel. In the middle of all his other requests, Giessler had slipped in a casual order for them.
Giessler had an extra problem. He knew Wehrlich was not experienced enough for the magnitude of his task-but Wehrlich's predecessor, Lt. Johann Hinrichs was. He was the man he wanted at his side to help plan this vital operation.
He was now the skipper of a fleet of mine-sweeping trawlers, but when Giessler explained the situation to Ciliax, a puzzled Hinrichs received a secret signal posting him back to Scharnhorst. When he arrived Giessler let him into the secret. During those January days they sat together in the navigator's cabin. Giessler kept muttering to himself "Ach so," and humming tunelessly as they pored over his charts. They worked out the tides, times of darkness, depth of water, and the complete timetable the ships must try and adhere to hour by hour on the voyage from Brest to Wilhelmshaven.
While Giessler was working out his plan, unknown to him something happened which was to help him. On 2 January, the Royal Navy's submarine "iron ring" faded away. High submarine losses in the Mediterranean and a bottle-neck in the training programme caused the "subs" to be withdrawn-and surveillance left to the RAE
Yet, as if to confirm Hitler's attitude, at 8:30 p.m. on 6 January 1942, a RAF bomb burst against the hull of the Gneisenau as she was lying in Number Eight Dock. Several yards of her armour were ripped and two compartments were flooded.
On 12 January, Admirals Raeder, Saalwächter and Ciliax were summoned to Wolfs Lair for the final full-scale conference. Raeder brought his Chief of Staff, Admiral Fricke, while Ciliax was accompanied by Captain Reinicke, his own Chief of Staff, and Saalwächter by his mine expert, Commodore Friedrich Rüge. The. Luftwaffe was represented by Göring's Chief of Staff, Lt.-General Jeschonnek, accompanied by one of Germany's famous fighter aces, Col. Adolf Galland, who had fought in the German Condor Legion in the Spanish Civil War and was a veteran of the Rattles of France and Britain.
They arrived in a snowstorm at Wolfs Lair. Lt.-General Jodl, Hitler's personal military adviser, who lived and worked there, described the Führer's headquarters as "a cross between a monastery and a concentration camp."
Hitler spent his days in a concrete bunker with a 20-foot thick roof. It was a sealed box with no window and no outlet to the open air. Next door was another similar concrete bunker used by Hitler as his map room, where he stood waiting for them. After giving them the Nazi salute he asked them to be seated round the big conference table.
At Hitler's request, Raeder opened the session, saying, "The question of the passage of the Brest Group through the Channel has been examined by all agencies concerned. In the light of the Führer's opinion, the German Fleet's primary task is to defend the Norwegian coast and ports and, in so doing, it should use its might unsparingly. Since you, mein Führer, informed me that you insist upon the return of the heavy units to their home bases, I suggest that Vice-Admiral Ciliax report on the details of how this operation is to be prepared and carried out, and that Commodore Ruge subsequently report on the necessary mine-sweeping measures, to enable you, mein Führer, to make the final decision afterwards."
Hitler replied: "The Naval Force at Brest has, above all, the welcome effect of tying up enemy air forces and diverting them from making attacks upon the German homeland. But with our ships at Brest, enemy sea forces are tied up to no greater extent than would be the case if the ships were stationed in Norway. If I could see any chance that the ships might remain undamaged for four to five months and, thereafter, be employed in operations in the Atlantic, I might be more inclined to consider leaving them in Brest.
"Since in my opinion such a development is not to be expected, I am determined to withdraw the ships from Brest to avoid exposing them to chance hits day after day. I fear that there will be a large-scale British-Russian offensive in Norway. I think that if a strong task force of battleships and cruisers, practically the entire German Fleet, were stationed along the Norwegian coast, it could, in conjunction with the German Air Force, make a decisive contribution towards the defence of the area."
Then it was Ciliax's turn. "I recommend the necessity of leaving Brest under cover of darkness, taking maximum advantage of the element of surprise, and of passing through the Straits of Dover in the daytime. This will make the most effective use of the means of defence at our disposal."
Hitler agreed, saying, "I emphasize particularly the surprise to be achieved by having the ships leave after dark."
Ciliax said, "I must stress emphatically that a very strong destroyer and fighter protection must be provided on the day of the break-through itself from dawn to dusk."
"I am aware of the decisive role to be played by the Air Force in this enterprise," replied Hitler and turned to Luftwaffe Chief of Staff, Lt.-General Jeschonnek, who said, "I do not believe I will be able to provide constant unfailing protection for the ships with the available 250 fighters which cannot possibly be reinforced."
Even in the presence of the Führer he was exhibiting the Luftwaffe's traditional reluctance to co-operate with the Navy. But with Hitler's cold eyes upon him, Jeschonnek hastily promised to draw on the existing night-fighter formation to provide dawn fighter protection.
Hitler then asked for opinions as to the possibility of using the northern route saying, "I do not care which route is selected by the Navy, if only it is successful in getting those ships transferred to Norwegian waters."
The four Admirals explained that the northern route was not suitable for several reasons. Baeder commented, "The present disposition of enemy forces is against such a move; there are two or three battleships and two aircraft-carriers in the Home Fleet. Moreover, the German air forces would not be able to provide the necessary air cover."
Commodore Buge, commanding the seaward defences of the occupied French coast, including the mine-sweeping and mine-laying forces, was asked to report. Buge was able to assure Hitler that the menace from mines, always regarded as the main danger to forcing a passage through the Channel, was not as bad as imagined.
Baeder, still unsure of the Luftwaffe's full support, repeated his demands to the Air Force for a very strong fighter cover. He also asked for attacks on enemy torpedo plane bases in the early morning of the day of the break-through, and possibly a few days earlier.
Lt.-General Jeschonnek replied stiffly, "The constant air cover demanded will leave insufficient aircraft for the heavy air battles that are sure to develop on the day of the breakthrough. We may expect our fighter force to become very inferior in strength-at least during the afternoon. Also our own anti-aircraft personnel are susceptible to fatigue in the afternoon as experience has shown."
Col. Galland, who was to command the Luftwaffe fighter cover, also offered his opinion, "The strong Spitfire forces at the disposal of the British will render things difficult for the long-range fighters which we are going to employ."
Raeder remarked that tide and daylight would determine the timing of the operation. That was the reason the date could not be changed. When he asked what should be done in case one or several ships were unable to move on the date set, Hitler decided, "If two battleships are in a position to move, they are to undertake the operation, if necessary without the cruiser. If only one battleship and the cruiser can move, they must do likewise. But in no case should the Prinz Eugen do so alone."
Then Hitler, cutting through both air and naval objections, said briskly, "The ships must not leave port in the daytime as we are dependent on the element of surprise. This means that they will have to pass through the Dover Straits in the daytime. In view of past experience I do not believe the British capable of making and carrying out lightning decisions.
"This is why I do not think they will be as swift as is assumed by the Naval Staff and the Admiral Commanding Battleships in shifting their bomber and pursuit forces to the south-eastern part of England for an attack on our ships in the Dover Straits.
"Picture what would happen if the situation were reversed!-if a surprise report came in that British battleships have appeared in the Thames estuary and are heading for the Straits of Dover. In my opinion, even we would hardly be able to bring up air pursuit forces and bomber forces swiftly and mediodi-cally."
He added dramatically, "The situation of the Brest Group is comparable with that of a cancer patient, who is doomed unless he submits to an operation. An operation, even though it might be a drastic one, will offer at least some hope that the patient's life may yet be saved. The passage of our ships through the Channel would be such an operation. It must therefore be attempted."
Finally Hitler said, "Nothing can be gained by leaving the ships at Brest. Should the Brest Group manage to escape through the Channel, however, there is a chance that it might be employed to good advantage at a later date. If the ships remain at Brest their ability to tie up enemy air forces may not continue for long. As long as they are in battle-worthy condition they will constitute worthwhile targets, which the enemy will feel obliged to attack. But the moment they are seriously damaged-and this may happen any day-the enemy will discontinue his attacks. In view of all this and in accordance with the suggestion of the C-in-C Navy I decide that the operation is to be prepared as proposed."
That was it. After the conference Hitler entertained his admirals and generals at dinner in the concrete shelter where he lived. He ate frugally as usual but was more genial than anyone had seen him for a long time. He said, almost jovially, "You will find that this operation will turn out to be our most spectacular naval success of the war."
He revealed his only doubt-would the Luftwaffe manage it? He realized that Galland with his fighters was the key figure in the operation. Saying good-bye to him he asked quietly, "Do you think they will bring it off?" When Galland assured him he thought they would he dismissed him with a rare smile.
The decision was made. Far from dismantling the great ships the Germans were to fight them through the English Channel in daylight. An attempt like this had not been made by an enemy of England for over three centuries-since the Spanish Armada of 1588.
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