Second Front (Kirov Series Book 24) Page 11
Over the next 30 minutes, those eight Germans fighters had to contend with two well coordinated strikes from the British carriers. The sky was suddenly alive with the movement of enemy aircraft. Brandt could see several groups of planes in formation, lower, slower, and obviously looking for trouble. He dove on one group, riddling one plane from above and sending the others scattering to evade. So the British have a new torpedo bomber, he noted. The heavy round nosed lances were evident beneath their fuselages as he climbed after his pass. Then two fighters came swooping in and he quickly banked right, soon finding himself in a heated dogfight.
Those eight German fighters pirouetted about, more maneuverable than anything else in the sky, and their dizzy dance seemed to multiply their numbers in the minds of the British bomber pilots. Two of the three strike groups had been broken up, twos and threes reforming and getting back on their attack heading. The pilots strained to look for targets, squinting at the sea below and still casting wary glances this way and that for German fighters. Then one man called out on the radio—Skunk at three o’clock! Lieutenant Commander Robert Everett of 810 Squadron thought they might keep on and find more targets. This looked to be nothing more than a destroyer. He pressed on, but saw nothing but the empty sea. The Germans had turned east some time ago, and by the time the planes got out to the reported location of Peter Strasser, the fleet-footed carrier was nowhere to be seen.
If all these angry bees are here, the hive must be somewhere, thought Everett. He kept on, with four wing mates, but saw nothing but that lone destroyer. It soon became a question of better than nothing, and so he took his planes in. That was going to seal the fate of DD Gunnar that day. It would dodge four of the five torpedoes after it, but not the one from Lieutenant Commander Everett. He saw the contact explosion, high white spray amidships, and grinned. Now the only carrier he had to find out here was the good ‘Old Ark.’
Admiral Scheer Norwegian Sea, 150 Nautical Miles ENE of Jan Mayen, June 16, 1942, 18:30 Hours
Kapitan Theodore Kranke was not happy. He had been given a very privileged role in this operation, the lead scouting group for the fleet, and he had certainly done that well enough, finding the enemy the previous day. Yet that engagement with a single destroyer and cruiser had been very costly. The sight of his brother ship Lutzow careening over like that was most disheartening. A destroyer, a cruiser, and finally a battleship, and that had been the end for Lutzow, a most able ship.
Raeder is getting too bold now, he thought. He had another aircraft carrier, and so he thinks he can send the fleet anywhere he pleases. We barely got away from that battleship—a new ship from the looks of it, and fast. If this were 1940, my ship would have little more than a British cruiser to worry about, unless we ran into the Hood. Now, most every battleship I’m likely to see in the Norwegian Sea has the speed to get after me, and I can do nothing about that except turn and run.
He shrugged, realizing his ship had been built to fight in 1940, but things were very different now, and Admiral Scheer was already obsolete. That was what had just happened to him. After slipping away, leaving Newcastle, Ledbury and Lutzow to their fate, he made a wide circling maneuver west and north around Jan Mayen, using the island itself, wreathed in fog, to mask his position. He had it in mind to then turn northeast and run on a course roughly parallel to the one he expected the convoy to take. Then he could come 30 points to starboard and see if he could take those merchantmen on the flank. The maneuver had been executed perfectly, over a long 24 hour period, and he was approaching the convoy zone again, guns ready, lookouts high on the mainmast, eager for vengeance. There, to his great surprise, was the looming presence of yet another British battleship, heavy on the horizon. He saw the long silhouette begin to compress, and knew that the enemy had turned toward him to give chase.
“Helmsman! Come about, 180 degrees! All ahead flank!”
Turn and run…. It was all he had in his pocket for such an encounter, and he steamed, angry to find himself right back where he was the previous day, running from a British battleship. It was as if a hungry man had just snuck into the kitchen after hours and was caught by a knife wielding cook. He could keep his distance now if he ran full out. The King George V class topped out at 28 knots, just like his own ship. As long as he was out of range of those 14-inch guns, he was safe. But if they had a pair of cruisers to harry him as well… Lutzow, rolling over into the dark cold sea, and nothing he could do for those men now. He had many friends on that ship.
So now we play the game again, he thought. How in the world did they know where I was? Could they have picked me up on radar? Was I spotted by a plane we failed to see? It was frustrating, and maddening at the same time. Here in these latitudes it was daylight round the clock in this season. There was no inky black darkness to hide in at night, just the long dull grey smear.
After running an hour, they eventually shook the dark shadow of the battleship and Krancke turned south west, intending to loop around and see about coming at the convoy from behind. It was then that the watchmen sounded the alarm again—ship sighted, only this time it was just what he feared, a pesky destroyer, a ship that had the speed to find him, mark his location on a chart, and stay on his heels. Only time could shake a determined destroyer Captain. Admiral Scheer had very long sea legs and could out last a ship like that. Yet if he turned to engage it, the destroyer could simply make smoke, put on speed, and race away. The worst of it was this—where there was a destroyer, a British cruiser or two were not far behind.
So the battle yesterday jangled their nerves, he thought. They know I’m still out here, and now they have two sightings in the space of an hour, so they also know what I’ve done with this last maneuver. I have no air cover, and it wouldn’t surprise me to see us fighting off an air strike soon. Damn the British. Damn the Royal Navy, they are simply too efficient! Yet it could be worse…. Yes? It could be very much worse. Thus far we have not heard a whisper about naval rocketry, so whatever I encountered up round the Cape in the Kara Sea last year isn’t on the prowl…. Yes, it was almost a year ago—Operation Wunderland. I was to go show the flag to the Russians, reconnoiter their bases, harass their shipping, but look what happened to me.
He had been warned, yes, warned about an unseen ship of war by Hoffmann, Kapitan of the Scharnhorst…. “It stuck a fast moving rocket right into Gneisenau’s belly. It was astounding, Krancke! You would have to see it to believe it, but I saw the whole thing with my very own eyes, and I will never forget it. This was the same weapon that sunk Sigfrid, and hit Bismarck. We had the heart of the fleet with us, yet this ship forced Lindemann to back off. Now they are sending you? Be careful!”
Krancke never liked the way Hoffmann said that—now they are sending you? I was in line for a battlecruiser, he thought. I had my eye on Kaiser Wilhelm, but they gave that ship to Heinrich. At the very least, I should have been moved up to Rhineland or Westfalen, but after Operation Wunderland, I suppose I am lucky they didn’t ship me off to Berlin to command a desk. I have never forgotten that experience, the humiliation, the sense of utter helplessness to feel rounds striking this ship from a vessel we could not even see! Raeder was kind enough to give Admiral Scheer back to me after we patched it together again, yet the message was clear. Class was again in session, and if I ever expect a higher command, a better ship, then I had better make the next sortie count. Well, here I am, with Lutzow in her watery grave, and now an impudent little British destroyer squawking my position to the entire Royal Navy.
They gave me the dirty work this time—slip through, find the convoy, and shadow it north. Yes, we knew there would be destroyers, and possibly cruisers in escort, but nobody said anything about battleships in this close to the merchantmen. They usually hold forth in the covering forces. Remember when Hoffmann handed me those three cigars? I always saved the third one after surviving that encounter in the Kara Sea. Smoke that one if you get back alive, he told me. That’s what this will soon become for me, another case of surv
ival.
Part V
North Cape
“The complete or partial destruction of the enemy must be regarded as the sole object of all engagements. . . . Direct annihilation of the enemy's forces must always be the dominant consideration.”
― Clausewitz, On War
Chapter 13
Admiral Sheer had come about and was running west now, with a destroyer running parallel to her course, about 11 nautical miles to the south. Behind him, he could still feel the impending shadow of that British battleship, and he knew it had also turned in his direction. He was unquestioningly being shown the door, and now he had to decide what to do. He still had sea room to the west, but eventually, he would begin to run into floes of ice. Now he could either repeat his loop to the north, or describe the same maneuver to the south. Either choice would most likely put him well behind the convoy, and that damn destroyer would duly mark it down. So at 18:38 he opened fire with secondary guns in an effort to chase it off. This is what it’s like to fight the Royal Navy, he shrugged. The hunter behind me had a big shotgun, and he always hunts with hounds.
The destroyer he was firing at was the Onslow, and the bigger German ship succeeded in discouraging its approach. Krancke saw the enemy destroyer making smoke and turning away, but the hunter behind it already had the range on Scheer, and the sea around the ship erupted with accurate fire from those 14-inch guns. It was a case of ‘pick on someone your own size,’ and it didn’t take much for Krancke to get the message. His ship was straddled, and one round of the four flung at him by Howe struck home, penetrating the hull well forward. It had been a stroke of very bad luck, and speed fell off to 23 knots as the engineers struggled below decks to try and stop the flooding. Now, hobbled by that hit, it was looking to be a very bad day for Krancke, but two things played in his favor.
The first was the smoke that had been laid down by the Onslow. It temporarily masked the scene, and Krancke correctly deduced that the British gunners were having difficulty getting the range again. They fired, but found nothing but seawater in the gloom, the shots coming in very wide. The second, unknown to Krancke, was a frantic message that came in from Group B in the merchant sailing order, the very same group that had first suffered the bite of U-376. There were four groups of eight ships each in the convoy, labeled A through D. Down to just six ships, the delay in getting back into cruising order after that attack had seen PQ-17B fall off to the tail of the convoy column. It was now some 50 nautical miles behind the other three groups, and suddenly under attack again.
Captain Charles Woodhouse aboard the battleship Howe got just a fragment of the message before it was cut off. “PQ-17B—Under attack—on fire—need help with all speed….” Thinking there might be yet another German surface raider about, Woodhouse reasoned that he could turn now for the merchantmen and still keep his ship between them and the Admiral Scheer. But what was out there? He knew the Tirpitz and Scharnhorst were spotted the previous day. If it was either of those two, things could get very ugly here soon.
As it happened, the Captain had little to fear, and he would have been better minded to send his destroyers back in his place. In turning, he gave Krancke just the brief interval he needed to slip away to the southwest. For it was not the Tirpitz feasting on PQ-17B, but yet another unseen marauder in the person of Max Teichert on U-456. While the British had raced after Admiral Scheer with three destroyers and a battleship, U-456 had slipped right into the midst of the fold, and torpedoes were soon flying in all directions, ripping into the thin skinned merchant ships and wreaking havoc. Ships were wheeling in all directions, and many of Teichert’s shots missed, but Olpana, Honomu, Rathlin and Pan Kraft would all take hits. The Kapitan was single handedly wrecking what was still left of PQ-17B, the prey Krancke had been maneuvering to get at for so very long.
When word reached Admiral Scheer, it came with mixed emotions for Krancke. Here I spend the better part of two days trying to get at the tail of that convoy, while Teichert slips right into the kitchen unnoticed and has himself a feast! Admiral Scheer does all the work, harried by battleships and destroyers of every stripe, and I’ve a nice little scar on the hull to prove it, but U-456 gets the laurels. My engineers are still pumping water, but I’m getting speed up again, and the range is opening. Thank God—that battleship is turning to the east.
He would later learn that the destroyer failed to return to a friendly port, and that would be his only consolation. Indeed, HMS Onslow would not survive the night. The ship was not making smoke willfully, it had been struck twice by those 11-inch guns from Admiral Scheer, and the fires were soon uncontrollable. The ship sunk at 23:30, the lone tally for the German raider, and the salt in the wound was that Krancke didn’t even know he had done even that.
He turned, chastened by his enemy again, and skulked away to the southwest, but his little drama had done one thing that would make a very big difference in the battle. It had force the British to detach the battleship Howe from the Home Fleet covering force, and now it was here, 40 miles behind the tail of the convoy chasing the smoky grey raider, while far to the north, the vanguard of a long procession of British ships was finally approaching the Cape.
All hell was about to break loose.
* * *
Captain Harold Richard George Kinahan was an Irishman through and through. Born in Belfast in 1893, he had just celebrated his 49th Birthday eleven days earlier as he prepared to join Home Fleet for one of the first major sorties of the war for his ship, the new battleship Anson. Kinahan had served on the staff of Home Fleet since 1940, and this was his second command at sea after a stint on the cruiser Orion before the war. A specialist in gunnery, he was about to be taught another lesson in that regard—from the battleship Tirpitz.
After the air strike earlier that day, it seemed that the Royal Navy had the enemy on the run. While they had failed to find the German carrier, and sunk only a lowly destroyer, the effect seemed to be that the Germans were now running east for the safety of land based air power. But appearances can be deceiving, for the early evening had also seen a well coordinated air strike aimed at the British carriers.
Home Fleet, with Anson, Ark Royal, Sheffield, Nigeria, Jamaica, and a hand full of destroyers, had been the farthest east, coming up from Scapa Flow. The assigned distant covering force was west with Victorious, Hood, Cumberland, Shropshire and more destroyers. As the two covering forces pressed on north, it was Home Fleet that was suddenly in the vanguard, and Anson seemed to be driving the Germans on before him. Their afternoon air strike had cost them seven Stukas, and but all it took was one good hit with a 500 pound bomb to severely ruffle Ark Royal’s feathers. To make matters worse, a group of He-111s had also flown from Tromso carrying 1000 pound bombs, and both arms of the strike caught the British unawares.
There were six fighters up near Ark Royal, but no visual sightings were made until the Stukas were only ten miles out. By then it was almost too late for the fighters to break up the attack. They came in, paid a heavy price in losing seven of the twelve planes that made the attack, but they got that single hit, and couple near misses. The resulting damage to planes parked all over the rear flight deck was considerable. When the skies finally cleared, Ark Royal had only 3 more fighters and a half dozen Barracudas left in mission ready order, and one of the four fighters she had up was shot down in a duel with the six German Messerschmitts that escorted the strike.
That was the first setback, a turn of fate that took out almost 40% of British sea based air power in one throw. Ark Royal was ordered to withdraw to a secondary role, where she might get some time to repair many of those damaged planes. For a time, Anson was then the only credible threat in that advanced covering force, and as if they could sense their enemies weakness at that moment, Admiral Carls decided to make a sudden turn. He had collected the disparate squadrons of his fleet as they approached the Norwegian coast, and now, he came about, guns ready, hoping to follow up that air strike with a surprise surface engagement.
At 30 minutes past midnight he spotted the tall silhouette of the Anson, more prominent than any other ship on his horizon, and Tirpitz opened fire. Fifteen minutes later, he scored a particularly telling blow, one that struck Anson amidships, penetrating to the engineering powerplant below decks.
Kinahan cursed inwardly when he felt the blow shake his brand new battleship. Nothing like scuffing up the pain the first time out of port, he thought. But that was the least of it. The loss of speed in an engagement like this was more than a tactical inconvenience—it could be fatal. Anson fired back bravely, and saw the bright flashes of at least two hits on Tirpitz. That gave Kinahan heart, the first bite for his ship in the war, and the first taste of blood.
The German ship took light damage, with a twin 152mm gun turret put out of action, one flak gun lost, but more significantly, the surface search radar was a total loss, flayed by shrapnel from the hit on that secondary battery.
Anson’s damage was equivalent, with a hit on one of her 5.25-inch secondary batteries, but the difficulties in the propulsion plant at this critical moment were a grave concern for Kinahan. More German ships were spotted, and now he realized there was grave danger here. He turned to his Executive Officer and whispered something quietly, so the other officers on the bridge would not overhear him. “Where is Hood? We need her—and that quickly.” Then he turned calmly to his helmsman and ordered the ship to come about.
Where was Hood?
She was 123 nautical miles away, slightly northwest of the Anson, returning to her watch with the carrier Victorious. The carrier was actually closer to the battle, some 97 miles off on that same heading, and with her were the heavy cruisers Kent and Cumberland. Nigeria and Jamaica were also slowly converging on the carrier’s position, but all these ships were now too far off to be of any immediate help to Kinahan on the Anson. After getting a fleet status update, the Captain leaned over the chart table with a decision to make.