The Royal Navy's Home Fleet in World War II (Studies in Military & Strategic History)

The Royal Navy’s Home Fleet in World War II James P. Levy Studies in Military and Strategic History General Editor: Wi...

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The Royal Navy’s Home Fleet in World War II James P. Levy

Studies in Military and Strategic History General Editor: William Philpott, Professor of Diplomatic History, King’s College London Published titles include: Martin Alexander and William Philpott (editors) ANGLO–FRENCH DEFENCE RELATIONS BETWEEN THE WARS Christopher M. Bell THE ROYAL NAVY, SEAPOWER AND STRATEGY BETWEEN THE WARS Peter Bell CHAMBERLAIN, GERMANY AND JAPAN, 1933–34 Antony Best BRITISH INTELLIGENCE AND THE JAPANESE CHALLENGE IN ASIA, 1914–41 Philippe Chassaigne and Michael Dockrill (editors) ANGLO–FRENCH RELATIONS, 1898–1998 From Fashoda to Jospin Michael Dockrill BRITISH ESTABLISHMENT PERSPECTIVES ON FRANCE, 1936–40 Michael Dockrill and John Fisher THE PARIS PEACE CONFERENCE, 1919 Peace without Victory? John P. S. Gearson HAROLD MACMILLAN AND THE BERLIN WALL CRISIS, 1958–62 John Gooch ARMY, STATE AND SOCIETY IN ITALY, 1870–1915 G. A. H. Gordon BRITISH SEA POWER AND PROCUREMENT BETWEEN THE WARS A Reappraisal of Rearmament Raffi Gregorian THE BRITISH ARMY, THE GURKHAS AND COLD WAR STRATEGY IN THE FAR EAST, 1947–1954 Stephen Hartley THE IRISH QUESTION AS A PROBLEM IN BRITISH FOREIGN POLICY, 1914–18 Brian Holden Reid J. F. C. FULLER: Military Thinker Ashley Jackson WAR AND EMPIRE IN MAURITIUS AND THE INDIAN OCEAN James P. Levy THE ROYAL NAVY’S HOME FLEET IN WORLD WAR II

Stewart Lone JAPAN’S FIRST MODERN WAR Army and Society in the Conflict with China, 1894–95 Thomas R. Mockaitis BRITISH COUNTERINSURGENCY, 1919–60 Bob Moore and Kent Fedorowich THE BRITISH EMPIRE AND ITS ITALIAN PRISONERS OF WAR, 1940–47 T. R. Moreman THE ARMY IN INDIA AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF FRONTIER WARFARE, 1849–1947 Kendrick Oliver KENNEDY, MACMILLAN AND THE NUCLEAR TEST-BAN DEBATE, 1961–63 Paul Orders BRITAIN, AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND AND THE CHALLENGE OF THE UNITED STATES, 1934–46 A Study in International History Elspeth Y. O’Riordan BRITAIN AND THE RUHR CRISIS G. D. Sheffield LEADERSHIP IN THE TRENCHES Officer–Man Relations, Morale and Discipline in the British Army in the Era of the First World War Adrian Smith MICK MANNOCK, FIGHTER PILOT Myth, Life and Politics Martin Thomas THE FRENCH NORTH AFRICAN CRISIS Colonial Breakdown and Anglo–French Relations, 1945–62 Simon Trew BRITAIN, MIHAILOVIC AND THE CHETNIKS, 1941–42 Steven Weiss ALLIES IN CONFLICT Anglo–American Strategic Negotiations, 1938–44

Studies in Military and Strategic History Series Standing Order ISBN 0–333–71046–0 (outside North America only) You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address, the title of the series and the ISBN quoted above. Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England

The Royal Navy’s Home Fleet in World War II James P. Levy

© James P. Levy 2003 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2003 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 1–4039–1773–6 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Levy, James P., 1965– The Royal Navy’s Home Fleet in World War II / by James P. Levy. p. cm. — (Studies in military and strategic history) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1–4039–1773–6 1. Great Briain. Royal Navy. Home Fleet—History—20th century. 2. World War, 1939–1945—Naval operations, British. 3. World War, 1939–1945—Campaigns—Atlantic Ocean. I. Title. II. Studies in military and strategic history (Palgrave Macmillan (Firm)) D771.L48 2003 940.54⬘5941—dc21 10 12

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Printed and bound in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham and Eastbourne

To Sara and Kristine

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Contents List of Illustrations

viii

List of Tables

ix

Acknowledgements

x

List of Abbreviations

xii

Introduction

xiii

1 The Royal Navy and the Home Fleet: Men, Material, Strategy, 1919–1939 2

The Home Fleet at the Outset of War

1 19

3 Cat and Mouse: German Initiatives, British Reactions, October 1939–March 1940

35

4

Norway: A Man-Made Disaster, April–June 1940

50

5 Thin Grey Line: The Home Fleet in the Defence of Great Britain, June 1940–June 1941

68

6

The Germans Roll the Dice: April–June 1941

82

7

The Hard Road to Murmansk: June 1941–May 1943

108

8

The Path to Victory: May 1943–May 1945

134

Conclusion

152

Notes

163

Bibliography

197

Index

203

vii

List of Illustrations 1 Neville Chamberlain and Winston Churchill 2 Admiral of the Fleet Sir Dudley Pound 3 Admiral of the Fleet Sir Charles Forbes, his wife and the Duchess of Kent 4 Admiral Sir John Tovey 5 Admiral Sir Bruce Fraser 6 Vice Admiral Henry Moore 7 Rear Admiral Robert Burnett 8 Aircraft carrier HMS Victorious (These appear between pages 81 and 82.)

viii

List of Tables 1.1 Specifics of Some Ships Serving with the Home Fleet, 1939–40 1.2 FAA Squadrons Embarked on Carriers, September 1939 1.3 The strength of the World’s Navies, September/October 1939 2.1 The Organization of the Home Fleet, 9 September, 1939 6.1 Disposition of Major Forces, May 23, 1941 7.1 Convoys to the Soviet North, 1941–42 7.2 German Forces in Norway

ix

8 13 16 22 86 113 115

Acknowledgements It is said that writing is a lonely profession, a singular struggle between an author and a blank page. That may be true for some, but it was not (excepting rare occasion) for this author. I enjoyed the love and support of my wife, Kristine, and the indulgence of my stepchildren, Grace and Joseph. My parents, Harold and Jean Levy, in their quiet way helped enormously; my father read every line of this book and contributed valuable comments. My brothers Thomas and Patrick never flinched when I asked for their aid. In the United States, I’d like to thank Professor Paul Kennedy, who answered a letter from the blue and steered me in the right direction. Dr Jill Gross, Ms Marlene Gralnick, and Mr James Pritchett convinced me that what seemed like an odd idea was actually wise. Dean David Christman, New College, Hofstra University, gave me an opportunity to teach and a place to call home. Professors Ruth Formanek, Martha Hollander, and John Krapp told me that it wasn’t beyond my grasp. They had faith before I did, and for this I am grateful. Mr Gibson Bell Smith and the other archivists at the National Archive Center, College Park, Maryland, found, for a novice with very little time, exactly the material he needed. Dr David Syrett of Queens College demanded that I go beyond the details and tell him what I wanted to say. He goaded me towards clarity, and I thank him for it. In the United Kingdom Bill Zajac and John France of the University of Wales Swansea were always willing to talk to an anxious young scholar far from home. Mr Robin Brodhurst was happy to answer my letters and share his views. Mr Tim Slessor shared his exceptional knowledge of the sinking of the Glorious with me, and set me straight on some points. Dr Eric J. Grove read the doctoral dissertation upon which this book is based and added many helpful comments. Mr J. Lennox-King, Mr Richard Phillimore, Commander M.G. Chichester, and Mr E. G. Turner all aided me with insights into their experience with the Home Fleet. My great friend Martin Jones spent many hours discussing the Royal Navy with me, trading insights and exploring many of the themes found herein. My friends Ms Tracey Knight and Ms Mairi Anderson provided much laughter and moral support. In London, Mr and Mrs Andy Rooney showed friendship and extraordinary generosity, as did Mr Aleister Smith. Without their hospitality the job could x

Acknowledgements xi

not have been done. Throughout it all, my thesis advisor at Swansea, Michael Simpson, was a brilliant mentor and a true friend. Many talented archivists and librarians extended help to me. The staff at the Public Record Office create an outstanding atmosphere in which to work, and their efficiency helped speed this book towards completion. The excellent library at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich was a pleasure to visit, and the staff there were most obliging in producing files from the Fraser Papers, and in granting permission to quote from them. Special thanks also go to the men and women at the Churchill Archive Centre, Churchill College Cambridge. Their kindness to a stranger and help with their collection are deeply appreciated. And thanks also to Mr Nicholas Roskill for letting me quote from his father’s papers housed at the Churchill Archive Centre. Captain Stephen Roskill left us more than his papers. He left a legacy of brilliance, insight, and thoroughness all historians of the Royal Navy aspire to emulate. Miss Elizabeth Forbes sent me priceless material to aid me in reconstructing her father’s life and career, and I cannot thank her enough. The staff at the Imperial War Museum went out of their way to provide wonderful pictures, and I wish to acknowledge their excellence and thank them for permission to reproduce several of the photographs found herein. Her Majesty’s Stationary Office granted permission to quote from their invaluable collection of Official histories; for this I extend my thanks. Professor Joseph Maiolo of King’s College London put me on the right course for publication, Professor William Philpott of King’s College thought the book worthy of his fine series, and Mr Daniel Bunyard at Palgrave Macmillan saw it through to completion – thanks aplenty to all three. Any mistakes in this book are mine and mine alone. For the errors avoided and help received, I thank those I have mentioned above. A lonely profession? Perhaps. But I could not have done it without you. JAMES P. LEVY

List of Abbreviations AA ACNS AMC ANZAC AP ASDIC ASW BCS BEF C-in-C COS CVE D/F DCNS DNI FAA OIC RA RAF RN SAP SONAR TSR UP VA VCNS

Anti-aircraft Assistant Chiefs of Naval Staff Armed merchant cruiser Australian and New Zealand Army Corps Armour piercing Allied Submarine Detection Investigation Committee Anti-Submarine warfare Battlecruiser squadron British Expeditionary Force Commander in Chief Chiefs of Staff Escort carrier Direction finding Deputy Chief of the Naval Staff Director of Naval Intelligence Fleet Air Arm Operational Intelligence Centre Rear Admiral Royal Air Force Royal Navy Semi-armour piercing So(und) na(vigation and) r(anging) Torpedo-Spotter-Reconnaissance Unguided projectile Vice Admiral Vice Chief of the Naval Staff

xii

Introduction Thus it was that the strategic role played by the Royal Navy against Germany was a mere repetition of that of the years 1914–1918: holding the line.1 Enemies and their strategies create the opportunities whereby naval glory is earned. In this regard, the Royal Navy in the 20th century was largely robbed, for want of the proper enemy, of the kudos and curtain calls associated with victories in great battles. From Howard’s duel with the Spanish Armada up the English Channel, through the bitter battles of the Dutch Wars, and on to the epic victories at Finisterre, Lagos, Quiberon Bay, The Saints, the Glorious First of June, Cape St Vincent, Camperdown, the Nile, Copenhagen, Trafalgar, and Navarino – the Royal Navy has enjoyed its share of naval triumphs. And naval history, as written, has been in large part the study and description of great fleet clashes. This may partially explain the fixation among historians of the modern British navy on the Battle of Jutland. But those of us who study the Second World War are not blessed with so massive an encounter as the meeting of the Grand Fleet and the High Seas Fleet on that hazy day in May 1916. In fact, and quite surprisingly, the largest battle fought by the Royal Navy in World War II, in terms of ships present, was the action off Calabria on 9 July, 1940: Andrew Cunningham had a carrier, three battleships, five cruisers, and 16 destroyers at sea with him that day facing (or, should one say, chasing) two Italian battleships, 14 cruisers, and 20 destroyers.2 The one ‘decisive battle’, the second Trafalgar, eluded the Royal Navy throughout the 20th century. The British were always prepared to fight it but Italy, and in two world wars Germany, refused the invitation. When starting on this project, I was asked by my father, a US Navy veteran, in which battles the Home Fleet had engaged. I gave him a vague answer about Norway and mentioned the Bismarck, but from that day forward I had to contend with how my compatriots would read and interpret the story of the Home Fleet. Americans think of naval actions in the Second World War and the names of major battles trip off their tongues: Coral Sea, Midway, the ‘Marianas Turkey Shoot’, Leyte Gulf. It can be pointed out, rudely but correctly, that the US Navy’s international reputation, before its brilliant World War II victories, rested xiii

xiv Introduction

largely on three successful frigate duels from the War of 1812 (the loss of Chesapeake and President being conveniently forgotten) and the slaughter of the decrepit Spanish Navy at Manila Bay and Santiago de Cuba. But a clash of fleets captures the popular imagination, and the war in the Pacific was more reminiscent of the great sea battles of the past than the Battle of the Barents Sea or that of North Cape. The Imperial Japanese Navy, steeped in the doctrine of ‘decisive battle’ was willing and able to throw itself at the US Navy, thus leading to a reputation-building string of US victories. The Royal Navy’s opponents were not so generous. In this regard, and unlike the great battles of the US–Japanese conflict, the story of the Home Fleet is more about struggle than battle, about holding the line. That is not to say that the Home Fleet fought no battles. Captain Warburton-Lee fought an excellent destroyer action against heavy odds at the First Battle of Narvik. Rear Admiral Whitworth won a crushing victory at Second Narvik. The sinking of the aircraft carrier Glorious by two German battlecruisers, though a grave and avoidable disaster, was partially offset by the heroic actions of her two attendant destroyers, Ardent and Acasta. The Battle of the Denmark Strait pitted the world’s biggest operational capital ships, the battlecruiser Hood and the battleship Bismarck, against each other in one of the shortest yet most dramatic encounters in maritime history. Within days, Admiral Tovey with the battleships Rodney and King George V tracked down Bismarck, Ark Royal crippled her in a daring air strike by Swordfish biplanes, and British battleships pounded her into submission, avenging the loss of Hood. Nineteen months later a grossly outnumbered Captain Sherbrooke with his destroyer screen escorting convoy JW51B would, at the Battle of the Barents Sea, hold off a vastly superior German force containing one pocket battleship, one heavy cruiser, and six destroyers until Rear Admiral Burnett could come up with the light cruisers Sheffield and Jamaica and put the Germans to rout. A year later, on Boxing Day 1943, Admiral Fraser, in the last big-gun duel fought in European waters, sank the battlecruiser Scharnhorst at the Battle of North Cape. Finally, in 1944, carriers of the Home Fleet would deliver a crippling blow to the battleship Tirpitz during Operation ‘Tungsten’. Therefore, it is obvious that the Home Fleet enjoyed its share of combat. However, these encounters tended to be small compared to the immense clashes going on in the Pacific. They can best be seen as punctuation marks in the course of a long struggle, a struggle to prevent a German invasion of Britain, keep the Germans bottled up in the their coastal waters, cut off their overseas trade, protect the Atlantic lifeline to Britain, and fight

Introduction xv

the convoys through to the Soviet Union. Much about the exercise of seapower is unromantic, even boring, but vital nevertheless. There is always much more convoying, patrolling, and blockading than shipto-ship action in any age. For the ships and men of the Home Fleet, it was a matter of waiting for an opportunity to fight. In this respect, the Home Fleet was hostage to the Germans’ intentions. For as in the First World War, it was the Germans who held the initiative and could choose to come out or stay in port as they pleased. British strategy from 1939 through to the sinking of the Bismarck in May 1941 sought to force the German surface units into action so that they could be decisively defeated. When Warburton-Lee found that the Germans had reached Narvik, when Whitworth in Renown ran into the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, neither commander hesitated to take on a larger enemy force. And although gunnery was still the preferred method of execution, British admirals were just as happy to use the torpedoes of submarines and destroyers, or the Skuas and Swordfish of the Fleet Air Arm, to accomplish their mission. Even after Bismarck went down, the British were glad to take on any German vessel save her sister ship, Tirpitz, which they frankly feared (although no British sailor would ever admit it; terms such as ‘much worry’, ‘bogeyman’, and ‘concern’ are invoked by historians when discussing British attitudes towards Tirpitz).3 It was this fear of engaging Tirpitz that led to the greatest disaster overseen by the Home Fleet – the destruction of Convoy PQ 17. Winston Churchill summed up the place Tirpitz held in the British imagination when he wrote: The destruction or even crippling of this ship is the greatest event at sea at the present time . . . The whole strategy of the war turns at this period on this ship, which is holding four times the number of British capital ships paralyzed, to say nothing of the two new American battleships retained in the Atlantic. I regard the matter as of the highest urgency and importance.4 The exertions both the Home Fleet carriers and RAF Bomber Command extended to sink her were immense, testament to the unease she generated in British naval circles. From the autumn of 1941 to her sinking in November 1944, Tirpitz remained an elusive spectre haunting every action taken by the Home Fleet. *

*

*

xvi Introduction

This work is a strategic and operational history. Herein, two major questions are explored: (1) What role did the Home Fleet play in Allied strategy?; (2) How well did the Home Fleet carry out the missions assigned to it within the framework of that strategy? Feeding into these were issues of personnel, equipment, and Intelligence. It will become apparent that, first and foremost, the Home Fleet was charged with holding the line against the German surface fleet, preventing it from disrupting the vital transatlantic sealanes or escorting an invasion force to Britain. We will see that the Home Fleet was also responsible for maintaining a blockade of German overseas trade, and with keeping the passage to north Russia open for Allied supply convoys while harassing German bases in Norway. This multifaceted set of shifting, and at times contradictory, responsibilities was to test the ships and men of the Home Fleet to the utmost. This work tracks and analyzes the naval actions outlined above, and illuminates the intervals between them, filled as they were with the activities, dull and often gruelling, of keeping a fleet in fighting trim. It attempts to be thorough. It hopes to do justice to the limited time spent in the presence of the enemy, but even here the tale is truncated by the materials at hand. Much of what I have come to know is filtered through ‘official’ records (some of which may still remain sealed) and the reports and correspondence of the Home Fleet’s four Commandersin-Chief: Charles Forbes, John Tovey, Bruce Fraser, and Henry Moore. Their disputes with the Admiralty, flashes of insight, serious blunders, and constant frustrations fill these pages. Beyond their story, I try to remember that a global war was going on, and that the Home Fleet fought in a context, not a vacuum. In London, on the Thames, is moored the light cruiser HMS Belfast, last surviving ship of the Home Fleet. On a sunny, unseasonably warm weekday in October 1997, I visited her. Only a handful of tourists were aboard. I stopped at all the gun mountings, inspected the crew compartments, the engine room, the forward 6-inch magazine. With no one about, I toured the bridge. I sat in the captain’s chair, pondering the responsibility that fell on his shoulders, imagining the swell of Arctic waters and the knowledge that a German torpedo or shell could send my crew and me to an icy death at any moment. I realized then that the story of the Home Fleet was much more than the story of ships and battles. It was and is the story of those men who lived that fear and responsibility, who held the line until victory was won. All their personal stories are beyond my power to recreate. But I can tell their collective story, and try always to recount their history with one foot in their

Introduction xvii

shoes. If my peacetime thought experiment taught me anything, it was to be true to their memory and humble in the face of their failings. Here, at my desk, I can refight all of their battles and come up with all the right solutions. It is easy to be an armchair Nelson. I only hope that my time on Belfast at least partially inoculated me against the worst offences of the know-it-all. This book aims at an objective telling of an important story. In it, I try to go beyond the limitations imposed on Roskill as the ‘official’ historian and integrate information that either he had to keep silent about (Ultra) or had not been released in his lifetime. Additionally, this book incorporates the important scholarly work that has been produced since his death twenty years ago. And although this volume owes much to Correlli Barnett, I feel it avoids the worst elements of his persistent attempts to prove that British politicians and technologists were nearly invariably inept. The following operational history absolves no one. Nor does it have a grand thesis about war, or Britain, or the course of Empire. Reconstructing and evaluating what happened was hard enough. It is, however, tinged with respect, a respect the officers and men of the Home Fleet earned in a great global conflict for freedom. JAMES P. LEVY

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1 The Royal Navy and the Home Fleet: Men, Material, Strategy, 1919–1939

The origins of the Home Fleet can be traced back over forty years from the day in late August 1939 when it sailed to its war stations at Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands. With the rise of the German navy in the early 1900s, the attention of the Royal Navy was gradually drawn away from the 19th century imperial lifelines of the Mediterranean Sea and the Indian Ocean. For facing Britain across the North Sea was the new German High Seas Fleet. These powerful ships posed a direct threat to Britain proper that her Admirals and politicians could not ignore. The Victorian fleet dispositions, intended for a war against France and/or Russia, were designed to ensure British control of the English Channel, the Mediterranean, and the environs of the vast Indian Empire. However, they were useless for a hypothetical war against Germany. So, in the decade before 1914, the battleships of the Royal Navy were called home.1 Geography dictated that a new base be established to counter the threat from across the North Sea. When Britain went to war in 1914, her battleship force, given the resounding title The Grand Fleet, was massed at the bay called Scapa Flow, in the southern part of the Orkney Islands, just north of Scotland. From there, the Grand Fleet could act as a cork in the bottleneck of German overseas trade. The objectives were to make sure that little in the way of goods could get past the British patrols, and German warships would not be able to get out into the Atlantic to attack British trade. The strategic advantage this afforded the British was summed up, in his inimitable, bombastic way, by Admiral ‘Jacky’ Fisher in a conversation with King George V: ‘There is no doubt, Sir’ [said Fisher] ‘that we are God’s chosen people.’ ‘A comforting thought,’ said His Majesty. ‘On what is it based?’ 1

2

The Royal Navy’s Home Fleet in WWII

‘With the great harbour at Scapa Flow in the North and the narrow Straits of Dover in the South, there is no doubt, Sir, that we are God’s chosen people.’2 If the Germans chose to fight, the Grand Fleet could, using superior speed and numbers, intercept them and cut the High Seas Fleet off from its bases on the north German coast. But, with the exception of the Battle of Jutland, the High Seas Fleet refused to come out in earnest. Thus, the Grand Fleet enforced its blockade and won a major strategic victory for the Allies. It was rewarded with the capitulation of the High Seas Fleet, which sailed into Scapa Flow as a captive of the Royal Navy in 1918. In a tragic and futile act of defiance, the crews of the High Seas Fleet later accomplished what the guns of the Grand Fleet had failed to – they sent their ships to the bottom in the largest mass scuttling in naval history. With the self-inflicted destruction of her own fleet, the German Navy ceased to be a threat to Great Britain, at least for the foreseeable future. Therefore, after the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, a major demobilisation took place, abetted by the limitations in naval tonnage and building agreed to by the major naval powers at the Washington Naval Conference of 1921–22.3 The Grand Fleet was no more, and its remaining elements were split between two commands: an Atlantic Fleet, based in home waters; a reconstituted Mediterranean Fleet, based at Malta. Both were normally allotted six battleships and/or battlecruisers. Command authority over the Atlantic Fleet (later to be renamed the Home Fleet), and indeed the entire Royal Navy, was, throughout the period discussed here, in the hands of two officials: the First Lord of the Admiralty and the First Sea Lord.4 The First Lord of the Admiralty was the civilian head of the Royal Navy, roughly analogous to the US Secretary of the Navy in the days before that post was subordinated to the Secretary of Defence after World War II. The First Lord of the Admiralty chaired meetings of the Board of Admiralty and was responsible to the Cabinet and to Parliament for the upkeep and operations of the Navy. On naval policy matters ‘the final say was his, and his alone’.5 With an active First Lord like Winston Churchill during his 1911–15 and 1939–40 tenures, that final say could be invoked dramatically and often.6 The Board of Admiralty included in its membership the First Lord, the First Sea Lord and Chief of Naval Staff (one and the same man), along with the following officials: the Second Sea Lord, responsible for Royal Navy personnel; the Third Sea Lord and Controller, who oversaw the

The Royal Navy and the Home Fleet 3

design and construction of Royal Navy warships; the Fourth Sea Lord, in charge of dockyards and supplies; and the Fifth Sea Lord, who was responsible for naval aviation. In the 1930s, a Deputy Chief of the Naval Staff (DCNS), responsible for plans, along with the Director of Naval Intelligence (DNI), also sat on the Board. Normally, two Assistant Chiefs of the Naval Staff (ACNS) acted as advisors to the Board of Admiralty, one responsible for operations taking place in home waters, the other for operations in foreign seas. While the First Lord of the Admiralty was a civilian, the Sea Lords were all serving Admirals. In operational command of all His Majesty’s ships was the First Sea Lord. He was the professional, as opposed to political, head of the Navy, and responsible for its deployment and strategic planning. How much, or how little, he wished to interfere in the Navy’s day-to-day activities was at his own discretion, for the Admiralty was an operational as well as an administrative headquarters. The First Sea Lord in charge at the Admiralty for the majority of the period discussed in this volume, from before the outbreak of hostilities in 1939 to the summer of 1943, was the controversial Admiral of the Fleet Sir Dudley Pound.7 The fundamental strategic problem facing the Board of Admiralty in the inter-war years was how, after the exhausting effort of the First World War, to dovetail decreased means with worldwide commitments. Money was tight, and, after World War I, three of the victorious powers – the USA, Britain, and Japan – found themselves poised on the brink of a naval arms race. The Royal Navy in 1919 was by far the largest in the world. But massive naval construction programmes, both planned and under way in the USA and Japan, threatened British naval supremacy. All three nations were anxious about their position in the postwar world, and US ‘navalists’ and naval planners feared the combined strength of Britain and Japan (at that time military allies) confronting America with a two-ocean war. None of the powers really wanted to spend the vast sums necessary to ensure security against each other, but all felt they had no choice if they were to stay in the first rank of global powers. Given the reality of her growing isolationism and the daunting price tag of a navy ‘second to none,’ the USA invited Japan, Britain, France, and Italy to a conference intended to head off a naval arms race. The Harding Administration proposed a building ‘holiday’ (no new battleships or battlecruisers were to be built for ten years), old ships were to be scrapped; Britain was to agree to the United States’ having equal tonnage in battleships and aircraft carriers. In addition, cruisers were not to exceed 10 000 tons and mount guns no larger than

4


8 inches. Japan was to be allowed only 60 per cent of the US/British figure. Britain was too poor, and Japan too weak, to turn the Americans down. But, to secure the Washington Naval Treaty and end the threat of a naval arms race with the United States, a race Britain lacked confidence she could win, the British were forced by the USA to sever their treaty of alliance with Japan. Britain acquiesced, leaving Japan alone to face the Americans across the Pacific. From 1922, Britain could no longer count on friendly relations with a Japan angered by her abandonment by Britain and furious at her ‘second class’ status under the Treaty. In fact, Japan soon became the focus of British strategic planning as a dangerous potential enemy.8 This led to the development of Singapore as a major (and expensive) fleet base. Along with it came a series of ‘Singapore strategies’ intended to counter Japanese aggression in Asia. All envisioned the dispatch East of at least some, and possibly most, of Britain’s capital ships, and used varying timetables for the fleet’s anticipated arrival. All were complicated by considerations of the situation in Europe.9 For Britain, the Treaty was a hard pill to swallow. Her status as the premier naval power now had to be shared with the United States. The alliance with Japan was no more. On top of this, from 1921 to 1936, the Royal Navy was starved of funds.10 After the enormous expenditures, and concomitant debts, of the 1914–1918 war, British governments, Liberal, Conservative, and Labour, fought hard to get Britain’s economic house back in some semblance of order. That meant, in the economic orthodoxy of the time, balancing the budget and cutting taxes. A ‘tenyear rule’ was decreed, stipulating that the service chiefs were to assume for budgetary purposes that no major war was to take place for the next ten years. Economies had to be found, and were, largely at the expense of the armed forces. The position of the Treasury was unequivocal: What we need above all is a period of recuperation, diminishing taxes, increased trade and employment . . . It is not surprising if our people are anxious to avoid heavy expenditure on armaments; and that such is the attitude of the nation is undoubted.11 Or, as stated bluntly by Michael Howard, British governments were constrained by ‘the heavy and ominous breathing of a parsimonious and pacific electorate’.12 From this financial insecurity, and abhorrence at the thought of a repeat of trench warfare, was born in the 1930s the policy that would come to be known as Appeasement.13 The British people, and their political leaders, simply did not want a repeat of the


Great War. Seven hundred thousand dead in the First World War had taught Britain the cost of modern mass warfare. And, with the rise of air power, the next conflict held the perceived possibility of near Armageddon (the Air Staff in 1937 predicted 1.8 million casualties in a 60-day German air offensive against British cities).14 To avoid this, Conservative Prime Ministers Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain attempted diplomacy and conciliation in the face of Japanese, Italian, and German bluster and aggression.15 That Appeasement ultimately failed is obvious. That it had to be tried only proves that Baldwin and Chamberlain were decent, reasonable men carrying out the will of their people and trying to save them from another round of blood-letting. And, beyond humanitarianism, Baldwin and Chamberlain were quite aware of the problems faced by the British Empire as a global military power. The Cabinet and the service chiefs were all too conscious of how unprepared Britain was for war. In February of 1936, with German rearmament, in violation of the Treaty of Versailles, an established fact, the British government made the decision to start arming for another major conflict.16 But rearmament would take time.17 And, as the 1930s progressed, time grew short. Britain’s strategic problems became intractable as Japan preyed on a prostrate China, Italy gobbled up Ethiopia, and Hitler unilaterally scrapped the Treaty of Versailles and began to move against his neighbours. Additionally, technical, financial, and manpower bottlenecks afflicted the whole rearmament process. The shipbuilding industry had been in a profound slump since the late 1920s; much plant and many skilled workmen had been lost in the interregnum. Funds were scarce, and competition for them fierce; and all the time, the Treasury was warning that, if Britain expected to win a future war, her economy must not be undermined in a headlong dash to rearm. Sir Thomas Inskip, the Minister for the Co-Ordination of Defence told the Cabinet in December 1937, economic stability should be ‘regarded as a fourth arm of defence . . . without which purely military efforts would fail’.18 Although prudent in the long term, the preferred policy of gradual rearmament (the industrial infrastructure was inadequate, outmoded and could not handle a crash programme anyway) that was adopted in the late 1930s meant that British diplomacy would lack a credible threat of force to back it up until 1940 or 1941 at the earliest. If all these economic and diplomatic dilemmas gave the politicians headaches, for the Board of Admiralty the military problem became simple: too many potential enemies, too few ships. The relative age and slow speed of many British warships, which will be discussed below, compounded this straightforward but deadly dilemma. Germany, it was

6


assumed, could be handled in isolation. However, if Germany gained the support of Italy, Japan, or both, then the Royal Navy would be stretched to the breaking point. The Chiefs of Staff were very clear about the implications of facing three potential enemies. They informed the Cabinet, in December 1937, that: We cannot foresee the time when our defence forces will be strong enough to safeguard our trade, territory, and vital interests against Germany, Italy, and Japan at the same time . . . We cannot exaggerate the importance from the point of view of Imperial Defence of any political or international action which could be taken to reduce the number of our potential enemies and to gain the support of potential allies.19 Therefore, based on sound strategic considerations, not least of which was the desire to keep open the option of sending most of the battle fleet out to Singapore to oppose Japanese aggression, the Naval Staff endorsed Appeasement.20 It was understood that if war came in 1938 or 1939, and lasted into late 1941, Germany, Italy, and Japan would have a combined minimum strength, barring losses, of 19 modern or modernized battleships and battlecruisers; at best, the Royal Navy would have nine.21 And Imperial Defence was still held to depend largely on the Royal Navy and its capital ships. The French Fleet, which could contribute six ships to the British cause by late 1941, would be of enormous help in protecting Britain’s Mediterranean lifeline to India and Australasia. But if France were defeated before Britain could gain other powerful allies (as was the case in the summer of 1940), or if the three ‘revisionist’ states struck simultaneously, then the British Empire’s strategic position would become perilous. Britain would be faced with the impossible choice of defending herself, or her Empire. She could not do both. And whereas the Empire needed the Navy for its protection, the defence of metropolitan Britain and deterrence against German aggression were believed to depend on the Royal Air Force. Not only would rearmament be expensive but, of necessity, resources would be split between naval and air forces from the beginning. Worse, to cement the French alliance and the essential help of the French Navy, a continental commitment would be necessary. This, despite years of public pronouncements that no repeat of the Western Front was envisaged in any future war. And that meant creating a new BEF with modern artillery, tanks, motor transport, and signals. Chamberlain understood this. As Andrew Gordon has boldly and perceptively noted:


By the time Chamberlain moved from No. 11 to No. 10 Downing Street, [from the Exchequer to Prime Minister] Appeasement offered the only accessible escape from the British Commonwealth’s strategical nightmare. In his words: ‘a political adjustment with one or more of our potential enemies was absolutely vital’.22 It is into this context of an overstretched but rapidly re-arming Royal Navy that the mission and operations of the Home Fleet must be placed. But before discussing the disposition, leadership, and plans of the Home Fleet (see Chapter 2), we must describe in some detail the ships and weapons that the Royal Navy took to war in 1939. The major surface warship types that participated in the operations of the Home Fleet were the battleship, the battlecruiser, the aircraft carrier, the cruiser, and the destroyer (see Table 1.1). Each type had its own specific tasks, and each played an essential and complimentary role in naval warfare during World War II. Most admired, and in 1939 still considered most central, of all the types of warships serving with the Home Fleet were its battleships.23 What the First Lord of the Admiralty had stated in 1934 was still in most naval circles considered true: ‘the battleship is, and must remain, the backbone of our fleet’.24 These vessels, along with all the others mentioned below, are described using five major criteria – displacement, speed, length, armour, and gun size. Displacement refers to the weight of water displaced by a floating body, in this case a ship. Therefore, a ship with a displacement of 25 000 tons weighs approximately 25 000 tons. Speed for ships is measured in nautical miles per hour, or knots. A nautical mile is slightly longer than a terrestrial or statute mile. Many warships, including all Home Fleet battleships, had special steel alloy plates, called armour, worked into their construction. These plates ran along both the sides of the ship (the belt) and covered the decks and gun turrets. Belt armour was usually thickest abreast the turrets and engine rooms, to protect against enemy shells knocking out these vital areas. Guns were measured by the diameter of the shell they fired. The big guns of the Home Fleet’s battleships had calibres measuring 14, 15, or 16 inches. Battleships, like most other warships, come in ‘classes’, or groups built to the same design. The Royal Navy in 1939 had five classes of battleship built or building. These were the five ships of the ‘Revenge’ class, the five ‘Queen Elizabeths’, the two ‘Nelsons’, plus five ships of the ‘King George V’ class under construction. A more powerful fifth class of battleship, the ‘Lions’, was in the early stages of construction, but they

8


Table 1.1 Specifics of Some Ships Serving with the Home Fleet, 1939–1940 Ship

Type

Displacement

Main Armament

Completed

Ark Royal

Aircraft carrier

27 000 tons full load

16 4.5 inch AA 48 2 – pounder AA 72 aircraft

1938

Rodney

Battleship


9 16 inch 12 6 inch 6 4.7 inch AA 8 2 pounder AA

1927

Hood

Battle cruiser


8 15 inch 8 5.5 inch 8 4 inch AA 24 2 pounder AA

1920

Suffolk

Heavy cruiser


8 4 8

8 inch 4 inch 2 pounder AA

1928

Curlew

Light cruiser


10 16

4 inch AA 2 pounder AA

Converted to AA Cruiser 1936–1939

Aurora

Light cruiser


6 6 inch 8 4 inch AA 6 21 inch torpedo tubes

Afridi

Destroyer


1937

8 4.7 inch 1937 4 2 pounder AA 4 21 inch torpedo tubes

Source: H. T. Lenton and J. J. Colledge, British and Dominion Warships of World War II.

were cancelled soon after the outbreak of war so that materials and skilled workers could be diverted to expedite the completion of ships more nearly ready for action. Because of both minor alterations in the course of periodic trips to the naval yards for repairs (called ‘refits’) and major changes worked into ships to improve their performance (‘modernization’), no two battleships in the Royal Navy were exactly the same. At the outbreak of war, the ‘Revenge’ class, built early in World War I, were the slowest ships in the battle fleet, barely capable of 21 knots, with the fewest improvements worked into them. The ‘Revenge’ class mounted eight 15-inch guns, 12 6-inch guns, and had eight 4-inch anti-aircraft guns. It should be noted


that although the quality of British anti-aircraft guns was more than adequate, their tracking and aiming systems were markedly inferior to those employed by the German and US navies.25 The ‘R’ class was not considered to be up to the challenge of engaging most of the battleships possessed by potential hostile powers. The ‘Queen Elizabeth’ class were the fastest, most powerful battleships designed before the First World War. These ships were considered too good to let become obsolete. So, in the 1930s, it was decided to modernize them completely, with improvements to their armament, protection, and engines. But the job was incomplete when war came; only Queen Elizabeth and Valiant received the total planned modernization. These two ships had their main battery of eight 15-inch guns modified so that they could be fired at an elevation of 30 degrees rather than 20 degrees. This increased the range to which they could fire their shells. Both ships also had extra armour worked into their decks to decrease their vulnerability to long-range plunging fire and aerial bombs. Newer German, Italian, and Japanese ships could fire their heavy shells much farther than had been the case back in World War I. At longer ranges shells tend to travel in great arcs, rather than along flat planes. Therefore, long-range fire is more likely to plunge into the deck, rather than slam into the side, of a ship. Queen Elizabeth and Valiant also had a new, powerful battery of 4.5-inch anti-aircraft guns added and a set of smaller, more powerful, and fuel efficient boilers installed. Of the other ships in this class, Warspite was the only one that, with its partial rebuild, was even marginally fit to engage first-rate opponents. The elevation of her guns was increased, she got new deck armour and boilers, but her anti-aircraft battery was not modernized to the extent of her luckier sisters. The last two ships, Barham and Malaya, had enjoyed minor modifications in the inter-war years but, like the ‘Revenge’ class, were really not fit for the front-line duty they were forced to perform in World War II. The battleships Nelson and Rodney represented the result of horsetrading at the Washington Naval Conference of 1921–22.26 Because Japan had two 16-inch gunned battleships nearing completion (Mutsu, Nagato), and the United States had three such ships (Colorado, Maryland, West Virginia), Britain insisted that she should be able to build two new ships carrying that calibre gun. These two ships became Nelson and Rodney. British designers came up with plans that sacrificed speed for gun-power and protection. Each ship carried nine 16-inch guns in three triple turrets, all forward of the bridge. Each had a secondary armament of 12 6-inch guns in six twin turrets massed around the stern,

10 The Royal Navy’s Home Fleet in WWII

six 4.7 inch AA guns, and a 14-inch thick armoured belt (13 inches abreast the machinery spaces). With a standard displacement of 33 700 tons, each measured 710 feet in overall length and could make 23 knots. Until the introduction of the modern fast battleships of Italy, Germany, Japan and the United States in 1940–41, Nelson and Rodney were the most powerful battleships afloat. Five ‘King George V’ class battleships were under construction when war came in 1939. Their main armament was to be ten 14-inch guns, and they were well armoured and able to reach 28 knots. They were not up to the standard of post-Treaty foreign battleships. The ‘Lion’ class, none of which were completed, was to have carried nine 16-inch guns, 15-inch belt armour, and be Britain’s answer to the biggest ships under construction in 1939. The job of all battleships was to use their big guns to sink any enemy ship that came within range – preferably, other battleships. Their huge guns and thick armour made battleships largely invulnerable to smaller ships such as cruisers and destroyers. Battleships could sink such smaller vessels before they could use their shorter-ranged guns and torpedoes to any effect. Aircraft from carriers or land bases would, however, pose a new and deadly threat to the battleship. This fact was not fully appreciated in 1939, or for some time thereafter. But battleship vulnerability to air attack had been seriously considered in the inter-war period. Even the Cabinet became involved with the issue in 1936. But the consensus remained that properly designed capital ships with sufficient deck armour, improved underwater protection, and watertight internal subdivisions could foil the airplane.27 Another type of large, big-gunned ship served with the Home Fleet in the early years of World War II: battlecruisers.28 The Royal Navy had three such ships in 1939: Hood, Renown, and Repulse. Battlecruisers were hybrids, with battleship-sized guns and the speed of a cruiser. To obtain this combination, armour protection was sacrificed. Instead of the 13or 14-inch belts that girdled the battleships, the battlecruisers Renown and Repulse had 9- and 6-inch belts, respectively. Hood, the king of the battlecruisers, had a respectable 12 inches of armour in her belt, but very little deck armour to protect against plunging fire. All three of these ships were elegant and sleek. Renown and Repulse measured 794 feet in length and topped off at over 35 000 tons full load displacement. Hood was in a class by herself: 860 feet long, her full load displacement in excess of 43 000 tons. With her eight 15-inch guns Hood was, from her completion in 1920 through the beginning of World War II, the biggest warship afloat.


Battlecruisers have often been criticized as being a blind alley in warship design. One historian has even referred to ‘the folly of the concept’.29 But with their high speed – Renown and Repulse were capable of 29 knots, Hood of 27 – and powerful gun armament battlecruisers were an invaluable tool for a maritime empire like that of the British. They had the speed to hunt down enemy raiders that the battleships lacked. When war came, Germany had five new, powerful commerce raiders (the three ‘Deutchland’ class ‘pocket battleships’ of 13 000 tons with six 11-inch guns, and the two ‘Scharnhorst’ class battlecruisers of 32 000 tons with nine 11-inch guns).30 All five ships were vulnerable to Britain’s battlecruisers. And none of Germany’s new 8-inch gunned cruisers could possibly stand up to Renown, Repulse, or Hood. So, for at least the first two years of the war, the battlecruisers were a valuable asset to the Royal Navy, not a liability. And, even as late as 1941, the fully modernized Renown would perform admirably as a fast, powerfully armed escort for the carrier Ark Royal, part of the justly famous Force H operating from Gibraltar.31 This brings us, most appropriately, to a category of ship whose value, unlike that of the battlecruisers, would rise during the course of the war – the aircraft carrier.32 Aircraft carriers were a British invention. The first purpose-built ship designed exclusively to operate aircraft was HMS Hermes.33 Completed in 1923, Hermes was still in service in 1939, but carried only 12 Swordfish bi-plane torpedo bombers, and was lucky to make 25 knots. She could, and did, serve on the trade routes and in the Indian Ocean, but was no longer a front-line combatant when war came. The Royal Navy, in the autumn of 1939, depended on five large, or fleet, aircraft carriers for performing their dual roles of operating reconnaissance planes and launching air strikes. These ships were the sisters Courageous and Glorious, each of which could carry up to 48 aircraft; their half-sister Furious, with the capacity to handle 33 (all three could steam at 301/2 knots); the converted battleship Eagle; and the brand new Ark Royal. Ark Royal was 800 feet in length, weighed in at 27 000 tons full load displacement, and could carry up to 72 combat aircraft. Her engines propelled her through the water at 30 knots, and she was armed with 16 4.5-inch AA guns and 48 2-pounder short-range pom-poms to knock down enemy planes. Ark Royal would serve admirably with the Home Fleet during the Norwegian Campaign of 1940, but would win her glory as the heart of Force H. Five new carriers were under construction in September 1939, and a sixth was laid down within weeks of Hitler’s invasion of Poland.


The first three (the ‘Illustrious’ class) would be 23 000 ton standard displacement (an attempt to stay within treaty limits), 753 feet long, and encased in an armoured box covering both the waterline belt, the sides of the aircraft hanger, and the flight deck. These ships could steam at 32 knots but paid a huge price for this level of protection – only 36 planes could be crammed aboard Illustrious, Formidable, and Victorious. The prejudice of the time was that carriers could not operate high performance fighters equal to land-based models, so the ‘Illustrious’ class was given a good anti-aircraft armament and heavy armour for protection against aerial attack. Miscalculations about the offensive and defensive capabilities of carrier-based aircraft were to cost the Royal Navy dearly. However, the US Naval Attaché in London was favorably impressed when he inspected Formidable in late 1940, so much so that he thought she was superior to the ‘Yorktown’ class!34 All British carriers operated aircraft of the Fleet Air Arm (FAA).35 The Fleet Air Arm had been a rather neglected stepchild of the Royal Air Force, of which it had been a part until the Navy wrested control of shipboard aircraft in 1937. Fleet Air Arm aircraft were not as antiquated in 1939 compared to, say, those in US service, as is often maintained. In fact, in June 1939, more than half of all US Navy carrier aircraft, including all Navy fighters, were bi-planes.36 However, whereas the US Navy was embarking on a major modernization programme at that time, the Fleet Air Arm was not keeping pace. The FAA would have to get by with lacklustre new aircraft such as the Fulmar fighter and the Albacore torpedo bomber until the Royal Navy came into possession of naval aircraft obtained from the USA by purchase or under lend-lease.37 Three airplane models made up the bulk of British carrier aircraft in the autumn of 1939: the Swordfish, the Skua, and the Sea Gladiator.38 The most numerous model by far was the Fairey Swordfish TorpedoSpotter-Reconnaissance (TSR) bi-plane. Each Swordfish could carry one 18-inch torpedo and a crew of three. Rugged and manoeuvrable, Swordfish could reach the shockingly slow maximum speed of 120 knots. Its job was to scout ahead of the fleet, identify the position of enemy vessels, and attack them with torpedoes. Such attacks would inflict damage on enemy ships, slowing them down so that the battleships could catch them up and sink them. As Michael Simpson has noted, ‘the designed function of the Fleet Air Arm’ was to slow down the enemy and ‘hand her on a plate to the pursuing superior forces of the Home Fleet’.39 The basic tactical unit of the Fleet Air Arm was the squadron. Squadrons usually numbered nine or 12 aircraft of the same type.


Squadrons were identified by number; Fleet Air Arm carrier squadrons were usually numbered from 800.40 Swordfish were assigned to 13 squadrons in September 1939, and two more were formed by January 1940. (For a list of FAA squadrons serving with the carriers in late-1939, see Table 1.2.) The only monoplane in service with the FAA in 1939 was the Blackburn Skua. It was designed as a fighter/dive-bomber and was flown by three squadrons. Capable of a modest 225 mph, Skuas were armed with four Browning machine guns and could carry a 500-pound bomb. Lastly, two FAA squadrons were equipped with the nimble Gloster Sea Gladiator bi-plane fighter, which could reach 245 mph and was also armed with four Browning machine guns. It was with these modest means, 232 front-line aircraft41 of all types, that the Fleet Air Arm would sally forth from the Royal Navy’s carriers to hunt down and attack German, and later Italian, ships, submarines, and planes. And the roughly 500 trained aircrews42 that the FAA had when Britain entered the war would be sorely tested. Also busy acting as the ‘eyes of the fleet’, and the guardians of the trade routes, were the Royal Navy’s cruisers.43 Britain’s cruisers ran the gamut from World War I ‘C’ class ships of 4590 tons full load, 449 feet Table 1.2 FAA Squadrons Embarked on Carriers, September 1939 Ship

Torpedo/Spotter/ Reconnaissance

Fighter/Dive Bomber

Ark Royal

810,820,821 36 Swordfish

800 803 18 Skuas

Glorious

812, 823, 825 36 Swordfish

Courageous

811, 822 24 Swordfish

Furious

Training Carrier to receive 816, 818 Squadrons with 18 Swordfish

Eagle

813, 824 18 Swordfish

Hermes

814 12 Swordfish

Source: ADM 187/1 and J. Winton, Find, Fix, and Strike!, pp. 2–3.

Fighter

802 6 Gladiators

3 Gladiators attached to 813


in length and carrying five 6-inch guns in single mountings, to the brand new Belfast and Edinburgh, boasting 12 6-inch guns in four triple turrets, 12 4-inch AA guns, 613 feet long and over 13 000 tons full load displacement. The Royal Navy had the largest cruiser force in the world in 1939 (see Table 1.3). British, Australian, and New Zealand ships under Royal Navy command numbered 22 modern 6-inch gunned light cruisers, 15 modern 8-inch gunned heavy cruisers, and 27 cruisers left over from the First World War era. By 30 November, 1939, another 23 light cruisers would be under construction for the Royal Navy. Besides their guns, most cruisers (and destroyers) were armed with torpedo tubes. Unlike, however, those in submarines, these tubes were mounted on deck, usually in groups (banks) of three or four tubes. The torpedo tubes could be trained over the side (port to left, starboard to right) of the ship so as to launch the torpedoes in the direction of an enemy vessel. The standard diameter of a British torpedo was 21 inches. Cruisers were relatively fast ships, capable of anywhere from 29 to 32 knots. In short, the job of the cruiser was to scout for the battleships, protect convoys and carriers from enemy warships, hunt down enemy merchant ships and raiders, and support the battleships in any fleet engagement. As the war progressed, the anti-aircraft armament of cruisers would be augmented, and these guns would play an increasingly significant role in fleet air defence. Destroyers were the most numerous type of warship serving with the Home Fleet. All modern British destroyers (the Royal Navy went to war with 105)44 were linear descendants of two experimental ships built in 1926 – Amazon and Ambuscade. These ships carried four 4.7-inch (120mm) guns and six torpedo tubes. The destroyers that followed were normally built in groups of nine, with one slightly larger ship (the flotilla leader) mounting five 4.7-inch guns, and the rest four. British fleet destroyers in 1939 weighed in on average at between 1350 and 1370 tons full load displacement, measured 323 feet overall, and were capable of bursts of speed as high as 36 knots. A special group of larger destroyers armed with eight 4.7-inch guns were completed just before the war, the ‘Tribal’ class. These ships also carried four torpedo tubes and four 2-pounder AA guns. New destroyers of the ‘J’ and ‘K’ classes mounting six guns in three shielded gun-houses were just starting to enter service when war broke out. In support, the Royal Navy still possessed a substantial number of obsolescent WWI destroyers, some of which were being converted into convoy escort ships. The tactical handling of British destroyers was second to none, barely matched by the Japanese and well ahead of German and Italian performance. The


Americans would only enter the same league in 1943 when Arleigh Burke revamped American destroyer tactics. The newest weapon in the arsenal of the destroyers was ASDIC (called SONAR in the US Navy). ASDIC was a device that used acoustic signals to detect submarines. A transponder fixed to the bottom of a ship near the bow sent out acoustic pulses. These pulses travelled through water at a predictable speed. A receiver, also attached to the bottom of the destroyer, could pick up echoes reflected back if the pulse bounced up against the hull of a submarine. If you knew for how long the pulse had travelled, you knew how far away the submarine was. Then, your destroyer could race towards the location of the submarine and drop depth charges into the water to sink it. The Royal Navy placed great faith in its new, high-tech marvel.45 The Admiralty believed that ASDIC would go a long way towards nullifying the German submarine (U-boat) menace that had come within weeks of starving Britain into suing for peace in 1917. But ASDIC had flaws. The pulse travelled almost exclusively forward from the bow. Consequently, subs directly beneath, behind, or even at right angles to an ASDIC equipped ship were invisible. Also, ASDIC could not detect U-boats on the surface. So, U-boat captains adopted the tactic of running on the surface at night to attack convoys. It was only when Britain’s advanced radar technology was applied to the problem that U-boats could be spotted at night. This, combined with improved ASDIC, code breaking, and air patrols from shore bases and escort carriers defeated the U-boats in the month of May 1943 and beyond.46 The fundamental functions of the destroyers were to protect larger ships from submarine attack, and to use their torpedoes and guns to attack enemy vessels. No large warship would willingly sail without an escort of destroyers. They ‘screened’ the battle fleet, hunting for submarines and keeping enemy destroyers at bay. As the war progressed, destroyers were fitted with more and better anti-aircraft guns. They were also the backbone of convoy escort forces. The Royal Navy never had enough destroyers to meet all the varied demands placed on these versatile ships. These were, in capsule form, the ships that Britain took to war in 1939. From Table 1.3, it can be seen that the Royal Navy was a formidable force compared to any one potential enemy. But, her fleet enjoyed no margin whatsoever if Britain found herself at war with Germany, Italy, and Japan simultaneously. This had been, as we have seen, the nightmare scenario since 1936. Although not initially likely, this threefront war scenario was possible, and its implications had to be faced.

16

Table 1.3

The Strength of the World’s Navies, September/October 1939 (Ships Building in Parentheses) Battleships and Battlecruisers

UK and Dominions France Germany Italy Japan USA a. b. c. d. e. f. g. h.

15 (7)a 7e (3) 2 (4)f 4 (4) 10 (2) 15 (4)h

Aircraft Carriers

Cruisers

Fleet

Light

Heavy

Light

4 (5)b (1)A (1)A 0 4 (2) 5 (2)

2 (1) 1 0 0 2 (1) 0

15 7 5g (3) 7 18 18

22 (23)c 12 (1) 5 (3) 12 (12) 0 8 (1)

Pre-1924 Cruisers 27 0 1 2 18 10

Destroyers Modern 105 (31) 58 (8) 22 (8) 49 (12) 50 (14) 56 (28)

Submarines

Pre-1925 78d 0 0 0 54 122

57 (11) 77 (10) 56 (55) 105 (14) 62 (16) 59 (8)

Including 2 Lion Class laid down but never completed A sixth carrier, Indefatigable, was laid down 3/11/39 1 Dido, 2 Fiji, and 4 Bellona laid down by 31/12/39 Many would be converted to convoy escorts Battleships ‘Courbet’ and ‘Paris’ training vessels 2 ‘H’ class cancelled 10/39 Including the 3 ‘pocket battleships’ Indiana laid down 11/39, Alabama 2/40

Sources: R. Chesneau (ed.), Conway’s All the World’s Fighting Ships 1922–1946(New york: Mayflower Books, 1980); R. Chesneau, Aircraft Carriers of the World 1914 to the present: An Illustrated Encyclopedia; Anthony Preston, An Illustrated History of the Navies of World War II (New York: Gallery Books, 1985); M. J. Whitley, Cruisers of World War II: An International Encyclopedia; E. H. H. Archibald, The Fighting Ships of the Royal Navy, H. T. Lenton and J. J. Colledge, British and Dominion Warships of World War II, and Stephen Roskill, War at Sea Volume 1, pp. 583–585; John C. Taylor, German Warships of World War II; Aldo Fraccaroli, Italian Warships of World War II (London: Ian Allan, 1968), and Roskill, War at Sea Volume 1 p. 61; Anthony J. Watts and Brian G. Gordon, The Imperial Japanese Navy (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., 1971); Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships Volume 1, and George T. Davis, A Navy Second to None (New York: Harcourt Brace & Co., 1940). Where discrepancies appear, I have fallen back on Conway’s, and my own counts.


As much as anything, it was the prospective naval threat of Germany, Italy, and Japan in combination that drove British rearmament after February 1936. Luckily for the Royal Navy, Germany was hopelessly inferior in naval strength to the British Empire. Hitler had, at least from the German Navy’s perspective, gone to war four years too soon. In fact, Hitler had assured the German Navy’s Commander-in-Chief, Admiral Raeder, that war would not come before his massive building programme was completed in 1944.47 The only advantage enjoyed by the German Navy was that her ships were for the most part newer, often faster, and more powerfully armed than their Royal Navy counterparts.48 But despite having some good ships and fine men, the Kriegsmarine simply lacked numbers, a coherent strategy, and a realistic building programme once war came. It was burdened with a poor geographical position (made better by the conquest of Norway and France), a cumbersome command structure, and an almost total dependence on the Luftwaffe for air support – support that Goering had no interest in giving. For reasons of doctrine and prestige, Raeder and Hitler wanted the centrepiece of the new German Navy to be a classic Mahanite battle fleet, but war came too early for one to be constructed. Additionally, a powerful force of cruisers and 12 new ‘pocket battleships’ of 19 000 tons were envisioned, but very little had been built, or was even building, when Hitler called Britain’s bluff and invaded Poland. Therefore, in 1939, the German Navy’s material was neither powerful enough to take on the Home Fleet, nor optimized for a war on British trade. In the realm of strategy, the Germans never adequately resolved certain fundamental questions. Was their navy intended for commerce warfare or ‘decisive battle’? If British supplies were the target, should the primary instrument in their destruction be surface ships or U-boats?49 Falling between two stools, the means available did not dovetail with the end of somehow defeating Great Britain. It eventually became apparent that, given Germany’s material resources and the needs of an actively engaged Army and Air Force, the surface fleet could not be built up to challenge the Royal Navy. U-boats were the only weapon in the Kriegsmarine’s arsenal that could be produced in sufficient numbers to perhaps win the war at sea. But in 1939–40 all was still unclear, and Raeder was forced to make do with what he had until U-boat production and the intervention of Germany’s Axis partners might give him his opportunity to avenge the humiliation of 1918–19. As is apparent from Table 1.3, Great Britain, in 1939, was embarked on the largest naval building programme in the world. Despite considerable criticism, both at the time and from historians, for penny-pinching and


Appeasement, the government of Prime Minister Chamberlain had, within weeks of the outbreak of hostilities, no less than seven battleships, six aircraft carriers, 23 cruisers and 31 destroyers under construction.50 Twenty ‘Hunt’ class 1000 ton escort destroyers were also building. Expenditures on the Royal Navy had jumped from 64.8 million pounds in 1935 to 127.2 million in 1938.51 Many battleships and carriers had been building for several years when war came. They had been laid down in 1936–38, and would be joining the fleet between 1940 and 1942. In 1939, however, the question was, would they be ready in time?

2

The Home Fleet at the Outset of War

With a broad outline of the Royal Navy and its ships established, the composition of the Home Fleet can now be described. It was a powerful if heterogeneous force (see Table 2.1)1 comprising all Britain’s battlecruisers, five of the 10 battleships ready for action on 6th September (Valiant was almost ready to recommission, but Queen Elizabeth was still well over a year away from completing her modernization). In addition, the Home Fleet could put to sea with two aircraft carriers, one heavy, five light, and one anti-aircraft (AA) cruiser, and 17 modern destroyers, including eight of the big ‘Tribal’ class ships. Commanding the Home Fleet since April of 1938 was Admiral Sir Charles Forbes.2 Forbes was a product of the late Victorian navy, having joined up as a cadet at age 15. His family was from ‘out East’, his father a merchant in Ceylon where Charles was born in 1880. Forbes was graduated with five first-class and one second-class results on his exams at the cadet-training establishment, HMS Britannia. He became a gunnery specialist, receiving advanced training at the Royal Navy’s gunnery school, HMS Excellent. At that time, one of the staff officers at HMS Excellent was the future First Sea Lord, Roger Backhouse. Later, Forbes would replace Backhouse as Flag Commander on the staff of the Commander-in-Chief of the Grand Fleet, Sir John Jellicoe. Forbes served on Jellicoe’s flagship Iron Duke at the Battle of Jutland, and earned the Distinguished Service Order. Jellicoe wrote of Forbes that he was ‘very capable, zealous, [with a] great knowledge of gunnery’.3 Forbes’s Flag Lieutenant from his days as C-in-C Home Fleet described him as ‘always calm, always the same, and ALWAYS correctly dressed’, but added: ‘he hated publicity and the personality cult, and dodged both like mad’.4 This probably proved a serious handicap in an era that gave us Halsey, Montgomery, and Patton. 19


Charles Forbes became friends with Roger Backhouse and followed him up the ladder of command rung by rung. On five separate occasions in his career, Forbes replaced Backhouse or held the same appointment. First, Forbes replaced Backhouse as Flag Commander (responsible for plotting the moves of both friendly and enemy ships) on Jellicoe’s staff. Next, he would follow Backhouse as Director of Naval Ordnance one year after Backhouse left the job. In 1932, Forbes again was sitting in a seat vacated by Backhouse, this time as Third Sea Lord and Controller. In 1934, when Backhouse hauled down his flag as Commander First Battle Squadron and Second-in-Command Mediterranean Fleet, Forbes hoisted his in the same command. Finally, in April of 1938, when Backhouse left the Home Fleet to become First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Charles Forbes took his place as the Commander-in-Chief, Home Fleet. This pattern is not likely to have been accidental. And it left Forbes only one seat left to occupy. So, in 1939, Forbes had only one position left to which to aspire, and he was two years younger than Roger Backhouse. Forbes held other important posts as he climbed the ladder of professional advancement. He served on Admiral Sir Charles Madden’s staff from the middle of 1916 to the summer of 1917 (Madden was Jellicoe’s brother-in-law, and would later become First Sea Lord from 1927–30). Forbes commanded the cruiser Galatea from July 1917 to August 1919 and was present at the surrender of the High Seas Fleet. He attended the Royal Naval Staff College at Greenwich from 1921–23, and then was Flag Captain to Admiral Sir John de Robeck, another influential officer. By 1932, Charles Forbes was a Rear Admiral and Third Sea Lord and Controller, responsible for the design and building of new warships. The opportunity to sit in the First Sea Lord’s chair must have seemed a likely and tempting probability. Backhouse’s getting the job in 1938 could not have hurt. But it was not to be. Sir Roger Backhouse died seven months into his tenure as First Sea Lord. This was only the last in a series of serious misfortunes for the Royal Navy, many of whose most talented leaders were lost to the service in the later 1930s. Vice Admiral Bertram Ramsay resigned in December 1936 after a dispute with Backhouse. In 1937, Vice Admiral Blake, identified by Chatfield as a future First Sea Lord, retired ill, and Admiral W. W. Fisher, an admired former C-in-C Mediterranean, died. Then, in 1939, Vice Admiral Somerville was retired due to ill health and Admiral Sir Reginald Henderson, an outstanding officer and the Third Sea Lord, died. Collectively, this represented a severe haemorrhaging of talent.5 It left Lord Stanhope, the First Lord of the Admiralty, with only two realistic successors for Backhouse: Charles Forbes, and the then

The Home Fleet at the Outset of War 21

current C-in-C Mediterranean, Admiral A. Dudley P. R. Pound. Admiral Pound had been informed in the summer of 1938 that he was to stay on as C-in-C Mediterranean Fleet until he was due to retire after March 1940.6 This fact strongly implies that Pound was not in line for the office of First Sea Lord at that time. Chatfield, when First Sea Lord, had been advised to pass over Pound as early as 1936, when Admiral Sir John Kelly, a former commander of the Atlantic Fleet, wrote to him arguing that ‘D.P. [Dudley Pound] would not be a success [as First Sea Lord] in my opinion. In the first place, he suffers from being not quite a gentleman; a disastrous lacuna in a First Sea Lord. He is too pig-headed; too unwilling to recognize that there may be another side of the question’.7 Stephen Roskill has argued that Forbes would have been a wise choice as First Sea Lord when it became clear that Backhouse was too ill to continue in the job. Or, Roskill believed, Chatfield could have been recalled to duty.8 Certainly, Forbes enjoyed great experience, both as a staff officer and afloat. Considering the issue, Admiral of the Fleet Lord Tovey wrote after the war that: ‘In my opinion he [Dudley Pound] was neither a great tactician or strategist, and unfortunately he firmly believed he was. Charles Forbes was both and in every way better equipped [to handle the responsibilities of being First Sea Lord]’.9 But Pound had seniority and had been a Commander-in-Chief longer than Forbes. He was a safe choice for Lord Stanhope to make. Therefore, it was Pound, from a limited pool of possible candidates,10 who would lead the Navy into the Second World War, and his disagreements with Forbes would sour their relationship and make Admiral Forbes’s job all the more difficult during his tenure in command of the Home Fleet. The Home Fleet was organized into several sub-commands (see Table 2.1), each led by a Flag Officer. First in seniority, and Second-inCommand of the Home Fleet, was Vice Admiral George Edward-Collins, who led the semi-independent Second Cruiser Squadron, at that time based in the Humber. The Vice Admiral Commanding Aircraft Carriers (VACAC) was Lionel ‘Nutty’ Wells, who had held the command since the Backhouse regime in 1937. The Battlecruiser Squadron (BCS) was commanded by Rear Admiral ‘Jock’ Whitworth. Forbes’s Chief of Staff, who had joined him when he took over as C-in-C Home Fleet, was Rear Admiral Edward King, who had been Director of Plans Division at the Admiralty. Rear Admiral L. E. Holland had been King’s senior and commanded the Second Battle Squadron, but had been sent on the outbreak of hostilities to the Channel with his flagship, Resolution, to take command in that sector. He was replaced by Rear Admiral Henry Blagrove, who was lost with his flagship, Royal Oak, only weeks into

22 The Royal Navy’s Home Fleet in WWII Table 2.1 The Organization of the Home Fleet, 9 September, 1939 2nd Battle squadron:

Nelson Rodney Royal Oak Royal Sovereign Ramillies

Battlecruiser squadron:

Hood Renown Repulse

Aircraft carriers:

Ark Royal Furious

Anti-Aircraft cruiser:

Calcutta

Cruisers:

Aurora (Flagship, Rear Admiral Destroyers) 18th Cruiser squadron – Norfolk, Belfast, Edinburgh, Newcastle, Sheffield

Destroyers:

6th Destroyer flotilla – 8 ‘Tribal’ class ships 8th Destroyer flotilla – 9 ‘F’ class ships

Source: ADM 187/1.

the war. The most junior Flag Officer serving with the Home Fleet, Rear Admiral Ronald H. C. Hallifax, held the key post of Rear Admiral Destroyers [RA(D)] and also temporarily carried out the duties of commanding the 18th Cruiser Squadron. These men formed the command team with which Forbes would carry out his responsibilities for the first fourteen months of the war.11 Forbes’s Second Battle Squadron and the Battlecruiser Squadron comprised the Home Fleet’s ‘punch’. But, this large concentration of big ships had its faults. First and foremost was that two of the ‘R’ class battleships, Ramillies and Royal Sovereign, were wholly unmodernized and therefore of extremely limited value. The same could be said for the battlecruiser Repulse. She was more than a match for Germany’s ‘pocket battleships’ but was of dubious value against the newer and bigger German warships. The Hood, as has been pointed out earlier, was a fine ship, but, as fate would have it, the much-needed improvements that were supposed to be worked into her had been due to commence in September 1939. With war imminent, it was simply impossible to take such a fast, powerful ship out of commission for two years for a substantial modernization. The Home Fleet was afflicted with two major handicaps. The principal one was a lack of speed. German surface raiders, by definition, enjoyed


the initiative; they chose when, and under what weather conditions, they would make their dash for the Atlantic. The Home Fleet (with the ardent, if inadequate, help of a few squadrons from RAF Coastal Command)12 was charged with finding these raiders and sinking them. But the slowest German commerce raiders, the three ‘pocket battleships,’ could make 26 knots, whereas Forbes’s fastest battleships, Nelson and Rodney, could make 23. So, if the German ships got any kind of jump on the British, it was very difficult to catch them. Only the intervention of torpedo attacks by submarines, destroyers, or Fleet Air Arm Swordfish could hope to damage or cripple a German warship sufficiently so that the battleships could intervene and deliver the coup de grâce. Even the battlecruiser force was inadequate for this purpose, for Renown, Repulse, and Hood were all three–four knots slower than the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. This gave the Germans a distinct tactical, as well as strategic, advantage; not only did it make a break-out into the Atlantic easier, it also meant that German ships could often accept or refuse combat at will, frustrating the British, who always wanted to ‘engage the enemy more closely’. Added to this offensive handicap was the equally vexing defensive problem of having an inadequately defended main base. Scapa Flow had, during the inter-war period, enjoyed a low priority as money and resources were invested in the fleet base at Singapore. Later, with the rise of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, attention was switched to waters closer to home. But the Abyssinian Crisis of 1935–36 had made it plain to the Admiralty that the Mediterranean Fleet’s base at Malta was too exposed to Italian air attack, and that Alexandria would have to be fitted out so that the Fleet could operate from there. Then, during the Czech Crisis of September 1938, the Home Fleet was sent to Scapa Flow, only to find it completely unready.13 On 8 October, Admiral Forbes wrote to Sir Roger Backhouse, the First Sea Lord, informing him that no teleprinter or other land-line communication existed at the ‘base,’ and that he could not even tell the boom operators who controlled the anti-submarine nets that guarded the main channel in and out of the anchorage that his ships were proceeding to sea!14 Forbes, at that time, also asked for continuous Coastal Command patrols over the North Sea to be readied in case of a future crisis; Backhouse told him he believed such patrols not to be feasible, and added somewhat oddly that they were probably not a good use of the RAF’s limited resources.15 A desultory series of letters and memoranda followed for the better part of a year, in which the defenses of Scapa were reviewed and


discussed.16 The possibility of a submarine passing over or around ships that had been sunk to block various openings to the anchorage was considered, and plans were put in hand to add more blockships to those left over from the First World War. However, the cost of hiring an agent to buy and then sink the ships (all this was being handled under peacetime rules for budgeting and procurement) was expensive and time-consuming.17 On 12 February, 1939, it was determined that Water Sound and Kirk Sound were, respectively, possibly passable and definitely passable to submarines or small torpedo boats.18 Two blockships were added to the defences, one in February and one in March, but the problem was not nearly solved. Admiral Forbes requested that the antisubmarine boom defenses be doubled, and wanted more blockships deployed. He told the Admiralty in a letter dated 28 June, 1939: ‘Unless these channels [at Water and Kirk Sounds] are effectively blocked the C-in-C at Scapa in war time cannot be free from anxiety as to the safety of his ships from submarine or destroyer attack’.19 The Admiralty informed Forbes that one line of booms was sufficient, and, possibly to sober Forbes and discourage further requests, that the cost of a more adequate defense would be 200 000 pounds, a huge sum in those days.20 Given limited resources, the Admiralty seems to have wagered that they would have time after mobilization to set things right. As we shall see later, the Admiralty’s gamble would cost over 800 British sailors their lives when a German submarine penetrated Scapa Flow, as Admiral Forbes had feared it would, and sank the battleship Royal Oak. To his credit, Admiral Forbes remained undaunted, pestering the Admiralty about the conditions at Scapa and insisting that anti-submarine detection devices like magnetic loops and contact mines be installed to strengthen the Fleet base’s defenses.21 The slow speed of too many of the Home Fleet’s major warships, combined with the vulnerability of the main fleet base at Scapa Flow, hindered Admiral Forbes in the performance of his primary function in Allied grand strategy. This was to intercept and destroy German naval units and merchant ships passing into or out of their home waters; if German commerce and the German Navy were immobilized simply by the threat of destruction, the Home Fleet’s mission would equally be accomplished. Under all circumstances, British trade must be protected from German raiders and German trade stifled.22 British strategy was, therefore, essentially defensive. The Home Fleet’s job was to protect British shipping and deny access to the Atlantic to Germany. Unfortunately, the new First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, found this defensive stance anathema. His restless temperament


would play a key role in fostering a major commitment of Home Fleet resources to a campaign in Norway in the Spring of 1940.23 From the opening of hostilities, Britain imposed a naval blockade on Germany. Cruisers of the 7th and 12th Squadrons, based on Scapa and under the able Vice Admiral Max Horton, patrolled the entrance to the North Sea. Their responsibility was intercepting German ships bound for home, and ordering neutral ships headed towards German ports to report to facilities set up in the Orkneys so that they might be searched for contraband. The efficacy of this policy of blockade has been hotly debated.24 Admiral Forbes himself reported that, in the first month of hostilities, the cruisers of the Northern Patrol had intercepted 109 ships, only one of them German; she scuttled herself to avoid capture. Of the rest, 28 were sent to Kirkwall in the Orkneys because it was believed that they might be carrying contraband to German ports.25 For the most part, the Germans had simply ordered their merchant ships to stay in neutral harbours around the globe, thus effectively ceding the oceans to the British. It is doubtful whether the blockade alone, without considerable pressure on Germany in the form of air bombardment and a sustained ground campaign, could have had a telling effect. The fact is that the whole issue became academic when Hitler’s armies overran Europe in 1940 and 1941, giving Germany access to most of the resources she needed to fight a protracted war. Even before this, her Pact with the Soviet Union involved the transfer of substantial amounts of raw materials to the Reich. But, blockade was one weapon that naval superiority afforded the British, so not unreasonably they took that weapon and tried to wield it as best they could. The tactical doctrines that guided the actions of the Home Fleet were codified in the ‘Fighting Instructions’ of 1939. Sir Charles Forbes had jointly developed these with Sir Dudley Pound while Pound was still Commander-in-Chief, Mediterranean Fleet. They descended from the Grand Fleet Battle Orders, the Battle Cruiser Fleet Standing Orders, and the Grand Fleet Battle Instructions of the 1914–1918 war.26 However, the Fighting Instructions of 1939 were a far more flexible system than their predecessors. Whereas the tactical doctrine of World War I had been built around a complex series of rigidly executed signal orders and stylized block manoeuvres en masse, the Fighting Instructions of 1939 stressed the use of improvisation and initiative on the part of all captains and squadron commanders. Their ethos can be determined by a quotation from the first page of the Introduction to the Fighting Instructions:


Captains, whenever they find themselves without specific directions during an action or are faced with unforeseen circumstances which render previous orders inapplicable, must act as their judgment dictates to further their Admiral’s wishes. Care should be taken when framing instructions, that these are not of too rigid a nature.27 The prevailing spirit was one of the offensive. Attacks were to be pressed vigorously and to close range: ‘At such a range the superior fighting qualities and stamina of the British race should tell, as they have so often in the past.’28 Combat at night, or against superior numbers, was not to be refused. Thus, within a defensive strategic framework, offensive tactics were to be employed whenever possible. An American gunnery officer serving on the USS Washington, temporarily assigned to the Home Fleet in 1942, had this to say about the fundamentals of British battleship tactics: Their idea of what to do was to head in there just as fast as they [the British] could to about ten thousand yards, which for big guns is like shooting a rifle across the room, and letting the enemy have it. This idea of closing the enemy and shooting it out in the Nelsonian tradition was certainly firmly implanted.29 Instructions for the manoeuvering of a large fleet of battleships were not ignored. In fact, the stated function of the Royal Navy’s battleships remained the same as it had been in 1914, or even 1805: ‘The Objective of the battlefleet is the destruction of the enemy’s battlefleet by gunfire.’30 This was far from a hide-bound premise or purely British conception in 1939. Officers of every major naval power dreamed about, and rehearsed for, a repeat of a clash of battle fleets in the style of Jutland throughout the inter-war period (the ‘battle fleet concept’).31 The United States, France, Italy, and Japan all maintained large battle fleets in 1939, and Germany was trying hard to build one. US and Japanese planners both envisioned a major clash of battle fleets within weeks of the outbreak of hostilities. That is one reason so many of America’s battleships were deployed at Hawaii in December 1941. Pound thought that blueprints for a major battle fleet action should be left in the Fighting Instructions just in case of a showdown with the Japanese.32 But the Fighting Instructions covered much more than ideas for a rehash of Jutland. Simple principles were laid down for four types of engagement: action between fleets sailing on parallel courses; action between fleets sailing on opposite courses; how to pursue a retreating


enemy; and lastly, how to extricate yourself from a lost battle.33 The Fighting Instructions stressed the need for reconnaissance, for reporting to superiors as much information about any enemy force as could be obtained, and for shadowing enemy vessels until superior strength could be brought to bear. They also included instructions for the employment of aircraft carriers. Carrier doctrine was stated simply. Top priority would be to ‘deny the use of aircraft to the enemy’ by sinking his carriers.34 Priority number two was scouting out the enemy battle fleet and then launching a strike in order to damage its ships and slow them down prior to a battle fleet engagement.35 Overall, the Home Fleet was blessed, compared to the Grand Fleet of the First World War, with a tactical doctrine that made the most of the limited resources available to the Royal Navy of 1939. The Fighting Instructions were uncomplicated, based on principles rather than set evolutions, and implied on every page that bold actions would be rewarded and that the rote carrying out of orders was insufficient under the conditions applying in 1939.36 Furthermore, Admiral Forbes was never wedded to a rigid ‘battle fleet concept’; in fact, within two weeks of the outbreak of war, the old command structure of the Home Fleet outlined in Table 2.1 was scrapped, and a system of Groups (similar to the famous American ‘Task Forces’ of the Pacific War) was introduced.37 These Groups had no permanent existence, being drawn from the pool of ships available at any given time to perform a specific function in the C-in-C’s intended operation. Each Group would usually be led by one of Forbes’s Flag Officers but could be composed of ships of any type depending on the job envisioned. This flexibility was necessary in hunting down enemy surface forces whose main preoccupation was, at least in their early operations, sinking merchant ships while avoiding engagement with the Royal Navy. One major flaw, with ominous implications for the Royal Navy in the Second World War, can be found in the Fighting Instructions of 1939. Only one page, the last page, is devoted to the defence of ships in convoy. In 1936, the First Lord, Sir Bolton Eyres-Monsell, had told the Cabinet’s Defence Requirements Committee that ‘the Admiralty thought submarines had not the same importance as in the past’.38 Although convoy was instituted from war’s commencement, the resources for an effective anti-submarine campaign had not been procured. Emergency stopgaps like the ‘Flower’ class corvette and the first batch of ‘Hunt’ class escort destroyers were not world-beaters. And when it came time to fight through the vital merchant convoys of 1939–41 carrying the essential supplies upon which Britain’s survival depended, tactics had


largely to be improvised, developed, or relearned from the experience of 1917–18. A serious threat to the smooth operation of the flexible tactical system laid down in the Fighting Instructions came from the improved shore-to-ship communications made possible by wireless telegraphy. Interference in the handling of a squadron at sea by shore-based admirals was nothing new; in 1910, Admiral Sir Arthur Wilson had ‘virtually usurped tactical control’ of a force of Home Fleet ships on manoeuvers off Portugal.39 The closer a Royal Navy command was to Britain, the greater the percentage of information available to the commander was simultaneously available to the First Lord and First Sea Lord. Reports from scouting planes and cruisers could be heard in London at the same time they were picked up at Scapa. And signals intelligence was more often than not in the hands of the men at the Admiralty before it was available to the commanding officers on the spot. So the temptation to interfere in the operations of the Home Fleet, based on the excuse that ‘we know better’, and to issue specific instructions to units or even individual ships, was profound. Little that was more stifling to the healthy exercise of the initiative can be imagined than the fear that the Admiralty was looking over one’s shoulder, and could be issuing direct orders over the head of one’s nominal superior, at any time. Dudley Pound wasted little time after his appointment as First Sea Lord to make it plain to Admiral Forbes that he was prepared to intervene directly in Forbes’s tactical handling of the Home Fleet.40 Forbes answered this letter from Pound in the strongest possible terms: ‘I would point out, however, that it must be left to my discretion at the time whether or not I carry out these [Admiralty] orders, in the same way that Captains are given this discretion in Clauses 2 and 6 of Section I of the Fighting Instructions.’41 Forbes went on to point out that if he were at sea maintaining radio silence, then the Admiralty might have little idea where exactly he was, so their issuing sailing instructions (as opposed to intelligence updates) could be unhelpful or even disastrous. There the debate ended. For at the top of Forbes’ letter to Pound the words ‘never answered’ appear in pencil, in what appears to be Forbes’s own hand. We know that Forbes failed to convince Pound of his conviction that Admiralty intervention in tactical operations was counter-productive because of another piece of correspondence that was written only a month later. Admiral Pound explained in a letter to Rear Admiral L. E. Holland, at that time operating with the Channel Force, the conditions under, and extent to, which he believed in principle he


should intervene in the normal chain of command.42 ‘All commands are treated alike’, Pound intoned, ‘even the Home Fleet.’ Thus, the command descended from the Grand Fleet of yore was to have no special status under the Pound regime. Nor was its Commander-in-Chief, once so close to the First Sea Lord’s chair, to have any special prerogatives in his role as commander of the Home Fleet. Pound went on to spell out his conditions for intervention: (1) If the C-in-C of an area has sufficient forces, then we [the Admiralty] give him all the information we have and leave him to it; (2) if the C-in-C has not sufficient forces, then we send him reinforcements and tell him they are coming and he gives them their orders; (3) every C-in-C sends his forces to sea and orders them to return when he likes. These three stipulations sound fine, and seem in keeping with the spirit of the Fighting Instructions, but there was a catch – ‘Naturally, I reserve the right to butt in if I consider it necessary, but I should never do so if it could possibly be avoided.’ How closely Pound kept to these principles will become apparent in the chapters below. With the crisis over Danzig looming ever larger, and the Pact signed between Hitler and Stalin guaranteeing that Poland would get no help from the East, the Home Fleet was mobilized for war. On 31 August, before war was declared, before Nazi Germany had even invaded Poland, Admiral Forbes took the Home Fleet to sea. He swept the North Sea almost to the Norwegian coast and instructed his Battlecruiser Squadron to be ready for detached service shadowing any German warships encountered.43 On 1 September, a ‘warning telegram’ was sent to Forbes from the Admiralty informing him that war was imminent, with ‘both Germany and Italy named as potential enemies’.44 After sweeping the North Sea, Forbes was informed by the Admiralty that the Germans had massed a force of one battlecruiser, two pocket battleships, one heavy cruiser, and one light cruiser in Icelandic waters.45 So Admiral Forbes dutifully took the Home Fleet out into the Atlantic, sailing for two days to a position 58 degrees 15⬘ North (N), 20 degrees West (W), but found nothing. In fact, no such force was at sea. Germany at that time had only two pocket battleships deployed in the whole Atlantic Ocean.46 Then, after their foray into the Atlantic, the Home Fleet was directed to follow up a new intelligence lead: German warships were now reported leaving Wilhelmshaven, perhaps for a sortie into the North Sea. So Forbes took his ships back through the Fair Island Channel into the North Sea. Again, British ships searched an empty sea. After cruising through thick fog to the east of the Orkneys, the Home Fleet returned to Scapa Flow at 7 AM on 6 September. Four days into


their fruitless search, three days before returning to base, the message ‘TOTAL GERMANY’ had been flashed to the Fleet: Britain was at war with her great continental rival for the second time in a generation. The log of the Home Fleet’s flagship, HMS Nelson, for 3 September, 1939, 11:17 am, read simply ‘War declared on Germany.’ From the beginning of the war, and for months to come, British intelligence failed Admiral Forbes.47 The deciphering of German codes was the responsibility of the Government Code and Cypher School, based at Blechley Park in Buckinghamshire.48 Although renowned for their later ‘Ultra’ decrypts, the cryptanalysts at Blechley Park had no early success against the German Navy’s ‘Enigma’ coding machine. German naval communications were immune from all efforts by the British code breakers to read them until the spring of 1941.49 The decrypted messages were to have been passed along from the code breakers to the Operational Intelligence Centre (OIC) at the Admiralty, and thence to the commanders at sea. But no information was passing through the system. So the Admiralty depended on spies and guesswork, which led to debacles like the Home Fleet’s initial chase from the Norwegian coast to Iceland and back. No information is bad enough; wrong information was proving crippling.50 On the other side of the North Sea, the Germans initially were partially able to read British naval codes.51 This failure of Intelligence contributed to a staggering list of British failures: But when there was thus a heavy premium on obtaining early warning of sorties by warships and surface raiders, and of the departure and patrol areas of U-boats, no such indications were forthcoming from those in the OIC who maintained plots of enemy surface ships and U-boats, as also of German mine-laying operations. No sign whatever betrayed Captain Prien’s penetration of Scapa Flow in U-47 in October 1939 . . . or the return of the Deutschland to Germany in November. . . or the sortie of the Gneisenau and the Scharnhorst in which, in the same month, they sank the Rawalpindi; or the next sortie of these battle-cruisers with the Hipper, in February 1940, which was, however, cut short by a chance sighting by an aircraft of Bomber Command.52 As early as January 1940, Forbes was writing to the Director of Naval Intelligence, Admiral J. Godfrey, that news of enemy ship movements


that reached him was often stale, contradictory, or wrong.53 This chronic lack of proper intelligence information must be kept in mind when one considers the actions of Admiral Forbes and his subordinates right from the outbreak of war. With so little useful intelligence information coming from OIC, the Home Fleet depended on the direct sighting of enemy ships by Coastal Command aircraft and Royal Navy submarines. Daylight flights were instituted out of Montrose in Scotland to near the edge of Norwegian territorial waters. From these waters ran a patrol line of five submarines 60 miles out into the North Sea, with an additional six boats patrolling the German Bight.54 But Coastal Command had only ‘about 170’ operational aircraft (many obsolescent like the Anson) available in the whole United Kingdom, a number insufficient to cover convoys, patrol for submarines, and watch out for the German surface fleet.55 Even this paltry force was under RAF, not RN, command and administration, and stood at the bottom of the Air Ministry’s priority list. Bomber Command had top priority throughout the war, so the Navy had to do with what little it had, and hope for good luck. And submarines had to remain submerged in daylight and could only see so far even when surfaced. Results were largely hit or miss. The Home Fleet commander received more bad intelligence on 9 September. The Admiralty informed Admiral Forbes that 800 German bombers were being massed for an attack on Scapa Flow.56 Preparations were therefore put in hand to move the Home Fleet to an emergency anchorage at Loch Ewe on the west coast of Scotland. Meanwhile, the Home Fleet was at sea. Forbes divided his Fleet into two groups: Nelson, Rodney, Repulse, Ark Royal, Aurora, Sheffield, and 10 destroyers sailed for a patrol off Norway on 7 September; Hood, Renown, Edinburgh, Belfast, and four destroyers sailed on the 8th to sweep the area between the Faeroe Islands and Iceland.57 The first group returned to Scapa on the night of 10 September, while the second returned at noon on 12 September after encountering ‘a good deal of fog’. Most of these ships were deployed to Loch Ewe by 15 September because of continued fear of massive Luftwaffe attack.58 On 25 September, the 2nd Cruiser Squadron (CS2) consisting of the Southampton, Glasgow (both 12 6-inch guns), and six destroyers was patrolling off the coast of Norway when they received a distress signal from the submarine HMS Spearfish operating in the German Bight. The ships of CS2 immediately steered south to assist, and the Home Fleet sailed out in support. That day a Dornier Do 18 flying boat sighted


the Home Fleet steaming east and was shot down by a Skua operating from Ark Royal. This was the first ever plane shot down by a carrierbased aircraft in history.59 But, on the 26th, German bombers attacked the combined forces of Forbes and Edward-Collins at 57 49⬘ N 1 55⬘ E. Ark Royal, Hood, Aurora, and Sheffield were all subjected to aerial bombardment. Forbes reported only minimal damage from near misses, the serious exception being a glancing blow by one bomb off Hood’s main belt. Forbes also noted that his ships’ anti-aircraft fire was ‘ineffective’. It was found that unstabilized British AA guns were badly thrown off their aim by evasive action, but captains insisted that avoiding action was worth the cost.60 Prewar reliance on AA guns to protect the fleet from aircraft was proving misplaced. After a short patrol, most of his ships sailed safely on past the north tip of Scotland, anchoring at Loch Ewe on 2 October. Not only planes, but U-boats also posed a threat. On 11 September, Ark Royal and four ‘F’ class destroyers of the 8th Destroyer Flotilla were sent out from Scapa to hunt German submarines. These ‘offensive’ antisubmarine sweeps were a popular tactic during the early days of the war. The hunting group formed around Ark Royal managed to sink the submarine U-39 on 14 September, but Ark Royal narrowly escaped being sunk herself that same day by a salvo of torpedoes fired by U-30. The carrier Courageous was not so lucky. She was sunk on an antisubmarine patrol by U-29 on 17 September.61 The Admiralty quickly realized that vital assets like fleet carriers could not be risked in such a manner, and ordered that the Ark Royal no longer be used on antisubmarine sweeps.62 The debate over where to base the Home Fleet continued. On 15 September, most of the Home Fleet was concentrated at Loch Ewe, but, by the night of the 20th, Nelson, Rodney, Hood, Repulse, Ark Royal, and nine destroyers were back at Scapa Flow.63 While the threatened air attack was failing to materialize, the U-boat menace was still high on the fleet commander’s agenda. A sweep on 19 September by 10 destroyers caught and sunk the submarine U-27.64 Another false alarm sent Forbes scurrying to sea on 8 October. He divided his fleet into four separate ‘task forces’ to sweep the North Sea and its exits to the Atlantic: Hood, Repulse, Aurora, Sheffield, and 4 destroyers A Humber Force of 3 6-inch cruisers Nelson, Rodney, Furious, Newcastle, and 8 destroyers Royal Oak and 2 destroyers


After another futile search, during which no German warships were discovered, most of the Home Fleet’s ships returned to their base at Loch Ewe, while Royal Oak and her two escorting destroyers made anchor at Scapa Flow. All ships were in port by 11 October.65 A serious handicap that afflicted the Home Fleet during the war was that it acted time and again as the Navy’s ‘floating reserve’, from which units were detached at frequent intervals to reinforce other commands or for special operations. Thus, during this period, Admiral Forbes lost the services of Ark Royal, Renown, the heavy cruisers Norfolk and Suffolk, and the old large cruisers Effingham, Emerald, and Enterprise, the last three ships being, in his words, ‘the only 3 Northern Patrol cruisers with satisfactory endurance’.66 The Graf Spee was loose in the South Atlantic, and Mr Churchill wanted her sunk. So these powerful units were dispatched to join the hunt. Furious replaced Ark Royal (hardly an even swap),67 the light cruiser Newcastle joined the Home Fleet, and a combined total of five old ‘C’ and ‘D’ class cruisers were sent as reinforcements for the Northern Patrol.68 Britain’s lack of sufficient modern naval forces meant that if one theatre needed reinforcing, some other command would have to suffer. Not for the last time would that command be the Home Fleet. Although at times necessary, such diversions were inherently risky. Britain could lose Singapore, and maybe even Suez, but if the Home Fleet was crippled, the war could easily be lost. As Chatfield told the Cabinet in 1937: ‘Home Waters being our vital area in a way the Far East never can be, it is essential that this margin [in capital ship strength] shall be sufficient for all contingencies.’69 Too often it was not. The first six weeks of hostilities, therefore, had been replete with frustration for the officers and men of the Home Fleet. Despite their aggressive tactical doctrine and experienced commander, the Home Fleet had neither engaged nor sunk any enemy surface vessels. The officers and men of the Fleet had spent many anxious hours at sea in their ‘storm tossed ships’ but had consistently come back to harbour with nothing to show for the exhausting effort. In fact, the endless steaming to and fro had led some men on the lower decks to refer to Admiral Forbes as ‘wrong-way Charlie’. This was unfair; the fault was in London, not on board the flagship. British Intelligence was woefully lacking in its ability to deliver timely and accurate information, and the number and types of Coastal Command aircraft were insufficient and inadequate. In wartime, however, it is impossible to disseminate the truth about one’s Intelligence failings. Therefore, Forbes’s reputation was sacrificed.


As in the First World War, much of the German Navy sat in port while German submarines and a few raiders had taken to sea determined to disrupt Britain’s maritime trade. The failure of the Germans to come out and fight was galling. Yet this period of frustration was simply a prelude to a time of trial as great as any experienced by the Royal Navy in its long history. The next seven months would add disaster to the bitter taste of frustration and leave the Home Fleet, and Britain, not striving for victory, but struggling for survival.

3

Cat and Mouse: German Initiatives, British Reactions, October 1939–March 1940

On 26 September, 1939, the Officer Commanding U-boats, Captain Karl Doenitz, received a set of excellent reconnaissance photographs taken over Scapa Flow by a plane from Luftflotten 2. These pictures confirmed a guess Doenitz had already made – Scapa Flow was vulnerable to an incursion by one of his submarines. After careful scrutiny, Doenitz passed the photos on to Lt. Commander Gunther Prien, captain of the U-47. He told him to consider the problem of penetrating the anchorage and report back after at least 48 hours; he wanted Prien to avoid a too eager acceptance of a mission he had not properly thought through. Doenitz had picked Prien because he believed he ‘possessed all the personal qualities and the professional ability required’.1 ‘After a thorough examination of all available information, Prien accepted’.2 His mission was to take his boat through an opening in the blockship defences of Scapa Flow at night and attack any targets of opportunity present. The next new moon, which would afford the darkest night and the highest tides, would take place on 13/14 October. Prien would be ready for it. Admiral Forbes had not been at all confident that his main fleet base was safe from such an attack. But it had been fear of air attack that had forced him to take most of his major surface units to Lock Ewe on the west coast of Scotland. So only a handful of ships were present when Gunther Prien’s U-boat approached the entrance to Kirk Sound on the night of 13 October. It was a clear night, lit by the aurora borealis.3 Prien’s U-47 entered Scapa Flow through a gap between blockships that had been sunk to make Kirk Sound impenetrable to just such infiltration. Tragically for the Royal Navy, a blockship intended to cover the gap sank on the way north, and another earmarked for Kirk Sound 35


arrived on 15 October.4 But for Prien and his men, the gap signified not tragedy, but impending triumph. When they penetrated the anchorage, the only large ships present were the battleship Royal Oak and the seaplane carrier Pegasus, north of Prien’s position, in Scapa Bay, lying close together under a cloudless sky. Prien pointed his four bow tubes towards them and opened fire. It was 1:04 am on 14 October when the first torpedo struck.5 Prien had managed to get off three torpedoes in his first salvo (one tube misfired); one hit Royal Oak far forward on the starboard side, breaking the slips on her cables and letting go the anchor. Immediately, Captain Benn, Rear Admiral Henry Blagrove (Commander, 2nd Battle Squadron), the ship’s Commander and her Chief Engineer all rushed on deck to try to determine what had happened. Captain Benn believed that his ship had suffered an internal explosion – the area most affected held the ship’s paint and flammable stores. After the explosion, the ship showed no list from serious flooding. So damage control parties were deployed and pumps engaged to siphon off the water seeping into the forward stores compartment. Inspecting the area forward, Captain Benn’s belief that Royal Oak had experienced an internal explosion seemed to be confirmed. ‘I had not even thought of the ship being torpedoed’, Benn told the Board of Inquiry.6 The situation seemed to be under control. The damage was minor. No order to close watertight doors in other parts of the ship was given. While Captain Benn was assessing the damage to his ship and taking countermeasures, Gunther Prien had not been idle. He turned his boat around and fired his stern tube but scored no hit. Finally, he reloaded his forward tubes and let loose a final salvo of three torpedoes – all hit Royal Oak amidships in rapid succession. It was 1:16 am. Lights and electrical power failed immediately, so no order to abandon ship could be given. Royal Oak began listing dangerously to starboard. Near ‘A’ turret, the shock of the explosions slammed a hatch closed, trapping the men below. Fires broke out, trapping others. Admiral Blagrove stayed on deck, refusing a life jacket and ordering every man within shouting distance overboard. He went down with his flagship.7 On Royal Oak, the persistent fear of air attack took a serious toll. The men had been trained to stay below in case of air attack, in the best-protected areas of the ship, rather than rush on deck and be killed by bursting bombs and shrapnel. So, when the explosions were heard, it is likely that, without any orders to abandon ship, many men, especially in the engine and boiler rooms, stayed at their posts – and died at them.8

Cat and Mouse: Initiatives and Reactions 37

The ship capsized at 1:29 am, twenty-five minutes after the initial hit and twelve minutes after U-47’s third salvo struck home. Rear Admiral Blagrove along with 23 other officers and 809 men died when Royal Oak went down.9 The Board of Inquiry, chaired by Admiral Drax, was more interested in finding out what had gone wrong and how it could be made right than in affixing blame. The Board cleared Blagrove and Benn of any dereliction of duty. They stated forthrightly in their report that ‘we consider that Captain W. G. Benn and his officers did all that was possible to save their ship’.10 However, once Benn failed to take the precaution of ordering all watertight doors closed, there was virtually nothing he could do; his ship was simply not capable of taking three torpedo hits. Moreover, closing the watertight doors may have delayed her sinking, but it is doubtful that a ship of Royal Oak’s vintage had any chance of surviving such an attack.11 How should blame be apportioned? The failing had been one of conflicting priorities and limited resources. Britain could not meet all the demands of a global empire given a moribund industrial and financial base. The men in charge understood this and acted accordingly. They set priorities. So when Admiral Forbes complained before the war of the vulnerability of Scapa, the men at the Admiralty looked out at Malta, Gibraltar, Alexandria, and Singapore, on the needs of the Fleet Air Arm and the major shipbuilding programme underway, and they gambled that maybe, just maybe, Scapa’s defences would prove good enough. Anyway, when war came, there would be resources to put things right. They gambled, and it did not pay off. Gunther Prien sailed home a hero. He slipped out of Scapa Flow on the falling tide and was out to sea by 2:15 am.12 He returned to Germany on 17 October, and his commanding officer, Captain Doenitz, summed up his exploits perfectly: ‘Prien had accomplished his task with great daring, outstanding efficiency and exemplary judgment.’13 Or, as Churchill put it, Prien had carried out ‘a magnificent feat of arms’.14 Prien was immediately, and deservingly, awarded Germany’s highest decoration, the Knight’s Cross, and Doenitz was promoted Rear Admiral. The Home Fleet had even more to worry about that autumn than the bombs of Goering’s Luftwaffe and the torpedoes for Doenitz’s submarines, for Germany had developed a practical magnetic mine and now began employing them along key sectors of the British coast. A magnetic mine functions by detecting the deviation from Earth’s normal magnetic field induced when a large metal object, for example a ship, passes over it as the mine lays submerged under water. When a ship passes over the mine, its detonator is activated and the mine explodes underneath the


ship’s hull, distorting or rupturing it in the process. The idea for this type of mine went back to the First World War: The Royal Navy had used magnetic mines in 1918, and the possibility that other powers might use them in the future had been considered on numerous occasions . . . Nevertheless, no effective steps to guard against the danger had been taken, chiefly because a lack of funds prevented the Admiralty from providing for all contingencies. On the outbreak of war the whole minesweeping fleet immediately was equipped to deal solely with contact mines, and plans for its expansion were based on the assumption that magnetic mines would not be used.15 Again, the need to deal with a serious threat, this time the magnetic mine, was left unaddressed for want of funds, which were absorbed by other necessary priorities. The problem for the Germans was numbers; the problem for the British was time. When war came, Germany had only 1500 magnetic mines,16 while the British had no effective means for countering them. So it became a race between Germany’s capacity to make sophisticated magnetic mines and Britain’s ability to figure out how to eliminate the threat. For the commanders on the spot, all that mattered was doing as much damage (or preventing it) as conditions would allow. And Doenitz was determined to do as much damage as was humanly possible. He sent out his U-boats on mine-laying operations, 34 in all,17 concentrated in areas where British warships might be based or major convoys would have to pass. He knew the Home Fleet would almost certainly abandon Scapa Flow after the loss of Royal Oak: ‘I presumed the possible alternatives would be Loch Ewe, the Firth of Forth, and the Firth of Clyde, and I initiated appropriate U-boat operations in all three localities.’18 These operations took some time to bear fruit, but they eventually did so in grand fashion when the new light cruiser Belfast (10 000 tons, 12 6-inch guns) was mined in the Firth of Forth on 21 November, followed by the mining of the Home Fleet’s flagship, Nelson, in the Clyde on 4 December. Neither ship was sunk, but both were to spend months in dockyard hands healing their grievous wounds. Overall, German mines sank 115 ships of 394 533 tons by 1 March, 1940.19 This was a substantial blow to Britain’s merchant marine. On the 34 mine-laying missions upon which U-boats embarked, two ended in the loss of the boat and crew (U-16 and U-33).20 Just the existence of magnetic mines was having an inordinately profound impact on the British.


They simply had no answer to the menace. They were not sure how the German mines worked, or how to counter them. Admiral Pound devoted no fewer than five major meetings at the Admiralty to the subject of how to deal with magnetic mines in the course of just six weeks.21 The threat that major British ports might be closed to shipping became a real possibility. The Germans supplemented their submarine mine-laying with forays by destroyers and aircraft. On one such mission, a German flying boat dropped a magnetic mine on the mudflats near Southend in the Thames estuary. On 23 November, Lt. Commander J. G. D. Ouvry went out to the site and stripped the mine of its detonator.22 The secret was out. It would take time, but a system of degaussing, or de-magnetizing, surface vessels was instituted, curtailing the effectiveness of the magnetic mine, and sweeping devices that would trigger their detonators were developed. Like the tank in the First World War, the magnetic mine was employed too soon and in too small numbers by its developer. Like the U-boats that often laid them, the magnetic mines were simply not numerous enough to make a decisive impact on the war at sea in 1939–40. In the case of the magnetic mine, the race between offence and defence had been won by the defenders. Whether or not this would be true of the contest with Doenitz’s U-boats remained an open question for some time to come. The U-boats were hardly finished with the Home Fleet after Prien’s exploit and the mining campaign. ‘On October 30 1939, U-boat command received the following signal from U-56 (Lt. Commander Zahn): “1000. Rodney, Nelson, Hood and ten destroyers . . . Three torpedoes fired. None exploded.” ’23 This was not an isolated incident. On numerous occasions, German torpedoes failed to explode24 or, as in the attack on Ark Royal by U-39 in September 1939, the torpedoes exploded prematurely.25 German torpedoes had two types of detonator: a simple contact pistol that exploded the warhead when a torpedo struck the hull of a ship; a more complex magnetic pistol designed to detonate the warhead under a ship as the torpedo passed beneath it. Both types had serious problems that were not fully corrected until 1942.26 Before that time, many opportunities were lost to U-boat commanders because their principal weapon proved defective. Prien, hero of Scapa Flow, fired two torpedoes at Warspite while operating off Norway on 19 April, 1940 – one failed to explode, and the other inexplicably blew up at the end of its run, alerting the British to his presence and bringing down a fullscale depth charge attack on U-47. Prien survived to tell his commander on returning to port that he ‘could hardly be expected to fight with


a dummy rifle’.27 Thus, the U-boats were not nearly as lethal as they might have been. As late as 1942, Doenitz was still unsure of the dependability and lethality of his torpedoes. A study he commissioned showed that of 816 hits scored by contact pistol armed torpedoes between January and June 1942, 40 per cent of enemy ships sank after being hit by a single torpedo, 38 per cent required two or more hits to sink, and 22 per cent were hit by one to four torpedoes yet failed to sink.28 Given the very limited number of torpedoes carried by a U-boat (the standard Type VIIC carried 12),29 this, along with clean misses and duds, reduced the killing capacity of the U-boat arm substantially. As Doenitz notes in his Memoirs, ‘U-boat[s] had been unable to take advantage of opportunities offered to them . . . because they had already used up all their torpedoes in giving the coup de grâce to vessels they had previously hit’.30 For the British, the persistent question after the Royal Oak disaster was where to base the Home Fleet.31 Admiral Forbes, banished to the west coast of Scotland, wanted to return to Scapa Flow with all speed. Winston Churchill and Dudley Pound argued that the Home Fleet was best, and most aggressively, positioned if it made its main base Rosyth on the east coast of Scotland. Forbes truculently, if typically, signalled the Admiralty that he ‘totally disagreed’ with any plan to move his fleet to Rosyth.32 So, on 31 October, Churchill and Pound took the train north to the Clyde and confronted the recalcitrant Forbes. The Home Fleet’s Commander-in-Chief argued cogently and doggedly that Rosyth was too near German air bases to be adequately protected against Luftwaffe attack, and that the narrow passage up the Firth of Forth was too vulnerable to mining or the destruction of the railway bridge that crossed the Firth; either action could bottle up the fleet, preventing it from reaching its anchorage, or, more seriously, getting to sea. In fact, Rosyth had been bombed by two squadrons of Ju-88s on 16 October, causing slight damage to the light cruiser Southampton and a destroyer.33 Churchill and Pound believed that with Scapa unavailable for weeks or months (the Home Fleet did not permanently return there until March), it was incumbent upon Forbes immediately to take up a position that did not cede the North Sea to the Germans. The argument went on all morning, until Churchill took Forbes aside. This is how Forbes later described the scene: We had been going at it ‘hammer and tongs’ until 12:30 when Churchill turned to me and said he wanted to speak to me in my after cabin. When he got there he said, ‘You have converted me


now you have to convert the other two [Pound and an Air Marshal].’ I suggested an immediate adjournment for luncheon. After lunch Churchill went to lie down and I merely said to the other two ‘Scapa wins and now we had better get busy over what is wanted to put it in a proper state.’34 So Forbes won the argument over the long-term basing of his fleet. As Roskill has noted: On the 21st of November the new cruiser Belfast was mined in the Firth of Forth and her back broken, which event showed that Admiral Forbes’ fears regarding the vulnerability of the long approach to Rosyth to mining had been well founded.35 But months were to pass before the Home Fleet could again call Scapa home base. Far to the south, the German ‘pocket battleship’ Admiral Graf Spee was causing consternation and losses on the sea lanes. With the Admiralty’s eyes glued to the South Atlantic, little at first took place in the area patrolled by the Home Fleet. This led to a dispatch of Home Fleet ships to join the hunt for Graf Spee. On top of this, Forbes lost control of the units still relegated to the east coast of Scotland, the 2nd Cruiser Squadron (2CS), 4 ‘Tribal’ class destroyers, and the 7th Destroyer flotilla.36 However, on 1 November, the 1st Cruiser Squadron under Vice Admiral J. H. D. Cunningham joined the Home Fleet. The squadron consisted of the heavy cruisers Devonshire, Norfolk, and Suffolk; their sister-ship, the Berwick, was due to join in December. Meanwhile, the Northern Patrol cruisers continued their dreary operations throughout November, intercepting 66 eastbound ships, 55 of which were sent in for examination.37 Joining the blockade line at this time was the converted liner Rawalpindi, outfitted with old 6-inch guns and commissioned along with a number of similar ships as armed merchant cruisers (AMC).38 The old ‘C’ and ‘D’ class cruisers were just too small and ‘wet’, and of too limited endurance to maintain the blockade line alone. At 1551 on 23 November, Rawalpindi reported ‘1 BC [battlecruiser] 280 4 miles, course 135 position 63° 41⬘ N 11° 29⬘ W’.39 Upon receipt of the message Forbes ordered his ships to raise steam. Rawalpindi was engaging the battlecruiser Scharnhorst, which, in company with sister-ship Gneisenau, had come out to test the British blockade line. Unfortunately for the Royal Navy, the brave Captain Kennedy, who eschewed running and defiantly turned his ship to face his vastly superior foe, amended his message and reported that he was under


attack by a single pocket battleship. He had no time to clarify the situation further – Rawalpindi was sunk in 14 minutes. The Germans picked up 21 survivors.40 At this juncture, Forbes and the Admiralty both made a serious, if understandable, error in judgment. They ignored Kennedy’s first report and came to the conclusion that his second was correct, that one pocket battleship was breaking back into the North Sea on its return voyage to Germany. It was known that the Deutschland had been at sea since before the opening of hostilities. So the British were on the lookout for her. Rawalpindi’s second report seemed to confirm everyone’s suspicion that Deutschland was coming home. So, to cover all possible routes back, Forbes issued the following instructions to the Home Fleet and the other naval forces in the vicinity:41 1 Belfast and 4 destroyers covering a convoy were to join the main body of the Home Fleet at the Mull of Kintyre; 2 The light cruisers Newcastle and Delhi were to close with the Rawalpindi’s last known position; 3 Three destroyers from Scapa were to proceed north immediately; 4 The light cruiser Glasgow and six destroyers were to proceed to Muckle Flugga and head northeast looking for the enemy; 5 The light cruisers Southampton, Edinburgh, and Aurora plus the destroyers Afridi, Gurkha, and Kingston were to cover the Fair Island Channel; 6 The destroyer Bedouin was to cover the Pentland Firth; 7 Five old light cruisers (2 ‘D’ and 3 ‘C’ class) were to cover to the northwest of the Fair Island Channel; 8 The light cruiser Sheffield was to head towards the last reported position of the pocket battleship; 9 The heavy cruisers Norfolk and Suffolk were to proceed to a position south of Iceland; 10 The Admiralty ordered the battleship Warspite to cover the Denmark Strait; 11 Forbes took his own force, Rodney, Devonshire, and seven destroyers north from the Clyde to a blocking position between the Shetlands and Norway. Despite foul weather, the Home Fleet and Northern Patrol were expending their utmost efforts to find and sink the German raider. However, they had no aircraft carrier with them, which limited their ability to search the vast North Atlantic and ancillary North Sea, and precious


little help from the largely grounded Coastal Command. Forbes had no Intelligence on the enemy save what turned out to be the inaccurate sighting report from Rawalpindi. He could later add to this a report from Newcastle, which spotted what her lookouts thought was a pocket battleship on a sweep towards Rawalpindi’s last known position. She had heard Rawalpindi’s sighting report and her crew was likely influenced by the information, for what they saw through mist and rain was, in fact, either Scharnhorst or Gneisenau. Newcastle had not yet been fitted with the new surface search radar, and lost her prey in a rain squall after the Germans sighted her and ran.42 Newcastle’s report did, however, reconfirm the British in their incorrect assessment of the situation. From this point, the British operation went totally wrong. The main search effort was concentrated in an area between the Faeroes, the Shetlands, and Norway. Despite being based on the wrong assumption, this accidentally became the right place to look. Admiral Marschall, the German squadron commander, decided after being sighted by Rawalpindi and Newcastle that it was time to head for home. If he had pushed out farther into the Atlantic, he would have been safer. Instead, he headed north and waited for bad weather to cover his break-back for Germany. Meanwhile, the British continued to think they were looking for the Deutschland, presumably low on fuel and headed for home. She had in actuality returned to Germany totally undetected two weeks earlier.43 But Forbes persisted. In miserable weather, the Home Fleet kept up patrols for the phantom pocket battleship. Destroyers could not stay on station in the northern gales; the battleship Rodney was damaged in rough seas on 29 November; Norfolk was damaged the same week. After being forced into port by an impending gale, Nelson was mined on 4 December.44 The searching forces were further thinned when Southampton and Suffolk were withdrawn to cover convoy HN3. But this was all academic. Helped by signals Intelligence (the Germans were reading some British codes) daring flying boat patrols, and bad weather, Admiral Marschall slipped his battlecruisers through the British net to the east of Forbes’s main fleet on 26 November.45 Although far from a stunning success as an attack against Allied commerce, the Germans had nonetheless shown that they could mount a hit-and-run raid with skill and finesse. The Home Fleet had been made to look foolish. Significantly, the Germans had fled when their two powerful ships with nine 11-inch guns apiece had been sighted by a cruiser with 12 6-inch guns, a hopeless mismatch. The British had been put on notice: the German Navy was going to hit and run away, in hopes of fighting another day. Admiral Forbes and his colleagues would find it hard to get


the Germans to stand and fight long enough so that they could send them to the bottom. The Home Fleet was compelled to take on additional responsibilities when Canadian troops began to be deployed to Britain in December 1939. This was at a time when available strength was falling. With the Nelson and Rodney disabled, Forbes transferred his flag to Warspite on 6 December.46 Warspite’s sister-ship, Barham, also joined the Home Fleet at this time, but her debut was not auspicious – she sank the destroyer Duchess in a collision on 12 December.47 On the same day, 12 Home Fleet destroyers were dispatched to escort the first Canadian troop convoy on the last leg of its transatlantic journey. They were soon joined at sea by the bulk of the Home Fleet, which responded to a Coastal Command sighting at 9:45 on the 13th of German ships in the lower reaches of the North Sea. The submarine HMS Salmon almost immediately confirmed the airplane’s report. So, the usual wheel was set in motion: the Northern Patrol was alerted; Devonshire, Glasgow, and Berwick were positioned between the Faeroes and Iceland; Southampton and Edinburgh took station covering the Fair Island Channel; Warspite, Barham, Hood, and eight destroyers patrolled west of the Shetlands to cover the convoy and support any of the other forces if they were attacked.48 As is obvious from these dispositions, protecting the lives of Canadian soldiers had overwhelming priority over finding the German squadron, which in fact never materialized – the Germans were exercising their fleet close to home. The political necessity of protecting the Canadians is clear, and under the circumstances wholly justified. The convoy arrived safely. However, Barham was not so fortunate. She was torpedoed on 18 December and suffered moderate damage, forcing her to retire to Liverpool for repairs.49 The winter wore on. As December drew to a close, two changes were made to the command structure of British forces that directly affected the Home Fleet. On 20 December, Vice Admiral Max Horton, a submariner by trade, left his command at the Northern Patrol to take over as Vice Admiral, Submarines. Vice Admiral Raikes replaced him. And, on Christmas Eve, Vice Admiral Layton arrived in the light cruiser Manchester to assume the post of Second-in-Command, Home Fleet.50 Layton would later make an impact as C-in-C China and galvanized the defence of Ceylon in 1942. On 27 December, Hood and four destroyers set off to cover the second Canadian troop convoy, and in early February the Home Fleet would contribute 12 destroyers to protect the third of these critical troop convoys. The Northern Patrol continued its work on the blockade line,


sighting 102 eastbound ships in December and sending 79 into harbour to be searched for contraband.51 Finally, on the last day of 1939, Rodney, her rudder now repaired from storm damage, arrived at the Clyde and resumed her role as fleet flagship.52 An uneventful start heralded 1940 for the Home Fleet. Admiral Forbes stuck to a gruelling schedule of patrolling. He teamed up his four capital ships in two groups, Rodney and Repulse were one, Warspite and Hood the other. This innovative paring of a battleship and a battlecruiser in tandem meant that the British would always have one fast capital unit available to chase the Germans if, when encountered, they chose to flee. Such an arrangement would have proved invaluable in dealing with a ‘pocket battleship’. Forbes kept at least one of the groups at sea 25 of the 31 days in January.53 The strain on men and ships can only be imagined. No German ships were sighted. None, in fact, came out to raid the convoy routes. Despite the Home Fleet’s hard work, a lull ensued – the ‘Phony War’ had come to sea, and it reached its nadir that January. The first real break that ruptured the monotonous routine that had dominated Home Fleet operations since December was the ‘Altmark Incident’ of 15 and 16 February, 1940.54 The Altmark was a tanker/supply ship that had serviced the Graf Spee, and was carrying British merchant sailors who had been captured by Graf Spee during her commerceraiding cruise in the South Atlantic. A tip to British Intelligence from Norway (almost certainly a spy) informed the Admiralty that Altmark, which had been at sea for months, had arrived at the Norwegian port of Bergen on 15 February. The British government demanded that the ship be searched and, given that the captives were in neutral territory, they be set free. The Norwegians responded by making a perfunctory search of Altmark, but they seem to have taken her captain’s word at face value that no prisoners were aboard. In fact, they were locked in a dirty, fetid hold. The Admiralty and the Government would have none of this. They supported Forbes’s decision, made after being informed of the Intelligence tip, to send Captain Phillip Vian and his ‘Tribal’ class destroyer Cossack into Norwegian territorial waters to investigate. On the 16th, Vian informed the Admiralty directly (over the head of his Commanderin-Chief) that he was in Jossing Fjord with Altmark and a Norwegian torpedo boat. At 1649, he signaled the Admiralty that ‘I have demanded English prisoners.’ The Norwegians were adamant and offended – Altmark had been properly searched, and the British had no right to sail into their waters and demand anything. Vian withdrew to international


waters and awaited instructions. Curiously, Forbes was being bypassed in the chain of command throughout the afternoon and evening by Churchill and Pound above him and Vian below. Vian’s instructions arrived at 2148 – he was to go in and get the prisoners. It was all over around midnight, and at 0201 Vian reported that all the prisoners had been released by means of an old-fashioned boarding action, with only one British casualty. The Altmark ran herself aground to avoid being hauled away as a prize. Vian’s final count of prisoners was 55 officers and 228 crewmen, including 56 ‘natives’. ‘Forbes, angry that the Admiralty had gone over his head in sending orders direct to Vian, sailed out his battleships to cover Cossack’s jubilant return to Rosyth on the 17th.’55 But if Forbes was angry, the British public was delighted. And Vian got an eloquently short and appropriate signal on the completion of his task: ‘From Admiralty – Well done Cossack.’56 British and German attention would soon be drawn back to Norway after this bold, if illegal, British action. And both sides had shown a cavalier attitude towards Norwegian neutrality that was to tempt them to further illegal actions later. As a footnote to the Altmark story, it is revealing to consider a letter written by Dudley Pound to Charles Forbes on 21 February.57 Its tone is rather friendly and cheerful, as might be expected after a public relations success like the freeing of so many British prisoners of war in an action that may deserve the adjective ‘swashbuckling’. But if Pound appeared happy, Forbes’s comments in the margins are anything but jovial. Pound wrote: ‘I have enclosed a copy of a letter I have sent to Vian.’ Forbes’s marginalia reads: ‘Vian under me. 1st SL [Sea Lord] will have to walk back on the letter.’ In other words, Pound should take the letter back and send it through Vian’s commanding officer, Forbes, as protocol demanded. Pound goes on to complain about Vian not keeping in closer contact with the Admiralty throughout the operation. ‘I have no doubt you also spent a good many unnecessarily anxious hours.’ ‘No, I went to bed’ Forbes scribbled to himself, and perhaps posterity, ‘I know Vian.’ The difference in temperament between the two men could not be delineated more clearly. Forbes trusted the man on the spot to get on with the job; Pound wanted to be kept informed so that he could, if he felt so inclined, butt in. The author believes this indicates an important reason why Forbes may have made a better First Sea Lord than Pound. The ‘Altmark Incident’ had hardly left the Germans stunned or inactive. On 18 February, an RAF Bomber Command aircraft spotted Scharnhorst and Gneisenau plus the heavy cruiser Hipper off Helgoland Island in the German Bight. On receiving this information, Forbes


ordered a convoy inbound from Norway to take shelter at Kirkwall in the Orkneys and took Rodney and Hood to sea in hopes of catching the German squadron. Nothing came of either side’s plans. The German raiders failed to find the convoy and, after a half-hearted sortie, were back in their home waters on the 20th. A U-boat did find the convoy and sank the destroyer Daring on the 18th. After hustling the convoy to safety, Admiral Forbes failed to find the Germans and returned to the Clyde on 24 February.58 An air of caution had descended on the North Sea, and neither combatant at this time seemed enthusiastic about risking major units of his respective fleets. The British did not wish to descend too close to the southern extremity of the North Sea for fear of mines, submarines, and massive Luftwaffe attack. The Germans, after their hit-and-run raid of November 1939 that sank Rawalpindi had failed to follow up that limited success with any aggressive moves. The situation had, at least temporarily, degenerated to shadowboxing. The blockade remained in force. The Northern Patrol sighted 184 ships in February and sent 79 in for inspection.59 On 7 March, the Home Fleet returned to Scapa Flow.60 Winston Churchill sailed with Forbes into the anchorage aboard the flagship Rodney, with Valiant, Hood, Renown, and Repulse in attendance.61 Despite this show of strength, the Home Fleet was without the services of the only first-class carrier operational in the Royal Navy; Ark Royal was ordered to Gibraltar after finishing her refit on 30 March.62 The Luftwaffe greeted the returning fleet with an air raid on 16 March that damaged the heavy cruiser Norfolk.63 Admiral Forbes took his ships on an extended patrol from 19–27 March. But while he was at sea, decisions were being reached in London and Berlin that would very soon throw the Home Fleet into a maelstrom. In March, a debate within the British government over the use of the Home Fleet to mine Norwegian territorial waters was gaining in intensity.64 The Norwegian port of Narvik was the embarkation point for German ships carrying Swedish iron ore during winter months when the Baltic was closed by ice. These ships could use the ‘Inner Leads’ between Norway and her offshore islands to stay primarily within neutral territorial waters and thus avoid interception by British ships enforcing the blockade. Early in the war, Churchill, in his capacity as First Lord of the Admiralty and member of the Cabinet, had requested that his government approve offensive mining operations to block the ‘Inner Leads.’ The Cabinet was anxious about neutral opinion, especially that of Norway, which might resist the incursion or ask for German help in doing so, Sweden, and the United States, which traditionally frowned


on the trampling of neutral rights.65 So the idea languished until the ‘Altmark Incident’ refocused attention on German ships using Norwegian territorial waters for clandestine passage to Germany. Churchill was able to convince the Cabinet that something had to be done to strike a blow at the Germans, and mining the ‘Inner Leads’ would do the trick. Two plans emerged: ‘Wilfred’ and ‘R4’. ‘Wilfred’ envisioned the mining of the ‘Inner Leads’ south of Narvik, while ‘R4’ involved landing a small expeditionary force at Narvik, and perhaps Bergen and Trondheim as well. The troops were to be landed if German intervention in Norway looked imminent, but ‘R4’ was intended to take place only after any German threats or actions against Norway. Churchill set preparations for both plans in motion on 21 March, pending final approval by the Cabinet.66 The Germans, too, had their eyes on Norway that March.67 They saw that its occupation would provide great strategic benefits, primarily defensive, but with an important offensive component. Defensively, the occupation would secure the entrance to the Baltic, preventing the RAF from gaining bases that could close off the North Sea and threaten German cities; it would secure the iron ore route from Narvik, and keep Sweden nervous and friendly. Possession of Norway would also provide valuable bases for the Luftwaffe, U-boats, and surface raiders. So, on 9 March, Grand Admiral Raeder told Hitler that ‘Operation Weser’ (Weserubung), the invasion of Norway, was essential to the successful prosecution of the war, but depended on an ‘operation on the largest scale by the German Air Force’ for the plan to work.68 Raeder was aided in his quest to secure Hitler’s backing for an invasion by partial decrypts of British transmissions concerning the assembly of men and ships for ‘R4’.69 Hitler was eventually convinced and, while the decision for ‘Wilfred’ was under discussion in London, he authorized ‘Operation Weser’ on 26 March. At a meeting on 2 April, D-day was set for 9 April.70 Raeder did not take half-measures. Every ship in the German Navy that could conceivably aid in the operation was committed. No less than 26 U-boats were diverted from the war on commerce to support ‘Operation Weser.’71 Doenitz employed ‘every U-boat that was in sea-going condition’ but thought his force ‘inadequate’ to protect the invasion fleet and interdict British warships responding to it.72 Admiral Carls of Naval Group West was even less optimistic. He predicted ‘the loss of about half the forces’ involved if the Norwegians and the British chose to resist the invasion.73 The shadowboxing of the Phony War was soon to be over.


Despite losses and detachments, the Home Fleet was a formidable force in the first week of April 1940.74 The capital ships available to Admiral Forbes were Rodney, Warspite, Valiant, Renown, Repulse, and, on stand-by, the carrier Furious. His cruiser strength was likewise impressive: 1CS comprised the three 8-inch gun ships Berwick, Devonshire, and York; 2CS was made up of the light cruisers Galatea, Arethusa, Aurora, and Penelope; 18CS had four ‘Town’ class light cruisers, Sheffield, Southampton, Glasgow, and Birmingham. In support were the anti-aircraft cruisers Cairo and Calcutta and the 24 modern destroyers of the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Flotillas. In addition to the 18 Swordfish that were to form Furious’s air group, four Fleet Air Arm squadrons were based at Hatston in the Orkneys for local air defence. They numbered 23 Skuas, six Sea Gladiators, six Gladiators, and four Rocs. As can be seen, although Admiral Forbes’s guns were more than a match for the whole German Navy, his air support was grossly inadequate if, as Raeder had suggested, the Luftwaffe put in an ‘operation on the largest scale’ over Norway and the North Sea. Given this weakness, the Admiralty’s decision to send Ark Royal south seems unsound. The Royal Navy had so few carrier planes that, with a major operation in the offing, it would have been a wise precaution to keep Ark Royal on station and recall Glorious from the Mediterranean. The Admiralty eventually had to do both. This would have massed what strength the FAA had facing the principal enemy in the decisive theatre – against Germany in the North Sea. Forbes certainly thought so, at least in retrospect.75 If the Germans attacked Norway or strongly intervened to counter ‘Wilfred’, Admiral Forbes lacked anything like adequate air cover over the potential combat theatre. A message from the Admiralty arrived for the Commander-in-Chief of the Home Fleet on 31 March – ‘Wilfred’ was on, tentative date, 7 April.76

4 Norway: A Man-Made Disaster, April–June 1940

When reviewing the historical record concerning the German invasion of Norway, and the British response to it, the overwhelming impression gained is one of Allied confusion. Operation ‘Wilfred,’ the mining of the ‘Inner Leads’ near Narvik to cut off the flow of Swedish iron ore to Germany, had been given the final green light on 3 April, 1940.1 However, the Germans were preparing a much grander scheme, Operation ‘Weser’, a full-scale invasion of Norway by sea and air, with their landings set for 9 April.2 The British moved first. On 5 April, the battlecruiser Renown (flagship of Rear Admiral Whitworth) and the destroyers Hyperion, Hero, Glowworm, and Greyhound set sail to cover the three separate groups that were actually to lay the mines off Narvik (comprising one mine laying vessel, six destroyer-minelayers, and eight destroyers in close escort).3 The day before, RAF reconnaissance aircraft had spotted the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau at Wilhelmshaven, so the Royal Navy was well aware that the Germans might intervene, and were making preparations accordingly. The men for Operation ‘R4’ were embarked on their ships in the Clyde and at Rosyth. The Home Fleet set sail on 7 April, with Rodney, Valiant, Repulse, Sheffield, Penelope, the French light cruiser Emil Bertin, and 10 destroyers. News of German naval activity had convinced the Admiralty and Forbes that a fleet action might be imminent.4 This appraisal of the situation was further enhanced by the sighting of one battlecruiser, two cruisers, and 10 destroyers by British aircraft on the late afternoon of 7 April. In fact, reports were pouring in from aircraft and submarines that the German Fleet was out.5 Were the Germans coming out to fight another Jutland? Or were they planning a massive breakout into the Atlantic? Perhaps all their ships were headed to Narvik to intercept and destroy the mining force? Neither Forbes nor the Admiralty knew for sure. The fact that the Germans were 50

Norway: A Man-Made Disaster 51

committing their entire surface fleet to an invasion of Norway was slow to dawn on anyone.6 And none of the possible German courses of action that the British were considering seemed to make much sense. What were the Germans up to? The British were forced to guess the Germans’ intentions. They guessed wrong. As Roskill has noted in the Official History: The truth appears to be that the attention of the Admiralty was concentrated exclusively on the possibility of a breakout by the German battlecruisers through one of the northern exits to the Atlantic.7 Based on various sighting reports, Admiral Forbes signalled the Fleet that they might expect to be in action against one battlecruiser, a pocket battleship, three light cruisers, and 12 destroyers at any time after 2110 on 7 April.8 Forbes had been at Jutland. He had later commanded a battleship, and a battle squadron. It is likely that he saw the situation as offering him the chance of a lifetime. He did not understand that the Germans were scurrying north to turn east, towards their objectives along the Norwegian coast, and not west, towards the Home Fleet, and were in no way interested in a gunnery action. Forbes had misjudged their intentions, and underestimated their speed. As Basil Collier has noted, Forbes was focused on Narvik and the North Atlantic.9 So, the Home Fleet drifted north, and kept too far west in a blocking position to cover a breakout, to intercept the German naval units speeding towards their destinations along the Norwegian coast. Meanwhile, Whitworth and his destroyers were covering the only mainland objective the British had under consideration – Narvik. To Forbes, Pound, and Churchill, the Home Fleet looked well-placed, and sufficiently strong, to deal with any breakout attempt. Whitworth had one battlecruiser and 18 destroyers in his vicinity, and the Germans appeared to be trapped between him and the bulk of the Home Fleet. The situation seemed to be under control. Even the mining of the ‘Inner Leads’ had gone off on schedule at 0443 on 8 April.10 But appearances were deceiving. With their eyes firmly fixed on Narvik, and what Scharnhorst and/or Gneisenau might be up to, the British failed to perceive the Germans’ real intention. And, by dawn on 8 April the Germans were well along in carrying through their plan to capture Norway. They had been on the move since 2:00 am on 7 April, when elements of their invasion forces rendezvoused off the mouth of the Weser River. They were divided into the following formations:


Group 1 – Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, and 10 destroyers with 2000 troops embarked intended for a landing at Narvik; Group 2 – Hipper and four destroyers with 1700 troops aboard sailing for Trondheim; Group 3 – The light cruisers Koln and Konigsberg, along with the old training cruiser Bremse, two torpedo boats, and seven motor torpedo boats with 1900 men aboard whose objective was the seizure of Bergen; Group 4 – the light cruiser Karlsruhe, three torpedo boats, seven motor torpedo boats, and the depot ship Tsingtao with 1100 men aboard charged with occupying Kristiansand and Arendal; Group 5 – the pocket battleship Lutzow, the heavy cruiser Blucher, light cruiser Emden, and three torpedo boats with 2000 men aboard with orders to capture Oslo.11 In addition, the Germans had placed seven merchantmen off the Norwegian coast that carried stores for the landing forces. They were to team up with the invasion Groups when they arrived off their targets. Another 23 merchant ships with approximately 14 000 troops and much heavy equipment were waiting in German ports to sail the quick, relatively safe route to Oslo once that port had been secured. Supporting this move into Norway was Luftwaffe Fliegerkorps X (Air Corps 10) under General Geisler with an impressive 1212 aircraft attached (1008 serviceable), over half of them transport planes needed to fly in the parachute troops whose job it was to seize Oslo airfield. In this way, Luftwaffe formations could operate almost immediately over all of southern Norway in direct support of the invading troops.12 Thus, the Germans wedded from the onset their naval, air, and army formations (including elite parachute and mountain infantry formations) into a coherent team with a single plan. As a British commentator has noted: The German campaign in Norway will always have a particular place in history as being the first large-scale combined operation, in which all three components – Army, Navy, and Air – of a modern defence organization were thrown in with equal weight.13 From first to last, it was air power that shaped the course of the battle for Norway. Admiral Forbes was worried about it from the outset. Few of his ships had radar sets, British AA gunnery was poor due to inadequate high-angle control, and the Home Fleet was operating outside the umbrella of land-based RAF fighters. As Correlli Barnett has accurately


noted: ‘the central operational problem for Forbes lay in the Luftwaffe operating at short range from Norwegian airfields’.14 For example, the Home Fleet was bombed on 9 April for over three hours by planes from KG (Kampfgreschwader or bomber wing) 26 and KG 30, and the ‘Tribal’ class destroyer Gurkha sunk.15 It was bombed again on the 11th, and the destroyer Eclipse was damaged.16 These attacks forced ships to stay out to sea for manoeuvering room, and to burn up precious fuel steaming at maximum speed. It is important to delineate here just how bad the air situation was for the British throughout the entire Norwegian Campaign. As we have seen, Fliegerkorps X was operating approximately 400 combat aircraft in support of German operations in Norway.17 In contrast, Bomber Command managed to put in slightly less than 800 combat sorties from their British bases in the month from 7 April to 10 May.18 And the Fleet Air Arm could hardly make up this deficiency. Initially, Admiral Forbes did not even bother to take Furious, his only available carrier, with him. The reason becomes clear upon further investigation. When Furious joined him on 10 April, it had aboard only 18 Swordfish of 816 and 818 squadrons, and no fighters.19 Ark Royal and Glorious had arrived from the Mediterranean by 22 April; Ark Royal had 30 Swordfish aboard, while Glorious boasted 36, and six Sea Gladiator biplane fighters, the only fighters immediately available to support fleet operations off Norway.20 By 17 May, the air groups had been reorganized and reinforced from air stations ashore. Ark Royal had 27 Skuas and 20 Swordfish embarked, Glorious was operating nine Sea Gladiators and six Swordfish, and Furious had six Sea Gladiators and six Swordfish aboard – all other aircraft had been lost or sent home from sheer exhaustion. This gave the Fleet Air Arm a maximum strength of 74 aircraft against perhaps 400 German.21 And none of these FAA aircraft could hope to stand up against the Me 109 monoplane fighter in aerial combat. Forbes, as usual, was blunt about the situation, complaining to the Admiralty that ‘Our Fleet Air Arm aircraft are hopelessly outclassed by everything that flies in the air and the sooner we get some different aircraft the better.’22 Glorious carried a squadron of RAF Gladiators (263 Squadron) which was flown off to operate from a frozen lake in Norway on May 21st; Furious flew off a squadron of Hurricanes (46 Squadron), a fully modern monoplane fighter, later that week. But this commitment of two squadrons, no more than 40 fighter planes, proved a forlorn hope. And, throughout this period, attacks on shipping continued (not to mention against Allied troops on the ground)23. On 17 April, the heavy cruiser Suffolk, sent to bombard German airfields near the coast, was hit off


Bergen and barely made it back to Scapa, her stern awash. On 30 April, the anti-aircraft sloop Bittern was sunk off Namsos; three days later, the destroyers Afridi and the French Bison were sent to the bottom.24 Later, the anti-aircraft cruiser Curlew went down near Narvik.25 From first to last, the Luftwaffe outnumbered and outclassed its opponent in the air over Norway. At sea, units of the Home Fleet and German Groups 1 and 2 had passed within two hundred miles of each other near the latitude of Bergen on the morning of 8 April. But the swifter German forces, blessed with superior intelligence and air reconnaissance, quickly outpaced their British adversaries. The Home Fleet proved too slow to catch the German forces bound for Trondheim and Narvik and, in chasing them, had proceeded too far north to intercept the remaining German Groups sailing for their objectives in southern Norway.26 On their way north to support ‘Wilfred’, one of Whitworth’s screening destroyers, Glowworm, under Lt Commander G. R. B. Roope, fell out of formation to search for a man overboard. She soon lost touch with her companions in bad weather. Unfortunately for her captain and crew, she ran into German Group 2 on the morning of 8 April. In a running fight, which eventually involved her going up against the heavy cruiser Hipper, Glowworm was sunk, but managed a rare feat in modern warfare – she rammed the Hipper as she was going down, inflicting serious damage in the process.27 Forbes heard Glowworm’s cry for help and sent Repulse, Penelope, and four destroyers to her aid, but they could not hope to arrive in time to turn the tide of a hopeless battle. So Repulse and her consorts were eventually ordered to join Whitworth.28 As a corollary, Whitworth was ordered south by Forbes to find and sink the German units that had attacked Glowworm. The Admiralty added their two cents at this time, ordering the ‘Wilfred’ destroyers, which were guarding the approach to Narvik, to sail west and link up with Whitworth as he moved south, thus uncovering Narvik at the critical juncture when Group 1’s destroyers were sailing in to land their troops.29 After detaching the Repulse task group to support Whitworth, Forbes sailed south to try to intercept German units that had been reported heading north through the Skagerrak.30 It was on the afternoon of the 8th that Forbes received a signal31 from the Admiralty that would have the gravest repercussions for the British in the contest for Norway. The cruisers earmarked for Operation ‘R4’ had been ordered to disembark their troops and set sail to join him. In a stroke, Churchill and Pound had robbed Britain of the only rapid reaction force available to counter a German move into Norway. Instead of keeping their options open, the


Admiralty staked everything on the assumption that the Germans would stay at sea long enough so that the superior forces of the Royal Navy could slaughter them. So mesmerized were the men in London by the possibility of a fleet engagement that they rushed every available ship, including all those intended to either land troops or cover their transports, to sea. Churchill later claimed he had consulted Forbes about this decision.32 No request for consultation or inquiry about Forbes’s opinion can be found in the signals recorded in the Home Fleet War Diary. Churchill and Pound jettisoned ‘R4’ because they saw the enemy before them and could think of nothing but launching an all-out attack. They finally had an excuse to occupy Narvik, one Churchill had been waiting for for months, and disregarded it. Strategy, the ability to look forward to what lies beyond the immediate situation, of planning a next move or follow-up, seems to have been largely beyond the Admiralty’s ken. The same shallow vision would later throw away the advantage gained by the decisive British victory in the Second Battle of Narvik, because no practical plan for exploiting the success existed.33 Forbes and the bulk of the Home Fleet spent much of 9 April sailing south and being bombed once the weather broke. His intention to intercept German ships headed north was thwarted when they all turned east to deposit their troops along the Norwegian coast. However, that morning in the far north, Rear Admiral Whitworth aboard Renown had run into Scharnhorst and Gneisenau.34 It was in Arctic twilight, 0337, that Renown spotted the enemy. She tried to close the range in heavy seas, her destroyer escorts unable to keep up. Finally, Renown was able to open fire at 0450, range nine miles. Renown had six 15-inch guns in her broadside to the Germans’ 18 11-inch guns. Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were also much younger ships, with greatly superior armour protection. Despite these advantages, the action quickly degenerated into a chase in rough seas and snow squalls, with the Royal Navy doing the chasing. Renown managed three hits on Gneisenau, inflicting heavy damage by knocking out one of her three main turrets and her fire control system. Renown was hit twice, but suffered no appreciable damage. The Germans used their superior speed to disappear into the Arctic wastes, steering due north and over the horizon. The first big-gun action since Jutland had gone to the British. But Whitworth was disappointed. Later, he wrote to his friend Admiral A. B. Cunningham: ‘Somehow, it never occurred to me, that they would not wish to fight.’35 Forbes, like Whitworth, was looking for a fight, but his attempts to induce one that afternoon were to lead to an even greater disappointment than the one experienced by Whitworth.


At 6:20 am on 9 April Admiral Forbes had requested the Admiralty to send him any Intelligence information they had on the situation at Bergen.36 This was the nearest major port to where the Home Fleet was located that morning, and Forbes was considering an assault. Two hours later, the Admiralty responded that they had no information on what was happening, or what ships might be present, at Bergen.37 Forbes hesitated, but took time out to order the 2nd Destroyer Flotilla operating off Narvik to sail up the Fjord and prevent a German landing.38 Then, at 11:30 am, Forbes ordered the light cruisers Manchester, Southampton, Glasgow, and Sheffield (12 6-inch guns each) along with seven destroyers to attack any German troops or vessels found around Bergen.39 At Bergen were the ships of Group 3, busily trying to disembark troops and stores in order to establish a firm bridgehead. With his strike forces detached, and his own ships getting nearer to German airfields with weather conditions improving, Forbes turned the main body of the Home Fleet north at noon.40 Then, at 2:38 pm, a bolt came from the blue – the Admiralty cancelled the attack on Bergen. Without consulting Forbes, they issued a blanket ‘Cancel Bergen Operation’.41 Ostensibly, the order seems to have been issued for two reasons: the Admiralty thought the Germans had captured the shore batteries along the approaches to Bergen and could use them against any attacking force (they had, in actuality, not done so); and, because they believed that ‘the Commander-in-Chief [Forbes] intended to use too few and too small ships’.42 With the German battlecruisers unquestionably far to the north (Whitworth had fought them that morning), it is hard to imagine what ships the Admiralty thought that four of the Royal Navy’s newest light cruisers and seven modern destroyers would find too formidable to handle. And the shore batteries, although a possible threat, would be most vulnerable that day because the Germans could have had absolutely no time to familiarize themselves with the equipment. What is most likely is that Pound and Churchill were still confused by the situation and needed more time to sort it out in their own minds. Their caution at this juncture, going so far as to countermand the orders of the fleet commander during the course of a tactical operation, when just the day before they had thrown caution to the wind and detached the units intended to carry out ‘R4’, is baffling.43 Such interference, based on no information, is contrary to Pound’s own stated principles, and had to have serious repercussions within the Home Fleet. It amounted to a vote of no confidence in Forbes’s judgment. Furthermore, it almost certainly ended Britain’s last fleeting opportunity to oust the Germans from any of their gains in central Norway before they had sorted themselves


out and had their Luftwaffe formations fully operational from captured Norwegian airfields. That morning, the Norwegian Government awoke to the unthinkable. Their relatively poor and underpopulated land was under direct attack from Nazi Germany. Norway had no hope of defeating such an enemy. Nevertheless, and to their lasting credit, at 5:30 am on 9 April, the Cabinet voted unanimously to reject the German ultimatum demanding that they give German troops unlimited access to Norwegian ports and airfields.44 Earlier, Norwegians spoke defiance not with words, but with fire. The obsolete fortress guarding Oslofjord had only two heavy guns mounted, ironically for the Nazis nicknamed ‘Moses’ and ‘Aaron’, but through a wild stroke of luck and the bravery of their commander, who waited until the last possible moment to open fire, the Norwegians scored two devastating hits with their first salvo on the German heavy cruiser Blucher at 4:20 am. Torpedoes from fixed shore-based tubes finished Blucher off, and she sank at 6:23.45 The Germans were forced to land their troops ten miles shy of Oslo, giving the Government time to evacuate the city. King Haakon, rock-steady, defiant, and leader amongst those who refused to capitulate, along with the Cabinet, Parliament, and gold reserves, were evacuated north on the morning of the 9th, just ahead of the German paratroopers who captured the Norwegian capital at noon. Narvik had not slipped Admiral Forbes’s mind. As we have seen, around midday on 9 April he ordered the nearest British naval formation to Narvik, the 2nd Destroyer Flotilla under Captain (D) Warburton-Lee, to ‘send some destroyers up to Narvik to make certain that no enemy troops landed’.46 This was a typical Forbes order – it said what he wanted done, and left the doing to the man on the spot. Warburton-Lee was a respected officer and, like Vian, trusted to do his job without undue interference. However, unbeknown to the British, the Germans had ten destroyers at Narvik, all bigger and better armed than Warburton-Lee’s five ‘H’ class ships.47 Despite discovering from the Norwegian pilots at Tranoy that at least six big German destroyers were at Narvik, Warburton-Lee signalled his superiors at 5:51 pm on the 9th, ‘intend attacking at dawn high water’.48 This phrasing (“intend”) informed Warburton-Lee’s superiors that he would carry out his intention unless ordered to desist. Meanwhile, Whitworth was faced with a dilemma. He had received no orders to support Warburton-Lee from Forbes or the Admiralty. In fact, he had been ordered to guard the sea south of Narvik to intercept any German reinforcements bound for that port. But he surmised that


Warburton-Lee might not have the strength to carry out his mission. Should he order Warburton-Lee to delay his attack so that he could send ships to reinforce him, thus contravening the order of his superior? And what about the threat still posed by Scharnhorst and Gneisenau? And if he left his battlecruisers at sea, but sent his destroyers to reinforce Warburton-Lee, then his big ships would not have an adequate antisubmarine screen. These questions are not intended to second-guess Whitworth. They show the complexity of the situation and the difficulties faced by commanders at sea. In the end, Whitworth chose to let the Admiralty and Forbes give the directives, and stuck to the role assigned to him.49 Warburton-Lee also stuck to his instructions. But even the Admiralty, at this time in direct contact with him (circumventing the chain of command), was having second thoughts. Churchill, through the mouthpiece of Pound, signalled Warburton-Lee that ‘You alone can judge whether, in these circumstances, attack should be made. We shall support whatever decision you take.’50 Warburton-Lee was given a way out, but refused to take it. In, as they say, the best tradition of the service, he chose to fight. At 4:30 am, 10 April, the destroyers Hardy, Hunter, and Havock swept into Narvik harbour and with guns and torpedoes sank the German destroyers Wilhelm Heidkamp and Anton Schmidt.51 Three further German destroyers were damaged. Warburton-Lee had wisely kept the Hotspur and Hostile in reserve. But after rejoining them, he chose to press his luck and decided to make a second attack. This gave the Germans a chance to recover, regroup, and strike back. From side bays off the main fjord five German destroyers, three from the north, two from the south, counter-attacked. The larger, better-armed German ships hit the British hard; Hunter was sunk, Hardy crippled and forced to beach herself. Captain Warburton-Lee was killed trying to lead his ships out of the vice, earning himself a posthumous Victoria Cross for bravery and singleminded persistence in carrying forward his attack against long odds. The remaining destroyers of the 2nd Flotilla escaped, with Hotspur seriously damaged. Losses were even, at two destroyers sunk per side, in what has come to be known as the First Battle of Narvik. But no less than seven German destroyers had been damaged in the action. In addition, six German merchant ships had been lost. The German destroyers succeeded in landing their troops at Narvik, but had allowed themselves to be caught by surprise and roughly handled by an inferior force. And, much of the stores and equipment needed to sustain the German garrison was


lost with their supply ships. Therefore, the battle can and should be considered a draw. While Royal Navy destroyers were fighting bravely in the north, Royal Navy submarines were performing sterling service in the south. As early as 8 April, the Polish submarine Orzel, serving with the British, sunk the German supply ship Rio de Janeiro off Kristiansand.52 On the next night, HMS Truant torpedoed the light cruiser Karlsruhe, which sank three hours later.53 And on 10 April, Spearfish torpedoed the pocket battleship Lutzow, sending her to dry dock for a year’s repairs. Sunfish sank four German merchantmen between the 8th and the 14th; Orzel sank a German tanker, and Triad, Sealion, and Snapper sank one supply ship each. The cost was three British submarines lost between 10 April and 18 April.54 The Fleet Air Arm scored a major coup at this time, too. On 10 April, 15 Skuas took off from their shore base at Hatston in Scotland. They were headed for Bergen, at the extreme edge of their effective range. Their target was the light cruiser Konigsberg, damaged the day before by Norwegian shore batteries. The Skuas formed up over the target and delivered a textbook dive-bombing attack, hitting Konigsberg three times and scoring several near misses. She went down at the quayside, the first major warship in history sunk by air attack.55 In London, Churchill added to the confusion and complexity of the situation by calling Admiral of the Fleet the Earl of Cork and Orrery, an old warhorse whom the First Lord knew from World War I, out of retirement, and designated him naval C-in-C, Narvik on 12 April. Lord Cork was to command all British ships within 100 miles of Narvik.56 This appointment split the British naval command between Forbes and Lord Cork, and involved the transfer of ships from the Home Fleet to the new Narvik command. By 17 April, Lord Cork would have Furious, Warspite, Southampton, Effingham, Aurora, and Enterprise under him, a considerable drain of Home Fleet resources.57 On top of this, Forbes was losing ships to the Mediterranean Fleet because the Government correctly assumed that Italy could enter the war at any time. Between 24 April and 18 May the Home Fleet lost five light cruisers, one AA cruiser, and 19 destroyers to commands other than Narvik.58 After the cancellation of the attack on Bergen, the Home Fleet headed north to link up with Whitworth. Furious launched an unsuccessful Swordfish attack on Trondheim while passing that port on 11 April.59 Forbes and the Admiralty were not satisfied with the results of the First Battle of Narvik and intended to crush the German forces there. So, after uniting the Home Fleet with the Battlecruiser Squadron, Forbes had


Whitworth transfer his flag to Warspite (Renown and Repulse had to return to Scapa to refuel) and take his battleship and nine destroyers up the fjord to Narvik. With Warspite’s Swordfish floatplane scouting ahead, Whitworth accomplished his task with ruthless efficiency, sinking all the remaining German destroyers around Narvik on 12 April. As a bonus, they also sunk U-64. The British lost none of their ships sunk.60 The second Battle of Narvik was, in naval terms, a complete success, and the risk run in taking a battleship into such constricted waters paid off handsomely. Yet, shockingly, no troops were immediately available to exploit the victory. Whitworth contemplated landing a scratch force of a few hundred sailors and Royal Marines, but he wisely thought better of it. He had no idea how many German troops he faced, but could guess that his enemy had assigned first-rate units to such an important operation. They were, in actuality, elite mountain troops under the able General Dietl. So the opportunity to seize Narvik by a coup de main was missed, and the town would remain in German hands until 28 May. Troops that might have stormed ashore at Narvik, one British and one French infantry brigade, had instead been diverted by Churchill to Namsos in central Norway, escorted by Manchester, Birmingham, three AA cruisers, and destroyers under Vice Admiral G. Layton.61 They landed on 12 April, the same day as the Second Battle of Narvik, and a follow-up landing was made south of Trondheim at Aandalsnes on 17 April, this time under the protection of Admiral Edward-Collins with two light cruisers, two AA cruisers, and two destroyers.62 On top of these commitments, troops were being shuttled to Harstad near Narvik, and massed for an eventual assault on that town. This dispersal of effort, combined with German air superiority and interior lines of communication, resupply, and reinforcement left the Allies too weak at all places and strong enough nowhere to beat the Germans. Churchill was directing the campaign from the Admiralty, and failing at it miserably.63 As Forbes was to say of this period later: ‘Of course, it was Churchill who tried to control the Fleet from Whitehall.’64 Lord Hankey, the able Minister Without Portfolio, was equally distressed ‘by Winston’s determination to direct the war’.65 And, as Correlli Barnett rightly points out, overall Allied strategy was wanting: So it was that when the Allies finally became committed to major land operations in Norway a week after ‘Weserubung’ they split their hastily improvised and ill-equipped forces between two strategic objectives 400 miles apart instead of concentrating on one chosen aim.66


The debate over proper Allied strategy was to reach a peak as Forbes and Churchill fought over Operation ‘Hammer’, Churchill’s proposed assault on Trondheim. After returning to Scapa to refuel on 15 April, Forbes signalled the Admiralty his thoughts on future operations against the Germans in Norway.67 Forbes stipulated that the only course of action open was to besiege the Germans by blockading Norwegian ports, mining the waters off Denmark and southern Norway, reinforcing Allied forces already in place, and getting the RAF to attack German aerodromes in Norway. Also, if bad weather permitted, destroyers were to be sent on sweeps into the Skagerrak to intercept convoys bound for Oslo.68 Like Winfield Scott’s ‘Anaconda’ plan of the American Civil War, this strategy held little appeal for the politicians, and the fall of France in June made it moot; resources could not be spared for its successful implementation. Nevertheless, Forbes’s strategy was sound. Churchill characteristically wanted action, and that at once. He proposed to the Cabinet an immediate landing at Trondheim against the 1700 troops, dug in and within range of German airfields, holding that city. He named the plan Operation ‘Hammer’. Forbes was unimpressed. He had seen the Luftwaffe in operation, and had little faith that transport ships could successfully sail the 30 miles up the fjord under air attack and disembark their troops and equipment under enemy fire. He wired the Admiralty that ‘I do not consider operation feasible, unless you are prepared to face very heavy losses in troops and transports.’69 German officers later testified to their doubts that ‘Hammer’ could have succeeded.70 But the prodding from London kept coming. The Admiralty came up with a complex plan involving shore bombardments combined with RAF and FAA attacks to neutralize German airfields while amphibious forces made the approach up the fjord to Trondheim. It looked baroque on paper, and most probably would have failed in practice. Most galling of all for Forbes was that the signal laying out the plan ended: ‘Pray, therefore, consider this important project further.’71 This could only have been penned by one man – Winston Churchill. After the failures of Intelligence, the bungling of ‘R4’, the interference in Home Fleet operations, from the dispatch of the destroyers guarding Narvik to the cancellation of the Bergen attack, the flouting of the chain of command through Admiralty despatches directly to officers under Forbes’s command, and the final insult of inserting Lord Cork’s command on a parallel footing to his own, Forbes had had enough. He responded with a series of probing questions: How many troops were to be landed? Where (the Home Fleet had only navigational charts!)?


How would his battleships support such a landing, when they had no high explosive shells, only armour piercing ones? Forbes added a pointed summary: ‘And I know, from personal experience, what an opposed landing is like, even without air opposition.’72 Any senior officer reading this message would know what it meant. Forbes had been a lieutenant on board Queen Elizabeth when she sailed to the Dardenelles in 1915 to support the landings on Gallipoli. Gallipoli had been Churchill’s brainchild, and one of the great military disasters in modern times. By invoking it, Forbes was at the very least telling Churchill to refrain from further meddling. His signal was a warning of impending disaster, and a reminder that the last such debacle had cost Churchill his post as First Lord in 1915. Even if the troops got ashore and defeated the Germans, the Allies would have been stuck with an exposed garrison under constant Luftwaffe attack, difficult to supply or reinforce. For, without a major commitment of RAF resources, no position in Norway could be held for long. Churchill, raised on stories of Cadiz, Quebec, and the Peninsula War, could not grasp this essential point – that the Navy alone was incapable of supporting a landing on hostile shores. It was a reckless signal, an insult, and entirely justified. The matter of Operation ‘Hammer’ stood unresolved until 17 April, when Pound, after the near-sinking of the heavy cruiser Suffolk off central Norway through dive-bomber attack, to his credit thought better of the plan and got the other service chiefs to join him in getting it scrapped.73 Meanwhile, German troop reinforcements continued to come up through Oslo. The Germans committed all or part of 11 infantry divisions plus paratroopers to their Norwegian offensive. The Allied order of battle never amounted to more than four understrength Norwegian infantry divisions, the equivalent of a Franco-Polish division, and four British infantry brigades.74 With total German superiority on the ground and in the air, the situation in Norway eventually became untenable for the Allies. By early May, the troops at Namsos and Aandalsnes had been evacuated. Yet despite the worsening situation, a remarkable development on the political front took place, and its chief beneficiary was the First Lord of the Admiralty. ‘It is . . . ironic that the man at whose door much of the responsibility for the Scandinavian debacle should be laid was thrust into the foremost position of power in the state in the midst of the crisis.’75 Ironic, indeed. The Norwegian campaign, which Correlli Barnett so aptly termed ‘A Churchillian Disaster’,76 managed to propel Winston Churchill to the office of Prime Minister with sweeping powers in his invented new portfolio, Minister of Defence.77 The nation, or at least its elites,78 had


lost patience with Neville Chamberlain. Churchill’s mistakes, his misapprehending the nature of the German moves of 6 April to 8 April, his cancellation of Operation ‘R4’, cancellation of Forbes’s attack on Bergen, failure to ensure that troops were available to exploit the Second Battle of Narvik, vacillation between the objectives of Narvik and Trondheim, and unnecessary division of command in Norway between Forbes and Lord Cork, were granted general absolution by his Parliamentary colleagues. Churchill replaced Chamberlain on 10 May. He was chosen because he had been right about the threat of Hitler, and because he was bellicose and active. His inability as a strategist, later confirmed in his Dakar gambit, Greek fiasco, the dispatch of the Repulse and Prince of Wales on a fool’s errand of deterrence, Aegean campaign of 1943, and the fanciful Ljubliana Gap ideas of 1944, lay in the future. Antwerp, Gallipoli, and Norway should have alerted British elites that Churchill had more bluster than brains.79 But they believed they needed a man who could lead and a man who would fight. These qualities Churchill had in abundance. And, he could also inspire. So, with the battle still raging in Norway (Narvik would not fall to the Allies until 28 May), Churchill left the Admiralty and hastily took up residence at Number 10 Downing Street. One last disaster, this one not of Churchill’s making, must now be explored. The term ‘explored’ is used because the truth of the matter is elusive. The disaster under consideration is the sinking of the aircraft carrier Glorious and her escorts, the destroyers Ardent and Acasta, at the very end of the Norwegian Campaign.80 Glorious was serving with Ark Royal under the command of Vice Admiral Wells as part of the carrier force providing air support to the troops in northern Norway in late May and early June. After capturing Narvik on 28 May, Allied leaders decided to abandon Norway; the situation in France and the Low Countries was critical, and all resources were of necessity being poured into the struggle there. Admiral of the Fleet Lord Cork was instructed to prepare, in secret, an evacuation. This secrecy was to prove disastrous. For, at the critical juncture when the transports departed, Coastal Command was ‘out of the loop’ – no extra patrols were flown to monitor possible German surface action off the Norwegian coast. Admiral Forbes, who knew of the evacuation, was distracted by a false report of a German raider in the North Atlantic on 5 June. Renown and Repulse were sent off to investigate.81 Belatedly, Admiral Forbes sent Valiant to compensate for the detachment of the BCS. When the drain of destroyers to help in the evacuation of the BEF from Dunkirk is added to the strain and confusion experienced by the forces engaged in Norway, the seeds of


a disaster can be seen to have been sown. Lord Cork’s transports lacked a powerful screen to protect them from a surface attack. The withdrawal and detachment of many of its ships diminished the Home Fleet. Command was split between Forbes and Cork. The Admiralty’s eyes were fixed on the Channel. As the evacuation of Narvik was getting under way, the commander of Glorious, Captain Guy D’Oyly-Hughes, requested permission from Vice Admiral Wells to proceed independently to Scapa Flow. Glorious had just flown on the last 20 RAF Gladiators and Hurricanes operating in Norway, the first time a Royal Navy carrier had landed on a high performance, single-seat fighter, in defiance of the common, erroneous, wisdom that such planes could not operate from carriers. Wells granted the request for independent passage. This was a foolish decision. It reduced the carrier strength of the covering force by half. But what made the request itself a crime was the reason behind it. Captain D’Oyly-Hughes was an angry man in a hurry: Guy D’Oyly-Hughes, was a throwback to the worst kind of arrogant, authoritarian, and choleric Edwardian naval officer. In the words of one former Fleet Air Arm subordinate . . . D-H was a very vain man and would not admit his ignorance on air matters and tried to enforce his views by bullying and bluster.82 D’Oyly-Hughes had worked himself into a rage over his disagreements with his two senior FAA officers concerning air operations over Norway. At one point, they had told him that his request for an additional mission was impractical and suicidal. D’Oyly-Hughes had his Commander (Air), J. B. Heath, arrested and wanted to get back to Scapa to convene his immediate court martial. Therefore, with two destroyers in attendance, Glorious set off for home. From the time of his decision on the court martial, D’Oyly-Hughes demonstrated a personality more akin to Captain Ahab than Admiral Nelson. The captain of the Glorious sailed straight for Scapa through waters wide open to the intervention of German U-boats and/or surface raiders without ordering any reconnaissance planes flown off, or a strike force readied! It is likely he simply did not wish to change course from his beeline to Scapa to sail into the wind in order to launch them.83 Why would a well-considered officer (Drax, a smart man, particularly liked him, as did Lord Cork and Sir Roger Keyes ) perform with such abominable incompetence? We shall never know. Historians for years believed that the evidence for ‘why’ the Glorious was lost might be


contained in the secret Findings of the Board of Enquiry. The Findings were finally released by the Lord Chancellor’s Office on 10 December, 1993 and deposited as ADM 178/201 at the Public Record Office, Kew.84 However, although they are of great interest, and confirm much of the story as Stephen Roskill and John Winton recreated it, they contain no ‘smoking gun’ that might illuminate D’Oyly-Hughes’s actions. It was hot, and the men exhausted from intensive combat operations in Norwegian waters – and probably demoralized, by the evacuation, and the news from Dunkirk. As one survivor commented: ‘The whole ship seemed gripped with a curious lassitude’.85 D’Oyly-Hughes did not know, and did nothing to ascertain, that a force of German surface vessels was heading right for him. To take the pressure off the troops, who had been forced out of Narvik by the Allies, the Kriegsmarine (German Navy) initiated Operation ‘Juno’, a raid by Scharnhorst and Gneisenau on British shipping in and around Harstadt. German radio decrypts revealed a Royal Navy temporarily vulnerable in northern waters, so Admiral Marschall took his squadron to sea on 4 June. At 4:00 pm on 8 June, the Germans sighted Glorious and began their chase. Belatedly, D’Oyly-Hughes tried to get a striking force of Swordfish readied. Luck was against him. Scharnhorst opened up at the extreme range of her main armament, 28 000 yards, and at 4:32 pm miraculously scored a hit on her third salvo. An early hit caused a fire in the hanger deck, cutting off the Swordfish from the torpedo armoury. Survivors’ accounts differ, but it seems that D’Oyly-Hughes was killed when the bridge was hit at around 5 o’clock. While his destroyers made smoke, and then in desperation hurled themselves at the enemy, Glorious had been broadcasting urgent appeals for assistance. For reasons only recently made clear, the distress signals were poorly heard and their importance unappreciated. Glorious had failed to switch over from the Narvik frequency to the home station frequency, and the Germans jammed her messages. The heavy cruiser Devonshire, perhaps 100 miles away, flying the flag of Vice Admiral J. H. D. Cunningham of the First Cruiser Squadron, received a garbled transmission. Cunningham could not, or would not, guess what the corrupted signal meant. Because he had the King of Norway and his country’s gold reserve on board, Cunningham refused to break radio silence to inquire of Glorious the meaning of her message. This was a logical decision – Glorious could not be reached in time, and Cunningham’s one cruiser could not have saved her, even if he had inferred the message was a call for help – but one which sadly led to a delay in rescue operations of many hours.


Acasta and Ardent charged gallantly at the German squadron. Their captains, Commander C. E. Glasfurd and Lt Commander J. F. Barker respectively, upheld the excellent standards set by Roope of Glowworm and Warburton-Lee at Narvik. Scharnhorst’s executive officer wrote of Ardent’s attack: ‘She fought with outstanding resolution in a situation that was hopeless for her. . . . her bow armament firing to the last’.86 Heroism could not save Glorious – but it was not wasted. A torpedo from Acasta hit Scharnhorst at 5:38 pm, badly damaging her. With her captain dead, someone finally ordered the crew of the sinking Glorious to abandon ship at about 5:20. When it was all over, 1519 British sailors and airmen were dead. Forty-six men were rescued.87 Marschall, gladdened by his success and nursing a crippled Scharnhorst, withdrew to Trondheim well satisfied, but was censured by his superiors for not pushing on to the transports. Forbes ordered a forlorn attempt at revenge, sending Ark Royal to attack the German squadron making temporary repairs at Trondheim. Fifteen Skuas attacked on 13 June, but landed only one direct hit on Scharnhorst that failed to explode. Eight Skuas were shot down. Such was the sad end of a misbegotten adventure. A Board of Enquiry was convened under Vice Admiral C. Ramsay, C-in-C Rosyth. He and the investigating officers presented their summary to Dudley Pound. They could not have stated their findings more directly:88 The Board of Enquiry has elicited the following facts: 1 There were 5 T.S.R. [Swordfish] on board which might have been used for reconnaissance, but none was in the air for twelve hours prior to, or during, the action; 2 There was a lack of proper look-out on board, and of precautions generally against a possible surface attack; 3 Before the action began the only shells at the guns were for antiaircraft attack; 4 All the boilers were not connected up. Why D’Oyly-Hughes blundered so badly remains a mystery, but his culpability is unquestionable. The last words will be those of Dudley Pound, written on the original document: I agree [with the Board of Enquiry] that a Court-Martial should not be held as the commanding officer did not survive. The lack of readiness for action as shown at A [site of the battle] is deplorable and knowing Captain D’Oyly-Hughes and his fine record Glorious [sic] had


throughout her commission I cannot understand it. They were being used as a transport and seem to have forgotten they were a man o’ war. I hope the gallant conduct of Ardent and Acasta will be [suitably? illegible] rewarded. The loss of Glorious was the punctuation mark closing the sad chapter that was the Norwegian Campaign. Norway had been, for the Allies, not a tragedy, but a man-made disaster. Chief among the men responsible was Winston Churchill, although the number of those who added to the finished product was large. Forbes’s contribution was his inability to intuit German intentions in the first 48 hours. Pound also could not grasp the situation, and his participation in the hasty cancelling of ‘R4’ and sending the ships to sea had, as we have seen, serious, negative consequences. But Pound can be credited with his intervention to support Forbes in stopping the planned assault on Trondheim. Captain D’Oyly Hughes has no such mark to his credit. Whether right or wrong in his efforts to court martial his senior air officers, D’Oyly-Hughes acted with amazing incompetence during that first week of June 1940. His insistence on sailing to Scapa ahead of the convoy was bad enough (and Wells should never have let him go). To then proceed in clear weather without sending out reconnaissance flights, or preparing a strike force armed and ready for action, is a staggering example of bad judgement, which crosses the line into dereliction of duty. The deaths of 1519 sailors and RAF flyers can be seen as being directly attributable to D’OylyHughes’s performance. In short, Captain D’Oyly-Hughes was lucky he went down with his ship, and never had to face the consequences of his actions. Largely, it would seem, to protect him and the reputation of the Navy, the results of the Board of Inquiry were sealed, and remained so until 1993. But what of the architect of Norway, Churchill? His unique responsibility for defeat lay in his insistence on ‘Wilfred’ without thinking through possible German responses or preparing adequate forces to deal with all likely contingencies. Scrapping ‘R4’, then countermanding Forbes’s decision to attack Bergen, stole any chance the British had of countering Germany’s move into Norway. But recriminations over, and responsibility for, the defeat in Norway would wait for another day. A much greater issue was at hand – the collapse of the Allied position in the Low Countries and France. For even before the last transport from Narvik had arrived back in Britain, the Dunkirk evacuation had been completed, France was on the brink of defeat, and the threat of a German invasion of Great Britain began to loom large.

5 Thin Grey Line: The Home Fleet in the Defence of Great Britain, June 1940–June 1941

From the fall of France in June 1940 to the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, Britain, her Commonwealth, and her Empire, stood virtually alone against Nazi Germany and fascist Italy.1 Although beyond the scope of this account, the period 1940–41 witnessed the Battle of Britain, and what U-boat commanders would fondly remember as the ‘happy time’. It was a year of largely fruitless, back-breaking effort on the part of the Home Fleet, punctuated by its worst defeat, in the Denmark Strait, and greatest victory, the sinking of the battleship Bismarck. This year of trial saw a change of command: Admiral of the Fleet Sir Charles Forbes was relieved, and Vice Admiral John Tovey took his place at the helm of the Home Fleet. In the end, it was a year that witnessed a shift of the strategic centre of gravity away from the North Sea and English Channel, north to the realm of the Arctic convoys, and south towards the Mediterranean. But, from June 1940 to June 1941, the Home Fleet was the last line of defence in British strategy – never so important as in that difficult year and, after it, never so important again. The question confronting the British nation and her political and military leaders in June 1940 was stark and simple: Would the Germans risk an invasion of the British Isles? It would have seemed safe to assume they would. Certainly, with the British Army largely neutralized after the Dunkirk evacuation, and the German Army and Luftwaffe proving their skill and mettle on the continent, the threat seemed imminent. But what of the reality? Was it likely that the Germans were coming and, if they were, what were their chances for success? The answer hinged on one point – could the Luftwaffe gain ascendancy over Fighter Command? As is evident from any study of the Norwegian Campaign, and was 68

Thin Grey Line: Defence of Great Britain 69

driven home during the Battle of France, control of the air gives the attacker an enormous advantage. If the Luftwaffe could wrest control of the skies over the Channel and the chosen invasion beaches, then the Germans would have a chance to foil the attempts of the RAF and Home Fleet to interdict the flow of men and supplies needed for a successful invasion. Without complete command of the air, the Royal Navy and Bomber Command would be in an excellent position to intercept an invasion force. Even if the Germans reached the English coast, British air and naval forces could cut off German units that made it across from supplies and reinforcements while simultaneously pounding them mercilessly in their beachheads. Given this situation, Charles Forbes was not overly worried about an invasion. Several factors made his optimism realistic: 1 The Germans had no experience in mounting a massive seaborne invasion. An invasion of Britain would require an initial landing force at least nine times larger than the Germans had employed at the outset in their Norwegian operation.2 2 The German Navy was much weaker in the summer of 1940 than it had been that spring; in June, only one heavy cruiser, two light cruisers, and four destroyers were fit for service.3 3 Forbes had seen the devastating influence of air power off Norway, and knew that as long as RAF Fighter Command could stay operational, and Bomber Command could strike at the Germans in the French ports and in the constricted waters of the Channel, no invasion could succeed. 4 Given its weakness, the German Navy could not, even if it managed to get troops ashore, keep them supplied in the face of cruiser and destroyer sweeps. Even if Fighter Command were defeated, the Royal Navy could operate at night, sinking German merchant ships, laying minefields,4 sending in submarines, and shelling the invasion beaches. Based on this assessment, Forbes wanted his Home Fleet to function actively off Norway and not be confined much of the time to harbour at Scapa and Rosyth, passively waiting for an invasion he did not believe was coming. In addition, he wanted modern cruisers released for employment on the Northern Patrol, and at least some of the destroyers and trawlers on anti-invasion patrol sent into the Atlantic to protect half-naked convoys from the renewed U-boat onslaught. But the consensus of elite opinion seemed not to be with Forbes.5 Churchill played


up the possibility of an invasion, but seems to have wavered in his conviction that it was actually coming.6 The new Prime Minister talked in public as if an invasion was imminent, but found ships during that summer both for the disastrous Dakar Expedition and to reinforce the Mediterranean Fleet. In August, he even had an armoured brigade dispatched to Egypt by heavily escorted convoy, along with vital stores (including Hurricanes!).7 The Chiefs of Staff Committee and their Joint Planning Committee also seemed at least as interested in events in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia as they did in the defence of the United Kingdom.8 This was strategic idiocy, unless Churchill and his advisors did not believe an invasion likely. But if they did not, why were Forbes’s recommendations against immobilizing vital ships in anti-invasion work, while the U-boats ran rampant in the Atlantic, ignored? For, against Forbes’s advice, ships were not only being drained away for service on foreign stations, they were also being detached to ports around the British coast. As Roskill has pointed out, the Chiefs of Staff (COS) and the War Cabinet insisted that ships from the Home Fleet be dispersed around the east and south coast ports for anti-invasion work. Forbes saw this as a foolish dispersal of limited resources, and the direct cause of the rise of U-boat predation; destroyers were waiting around in British ports to counter a possible German invasion while poorly escorted convoys fell prey to Doenitz’s ‘aces’.9 Forbes believed that the Navy’s job was not static defence, but to act ‘offensively against the enemy and in defence of our trade’.10 He tried to keep something of the offensive spirit alive through raids off the Norwegian coast.11 But his ships kept getting sent south. The answer to why Forbes was ignored can only be that Churchill wanted to adopt an aggressive policy in the Mediterranean, while hedging his bets with a more defensive posture at home. Given Britain’s inability to be strong everywhere, this was a most dangerous strategy; it left the Atlantic convoy routes woefully vulnerable, and the Home Fleet without its full potential margin of superiority for turning back an invasion armada. The logically consistent choices were: (1) an invasion is very likely coming, so all Britain’s resources should be deployed at the decisive point in home waters to enjoy the greatest chance of defeating the assault; (2) the invasion was not coming, or at least not until Fighter Command had been neutralized, so the fewest possible number of ships should be tied up in anti-invasion work; (3) the real threat was to the trade routes, so the lion’s share of ships and planes should be deployed to counter the U-boats and Condors preying on Britain’s vital supplies. Forbes pushed the government to make a choice and set a priority. However, no such coherent policy was adopted.


Meanwhile, the Germans had problems of their own.12 Hitler’s attempts at securing peace with Britain on his terms were rebuffed by the British Government. The path to victory, however, remained unclear. The Luftwaffe, heady with success, believed that it could knock Britain out of the war single-handed: ‘Goering was determined to break the British power of resistance by a massive bombing campaign . . . . He intended to sweep British fighter aircraft out of the sky, leaving British industrial centres, ports and food storehouses helplessly at his mercy.’13 The German Army jumped at the idea of a seaborne invasion of Britain, despite the fact that ‘Grand Admiral Raeder doubted a quick success.’14 Raeder knew the overwhelming odds against his Kriegsmarine, and that the Army had no plan in hand for a cross-Channel invasion. Surprisingly, before July 1940 ‘a crossing of the Channel . . . was never contemplated by the Wehrmacht staff, not even as an intellectual exercise’.15 The German Naval Staff was only alerted to the need for invasion planning on 5 July, and on the 8th still had no idea how many troops the army intended to commit or where they proposed to land them!16 Despite this, Hitler announced to the armed services on 15 July that they had one month to complete plans and initial preparations for the invasion.17 The German Navy was so pessimistic that, on 13 August, Raeder told Hitler: ‘In view of the limited means available for naval warfare and transport, operation ‘Sea Lion’, as emphasized repeatedly, should be attempted only as a last resort, if Britain cannot be made to sue for peace in any other way.’18 When one considers that planning for D-Day took almost two years, the notion that the Germans could have improvised a cross-Channel invasion in two months, and carried it off without air or naval superiority, seems far-fetched. Just assembling the supplies, shipping, landing barges, and training the troops for an amphibious assault in so short a time was probably beyond Germany’s capability at that time. The debate in Britain over the deployment of ships in home waters continued all summer. The general plan for the defence of the British Isles called for the mining of coastal waters and the seas off the French ports, the massing of naval assets in the south of England, a vigilant patrol by Coastal Command supplemented by naval anti-submarine trawlers and minesweepers in the Narrow Seas, and the fortification of ports and beaches. Forbes wanted most of the trawlers back with the convoys, and the heavy units of the fleet at Scapa Flow.19 Given the all-out reconnaissance effort mounted by RAF Bomber20 and Coastal Commands, the massive auxiliary patrol of about 1000 coastal craft and trawlers keeping watch in the Channel and North Sea (300 of which


were at sea at any time), and the time it would take for an invasion fleet to mass, first in harbour, then into convoys, and finally to cross over to England, Forbes believed the Royal Navy would have plenty of time to respond to any German move; Scapa Flow is only 24 hours sailing time from the Channel at a modest 20 knots. So Forbes fought the dispersal of his Fleet. But, by 18 September, only Repulse, Furious, four cruisers and four destroyers were left at Scapa – Nelson, Rodney, and Hood were at Rosyth, whereas 12 cruisers and 76 destroyers were deployed throughout the British Isles on anti-invasion duties.21 Forbes’s final effort to redirect strategy away from this passive defence (ships were being held in harbour at the ready just in case) to a strategy more concerned with the defence of trade, what Churchill had himself termed the Battle of the Atlantic, came in a letter of 28 September to the Secretary of the Admiralty.22 Forbes dismissed as improbable any further threat of invasion, stating that ‘the weather will make it impossible to land in many places on many days’ with winter approaching.23 The Channel is subject to autumn gales from September. What mattered most was releasing ships from anti-invasion duties and getting them out into the Atlantic to protect merchant shipping.24 Churchill and the Admiralty had heard enough. Forbes could not keep his eyes on his Fleet and leave the strategic direction of the war to Churchill and Pound. Later, Admiral of the Fleet Lord Cunningham of Hyndhope was to say of Forbes during the invasion scare: ‘How right he was . . . He was in my opinion quite one of the soundest and best of our war admirals, and was never given credit for his doings. Winston and Brendan Bracken disliked him.’25 Being right was no defence26 – the Prime Minister would not tolerate so persistent, defiant, and independent a subordinate. Therefore, Pound wrote to Cunningham on 20 September, telling him that Forbes ‘might’ be replaced, and that his most likely successor27 was Cunningham’s second in command, John Tovey, Vice Admiral Commanding Light Forces, Mediterranean Fleet: You will possibly have wondered why Tovey has been ordered to come home. The reason is there seems to be some chance C.M.F. [Charles Morton Forbes] will be relieved in the near future; not because he has not done well but because there is a growing demand for younger people . . . I do not think you need feel any anxiety that you are considered too old!28 The excuse was disingenuous. Pound was older than Forbes. Moreover, the paper trail dealing with Forbes’s dismissal has largely vanished, or


never was written down. As Roskill has explained: ‘no contemporary record of the reasons for the premature relief of Forbes has been found’.29 This proved true until March 2003, when this author was sent a packet of documents from Forbes’s sole surviving child, Elizabeth Forbes. Included in the packet was a letter of 14 October, 1940 from A. V. Alexander, the First Lord, telling Forbes that he was to be relieved. It exactly mirrors Pound’s contention that the reason for Forbes’s dismissal was not a loss of confidence in him, but as a means to clear the way for younger men.30 How seriously we are to take this excuse is open to debate. Nevertheless, the reasons why Forbes was sacked are not hard to discern. For in the last analysis, Forbes was not ‘too old’, but a victim of Churchill and Pound’s vanity and frustration. Forbes had too many strongly held opinions, and had voiced them too readily. He had been right about the vulnerability of Scapa Flow, and about the need to keep the Home Fleet there rather than at Rosyth; he had been right about the futility of dispersing the Fleet, and about how unlikely it was that the Germans would take the leap and risk an invasion. Forbes had been right to send his cruisers to Bergen on 9 April, and right about not attacking Trondheim a week later. But he had guessed wrong when Rawalpindi had been sunk, and had failed to intuit German intentions during the critical first 24 hours of the campaign in Norway. Lacking proper intelligence and aerial reconnaissance, Forbes had at times staggered blindly about in search of an infuriatingly elusive prey. Equally detrimental to his efforts was the fact that the German B-dienst intelligence unit had broken several Admiralty codes and often alerted the German Navy of British moves in a timely and therefore tactically useful manner. Forbes had sensed something was amiss when he wrote to the Admiralty after Norway:31 the quite unexpected appearance of enemy forces . . . in the far north on June 8th which led to the sinking of the Glorious, two destroyers and a liner. . . shows that it is absolutely essential that our scheme of air reconnaissance should be overhauled . . . The enemy reconnoiter Scapa daily if they consider it necessary. Our reconnaissances of the enemy’s main bases are few and far between . . . It is most galling that the enemy should know just where our ships . . . always are, whereas we generally learn where his major forces are when they sink one or more of our ships. Years later, when he found out about the German’s code-breaking success, Forbes told Stephen Roskill:


when one comes to think of the mass of stuff that went out, over the air, from our War Lords at the Admiralty, just giving away all our dispositions, on the slightest provocation, it makes one think the Admiralty should not be allowed to send anything over the air at all and if they cannot do it over a cable [the land line between London and Scapa] then to hold their peace!!32 Forbes had the brains and the talent of a first-rate admiral, and was well suited to the First Sea Lord’s chair, but failed to deliver the victory that might have propelled him to the top. And he lacked the temperament to get along with Churchill. Pound was more to the Prime Minister’s liking, and Churchill was loath to get rid of so loyal and respectful a subordinate. Forbes could only have reminded Churchill of Jacky Fisher, and another Fisher was the last thing Churchill wanted at the Admiralty. So, on 2 December, 1940 Admiral of the Fleet Sir Charles Forbes hauled down his flag as Commander-in-Chief, Home Fleet. He never got a sea posting again, a seat on the Board of Admiralty, or a theatre command33, and was sent off to become C-in-C Plymouth, retiring to relative obscurity in 1943. His replacement, Jack Tovey, was a destroyer man. He was born in March 1885, in Kent, and joined HMS Britannia as a cadet in January 1900. Tovey made his name at Jutland where, in command of the destroyer Onslow, he earned official praise for ‘the determined manner in which he attacked enemy ships . . . even though his destroyer was disabled by shell fire and unable to proceed at more than 10 knots’.34 Tovey continued to serve in destroyers, becoming a Captain (D). Later, he got the plum assignment of commanding Rodney, before going to the Mediterranean Fleet to serve as Rear Admiral, Destroyers in 1938, and then Vice Admiral Light Forces in 1940. Cunningham, a notoriously tough taskmaster, held Tovey in high regard, and wrote to Pound when news of Tovey’s appointment broke: ‘I am so glad Tovey has been selected for the H.F. [Home Fleet] though I shall badly miss his sane and optimistic outlook out here. I am quite sure he will justify your selection of him.’35 Cunningham’s endorsement was an important reassurance, but the impetus behind Tovey’s appointment seems to have come from Churchill. Only six months earlier Pound had offered Forbes Tovey to act as either Second-in-Command Home Fleet or Vice Admiral Second Cruiser Squadron, with the caveat: ‘He is difficult at times and not overburdened with brains.’36 Thus Pound’s assessment of Tovey can at best be termed ambivalent. Forbes turned down Tovey’s services, preferring to keep Edward-Collins on and requested Rear Admiral Lancelot Holland


be assigned to his team at the earliest moment he was available.37 However, Churchill must have gained at some point a positive impression of Tovey, for he wrote to his Chief of Staff, General Ismay, on 2 September, 1940 instructing him ‘to procure discreetly for me a photograph of Admiral Tovey, Second-in-Command in the Mediterranean. I think I met this officer several years ago, but have not seen him since the war began.’38 On 7 September Churchill wrote to the First Lord of the Admiralty, A. V. Alexander, telling him that he had never met Tovey ‘but I have heard from many quarters [Cunningham?] the highest accounts of him’.39 Within days, Tovey got the summons to come home and meet the Prime Minister. Despite his fine record and later glowing recommendation from Cunningham, Tovey almost lost the job of C-in-C Home Fleet before he got it. Tovey relates the story in a famous letter to Cunningham:40 ‘When the 1st L [First Lord, A. V. Alexander] started talking about the H.F. I was completely taken aback and I admit delighted. It was the job I have always wanted but never dared to hope I should get’. Tovey goes on to describe how his initial interview with Churchill went well, but when he was invited down to Chequers, the Prime Minister’s country retreat, things almost got out of hand. Over copious quantities of champagne, Churchill regaled his guest with stories and opinions. At one point, Churchill blamed Britain’s lack of preparedness in 1939 on the inter-war service chiefs. This was an obvious attack on Admiral of the Fleet Lord Chatfield, First Sea Lord from 1933–38, a well-respected officer. When Tovey, who had been encouraged to speak freely, defended his old chief, Churchill got up in a huff and walked out of the room. Only the intervention of Pound and Alexander secured Tovey in his new appointment. It was here that Cunningham’s unequivocal support might have swayed Pound and Alexander to stand up for Tovey. But it was on this discordant note, and after some delay, that Tovey took over the Home Fleet on 2 December, 1940. That the Home Fleet command went to a relatively junior Vice Admiral signalled a break with an established norm that went back to before the First World War. No longer was the Home Fleet reserved for senior Admirals and Admirals of the Fleet. The fact that one of Britain’s two senior admirals afloat was not at Scapa Flow was no accident. Cunningham at Alexandria, and Somerville at Gibraltar, were both senior to Tovey. At least temporarily, the shift to the Mediterranean as the primary arena of Britain’s war effort was complete. The Home Fleet that Tovey inherited from Forbes was not so large as it had been at the start of 1940, or during the Norwegian Campaign.


It suffered from one very serious handicap: it had no aircraft carrier assigned to it.41 The old reliables, Nelson and Rodney, were still serving up at Scapa Flow; Hood and Repulse made up the BCS, under Admiral Whitworth. The supporting cast was thin: one heavy cruiser, four light cruisers, an AA cruiser, and 14 destroyers. By comparison, Admiral Cunningham commanded a force of four battleships, two aircraft carriers, one heavy and six light cruisers, two AA cruisers, and 18 fleet destroyers. Force H at Gibraltar, led by Vice Admiral Sir James Somerville, was composed of the aircraft carrier Ark Royal, the battlecruiser Renown, one light cruiser, and six destroyers. In addition, one old ‘R’ class battleship, a heavy cruiser, and three modern destroyers were at Gibraltar for convoy escorting duty. No further evidence is needed to comprehend just how comparatively great had become the Royal Navy’s commitment to the war in the Mediterranean. For the first time since the days before Jacky Fisher took over at the Admiralty, Britain’s strategic centre of gravity was in the Mediterranean. Whatever the grand strategic reasons for the deployment of so many ships to the Mediterranean, the reason that the Home Fleet had no carrier was simple – the Royal Navy’s carrier strength was not keeping up with the demands placed upon it. Priority in the shipyards had passed from big ships to the escort vessels upon which the maintenance of the Atlantic lifeline depended.42 Courageous and Glorious were gone. Illustrious had joined the Mediterranean Fleet, and Formidable was working up in the South Atlantic. Additionally, the number of planes embarked on Royal Navy carriers had hardly risen since September 1939: the Fleet Air Arm had 153 planes at sea in September 1939, and 18 waiting to join Furious; that number stood at 161 in December 1940.43 The only new aircraft types to have entered service during the war to that time were the Fairey Albacore TSR and the Fulmar fighter. The Albacore was an improved Swordfish with an enclosed cabin, crew of three, and slightly increased range and speed, but still a bi-plane. The Fulmar was a navalized monoplane fighter variant of the proposed replacement for the Fairey Battle light bomber, with a pilot and a navigator/radioman, a maximum speed of only 255 mph, and eight Browning .303 machine guns. The Fulmar was adequate for service in the Mediterranean against Italian opposition and shadowing reconnaissance aircraft, but no match for the latest Axis land-based fighters. The first 12 Martlet fighters, FAA versions of the Grumman Wildcat purchased (originally by France) from the United States, were entering squadron service in Britain, and promised a major improvement in embarked fighter capability. Overall, the FAA could muster only


98 torpedo bombers, 18 fighter/dive bombers (Skuas still with Ark Royal), and 45 fighters embarked on carriers at the close of 1940. With inadequate land-based reconnaissance, and without a carrier, the Home Fleet, in its hunt for German surface raiders, was not only looking for a needle in a haystack, it was doing so blindfolded. If this was not bad enough, the Germans enjoyed one further advantage – their raiders could refuel at sea. On extended patrol, German surface raiders could rendezvous with prepositioned supply ships. Tankers, either trapped in foreign ports when war was declared or having run the blockade from Germany, were stationed at shifting coordinates in the vast expanses between the normal shipping lanes. For a given number of days, these ships would be at a specific location, so any raider on patrol could link up with a tanker/supply ship, top-up with fuel, and receive vital stores.44 The Royal Navy, with its great overseas Empire, had underestimated the value of fueling at sea; it was ‘leashed to fixed naval bases: a heavy handicap’.45 This created a comparative disadvantage vis-à-vis the Germans, who could stay at sea longer and disappear for extended periods of time, during which their pursuers were forced to discontinue the hunt due to empty fuel tanks. At sea, while Admiral Forbes’s fate was being decided, the struggle persisted. Lack of sea and land-based air assets continued to plague Home Fleet operations. The German surface fleet was re-emerging after its rough handling in the Norwegian Campaign and getting back to its primary business, assaulting Britain’s trade. The Admiral Scheer was the first ship back on the prowl, leaving German waters at the end of October. She made it through the weakened Northern Patrol without being detected and pounced on convoy HX84, 37 merchant ships out of Halifax, Nova Scotia, on 5 November. The convoy’s only escort was the Armed Merchant Cruiser (AMC) Jervis Bay. She followed the example of Rawalpindi, bravely facing down her enemy. The result more closely resembled an execution than a battle, but Jervis Bay’s skipper, Captain E. S. F. Fegen, handled the situation perfectly: he radioed his exact position, ordered his convoy to turn away from the enemy and scatter, and sacrificed his ship and crew to buy the merchantmen time to get away. For his efforts, Fegen earned a posthumous Victoria Cross. Captain Kranke of the Scheer had to content himself with sinking Jervis Bay and only five of the 37 merchant ships of HX84.46 Forbes knew that the German raider had two choices after intercepting convoy HX84: a prolonged cruise, or a hasty retreat to base. Given the reality that an extended cruise would take the enemy raider far outside his operational area (to the south of the British Isles was


the North Atlantic command based on Gibraltar), Forbes did the logical thing – he deployed his forces to cover a return by the raider to base. The C-in-C Home Fleet understood that such an action could now include a French Atlantic port, so he sent Hood, Repulse, three cruisers, and six destroyers to cover the approaches to Brest and L’Orient, while taking Nelson and Rodney with the remaining ships of his fleet to cover the Iceland–Faroes passage. Gratuitously, Pound interfered in this disposition,47 ordering part of the Battlecruiser Squadron’s forces to the last known position of the Jervis Bay (‘the one point on the face of the Earth where she [Scheer] was least likely to be’)48 and ordered Rodney to escort homeward-bound convoys at sea. ‘Yet all this groping was in the blind’,49 for Kranke had taken his ship south for an extended raiding cruise. In December, the heavy cruiser Hipper (13 000 tons, 8 8-inch guns) followed in Scheer’s wake. She broke through into the Atlantic unseen, but suffered through a short and fruitless foray. The highlight was getting into a scrape with the heavily escorted troop convoy WS5A bound for the Middle East off the coast of West Africa. Hipper was hit twice by the ‘County’ class heavy cruiser Berwick before retiring. She did not linger long on the shipping lanes. As a group, German heavy cruisers lacked ‘legs’, and given their short endurance proved poorly suited to the long voyages necessary for successful commerce raiding. As Grand Admiral Raeder noted in his memoirs: ‘She [Hipper] consumed an excessive amount of fuel.’50 Additionally, Hipper’s high pressure steam turbines, never as reliable as the pocket battleships’ excellent diesels and the cause of her much shorter endurance, started giving her crew trouble, so Hipper made for Brest, arriving there on 27 December.51 By this time, Tovey had taken control of the Home Fleet. From 18 December to 20 December he put the fleet through its paces, practicing night fighting, delivering and countering air attacks, and demonstrating his new tactic for approaching the enemy. 52 The persistent problem of German surface ships trading a few shots and running away had to be remedied. Also, the superiority of German long-range gunnery had to be countered. Tovey adopted a bold response – he was willing to let the Germans cross his ‘T’. Crossing the ‘T’ is defined as the tactical condition in which one ship or group of ships finds itself cruising perpendicular to an opponent’s force. It allows the favorably placed ships to fire full broadsides while their opponent can respond with only a few guns in forward turrets. Traditionally, it is the one position that an admiral must never allow himself to get into. But Tovey was a pragmatist, and a destroyer man. He needed to get his ships into close proximity with


those of the Germans before they could run away, and he had been turning his destroyer (or later destroyer flotilla) directly towards the enemy in torpedo attack drills for years. So he was prepared to accept the temporary tactical disadvantage of letting the Germans cross his ‘T’ in order to insure an engagement at a favourable range. Following the sortie by the Hipper, Grand Admiral Raeder kept up the pressure. On 23 January, 1941 the battlecruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau under the command of Vice Admiral Gunther Lutjens sailed from Kiel bound for a raiding cruise in the Atlantic.53 This latest round in the guerre de course might easily have ended in disaster before it had begun. Admiralty intelligence was able to give Tovey prior warning of the German sortie, so the patrols guarding the Iceland–Faroes and Iceland–Greenland passages were reinforced, and the Home Fleet taken to sea south of Iceland to cover both patrol lines.54 Lutjens steered for the Iceland–Faroes passage and ran into the new light cruiser Naiad (5800 tons, 10 5.25 inch guns) just before dawn on 28 January. The German ships picked Naiad up on radar and immediately fled; Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were able to increase speed rapidly and break away, just as they were sighted visually by Naiad. Unfortunately for the British, visibility was limited and Naiad had no surface search radar. Tovey headed to Naiad’s relief, and released his cruisers to sweep for the enemy, but the British failed to re-establish contact. Two days later, the Home Fleet headed back to Scapa.55 Lutjens charily ‘withdrew northeast into the Arctic Ocean and loitered there until the hue and cry had died down. He then slipped out undetected through the Denmark Strait.’56 Once out into the Atlantic, Lutjens refuelled from a prepositioned tanker off Cape Farewell, Greenland and proceeded to hunt the Halifax convoy route for game. On 8 February he found his quarry, but one with teeth: Convoy HX106, escorted by the aged battleship Ramillies. Lutjens’s orders were specific – he was not to engage any enemy heavy units. So, as Correlli Barnett puts it: ‘In the scornful words of a German naval historian: ‘The ancient Ramillies had only to let off a few angry puffs of smoke and both the German battleships [sic] despite their modern fire-control and the proven effectiveness of their guns, even at long range–sought safety in escape.” ’57 This incident shows in a clear light the acute problem of waging cruiser warfare far from one’s home base: the vulnerability of the raider to damage in the course of the sortie. Only one significant hit from a 15-inch shell could spell doom for Scharnhorst or Gneisenau, over 2000 miles from home; a crippled ship is more likely to be found because of her increased time at sea and, if found, likely to be incapable of outrunning her inevitable pursuers.


So Lutjens ran away from his weaker opponent, and lived to continue the hunt for more vulnerable convoys. Tovey, like Forbes before him, sailed off in pursuit of the enemy force sighted by Ramillies. From 8 February through 11 February, Tovey with Nelson, Repulse, 5 light cruisers and 6 destroyers swept the area of the Iceland–Faeroes passage, but found nothing. Unfortunately, the British were under the mistaken impression that Ramillies had sighted a ‘Hipper’ class heavy cruiser and did not connect the Naiad incident with the most recent convoy attack.58 After his brush with Ramillies, Lutjens laid low until 22 February, when he made another appearance on the Halifax convoy route. He sank five unescorted ships of 25 784 tons, then proceeded south to refuel in the central Atlantic between 26 and 28 February.59 From there, Lutjens sailed towards the coast of Africa, crossing into the Sierra Leone convoy route. On 8 March, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were sighted by the battleship Malaya, escorting convoy SL67, ‘but again the German Admiral forbore to attack a convoy escorted by a single battleship’.60 The Admiralty believed that the Germans might now break for home, but Lutjens was determined to take one last crack at the Halifax convoys. Nelson, Nigeria and three destroyers began a sweep south south west of Iceland on 14 March.61 The next day, the German raiders began a twoday slaughter off the coast of maritime Canada. Sixteen ships totaling 82 000 tons were sunk or captured.62 Tovey and the Admiralty mobilized every ship available to cover the northern exits to the Atlantic. Rodney even sighted the German squadron, which was now definitely identified as consisting of Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, but their speed advantage was such that no engagement was possible. Unfortunately for the British, they had incorrectly guessed their enemy’s destination. The Royal Navy had all the routes back to Germany covered – but Lutjens was headed for France. Quite by accident, Force H, which had been mobilized and sent into the Atlantic to join the hunt, spotted the German raiders to the west of the Bay of Biscay. Presumably, they were headed to the east of Ireland, towards the Iceland–Faeroes gap. This was a ruse. Lutjens had turned north when the reconnaissance plane from Ark Royal was briefly spotted to throw his pursuers off his trail. Bad weather prevented an air strike or any further sightings. The British converged on the track of the false lead, while Scharnhorst and Gneisenau sailed safely into port at Brest on the morning of 22 March.63 Lutjens had enjoyed a brilliant cruise. His two battlecruisers had been at sea for two months, travelled thousands of miles, and sunk or captured 115 622 tons of shipping.64 He had kept the Royal Navy


guessing, avoided its most powerful units, and disordered the essential convoy routing system. Tovey was exasperated. He wrote to Cunningham on 21 March: ‘How the devil do you get in touch with the blighters? That’s what I want to know, so please let me into the secret.’65 The inability of the British to force a surface engagement continued to be the surface fleet’s biggest problem. On three separate occasions, German capital ships with a 2–1 advantage in numbers had run away from British battleships. The Germans were delaying convoys and sinking ships without risking battle. The Admiralty could change commanders at will, but without carriers, fast battleships, or a change in German tactics, the Home Fleet’s woes would continue. Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were now astride the southern flank of the convoy routes, and soon the battleship Bismarck would be ready to threaten the northern flank of the Atlantic lifeline. It is to this threat, and Bismarck’s short, spectacular career, that we will now turn.

6 The Germans Roll the Dice: April–June 1941

The first six months of 1941 stretched the resources of Britain, her Commonwealth, and her Empire to the limit. The German assault on British shipping, now augmented by the ‘first wave’ of armed merchant raiders, continued unabated.1 In late February 1941, the British Government agreed to send troops and air units to support Greece in her struggle against their common enemy, Italy, which had launched an unprovoked attack on that country on 28 October, 1940.2 Eventually, this would entail the dispatch of 50 000 British and ANZAC troops, mostly drawn from the Middle East Command. The push to drive the Italians from North Africa, begun with such outstanding success by General O’Connor in November 1940, was thereby stalled.3 Commitments were outstripping resources. Churchill had chosen to fight, or was forced to fight, on seven different fronts.4 Shipping had to be found to get the men and equipment to Greece. The Royal Navy’s Mediterranean Fleet was compelled to assume the added burden of protecting the convoys to Greece, in addition to the already difficult tasks of providing sustenance and support to an increasingly isolated Malta and protecting the Suez Canal. All the while British, East African, and South African troops were fighting in Ethiopia and Italian Somaliland to destroy Mussolini’s African Empire and clear the shores of the Red Sea. Men were needed to hold down Egypt and Palestine, and to police India. A vastly expanded Army and most of the Royal Air Force was still based in Britain, just in case the Germans chose to renew the invasion threat of 1940 once spring returned.5 In the meantime, Bomber Command was being built up for a full-scale air offensive against Germany. Last on the strategic horizon were the ominous rumblings of Japanese aggression that brought warnings from the Far East Command: reinforcements were 82

The Germans Roll the Dice 83

essential if Malaya and Singapore were to survive a likely Japanese onslaught.6 In April 1941, Churchill’s strategic house of cards began to collapse. General Rommel and the German 5th Light Division launched a surprise raid into Cyrenaica that quickly led to the ousting of the British from eastern Libya.7 On 6 April Hitler, in order to punish the Yugoslavs for refusing to support the Axis, deny the British airfields from which to attack precious Ploesti and the Romanian oil fields, and free up his southern flank for the imminent invasion of the Soviet Union, struck Yugoslavia and Greece. The Germans succeeded brilliantly. British forces were bounced from the continent, and the Royal Navy was called in to evacuate them on 22 April.8 One month later, the British were driven off Crete. The Royal Navy suffered grave losses in their efforts to lift as many men as possible off the doomed island. Altogether, one carrier, two battleships, six cruisers and seven destroyers were damaged – three cruisers and six destroyers were sunk.9 If this were not bad enough, a German-inspired revolt in Iraq broke out that April, threatening a wider Arab rebellion against British dominance in the Middle East and its vital oil resources.10 The war at sea continued. Merchant shipping losses rose from 403 000 tons in February 1941 to 529 000 tons in March and to 687 000 tons in April (mostly in the Atlantic), the worst month’s losses yet in the war, and British shipyards could replace only a fraction of it.11 Into this precarious balance, with the British Empire’s fortunes tottering, Grand Admiral Raeder and the Kriegsmarine threw in their finest asset, the most powerful battleship in existence – the Bismarck.12 The Bismarck’s operational career lasted nine days. Yet, in that short time, she forced the Royal Navy and the world to hold their breath. She was a big ship, her standard displacement of 41 700 tons making a travesty of the Nazi claims that she conformed to the Washington Naval Treaty limit of 35 000 tons. She carried an armament of eight 15-inch guns, 12 5.9-inch guns, and an armoured belt 12.5 to 10.5 inches thick; Bismarck had a designed speed of 29 knots. When her keel was laid down at the Blohm & Voss shipyard in Hamburg on 1 July, 1936,13 Bismarck caught the British at a disadvantage, as they were trying to cement a deal among the major naval powers to keep battleship construction within the Washington and London naval treaty rubric. To set a proper example, the British gave their new ‘King George V’ class battleships 14-inch guns and tried with religious zeal to stick to the 35 000 ton standard displacement limit of the earlier arms control regime. Germany, Italy, and Japan moved beyond this limitation, and the United States


followed suit. Therefore, no single British battleship was a match for Bismarck. The ‘Lion’ class, which were to have been Bismarck’s equals, were cancelled due to the demand for dockworkers, steel, and naval personnel for the escort vessels needed to fight the U-boats.14 This disparity between British and German battleships, and Bismarck’s relatively large size compared to other battleships in early 1941, helps explain her aura as a ‘supership’ in the public imagination. Bismarck’s career did not get off to an auspicious start. She was plagued with ‘teething troubles’ and, though completed in August, 1940 she was not fit for sea until April 1941. That much work-up time was not unusual, however – the US battleship North Carolina and her sister-ship USS Washington spent six months after their commissioning having modifications made to fix severe propeller vibrations.15 By comparison, the British battleship Prince of Wales, which played a prominent part in the dramatic career of the Bismarck, went into battle virtually ‘as-is’. She was completed on 31 March, 1941 and in action against Bismarck on 24 May.16 The Royal Navy needed every ship it could muster, and had no time for the fine points. Prince of Wales would go into battle with civilian construction workers still on board trying to get her complex 14-inch quadruple gun turrets to work properly. As she finished her trials, the question faced by Grand Admiral Raeder and his naval staff was: How best could the new battleship be employed? Bismarck’s sister-ship, Tirpitz, was still months away from being combat ready. Given their superiority over existing British battleships, they would make a formidable team. However, waiting for Tirpitz would take the pressure off the Royal Navy until the autumn, allow them to get the Prince of Wales in fighting trim, and perhaps complete the battleship Duke of York.17 With lend-lease now in full swing, giving the British such a respite seemed foolish. Graham Rhys-Jones, in his fine article on the loss of the Bismarck, summarizes the factors that convinced Raeder to send the Bismarck to sea: (1) the approach of summer meant that the hours of daylight in northern latitudes would increase greatly, making an undetected breakout into the Atlantic more and more difficult with each passing day; (2) ‘If his fleet was to survive the unequal battle for resources, it had to show a return on investment’, in other words in the bureaucratic jungle of Nazi administration, offensive activity was fed and a defensive posture starved; (3) the need to act before the Americans could intervene in the Atlantic struggle; (4) the looming spectre of an invasion of the Soviet Union; (5) the still limited number of U-boats could not do the whole job of starving Britain out alone.18 Critical here is the Soviet factor. Once Germany was involved in a full-scale battle to


the death on the Eastern Front, the German Navy would face a direct challenge to its raison d’être. The war against Great Britain, which the Kreigsmarine existed to prosecute, would immediately be eclipsed. With three million troops engaged against the Soviet Union, the Army and the Air Force would perforce get first call on the steel, electrical and optical equipment, skilled labour, and quality recruits always in short supply in the German war economy. One last triumph before Operation ‘Barbarossa’ commenced might help the German Navy maintain its share of the pie. Raeder believed he had to act, but Hitler was not so sure. Neither was the designated commander of the raiding force, Vice Admiral Lutjens.19 Additionally, attempts to organize an early large-scale raid using a preponderance of the Kriegsmarine’s assets were frustrated. Scharnhorst needed a major overhaul after she returned from her raid in late March. Gneisenau was supposed to sail out into the Atlantic from Brest in April simultaneously with Bismarck and Prinz Eugen breaking out through the Iceland–Faeroes Gap or the Denmark Strait. But, before the plan could come to fruition, Gneisenau was badly damaged by a torpedo from a Coastal Command Beaufort. On 6 April a Canadian, Flying Officer Kenneth Campbell, held his course to the end and was shot down in the act of releasing the torpedo. This heroic action earned him a posthumous Victoria Cross.20 Then, later that month, Prinz Eugen struck a mine in the Baltic. She had to undergo repairs that delayed her availability for a sortie until May’s new moon period. Nevertheless, Raeder was determined to persevere. He dodged an anxious Hitler throughout May, and kept the date of Bismarck’s sailing from him.21 Hitler did interview the recently returned hero Lutjens. Two facts important to the future emerged from their discussion: Lutjens was prepared to engage a British capital ship while Prinz Eugen struck at the escorted convoy, and Hitler was worried about the danger of carrier-based torpedo bombers to the raiding force.22 Undaunted by Hitler’s fears, Raeder ordered Operation ‘Rhine Exercize’ to commence as soon as practicable. Bismarck and Prinz Eugen sailed from Gotenhafen in the Baltic at 0200 on 19 May, 1941. In all the fuss of her departure, a minor mishap went almost unnoticed – a fuel line ruptured while Bismarck was taking on oil. To comply with the schedule for departure, she left harbour without her full load of fuel.23 At the time of the Bismarck’s sortie, in company with the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen (herself very much over treaty limits), the Royal Navy lacked decisive strength in any one theatre (see Table 6.1).24 The carrier attached to the Home Fleet (Victorious), one of its three battleships (Rodney), and one of its two battlecruisers (Repulse), were on detached

86 The Royal Navy’s Home Fleet in WWII Table 6.1 Disposition of Major Forces, May 23, 1941

Home Fleet Mediterranean South Atlantic Gibraltar Red Sea and Indian Ocean China Western App. Halifax Under Repair in USA

BB

BC

CV

3 4 1

2

1 1

1

CVL

CA

CL

2

7 8 3 1 9

1

3

1

3

2

CLAA

3

3 1 2 3

1

DD 20 34 3 7

5 43

1

Source: ADM 187/13, May 23, 1941.

service; Victorious, filled with 48 crated Hurricanes for the Mediterranean, along with Repulse, was due to leave with a convoy for Gibraltar, and Rodney, in need of a refit, was with a convoy headed west.25 Admiral Tovey had been a busy man both during and after the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau sortie. He had to cover Operation ‘Claymore’, a commando raid on the Lofoten Islands, in early March.26 As an ancillary to the raid, the 18th Cruiser Squadron was assigned the task of attempting to capture a German auxiliary or weather ship with an Enigma machine. They succeeded, taking the armed trawler Krebs before she could destroy her Enigma and its code settings. This gave the cryptanalysts at Bletchley Park the ability to temporarily read German Navy radio messages. However, as the settings were regularly changed, it still took between three and seven days to read any given piece of German radio traffic.27 Home Fleet ships were constantly being detached for convoy escort duties. Despite the drain, Tovey with the Home Fleet’s battleships and Whitworth with the Battle Cruiser Squadron took turns maintaining a distant blockade of the Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, and Hipper at Brest.28 Meanwhile, a breakout from the north had to be protected against. On 19 April, Lancelot Holland (VA18CS) took Edinburgh, Suffolk, Exeter, and five destroyers on a sweep of the Iceland–Faeroes gap and then covered a mining operation in the Denmark Strait.29 As spring wore on, Admiral Tovey was both conscious of, and concerned about, a breakout by the Bismarck. He was labouring under the usual great constraint that had afflicted Forbes and now plagued him – Tovey needed timely intelligence of any German move to


effectively counter it, and was therefore forced to be reactive rather than proactive. But after so many months of frustration, the British Intelligence apparatus was finally beginning to deliver. German naval signal traffic could still not be read easily. Luftwaffe signals, however, whose simpler Enigma configuration the code breakers at Bletchley Park could read with little or no delay, alerted the British to an impeding sortie. On the morning of 18 May, the OIC informed Tovey that the Luftwaffe had been flying Condor reconnaissance missions to determine the ice conditions off Greenland.30 Tovey therefore ordered the heavy cruiser Suffolk, at that time patrolling in the Denmark Strait, which separates Greenland from Iceland, to keep an eye on the edge of the Greenland ice sheet. Rear Admiral W. F. Wake-Walker (RA1CS) in her sister-ship, Norfolk, was instructed to relieve her so that Suffolk could refuel and the two then operate together to cover that critical passage.31 Then, on the night of 20 May, a report arrived at the Admiralty from the naval attaché in Stockholm: information ‘from a usually reliable source’ warned that two large German warships had passed out of the Baltic that afternoon on a northwesterly course.32 The Admiralty alerted Tovey and requested air reconnaissance of the Norwegian coast for the next morning. The game was afoot. First the man, then the plan: Admiral Gunther Lutjens is a difficult figure for an historian to fathom. His performance as commander of Scharnhorst and Gneisenau during their two months’ romp around the Atlantic had been exceptional. His handling of the Bismarck sortie was not. Perhaps he was played out. One remembers the example of Thomas J. ‘Stonewall’ Jackson in the American Civil War. Brilliant during his thrusting Valley Campaign, when he joined the Army of Northern Virginia at the time of the Seven Days’ Battles he was suddenly lethargic and diffident. As we shall see, Lutjens also seemed to have been operating well below his earlier standard during his time as ‘fleet’ commander with Bismarck and Prinz Eugen. The impression of him that has been passed down to us is well summarized by Ludovic Kennedy: Gunther Lutjens was then 51, a long, lean, lamppost of a man, with cropped hair like most German officers, and a dour, tight expression which some said concealed a dry sense of humour. He was born in Weisbaden, son of a merchant, entered the naval college at Kiel in 1908, passed out 20th from a class of 160, had a reputation for mastering whatever he studied . . . Lutjens was a man wholly dedicated to the service, courageous, single-minded, stoical, austere, taciturn as a Cistercian monk. He was not a Nazi, gave Hitler the naval not the


party salute, always wore an admiral’s dirk of the old Imperial Navy, not one with a swastika.33 Lutjens’s instructions were to take his two ships into the Atlantic by a route of his choosing and commence up to three months of commerce raiding.34 No less than nine support ships – six tankers, two reconnaissance ships, and a supply vessel – had been deployed in the Atlantic to succour the mission.35 Lutjens had permission to engage a single enemy battleship protecting a convoy (which was almost certain to be unmodernized), but was to avoid forces of equal or superior strength. After passing through the Skaggerak, Lutjens decided, presumably because the weather was clear and therefore not conducive to an unobserved breakout, to put into Bergen.36 It was here that Flying Officer Suckling in his photoreconnaissance Spitfire, sent out in response to the tip from Stockholm, sighted Bismarck (Captain Lindemann) and Prinz Eugen (Captain Brinkmann) at 1300 hours on 21 May, 1941.37 By 1828, the plane had returned to Wick, her pictures had been developed, the ships identified, and the word was out. The OIC issued the following warning to all naval commands: ‘One Bismarck and one Prinz Eugen class reported by reconnaissance at Bergen on 21 May. It is evident that these ships intend to carry out a raid on trade routes.’38 Tovey, still handicapped by the restricted endurance of his ships and their inability to fuel under way, could not afford to overreact to the news from Bergen. Nonetheless, he ordered the Battlecruiser Squadron (BCS)39 to sea, while keeping the rest of the Home Fleet at Scapa. Under its new commander, Vice Admiral Lancelot Holland, the BCS, which comprized the Hood (flagship, Captain R. Kerr), Prince of Wales (Captain J. C. Leach), and the destroyers Electra, Anthony, Echo, Icarus, Achates, and Antelope, left Scapa Flow at 0100 on 22 May. Holland’s orders were to proceed to Iceland and support Wake-Walker.40 Suffolk was ordered to join Norfolk in the Denmark Strait; Suffolk, with her new surface-search radar (RDF) was to patrol closest to the ice edge, while Norfolk patrolled closer to the minefield off northern Iceland.41 The light cruisers Birmingham and Manchester and five armed trawlers were already deployed to the Iceland–Faeroes gap, and Arethusa was soon to join them there. To support the incipient hunt, on the 21st the Admiralty had released the old battlecruiser Repulse and the brand new carrier Victorious for Tovey’s use.42 And, on the evening of the 21st, Coastal Command scraped together a force of 18 bombers to attack the German ships at Bergen. However, Lutjens was in luck – weather conditions deteriorated, and the bombers could not find their targets in the clouds and descending


darkness. Lutjens had meanwhile decided to take advantage of the weather and set sail, steering north for the Arctic.43 Inexplicably, during their sojourn in Norwegian waters Prinz Eugen had filled her fuel tanks but Bismarck had not. This oversight, so contrary to standard British practice, was to have disproportionate consequences only a few days later.44 Tovey remained at Scapa Flow. He bravely refused to jump until he was sure the Germans had left Bergen. But, as we have seen, the weather was not cooperating. Only a brilliant piece of blind flying by Noel Goddard in an obsolescent American twin-engine Maryland bomber allowed Commander Rotherham, an experienced Royal Navy observer, to inspect the waters around Bergen and determine that Bismarck and Prinz Eugen had departed. Tovey, hearing Rotherham’s report, was convinced. He made the correct assumption that the Germans were off for the Atlantic. At 10:45 on the night of the 22nd he took King George V (Repulse was sailing to meet him), Victorious, Galatea, Aurora (both six 6-inch guns), Kenya (12 6-inch guns), Hermione (10 5.25-inch guns), and seven destroyers through the gate and out of Scapa Flow.45 Admiral Tovey was sailing for a position south of Iceland from which he could support either the forces in the Denmark Strait or those in the Iceland–Faeroes gap. A few notes on the Home Fleet at this time are in order. It is important to point out that many units were not up to the demands of an encounter with the Bismarck. The problems with the Prince of Wales have been noted above. Serving with her was Hood. The popular image of Hood before World War II was of a beautiful marvel, biggest capital ship in the world and symbol of British seapower. Since her destruction, she has often been seen as an aging throwback to Fisher’s ‘flawed’ battlecruiser concept, a giant with a glass jaw. The latter image is much overdrawn. Her 12-inch belt was comparable to most battleships (including the new American ones) in 1941, although too narrow by contemporary standards. Hood had recently enjoyed a refit, and her secondary armament had been modernized. In addition to her eight 15-inch guns, she mounted 14 4-inch AA guns, three 8-barrel 2-pounder pom-poms, five UP anti-aircraft rocket launchers, and four torpedo tubes.46 Her true weakness was a lack of adequate deck armour against plunging fire, a problem well understood in the Royal Navy.47 To overcome this weakness, she had to fight at close range, where shell trajectories would be flatter. Victorious had been preparing to leave for Gibraltar with 48 crated Hurricanes in her hangar. This left room for only nine Swordfish of 825 Squadron and six Fulmar fighters of 800Z Squadron on board, hardly


an overwhelming striking force, and they had been operating together from the carrier for less than a week.48 Repulse had even less armour than Hood. Only King George V was a fully operational fighting unit. Against Bismarck, Tovey was, to reiterate an assessment made of an earlier admiral, truly a sailor with a flawed cutlass. ‘Early on the morning of 23 May, in foggy, rainy weather, the Bismarck and Prinz Eugen entered the Denmark Strait.’49 Under overcast skies, Lutjens had sailed north until he reached the latitude of Iceland, then headed west at 24 knots towards the Denmark Strait; German B-dienst intercepts had been passed to Lutjens by radio, revealing that the British had no idea where he was.50 At 2300 on 22 May, the Bismarck and Prinz Eugen were 200 miles northeast of Iceland. A meteorology expert assigned to Lutjens’s staff warned that weather conditions would be improving over the next 24 hours; the two ships increased speed to 27 knots, trying to slip through the Strait before the weather could clear.51 The British, prepared for this contingency, were waiting. Suffolk sighted Bismarck in the Denmark Strait at 1922 on 23 May. Lutjens’s meteorologist had done his job well – the weather had cleared on the Greenland side of the Strait. The sea north of Iceland was shrouded in fog. ‘. . . Suffolk radioed her “enemy report”, turned 90 to port, and headed at utmost speed for the shelter of the wall of fog’.52 Bismarck picked Suffolk up on her radar and by means of her advanced hydrophones, but could not get a clear visual target. The B-dienst detachment on Prinz Eugen picked up and quickly deciphered Suffolk’s ‘enemy report’; as twilight descended, Suffolk was found by the German codebreakers to be relaying accurate reports of Bismarck’s position while hiding in the fog. To the German’s surprise, for they believed the British had no such technology, her pursuers were sporting an advanced surface-search radar. Wake-Walker took up position with his two heavy cruisers to perform the venerable function of shadowing. Their job was to observe, not to fight.53 Wake-Walker had to stay close enough to maintain contact, but outside the effective range of Bismarck’s 15-inch guns. Given the limited range of Suffolk’s R.D.F. set,54 the margin for error was small. However, help was on the way – Vice Admiral Holland and the BCS. Holland was confronted with a grave set of problems and uncertainties as he sailed into battle: 1 He was new to his command; 2 He had an untested ship in Prince of Wales with him; 3 Hood was vulnerable to plunging fire;


4 German long-range gunnery was considered superior; 5 He did not know exactly where his ships were vis-à-vis the Germans; 6 The Germans had the annoying habit of running away whenever they encountered an equal or superior British force, and had the speed advantage to do it. A difficult situation was exacerbated by the fact that Norfolk and Suffolk temporarily lost touch with the German squadron just after midnight. Holland responded by turning due north (he had been heading west of north) and reducing his speed to 25 knots.55 He was apparently worried that the Germans would turn south, skirt the Icelandic coast, and get behind him. This hypothesis is born out by his later decision to detach his attendant destroyers to sweep to his east as battle approached. This period of uncertainty was to have grave consequences when battle was joined at dawn. The problems that arose from the loss of contact were compounded by a subtler problem. Holland’s force had been steaming at high speed for two days out of sight of land and in poor weather. This meant that the BCS had had to use speed and course changes on the ship’s plot to determine their position. Over time, this leads to minor errors in identifying the ship’s ‘true’ position.56 Normally, the difference of a few miles is negligible, but to gain a decisive tactical position, Holland needed a more precise understanding of Bismarck’s distance, bearing, and speed than he had. Given his uncertainties about his own command and the position of the enemy, Holland needed any advantage he could get. What Holland needed was a surprise night action at close range. He fully expected to fight a night battle,57 and could only have taken solace in the words of the Fighting Instructions: ‘The essence of night fighting is surprise, followed by prompt action.’58 If he could hit the Germans swiftly and hard, at the reduced ranges of a night action, he could negate Hood’s vulnerability to long-range fire, take away the Germans’ advantage in long-range gunnery, and force them to fight and not flee. To ensure surprise, Holland even refused a request from Captain Leach of Prince of Wales to use his surface search radar – he was afraid the Germans would detect the radiation. But for his presumed plan to work, Holland had to know before contact exactly where the Germans were, and how quickly he could get at them. Without that knowledge, he could only steer towards the enemy and trust to his luck. At last, Bismarck and Prinz Eugen loomed into view to the northeast at 0535, daybreak, on 24 May.59 Bismarck was in an enviable position; her relative speed and bearing made it impossible for Holland to close on her rapidly (she was making 28 knots and would be able to pass Hood’s


bow and get in front of her if Hood’s initial course and speed were maintained). Two minutes after sighting Lutjens, Holland ordered his ships to turn together towards the enemy.60 He could only close at a shallow angle, with his rear turrets unable to bear on his enemy. Luck had not been with him, and the surprise attack against the German force had not come to fruition. The question remains – should Holland, given the weaknesses within his own force and the poor tactical position he had come to occupy, have chosen to attack? When Prinz Eugen (out ahead) and Bismarck appeared on the horizon that morning, Holland had three options: he could have hauled off, joined Wake-Walker, and shadowed his quarry; he could have turned his ships to a parallel course with Bismarck and opened a gunnery duel at long range; or, he could turn towards the enemy and attack. The first option would have been anathema to an aggressive commander like Holland, contrary to the tradition of the Navy, and would have given the Germans an opportunity to run away. The Germans had perhaps a one knot speed advantage over the British, were still quite some distance away, and had a much greater endurance – once Holland refused battle, his chances of forcing an engagement before he had to head into port to refuel were almost nil. Likewise, his second option was not promising. Initiating a battle along parallel lines at long range would place Hood in great danger and play to the Germans’ strength in long-range gunnery. So, in the best tradition of the Service, Holland chose the third option – attack. Whether this decision would prove itself akin to Nelson’s at St. Vincent, or Cradock’s at Coronel, only time would tell. Once Holland chose to close and fight, criticism became inevitable. He was putting himself in a bad tactical situation. Barnett is highly critical, calling his deployment ‘impetuous and ill-conceived’.61 Roskill in The War at Sea also finds fault with Holland’s tactics. He quotes Pound on how odd it was that Holland, with only his forward guns bearing on the enemy, his ‘A’ arcs closed, was ‘fighting with one hand only’.62 Jurens, in his article on the loss of Hood, is close to excoriating in his critique of Holland’s tactics.63 Ludovic Kennedy enunciates the many disadvantages under which the BCS fought, but adds on a positive note that Holland’s course on sighting Bismarck ‘meant exposing Hood’s vulnerable upper deck to the enemy’s long-range fire for the minimum time’.64 To this author, much of the anti-Holland critique misses the broader picture – British admirals were expected to attack, and after the Scharnhorst–Gneisenau romp, had no choice but to do so. Bismarck could not be allowed to get away. Marginal, and perhaps unavoidable, failures in shadowing and navigation had landed Holland in a bad position.


Holland’s night approach could have been handled better, or at least more intuitively. He need not have reduced speed and turned north after the shadowing cruisers lost the German squadron; he did so to cover his eastern flank, and the Germans drove west. He could not have known this, but did guess wrong. But, given the extant culture of the Royal Navy, and the need to keep the convoys running, once Bismarck was sighted Holland was going to attack, whether the tactical situation was good, bad, or indifferent. His only real error up to the point of opening fire was following the Fighting Instructions too literally, operating his ships by ‘division’, that is manoeuvering Hood and Prince of Wales tightly together as one unit the way Jellicoe and his subordinates handled their battleship squadrons at Jutland. It may well have proved better to act like Duncan at Camperdown, letting Captains Kerr and Leach loose to go forward under their own initiative to confuse and split the German fire.65 We may attribute this mistake to two causes: the quite human desire of Holland to control the battle himself, and his newness to the job – he had been in command of the BCS for all of 12 days,66 and could not have gained the complete confidence in his captains necessary for him to release tactical control to these two officers. To all this criticism, Tovey’s later comment proves a powerful corrective, if not a pure rejoinder: ‘If I were to criticize the approach of the HOOD and the PRINCE OF WALES I should say it was perhaps a pity that they did not close at an even finer angle, to close a German from long range with ‘A’ arcs open is in my humble opinion the worst mistake you can make.’67 And Captain R. A. Currie of the Royal Naval Staff College argued after the war that given the Germans’ proclivity to run away, and Hood’s vulnerability to long-range fire, Holland had to close quickly. Therefore, these factors would logically induce him to steer straight for the enemy.68 Nevertheless, the perception that Holland blundered continues.69 The reason for this was, and is, the loss of his flagship. ‘The Hood – it’s the Hood!’ shouted Lieutenant Commander Adalbert Schneider, Bismarck’s chief gunnery officer, into his telephone, announcing to the bridge and the turret officers that their opponent had been sighted and identified. Battle was about to commence. Schneider wanted to open fire, but the command team on Bismarck – Lutjens and Lindemann – seems to have been momentarily surprised and unsure what to do. They had permission to engage one British capital ship, but in the twilight two were now clearly visible.70 Holland had no such problem. He was not contemplating the relative merits of


fight or flight. But he had made a serious mistake that almost went uncorrected. Holland mistook the Prinz Eugen, leading the German squadron because Bismarck’s radar was out of action, for the German flagship. This was not strange, because German ships were deliberately built with similar silhouettes, but it should have become apparent by the time he opened fire. Captain Leach in Prince of Wales picked up on the error and ordered his own gunnery officers to target Bismarck. Holland noticed the mistake and at the last minute ordered Leach to fire on Bismarck,71 but, strangely, he did not shift his own fire to the vastly more dangerous battleship. Throughout the brief action, Hood persisted in firing on Prinz Eugen. Of all the aspects of Holland’s handling of the Battle of the Denmark Strait, this may have been the gravest error he committed. It is almost never pointed out as such, which is ironic given the vilification Holland has endured for his chosen approach. Seconds after instructing Leach to fire on Bismarck, Hood opened up on Prinz Eugen. It was 0552 and thirty seconds, and the estimated range to the target was 25 000 yards. Prince of Wales let loose thirty seconds later.72 Approximately two minutes later, Bismarck and Prinz Eugen replied, both aiming at Hood.73 German shooting was from the outset excellent. Brinkmann’s ship not only straddled on her second salvo, she scored a hit that started a fire among the aft 4-inch AA ready ammunition boxes. A Hood salvo fell forward of Prinz Eugen close enough to cover her fo’c’sle in spray.74 At 0555 Holland ordered a turn two points (20 degrees) to port in order to open ‘A’ arcs – enemy shooting was just too good not to be answered by full broadsides.75 Prince of Wales straddled on her sixth salvo. She received an order at 0600 to make another two point turn to port. It was at that moment that Hood exploded.76 After a short, ebullient outburst on Bismarck,77 the battle continued. The distance between the forces was down to little more than 14 000 yards. Inexplicably, Bismarck had done nothing during the action thus far to keep the range open – for what it was worth, Holland’s tactic had worked. Bismarck switched her fire to the remaining target. Norfolk and Suffolk, far astern, had earlier tried to open fire to distract Bismarck but their 8-inch shells ‘fell hopelessly short’.78 Prince of Wales was on her own. Very quickly, a shell hit her bridge, wounding the navigation officer and killing all others save the Captain and the Chief Yeoman of Signals. Given the shock and carnage, command and control could not help but be affected. In rapid succession, Prince of Wales took three more 15-inch hits. Three 8-inch shells from Prinz Eugen also hit home. Because of mechanical failures, Prince of Wales was averaging only three guns per salvo rather than the theoretical ten.79 After firing her 18th


salvo, Captain Leach ordered his ship at 0613 to make smoke and retire on Norfolk and Suffolk.80 It was a few seconds less than 21 minutes since Hood had opened fire and 13 minutes since she went down. The Battle of the Denmark Strait was over. The German Navy had won its greatest victory. Hood, for twenty years the largest warship afloat, had been blown out of the water in a matter of minutes. Prince of Wales had been driven off. Lutjens seems to have overridden his flag captain at that moment – Lindemann may have wanted to pursue his crippled opponent and finish her off.81 Lutjens saw an open sea before him and wanted to get back to his main task, commerce raiding, and avoid further damage. Bismarck had been hit by three 14-inch shells during the battle. Even one more hit could prove fatal to Bismarck, so far from home. Lutjens and Lindemann would soon discover their flagship was more seriously hurt than they suspected. The British could only lick their wounds, radio for destroyers to search for Hood’s survivors (three would be found; 1415 officers and men were dead),82 follow the enemy, and hope that Tovey could come up and renew the battle with better results for the Royal Navy. Convoys would have to be recalled or rerouted; reinforcements would have to be dispatched. A grave defeat would have to be avenged. The question of how Hood could not only have been knocked out of action, but also completely destroyed, in such a short time, has plagued investigators and historians since 1941. The Board of Enquiry was correct in stating about Hood’s loss that ‘much of the evidence is contradictory and inconclusive, and we realize that many points in connection with the loss of Hood can never be proved definitively’.83 The Board was in general agreement that the fire in the 4-inch AA ready use ammunition lockers, which spread to the boat deck, could not have caused the disaster.84 The best reconstruction of the incident to date argues that a 15-inch shell from Bismarck’s fifth salvo penetrated the Hood at an acute angle above the main belt and detonated in the aft 4-inch magazine. This explosion set off the ‘X’ and ‘Y’ turret magazines, while venting much of its explosive force through the engineering spaces and up the vents ahead of and behind the main mast. This explains why so many eyewitnesses saw smoke and flame shooting up amidships. Within seconds, the aft half of the ship would have disintegrated.85 Investigation by Dr Eric Grove of the Hood’s wreck in the summer of 2001 confirms the hypothesis that a 15-inch shell set off the rear turret magazines and sunk the ship.86 The outstanding quality of German gunnery was rewarded with a perfect ship-killing hit.87


It quickly became apparent to Lutjens that his desire to continue his commerce-raiding cruise could not be fulfilled. Within two hours of his victory in the Denmark Strait, he radioed Navy Group West, his shore command authority, that he was detaching Prinz Eugen to continue operations and taking Bismarck to St. Nazaire.88 Despite all her handicaps, Prince of Wales had drawn blood: one of her hits had been harmless, but a second had passed through the fo’c’sle just above the waterline, caused Bismarck to ship 2000 tons of water, and flooded a forward pump room isolating 1000 tons of fuel, and a third hit had struck below the waterline, ruptured a fuel tank, and flooded a turbogenerator compartment. Bismarck was trailing an oil slick. Lutjens was going to have to bring his flagship into port for repair. He chose to take her south, towards France.89 There, the great Normandie dry-dock at St. Nazaire, near Brest, could be used to ready Bismarck for another sortie. Meanwhile, Admiral Tovey, 350 miles from Bismarck, was steaming to Wake-Walker’s aid. The weather was deteriorating, and the Home Fleet (King George V, Victorious, Repulse, four light cruisers and nine destroyers) was unlikely to intercept the enemy before 7:00 am on the 25th, even after Lutjens reduced speed to 24 knots to minimize wave damage to his hull breach.90 The Admiralty was very busy that day: Force H had been ordered to sea on 24 May, and was instructed to cover the approaches to Brest.91 The next day, Rodney, on her way to America for a refit, and her escort of four destroyers were ordered to close on Bismarck’s position; Ramillies was ordered to leave her Halifax-bound convoy to join the pursuit, as were Revenge and Edinburgh.92 The heavy cruiser Dorsetshire’s captain, on his own initiative, left his convoy and joined the hunt on the morning of the 26th.93 The Royal Navy was mustering all its available strength to meet this challenge to her maritime trade. Convoys were ordered into port or delayed in sailing, because none was safe until the German threat was eliminated. The longer Lutjens could stay at sea, the worse the situation would become for the British. And the Atlantic was a mighty big place to hide. All deployments depended on Wake-Walker maintaining contact with Bismarck and Prinz Eugen, and that contact, in the last analysis, depended on the radar set in Suffolk. To better Wake-Walker’s chance of maintaining contact, and improve his own odds of bringing Bismarck to action, Tovey needed to slow his quarry down. Therefore, at 0240 pm on the 24th Tovey sent A. T. B. Curteis (RA2CS) ahead with Victorious, Galatea, Aurora, Hermione, and Kenya at full speed to launch a Swordfish strike.94 It would have been safer


to keep his fleet together, but the Fighting Instructions stressed the desirability of damaging and slowing an enemy force by air attack prior to a surface engagement.95 Tovey took a wise and proper risk. Unfortunately, the means at his disposal was not worthy of the choice. Victorious had only nine Swordfish of 825 Squadron and six Fulmar fighters of 800Z Squadron embarked, the carrier had only just been commissioned, and had had one week to work up.96 Despite these handicaps, the Swordfish, with Fulmars along to help shadow Bismarck, took off shortly after 2200 in gathering darkness and headed towards the enemy. Led by Lt Commander E. Esmonde, later to earn a posthumous VC when his tiny squadron tried valiantly and vainly to influence the Channel Dash, Victorious’s Swordfish found, then lost in clouds and rain squalls, then found again the Bismarck. Pressed through heavy AA fire, the attack scored a single torpedo hit. Low in the water from her forward flooding, the torpedo struck Bismarck’s main armoured belt and did no appreciable damage.97 Nonetheless, Tovey praised the gallant effort, and wrote in his dispatch: ‘This attack, by a squadron so lately embarked in a new carrier, in unfavorable weather conditions, was magnificently carried out and reflects the greatest credit to all concerned.’98 Tovey also noted that, on the way back to their carrier, Victorious’s homing beacon broke down, so that her Swordfish and Fulmars flew blind in darkness and clouds. Amazingly, all the torpedo-bombers made it back by dead reckoning, but two of the Fulmars that stayed to shadow Bismarck were lost.99 Throughout 24 May, Wake-Walker hung on to Bismarck and Prinz Eugen. The tense hours passed. But safe and warm in London, Churchill, Pound, and the VCNS, Tom Philips, armchair Nelsons all, prodded Wake-Walker by radio to re-engage Bismarck.100 The RA1CS noted in his after-action report that ‘I did not and do not consider that in her then state of efficiency the Prince of Wales was a match for the Bismarck.’101 He was almost certainly correct. But it was Lutjens who broke the standoff by turning to attack his pursuers, in an attempt (which proved successful) to give Prinz Eugen cover so she could slip off and continue her commerce-raiding mission. The brief exchange of fire took place at 1840, and led to the Bismarck withdrawing further to the west, away from Tovey.102 Wake-Walker’s tête-à-tête with Bismarck did nothing to ameliorate the hostility in London. After Tovey returned to port Pound telephoned him and threatened Wake-Walker and Leach with courts martial for failing to act more aggressively. Like earlier actions taken against James Somerville and Dudley North, Pound’s accusation against Wake-Walker


and Leach was vindictive and ludicrous. Tovey unflinchingly stood by his subordinates, and informed Pound that he would haul down his flag as C-in-C Home Fleet and appear in court as ‘Prisoner’s Friend’ (supporter and chief character witness) if Pound charged them. The threat worked. Tovey’s account of the story ends succinctly: ‘I heard no more about it.’103 After the skirmish, the difficult work of shadowing continued. Poor visibility persisted, and twilight descended. As was prescribed in the Fighting Instructions, Wake-Walker separated his three ships fairly widely, one on each wing and one behind Bismarck. Ominously, the Fighting Instructions also noted that ‘use of RDF [radar] produces a great strain on operators’.104 After over 24 hours’ contact, the exhaustion on Suffolk can only be imagined. The radar operators laboured under an added handicap, the need to zigzag for added safety against U-boats. Tovey and the Admiralty had both warned Wake-Walker of the danger of submarine attack.105 Additionally, the Type 286 radar was only usable bow-on, so as Suffolk (by that time the only British ship of the three with a working radar) zigzagged she temporarily lost contact with Bismarck with each outward turn. Despite this, Suffolk held on for over 30 hours. But at 0306 on 25 May, when Suffolk turned back from one leg of her zigzag, Bismarck simply wasn’t there.106 Instead of continuing south before his pursuers, Lutjens picked the right moment in the British zigzag, broke away, and circled behind Wake-Walker. ‘After doing the most admirable and classical piece of shadowing for over 24 hours Suffolk and Norfolk lost touch with Bismarck at 3 a.m. this morning in the dark’.107 So wrote Vice Admiral Sir James Somerville, Senior Officer Force H, to his wife in the midst of the Bismarck chase. Despite later criticism by some historians, Somerville did not believe that 1CS had bungled their assignment. Neither did Tovey, who wrote: ‘It seemed almost too much to hope that the cruisers would be able to maintain contact throughout yet another night . . .’108 Tovey’s later support of Wake-Walker against Pound’s wrath reinforces the conclusion that the loss of contact with Bismarck was more the result of careful German action rather than British negligence or error. But the fact remained that Bismarck had given the British the slip. Tovey was confronted with an extreme dilemma. He had to find Bismarck, which meant dispersing his forces to search, yet concentrate enough firepower to sink Bismarck once found. Tovey believed that Lutjens’s only two options were to make for a tanker (the Germans had deployed six to support ‘Operation Rhine’)109 or a dockyard. If Bismarck were headed for a tanker, she would steer due south towards the Azores


or northwest towards the Davis Strait off Greenland. If Lutjens wanted a dockyard, he would sail southeast towards France, or perhaps even Ferrol in Spain. Therefore, Tovey ordered Curteis to take Victorious and his cruisers to search northwest of Bismarck’s last reported position, while King George V and Wake-Walker’s squadron searched south. The damaged Prince of Wales was sent home. Repulse had run low on fuel and been detached to Halifax.110 In actuality, Bismarck was at 0800 that morning 100 miles astern of King George V, sailing southeast towards Brest.111 Lutjens had doubled back past Wake-Walker then steered southeast. Captain Dalrymple-Hamilton of Rodney decided to cover the Bay of Biscay, just in case Bismarck was headed east, and not northwest or south, as Tovey was coming more and more to believe.112 And, as added insurance, the Admiralty ordered Somerville to take Force H towards the Bay of Biscay to cover the approaches to the French Atlantic ports at 1100 on the morning of the 25th, just in case.113 Anxiety mixed with determination as the minutes passed by. That morning, Admiral Tovey made a critical error, which flowed from another error, one made by Admiral Lutjens. At 0854, Lutjens signalled his home command about his (erroneous) belief that the British were still shadowing him. This signal gave his position away. Tovey’s staff detected the signal and plotted (incorrectly) the position of its transmission. They determined Bismarck’s position as being north and west of where the ship actually was.114 Seizing on the false intelligence, likely because it confirmed his suspicion that Bismarck was headed north, Tovey turned the Home Fleet about and headed in the wrong direction.115 Luckily for the British, Force H kept on course for the Bay of Biscay, and the Admiralty likewise signalled Rodney at 1158: ‘Act as though the enemy is proceeding to a Bay of Biscay port.’116 Lutjens had been rewarded for his mistake, but later radio messages he made that morning, despite warnings from Group West to maintain radio silence, began to convince the Admiralty that Bismarck was not headed north, but southeast. But they were, on this occasion, not prepared to overrule Tovey, who himself tried to steer a course that did not commit him too far to the west so he could double back if his guess proved wrong. A signal picked up at 1320 that indicated an enemy vessel roughly where Tovey projected Bismarck to be kept him on the wrong track. However, at 1507, the Admiralty signalled Tovey that the 1320 signal was probably from a U-boat and not Bismarck. Finally, at 1810, Tovey decided to turn back towards Brest. Confirmation came immediately: General Jeschonnek, the Luftwaffe Chief of Staff, whose


son was aboard the Bismarck, sent a message to Naval Headquarters using the Luftwaffe Enigma asking if Bismarck was coming in for repairs; he was told that she was making for a French port. The message was quickly deciphered and passed to the Admiralty, who sent the news out at 1812.117 Tovey’s blunder had given Bismarck her chance to get away. The Home Fleet could not hope to catch her unless her speed was greatly diminished. Even Rodney, given the maximum speed available to her ailing engines, despite the fact that she had been marking time in a better position to cover the French ports, could not catch Bismarck without help. That help was steaming north in the form of Force H. But before she could be brought to battle, Bismarck’s exact position had to be determined. Although the United States was still ostensibly neutral, President Roosevelt had, after much effort, convinced Congress to approve lend-lease in March 1941. Weapons and supplies that Britain had exhausted her cash reserves buying in the first eighteen months of the war now flowed free of charge from the ‘arsenal of democracy’. RAF Coastal Command had recently received some of this largesse: US Catalina flying boats, superb long-range patrol aircraft. They had arrived so recently that US Navy pilots were helping break in the new British crews. One such pilot, Ensign Leonard Smith, was assigned to a Catalina out searching for Bismarck when, at 1030 on the morning of the 26th they found her, 690 miles from Brest.118 Admiral Somerville had already flown off 10 Swordfish from Ark Royal at 0835 to search for Bismarck. Somerville got the Catalina’s sighting report and sent off another two Swordfish with long-range tanks ‘to gain touch as I feared the Catalina’s position might be somewhat inaccurate in view of the weather conditions and the distance from her base’.119 Before they could get aloft, one of the original Swordfish reconnaissance planes confirmed the finding: Bismarck was 77 miles to the west of Force H. The weather was inclement, but Somerville was in excellent proximity and well capable of holding on to Lutjens. ‘At 1315 I detached Sheffield with orders to close and shadow the enemy’.120 Bismarck had been found – now she had to be slowed. Michael Simpson neatly sums up the troubled history of Ark Royal’s first strike force in his commentary on the Somerville papers: The torpedo bombers which followed [the reconnaissance Swordfish] nearly compounded the developing British fiasco as they launched their torpedoes at Sheffield, a function both of foul weather and also


of a communications failure, the crews not having been informed of Sheffield’s detachment to shadow.121 The accidental attack on Sheffield, in which 11 of 14 Swordfish launched their torpedoes, pointed out a serious mechanical defect in the torpedoes that had profound consequences later on. Five of the torpedoes exploded without hitting anything – their magnetic detonators were defective. Luckily for the British, the rest were avoided by the sage and steady action of Sheffield’s captain. Next time out, Ark Royal’s Swordfish would be armed with contact pistols rather than magnetic detonators.122 With night approaching, everything hinged on Ark Royal’s last Swordfish strike of the day. Tovey knew it better than anyone. He wrote later that, if Bismarck was not significantly slowed, he was going to avoid a futile hunt into German controlled coastal waters. The threat of U-boats, bombers, and mines was too great. If he was unable to intercept Bismarck, Tovey had determined he was going to turn back, ‘fully appreciating there would be another Byng123 trial on my return.’124 If the torpedo-bomber force failed to score a telling hit, Bismarck would unquestionably live to fight another day, and Hood would go unavenged. The reputation of the Royal Navy was at stake. Never had the words of Nelson’s famous signal, that England expected every man at that hour to do his duty, been more apt. Captain Maund of Ark Royal ranged four Swordfish of 818, four of 810, and seven of 820 Squadron on his flight deck and sent them aloft at 1910. They formed up and set off towards Bismarck in seven-tenths cloud cover, force 6 winds, and a rolling sea, conditions under which few planes could operate. But the venerable Swordfish, with its two wings and slow speed, could. The stringbags, as they were affectionately known, though obsolete, were uniquely suited to these unfavorable conditions, and some of them were outfitted with a device by no means antique – radar.125 Using their radar in heavy, low clouds the strike force first found Sheffield, then zeroed in on Bismarck. Bad weather and the enthusiasm of the pilots quickly lead to a breakdown in order as the planes, in small bunches, jumped to the attack. The first wave went in at 2053. The bold determination of the torpedo bombers impressed one German eyewitness: They approached even more recklessly than the planes from the Victorious had done two days earlier. Every pilot seemed to know what this attack meant to Tovey. It was the last chance to cripple the Bismarck so that the battleships could have at her. And they took it.126


Four Swordfish attacked on the port side, claiming one hit. Then, in rapid succession two planes attacked from the starboard, followed by a single plane launching her torpedo on the port side (one hit claimed), then four more Swordfish attacked on the port beam, one to starboard, and finally two planes came in and attacked on the starboard side. One plane had failed to find Bismarck and returned to Ark Royal. No planes were lost, four were damaged, and two men wounded. It had all taken 32 minutes. The damage the British needed to inflict had been done. Ark Royal’s pilots had managed two hits. One on the port side amidships did little damage. One torpedo had struck astern; it flooded compartments and jammed the rudder 12 degrees to port. The Bismarck was truly crippled. Despite all Captain Lindemann’s best efforts, she could neither steer for home nor manoeuver. ‘Moreover, in order to prevent Bismarck from wallowing and yawing helplessly she had to be kept under way. And so all through the night of 26/27 May, 1941, she steamed at seven to eight knots towards her hunters, delivering herself to the kill.’127 Although Ark Royal’s fliers would be ready to strike again next morning, it would prove unnecessary – Admiral Tovey, with King George V, Rodney, which had joined him, and Norfolk, were slowly closing on the floundering Bismarck, conserving fuel and awaiting daybreak. That night, Captain Vian with his 4th Destroyer Flotilla (Cossack, Sikh, Zulu, Maori, and the Polish Piorun) headed toward the coming arena of battle. They had been detached from Convoy WS8B to form a screen for King George V and Rodney, whose destroyers had fallen away for lack of fuel. Vian arrived in the vicinity of Bismarck first, for Tovey had hauled off to await dawn. His 4th Flotilla engaged Bismarck in hit-and-run torpedo attacks throughout the night, wearing down the nerves of Bismarck’s crew. Although they scored no hits, Tovey approved of Vian’s actions.128 As daybreak approached, Tovey turned his ships toward the Bismarck, said a prayer for guidance and strength, and called his men to action stations.129 Tovey steered his battleships straight at the enemy in line abreast at 19 knots. Unlike Holland, Tovey gave Dalrymple-Hamilton permission to manoeuver his ship independently. However, Tovey’s tactical plan mirrored Holland’s: ‘With the knowledge of the German’s extraordinary skill with their opening salvoes I approached, giving an almost end-on target and continued to do so until within about fifteen thousand yards, when I only turned sufficiently to open ‘A’ arcs.’130 At 0847, Rodney opened fire, and a minute later King George V chimed in. Bismarck did not take long to respond. Although her crew’s feelings can only be a


point of conjecture, she was still a formidable opponent. ‘The enemy’s first salvoes nearly hit the Rodney, but thereafter the accuracy and volume of the Bismarck’s fire fell away rapidly. Soon after 9 am she started to sustain heavy damage from hits by armour-piercing shells.’131 As the hit total mounted, the battle devolved into a one-sided execution.132 Here, Tovey’s instincts as a destroyer skipper proved too strong. He closed the range with admirable speed and daring. But flat salvoes at close range unduly played into Bismarck’s extensive vertical strength and failed to take advantage of her weaker deck armour. Nonetheless, by 0915, Bismarck was rendered impotent by British pounding. Her main deck and superstructure were a charnel house. Dead and horribly wounded men were everywhere. Later, an eyewitness went up on deck: ‘It was chaos and desolation. The anti-aircraft guns and searchlights that once surrounded the after station had disappeared without a trace. Where there had been guns, shields, and instruments, there was empty space. The superstructure decks were littered with scrap metal’.133 Unable to manoeuver, only her exceptional watertight construction kept Bismarck from quickly succumbing to the British barrage. Tovey looked to see if she had struck her colours, but the Germans did not surrender. As the battle between Tovey and Lindemann raged, the heavy cruiser Dorsetshire showed up on the scene. On the morning of 26 May, Dorsetshire had been escorting convoy SL74 when she intercepted the Admiralty’s announcement that Bismarck had been rediscovered and was making for Brest. Her Captain, B. C. S. Martin, decided on his own initiative to leave the convoy and make 26 knots towards the likely path of Bismarck.134 He arrived at the battle at 0904, opening fire at 20 000 yards with his main battery of eight 8-inch guns. Alternately steering straight at Bismarck and then opening ‘A’ arcs (just like Tovey), Martin worked his ship into point-blank range, where she fired three torpedoes into Bismarck. It was past 1000; Tovey ordered Dorsetshire to finish Bismarck off while his battleships steamed off. Perhaps these torpedoes were the coup de grâce, perhaps not – Bismarck had taken many largecalibre hits, and German sources maintain that scuttling charges had been set. But, as two experts who have reviewed the film taken from the wreck report say,135 We do not doubt that the ship was scuttled by her crew, but the Bismarck was a defeated and sinking ship. The scuttling charges, which Statz [a survivor] has freely admitted and confirmed, merely accelerated her inevitable demise.


After launching her torpedoes, Dorsetshire ordered Maori to help her pick up survivors. The short, tumultuous career of the battleship Bismarck was over. ‘It has been’, Tovey wrote to Pound when he got back to port, ‘quite the most fascinating operation in which anyone could have hoped to take part.’136 The Bismarck was gone. But hundreds of her crew were bobbing up and down in the oily water, many with grievous wounds. In a brave act of chivalry, Captain Martin ordered his ship to stop dead in the water, making her a sitting duck for any U-boat in the vicinity, while his crew threw every line and net at hand over the side. Men whom these Royal Navy sailors had tried to kill just an hour before, who only three days earlier had themselves killed over 1000 British sailors when they sunk the Hood, now ceased to be the enemy. One man deserves to have his name remembered: Midshipman Joe Brooks. Brooks climbed down a lifeline into the heaving Atlantic to try and tie a rope around a German sailor who had lost both his arms. The ship swayed and both men went under, but the German never came up.137 Even Tovey was seized by the moment. At 1117 he radioed the Admiralty: ‘She [Bismarck] put up a most gallant fight against impossible odds, worthy of the old days of the Imperial German Navy.’138 High praise indeed. But the rescue mission could not last long. Dorsetshire’s navigating officer thought he saw the puff of diesel fumes from a submerging U-boat. So, ‘the Dorsetshire reluctantly left the scene of the sinking’.139 And Maori went with her. Dorsetshire and Maori had taken 110 survivors aboard. One of the German sailors died on the way back to England. He ‘was buried at sea in the presence of his shipmates and a guard of honour from Dorsetshire . . . The ship’s bugler sounded The Last Post’.140 The names of the German survivors were duly sent by radio from the British Admiralty to the Germans on 7 June. In a purely instrumental age, the concept of honour seems superfluous. Nonetheless, the action of the officers and crew of the cruiser Dorsetshire and destroyer Maori remind us of the fact that men are still at times prepared to risk much to do what honour dictates. In a world where barbarity was swiftly eclipsing any notion or consideration of the honorable conduct of warfare, Royal Navy sailors who literally extended a lifeline to their enemies should not be forgotten. Although some criticism was, in later years, voiced about the British ‘abandoning’ the German survivors, it does not bear up under scrutiny. U-boats were in the area, and Luftwaffe aircraft were on the way – the destroyer Mashona was bombed and sunk on the passage back to England. As the senior surviving officer of the Bismarck has stated: ‘I am


now convinced that under the circumstances, [Captain] Martin had to act as he did.’141 In comparison, US flyers machine-gunned Japanese survivors after the Yamato went down in 1945.142 The Royal Navy’s honour was upheld in more ways than one on that day of victory in May 1941. From tragedy, we must now turn to farce. Anxious for details of the battle and nervous about his fuel situation, the Admiralty sent Tovey the following signal at 1137: We cannot visualize situation from your signals. Bismarck must be sunk at all costs, and if to do this it is necessary for King George V to remain on scene then she must do so, even if subsequently means towing King George V.143 Tovey was furious upon receiving such a message. He had already won the day, and did not want or need to have his ability, courage, or resolve questioned. Although ostensibly from Pound, Tovey was sure Churchill penned the signal.144 He seemed incapable of refraining from silly advice and sticking his nose into tactical matters. Pound later apologized for what Tovey considered ‘the stupidest and most ill-considered signal ever sent’.145 A solid officer like Tovey did not deserve such insulting advice from a man whose military experience extended to a stint with the cavalry before the Boer War and command of a battalion for a few months in the trenches of World War I. What does the Bismarck chase say about the German and British navies? Much. From first to last, the Germans showed a certain lack of surety in their actions. This was manifest from the failure to refuel at Bergen, to the lack of a plan for dealing with British cruisers once they were encountered; Lutjens seemed surprised when he encountered Norfolk and Suffolk, took too long devising his scheme for shaking them off, and persisted in believing they were on his tail long after he gave them the slip. The German lack of assurance extended to the stolid handling of Bismarck during the Battle of the Denmark Strait, through the chase, and down to the resigned way in which Bismarck went to her death. The exception, giving Suffolk the slip, was carelessly thrown away. German gunnery was excellent, but tactics and damage control mediocre. One finds no hint of cowardice on the German side, but little sense of bold determination, either. As for the British, all levels of command displayed a dogged tenacity. Holland, Vian, and Tovey employed aggressive tactics. Wake-Walker knew his job and stuck to it under constant threat of destruction. Admirals


Pound and Somerville kept clear heads and shrewdly prevented Tovey’s error in misconstruing the whereabouts of Bismarck from spiralling into a disaster. British aircrews did their duty courageously. But their planes were few and obsolescent. British torpedoes and shells lacked a lethal punch. And the limited endurance of British warships proved an enormous hindrance in stalking Bismarck. Luckily for the British, the Germans did not have the numbers and leadership to take full advantage of these weaknesses. The Royal Navy had, like some ancient hero, endured the anxiety, disaster, quest, and redemption that marked the epic Bismarck chase. But it had been a damned close-run thing. The period following the sinking of the Bismarck saw a considerable reduction in surface fleet activity for both the British and the Germans. Bismarck’s bright flash in the pan marked the last time German warships would ply the broad Atlantic. She had been lost due to a combination of Lutjens’s mistake in breaking radio silence, the persistence of the British, and the courage and good luck of the Ark Royal’s aircrews. Temporarily, there was no German raider to take her place. When Prinz Eugen pulled into Brest on 1 June the curtain came down on the Kriegsmarine’s effort to use major surface units to disrupt transatlantic trade. The German Navy was not alone in its inability to land a telling blow. The Royal Navy’s top strategic priority was the neutralization of the German squadron at Brest. But the navy’s mounting losses and many commitments precluded a major offensive operation against continental targets. Rodney went to Boston for repairs. Illustrious and Formidable were in dockyard hands. Hood was gone, as were three cruisers and six destroyers sunk off Crete in late May – Cunningham was down to two barely serviceable battleships, one light cruiser, and nine destroyers.146 Prince of Wales went in for a quick round of repairs after the Bismarck chase, but was then commandeered by Churchill to take him across the Atlantic for his secret meeting with Roosevelt at Argentia Bay in August. Already that July, in the name of hemispheric defence, Roosevelt had dispatched the aging American battleships New York and Arkansas, along with two light cruisers and a destroyer squadron, to land Marines in Iceland and backstop the British patrols.147 But Malta still needed succour, and the Japanese occupied southern French Indochina in July, bringing Singapore within range of their bombers. The Royal Navy’s only apt means of power projection, the Fleet Air Arm, was not yet up to the job of taking out Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, and Prinz Eugen in a welldefended German anchorage. So RAF Bomber Command was called in. A series of raids beginning in April and ending on 24 July managed to


score hits on all three ships.148 For months to come, the Brest Squadron could not operate due to the incapacitation of one or another of its ships. Intelligence scored a coup in early June when news of a sortie by the Lutzow led to a Coastal Command air strike by 14 Beaufort land-based torpedo bombers. Lutzow was caught off the Norwegian coast and hit by a torpedo launched by Flight Sergeant R. H. Loveitt. Crippled, the pocket battleship limped back to Kiel. She did not leave dry dock for seven months.149 With Tirpitz still working up, and Scheer and Hipper in the Baltic, the threat posed to British shipping by the German surface fleet had at least temporarily subsided. Even the armed merchant cruisers and their supply ships became waning assets to the Germans. Prey to aggressive cruiser sweeps and Ultra decrypts, three of seven raiders and six of eight supply ships were lost in 1941. Those that escaped were forced to head for home. Losses from armed merchant cruisers fell from 20 ships of 78 484 tons in January 1941 to only two ships of 8 734 tons in September – and no ships were lost to them for the rest of the year.150 Raeder’s strategy of continuous pressure was broken. The Battle of the Atlantic would now be won or lost by Doenitz’s U-boats. The Home Fleet, and the Royal Navy generally, was holding the line, but they could not yet bring the war to the Germans. The grand strategic context in which the navy operated, however, changed dramatically just before dawn on 22 June, 1941, when Hitler turned his back on the Atlantic and threw his strength eastward. For that morning, Operation ‘Barbarossa’, the German invasion of the Soviet Union, commenced. The greatest land campaign in history was under way.151 Churchill, to his credit, did not waste a second in throwing his support behind the Soviet Union. On the evening of the 22nd, he broadcast to the world over the BBC a stirring speech declaring ‘that we shall give whatever help we can to Russia and the Russian people’.152 He reiterated the same pledge in a letter to Stalin of 7 July: ‘We shall do everything to help you that time, geography, and our growing resources allow.’153 Geography dictated that any aid Britain had for her new Soviet ally would have to be shipped through Arctic waters, to Russia’s icy northern ports. And those convoys would have to be guarded against German depredations. The Home Fleet suddenly had a new task – protecting convoys on the long trek to Murmansk.

7 The Hard Road to Murmansk: June 1941–May 1943

Karl von Clausewitz’s most famous utterance was a simple dictum: ‘War is merely the continuation of policy by other means.’1 Rarely has this been so true as in the story of the Arctic convoys. State policy was clear – all possible aid to the Soviets was to be dispatched forthwith. That policy had to be carried out by men making war under some of the most difficult conditions on Earth. From the very beginning, the campaign to fight the convoys through was a political act, to encourage an ally to soldier on, to convince a people and their government that they had not been forgotten, and to try to buy their continued participation in the war. As Churchill told the Cabinet on 10 July 1941: The advantage we should reap if the Russians could keep in the field and go on with the war, at any rate until the winter closes in, is measureless. A premature peace by Russia would be a terrible disappointment to great masses of people in our country. As long as they go on it does not matter so much where the front lies. These people have shown themselves worth backing and we must make sacrifices and take risks, even at inconvenience, which I realize, to maintain their morale.2 Churchill’s ‘sacrifices’ meant substituting political considerations for military logic. As one historian of the convoys has noted in relation to the Home Fleet’s carrier raid on north Norway in the summer of 1941, ‘not for the first time in the story of the Arctic convoys, military rationale was overridden by political necessity’.3 Stephen Roskill concurs in this judgement concerning the political nature of the war in the Arctic. As he wrote to F. H. Hinsley, the official historian of British Intelligence, the hazardous summer convoys of 1942, especially the notorious PQ17, 108

The Hard Road to Murmansk 109

sailed despite the advice of Tovey and Pound: ‘They [the admirals] were over-ruled by political arguments from FDR, applied by Churchill.’4 And Andrew Lambert has noted: ‘Unlike the Atlantic convoys, they [the Arctic convoys] were sustained by political objects, and were never critical to the British war effort, narrowly defined.’5 This tension between political necessity and military reality cannot be too heavily stressed. It forms the backdrop against which all the decisions of the various naval commanders must be evaluated. Militarily, the Arctic convoys were fraught with difficulties. The 2000 miles route from Scotland to Murmansk was flanked by the German position in Norway. U-boats could easily be deployed to Arctic waters. The Luftwaffe had four major air bases in northern Norway. Norway’s many fjords provided perfect anchorages to German warships for hitand-run raids.6 Weather and distance circumscribed RAF reconnaissance over the contested area. Compounding all these handicaps, the Western Allies enjoyed only the minimal and most begrudging Soviet assistance. Therefore, if the Germans chose to contest the convoys, each would need a major British operation to fight it through, including scarce escorts from the Battle of the Atlantic and capital ships. These carriers and battleships, tied down in a defensive role, might otherwise have been deployed to the Mediterranean or the Indian Ocean for offensive operations. In essence, the German position in Norway acted as a force multiplier. Not only could warships based there menace the Arctic convoys, they were also a threat to break out into the Atlantic if the Home Fleet strayed too far north. Admiral Tovey believed that, given the forces available to him, he could not simultaneously provide close escort to the convoys and cover the outlets to the Atlantic.7 Thus, a small contingent of German ships and submarines could tie up a large number of British vessels. Likewise, a modest Luftwaffe presence could, from May until September, fly an inordinate number of sorties against any convoy. For months at a time, these northern waters were bathed in perpetual daylight and/or twilight. Convoys could be spotted easily and attacked from the air virtually around the clock. Finally, on top of all these capabilities, the Germans held an ace up their sleeve, a leviathan that no single British ship could combat – the Tirpitz. Before turning to operations in Arctic waters, we must address the issue of their importance. Just how crucial was the flow of Anglo-American aid to the Soviet Union? First, aid to Russia did not proceed exclusively through the Arctic. Of the 17 500 000 tons of cargo shipped to the USSR between June 1941 and September 1945, 3 964 000 tons (22 per cent) went to Murmansk and Archangel.8 Most of the rest went through


Persia or Vladivostok, and about half the total tonnage arrived in 1944–45. Much of the actual military equipment (Hurricanes and P-39s, Valentines, Stuarts, and Shermans) was at best comparable, but often inferior to, Soviet models. Aircraft deliveries amounted to 14 per cent of Soviet production, while Allied tanks given to the Red Army constituted only 12 per cent of Soviet output.9 But Anglo-American aid in food, radio equipment, and especially trucks was of enormous help to the Red Army. Britain and America shipped 409 000 trucks to the USSR, slightly more than double Soviet production. As a disgruntled German officer later wrote: ‘The dramatic advance to the Dnepr and the Vistula in June and July, 1944, and the subsequent rapid breakthrough in Hungary and Poland, can be attributed directly to Anglo-American aid.’10 But these were late developments. The Germans were beaten before Moscow, at Stalingrad, and at Kursk, by Soviet soldiers using Soviet equipment. Later, Anglo-American aid helped the Red Army move farther, faster, and in a more coordinated manner than they could have without such aid. In their recent book, Williamson Murray and Allan R. Millett ask the rhetorical question, ‘Could the Soviet Union have survived without Lend-Lease?’ Their answer is: ‘Most probably. But the cost of the war for the Soviets would have been considerably higher.’11 In the last analysis, Allied merchant and navy sailors performed a useful, but not crucial, function in helping to defeat Nazi Germany by giving aid to the Soviets via the Arctic convoys. Despite the rapid advance of German forces in the summer of 1941, the Red Army stubbornly held its ground and fought off repeated attempts by the German army based in Finland to take Murmansk or cut the rail line that connected it to central Russia. To support the Soviet position and help keep open the port of Murmansk, the Home Fleet was called upon to strike at the German supply bases at Kirkenes in north Norway and Petsamo in Finland. Operation ‘E.F.’ was instituted to do just that.12 On 23 July, 1941, Tovey dispatched Rear Admiral Wake-Walker (whom he had saved from a court martial) from Scapa with Force P, consisting of the carriers Victorious and Furious, the heavy cruisers Devonshire and Suffolk, and six destroyers. Their mission was to hit the ports of Kirkenes and Petsamo and sink any Axis shipping present. Wake-Walker divided Group P into two forces: Division 1, of Victorious, Devonshire (flagship), Inglefield, Icarus, and Escape; Division 2, of Furious, Suffolk, Intrepid, Echo, and Eclipse. Victorious, whose air group consisted of 21 Albacore torpedobombers of 827 and 828 Squadrons, along with 12 Fulmars of 809 Squadron, was earmarked for Kirkenes. Furious, with nine Swordfish of 812 Squadron, nine Albacores of 817, nine Fulmars of 800, and four


Sea Hurricanes of 880A Flight, was to hit Petsamo.13 The weakness of the force was in the slow speed of the two-seat Fulmar (255mph) and the biplane Albacore (100 knots maximum), and the absence of a divebomber in the FAA inventory. Whereas bombs could be used against ships or shore-based targets, the Albacore’s torpedoes were only good against ships. Although the Swordfish could, and did, carry a load of small bombs, these were not even as useful as the 500-pound bombs of the obsolete, and now largely retired, Skuas. The British lacked an equivalent of the German Stuka, the Japanese Val, or the American Dauntless, and did not place a high priority in producing or procuring one.14 The entire mission was compromised when, as the strike force was being marshalled on deck in the afternoon of 30 July, a German reconnaissance plane spotted Force P. All chance of surprise was now lost. The prudent course would have been to withdraw. But Wake-Walker had his orders and, after his aggressiveness had been questioned during the Bismarck chase, he was unlikely to pull back from such a high profile, politically motivated mission. So Wake-Walker threw 20 Albacores with Fulmar escort against Kirkenes. Furious then flew off nine Albacores, six Swordfish, and six Fulmars against Petsamo. As the captain of the Furious recorded, it was a perfect summer afternoon: ‘Weather fine, sea calm, clouds less than 1/10, no cloud cover. Visibility very good.’15 Such was the recipe for disaster. The shipping expected to be present was not there. And the German air defence was ready and waiting. A mixed force of Me109s and Me110s jumped the Victorious’s air group as it came in on Kirkenes. Eleven Albacores and two Fulmars were shot down at the cost of only one Me109 and one Me110. The raid on Petsamo found an empty harbour and lost three planes. In addition, one FAA flier died of wounds on his return to Victorious.16 The Albacore, although a good and sturdy aircraft, had proved no match for modern fighters in daylight, and the Fulmar could not defend it. The raid had been a costly failure. Victorious’s air group, so recently worked up, had lost 39 per cent of its aircraft and almost half of its aircrews killed, wounded, or captured. It would have to be entirely reconstituted. The terrible limitations of the Fleet Air Arm in conducting strikes against a foe equipped with modern fighters had been laid bare. Tovey was not wrong when he wrote to the Admiralty that ‘[t]he gallantry of the aircraft crews, who knew before leaving that their chance of surprise had gone and that they were certain to face heavy odds, is beyond praise’.17 But so was the Charge of the Light Brigade. The issue was not one of courage, but of effectiveness. Against defended land targets the Fleet Air Arm was simply ineffective


for want of numbers and equipment. This fact would guarantee the Germans secure sanctuaries in Norway and an enormous advantage over the British for the next two years of the war. Wherever German land-based fighters flew, the Fleet Air Arm could not fly and the Royal Navy could not operate. Until large numbers of carriers equipped with British Seafires and American Hellcats became available, the coasts and fjords of Norway were off limits to Royal Navy surface units. Except for the occasional destroyer sweep in appalling weather, they would remain so until 1944. As summer slipped into autumn, small convoys of British merchantmen ploughed through the Barents Sea and into Soviet ports. The individual story of each Arctic convoy has been told elsewhere, and is beyond the scope of this work (they are summarized in Table 7.1).18 However, as they relate to the activities of the Home Fleet proper they will be discussed in turn. The first seven convoys (‘Dervish’ and PQ 1–6) proceeded with, surprisingly, no loss. This was due to German inaction brought about by their concentration on operations in the Baltic, the Atlantic, and preparation for the Brest squadron to break for home. As late as 1 January, 1942, only four U-boats were operating in Norwegian waters. Hitler and the Naval Staff, against Doenitz’s wishes, ordered more U-boats to the Arctic to protect Norway (which Hitler always feared might be invaded as a way to take pressure off the Soviets) and operate against British shipping.19 These U-boats, along with Kriegsmarine and Luftwaffe reinforcements would, by the spring of 1942, entirely change the correlation of forces in northern waters and cost Britain a serious check to her maritime fortunes. After Operation ‘E.F.’, consideration in London turned away from the largely successful Arctic convoys to the Far East. The code-breakers at Bletchley Park had determined that Tirpitz would not be ready for sea before December 1941.20 Intelligence, both British and transferred American, indicated that Japan was preparing for war. These twin developments led Prime Minister Churchill to insist that the growing Japanese threat and temporary German quiescence allowed for, and demanded, the dispatch of a deterrent force of at least one modern battleship and one modern aircraft carrier to Singapore. He believed that such a force, along with the forward-deployed US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, would deter Japanese aggression. Pound was skeptical, and Tovey objected strongly when Prince of Wales and Repulse, two faithful Home Fleet veterans, were chosen to go East.21 Once again, the Home Fleet was being tapped as the ‘floating reserve’. The new carrier Indomitable was also to go, but was damaged in a grounding accident while working up

The Hard Road to Murmansk 113 Table 7.1 Convoys to the Soviet North, 1941–42 1941 Convoy

Merchant Ships

Losses

Dervish PQ 1 PQ 2 PQ 3 PQ 4 PQ 5 PQ 6

7 10 6 8 8 7 7

0 0 0 0 0 0 0

1942 Convoy PQ 7 PQ 8 PQ 9, 10 PQ 11 PQ 12 PQ 13 PQ 14 PQ 15 PQ 16 PQ 17 PQ 18 JW51 A JW51 B

Merchant Ships

Losses

11 8 10 13 16 19 8 25 35 34 40 16 14

1 0 0 0 1 5 1 3 7 23 13 0 0

Sources: Roskill, War at Sea, Volume 3, Part 2, pp. 432–3; and Kemp, Convoy!, pp. 17, 18, 28, and 35.

and delayed in her departure. The result is well known – Japanese land-based torpedo bombers sank both Repulse and Prince of Wales on 10 December 1941. Compounding the disaster, Ark Royal was lost to a U-boat torpedo in November, and Queen Elizabeth and Valiant were sunk at their moorings in Alexandria. Italian frogmen had penetrated the harbour and placed powerful charges under both ships.22 Churchill had robbed Peter to pay Paul with disastrous consequences. Unable to be strong everywhere, the Royal Navy, at the beginning of 1942, found itself hard pressed to be strong anywhere. December 1941 brought the entry of the United States into the war. Her stupendous military potential, however, was still largely untapped.23


With the USA and the USSR fully engaged against the Axis, victory might be, as Churchill believed, a foregone conclusion, but the fighting and dying would continue.24 That December, one of Churchill’s pet projects, the commando units he had pushed to create, was to pay unexpected dividends. Rear Admiral Burrough, commander of the 10th Cruiser Squadron, led the light cruiser Kenya, the destroyers Oribi and Offa, and the ‘Hunt’ class escort destroyer Chiddingfold plus two troop landing ships across the North Sea for a raid on Vaagso Island off the Norwegian coast.25 He landed 51 officers and 525 men of 3 Commando on the island. Then the ships and troops proceeded to destroy or damage the lighthouse, five factories, the phone exchange, and the German garrison’s barracks. They damaged and drove aground a merchant ship and a tug, and took away 102 German prisoners while leaving about 150 Germans dead in their wake. Despite air attacks, no British ship was damaged and the force made a clean getaway. It was a small victory, but it had large repercussions. It started Hitler thinking about the vulnerability of Norway. The new year saw the Arctic convoys’ first merchant and naval losses. PQ 7 lost a freighter to U-134 on 2 January.26 The Home Fleet detached the light cruiser Trinidad and the ‘Tribal’ class destroyers Somali and Matabele to cover PQ 8, while Edinburgh, Echo, and Escapade covered the returning PQ 4.27 At the entrance to the Kola Inlet, Matabele was torpedoed and sunk with the loss of all but two of her complement of 200.28 In these icy waters, a few minutes’ exposure meant death. Tovey detached the destroyers Inglefield and Intrepid to raid the Norwegian coast in early January; they shelled shore targets and sank a 2000-ton freighter.29 He then took the Home Fleet to sea on 17 January to cover PQ 8.30 Tovey knew Tirpitz was on her way north. What he did not know was just how concerned Hitler was about Norway. The Vaagso raid and British activity in the north had him worried. That January, he announced to his staff that: ‘Every ship which is not stationed in Norway is in the wrong place.’31 Raeder agreed. This fixation would lead to a continuous deployment of German surface ships to Norway (See Table 7.2).32 Not counting the three ships still at Brest, the German Navy could muster an operational strength of one battleship, one pocket battleship, a heavy cruiser, four light cruisers, and twenty destroyers. Tovey had two battleships, one battlecruiser, one carrier, four heavy and six light cruisers, and 18 destroyers.33 The British margin of superiority was therefore modest at best, considering the power of Tirpitz. Hitler understood that if the Brest squadron (two battlecruisers, one heavy cruiser) could be brought north, the British advantage would

The Hard Road to Murmansk 115 Table 7.2 German Forces in Norway Ship

On Station

Tirpitz

January 1942–November 1944 Out of action 9/43–3/44, 4/44–7/44 Sunk 11/44 February 1943–December 1943 Sunk Boxing Day 1943 February–November 1942 May–August 1942 December 1942–September 1943 March 1942–February 1943 Arrived in March 1942 but torpedoed by Trident on arrival July 1942–February 1943 November 1942–May 1943

Scharnhorst Scheer Lutzow Hipper Prince Eugen Koln Nurnberg

Source: ADM 234/369 Appendix D.

vanish, and Norway would be secured against invasion. These calculations served as the genesis for the Channel Dash.34 The next three outbound convoys (PQ 9–11) totalling 23 ships, and three homeward-bound convoys (PQ 5–7) of 19 ships all proceeded without loss. Ominously, QP 6 came under air attack on 31 January, ushering the Luftwaffe into the Arctic battle.35 Despite the overall success of the convoy runs to this point, Tovey was rapidly losing the support of Churchill, who by February 1942 found him ‘negative, unenterprising, and narrow-minded’.36 Churchill was demanding that something be done about Tirpitz, which was tying up precious British resources, and took his frustration out on Tovey.37 Churchill even cajoled a contribution from Bomber Command, which sent 16 bombers against Tirpitz from Scotland on the night of 29/30 January and 33 bombers against her on 31 March, but they scored no hits.38 Aware of the growing German strength and conscious of his own weaknesses, especially in the air, the C-in-C Home Fleet could only bide his time and await a favourable opportunity offered him by the Germans. That opportunity would arise with the sailing of the next PQ convoy. Frustrated and wary, Tovey warned the Admiralty that he believed his forces inadequate to the chore of shuttling back and forth through Arctic gales covering both the Atlantic and the Arctic convoys. He warned them that ‘a disaster to one of these convoys would have serious political repercussions’, but could get no respite.39 The Home Fleet could only ‘cover’ the convoys to Murmansk, not directly protect them.


Given the paucity of modern British capital ships available in early 1942, this was understandable. However, it rendered Home Fleet operations effectively a bluff. Convoy PQ 12 left Iceland on 1 March with 17 ships, escorted by the destroyers Oribi and Offa, while QP 8 of 15 ships left the Soviet Union. Tovey ordered his Vice Admiral Second-in-Command (VA2), A. T. B. Curteis, to take Duke of York, Renown, Kenya, Faulknor, Eskimo, Punjabi, Fury, Echo, and Eclipse to sea on 3 March to provide distant cover to the outbound and homebound convoys.40 Anxious about the Luftwaffe, Curteis sent Tovey a message on 1 March complaining that without a carrier he was at a distinct disadvantage engaging German surface units anywhere near Norway, and that such action involved ‘a risk which in my opinion should not be accepted’.41 Tovey reassured Curteis that ‘no repetition NO’ evidence of enemy torpedo bombers existed to the north of Trondheim, implying that he was in no danger from the Luftwaffe. Curteis was nevertheless instructed to stay 250 miles from the coast of Norway, and Tovey gave his VA2 latitude to act as he saw fit.42 Curteis had absorbed the lessons of Norway, Dunkirk, Crete, and Force Z, perhaps too well.43 Meanwhile, the Germans had their own problems to solve. Admiral Ciliax, hero of the recent Channel Dash, had taken command of the Tirpitz and her attendants and intended to use them offensively. However, his High Command set stringent limits on his freedom of action.44 After gaining Fuehrer approval, Ciliax sailed with Tirpitz and three destroyers at 1100 on 6 March intending to smash PQ 12 and/or QP 8. Tovey had left Scapa on the 4th with King George V, Victorious, Berwick (eight 8-inch guns, 10 000 tons), and six destroyers.45 From the 6th through to the 9th, Ciliax and Tovey would perform a perilous game of blind man’s bluff in foggy northern waters. Ciliax just missed intercepting the convoys, and Tovey came close to bagging Tirpitz. On the 7th, the British submarine Seawolf reported sighting a large enemy vessel off Norway headed northwest at high speed.46 Tovey joined up with Curteis on the 8th and made for the projected position of Tirpitz, but missed her. Dangerously, all his screening destroyers, low on fuel from high speed steaming, had to be detached for refueling.47 This meant that on the 9th, when contact was finally made, Victorious would have to spread her already inadequate force of 21 Albacores too thinly: flying reconnaissance missions to find Tirpitz, flying anti-submarine patrols, and forming a strike force to assail Tirpitz. Therefore, only 12 Albacores were available when Tirpitz was spotted; they took off into heavy cloud cover to disable her so that Home Fleet battleships could catch her at sea and force a surface engagement. Although one torpedo


came very close to hitting Tirpitz, the Albacore pilots were raw and impetuous and their planes lacked adequate speed to get into effective attacking position ahead of the German battleship. Two Albacores were lost on the mission.48 Flying into a 30-knot wind, chasing a 30-knot ship, fuelled up and carrying a torpedo and crew of three, the Albacores could only overtake Tirpitz at a relative speed of 20 knots! After the failed attack, Tirpitz slipped in under German air cover, thus ending the chase.49 A feeling of dejection, of a fleeting opportunity lost, swept the Home Fleet. The Germans, too, were chastened, and even greater restrictions were placed on the operation of the surface fleet.50 Tovey arrived back at Scapa on 10 March.51 On the 14th he penned a letter to the Admiralty, summing up his quite prescient appraisal of future German strategy: ‘She [Tirpitz] is so valuable an asset to all the Axis powers that I am convinced that the enemy will not willingly expose this unique and irreplaceable ship to any unnecessary risk.’ 52 Germany, Italy, and Japan were all benefitting from the concentration of British (and soon American) warships required to contain Tirpitz. Tovey would have to guard against Tirpitz knowing full well that he would have few, if any, chances to engage her. Thus, the German strategy of maintaining a ‘fleet in being’, of keeping their warships poised for an offensive without releasing them for action in which they might be sunk, was, as in the First World War, tying down Allied strength in a monotonous stand-off. This strategic deadlock would last for over two years and cost the British a steady attrition of ships and men, not to mention wear and tear.53 As the Grand Fleet did before it, the Home Fleet would hold the line, while month after month fighting through the convoys to Soviet Russia. PQ 13 (19 ships) left Iceland on 20 March, and QP 9 (19 ships) departed Murmansk on the 21st.54 Tovey had arranged to have all sailings synchronized so that the Home Fleet could cover both outbound and homebound convoys in the zone of maximum danger around Bear Island off northern Norway.55 PQ 13 was scattered by a gale and most of its ships turned back. The Germans spotted elements of the convoy that had pressed on, and sent out three destroyers to intercept them. The German warships ran into PQ 13’s close escort of Trinidad, Eclipse, and Fury, and in a running battle the German destroyer Z26 was sunk. But in a bitter stroke of irony, one of Trinidad’s torpedoes malfunctioned, circled back, and struck the light cruiser in the engine room.56 Badly damaged, Trinidad made for Murmansk. In all, five merchant ships of PQ 13 were lost.57 The PQ 14-QP 10 sailings (24 and 16 ships, respectively) got under way on the 8th and 10th of April, with the Home Fleet contributing


Edinburgh, Bulldog, Beagle, and Amazon to the former and Liverpool (12 6-inch guns, 10 000 tons), Oribi, Fury, Eclipse, and Marne to the latter.58 Dense ice floes forced convoy PQ 14 to disperse, and two-thirds of its ships had to turn back, but seven of eight that pushed on got through to Murmansk.59 QP 10 was bombed and assailed by U-boats, and lost four ships before reaching Iceland on the 21st. Rear Admiral Bonham-Carter of 18th Cruiser Squadron, considering future trends, wrote in his report of proceedings after PQ 14: Under present conditions with no hours of darkness, continually under air observation for the last four days, submarines concentrating in the bottlenecks, torpedo attack to be expected, our destroyers unable to carry out proper hunt or search owing to the oil situation, serious losses must be expected in every convoy.60 But the convoys continued. The Soviets and Americans demanded that they must. PQ 15 (26 ships) left Iceland on 26 April, with a close escort of London, Nigeria, and four fleet destroyers under the RA10CS, H. M. Burrough.61 The Home Fleet, composed of the battleship King George V, the Victorious, one light cruiser and 11 destroyers, plus the American battleship Washington, heavy cruisers Tuscaloosa and Wichita, and four destroyers, set sail as distant cover.62 This first joint USN/Home Fleet operation (under Tovey’s command) got off to a terrible start when King George V rammed and sank the destroyer Punjabi in dense fog.63 Such an occurrence was, surprisingly, not uncommon: the Washington would, in 1944, ram the battleship Indiana, and the US battleships California and Tennessee would collide that same year.64 But the flagship was damaged and the operation disrupted. PQ 15 got through with three merchant ships lost to air attack.65 QP 11, the homebound element of the tandem, suffered a serious loss when Edinburgh was torpedoed by U-456 and had to turn back with two destroyers as escort.66 This left the destroyers Bulldog, Beverly, Beagle, and Amazon as close escort for QP 11. The convoy was intercepted by three large German destroyers (two ships four 5.9-inch guns, one ship five 5-inch guns). Three of the four British destroyers had been reconfigured for escort duty, with guns replaced by depth charge throwers, so the British force mustered only six 4.7-inch guns and three 4-inch guns. Nonetheless, they beat off five separate German attacks and lost only one convoy vessel.67 Exasperated, the Germans hauled off to try to find the crippled Edinburgh. They did, and sank her in a fierce fight for the loss of the destroyer Schoemann.68 Two weeks later, Trinidad, patched up


in Murmansk, made a break for Iceland, but was bombed, hit, and scuttled.69 With summer approaching, Luftwaffe effectiveness could only increase. Tovey 70 and Bonham-Carter both urged the Admiralty to halt the convoy cycle, but to no avail.71 Roosevelt demanded that the convoys continue, and was prepared to send US Navy warships to underline his insistence. They were to give the Home Fleet the numbers the Americans thought it needed to fight the convoys through. Churchill, despite having Pound, Tovey, and Bonham-Carter united against their continuance, felt compelled to acquiesce in this American demand. The resulting convoy, PQ 16, left Iceland on 21 May. It was the largest to date, 35 ships, and had an escort that included one heavy and three light cruisers. Seven merchantmen, 20 per cent of the convoy, were lost, all to air attack, and the destroyer Garland badly damaged.72 Despite these sobering losses, and the certainty of more, Churchill wrote to Stalin after PQ 16: We are resolved to fight our way through to you with the maximum amount of war materials. On account of Tirpitz and other enemy surface ships at Trondheim, the passage of every convoy has become a serious fleet operation. We shall continue to do our utmost.73 Brave words, but professional pessimism would soon be confirmed in the fateful passage of PQ 17. The spring of 1942 saw the Royal Navy at its lowest ebb. In April, the Japanese surged into the Indian Ocean, sank the old light fleet carrier Hermes, the heavy cruisers Dorsetshire and Cornwall, the destroyer Vampire, and the corvette Hollyhock. Admiral Somerville and his Eastern Fleet were driven from the seas around Ceylon. Losses at the hands of the Japanese since 10 December, 1941 stood at one light fleet carrier, one modern battleship, one battlecruiser, three heavy and one light cruiser, eight destroyers, and one corvette.74 Valiant and Queen Elizabeth were still under repair from damage sustained in a daring attack by Italian frogmen in December. In March and April, Doenitz’s U-boats cut a swath of destruction through American waters, causing a redeployment of scarce escort forces to help the Canadians and the Americans.75 Malta was hanging on by its fingertips. A convoy had to be sent to resupply the island fortress. As always, the Home Fleet would have to provide ships to reinforce Force H to cover the Malta run. British carrier forces were of necessity split: in June, Eagle was at Gibraltar, Victorious with the Home Fleet, Formidable, Indomitable, and Illustrious in the Indian Ocean.76 That same month, convoys to Malta from Gibraltar and Alexandria,


Operations ‘Harpoon’ and ‘Vigorous’ respectively, had suffered serious losses in the face of Italian and German air and naval forces and failed to deliver significant supplies to the besieged island.77 On top of all this, the Soviets, facing the great mass of the German Army, demanded aid Given the strain, Churchill requested, and got, US aid. Task Force 99, consisting of the new 16-inch gun battleship Washington, the heavy cruisers Tuscaloosa and Wichita, and the destroyers Wainwright, Mayrant, Rhind, and Rowan under Rear Admiral R. C. Giffen was sent to reinforce the Home Fleet.78 These conditions form the backdrop of Convoy PQ 17.79 Of great significance in understanding the fate of PQ 17 is the lack of enthusiasm for the Arctic convoys in the Royal Navy. Norway, Dunkirk, and Crete had taught the navy what the Luftwaffe could do. The Bismarck chase had demonstrated the devastating punch and tremendous defensive strength of her class of battleship. Tirpitz would likely prove just as powerful and just as tough. Given the German advantages in proximity to the contested area, reconnaissance, air power, and possession of the initiative, by the spring of 1942, Tovey was, as we have seen, urging that the convoys be suspended.80 Pound agreed, warning the Cabinet Defence Committee that conditions were such that, given Luftwaffe numbers and eternal daylight, losses to the convoys might well reach an unsustainable level.81 In frustration, Pound wrote to the US Navy supremo, Admiral Ernest J. King: ‘These Arctic convoys are becoming a regular millstone round our necks and cause a steady attrition in both cruisers and destroyers.’82 But political pressure from Churchill and Roosevelt to keep the convoys running in support of the Red Army overrode the doubts of the professionals.83 Deep down, it is likely that Pound and Tovey believed that the summer convoys were doomed to heavy losses, and that committing significant British naval forces to German air, submarine, and surface attack in their defence would be, as it were, throwing good money after bad – money that the British could not afford to lose. Reluctantly, they carried out the orders of their political master. The half-hearted nature of Pound and Tovey’s commitment is reflected in the orders issued to Tovey.84 Convoy PQ 17 was to be pushed through as soon and as quickly as possible. The Home Fleet was to stand off to the convoy’s north and west as distant cover, and was only to engage the Tirpitz west of Bear Island – the convoy would have to proceed east of the island as it moved into the Barents Sea. The 1st Cruiser Squadron of two British and two American heavy cruisers under a newly minted Rear Admiral, L. H. K. Hamilton, was to act as close support until the convoy reached roughly the meridian of Bear Island, but was not to


proceed further without orders and only if the convoy ‘was threatened by the presence of a surface force which the cruiser force could fight’85 – in other words, if Tirpitz was known to be in port. Tovey discussed using the convoy as a lure, having it retire westward for a time during the approach to Bear Island, to entice the Germans within range of Victorious’s Albacores, but the plan was rejected.86 It was thought more important, for political reasons, to use speed to reduce the time the convoy was under Luftwaffe attack, to keep PQ 17 moving east towards its destination at all cost. However, even before it departed, Pound was considering ordering PQ 17 to scatter if the German surface fleet sailed; in fact, it seems to have been his only plan.87 Tovey believed such a decision would lead to ‘sheer bloody murder’. If the German surface ships were the only threat, scattering the convoy made sense. Caught together, the merchant ships would be just so many lambs for the slaughter.88 But given Luftwaffe and U-boat strength, the lack of mutual protection could prove fatal. The lessons of convoys since 1917 were clear – a concentrated body of ships was harder to find and harder to attack than lone merchantmen. US Admiral King forgot that when the U-boats came to call on the Eastern Seaboard, and Pound forgot it, too. PQ 17 sailed on 27 June from Iceland. It would initially consist of 36 merchant ships with a close escort of four corvettes, two anti-aircraft ships, three minesweepers, and four anti-submarine trawlers. They were later met by Commander Broome with six destroyers, forming a powerful anti-submarine screen. Simultaneously, QP 13 of 35 ships left Soviet ports headed west.89 Rear Admiral Hamilton, with London, Norfolk, Tuscaloosa, and Wichita, plus two American and one British destroyer, provided close escort.90 Tovey’s distant covering force was made up of the Duke of York, Washington, Victorious, Cumberland, Nigeria, 12 British and two US destroyers.91 The Germans had formidable forces arrayed to contest the convoy’s passage. The navy had on hand Tirpitz, Lutzow, Scheer, Hipper, 10 large destroyers, two ocean-going torpedo boats, and 10 U-boats.92 Luftwaffe strength93 was equally impressive: 103 Ju-88 bombers, 42 He-111 torpedo bombers, 20 Stuka dive-bombers, 15 He-115 torpedo floatplanes, plus eight Condors, 22 Ju-88 reconnaissance planes, and 44 BV-138 floatplanes – a search and strike force equivalent to five British fleet carriers. Tovey’s orders, and German land-based air power, offered him little choice in his course of action. He would have to hope that German air reconnaissance would fail to find the Home Fleet, but would find the convoy. If German surface ships became overconfident and chased the convoy to the vicinity of Bear Island, Tovey could launch a strike from


Victorious and hopefully cripple one or more major German units. Then, he could rush in with all his forces and finish off as many German ships as came under his guns. Above all, he wanted to sink Tirpitz, whose destruction, he had written, was ‘of incomparably greater importance to the conduct of the war than the safety of any convoy’.94 To succeed, Tovey had to keep his own capital ships and cruisers intact, and that meant staying west of Bear Island until he was sure the Germans were slowed by torpedo-bomber attack. The stated aims of British policy – to preserve the fleet, to sink the Tirpitz, to get the convoy through – were mutually exclusive. The failure of Churchill and Pound to determine which objective had precedence, and then follow through with plans that made sense in the light of the priorities set, would lead to a disastrous maritime defeat. Convoy PQ 17 had proceeded without incident until the morning of 4 July. Then, out of the foggy morning sky, an He-115 floatplane descended and dropped a torpedo. The US freighter Christopher Newport was hit, sat dead in the water, and her crew abandoned ship. Although she failed to sink, the escorts picked up the crew and hurried to catch up with the convoy. Later that day, two more ships were crippled by torpedo hits and abandoned, although accurate AA fire from the destroyer USS Wainwright broke up at least one attack.95 Meanwhile, in London, Dudley Pound was growing anxious. He knew that the German surface forces were on the move. However, a change in naval ENIGMA cipher settings on 3 July delayed decryption for 31 hours, until 1900 on 4 July, and left Pound and the Admiralty staff in the dark.96 On the 4th, the OIC warned him that the volume of enemy radio traffic ‘may indicate the commencement of a special operation by main units’ of the German fleet.97 Decrypts of Luftwaffe ENIGMA traffic confirmed that PQ 17 had been found on the morning of the 4th. Therefore, Pound decided to keep CS1 with the convoy until the situation clarified.98 Tovey, having even less of a clear picture of the situation than Pound, countermanded the Admiralty order to Hamilton and told him to obey his initial instructions and depart the convoy after it reached the area of Bear Island. To him, the Admiralty was meddling in tactical affairs and passing orders over his head. If they wanted the 1st Cruiser Squadron to stay with the convoy, Tovey wanted to know why – surely, they had not told him they had intelligence that nullified the prearranged plan. Of course, the Admiralty had no such specific intelligence, only air reconnaissance that confirmed that Tirpitz had moved north up the Norwegian coast. Hamilton did not know what to do, so he stayed with the convoy. Later, the Admiralty would again order him to stay put.99


In London, it became clear as signals intelligence began to trickle in from the codebreakers at Bletchley Park that Tirpitz had reached Altenfjord in northernmost Norway and her attendant destroyers had been ordered to fuel immediately. Nevertheless, that evening the British could not be sure if Tirpitz or any other German surface units had actually sailed. Commander Denning, one of the finest analysts in the OIC, argued that it had not. But Pound, exhausted and perhaps succumbing to a preconceived notion, concluded that it had. At 9:14 pm on 4 July, Pound had an order sent to Hamilton, under the heading ‘Most Immediate,’ that the cruisers were to withdraw at high speed to the west. Then, at 9:23 pm the convoy was ordered to disperse. Thirteen minutes later, also under the heading ‘Most Immediate’, came the order ‘Convoy is to scatter.’100 The men on the scene could only assume that the Admiralty was sure that Tirpitz was out and about to pounce. Embarrassed, Hamilton had no choice, given the tone of the last message (a message which, as one historian has noted, ‘almost conveys a note of panic’)101, but to abandon the convoy. Hamilton and Commander Broome, who was in charge of the fleet destroyers escorting the convoy, decided to link up and head west to rendezvous with Tovey. They reasoned that the largest possible surface force should be massed to take on the Tirpitz or any other German ships they encountered.102 This was tactically sound, and Tovey later backed Broome up on his decision.103 But it was devastating to the morale of the convoy, especially to the American sailors and merchant seamen, who were as yet unscathed by war and cocky about their chances of dealing with any enemy they might face. The results were predictable. Of the 33 merchant ships present when the order to scatter was issued, 22 would go down on the way to Murmansk.104 Ironically, the German naval commanders had begged for the opportunity to sail, but had been stymied by Hitler’s insistence that any British aircraft carriers must be found and neutralized before the big ships could sortie.105 Admiral Schniewind, commanding the surface fleet had, after a long period of waiting, displayed unusual audacity in ordering to sea on 5 July Tirpitz, Scheer, Hipper (Lutzow had run aground and been damaged), seven destroyers and two torpedo boats before receiving the prearranged code signal to do so.106 After a brief sortie, Schniewind was ordered back to Altenfjord that night. The effect of indecision and caution by the high command on the morale of the German Fleet was quite negative.107 Not being employed, in spite of every advantage and opportunity, led officers and men to question their mission, their leaders, and even themselves. The ‘fleet in being’ strategy was creating frustration, and timidity at the top was sapping


the aggressive spirit of the Kriegsmarine.108 Just how badly would not become evident until the Battle of the Barents Sea that December. The issue over whether or not the convoy should have been ordered to scatter has been debated for many years. Even two unquestionable experts, Stephen Roskill and F. H. Hinsley, disagreed over the matter. Roskill thought that PQ 17 was scattered prematurely, whereas Hinsley thought that the intelligence picture was such that Pound had no choice but to order the convoy to scatter.109 For what it is worth, this author favours Roskill’s interpretation of the situation. Given the withdrawal of the fleet destroyers, the threat of U-boats, the almost uninterrupted daylight, and the known strength of the Luftwaffe, it would have been better to hold the convoy together until the fact that Tirpitz was unequivocally at sea was confirmed. As Tovey summed it up: ‘the order to scatter the convoy had been premature; the results were disastrous’.110 But Pound had to make the call, and he did. He did it honestly and without malice, because he believed he had no other choice. We must remember the strategic situation. The Germans had just started their great drive towards Stalingrad and the Caucasus. The Soviets had suffered grievous losses the year before, and again in an ill-advised spring offensive. Britain’s position in Asia was a shambles. Rommel had only just been stopped at El Alamein, and might yet resume the offensive against the shaken 8th Army and grab Cairo or Alexandria. The Soviet Union had to be kept in the war at any cost. Politically, to turn back the convoy would look like a cowardly act of betrayal. To send the Home Fleet in to protect it would have risked ships Britain could not afford to lose. Pound knew that many merchant ships would most likely be lost, but at least some would get through. That gesture was seen as being more valuable than the lives of the merchant seamen. All in all, the reality of the Royal Navy’s strategic position militated against Convoy PQ 17. It was an unalterable fact that its merchant ships were considered more expendable than the capital ships, cruisers, and destroyers of the Home Fleet. Given the weakness of the Royal Navy in 1942, the awful calculus of war dictated that battle could and would only be accepted west of Bear Island. In war, morality gives way to expediency. After Pearl Harbor, the USA was forced to write off the 25 000 soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines garrisoning Wake, Guam, and the Philippines – Britain wrote off the six battalions guarding Hong Kong. Among the reasons why wars should be avoided are just such instances of callous ‘realism’. War produces casualties. Men have to die to further the political and military aims of their governments. The men lost from Convoy PQ 17 enjoy the solace of having suffered and


died in the performance of their duty in a just cause. Too many others throughout history, including their opponents, cannot say the same. Churchill now had no choice but to suspend Arctic convoys for the summer. He wrote to Stalin on 17 July: ‘We do not think it right to risk our Home Fleet east of Bear Island or where it can be brought under the attack of powerful German shore-based aircraft.’111 After PQ 17 and the suspension of convoys to north Russia, the Home Fleet went into a period of virtual hibernation. Task Force 99, the USS Washington, Tuscaloosa, Wichita, and four destroyers left for America on 15 July.112 The USA was prepared to loan ships only if they served what Washington saw as a legitimate strategic purpose like convoying aid to Russia. Thwarted by the circumstances and never keen on giving aid to the British, Admiral King blamed the disaster on Pound, took his ball, and went home. A new post, Rear Admiral Aircraft Carrier (RAAC) Home Fleet, was created in July under A. L. St. G. Lyster, hero of Taranto, flying his flag in Victorious. However, on 31 July he took Victorious, the light cruiser Sirius, and four destroyers to the Mediterranean for Operation ‘Pedestal’, the relief convoy for Malta. Victorious would be away until 25 August, then immediately go in for a refit. After working up and performing training exercises with her air group, Lyster and Victorious were off again on 31 October to cover the ‘Torch’ landings in North Africa. In his first four months as RAAC, Lyster had not spent a day on operations with Tovey!113 But this was only part of the drain. Nelson, Rodney, Furious, three more light cruisers, and another seven destroyers were detached from the Home Fleet for ‘Pedestal’.114 Tovey was left with a fleet below minimum strength and without an aircraft carrier. That August, the Germans had Tirpitz, Scheer, Lutzow, and Hipper all deployed in Norway.115 The Atlantic was clogged with convoys. Yet the German high command did nothing. Hitler’s obsession with the defence of Norway, and refusal to risk losing ships in action, combined to let the opportunity slip. After recouping from ‘Pedestal’, it was decided to challenge German dominance over the northern route to Russia. When the British resumed the convoy cycle to the Soviet Union, they left little to chance. Tovey decided that the convoy would have a powerful escort of fleet destroyers to fight off any surface attack and an escort carrier to provide air cover against Luftwaffe bombers; submarines would be held at bay by the destroyers Achates, Malcolm, and four corvettes. PQ 18 would consist of 40 merchantmen.116 Her escort divided into three groups:117 Force A – destroyers Onslow, Onslaught, Offa, Opportune, Eskimo, Somali, Ashanti, Tartar.


Force B – the ‘Dido’ class light cruiser Scylla (flagship, RA (D) Robert Burnett), destroyers Impulsive, Milne, Marne, Martin, Meteor, Faulknor, Intrepid, Fury. Force Q – the escort carrier Avenger (six Hurricane fighters, three Swordfish), the ‘Hunt’ class escort destroyers Wheatland and Wilton. In addition, Vice Admiral Fraser with Anson, Duke of York, Jamaica, three destroyers and an escort destroyer sortied twice, from 11 September to 14 September and again from 19 September to 22 September, to cover PQ 18 and inbound QP 14.118 This impressive armada was hardly unopposed – German U-boats and bombers had enjoyed a brilliant victory against PQ 17, and had every expectation of another. German aerial reconnaissance had spotted the convoy assembling in Icelandic waters on 8 September. Immediately, Tirpitz, Scheer, Hipper, Koln, seven destroyers and two torpedo boats were readied for action.119 A showdown for control of the Arctic passage was imminent. Luftwaffe attacks began on 13 September and continued until 20 September.120 On 13 September alone, 54 torpedo bombers and 37 bombers sortied;121 more than 40 German He-111s and Ju-88s attacked the convoy. They pressed home their runs bravely and sank 8 merchantmen for the loss of only five planes.122 Later, with orders to sink the carrier, the torpedo planes came back for another go, but little Avenger led a charmed life and went unscathed. For four days her fighters and the guns of the escorts beat off repeated attacks. Bad flying weather on the 15th curtailed Luftwaffe operations.123 And while the Hurricanes broke up German air attacks, Avenger’s Swordfish flew ASW patrols, and one helped Onslow sink U-589.124 Groups of British destroyers shuttled between the convoy and two tankers off Spitzbergen, refuelling and then re-entering the fight. Altogether, PQ 18 lost 13 ships, 10 to the Luftwaffe and three to subs,125 but it made it through to Russia. Astonishingly, the German surface fleet sat out this pivotal contest. Hitler phoned Raeder on the morning of the 13th and warned him against taking any unnecessary risks with the surface fleet. At 1845 that same day, Raeder informed Schniewind that no fleet operation was to be mounted.126 The Admiralty had gambled on PQ 18, the ‘Pedestal’ of the north, and won. On the 17th Burnett had taken Scylla, Avenger, and most of the escort force to join QP 14, made up primarily of the survivors of PQ 17, to see it safely home. In this, Burnett was largely successful – of 17 ships, only three were lost. However, the escort force suffered badly at the hands of the U-boats; Somali was torpedoed and broke in two under tow, the oiler


Grey Ranger was sunk, as was the corvette Leda. Overall, losses had been substantial but sustainable, with 16 of 57 merchant ships succumbing to enemy action. PQ 18/QP 14 therefore marked a continuation of the struggle, not a clear victory over the Germans. Richard Woodman has described it as ‘a Pyrrhic victory for the Allies, but a victory nonetheless’, and this is fair. The Luftwaffe had flown 337 sorties, lost 41 planes127 and sunk 10 merchantmen, yet was disappointed with the result; the U-boat arm had lost two boats but sunk six merchantmen, one oiler, and two warships. The German surface fleet, hobbled by Hitler’s caution and orders to wait until any and all British carriers had been found and neutralized, did not even put in an appearance. On the other side of the hill, the British had shown that they could absorb a pummeling like PQ 17 and come back willing and able to fight more merchant ships through. Allied morale got a shot in the arm, whereas the Germans knew that PQ 18 was a strategic setback. They could hurt the Allies, but they could not make them stop sending aid to the Soviets. And beating the Soviets was Germany’s only hope of staving off defeat. The Naval Staff had written after PQ 16 that they were ‘convinced of the great importance of fighting the Murmansk convoys and the effect thereof on land operations’.128 Yet the fleet did nothing to stop PQ 17 or PQ 18. The Red Army continued to maintain a toehold in Stalingrad, and dark winter nights would soon enshroud the Arctic convoys and ground the Luftwaffe. Many Germans may have secretly pondered after PQ 18 whether or not their best chance of permanently interdicting the Arctic supply route had come and gone. In fact, it had. Germany had a unique opportunity to effect the fighting on the Eastern Front and perhaps drive a wedge between the Allies that autumn. The second front had not yet materialized. The Germans had ripped open the Soviet southern front and were in Stalingrad. Recriminations had flown thick and fast after PQ 17. The effect on Stalin and his apparachiks of the annihilation of PQ 18, not to mention on the British, would likely have been profound. Would Churchill have weathered another defeat? Could Roosevelt have kept ‘Torch’ on track? Given Hitler’s later obsession with the fragile state of the Anglo-Saxon/Soviet alliance, it is strange that at this one juncture where a heavy blow might just have sent the two halves down different courses of action (Stalin’s towards a separate peace?)129 he ordered his fleet to sit tight. ‘Every attempt’ the German Naval Staff had lamented ‘to bring heavy surface forces into action is rendered difficult by the Fuerher’s insistence that losses or set-backs must be avoided at all costs.’130 This could fittingly read as the Kriegsmarine’s epitaph.


After PQ 18 the Home Fleet again found herself the ‘floating reserve’, this time for the landings in North Africa, Operation ‘Torch.’ Duke of York, Nelson, Rodney, Renown, Furious, Formidable, Victorious, four CVEs (escort carriers), two heavy and five light cruisers, and 13 fleet destroyers were on detachment, leaving the Home Fleet once more without a carrier.131 After the landing forces in North Africa were firmly established, the Royal Navy prepared for a new round of convoys to north Russia under cover of Arctic night. However, as late as the end of November, Tovey had only King George V, the new battleship Howe, London, Norfolk, Cumberland, Suffolk, Berwick, Sheffield, Jamaica, and about eight fleet destroyers available at Scapa for operations.132 But Tovey was not only interested in the immediate future. He was concerned with the issue of what spring would bring, and whether the Admiralty intended to keep fighting convoys through in perpetual daylight despite the experience of PQ 17. Tovey told the Admiralty that his minimum requirement would include two battleships, one fleet carrier, two heavy and two light cruisers, and 37 fleet destroyers. If the Germans reinforced the Luftwaffe formations in Norway, he would need in addition four escort carriers and eight destroyers. Lastly, given only this minimum allocation of naval resources, if the Germans deployed all their available surface ships to north Norway, Tovey would suspend the convoys.133 Such realism may not have been very welcome in London, but after PQ 17 and PQ 18 it could not be ignored. The question of continuing Arctic convoys through the spring would be tabled, however, owing to the needs of the Battle of the Atlantic and, later, preparations for the landing in Sicily. Ironically, for once, operations in the Mediterranean aided the Home Fleet – in November 1942 the Luftwaffe pulled its torpedo bombers out of Norway to counter ‘Torch’.134 They were chewed up in the meat grinder that was the central Mediterranean. Despite their success in 1942 and the unquestionable force multiplier they represented, these squadrons would never return to Norway and they were not replaced by fresh formations. Late in December, convoys to Russia recommenced. They would use a new letter prefix, JW, and the first two, of 16 and 14 ships respectively, were numbered JW51A and JW51B. The passage of the two convoys proceeded in the established manner, with a distant covering force of Anson, Cumberland, and three destroyers.135 Close cover was provided by Force R (Sheffield, Jamaica) under Rear Admiral Burnett. Force R was to keep station approximately 50 miles from JW51B while it passed into the Barents Sea.136 A gale had forced Burnett’s two escorting destroyers to turn back to port, and had led to confusion as to the position of Force


R vis-à-vis the convoy, which had itself been disordered by the heavy weather. Visibility was poor, darkness reigned for most hours of the day, and both light cruisers’ surface-search radars were playing up due to wind and freezing spray.137 When battle was joined on the 31st, Burnett would be, unbeknownst to him, well north of JW51B. Vice Admiral Fraser in Anson, with his attendant destroyers running low on fuel due to the strain of keeping station in such roiling seas, took his distant covering force south to scout for German surface ships on the 30th, then sailed for Iceland to refuel.138 Burnett and the convoys were on their own. The one thing such bad weather guaranteed was that no British carrier could possibly be operating in northern waters. Therefore, the German naval command decided to take advantage of the bad weather and their own submarine reconnaissance to hit the convoys they had identified as being in transit. Lutzow, Hipper, and six destroyers sortied from Altenfjord to find and destroy one or both convoys. On 31 December they ran into JW51B, whose close escort consisted of the 17th Destroyer Flotilla (Onslow, Obedient, Obdurate, Orwell, and Achates) under Captain (D) R. St V. Sherbrooke, plus the corvettes Hyderabad and Rhododendron. It was a clear mismatch: German ships mounted six 11-inch, eight 8-inch, 20 5.9-inch, and 15 5-inch guns against a British broadside of six 4.7-inch guns and 12 4-inch guns. Even with Sheffield and Jamaica thrown in (24 6-inch guns), the Germans had the advantage in weight and destructiveness of armament.139 On the morning of the 31st, Hipper (flagship of Vice Admiral Kummetz) and three destroyers were coming in at JW51B from the northeast; Lutzow and three destroyers were positioning themselves to its south. The only advantage, aside from innate skill and courage, enjoyed by the British convoy escorts were Kummetz’s last-minute orders: ‘Contrary to operational order regarding contact with the enemy. . . use caution against enemy of equal strength because it is undesirable for the cruisers to take any great risks.’140 Despite enjoying a clear superiority, the Germans took this admonition to heart. They wasted two hours from their initial contact to mount an attack. After this inordinate delay, Hipper and three destroyers manoeuvered in from the north to engage the convoy. Conversely, Sherbrooke did not hesitate to take his much weaker force into action at 0930 that morning, interposing his destroyers between the Germans and the convoy. He left Obedient, Obdurate, Achates, and the corvettes with the convoy while steaming Onslow (flagship) and Orwell north towards the enemy.141 Sherbrooke bore in on the only German force he could see, Hipper and her three destroyers. Lutzow and


the other three German destroyers were at that time south and slightly west of the convoy – the Germans had the British in a vice. At first, Hipper ignored Sherbrooke and fired at the convoy, hitting Achates, which was making smoke. But as the British drew closer, Hipper turned her attention to Onslow, which was hit four times by 1020. Tovey’s description of the battle in his dispatch to the Admiralty deserves to be quoted at length: A and B guns were put out of action and fire broke out in the fore superstructure and messdeck, the main aerials and both R.D.F. [radar] sets were destroyed, the engine room holed, and Captain (D) was severely wounded in the face, disabling the left eye so that he could not see. In spite of his wounds, he continued to handle his force and disengage under smoke to the southward; only when he had received reports that the hole in the engine room had been plugged and that main engines and steering gear were still efficient would he leave the bridge for medical attention.142 Sherbrooke’s boldness was rewarded as Hipper hauled off, fearing his little force had dashed forward for a torpedo attack. Captain Sherbrooke’s valour had chastened the Germans and bought the convoy time. But he and 21 of his crew were injured, and 17 of Onslow’s company were dead.143 Tovey went on in his letter to the Admiralty to state:144 His Majesty the King has been pleased to award the Victoria Cross to Captain Sherbrooke for his great gallantry and skill in this action. There can be no doubt that it was well earned. Hipper had, at least temporarily, been driven off. Meanwhile, Lutzow and her three destroyers had worked around the southern flank of the convoy, but were so intimidated by the remainder of the 17th Destroyer Flotilla, and confused by the bad weather and spotty visibility, that they refused to engage the enemy.145 Soon, Hipper was back for another try at the convoy, taking a hit on her bridge but finishing off the crippled Achates. Achates went down an hour and forty minutes later – 81 survivors were plucked from the water before the cold could claim them.146 While Sherbrooke’s overmatched convoy escorts fought such long odds, one must imagine a single question preoccupying his mind: Where is Burnett? The pugnacious Admiral was on the way, after a confused morning determining between persistent (false) radar contacts


to his north and gun flashes to his south. Burnett chose to ignore his radar and sail for the flashes.147 Sheffield and Jamaica intervened just as Hipper was preparing to take another run at the convoy and its depleted escort. It was 1130, two hours into this incredible fight. Burnett’s ships caught Hipper unawares, and hit her four times in rapid succession with 6-inch shells. Kummetz was stunned, and immediately broke off the attack.148 Hipper slipped away, but the German destroyer Friedrich Eckholdt was not so lucky and went down under a hail of British fire around 1148.149 Belatedly, Lutzow steered north to join Kummetz, but again failed to press home an attack on the convoy, preferring to lob a few shells ineffectively in its general direction. After one last short, sharp exchange with Sheffield and Jamaica, the Germans broke off the action. Burnett, concerned that other German raiders might be about, quickly called off his pursuit and sailed back to guard the convoy. British light forces had again shown heroic dash and determination, just as Glowworm had, and Warburton-Lee at Narvik, and Ardent and Acasta during the Glorious debacle. The German Navy had planned and executed, up to the point of contact, a brilliant coup, then threw it away via caution, confusion, and an especially poor showing by Lutzow and the destroyers. As Tovey pointed out in his letter to the Admiralty, the German destroyers made the tactical mistake of operating behind their heavy ships, which prevented them from launching torpedoes. The Germans also failed to hold the escorts with one force while ruthlessly assaulting the convoy with the other. Even at the close of the action, the Germans had the strength to win. All this takes nothing away from Sherbrooke and his destroyer captains – they enjoyed a splendid day. Tovey summed up their accomplishment well:150 That an enemy force of one pocket battleship, one heavy cruiser and six destroyers, with all the advantages of surprise and concentration, should be held off for four hours by five destroyers and driven from the area by two 6⬙ cruisers, without any loss to the convoy, is most creditable and satisfactory. The British could hardly comprehend their victory in the Battle of the Barents Sea. As Captain Clarke of Sheffield later noted, they could not believe that ‘the enemy would abandon “sitting birds”’.151 And yet, they had. The reaction in Berlin could not have been worse. As the German ships meandered back to Altenfjord, and Kummetz tried to contact his


headquarters using a malfunctioning landline, news from the BBC of a victory in the Barents Sea reached Hitler’s ears. Already anxious and sceptical, Hitler flew into a rage. He charged the fleet commander with cowardice and announced that it was his ‘unalterable resolve’ to scrap the surface fleet.152 The charge of cowardice, at least against Kummetz, was unjustified – his flagship, Hipper, may have fought ineptly, but it had fought. The same could not be said for Lutzow and her consorts. The surface fleet was demoralized, but more through enforced caution from above and months of inaction than because of cowardice in the ranks. Hitler and Raeder had, since the Bismarck went down, sapped the surface fleet of any initiative and given it nothing much to do. It now needed clear objectives and a free hand in obtaining them, plus more fuel for training and operations, not blowtorches and hammers. Yet Hitler was so outraged, he planned to hand the Allies the greatest bloodless naval victory imaginable. Grand Admiral Raeder was determined to prevent this, and asked for an audience with the Fuehrer. On 6 January Hitler met Raeder153 to discuss the Battle of the Barents Sea. Hitler went out of his way to insult Raeder and the navy, insisting that the heavy surface units of the Kriegsmarine be scrapped and their guns transferred to fixed coastal fortifications. Raeder was convinced this was folly and had had enough – he announced his resignation. Hitler at first balked, then requested a list of names from which to pick Raeder’s successor. Raeder put forward the names of Admiral Carls, C-in-C Group North, as his first choice, and Admiral Doenitz as his second. Hitler selected Doenitz. Upon assuming command Doentiz surprised Hitler by supporting Raeder’s contention that a substantial percentage of the surface fleet should be retained. However, he waited almost a month and submitted his argument to Hitler in writing.154 As one can imagine, the fleet was paralyzed in the interregnum. Hitler, perhaps shaken by his recent defeat at Stalingrad,155 was grudgingly convinced. But Doenitz was body and soul a U-boat man, and retained tactical control of his wolf-packs in addition to his duties as Commander-in-Chief of the Navy. Even without Hitler’s insane order being implemented, the slow dissolution of the German surface fleet had begun. The victory in the Barents Sea capped an anxious and hectic year for the Royal Navy. In 1942, the British had been forced to concentrate Warsprite, Indomitable, Formidable, and Illustrious plus two heavy and five light cruisers and 16 destroyers in the Indian Ocean for operations in the spring. Then, in August, Nelson, Rodney, Victorious, Indomitable, Eagle, and Furious, along with seven light cruisers and 32 destroyers had


been deployed in Operation ‘Pedestal’ to fight a convoy through to Malta; in September, Duke of York, Anson, an escort carrier, four heavy and three light cruisers, and 25 destroyers were massed in the Arctic to fight through PQ 18. Finally, in early November Duke of York, Rodney, Renown, Victorious, Formidable, Furious, four escort carriers, two heavy cruisers, eight light cruisers, and approximately 60 destroyers were committed to support the ‘Torch’ landings in North Africa.156 Such juggling showed just how flexible and formidable a force the Royal Navy still was after more than three years of war. But each time one theatre went on the offensive, other theatres were forced to scale back or suspend operations. And now, everything depended on reinforcements from the United States. Her ships were needed to bolster the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, and active US naval operations in the Pacific were essential in keeping the Far East tenable. The Royal Navy had been, in 1942, a vital, equal partner with the US Navy. However, the inexorable rise in US naval strength portended a radical change in Anglo-American relations, and global maritime power. Britannia’s hour upon the stage as mistress of the seas was drawing to a close.157 While the German naval command was in flux, the British were busy. Convoy JW52, covered by Fraser with Anson, Sheffield, and four destroyers,158 took 15 ships through to Kola Inlet without loss in January 1943. JW53 of 25 ships risked appalling weather in February to get its cargoes to Murmansk. However, convoy RA53 lost four of its 30 ships to U-boats and the weather on its return passage from the Soviet Union in early March.159 The approach of spring, the deployment of Scharnhorst to Norway in mid-March, and the need to reinforce the besieged Atlantic convoys with Home Fleet destroyers led to the suspension of the Arctic convoys after RA53.160 Roosevelt and Stalin were unhappy, but Churchill was adamant, and armed with the latest sinking statistics from the North Atlantic. If supplies could not get to Britain, they could not be transshipped to the USSR. This simple logic carried the day, and the Home Fleet enjoyed a respite from the howling winds and heavy seas of the Arctic run. April brought much patrolling and exercising, but no serious operations. Yet May promised big changes at the Home Fleet, with a new commander taking the reins and the arrival of American reinforcements.

8 The Path to Victory: May 1943–May 1945

Jack Tovey had weathered many a literal and figurative storm in his tenure as C-in-C Home Fleet, but on 8 May, 1943 that all came to an end.1 He hauled down his flag to assume command at The Nore. Tovey had been solid, forthright, and clear thinking. He had beaten the Bismarck, kept his fleet in fighting trim, and wisely warned the Admiralty when he knew the summer convoys to Russia were in jeopardy. Tovey had championed the reallocation of air resources to the Battle of the Atlantic, and left the Home Fleet at a time when those long-range aircraft were belatedly helping to smash the U-boat menace. His wariness had irked Churchill, but he was able to keep the Germans contained and hand on to his successor a fleet possessed of high morale and fighting efficiency.2 The man who replaced him, Bruce Fraser, had been a high-flyer in the Navy from the beginning. He earned an outstanding six First Class certifications on leaving HMS Britannia, and was chosen to attend the coveted Gunnery School HMS Excellent. He served on the powerful new battleships Resolution and Royal Sovereign in World War I, and in 1920 participated in the British Expedition to Russia where he was captured by the Bolsheviks. Ironically, Fraser would spend the better part of World War II working to aid Soviet Russia. Fraser was much ashore in the 1920s and 1930s on staff assignments, but spent two years at sea (1936–1938) as captain of the carrier Glorious. Pound, while still C-in-C Mediterranean, selected Fraser to be his Chief of Staff, and when Pound replaced Backhouse he took Fraser with him to the Admiralty to be Third Sea Lord. Fraser spent the first three and a half years of the war in London before replacing Curteis as VA2. Now, at the age of 55, Fraser could savor the richest reward any naval officer could imagine, command of a great fleet in war.3 134

The Path to Victory 135

On 10 May, 1943, the Home Fleet could muster Duke of York and Anson, the 8-inch gun cruisers Berwick and Suffolk, the 6-inch gun cruisers Belfast, Glasgow, Bermuda, and Jamaica, and 13 destroyers. King George V had been sent south to join Force H, and as was too often the case, no fleet carrier was available: Victorious was in the Pacific supporting the Americans; Formidable was with Force H; Illustrious was refitting; Furious and Indomitable were working up after refits.4 With Anson’s crew due for leave, the Home Fleet’s margin of safety vis-à-vis the Germans was whittling down to nothing. In fact, on assuming command Fraser was very concerned with a German breakout into the Atlantic. But help was on the way. To compensate for units going to the Mediterranean for Operation ‘Husky’, the invasion of Sicily, the modern American battleships South Dakota and Alabama, escorted by five destroyers, joined the Home Fleet on 19 May.5 In late May, Fraser took his Anglo-American force to sea, bringing men and supplies to the weather station on Spitzbergen Island. The Germans made no move to intervene.6 More provocatively, the Home Fleet demonstrated off Norway in early July with Duke of York, South Dakota, Furious (finally, a carrier!), Glasgow, Belfast, Kent, London, Berwick, Norfolk, five American and nine British destroyers. Their mission was to fix German attention on Norway while the invasion of Sicily commenced, but the Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine remained passive and did not take the bait.7 Fraser sailed his fleet to within 150 miles of the coast, but was ignored. It must have been galling. On 1 August, the US battleship Task Force was withdrawn, to be replaced by the small fleet carrier USS Ranger and her attendants: the heavy cruisers Tuscaloosa and Augusta plus five destroyers.8 Ranger had been an unsuccessful experiment of the early 1930s, an attempt to put the largest aircraft complement on a light 14 500-ton standard displacement frame. The result was a poorly protected and not particularly fast ship that could, in theory, carry 72 planes.9 Ranger was not considered suitable for operations in the Pacific, and had spent much of the war in training duties, although she had participated in ‘Torch’. With Britain’s modern fleet carriers tied up in the Mediterranean, beggars could not be choosers. It was not long after the arrival of Ranger that the Home Fleet experienced its only shock that summer. The Germans had decided to do something about the Allied presence on Spitzbergen Island. They planned to bombard the weather station and coal mines while exercising their fleet at sea.10 Tirpitz, Scharnhorst, and 10 fleet destroyers participated in the raid, the most powerful squadron the Germans mustered in the


Second World War. Fraser did not find out about it until the distress call reached Scapa at 0145 on 8 September. He was slow to grasp the size of the raiding force, and lethargic in his response – the Home Fleet did not sail until 1930 that evening.11 Given the relative distances, Fraser’s response is understandable; Altenfjord is considerably closer to Spitzbergen than it is to Scapa, and the Germans were able to return to base long before Fraser could have intercepted them. But what if Tirpitz’s machinery, always prone to playing up and without a proper dockyard overhaul in over a year and a half, had broken down? Greater celerity on Fraser’s part was called for in this instance. Fraser could legitimately complain, however, that much-vaunted Allied Intelligence had let him down. Here, delays and German caution combined to create a dangerous situation for the Home Fleet. A Spitfire photoreconnaissance aircraft based in the Soviet Union had overflown the German anchorage after the Tirpitz and her consorts had sailed, but the pictures arrived in Britain a day late. Uncharacteristically for the Germans, they had maintained strict radio discipline and did not give away the sortie by indulging in unnecessary chatter over the wireless. As Hinsley, the Official Historian of Intelligence, has noted: ‘The episode had illustrated once again that Ultra and PR [photorecon] could not always be relied on to give adequate warning of the movements of main units from the Norwegian bases.’12 The best way to curtail the movements of the German surface forces was to damage or destroy them, but how? They avoided battle and the British had no means of getting at them in their protected bases – but soon, they would. Churchill had never stopped harping on the need to ‘do something’ about the Tirpitz.13 In this, he had been consistent and correct, if not always realistic. Four attacks by RAF Bomber Command aircraft and the strike by Victorious’s Albacores had all yielded no results.14 But in September 1943, a new weapon that Churchill had championed was hastily being readied for action. These were the X-craft, midget submarines 51 feet long, displacing 35 tons, crewed by four volunteers. Each carried in lieu of torpedoes two detachable 2-ton explosive charges.15 The objective was to penetrate the German anchorage, drop the time-delayed charges under Tirpitz and Scharnhorst, and then get out before they exploded. In this, the British wished to emulate the Italian triumph at Alexandria in December 1941, when Italian frogmen placed charges on Queen Elizabeth and Valiant and crippled both. By September, six boats, X-5 through X-10, were operational. The British plan involved conventional submarines towing the X-craft to the area of Altenfjord, at which point they would be released to penetrate the anchorage.16


X-10 was to target Scharnhorst and the rest were to concentrate on Tirpitz. Reconnaissance Spitfires operating from Soviet bases photographed the area on 14 September, and the pictures were rushed to Scotland to be passed on to the X-craft.17 From the first, things did not go well. X-9 sank in transit to Norway. Then, as they sailed up Altenfjord, Scharnhorst left her berth and sailed out for gunnery practice. This left Tirpitz. X-5 was lost in the fjord, perhaps after making an attack against Tirpitz, perhaps before.18 X-8 was damaged and had to be scuttled.19 Mechanical failures abounded, and the crews fought both the Germans and their untried midget subs. X-10 spent the entire day of the attack (22 September) on the bottom trying to fix defects. But X-6 and X-7 got through the anti-torpedo netting and planted their charges under Tirpitz. At one point, X-6 actually popped to the surface so close to Tirpitz that none of the behemoth’s guns could be depressed low enough to train on her!20 The Germans resorted to small arms and hand grenades. Tirpitz’s captain ordered all watertight doors closed and for a tug to come alongside and pull his ship out of her moorings, but it was too late. The explosion of at least three charges lifted the ship right out of the water; the whip and crash severed bolts, smashed bearings, and wrecked electrical and optical equipment. One 15-inch turret was rendered useless, two more were non-operational, and the port rudder and main rudder shaft damaged.21 X-10 slipped out of Altenfjord after hearing the explosions. X-6 and X-7 were damaged and scuttled. Their commanding officers were captured – both received the Victoria Cross for a daring job well done. British Intelligence quickly ascertained that surprise had been complete and Tirpitz damaged. Although no details of the actual hurt inflicted were ascertained, German radio traffic revealed that the repairs would take until mid-March 1944. In October it was learned that her whole ship’s company was being given leave in three shifts starting on 1 November.22 Therefore, Tirpitz could be written out of the global naval equation for at least four months. Despite serious technical teething troubles, the X-craft had proved their worth and, combined with old-fashioned Royal Navy courage, won a significant victory. The period following the X-craft attack allowed the gradual freeing of British strategy to pursue a more active policy. Fraser saw this as having two main components: raiding German assets in Norway and resuming the convoys to north Russia.23 His first priority after Tirpitz had been damaged was to hit German coastal shipping in Norway, and his primary instrument was to be carrier air power in the form of the USS Ranger.


On 2 October, Fraser took Duke of York (flagship), Anson, Ranger, Tuscalooosa, Belfast and a destroyer screen to sea. Target: Bodo, Norway.24 Ranger’s well-balanced Air Group 4 consisted of 10 Avenger torpedobombers, 24 Dauntless dive-bombers, and 27 Wildcat fighters.25 An initial wave of 20 Dauntlesses and eight Wildcats swept in on 4 October. Visibility was unlimited, with only one-tenth cloudcover, so the planes came in low at 50–100 feet to avoid detection. They encountered no Luftwaffe opposition.26 A second wave of 10 Avengers, carrying bombs instead of torpedoes, and covered by six Wildcats followed up looking for targets of opportunity.27 As the American Task Force commander, Rear Admiral O. M. Hustvedt, wrote back to Washington the amount of shipping encountered was ‘far above the average expected’.28 All told, the American planes sank five German ships of 20 753 tons.29 The cost was three aircraft lost to anti-aircraft fire.30 Hustvedt wrote home ‘the results are regarded by British naval authorities as being highly successful’.31 And so they were. But it would be a fleeting success, for Admiral King wanted his carrier back, if only to act as a training vessel. Ranger never went to the Pacific or saw active service again. Just as the Home Fleet was gearing up for a renewed round of Arctic convoys, the last of the American ships left Scapa on 22 November, 1943.32 King summed up his attitude in a letter to Admiral Stark: ‘I think we have done enough for them in the HF!’33 The Royal Navy sailors and Allied merchant marine crews who plied the treacherous Arctic waters may not have been quite so sure that Admiral King had, in fact, ‘done enough’. A few comments comparing the raid on Petsamo and Kirkenes with the Bodo raid are in order. The greatest difference was not to be found on the Allied side, but the German. By 1943, the demands of other fronts had denuded the Luftwaffe in Norway and robbed it of any offensive or defensive capabilities. The fighters that had devastated Furious and Victorious’s Albacores were no longer a threat to Ranger’s strike force. This gave the Americans a huge advantage. Nevertheless, their Wildcats, Dauntlesses, and Avengers were better aircraft than the Albacore and Fulmar, and their use of bombs rather than torpedoes gave them greater flexibility in their attacks. Much had changed between 1941 and 1943. It would remain to be seen if the Fleet Air Arm had come as far as the Americans had. After the Bodo raid, the Home Fleet was largely taken up with preparations for the resumption of Arctic convoys, the second part of Fraser’s two-pronged offensive strategy. In November, convoys resumed. Outbound JW54A and JW54B, and two inbound convoys, RA54A and RA54B, were passed through the Barents Sea without loss.34 German


fortunes were waning. Lutzow had already been withdrawn to the Baltic in September after Tirpitz was mined.35 Alerted to her departure by a spy and Ultra decrypts, Coastal Command torpedo bombers were dispatched to intercept and sink her, but failed to find the target. The force was too small and inter-service cooperation poor. Fraser blamed the airmen and much acrimony was generated.36 Even at this late date in the war the lack of a large, integrated naval air force was hurting the British war effort, and the collegial ‘COS model’ of independent theatre service commanders was being shown up as inferior to the ‘Supreme Commander’ model more popular with the Americans. But what had been a German fleet was now barely a squadron. At this time, too, Ranger and the rest of Task Force 121 withdrew from the European theatre, ending the important, though very limited, participation by the US Navy in Home Fleet operations.37 They had come to help ‘hold the line’, largely in the inactive summer months of 1942–43 when convoys to north Russia were not running. These US Navy Task Forces had, however, proved an excellent insurance policy against a German breakout, released British ships for leave, refits, and other theatres, and enjoyed an excellent training ground for new American ships and untested American men. American ships did not get a real opportunity to show their full capabilities, and departed just a little over a month before the last major surface engagement of the European war, the Battle of North Cape. After the convoy cycle resumed, Fraser became more and more certain that the Germans would eventually use Scharnhorst against one of them. He went so far as to take Duke of York through to Kola Inlet in midDecember, but the Germans remained inert. By the time JW55B sailed on 20 December, Fraser was sure that Scharnhorst would soon come out. To understand this belief, and the events leading up to the Battle of North Cape, it would be wise to first examine the Intelligence picture that both sides were developing from 22 December. Fraser knew from German air reconnaissance operations, destroyer sweeps, and Ultra decrypts that they aimed to hit a convoy.38 Doenitz had, in fact, gained Hitler’s permission to do so.39 On 22 December, Luftwaffe reconnaissance had sighted JW55B. Fraser was informed by the OIC on the 23rd that U-boats had been ordered to close the convoy. By then, Fraser had left Iceland with his own Force 1 (Duke of York, Jamaica, and four destroyers) and was on his way to the area south of Bear Island. Force 2 under Vice Admiral Burnett (Norfolk, Belfast, Sheffield) had covered JW55A and was now doubling back to cover JW55B. The Germans surmised that powerful units of the Home Fleet


were out. They were even detected by D/F when Fraser broke radio silence to warn the convoy to change course northwards and prepare for possible attack; a German reconnaissance plane actually picked up Fraser’s force on surface-search radar, but the information seems to have not propagated widely through the German organization, was misinterpreted, or ignored. Like Raeder before the Bismarck sortie, Doenitz was determined to get his ships into action regardless. Fraser knew that Luftwaffe planes and U-boats had spotted JW55B again on the 24th and 25th, so he increased speed to take up an intercept position south of the convoy along Scharnhorst’s predicted line of retreat. But much German signal traffic at this time was in the special ‘Barracuda’ cypher and unreadable by the cryptanalysts at Bletchley Park. Fraser was forced to extrapolate and intuit – Ultra did not hand him Scharnhorst on a silver platter. Responsibility for German operations fell on the shoulders of the newly appointed Fleet Commander, Rear Admiral Bey.40 He had commanded German destroyers in Norway, and had captained a destroyer at Narvik in 1940. With Tirpitz still out of action, Bey’s fleet consisted of Scharnhorst and five big 5.9-inch gunned destroyers. Doenitz and Schneiwind, Commander of Group North, had let Bey know that they anticipated action and expected him to fight. His orders of 1925 on 25 December stated: ‘Scharnhorst and destroyers are to attack the convoy . . . [emphasis in original] use your own judgement regarding when action should be broken off. Disengage if heavy units are encountered.’41 Bey therefore had strict orders to attack the convoy but avoid powerful enemy units. How he could fulfill such a mission in late 1943 is anyone’s guess. He seems to have been keenly aware of his own lack of experience with capital ships, and his performance as Fleet Commander is at times difficult to fathom. However, late on Christmas Day, Bey was steaming north from Altenfjord into a force 8 gale and had put himself in an excellent position to intercept JW55B. At 0700 on 26 December, Boxing Day to the British, Bey ordered his destroyers to form a reconnaissance screen 10 miles out ahead of Scharnhorst to increase the chance of locating his prey. This was logical, but it assumed that the formation would keep to the same course – it did not. For reasons unknown, Bey in Scharnhorst ordered his flagship to shift course. He had hit upon an inspired notion of where the convoy would be, and his course change put him exactly on track to pounce on JW55B. But Bey’s destroyers were out of visual communication range and, given the weather conditions, Scharnhorst could not be seen from any German destroyer. With strictest instructions to maintain radio silence,


Bey could only hope that his destroyers might guess his intentions and follow. They didn’t. In fact, they would play no more part in the story and return to base later that afternoon, empty handed. Bey was on his own.42 Meanwhile, Fraser and Burnett were heading towards JW55B43 and an anticipated rendezvous with Scharnhorst. At 0217 on the 26th, the OIC had alerted Fraser: ‘Emergency: Scharnhorst probably sailed 1800 25 December.’44 The much-desired surface action was at hand, and if Scharnhorst played her part, and Fraser hurried, he would be there to win it. By 0400 on the 26th Burnett was 150 miles east of JW55B and sailing to intercept after dawn. Fraser was 210 miles southwest of the convoy and headed for it at 24 knots.45 Bey was between the two forces and south of the convoy. The Germans were actually closer to it than Burnett was. But Force 1 just barely, and a bit luckily, found itself in the right place at the right time as Scharnhorst bore in on the convoy. Burnett had positioned himself correctly just in the nick of time. Fraser learned conclusively that Scharnhorst was out, and where she was, the old fashioned way, when his cruisers made contact and radioed their report. At 0840, Belfast picked up Scharnhorst on her radar, range 35 000 yards. Burnett immediately steered towards the enemy. At 0921, Sheffield announced ‘Enemy in sight,’ and four minutes later battle was opened. Norfolk hit Scharnhorst’s bridge area with her second or third salvo. Bey turned south, putting on a burst of speed as he disengaged. Burnett’s cruisers were able to make at best 24 knots in such heavy seas, so he chose to stay with the convoy and not try to pursue. Fraser sent orders to Burnett to hunt for Scharnhorst, fearing that she might now slip out of his trap. But Burnett wisely stayed put. He anticipated that Bey would come to him.46 Bey too, had orders, and after the Barents Sea debacle he could hardly now just turn tail and run home. So at 1204, he was back. After 20 minutes, Bey was again driven off, although he had managed to pay back Norfolk with an 11-inch hit aft that caused serious damage.47 Burnett had been joined by the destroyers Musketeer, Matchless, Opportune, and Virago, and he had worked his entire force to within torpedo range of Scharnhorst, so Bey beat a hasty retreat. This time Force 1 pursued. Scharnhorst sailed south, right on course to be delivered onto the guns of Force 2.48 Fraser now had only to hold his course and wait. Before action, each man on Duke of York received his Boxing Day pork chop.49 Fraser had worked out his tactical plan long in advance. His intention was to close the enemy until the range was reduced to about 12 000 yards, then fire


star shells from his 5.25-inch secondary battery to illuminate the target. Jamaica was to stay close, but her captain was given leeway to manoeuver independently if she came under fire. Lastly, Fraser intended to divide his four destroyers into two sections with orders to pull out ahead and be ready to deliver a torpedo attack.50 Duke of York’s Type 273 surfacesearch radar detected Scharnhorst at an astonishing 45 500 yards. Fraser immediately set his plan in motion. At 25 800 yards Duke of York switched on her Type 284 gunnery radar and continued to close. When the range was down to 11 950 yards Fraser ordered star shells to be fired, and then a full 10-gun broadside. It was 1651.51 Bey’s ship was caught completely unawares and was straddled and hit by the first British salvo. It is likely that in the earlier encounter Norfolk’s 8-inch shell hit had damaged or destroyed Scharnhorst’s radar and, given the terrible weather conditions, she never saw her assailant. Nonetheless, Bey responded quickly with a turn to the east, a burst of speed, and a smokescreen.52 Duke of York was slow to respond, and Scharnhorst’s superior speed began to tell. Fraser was paralleling Bey to the south-southwest, but could engage only with his forward turrets. Ominously, breakdowns in Duke of York’s 14-inch armament began to crop up.53 Fraser could see occasional flashes from Scharnhorst’s guns, but his ship and the cruisers were largely firing blind using radar direction. Bey, meanwhile, was alternately opening ‘A’ arcs by turning south, then immediately steering east to get away.54 This prevented the British from taking undisturbed pot shots at him (Duke of York was straddled many times) while pulling Bey out from between Force 1 and Force 2. It might just have worked. Fraser was falling behind the faster German vessel and could not get his destroyers far enough in front to deliver a torpedo attack that might slow the Scharnhorst down. Fraser even contemplated breaking off the action as hopeless. But Scharnhorst was taking brutal punishment at the hands of Duke of York, and around 1820 a hit destroyed the battlecruiser’s starboard No. 1 boiler room.55 As she slowed, every British ship within range poured on a murderous fire. The destroyers Savage, Saumarez, Scorpion, and the Norwegian-manned Stord launched 28 torpedoes at 1855, probably scoring three hits.56 Scharnhorst was done for. At 1919, Fraser ordered Jamaica, then Belfast, to close and finish her off with torpedoes.57 Scharnhorst was completely shrouded in smoke by this time, and night had long ago descended. At 1945, a huge explosion was heard on the British ships – Scharnhorst was gone.58 Thirty-six German survivors were plucked from the freezing water out of a crew of 1968 officers and men.59 The Battle of North Cape had ended in a complete British victory.


It had been a nail-biter. When the chips were down, Bey had not frozen or wavered and had almost extricated his ship from Fraser’s trap. On the other hand, Fraser knew what he wanted to do and stuck to it, like Montgomery at Alam Halfa. Ironically, speed, that bogey of the battlecruiser detractors, had nearly proved decisive. If not for a late, unlucky hit Scharnhorst may have turned a 2 or 3 knot advantage into a means to salvation. The other senior commander present, Burnett, had, after initial difficulties, won his commander’s praise: ‘the resolute attacks by Force 1 to drive off the enemy undoubtedly saved the convoy and their subsequent shadowing was invaluable to me in my approach’.60 Fraser was lauded. On 5 January, he was informed that King George VI, with whom he had served as a young naval officer before the Great War, had awarded him the Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath.61 The Soviets awarded Fraser the Order of Suvorov First Class, which included the perquisite that he would not have to pay for any tram rides within the USSR!62 British radar and gunnery had been good, British nerves up to the strain, but Scharnhorst had proven as resistant to sinking as Bismarck, although she had not managed to land a single hit on Duke of York in over an hour of shooting. It had not been a lopsided mismatch like Second Guadalcanal or Surigao Strait, but Bey was behind the eight ball from the start, with inadequate Intelligence, an unenterprising destroyer force, and a much more powerful enemy surface fleet to contend with. Bey had not been brilliant, but he was far from inept. Like many a brave, unlucky, and overmatched commander before him, he met an honourable death on his sunken flagship. The men at Barents Sea had been disgraced – he had only been defeated. With Scharnhorst gone and Tirpitz crippled, the convoys could continue apace. JW56A and B, JW57, JW58, and JW59 made the run to the Soviet Union that winter and early spring.63 Although the U-boats were still putting up fierce resistance, including the deployment of the new Gnat acoustic homing torpedo, the results were swinging towards the defenders. By 30 April, 1944, units of the Home Fleet were able to take a big convoy, RA 59 of 45 merchant ships, through a powerful wolf pack and lose only one ship. Plenty of ASW escorts were now available for each convoy, and two escort carriers protected RA 59.64 However, Tirpitz still had to be eliminated. It was decided to employ a large carrier task force to hit Tirpitz and perhaps deal her a fatal blow. Fraser was not sanguine about the idea. He believed that a combination of bad weather, German defensive measures, and the fact that Altenfjord was too shallow for torpedoes militated against success.


He informed the Admiralty (now under Sir Andrew Cunningham, who had replaced the dying Pound in October 1943) that it was ‘practically impossible’ to sink Tirpitz with the size bombs carrier aircraft could carry. Additionally, the strike force envisioned was not overly impressive – 42 of the shambling new Barracuda torpedo/divebombers.65 The British firmly believed that the fleet and the strike force needed generous fighter protection, so much of the limited hangar and deck space was crammed with fighters.66 The Royal Navy was failing to think big here,67 to follow the age-old dictum of concentration of force against the principal point of attack, in other words Tirpitz. Fraser really doesn’t seem to have believed it could be done, and did not exert every effort to insure that all possible force was employed to guarantee the strike, Operation ‘Tungsten’, the best chance of success. For whatever reason, Fraser left the planning and tactical control of ‘Tungsten’ to his VA2, Henry Moore.68 This was very odd, and perhaps improper, as Fraser had experience commanding an aircraft carrier (Glorious in the late 1930s) and had sailed as an observer with the carriers during ‘Pedestal’, while Moore had no such firsthand knowledge of carrier operations. But it betokens much about Fraser’s attitude towards the mission. The British were to use the sailing of JW58 as a decoy to draw German attention north – the Home Fleet would sail in the convoy’s wake.69 Signals Intelligence confirmed that the Tirpitz was working up from repairs necessitated by the X-craft attack, but was still in Altenfjord on 31 March.70 On 1 April, Fraser and Moore were at sea, and promising weather reports induced Fraser to push forward the timetable for the attack.71 The whole Home Fleet rendezvoused on 2 April. It was divided into three groups. Fraser, with Duke of York and the destroyers Matchless and Marne sailed to a covering position 200 miles north of the flying-off point just in case Tirpitz had left Altenfjord undetected. Moore was in command of the two remaining groups: Force 7 of Anson, Victorious, Furious, Jamaica, Belfast, and six destroyers; Force 8 (Rear Admiral Bisset) of the light cruisers Royalist and Sheffield, the escort carriers Emperor, Searcher, Fencer, and Pursuer, and six destroyers.72 All 42 embarked Barracuda strike aircraft were on Victorious and Furious. The escort carriers had fighters, fighter-bombers, and ASW aircraft aboard. The first strike began flying off at 0415 on the 3rd and consisted of 22 Barracudas and 20 American-built Corsair fighter-bombers escorted by Hellcat and Wildcat fighters. The plan was to use a combination of 1600-pound armour piercing (AP) bombs to disable or sink Tirpitz, plus 500-pound semi-armour piercing bombs (SAP) and 500-pound


impact-detonated Torpex bombs to inflict topside damage and suppress anti-aircraft fire. Critically, only 10 Barracudas carried 1600-pound bombs.73 The German defences included radar, shore and sea-based anti-aircraft guns, and huge smoke generators intended to obscure the target, but no fighters. The German response was slow, and as the British Staff Battle Summary states ‘the enemy had been caught napping.’74 Enthusiastic Barracuda crews went into their dives as the smoke started to spread from the generators. They pressed their attacks bravely, too bravely in fact, releasing their bombs so low (600–1200 feet) that the bombs had insufficient time to accelerate and pick up momentum.75 The strike leader, Lt Commander R. Baker-Faulkner, later reported that Tirpitz was initially clear of smoke, and that the attack lasted perhaps 60 seconds.76 Hits were repeatedly witnessed. A second strike of 19 Barracudas and 45 fighters had taken off at 0525, and its pilots too believed that they had scored multiple hits but, by the time of their arrival, Tirpitz was shrouded in smoke.77 Moore kept nine Swordfish ASW aircraft and 25 fighters back to protect his fleet, but no German response materialized.78 Losses had been minor – one Barracuda crashed after take-off, two had been lost to enemy action, one Hellcat had been forced to ditch, and one Corsair had been badly damaged in a landing accident.79 Fleet Air Arm aircraft had delivered 14 hits on Tirpitz, two or three of them with 1600-pound bombs, but none had penetrated the ship’s main armoured deck.80 However, enough damage had been done to put Tirpitz out of action for three months.81 Moore believed even greater damage had been inflicted. Pilot debriefings and photos taken during the mission indicated many hits scored and great damage done. Rear Admiral Bisset signalled Moore that ‘I believe Tirpitz now to be useless as a warship’.82 Since it was soon clear that the first strike had been more effective than had the second, and that the Germans were now fully alerted to his presence, Moore, like Nagumo at Pearl Harbor, decided to cancel further operations and leave the area. Moore knew that most of his aircrews ‘were having their first experience of enemy action’.83 Like most new men, they were very likely to have given it their best go on the first try. It seemed prudent to withdraw. Fraser backed his VA2. He explained to Cunningham that the weather did not look favourable for continued operations, Furious could not loiter for lack of fuel, bombs were unlikely to finish the job, and an alerted enemy would make additional attacks more costly and less likely to succeed.84 This was a reasonable assessment. The First Sea Lord did not see it that way: ‘No sooner had Duke of York returned to the


telephone buoy in Scapa Flow than Cunningham was on the line to Fraser, demanding a second attack.’85 Fraser demurred, and a row ensued. Fraser eventually was forced to comply, but the bad weather he expected descended on Moore (again leading the carriers) and the strike was cancelled.86 Cunningham, a brilliant commander in so many ways, can be faulted here for two mistakes: (1) ‘backseat driving,’ which he hated in Pound and now indulged in with Fraser; (2) giving tactical orders about air strikes, which he did not understand intimately, in a theatre he did not know at all. Carrier air strikes depend on the weather, and weather conditions can only be gauged by the man on the spot. Worse still, Cunningham did not know the Arctic, and Arctic weather conditions are often bad and always unpredictable. Altenfjord was not Taranto. Despite the excellent coordination and typical bravery of the Fleet Air Arm pilots, one is left with the impression that the tactics and forces employed during ‘Tungsten’ were faulty. Most obviously, all the Barracudas should have been armed with 1600-pound AP bombs. It would also have been wise to have them maintain level flight high enough so that their bombs would have had a good chance of penetrating Tirpitz’s vitals. Japanese Kate torpedo-bombers, carrying 1600-pound AP bombs, dropped them from level flight during the Pearl Harbor raid and scored a tremendous success when one penetrated the forward magazine of the USS Arizona and sunk the ship.87 The mix of bomb sizes used by the British obscured what should have been the primary focus of ‘Tungsten’ – destroying Tirpitz. This lack of focus on decisive results went right back to the planning stage. As we have seen, from the first Fraser lacked confidence in the mission and did not do all in his power to further its chances for success. Although that February Illustrious was working up with 21 Barracudas aboard, he did not insist that she be included in his strike force. Twentyfour Avengers of 846 and 848 Squadrons were operational, but Fraser refused to use them because he and Moore were fixated on dive-bombing.88 Logically, Illustrious should have been delayed in her departure for the Indian Ocean, and all the Avengers embarked on the carriers to maximize the probability of annihilating Tirpitz. But Fraser and Moore settled for half-measures. And if the number of strike aircraft employed was too small to optimize the likely result, the number of fighters present was too large. The ratio of 42 strike aircraft to 106 fighters envisioned from the inception of the plan was excessive and overly defensive, given likely Luftwaffe resistance.89 The FAA had a front-line strength of 513 fighters


and 479 bombers in April 1944.90 As Heinz Guderian is said to have told his panzer commanders in 1940: ‘don’t use driblets, use masses’. More strike aircraft should have been found for ‘Tungsten’. The decision to suspend the attacks after the second strike on 3 April is another matter, and here the author believes that the men on the spot should be given the benefit of the doubt. Initial information from aircrews and photoreconnaissance indicated that Tirpitz had been badly hurt. She was certainly not now likely to pose even a diversionary threat to the D-Day landings. Bisset, Moore, and Fraser were all agreed that given stiffening German defences (fighters, not in present on the 3rd, could easily be rushed into position by the 4th), the success already achieved, worsening weather, and the state of the aircrews, it was best to withdraw. The problem was not in the decision to return to Scapa, but in the decision not to mass all available offensive assets for ‘Tungsten.’ Here, the blame can be spread around, to Fraser, Moore, and Cunningham. Cunningham had final say on the deployment of British warships. All three men should have grasped the need, given FAA weaknesses and handicaps, to have as many strike aircraft over Tirpitz on the first go as could be found. The British still, in the spring of 1944, had not developed a theory and practice of carrier operations built around massed formations delivering knockout blows.91 The result of the indecisive attack on Tirpitz was a continuation of the carrier strikes well into the summer. Any economy of force envisioned in the initial plan was lost because the Home Fleet had to return time and again to try and sink the Tirpitz. But Fraser was not going to be around to see the process through. With the Intelligence picture still murky, and the D-Day landings approaching, Admiral of the Fleet Sir Andrew Cunningham ordered up additional raids to neutralize Tirpitz. Fraser and Cunningham had disagreed over this. A possible source of the tension between the two men may have had its roots in Churchill’s offer of the First Sea Lord’s chair to Fraser, who turned it down in favour of the more senior and better known Cunningham.92 This may have made it difficult for Fraser to accept Cunningham’s blunt orders. Cunningham had not been pleased with Moore’s decision to cancel follow-up attacks after ‘Tungsten’. When Fraser finally conceded, Moore took the Home Fleet to Norway on 21 April, but bad weather forced the cancellation of ‘Tungsten’ redux, Operation ‘Planet’. The Home Fleet was back at sea for another carrier strike in late May, Operation ‘Tigerclaw’, but this too was aborted due to the weather.93 The needs of the Normandy invasion forestalled further operations against Tirpitz for over a month. When they resumed,


Fraser would be on his way East to take command of the British Pacific Fleet. The revived carrier operations were to be the responsibility of the new C-in-C Home Fleet, Vice Admiral Henry Moore. Henry Ruthven Moore’s father, like Fraser’s, was an army officer.94 Born in Dublin in 1886, Moore was at Jutland, but in the 1920s his career path veered towards staff work. He attended both the Naval Staff College and the Imperial Defence College before serving short stints as captain of the light cruisers Caradoc and Dauntless between 1928 and 1930. Moore went on to be Deputy Director, then Director of the Plans Division at the Admiralty, but he was back at sea again in 1934–35 commanding the new light cruiser Neptune. He then became Chief of Staff to Backhouse while he was C-in-C Home Fleet from 1936–38, and then made a sideways step to be Lord Cork’s Chief of Staff at Portsmouth in 1938–39. War found Moore in command of the 3rd Cruiser Squadron in the Mediterranean, but he was quickly plucked from that assignment by Pound to serve at the Admiralty. In 1941, Moore replaced Tom Phillips as VCNS, a post he held until Fraser took him to be his VA2. Now, with the end of the war in Europe coming dimly into focus, Moore assumed command of the Home Fleet on 14 June, 1944. The Home Fleet was back at Tirpitz in July. On Bastille Day, Moore set sail from Scapa with a carrier strike force of Formidable, Furious, and the new fleet carrier Indefatigable (32 000 tons, 32 knots, 60 aircraft). The carriers were under the tactical command of Rear Admiral R. R. McGrigor, a fast comer in the Navy and future First Sea Lord. Screening the carriers were Duke of York, Kent, Devonshire, Jamaica, Bellona, and 12 destroyers.95 The raid was codenamed Operation ‘Mascot.’ The strike went in on 17 July and found Tirpitz alerted and shrouded in smoke, and the planes scored no hits. Moore summed up not only ‘Mascot’ but the whole effort to use carrier planes to sink Tirpitz when he wrote: ‘The strike has to pass over 50 miles of land before reaching the target . . . so timely and effective smoke screening is only to be expected, and the enemy has ample time to discover the strength of the attacking force.’96 A second strike was fuelled, armed, and ready to go that day, but the sudden appearance of dense fog led to its cancellation.97 The Home Fleet returned to Scapa. Frustrated, Moore saw these operations as increasingly futile, but Cunningham was no more interested in hearing complaints from Moore than he had been from the more senior and well-connected Fraser. He ordered Moore to try again, to hold position off Norway for several days in order to exhaust the smoke generators and swamp the target. Dutifully, Moore assembled the Home Fleet for Operation ‘Goodwood’.98


The Home Fleet did hold station off Norway from 24 August to 29 September, delivering four large raids with its carrier airwings. The German defences did not ‘evaporate’, and the weather did not cooperate (‘alternate fogs and gales’). Losses were not inconsequential:99 Aircraft Barracudas Corsairs Hellcats Fireflies Seafires

Sorties

Losses

92 65 34 41 15

1 5 3 1 1

Given their inability to land a telling blow, the fact that Furious was due to pay off, and the needs of the nascent British Pacific Fleet, it was decided to suspend the carrier raids on Tirpitz. She was left to the RAF, who scored a crippling hit on her with a 12 000-pound bomb on 15 September. Tirpitz’s end was drawing near. Despite the suspension of carrier raids on Tirpitz, the British remained very much committed to taking the war to the Germans in Norway. But the means to that end were not available. And they still worried about Tirpitz. For a brief moment, it appeared that the British need not fear, for the German battleship seemed determined to deliver herself into their hands. On 15 October, she limped out of Altenfjord, barely able to maintain a few knots speed, heading south. The Admiralty was stunned. Moore did not even have a battleship at Scapa, so King George V, finishing a refit at Plymouth before going to the Pacific, raced north. Indefatigable’s sister-ship Implacable, working up at Scapa before she too headed East, got underway, but Tirpitz pulled into Tromso – she was to serve as a moored battery to defend the base there.100 After careful planning, 31 Lancaster bombers of 9 and 617 Squadrons, each carrying a 12 000-pound bomb, took off from Scotland to destroy the great ship. Twenty-eight planes actually dropped their bombs (one had suffered damage and landed in Sweden, two arrived late and did not bother). The sky was clear and sunny. Three bombs hit the target; Tirpitz turned turtle but, since she was anchored in shallow water, her bottom still showed as she settled. No fighters had risen in defence, and no smoke screen had covered her. Tirpitz and over 1000 of her crew died that day, 12 November 1944.101 With the sinking of the Tirpitz the raison d’être of the Home Fleet was no more. Although convoys still had to be protected from the few German destroyers left in Norway, and raids on the Norwegian coast


were contemplated, the great responsibility of the Home Fleet to hold the line had been discharged. By late December, its once proud ranks were reduced to the aging Rodney and three 8-inch gun cruisers.102 The venerable Furious, which despite her modest size and mediocre design ran up a distinguished record of service in World War II, was paid off on 12 October.103 As the war drew to a close, the Home Fleet of Forbes, Tovey, and Fraser was no more. The business of finishing up the war against Germany continued. Nineteen forty-four saw the full fruition of the convoy system to north Russia. The Home Fleet and Western Approaches worked in tandem, and now had the numbers and types of ships needed to beat the U-boats. The opposition was weakening, his experienced captains and crews now mostly dead, and his new technological innovations like the schnorkel and the Type XXI U-boat appeared too late to turn the tide, whereas the men, weapons, and tactics on the British side had been honed to a sharp edge. For example, three escort carriers, one cruiser and 24 escorts screened JW61 of 29 merchant ships. No less than 159 ships sailed to Russia in the second half of 1944, and every one of them arrived safely; 100 ships set sail for Britain, and only two were lost. Despite the best efforts of Admiral Doenitz, who was concentrating much of his remaining U-boat strength in Norway, the convoys kept getting through, speeding the Red Army’s advance and hastening the end of the Third Reich.104 Slowly, the British tightened the screws on the Germans in Norway. A mine-laying campaign, aimed at both surface ships and U-boats, was instituted.105 The Home Fleet went even further in discomfiting the Germans when Rear Admiral McGrigor took Kent, Bellona, and four destroyers into Norwegian coastal waters in November to troll for merchant ships, sinking several in the process.106 McGrigor returned with Norfolk, Bellona, and three destroyers in January, but encountered no enemy vessels.107 The Home Fleet’s last surface action came on the night of 27/28 January, 1945 when Rear Admiral Dalrymple-Hamilton (late of the Rodney) took Diadem and Mauritius into coastal waters in an attempt to intercept the last three operational German destroyers in Norway as they fled towards the Baltic.108 What was left of the German Navy and merchant marine was being organized to evacuate civilians and trapped soldiers from areas cut off by the advancing Soviets. The Kriegsmarine would perform Herculean tasks trying to spare German civilians in the East from Red Army revenge. Anything that could float was being impressed to sealift ethnic Germans from East Prussia and the Baltic States. So when Dalrymple-Hamilton made contact, the Germans


were in no mood to fight and used their superior speed to open the range and get away. As the weather improved, the British switched from surface interdiction to carrier air strikes. Now a Vice Admiral, Dalrymple-Hamilton with Dido (flagship), four destroyers, and the escort carriers Puncher and Premiere flew missions against coastal shipping and targets of opportunity from 21 February to 23 February.109 From 24 March to 29 March, McGrigor, also now a Vice Admiral, got his turn at bat with the carriers: Puncher, Nairana, and Queen, with the cruisers Dido, Bellona, and six destroyers struck targets between Trondheim and Kristiansund, returning in daylight to areas ceded to the Germans back in 1940.110 The Home Fleet’s war was coming full circle. Attempts in April to bomb the German submarine bases in Norway were thwarted by bad weather, but McGrigor returned in May. As the second and last German Fuehrer, Admiral Doenitz, contemplated ordering his shattered armed forces to lay down their weapons, McGrigor’s carrier planes from Searcher, Trumpeter, and Queen struck at the submarine depot at Kilbotn.111 The fighting mercifully came to an end on 8 May. Although Home Fleet ships would remain busy accepting German surrenders, clearing ports, sweeping mines, and rushing supplies to hungry civilians in Norway and Denmark, the war in Europe was over.

Conclusion

History is a very human endeavour. In it, we find ourselves, as in life, returning to certain events in a quest for meaning, understanding, and lessons. We want to know why things happened the way they did, search for alternatives, and, too often, ascribe blame. In my introduction, I ask two questions: What role did the Royal Navy’s Home Fleet play in Allied strategy? How well did the Home Fleet carry out the missions assigned to it within the framework of that strategy? Now, after surveying almost six years of Home Fleet operations and the context in which they took place, we can summarize our answers, and evaluate the performance of the Home Fleet’s ships and men. The fundamental roles assigned to the Home Fleet were to: 1 Protect the British Isles from invasion; 2 Keep the German surface fleet from contributing to the Battle of the Atlantic; 3 Deny Germany access to overseas trade; 4 Maintain the flow of supplies to the Soviet Union’s northern ports. The first role, that of guardian of the Narrow Seas, was well within the power of the Royal Navy in general, and the Home Fleet in particular. Unless Fighter Command was destroyed, the Home Fleet could interdict any invasion force or follow-up echelons by day or night, and could even control the Channel by night if the RAF was defeated. At no time in the war were the waters surrounding Britain out of effective British control. The ultimate guarantor of that control was the Home Fleet. This most vital Home Fleet mission was accomplished through numerical superiority and the persistent exercise of sea control by constant and aggressive patrolling – the Home Fleet spent as little time as possible 152

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swinging at anchor, and a great deal of time at sea. This hardened the men, exposed weaknesses in the equipment and, juxtaposed against the enervating effects of German inaction, seems to have fortified morale. A fleet controls the sea by sailing on it. The Germans might appear upon the sea, but the Home Fleet to a great extent lived there. The second major responsibility of the Home Fleet was to keep the German surface fleet out of the Atlantic. This mission was critical. The Home Fleet could not win the war with its guns, planes, and torpedoes, but like the Grand Fleet in World War I, its failure could go a long way toward losing it. The Home Fleet could facilitate victory by neutralizing the German surface fleet, thereby contributing to the safe and timely arrival of merchant ships in European waters. Western Approaches’ sloops and corvettes could not do their job if the Home Fleet failed to cover them. As Sir Julian Corbett has written: ‘The true function of the battle-fleet is to protect and flotilla [craft] at their special work.’1 In this, the Home Fleet’s record is much spottier than in its defence of Britain proper. From September 1939 to the sinking of the Bismarck, the Home Fleet was rarely capable of preventing German hit-and-run raids into the Atlantic. This was not for want of trying. It was largely due to a dearth of modern cruisers and aircraft to patrol the vast expanse of the north Atlantic, and a lack of timely Intelligence. The storms and fog endemic to the area also did not help. But one key Home Fleet deficiency exacerbated the situation tremendously – her capital ships. The circumstances that led to the Royal Navy going to war without sufficient numbers of modern or modernized warships have been discussed in Chapters 1 and 2. Suffice to say that economic hardships brought on by what Britons call the Slump, indecision, a revulsion against war engendered by the experience of the Western Front, and an attempt to use arms control to ‘manage’ the emerging arms race of the 1930s, all conspired against the Home Fleet. Early in the war, the Home Fleet was hobbled by the ‘R’ class battleships and throughout the war had to accommodate the 23-knot Nelson and Rodney. None of these ships could hope to catch any German vessel of heavy cruiser size or bigger. The Home Fleet was cast in the role of the hunter, and suffered because her prey were always faster. Despite their bad reputation among historians, the Home Fleet would have been better served, at least until 1942, by a few more battlecruisers. The introduction of the ‘King George V’ class helped improve the speed of the Home Fleet, but their endurance left much to be desired. Bismarck could sail 8000 miles at 19 knots; the USS Washington could steam an astonishing 17 450 miles at 15 knots, while the ‘King George V’ class, with their limited fuel bunkerage and

154 Conclusion

inefficient engines could manage only 6000 miles at their most economical speed of 14 knots. This, combined with the failure to adopt refuelling at sea until well into the war, handicapped Home Fleet operations immensely. As for those other capital ships, the aircraft carriers, the story was one of even greater deficiency. A proper carrier force would have proved invaluable, but the Home Fleet rarely had a proper carrier force. The Home Fleet needed two fleet carriers at all times, yet often had one or none. The lack of carriers was bad enough, but the limited number of obsolescent aircraft they carried made matters worse. As Stephen Roskill said: Looking back to-day the most astonishing thing about British naval aviation in the last war is not that it occasionally failed to meet the heavy demands made on it, but that the carriers and their aircrews accomplished so much with the inadequate types of aircraft they had to use.2 Brave, eager, and even skilful pilots were not enough. The Royal Navy needed a balanced force of fighter and strike aircraft in numbers sufficient to scour the seas and neutralize defended targets on the European mainland. This was never fully achieved. Without it, the Home Fleet could only hold the line, and could never satisfactorily go over to the offensive until enemy resistance had been broken, largely by other means. It has become a commonplace that Intelligence in general, and Ultra decrypts in particular, were of great value in the war at sea. As we have seen, this was not always the case. Breaking codes and reading enemy messages can be a wonderful asset, but for Intelligence to be meaningful it must be timely. Ultra decrypts were of only marginal help in operations as late as the Bismarck chase. An Ultra blackout helps explain the PQ 17 disaster, and signals intelligence failed to detect the sortie of the German surface units defeated at the Battle of the Barents Sea. As late as the German raid on Spitzbergen in September 1943, Ultra told the British nothing. On the other hand, Ultra did aid in the sinking of the Scharnhorst. Failures of tactical intelligence, however, were partially compensated for through strategic intelligence, such as the decoded messages rightly convincing the Admiralty that Tirpitz was not going to sea before January 1942, or that she had been badly damaged by the X-craft.3 Of greater value to the Home Fleet than signals intelligence would have been an expanded Coastal Command and the presence of

Conclusion 155

two carriers with the fleet at all times. The voracious appetite of Bomber Command for long-range aircraft, a failure to develop better aircraft for the Fleet Air Arm in the 1930s, the needs of other theatres, and the stunning mishandling of Courageous and Glorious early in the war robbed the Home Fleet of the most vital asset of air power. This deficiency in both land-based and carrier-based air power ranks, along with the slow speed and poor endurance of the Home Fleet’s capital ships, as the two fundamental causes of the Home Fleet’s failure to keep the German surface fleet continually bottled up in the North Sea during the first three years of World War II. Yet, despite these handicaps, from 1939 until 1941, German surface ships and merchant raiders sank only 953 317 tons of Allied and neutral shipping compared to overall losses of 9 075 436 tons, or just 10.5 per cent of ships sunk. Tellingly, those 953 317 tons represented just over four per cent of British merchant tonnage in 1939.4 One can see why Hitler eventually turned exclusively to Doenitz and his U-boats to prosecute his maritime war. In the realm of men rather than machines, the Home Fleet enjoyed solid leadership throughout the war. But before we can discuss the Admirals who commanded the Home Fleet, we must address the supreme command – Churchill and Pound. On the level of grand strategy, Churchill was governed by the sound principle that American participation in the war meant German defeat. He was also quick to grasp the value of the Soviet Union as an ally once Hitler stabbed her in the back in June 1941. However, his handling of strategic and operational issues like Norway, Greece, Singapore, and Italy are all tinged with amateurism, wishful thinking, and inflated hopes. As Eric Grove has noted, Churchill ‘was much better at putting words together than in assessing strategic priorities or giving operational naval commands’.5 Lord Alanbrooke, who worked with Churchill almost daily for four years, summed up Churchill’s weakness well: ‘In all his plans he lives from hand to mouth. He can never grasp a whole plan, either in its width (on all fronts) or its depth (long term projects).’6 In addition, Churchill spent his country into the ground, fighting the war at levels of financial, industrial, and personnel commitment that were unsustainable.7 As Lord Keynes was to say of the wartime economy: ‘We threw good housekeeping to the winds.’8 In the purely naval realm, Churchill pushed forward men of dubious or limited ability like Cork, Keyes, Phillips, Mountbatten, and Harwood, while ignoring or denigrating abler men like Chatfield, Forbes, and Tovey. And he kept Pound as First Sea Lord long after the old warrior should have been replaced. When looking at other top men at the Admiralty, Admiral Fraser’s

156 Conclusion

consummate political skill abetted, rather than substituted for, real ability, but Churchill should never have offered him the First Sea Lord’s chair in 1943. Andrew Cunningham, the only realistic choice, was a great sailor who mixed success at sea with just enough tact to survive and replace Pound. Altogether, Churchill’s performance as war leader, and his influence over the Royal Navy as First Lord and later Minister of Defence, was a mixed blessing to his country and probably fell short of Lloyd George’s accomplishments in the First World War. For readers steeped in a narrative that lauds Churchill and decries Chamberlain, an explanation of the author’s contrary assessment of these men is in order. The situation confronting Britain and her Empire in the 1930s – economic hardship, predatory states on the prowl, a weak partner in France, the spectre, foreseen by Palmerston, of the US and Russia pushing what Paul Kennedy terms the ‘Middle Powers’ from their position among the ‘Great Powers’ – may well have been an insurmountable challenge to any generation of statesmen. Chamberlain and Churchill approached the issues differently. Chamberlain, a businessman by temperament and some experience, wanted to buy time for economic recovery, diffuse tension through reasonable concessions to the revisionist powers, and promulgate a programme of affordable rearmament to deter aggressors.9 His long-term goal was to foster the return of international trade, more tightly integrate the Empire into a coherent economic block, and preserve the multi-polar ‘Great Power’ system in which Britain enjoyed pride of place. Churchill, in stereotypical aristocratic style, had almost no interest in economics, but an abiding sense of Britain’s honour, which he saw as sullied by Appeasement. He was absolutely right when he came to the conclusion that Hitler was an evil man who could probably not be bought off at a price Britain’s honour and reputation could afford. However, unlike Chamberlain, he seemed completely indifferent to the human and economic cost of war. His belief that Britain’s world position could be preserved through an Anglo-American ‘partnership’ was a chimera. And reading his books and speeches, one has trouble avoiding the conclusion that war appealed to Churchill. He saw himself as a great leader and wanted a great crusade to lead. In contrast, Chamberlain saw chaos, decline, and death ahead if war came. Which one was ‘right’ depends on a complex assessment of many variables: the morality of war; when the use of force is justified in international affairs; the responsibility of a British Prime Minister to defend British power versus upholding moral principle; the relative demerits of Hitler and Stalin; the value or lack thereof of the British Empire; the comparative merits of the ‘Great Power’ system; whether or

Conclusion 157

not the USA has proved a competent hegemony; was war inevitable. I believe that striving for peace before resorting to war was more reasonable than the bellicose and self-aggrandizing pose of ‘prophet in the wilderness’ and ‘warlord’ Churchill struck. Sir Dudley Pound is a difficult man to encapsulate in any single assessment. He was not the best choice for his office – Forbes was, or Chatfield. His chronic pain from severe hip arthritis was a burden to him; he worked too much, delegated too little.10 Pound proved adept at times in dissuading Churchill from his more ludicrous ideas; he used argument and delaying tactics to scupper Operation ‘Catherine’, Churchill’s risky plan for sending a fleet into the Baltic, and ‘Workshop’, his Mediterranean fantasy. Pound also directed the Bismarck chase with real skill, although his failure to stop Churchill from sending his silly message to Tovey about towing back the King George V proved an embarrassment. The First Sea Lord was also correct in opposing the dispatch of the Repulse and Prince of Wales. He was wise in supporting Tovey, both in his effort to get the Arctic convoys suspended in 1942 as the summer approached, and in releasing long-range aircraft to cover Atlantic convoys from departure to arrival. This wisdom was somewhat vitiated by Pound’s failure to stand or fall on the issues. On the down side, Pound’s efforts during the Norwegian Campaign were muddled and did more harm than good. He meddled in Sir Charles Forbes’s handling of his fleet for no good reason, and conspired with Churchill to sack that highly competent officer. Pound had an ugly vindictive streak, which emerged in his efforts to court martial Rear Admiral Wake-Walker and Captain Leach.11 Pound had shown similar poor judgement in dealing with Admiral Somerville and Admiral North earlier in the war. His decision to scatter PQ 17 was a full-scale disaster. Churchill should have noticed Pound’s failing health at that time and, if he wanted to save the old Admiral’s reputation, waited until PQ 18 was successfully fought through then relieve Pound of his office. If Churchill lacked the stomach for this, Pound should have assessed his abilities honestly and resigned. His retention into 1943 was a mistake. Pound’s only defence was his growing conviction that Churchill would choose the completely unseasoned Mountbatten to replace him. When Pound finally left, on death’s door, he was replaced by Sir Andrew Cunningham, a superior officer but one who at times got along poorly with the Home Fleet’s Commander-in-Chief, Sir Bruce Fraser. Eventually Cunningham and Fraser learned to each get on with their jobs without getting in the other’s way. It was probably a relief for both of them when Fraser left Britain to take command of the Pacific Fleet in June 1944.

158 Conclusion

This brings us to the men whose careers we have so closely followed throughout this work – Forbes, Tovey, Fraser, and Moore. Sir Charles Forbes was an excellent, clear-thinking officer. He led his fleet well, but suffered from the underdeveloped state of British reconnaissance and Intelligence assets early in the war. His successes and failures I have enumerated in Chapter 5. His premature removal from office and the way he was underutilized thereafter were a travesty. The last word on his tenure with the Home Fleet can go to Stephen Roskill: To carry out the responsibilities of high command at the beginning of a war must, at least in democratically governed countries, always be a situation of doubtful good fortune; for it is then that difficulties and neglects, for which the commander was in no way responsible, first become apparent. Admiral Sir Charles Forbes was no exception to that rule.12 Admiral Sir John Tovey led the Home Fleet longer than any one. He was a solid, capable officer. He knew his business and stuck to his convictions. His performance in the Bismarck chase was marred by his decision to follow a wrong fix on Bismarck’s position, which nearly cost him any chance to catch her. Otherwise, his actions were able, but not brilliant. Tovey’s doubts about the viability of Arctic convoys under summer skies were well founded, and his fury over the failure to supply the navy with long-range reconnaissance aircraft to cover the Norwegian coast and close the mid-ocean gap justified.13 All his actions, and his forthright correspondence, show courage and common sense. Tovey held the line through the lean, difficult year of 1942 when the Royal Navy was stretched to the breaking point. His country owes him its thanks for his tenure at the helm of the Home Fleet. Sir Bruce Fraser was a very different animal from Tovey. He was a staff officer par excellence, and had a keen political sense. Fraser had the dislikable trait of always supporting the Churchill–Pound ‘party line,’ as can be seen from a perusal of his papers at the National Maritime Museum Library, Greenwich.14 Nevertheless, he was an able commander and his victory at North Cape displayed a sure, if not terribly inspired, hand. It can be said that under his tenure the convoys got through and any threat from the German surface fleet to the Atlantic sea lanes vanished. His decision to back Moore when he withdrew after the initial ‘Tungsten’ strike was sound, but his lack of faith in the mission and failure to maximize its chance of success were mistakes. Fraser was

Conclusion 159

an administrator of great skill, loved to ‘show’ himself to the fleet, and was wise enough to concentrate on the Home Fleet’s logistics, planning, and morale while often letting his VA2, Henry Moore, do much of the day-to-day tactical handling of the fleet at sea. Fraser adopted the same division of labour when he left the Home Fleet to take over in the Pacific in 1944. As his Flag Lieutenant later wrote: ‘He was a superb delegator.’15 Henry Moore proved the kind of steady professional officer one often found in the German Army. He was a real asset as VA2 to Fraser, and showed aggressiveness in dealing with the enemy and moral courage in letting weather, rather than importuning from Cunningham, dictate his carrier operations off Norway. Moore never enjoyed a reputationmaking opportunity to win a battle at sea, and his resources were progressively eroded throughout his tenure as commander of the Home Fleet, but he gave every indication in his actions that he was up to the challenge. He kept the pressure on the Germans to the end, and justified the Admiralty’s choice of him as C-in-C Home Fleet. Finally, four junior commanders must be singled out for praise – Vice Admiral Whitworth, Captain Warburton-Lee, Vice Admiral Burnett, and Captain Sherbrooke. All four men showed dash and determination in the face of the enemy, and their aggressive spirits helped gain and maintain the moral ascendancy the Royal Navy established over the Kriegsmarine that proved an invaluable asset throughout the war. Whitworth led the Battlecruiser Squadron in the best Beatty fashion. When in Renown, he spotted the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau on 9 April, 1940, Whitworth charged headlong at the enemy, and, despite being outnumbered 2–1, damaged Gneisenau with three hits and drove the Germans off. Later, at the Second Battle of Narvik, Whitworth would boldly take the Warspite up a fjord and smash a German destroyer squadron. In between, at the First Battle of Narvik, Warburton-Lee, also outnumbered 2–1, sank two enemy destroyers and disrupted the unloading of supplies for the German garrison. Burnett and Sherbrooke would show a similar tenacious spirit when faced with the odds heavily against them at the Battle of the Barents Sea. This willingness of junior commanders to think for themselves and fight any enemy they encountered suffused the Home Fleet, and stands in marked contrast to German caution. Even when it backfired, as it did with Vice Admiral Holland in the Denmark Strait, the policy was a sound one; although the results were disastrous, Holland was correct in steering towards the enemy and forcing an engagement – it was his ship that let him down, not his aggressiveness.

160 Conclusion

Traditionally, the third mission of the Home Fleet, enforcing the blockade, has been one of the Royal Navy’s chief weapons of war. Germany, in 1939, seemed to be a prime target for economic strangulation. She was deficient in her supplies of oil, iron, copper, tin, nickel, bauxite, rubber, tungsten, and chromium.16 And the Northern Patrol did clamp down on Germany’s overseas trade. But the absorption of the Czech lands, Poland, Holland, Belgium, Norway, and France, plus trade with Romania, Sweden, Spain, and until 22 June 1941 the Soviet Union, made the blockade largely irrelevant. Although the Home Fleet supported the blockade, German military successes and diplomatic initiatives rendered it ineffective. Lastly, we must turn to the Home Fleet’s responsibility in fighting the convoys through to north Russia. Here, the big picture is a portrait of success: 93 per cent of the 3 964 000 tons dispatched from Iceland and Britain to the USSR arrived safely.17 Only 20 000 tons were lost after December 1942.18 This, however, misses the details. From ‘Dervish’ to PQ 6, the convoys suffered no loss. But when the Germans chose to employ (at least theoretically) an integrated air-surface-submarine strategy to interdict the convoys, losses mounted dramatically. From PQ 13 to PQ 18, 52 of 161 ships – 32 per cent – were lost to enemy action (see Table 6 in Chapter 7). Tonnage losses were in proportion. It took the introduction of escort carriers and standing anti-submarine groups, combined with the withdrawal of Luftwaffe assets to the Mediterranean and the demoralization and confusion in the German surface fleet after its disastrous defeat in the Barents Sea, to reverse the losses of 1942. Tirpitz remained a threat, but damage inflicted on her by the X-craft attack and Operation ‘Tungsten’ reduced her to a floating battery. It was Fraser’s victory over the Scharnhorst that put the nail in the Kriegsmarine’s coffin. Without a credible air or surface threat, the concentration on the decimation of Doenitz’s U-boat forces Andrew Lambert has documented could proceed apace. Overall, the verdict on the Home Fleet’s Arctic convoy travail is, mission accomplished. In the final analysis, the Home Fleet succeeded in three key strategic areas: national defence, sea control, and convoy escort. The Royal Navy’s men and material were up to the challenge of fulfilling their role in Allied plans for prosecuting the war. In these plans, the Home Fleet formed one of Britain’s four essential strategic instrumentalities, along with Coastal Command, Fighter Command, and Western Approaches, without which the Western Allies could not have made the same contribution to ultimate victory. These formed the pillars upon which the British war effort rested. If any of them had failed, Britain would most probably

Conclusion 161

have been knocked out of the war. And without staging areas in Britain, the full weight of American military/industrial might could not have been brought to bear against Nazi Germany. The outcome of the Second World War would thereby have been placed in doubt. In fairness, it must be pointed out that at no time did any of Britain’s four pillars of defence seriously approach the breaking point, but all were severely taxed, and Coastal Command’s effectiveness almost nullified by RAF neglect. It is in this context that the resources showered on Bomber Command seem most excessive. Tovey understood this in the summer of 1942, and let the Admiralty and the Government know about it in no uncertain terms: Whatever the results of the bombing of cities might be, and this was the subject of keen controversy, it could not of itself win the war, whereas the failure of our sea communications would assuredly lose it.19 What mattered for the Allies was the creation of armies backed by tactical air power that could smash their way onto the continent of Europe and drive east to link up with the Soviets (for the British and Americans, the farther east, the better). Churchill well understood the paramount importance of Soviet and American participation in the war, but he was never clear as to how Britain fitted into the overall strategic equation. His Majesty’s Government’s primary duty was to defend ‘Fortress Britain’, keep its lines of supply open, and contribute, along with the Americans, the largest land force practicable for the destruction of the German Army. Naval theorist Julian Corbett understood these priorities well: Since men live upon the land and not upon the sea, great issues between nations at war have always been decided – except in the rarest cases – either by what your army can do against your enemy’s territory and national life, or else by the fear of what the fleet makes it possible for your army to do.20 It was British sea power, concretized in the Home Fleet and Western Approaches, along with air power in the form of Coastal Command and Fighter Command, that made it possible for American, British, and, indirectly, Soviet armies to destroy Nazi Germany.21 Once Churchill learned of America’s ‘Germany first’ strategy, British resource allocation should have been adjusted away from Bomber Command and the

162 Conclusion

Middle East. Yet priority mistakenly stayed with Bomber Command and in the Mediterranean. Luckily for Britain, Hitler’s quest for lebensraum and to destroy his ‘racial’ enemy, Judaism, and its perceived hellspawn, Bolshevism, diverted Germany from a sustained and overpowering effort to topple one or all of Britain’s military pillars. Therefore, the United States could not be shut out of Europe, and Germany was compelled to fight vast enemy forces, East and West, in a hopeless two-front war. This is why the Home Fleet’s holding the line was so crucial – its defensive success was a necessary precondition for both full American participation in the European theatre, and for supplying aid (at least in 1941–42) to the Soviet Union. Not as spectacular as a decisive battle, but essential. The Royal Navy understood this, and adopted its strategy accordingly. And the Home Fleet, through six difficult years, executed that strategy with courage and ability. Despite deficiencies in ships and aircraft, problems with Intelligence, and occasional operational lapses, the Home Fleet successfully carried out its mission under Allied strategy. By 1943, it had gained a sure ascendancy over its German opponent and despite a paucity of proper strike aircraft, the Home Fleet was taking the fight to the Germans in Norway by 1944. Between battle, blockade, patrol, and raid, the Home Fleet earned an important victory for Britain and the Allies in the wider struggle against the Axis in World War II.

Notes Introduction 1. P. Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery (London: Ashfield Press, 1995 revised paper back ed.), p. 306. 2. For a modern account informed by Italian language sources, see J. Greene and A. Massignani, The Naval War in the Mediterranean 1940–1943 (Rochester, Kent: Chatham Publishing, 1998), pp. 63–81. 3. L. Kennedy, The Death of the Tirpitz (Boston: Little, Brown, 1979), p. 56 uses the term ‘much worry’; ‘bogeyman’ is from P. Kemp, Convoy! Drama in Arctic Waters (London: Arms Armour Press, 1993), p. 191; Rear Admiral W. H. Langenberg, USNR, in ‘The German Battleship Tirpitz: A Strategic Warship?’, Naval War College Review, 34 (4), p. 82, uses the term ‘concern’. See also T. Gallagher, The X-Craft Raid (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1969), chapter 2. 4. Langenberg, ‘The German Battleship Tirpitz’, p. 82.

1 The Royal Navy and the Home Fleet: Men, Material, Strategy 1919–39 1. This process is described in detail by P. Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery, pp. 205–37. However, the conventional view of naval policy ca 1900–14 has recently come under critical review; see, for example, J. T. Sumida, In Defence of Naval Supremacy (London: Routledge, 1993), N. Lambert, Sir John Fisher’s Naval Revolution (Columbia, SC: South Carolina University Press, 1999). Certainly, it was a cost-saving measure. But whether Britain employed a Dreadnought fleet or ‘flotilla defence’, it became clear between 1906 and 1912 that most of the Fleet would be needed in Home Waters if war with Germany erupted. 2. Quotation from A. Gordon, The Rules of the Game: Jutland and British Naval Command (London: John Murray, 1996), p. 21. 3. For an introductory look at the Washington Naval Conference, see Kennedy’s Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery, pp. 274–83, and Admiral of the Fleet Lord Chatfield’s memoir It Might Happen Again (London: Heineman, 1947) chapter 1. To see how domestic politics, strategy, money, and President Harding’s need for acclaim and foreign policy success figured into the Washington Conference, see R. Dingman, Power in the Pacific: The Origins of Naval Arms Limitation, 1914–1922 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976). 4. A. Marder, From the Dardanelles to Oran: Studies of the Royal Navy in Peace and War 1915–1940 (London: Oxford University Press, 1974), pp. 108–9. The responsibilities of the First Sea Lord are delineated in the Introduction to M. Murfett’s The First Sea Lords (London: Praeger, 1995). 5. Marder, From the Dardanelles to Oran, p. 108. 163

164 Notes 6. Or, as A. J. P. Taylor has noted, Churchill was responsible for ‘trespassing into operations more than any other first lord had ever done’; see A. J. P. Taylor, English History 1914–1945 (London: Oxford University Press, 1965), p. 480. For Churchill’s activity (meddling?) as First Lord, see Murfett, The First Sea Lords, pp. 26–9, 48–9, and 55–87; for a general critique, see S. Roskill’s Churchill and the Admirals (London: Collins, 1977). 7. For three differing opinions about Pound, see S. Roskill, Naval Policy Between the Wars Volume 2 (London: Collins, 1976), pp. 463–7; Marder, From the Dardanelles to Oran chapter 4; and more generally, R. Brodhurst’s chapter on Pound in Murfett, The First Sea Lords. A spirited defence of Churchill can be found in both R. Lewin, Churchill as Warlord (New York: Stein & Day, 1973) and in R. Lamb, Churchill as War Leader (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1993), especially pp. 339–48. Recent revelations in Lord Allenbrook’s War Diaries 1939–1945 (A. Danchev and D. Todman (eds), Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001) of Pound’s napping at COS meetings, his inarticulateness, and Churchill’s drunkenness supports my negative impression of both. 8. This rift with Japan can be seen in Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery, p. 290, and Roskill, Naval Policy Between the Wars Volume 2, pp. 168 and 346. 9. See C. M. Bell, The Royal Navy, Seapower and Strategy Between the Wars (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), pp. 59–98. 10. For moneys allotted to the Royal Navy, see S. Roskill, Naval Policy Between the Wars Volume 1 (London: Collins, 1968), appendix D. 11. Quotation in Roskill, Naval Policy Between the Wars Volume 2, p. 145. 12. Quotation in Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery, p. 276. 13. For an all-out assault on Appeasement, see C. Barnett, The Collapse of British Power (New York: Morrow, 1972). Britain’s strategic situation in the inter-war years is well covered in Kennedy’s The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery, pp. 278–98, and in his The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (New York: Vintage, 1988), pp. 275–320, and I have drawn heavily for my analysis from these sources. Britain’s Achilles’ Heel in the Mediterranean is brought to light in L. R. Pratt, East of Malta, West of Suez (London: Cambridge University Press, 1975). And, for a magisterial synopsis of what the Admiralty and Cabinet were thinking at that time, read N. H. Gibbs, Grand Strategy Volume 1 (London: HMSO, 1976), esp. pp. 323–438. 14. Figures in Roskill, Naval Policy Between the Wars Volume 2, p. 335. The dread fear was from poison gas. And, ironically, air advocates like Churchill had compounded the problem, echoing Baldwin that ‘the bomber will always get through’. For a manifestation of the popularly imagined horror which people in the 1930s expected might be the face of the next war, see the 1938 film Things to Come. 15. Part of that diplomacy was the Anglo-German Naval Agreement of 1935, limiting the re-emerging German Navy to 35 per cent of British tonnage in surface ships and 45 per cent in submarines. The best work on this is J. Maiolo, The Royal Navy and Nazi Germany 1933–1939 (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1998). On Britain’s decision to reach such an agreement with the Germans in contravention of the Versailles Treaty, Eric Grove has written: ‘Having used arms control successfully to contain the power of one rival, the USA, why not use it against Germany too?’, E. Grove, ‘A War Fleet Built

Notes 165

16. 17.

18. 19. 20.

21.

22.

23.

24. 25. 26. 27. 28.

for Peace: British Naval Rearmament in the 1930s and the Dilemma of Deterrence versus Defence’, Naval War College Review (Spring 1991): 82–92. Quotation from p. 83. Maiolo, The Royal Navy and Nazi Germany, pp. 218–19. Ironically, Winston Churchill, the Cassandra of the 1930s, was largely responsible for the running down of the Navy in the 1920s. It was Churchill who wielded the ‘Geddes Axe’, cutting naval expenditures during his tenure as Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1924–29. Churchill was also responsible for the disastrous decision to re-establish the value of the Pound at its pre1914 $4.86, instantly making British exports noncompetitive, thus damaging Britain’s balance of payments and reducing the funds available to purchase supplies for rearmament. Maiolo, The Royal Navy and Nazi Germany, p. 136. Quotation from Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery, p. 290. Maiolo stresses the desire of Chatfield to lock in the existing British position of naval pre-eminence through an interlocking series of qualitative and quantitative arms limitation treaties. See also Bell, The Royal Navy, Seapower and Strategy Between the Wars. Bell shows that the British fully understood ‘the need for securing bases, defending imperial trade, and enforcing a maritime blockade’. (p. 134) They were not hidebound battleship bumpkins forever trapped at 7 o’clock on the evening of 31 May, 1916. Japan would have six battleships and four rebuilt battlecruisers, plus the battleship Yamato completing. Germany would have her two battlecruisers plus Bismarck, with Tirpitz on the way. Italy would have six modern or modernised battleships and two building. The Royal Navy could count on having two ‘King George V’ class battleships built and another three on the way, Hood, Nelson, Rodney, Renown, Queen Elizabeth, Valiant, and, generously, Warspite. See Table 1.2 and R. Chesneau, Conway’s All the World’s Fighting Ships 1922–1946 (New York: Mayflower Books, 1980). British estimates of their future battleship strength and proposals for additional warship modifications in early 1939 are in ADM 1/10139. A. Gordon, ‘The Admiralty and Imperial Overstretch, 1902–1941’, Journal of Strategic Studies, 17 (1) (1994), 63–85. Quotation is from p. 71. See also G. C. Peden, British Rearmament and the Treasury 1932–1939 (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1979), esp. pp. 179–84. A. Raven and J. Robert, British Battleships of World War II (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1976), esp. pp. 107–43 and pp. 165–269; E. H. H. Archibald, The Fighting Ships of the Royal Navy (New York: Military Press, 1987), chapters 20 and 21. Quotation in Roskill, Naval Policy Between the Wars Volume 1, p. 167. See Roskill, Naval Policy Between the Wars Volume 2, pp. 333–4. For details of Nelson and Rodney, see Raven and Robert, British Battleships, pp. 107–27. CAB 16/147, ‘Sub-Committee on the Vulnerability of Capital Ships to Air Attack, 1936’. For a general discussion of the battlecruiser concept, see Archibald, Fighting Ships of the Royal Navy, chapter 21. The details of Renown and Repulse are given in Raven and Robert, British Battleships on pp. 45–52, 141–3, 206–17, and 250–63. For the particulars of Hood, see ibid. pp. 60–75, 189–97.

166 Notes 29. M. J. Whitley, Cruisers of World War II: An International Encyclopedia (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1995), p. 9. 30. For a description of these five ships, see J. C. Taylor, German Warships of World War II (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966), pp. 16–20. 31. The strategic value of Force H operations is related in M. Simpson, ‘Force H and British Strategy in the Western Mediterranean 1939–1942’ The Mariner’s Mirror, 83 (1) (1997), 62–75. 32. An excellent book is N. Friedman, British Carrier Aviation (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1988). See also R. Chesneau, Aircraft Carriers of the World 1914 to the Present: An Illustrated Encyclopedia (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1984), and Archibald, Fighting Ships of the Royal Navy, chapter 30. 33. See R. Chesneau, Aircraft Carriers of the World, p. 92. 34. Letter, Captain A. G. Kirk of 12 December, 1940 in RG 38 Intelligence Division Confidential Reports of Naval Attachés Box 1202, US National Archive, College Park, Maryland. 35. A fine popular account of the exploits of the Fleet Air Arm can be found in J. Winton, Find, Fix and Strike! The Fleet Air Arm at War 1939–1945 (London: Batsford, 1980). 36. These surprising figures were obtained from W. T. Larkin, US Navy Aircraft 1921–1941 (New York: Orion Publishers, 1988 edn), pp. 243–5. 37. See Friedman, British Carrier Aviation, appendix B. 38. All three planes are described in O. Thetford, British Naval Aircraft Since 1912 (London: Putnam, 1962). For the Swordfish, see pp. 133–5; for the Skua, pp. 56–7; for the Sea Gladiator, pp. 190–1. 39. Quote from M. Simpson (ed.), The Somerville Papers (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1995), pp. 54–5. 40. For the designation of FAA squadrons and their composition in the autumn of 1939, see Winton, Find, Fix, and Strike!, pp. 2–3. 41. From Friedman, British Carrier Aviation, appendix B, and Winton, Find, Fix, and Strike!, pp. 2–3. Roskill in the Official History, The War at Sea Volume 1 (London: HMSO, 1954) points out that the FAA also had 191 aircraft for training purposes. Before the war, the Admiralty had projected a strength of 480 frontline FAA aircraft (360 embarked on ten ships with Courageous as the training carrier), plus 480 aircraft in immediate reserve to replace losses and wastage, and 332 training aircraft in the air establishment by 1 April 1942. The British, given budget limitations, were very carrier conscious. See ADM 1/10112. Their big mistake was estimating that at that date the Japanese would have only 278 planes embarked! 42. Winton, Find, Fix, and Strike!, p. 3. 43. For a complete description of the cruisers serving with the Home Fleet, see M. J. Whitley, Cruisers of World War II: An International Encyclopedia, pp. 66–128. 44. This section on British destroyers is drawn from H. T. Lenton and J. J. Colledge, British and Dominion Warships of World War II (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1968), pp. 95–109, and Archibald, Fighting Ships of the Royal Navy, p. 235. 45. For an American take on this faith, and the technology behind it, see On His Majesty’s Service: Observations of the British Home Fleet from the Diary, Reports, and Letters of Joseph H. Wellings, Assistant US Naval Attaché in London 1940–1941 (Newport, RI: Naval War College Press, 1983), edited by J. B. Hattendorf, p. 40.

Notes 167

46.

47. 48.

49.

50.

51.

Chatfield, the First Sea Lord from 1933–38, thought British anti-submarine methods would prove ‘80% successful’, Roskill, Naval Policy Between the Wars Volume 2, p. 227. See also the notes on pp. 40–1 of A. Marder, From the Dardanelles to Oran. D. van der Vat’s The Atlantic Campaign (New York: Harper & Row, 1988) devotes a great deal of attention to the technology and tactics that won the Battle of the Atlantic. W. J. R. Gardner in Decoding History: The Battle of the Atlantic and Ultra (Annapolis, MD: Naral Institute Press, 1999) deals with how organisation, technology, production, and tactics were just as important as Ultra. For Raeder’s information regarding when war might come, see S. Roskill, The War at Sea Volume 1 (London: HMSO, 1954), p. 52. For a comparison of the relative modernity of German surface warships compared to their Royal Navy counterparts, see Taylor, German Warships of World War II, pp. 11–45, and Lenton and Colledge, British and Dominion Warships, pp. 16–109. For the serious lack of coherence in German naval strategy and policy before and during the war, see Holger Herwig, ‘The Failure of German Sea Power 1914–1945: Mahan, Tirpitz, and Raeder Reconsidered’, International History Review, 10 (1) (February 1988), esp. pp. 86–105, and Maiolo, Royal Navy and Nazi Germany, pp. 70–4, 164. A. J. P. Taylor wrote of Chamberlain that ‘He had led every step towards rearmament and, indeed, more than any other man, laid the foundations for British fighting power during the Second World War’. Quotation from Taylor, English History 1914–1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965), p. 414. Chamberlain’s weakness was his insistence on rearming within the constraints of Britain’s ability to pay for it. For the surprising similarities between the strategic outlook of Churchill and Chamberlain in the 1930s, see G. C. Peden, ‘Winston Churchill, Neville Chamberlain and the Defence of Empire’, in J. B. Hattendorf and M. Murfett (eds), The Limitations of Military Power: Essays presented to Professor Norman Gibbs on his eightieth birthday (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1990). Figures are from Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery, p. 286. It should be noted that monies for the RAF surpassed those for the Navy and Army in 1938, and again to September 1939, revealing Chamberlain’s preference for this arm of defence.

2 The Home Fleet at the Outset of War 1. Taken from ADM 187/1. 2. ADM 196/45, p. 219 (Forbes’ naval record); The Dictionary of National Biography 1940, pp. 26–7 (for Backhouse); The Dictionary of National Biography 1960 (for Forbes). 3. ADM 196/45, p. 219. 4. Letter, Sir G. Style to Roskill, 10 March, 1979 in the Roskill Papers, File 4/50. 5. For a discussion of the senior flag officer crisis affecting the Royal Navy in the late 1930s, see Roskill, Naval Policy Between the Wars Volume 2, pp. 463–8; R. Brodhurst, Churchill’s Anchor: The Biography of Admiral of the Fleet Sir Dudley Pound (Barnsley, England: Pen & Sword, 2000), pp. 113–16;

168 Notes

6. 7. 8.

9. 10.

11. 12.

13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24.

25. 26.

Michael Simpson, The Cunningham Papers Volume 1: The Mediterranean Fleet 1939–1942 (Alde shot: Ashgate Press, 1999), pp. 7–8. See R. Brodhurst’s chapter in Murfett, The First Sea Lords, esp. p. 186. Quoted from C. Barnett, Engage the Enemy More Closely, (New York: Norton, 1991), p. 51. Roskill in Naval Policy Between the Wars Volume 2, p. 466, argues that Chatfield or Forbes could have been given the post of First Sea Lord, but Brodhurst in Murfett, The First Sea Lords, pp. 186–7, says that Pound was the only logical appointee. In Churchill’s Anchor, Brodhurst argues persuasively (if not to this author’s mind, convincingly), that Pound was the not only the logical, but the best choice for Lord Stanhope to make. Tovey to Roskill, 1 January, 1962, Roskill Papers File 4/17. Other outside possibilities such as Admirals of the Fleet Lord Cork and Keyes, and Admirals James and Drax, were considered too long retired or away from a sea posting to sit in the First Sea Lord’s chair. Andrew B. Cunningham, Backhouse’s Vice Chief of the Naval Staff, was held to be too junior for the post and had yet to serve as a Commander-in-Chief. Organization and seniority based on ADM 187/1, and ADM 177 The Navy List for September 1939, pp. 93–8. At the outset of hostilities, Coastal Command had ‘about 170’ operational aircraft for employment throughout the entire United Kingdom. B. Collier, The Defence of the United Kingdom (London: HMSO, 1957), p. 59. This section is drawn from ADM 116/3831. Forbes to Backhouse, 8 October, 1938 in ADM 205/3. Backhouse to Forbes, 18 October, 1938 in ADM 205/3. See correspondence in ADM 116/3831. Correspondence between Admiralty and Commanding Officer Coast of Scotland, 3 May, 1938, 1 July, 1939, and letter from Metal Industries Ltd to Admiralty, 18 January, 1939, all in ADM 116/3831. Lawson to Commanding Officer Coast of Scotland, 12 February, 1939 in ADM 116/3831. Letter from Forbes, 28 June, 1939 in ADM 116/3831. Letter to Forbes, 2 August, 1939 in ADM 116/3831. Forbes to the Admiralty, 25 September, 1939 in ADM 116/3831. J. R. M. Butler, Grand Strategy Volume 2 (London: HMSO, 1957), p. 14. For a positive take on this ‘offensive-mindedness’, see ‘Winston’s Back’ in Marder, From the Dardanelles to Oran. W. Murray in his The Change in the European Balance of Power 1938–1939 (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1984). pp. 310–69 argues that Germany was susceptible to Allied blockade, especially if they could force Italy into the war quickly and compel Germany to come to her aid with economic assistance; Kennedy, in The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery, pp. 306–12 has a counterpoint to Murray’s dubious claim: ‘Mahan-ite methods were ineffective against a power which had adopted a Mackinder-ite expansion program.’ p. 307. See ADM 199/393, p. 13. For a detailed discussion of the tactical fighting systems promulgated during the First World War, see A. Gordon, The Rules of the Game, esp. pp. 55, 517–19, and 527–9.

Notes 169 27. The ‘Fighting Instructions’ are listed as ADM 239/261. 28. ADM 239/261, p. 11. 29. Quotation is from Lieutenant (later Vice-Admiral) Ed Hooper, in I. Musicant, Battleship at War: The Epic Story of the U.S.S. Washington (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1986), p. 39. A related issue was main battery fire control. This had been a problem in World War I wherein British capital ships had been equipped with the Dreyer Table for calculating the angle and elevation of the big guns so that they could ‘lead’ the target and land the salvo where the ship would be when the shells arrived. Although adequate for speed and distance, the Dreyer Table could not properly handle changes in bearing. The Admiralty fire control table (AFTC) was introduced after the war, based on the work of Arthur Pollen. A sophisticated mechanical computer, the AFCT largely solved the problem, but it was only installed in 6 of Britain’s 15 capital ships (Warspite, Queen Elizabeth, Valiant, Renown, Nelson, and Rodney) at the beginning of World War II. AFTC or no, the British still preferred to close the range. For a related discussion, see J. Sumida, ‘A Matter of Timing: The Royal Navy and the Tactics of Decisive Battle, 1912–1916’, Journal of Military History, 67 (1): 85–136. 30. ADM 239/261, p. 62. 31. For the persistence of the ‘battlefleet concept’, see Roskill, Naval Policy Between the Wars Volume 2, esp. pp. 430–1, and 475. For a persuasive argument for the continued value of the battleship, see J. Sumida, ‘ “The Best Laid Plans”: The Development of British Battle-Fleet Tactics, 1919–1942’, International History Review, 14 (4) November, 1992: 681–700. In R. O’Connell’s book Sacred Vessels: The Cult of the Battleship and the Rise of the US Navy (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1991), the author maintains that the battleship was always overrated as a weapon system, and persisted in the arsenals of the major powers because of the unique culture of naval officers and the appeal of such impressive-looking ships to politicians and the public. 32. See Marder, From the Dardanelles to Oran, p. 53–4. For additional insight into the reigning tactical doctrine, and the continued anxiety over a battle fleet showdown with Japan, see Gordon, The Rules of the Game, pp. 574–6. 33. ADM 239/261, pp. 53–7, 67–73. 34. ADM 239/261, p. 49. 35. ADM 239/261, p. 49. 36. However, no less an authority than A. B. Cunningham told Roskill that during the war nobody paid any heed to the Fighting Instructions. Cunningham to Roskill [n.d.] in ROSK 6/52. 37. ADM 187/1. 38. Quotation from Peden, British Rearmament and the Treasury, p. 166. 39. See Gordon, The Rules of the Game, p. 369. 40. The letter, along with Forbes’ response, can be found in the British Library in Add Ms 52565 (the Cunningham Papers), Pound to Forbes, 18 August, 1939. 41. Quotation from letter to Pound, 22 August, 1939 in Add. Ms. 52565. 42. Pound to Holland, 25 October, 1939 in ADM 205/3. 43. ADM 199/393, p. 7. 44. Roskill, Naval Policy Between the Wars Volume 2, p. 484. 45. ADM 199/393, p. 7.

170 Notes 46. For the position of German naval units at the onset of hostilities, see Roskill, War at Sea Volume 1, p. 591. 47. See the Official History of British Intelligence, F. H. Hinsley, British Intelligence in the Second World War Volume 1 (London: HMSO, 1979), pp. 103–7. 48. For the Organization of British Intelligence at the opening of the Second World War, see Hinsley, British Intelligence in the Second World War Volume 1, pp. 3–43. 49. Hinsley, British Intelligence in the Second World War Volume 1, p. 103. 50. Hinsley, British Intelligence in the Second World War Volume 1, p. 106. 51. A perusal of the unpublished ‘War Diary of the German Naval Staff (Operations)’ translated by the US Office of Naval Intelligence in the late 1940s shows that, in the summer of 1940, German Intelligence was doing sterling service. I owe access to this source to Dr S. Papadopoulos of the Naval Historical Center, Washington, DC. The microfilm copy is designated TM-100C. 52. Hinsley, British Intelligence Volume 1, p. 105. 53. Letter, Forbes to Admiralty, 12 January, 1940 in ADM 1/10, 715. Godfrey commented on the letter, saying that Forbes did not understand the limitations under which the IOC operated and expected too much. 54. ADM 199/393, p. 8. 55. Coastal Command’s weakness would persist into 1943. 56. See ADM 199/393, p. 8. The actual strength of the Luftwaffe formations trained in anti-shipping tactics was, on 9 September, 1939, 85 aircraft, of which 71 were serviceable. Figures from Collier, The Defence of the United Kingdom, p. 80. 57. ADM 199/393, p. 8. 58. ADM 199/393, p. 10. 59. See Roskill, War at Sea Volume 1, p. 69. 60. ADM 199/393, pp. 11–12. For an analysis of the problems experienced in this encounter, see ADM 1/9920. 61. See van der Vat, The Atlantic Campaign, pp. 86–7; Doenitz, Memoirs, pp. 55–6 gives the date of the sinking as 19 September. 62. ADM 199/393, p. 9. 63. ADM 199/393, p. 10. 64. ADM 199/393, p. 10. 65. ADM 199/393, p. 14. 66. ADM 199/393, p. 13. 67. Furious at that time was operating 18 Swordfish of 816 and 818 Squadrons; Ark Royal had disembarked part of her air group but still carried 24 Swordfish and 9 Skuas on her trek south. See ADM 187/3. 68. ADM 199/393, p. 13. 69. Quotation from Gibbs, Grand Strategy Volume 1, p. 341.

3 Cat and Mouse: German Initiatives, British Reactions, October 1939–March 1940 1. Grand Admiral Doenitz, Memoirs: Ten Years and Twenty Days (New York: Da Capo Press, 1997), p. 69. 2. Doenitz, Memoirs, p. 69. 3. ADM 199/158, p. 75.

Notes 171 4. Roskill, The War at Sea Volume 1, pp. 73–4. 5. This account of the sinking of Royal Oak is derived from ADM 199/158, pp. 75–6; Roskill, The War at Sea Volume 1, pp. 73–4; Doenitz, Memoirs, pp. 67–70; van der Vat, The Atlantic Campaign, pp. 89–91. 6. ADM 199/158, p. 75. 7. ADM 199/158, pp. 76–8. 8. ADM 199/158, pp. 78, 81. 9. Roskill, The War at Sea Volume 1, pp. 73–4. 10. ADM 199/158, p. 82. 11. The battleship Barham, launched in the same year (1914) as Royal Oak, took three torpedo hits on 25 November, 1941. She exploded and sank with over 800 men lost. 12. Roskill, The War at Sea Volume 1, p. 74. 13. Doenitz, Memoirs, p. 69. 14. Quoted in van der Vat, The Atlantic Campaign, p. 91. 15. Quotation from Collier, The Defence of the United Kingdom, p. 86. 16. van der Vat, The Atlantic Campaign, p. 86. 17. Doenitz, Memoirs, p. 65. 18. Quotation from Doenitz, Memoirs, pp. 69–70. 19. Doenitz, Memoirs, p. 67. 20. Doenitz, Memoirs, p. 65. 21. Pound’s meetings listed in ADM 205/4. 22. Collier, The Defence of the United Kingdom, p. 87. 23. Doenitz, Memoirs, p. 71. 24. For evidence of this, see Doenitz, Memoirs, pp. 73, 84–99. For a discussion of what the Germans considered a ‘torpedo crisis’, see van der Vat, The Atlantic Campaign, pp. 115–116. 25. Doenitz, Memoirs, p. 55. 26. Doenitz, Memoirs, p. 95. 27. This anecdote appears in Doenitz, Memoirs, p. 89. 28. Doenitz, Memoirs, p. 94. 29. van der Vat, The Atlantic Campaign, pp. 148, 170. 30. Doenitz, Memoirs, p. 95. 31. For details of the debate, see ADM 199/393, entry for 31 October 1939. See also Roskill, Churchill and the Admirals, pp. 117–118, and Churchill, The Second World War Volume 1 (London: Cassell & Co., 1948), p. 388. 32. Roskill, Churchill and the Admirals, p. 118. 33. Roskill, The War at Sea Volume 1, p. 75. 34. Forbes to Roskill, 5 September, 1949 in the Roskill Papers, File 4/49. 35. Roskill, The War at Sea Volume 1, p. 78. 36. ADM 199/393, p. 20. 37. ADM 199/393, p. 32. 38. van der Vat, The Atlantic Campaign, p. 92. 39. ADM 199/393, p. 17. 40. For Rawalpindi, see van der Vat, The Atlantic Campaign, p. 92; for the operation, see Roskill, The War at Sea Volume 1, pp. 82–7. 41. ADM 199/393, pp. 22–3. 42. Roskill, The War at Sea Volume 1, pp. 85–6. 43. Roskill, The War at Sea Volume 1, p. 83. 44. ADM 199/393, pp. 27–31.

172 Notes 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65.

66. 67.

68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76.

Roskill, The War at Sea Volume 1, p. 87. ADM 199/393, p. 32. ADM 199/393, p. 32. ADM 199/393, pp. 33–5. ADM 199/393, p. 38. ADM 199/393, p. 40. ADM 199/393, p. 40. ADM 199/393, p. 39. ADM 199/393, pp. 40–1. This account is based on ADM 199/280. Quotations are from this file unless otherwise noted. van der Vat, The Atlantic Campaign, p. 98. ADM 199/280. Letter, Pound to Forbes in British Museum file Add Ms 52565. All quotes in this paragraph are from that file. ADM 199/393, pp. 45–7; Roskill, The War at Sea Volume 1, p. 153. ADM 199/393, p. 51. ADM 199/393, p. 80. ADM 199/393, pp. 84–5. ADM 199/393, p. 85. ADM 199/393, p. 83. For Operations ‘Wilfred’ and ‘R4’, see Marder, From the Dardenelles to Oran, pp. 148–71, and Roskill, Churchill and the Admirals, pp. 97–9. During the Russo-Finnish ‘Winter War’ of 1939–40, Churchill and Lord Halifax, the British Foreign Secretary, entertained thoughts of landing in Narvik, pressing on into Sweden to take control of the iron ore mines to deny their products to the Germans, and then sending forces to help the Finns fight Hitler’s ‘friend’, Stalin. C. Ponting, Armageddon (New York: Random House, 1995), pp. 27–8. How Britain and France could have coped with a war against Germany and the Soviets is anyone’s guess, and highlights Churchill’s strategic naivety. Roskill, Churchill and the Admirals, p. 98. An invaluable source is ADM 234/427 written by German officers after the war. See also Fuehrer Conferences on Naval Affairs 1939–1945 (London: Greenhill Books, 1990), pp. 83–8. ADM 234/427, p. 5. ADM 234/427, p. 7. ADM 234/427, pp. 7–8. ADM 234/427, p. 9. Doenitz, Memoirs, p. 77. ADM 234/427, p. 10. See ADM 187/3 for 5 April 1940. Letter, Forbes to Roskill, 28 January, 1950 in ROSK 6/30. ADM 199/361, p. 48.

4 Norway: A Man-Made Disaster, April–June 1940 1. See ADM 199/361, pp. 53–4. 2. For a detailed description of the invasion of Norway from the German perspective, see ADM 234/427.

Notes 173 3. Home Fleet War Diary entry for 5 April in ADM 199/361, and Barnett, Engage the Enemy More Closely, p. 107. 4. Barnett, Engage the Enemy More Closely, pp. 108–9, and Roskill, The War at Sea Volume 1, p. 158. 5. Home Fleet War Diary entries for 7 April and 8 April in ADM 199/361. 6. Forbes was warned by Admiralty Intelligence on 7 April of a possible German move against Norway, but the signal ended with this dismissive statement: ‘All these reports are of doubtful value...’. Text of message in M. Gilbert, The Churchill War Papers Volume 1 (New York: Norton, 1993), p. 977. 7. Quoted from Roskill, The War at Sea Volume 1, p. 158. 8. See Forbes’s signal of 2110, 7 April in ADM 199/361. 9. Collier, The Defence of the United Kingdom, p. 100. 10. Home Fleet War Diary entry for 8 April in ADM 199/361. 11. ADM 234/427 and C. Bekker, Hitler’s Naval War (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1974), pp. 96–7. 12. T. K. Derry, The Campaign in Norway (London: HMSO, 1952), p. 20. 13. Quoted from ADM 234/427, p. vii. 14. Barnett, Engage the Enemy More Closely, p. 122. 15. Ibid., p. 125, and ADM 234/427, pp. 24–5. 16. See ADM 234/332, p. 13. 17. At the peak of operations, the Luftwaffe had 360 bombers, 50 Stukas, and 120 modern fighters operating over Norway. See Air Ministry, The Rise and Fall of the German Air Force 1933–1945 (New York: St Martin’s Press repr., 1983), p. 63. 18. Barnett, Engage the Enemy More Closely, p. 122. 19. See the ‘Pink Sheet’, ADM 187/3, 15 April. 20. ADM 187/3, 22 April. 21. ADM 187/3, 17 May. 22. Quotation from J. Winton, Carrier Glorious (London: Leo Cooper, 1986), p. 156. 23. For the decisive impact of air power on the ground campaign in Norway, see J. Adams, The Doomed Expedition: The Norwegian Campaign of 1940 (London: Leo Cooper, 1989), pp. 171–3. 24. F. Kersaudy, Norway 1940 (London: Collins, 1990), pp. 135, 180–1. 25. Roskill, The War at Sea Volume 1, p. 191. 26. Kersaudy, Norway 1940, maps between pages 63–7, and Bekker, Hitler’s Naval War pp. 96–9. 27. Roskill, The War at Sea Volume 1, p. 158. Roope survived the sinking only to die in a POW camp in 1945, and was awarded a posthumous VC. 28. See entry for 1000 9 April in ADM 199/361. 29. Barnett, Engage the Enemy More Closely, p. 110. 30. Ibid., pp. 110–14. 31. Admiralty to Forbes, received 1300 8 April in ADM 199/361. 32. Roskill, The War at Sea Volume 1, pp. 161–2, and read between the lines. 33. Ibid., pp. 177–8. 34. For details of the action that followed see Roskill, The War at Sea Volume 1, p. 166, and Barnett, Engage the Enemy More Closely, p. 111. 35. British Library Add. Ms. 52569, letter, Whitworth to Cunningham, no date. 36. Signal, Forbes to Admiralty, 0620 9 April in ADM 199/361.

174 Notes 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42.

43.

44. 45.

46. 47. 48. 49.

50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67.

Signal, Admiralty to Forbes, 0825 9 April in ADM 199/361. See signal, Forbes to Captain (D) 2nd DF, 0952 in ADM 199/361. For Forbes’s decision and orders, see Roskill, The War at Sea Volume 1, p. 170. Ibid., p. 171. See message of 1438 in ADM 199/361. Strangely, no reply to this message appears in the Home Fleet War Diary. This quote, and the Admiralty’s opinion at the time, is taken from Roskill, The War at Sea Volume 1, p 171, with additional input from Barnett, Engage the Enemy More Closely, p. 113. At a War Cabinet meeting of 8:30 AM on 9 April, Churchill stressed the need to ‘take immediate steps’ to seize Narvik and prevent the Germans ‘establishing themselves at Trondheim and Bergen’. This makes the cancellation of ‘R4’ and countermanding of Forbes’s Bergen attack order even more inexplicable. Gilbert, The Churchill War Papers Volume 1, pp. 988–9. Kersaudy, Norway 1940, pp. 67–99. Roskill, The War at Sea Volume 1, p. 165. It has been brought to the author’s attention that a complete, modern account of this incident can be found in Rolf Hobson and Tom Kristiansen, Total krig, noytralitet og politisk splittelse 1905–1940 (Bergen, 2001). Quoted in Roskill, The War at Sea Volume 1, p. 173. For German destroyers, see ibid., pp. 590–1. Quoted in ibid., p. 173. Later, Whitworth did decide to send Penelope and four destroyers to Narvik, but countermanded the order, van der Vat, The Atlantic Campaign, p 103. Quotation from Roskill, The War at Sea Volume 1, p. 174. This account of the First Battle of Narvik is based on Roskill, The War at Sea Volume 1, pp. 172–5. Barnett, Engage the Enemy More Closely, p. 110. Ibid., p. 117, and Roskill, The War at Sea Volume 1, p. 172. Sinkings and losses are taken from Barnett, Engage the Enemy More Closely, p. 117; Roskill, The War at Sea Volume 1, p. 179. Barnett Engage the Enemy More Closely, p. 117. Derry, The Campaign in Norway, p. 262; Barnett, Engage the Enemy More Closely, p. 120. Derry, The Campaign in Norway, p. 265. Roskill, The War at Sea Volume 1, p. 188. See ADM 234/332, p. 12, and ADM 234/427, pp. 45–6. For details of the second Battle of Narvik, see ADM 234/332, pp. 21–3, and Barnett, Engage the Enemy More Closely, p. 119. Derry, Campaign in Norway, p. 262. Ibid., p. 263. Barnett, Engage the Enemy More Closely, pp. 120–1. Letter, Forbes to Roskill 9 Feb (no year, probably 1949) in the Roskill Papers 4/49. Hankey’s comment was recorded by John Colville, the Prime Minister’s Private Secretary, and appears in Gilbert, The Churchill War Papers, p. 1086. Quotation from Barnett, Engage the Enemy More Closely, p. 121. ADM 234/332, p. 29.

Notes 175 68. One such raid by fast French destroyers yielded poor results because the ships could not linger. 69. Quotation from ADM 234/332, p. 31. 70. ADM 234/427, p. 60. 71. Plan and quotation can be found in ADM 234/332, pp. 31–2. 72. Forbes’s reply can be found in ADM 234/332, pp. 31–2. 73. Kersaudy, Norway 1940, pp. 135–6. 74. The Doomed Expedition, pp. 179–84 and ‘Operation Weserubung: A Case Study in the Operational Art’ by R. D. Hooker, Jr and C. Coglianese in R. D. Hooker, Jr (ed.), Maneuvre Warfare (Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 1993), pp. 374–90. 75. Quotation from M. Harvey, Scandinavian Misadventure (Tunbridge Wells, Kent: Spellmount, 1990), p. 303. 76. This is the title of chapter 5 of his book Engage the Enemy More Closely. 77. For the political crisis which propelled Churchill into Number 10, see Kersaudy, Norway 1940, pp. 175–95; for the speeches in Parliament which helped to doom Chamberlain, see Gilbert, The Churchill War Papers Volume 1, pp. 1227–40. To his credit, Churchill continued to treat Chamberlain with respect. See Churchill’s letter of 11 May, 1940 to Chamberlain in M. Gilbert, The Churchill War Papers Volume 2 (New York: Norton, 1995), pp. 7–9. In the same volume, pp. 1080–2, one can read Churchill’s magnanimous, eulogizing speech to the House of Commons announcing Chamberlain’s death. 78. For a dissenting view, see Gilbert, The Churchill War Papers Volume 1, p. 1284. King George VI preferred Lord Halifax as Prime Minister if Chamberlain had to go. 79. A telling example of Churchill’s dubious grasp of military strategy is exemplified in the following minute of 13 January, 1941 sent to the Chiefs of Staff Committee: ‘I do not remember to have given my approval to these very large diversions of forces [to the Far East]. On the contrary, if my minutes are collected they will be seen to have an opposite tendency. The political situation in the Far East does not seem to require, and the strength of our Air Force by no means warrants, the maintenance of such large forces in the Far East at this time.’ The ‘large forces’ Churchill to which was referring were the 336 aircraft that the Chiefs of Staff had agreed to send to Malaya and Singapore over the next twelve months in lieu of a fleet. In fact, the Commander-in-Chief Far East, Air Chief Marshal Sir Robert Brooke-Popham, had informed London that without a fleet he would need 582 front-line aircraft to hold Singapore and keep the Japanese out of the Bay of Bengal. Churchill was therefore rejecting as too great a force one which the commander on the spot believed 40 per cent too small. When war came on December 8, 1941, Brooke-Popham had 180 planes available in the Far East Command, none of which were modern. The Japanese committed 530 modern aircraft to the drive on Singapore. The result was the sinking of Repulse and Prince of Wales (whose dispatch was itself a misguided Churchillian half-measure), the fall of Singapore, and the loss of Britain’s Asian Empire. Quotation is from S. Woodburn Kirby, The War Against Japan Volume 1 (London: HMSO, 1957), p. 55. See also pp. 53–4, 162 (for British air strength), and 192 (for Japanese air strength). 80. ADM 178/201, findings of the Board of Enquiry into the loss of HMS Glorious; ADM 234/427, pp. 73–76; Winton, Carrier Glorious, pp. 165–82;

176 Notes

81. 82. 83. 84.

85. 86. 87. 88.

Roskill, The War at Sea Volume 1, pp. 195–200; Hinsley, British Intelligence Volume 1, pp. 141–2; Barnett, Engage the Enemy More Closely, pp. 134–9. ADM 1/12467, pp. 137–8. Quotation from Barnett, Engage the Enemy More Closely, p. 136. Winton, Carrier Glorious, p. 164. J. Levy, ‘The Inglorious End of the Glorious: The Release of the Findings of the Board of Enquiry into the loss of HMS Glorious’, The Mariner’s Mirror, 86 (3) (August 2000), pp. 302–9. An earlier take on ADM 178/201, of which this author was unaware when he wrote his article, was T. Slessor, ‘The Tragedy of HMS Glorious’ Royal United Services Institute Journal February/ March 1999, pp. 68–74. Mr Slessor’s thoughts on Vice Admiral Cunningham knowing more than he let on, and information that the Germans were jamming Glorious’s transmissions, are important. In my article, I maintain that the Valiant heard Glorious’s signal, too. Mr Slessor disagrees, and on further investigation the evidence points to his conclusion. Winton, Carrier Glorious, p. 165. Winton, Carrier Glorious, p. 174. Roskill, The War at Sea Volume 1, pp. 195–6. ADM 178/201 (not paginated). It should be pointed out that Glorious had on board not only the 5 Swordfish mentioned, but also 9 Sea Gladiators of 802 Squadron that could have flown CAP and kept an eye out for enemy ships.

5 Thin Grey Line: The Home Fleet in the Defence of Great Britain, June 1940–June 1941 1. In fairness, for part of the period discussed Greece, and later Yugoslavia, were at war with one or both Axis Powers. 2. German ships delivered a total of 127,114 personnel to Norway in the month of April 1940 with 115,282 tons of cargo. This did not include any tank formations or much heavy artillery. The German army insisted on landing 90,000 men and at least 600 tanks on the first day of an invasion of Great Britain, not into captured harbours but over open beaches under enemy fire. It is not unrealistic to believe that the Germans would have had to bring a million men over to England to conquer and occupy the country. See TM-100C ‘War Diary of the German Naval Staff (Operations)’, pp. 97, 240. 3. Collier, Defence of the United Kingdom, p. 231. This number would increase within a few weeks to include another 2 light cruisers and 6 destroyers – facing which were a British anti-invasion force of 8 light cruisers and 36 destroyers, plus the two battleships, one battlecruiser, and five cruisers normally with the Home Fleet, and about 40 destroyers under various commands around the British Isles. See K. G. Larew, ‘The Royal Navy and the Battle of Britain’, The Historian, 54 (2), pp. 243–52. 4. The threat faced by the Germans from mines is well covered, as are German problems and British strengths in general, in Larew, ‘The Royal Navy and the Battle of Britain’. 5. Barnett, Engage the Enemy More Closely, pp. 186–93; for the general naval situation, see Roskill; for the political climate, see Taylor, English History 1914–1945, pp. 479–501, and A. Bullock, Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives (New York: Vintage, 1993), pp. 673–8.

Notes 177 6. Insight into Churchill’s thoughts on a possible invasion can be found in his letter to the Chief of the Imperial General Staff of 10 July, 1940 in ADM 205/6. 7. For details of these two diversions of resources from home defence, see Barnett, Engage the Enemy More Closely, pp. 209–13, 228–34. 8. The COS and the Joint Planning Committee certainly spent time considering the issue of invasion and measures to deal with it, but in the summer of 1940 they were at least as concerned about the planning of Operation ‘Menace’, the attack by De Gaulle on Dakar, and with Egypt, Turkey, Greece, and the situation in the Far East. The Minutes of their meetings can be found in CAB 79/6 and CAB 84/2. All this implies that the invasion scare, and the deployment of so many Royal Navy ships to different ports, was at least as much a political act as it was a military one. Forbes seems never to have grasped that the dispersal of his fleet may have been to boost morale and show the people that the Government was doing something to defend them. This hypothesis is supported by a minute of the Joint Planning Committee in CAB 79/6 of 31 August: ‘we are confident of our ability to withstand any attack on this country, and our whole policy is based on this assumption’. The day before, the JPC representatives had been to Chequers for a meeting with Churchill – they discussed the problems of bombing, ship losses, German batteries closing the Channel narrows at Point Gris Nez, and offensive options for 1941. Invasion talk is conspicuously absent from John Colville’s lengthy description of the meeting. J. Colville, The Fringes of Power: 10 Downing Street Diaries 1939–1955 (New York: Norton, 1985), pp. 232–4. 9. See Roskill, Churchill and the Admirals, p. 119. Churchill himself states in a letter to Pound of 17 August 1940 that he was ‘much concerned’ with shipping losses, but seems to imply the problem was Admiral Dunbar-Nasmith, C-in-C Western Approaches, for keeping his headquarters at Plymouth when the convoys were being routed to the north around Ireland to Liverpool. See Gilbert, The Churchill War Papers Volume 2, pp. 679–80. 10. Roskill, Churchill and the Admirals, p. 120. 11. ADM 199/450. 12. For German problems with, and doubts about the viability of, a cross-Channel invasion, see J. L. Wallach, ‘The Sea Lion That Did Not Roar: Operation Sea Lion and its Limitations’, in J. B. Hattendorf and M. Murfett, (eds), The Limitations of Military Power: Essays presented to Professor Norman Gibbs on his eightieth birthday (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1990), pp. 173–202. 13. Quotation from Wallach, ‘The Sea Lion That Did Not Roar’, p. 181. 14. Ibid., p. 180. 15. Ibid., p. 185. 16. See ‘War Diary of the German Naval Staff’, TM-100C, pp. 38, 75. 17. ‘War Diary of the German Naval Staff’, p. 113. 18. Report of the C-in-C (especially 13 August, 1940), Fuehrer Naval Conferences, p. 126. 19. For anti-invasion planning, see ADM 234/436 especially pp. 36–9. Forbes wanted the anti-submarine trawlers back on convoy escort as early as August, but was ignored (p. 43). 20. Bomber Command was also contributing a not insignificant effort against the invasion ports. M. Middlebrook and C. Everitt, Bomber Command War Diaries (New York: Viking, 1985), pp. 61–91.

178 Notes 21. ADM 187/9, 18 September 1940. On 6 September the Admiralty ordered all cruisers and destroyers to be at immediate notice for operations during all hours of darkness, and all ships were to cease cleaning boilers (a necessary bit of preventative maintenance) so that they would be ready for sea at all times. This effectively immobilized the fleet in Home waters. See ADM 234/436, p. 27. 22. ADM 234/436, appendix F. 23. Ibid. 24. Roskill, The War at Sea Volume 1, pp. 257–9. 25. Quotation from Roskill, Churchill and the Admirals, p. 120. 26. Everything depended, as Forbes and the COS knew, on Fighter Command. J. Ellis has pointed out in his marvellous book Brute Force: Allied Strategy and Tactics in the Second World War (New York: Viking, 1990), pp. 24–9 that Fighter Command was never seriously in jeopardy of losing the Battle of Britain. Also, Grand Admiral Raeder quickly lost faith in the invasion plan, Operation Sea Lion. See Fuehrer Naval Conferences, Reports of 13 August, 14 August, 3 September, and 13 September (esp. pages 126, 127, 129–30, and 137). Wallach in ‘The Sea Lion That Did Not Roar’ (Hattendorf and Murfett, 1990) concludes that an invasion was not likely. 27. Vice Admiral Max Horton turned it down due to the endemic tinkering from the Admiralty that he had no desire to deal with. See M. Stephen, The Fighting Admirals: British Admirals of the Second World War (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1991), pp. 201–2. 28. Quotations from Pound’s letter to Cunningham, 20 September, 1940 in Add Ms 52561; see also Roskill, Churchill and the Admirals, p. 121. 29. Roskill, Churchill and the Admirals, p. 121. 30. Ms Forbes had read a biographical article about her father that I wrote in The Mariner’s Mirror (May, 2002). Her great kindness in considering me for custodian of these documents is deeply appreciated. The letter mentioned is in the author’s possession, but will in future be deposited at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich. 31. Quotation from Roskill, The War at Sea Volume 1, p. 198. 32. Forbes to Roskill, 28 January, 1950 in the Roskill Papers, File 6/30 33. Speculation: when Cunningham had to leave the Mediterranean, who would have better replaced him, Harwood or Forbes? 34. Quotation and information about Tovey from ADM 196/49, p. 131. 35. Cunningham to Pound, 16 October, 1940 in British Library Add Ms 52561. 36. Letter, Pound to Forbes, 21 March, 1940 in ADM 178/322 37. Letter, Forbes to Pound, 28 March, 1940 in ADM 178/322. Forbes said bluntly ‘I do not want Tovey’. 38. Letter, Churchill to Ismay, 2 September, 1940 in Gilbert, The Churchill War Papers Volume 2, p. 761. Churchill would have read Cunningham’s dispatch after Calabria praising Tovey’s skill and fighting ability; see CAB 106/338. 39. Gilbert, Churchill War Papers Volume 2, p. 786. Churchill speaks in this letter to Alexander about giving Harwood and Tom Phillips major sea postings. Wisely, Churchill gravitated towards Tovey for the Home Fleet. 40. This section, and quotations from Tovey’s letter to Cunningham of 17 October, 1940 in Add. Ms. 52569.

Notes 179 41. ADM 187/10, 2 December, 1940. 42. Roskill in The War at Sea Volume 1 gives the details for the War Emergency, 1940, and 1941 RN building programmes in his Appendix F. 43. Compiled from ADM 187/1 and ADM 187/10. 44. The operations of the German supply system in van der Vat, The Atlantic Campaign, pp. 158–60. 45. Barnett, Engage the Enemy More Closely, p. 279. 46. For convoy HX84, see Roskill, War at Sea Volume 1, pp. 288–300, and van der Vat, The Atlantic Campaign, p. 157. 47. Roskill, The War at Sea Volume 1, p. 289; Barnett, Engage the Enemy More Closely, p. 197. Was the interference by Pound simply a parting shot at Forbes, or just another example of his foolish meddling? 48. Quotation from van der Vat, The Atlantic Campaign, p. 158. 49. Quotation from Barnett, Engage the Enemy More Closely, p. 197. 50. Grand Admiral E. Raeder, My Life (Annapolis, MD: United States Naval Institute, 1960), p. 349. 51. For the sortie of the Hipper see, Bekker, Hitler’s Naval War, pp. 207–8, and Roskill, The War at Sea Volume 1, p. 291. 52. See the entry for this period in ADM 199/447. 53. The January–March 1941 operations of the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau are in G. Rhys-Jones’s article ‘The Loss of the Bismarck: Who was to Blame?’, Naval War College Review, 45 (1) (Winter, 1992), p. 28, and Roskill, The War at Sea Volume 1, pp. 373–9. 54. See ADM 199/396, p. 22. Tovey had two battleships, a battlecruiser, eight light cruisers and 11 destroyers to take to sea at midnight on 25 January. 55. ADM 199/396, pp. 22–3. 56. Quotation from Rhys-Jones, ‘The Loss of the Bismarck: Who was to Blame?’, p. 28. 57. Taken from Barnett, Engage the Enemy More Closely, p. 279. 58. See ADM 199/396, pp. 30–1, 36. Earlier, when reporting on Naiad’s sighting report, Tovey incorrectly concluded ‘that it was unlikely that an enemy vessel had in fact been present’. ADM 199/396, p. 23. 59. Roskill, The War at Sea Volume 1, pp. 374–5. 60. Quotation is from Roskill, p. 376. 61. ADM 199/396, p. 55. 62. Roskill, The War at Sea Volume 1, p. 376. 63. ADM 199/396, p. 70. 64. Roskill, The War at Sea Volume 1, p. 379. 65. Quotation from Add Ms 52569, letter, Tovey to Cunningham, 21 March, 1941.

6 The Germans Rolls the Dice: April–June 1941 1. See Chapter 5 and Roskill, The War at Sea Volume 1, pp. 362–88. 2. The all-out diplomatic efforts of Foreign Secretary Eden are discussed in Playfair, The Mediterranean and the Middle East Volume 1 (London: HMSO, 1954), pp. 377–80. 3. The author supports the view put forward by the German staff officer General F. W. von Mellenthin, who served in the Greek Campaign and with

180 Notes

4.

5.

6. 7. 8. 9.

10.

11. 12.

the Afrika Korps, when he wrote: ‘Of all British enterprises during the war, the expedition to Greece seems to me the most difficult to justify on purely military grounds . . . The British forces sent to their support – while they deprived Wavell [C-in-C Middle East] of an excellent opportunity of getting to Tripoli – were a mere drop in the ocean by standards of continental warfare’, von Mellenthin, Panzer Battles (New York: Ballantine Books, 1984), p. 39. General Alanbrooke considered it ‘a definite strategic blunder’, War Diaries (Danchev and Todman, 2001), p. 141. However, the argument for helping the Greeks was largely political. It was intended to keep the Turks out of the Axis camp, aid in the war against Italy, give encouragement to the anti-German Yugoslavs, and impress neutral (in other words US) opinion as to Britain’s value as a military ally. The debacle did nothing to further Britain’s political ends. Home Defence, Battle of the Atlantic, the Bomber Offensive, Mediterranean (naval), North Africa, East Africa, and Greece. Churchill ignored the Far East, and could never fully comprehend the Japanese threat. To do so would have led to a recapitulation of the arguments over sending much of the Fleet to Singapore and shutting down operations in the Mediterranean that had dogged the Cabinet throughout the 1930s. Such a fundamental reappraisal of British strategy was not in Churchill’s interest, and may well have led to the adoption of a radically more defensive posture than Churchill could intellectually or emotionally tolerate. The British could begin to qualify their fear of invasion by April 1941 because intelligence sources indicated that Hitler intended to invade the Soviet Union that spring. The British, and the Americans, passed this information on to Stalin, who ignored and profoundly distrusted the warnings. See Bullock, Hitler and Stalin, pp. 712–13. The need for reinforcements is spelled out in Kirby, The War Against Japan Volume 1 pp. 48–55. Rommel’s campaign is covered in Playfair, The Mediterranean and the Middle East Volume 2, pp. 19–30. Hitler’s decision and a synopsis of its execution can be found in Bullock, Hitler and Stalin, pp. 707–9. The Royal Navy’s losses are given in Playfair, The Mediterranean and the Middle East Volume 2, p. 147. This period is fully discussed in M. Simpson, The Cunningham Papers Volume 1: The Mediterranean Fleet 1939–1942, pp. 231–446. For a lively account of the Greek/Crete campaigns see Barnett, Engage the Enemy More Closely, pp. 346–64. Barnett believes, as does the author, that the British commitment of forces to Greece was a mistake. Playfair, The Mediterranean and the Middle East Volume 2, pp. 177–97. An interesting look at German strategy in this period is K. Macksey, Why the Germans Lose at War (London: Greenhill Books, 1996), pp. 120–31. Losses are given in Roskill, The War at Sea Volume 1, p. 616. Any discussion of the career of the Bismarck owes a debt to S. Roskill who compiled the Admiralty’s ADM 199 series. See ADM 199/1187 titled ‘Pursuit and Destruction of the German battleship Bismarck’. See also ROSK 4/17; Captain R. Grenfell, RN, The Bismarck Episode (New York: Macmillan, 1949); L. Kennedy, Pursuit: The Chase and Sinking of the Bismarck (London: Book Club Associates, 1974); Roskill, The War at Sea Volume 1, pp. 394–418, and,

Notes 181

13. 14.

15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43.

unfortunately, ADM 1/11,726, the findings of Board of Enquiry into the loss of HMS Hood. Details of the Bismarck can be found in Chesnau, Conway’s, p. 224, The terrible trade-off between the need for escorts and the need for capital ships is explained in A. Lambert, ‘Seapower 1939–1940: Churchill and the Strategic Origins of the Battle of the Atlantic’, Journal of Strategic Studies (1994) pp. 86–108. Admiral Forbes, then C-in-C Plymouth, wrote to Pound in the summer of 1941 to remind him that the partially completed Lion and Temeraire might still be finished in time to participate in the war. Pound and Churchill discussed the idea but nothing came of it. See PREM 3 324/12. Chesnau, Conway’s, p. 97. Ibid., p. 15. In fact, Duke of York became operational in December 1941 while Tirpitz did not become fully operational until January 1942. G. Rhys-Jones, ‘The Loss of the Bismarck: Who was to Blame?’, pp. 30–1. L. Kennedy, Pursuit, pp. 29–30. Barnett, Engage the Enemy More Closely, p. 280; L. Kennedy, Pursuit, pp. 27–8; Roskill, The War at Sea Volume 1, p. 393. While in dry dock four days later, Gneisenau was hit by four bombs during an RAF raid, further damaging the battlecruiser. L. Kennedy, Pursuit, pp. 30–1. Ibid., p. 31. B. Baron von Mullenheim-Rechberg, Battleship Bismarck: A Survivor’s Story (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, new and expanded edn, 1990), p. 101. Table 6.1 is drawn from ADM 187/13, 23 May, 1941. Rhys-Jones, ‘The Loss of the Bismarck’, pp. 31–2. See ADM 199/399 18th CS and HF Destroyer Command War Diaries p. 127 and Roskill, The War at Sea Volume 1, pp. 341–2. Hinsley, British Intelligence in the Second World Volume 1, p. 337. ADM 199/409 1st, 2nd, and 10th CS and 2nd-in-C HF War Diaries, p. 250. Holland’s activities can be found in ADM 199/399, p. 34. Hinsley, British Intelligence in the Second World War Volume 1, pp. 340–1. L. Kennedy, Pursuit, p. 39. Hinsley, British Intelligence in the Second World War Volume 1, p. 340; L. Kennedy, Pursuit, pp. 18–19. L. Kennedy, Pursuit, p. 29. Mullenheim-Rechberg, Battleship Bismarck, p. 83. L. Kennedy, Pursuit, p. 32. Mullenheim-Rechberg, Battleship Bismarck, p. 108n. Hinsley, British Intelligence in the Second World War Volume 1, p. 341. Ibid. Technically, while operating with destroyers BCS was referred to as the Battle Cruiser Force. The composition and instructions to the BCS are contained in ADM 199/409; see also Grenfell, The Bismarck Episode, p. 29. ADM 199/409, p. 44. Grenfell, The Bismarck Episode, p. 21. Grenfell, The Bismarck Episode, p. 29; L. Kennedy, Pursuit, pp. 44–5.

182 Notes 44. L. Kennedy, Pursuit, p. 44. 45. Roskill, The War at Sea Volume 1, p. 396 and Map 30. 46. Armament for the Hood upon completion of its refit in April 1941 in ADM 239/70. 47. For the weakness of Hood’s armour scheme, and how she was sunk, see W. J. Jurens, ‘The Loss of H. M. S. Hood – A Re-Examination’, Warship International, 24 (2) esp. pp. 122–7. 48. ADM 199/1187, p. 162. 49. Quotation from Mullenheim-Rechberg, Battleship Bismarck, p. 128. 50. Mullenheim-Rechberg, Battleship Bismarck, p. 117. 51. L. Kennedy, Pursuit, p. 51. 52. Barnett, Engage the Enemy More Closely, p. 289. 53. See Roskill, The War at Sea Volume 1, pp. 397–8. 54. Suffolk could detect Bismarck out to a range of approximately 10 miles, technically well within 15-inch gun range. See Roskill, The War at Sea Volume 1, p. 404. 55. Roskill, The Navy at War 1939–1945 (Ware, Hereford: Wordsworth Editions, 1998), p. 129. 56. This problem is discussed in Gordon, The Rules of the Game, especially in the Appendices. 57. ‘Holland expected that he might make contact any time after 0140 on the 24th . . .’ Quotation from Barnett, Engage the Enemy More Closely, p. 290. L. Kennedy supports the contention that Holland expected a night battle. 58. Quotation from ADM 239/261, p. 11. 59. ADM 234/321, p. 5 60. ADM 234/321, p. 5. 61. Quotations from Barnett, Engage the Enemy More Closely, p. 292. 62. Quotation from Roskill, The War at Sea Volume 1, p. 402. 63. W. J. Jurens, ‘The Loss of HMS. Hood’, esp. p. 128. 64. Quotation from L. Kennedy, Pursuit, p. 76; his critique is found on pp. 83–4. 65. Roskill, The War at Sea Volume 1, p. 402. 66. ADM 199/363, C-in-C Rosyth War Diaries, p. 103. 67. Quotation from ADM 178/322, personal letters of First Sea Lord, Tovey to Pound, 12 July, 1941. 68. Currie’s position is laid out in a letter to Roskill of 20 December, 1951 in ROSK 4/17. 69. I noted with satisfaction that Graham Rhys-Jones, The Loss of the Bismarck (London: Cassell, 1999), pp. 120–2 reached a similar conclusion regarding Holland’s handling of his force. 70. Quotation and speculation about the activity on Bismarck’s bridge are from Mullenheim-Rechberg, Battleship Bismarck, p. 139. 71. Grenfell, The Bismarck Episode, p. 49. 72. ADM 234/321, pp. 5–6. 73. Mullenheim-Rechberg, Battleship Bismarck, p. 139. 74. L. Kennedy, Pursuit, pp. 84–5. 75. ADM 234/321, p. 6. 76. ADM 234/321, p. 6. 77. Mullenheim-Rechberg, Battleship Bismarck, p. 144.

Notes 183 78. Mullenheim-Rechberg, Battleship Bismarck, p. 141. After the war, the experts at the Royal Navy Tactical School determined that given the relative speed of Bismarck vis-à-vis Norfolk and Suffolk, they had no chance to engage their German opponent. See Captain G. S. Swallow to Roskill of 8 January, 1952 in ROSK 4/17. 79. L. Kennedy, Pursuit, pp. 88–90. 80. ADM 234/321, p. 6. 81. Mullenheim-Rechberg, Battleship Bismarck, pp. 147–9. 82. Jurens, ‘The Loss of HMS Hood’, p. 129. 83. Quotation from ADM 1/11,726, p. 14. 84. ADM 1/11,726, p. 12. 85. I am in debt here to the excellent detective work of Jurens in ‘Loss of HMS Hood’, esp. pp. 155–7. See also ADM 1/11, 726, pp. 16–17. 86. D. Mearns and R. White, Hood and Bismarck (London: Channel 4 Books, 2001), pp. 215–16. 87. By comparison, the similarly weakly armoured Japanese battlecruiser Kirishima received nine 16-inch shell hits and approximately 45 5-inch gun hits at the Battle of Guadalcanal from the modern US battleships Washington and South Dakota, yet took over 3 hours to sink with the help of her own crew who opened her sea cocks when it became obvious she could not escape the scene of the action. Either German shells were vastly more destructive than their American counterparts (the evidence of the shell hits on Prince of Wales does not support this) or Bismarck just happened to land a very lucky hit. See R. Spector, Eagle Against the Sun (New York: Free Press, 1985), pp. 212–3, and P. S. Dull, A Battle History of the Imperial Japanese Navy (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1978), pp. 245–6. 88. See Rhys-Jones, ‘Loss of the Bismarck’, pp. 36–8. 89. Ibid. 90. Roskill, The War at Sea Volume 1, p. 407; Rhys-Jones, ‘Loss of the Bismarck’, pp. 38–9. 91. M. Simpson (ed.), The Somerville Papers, pp. 54–5, 266–7. 92. Roskill, The War at Sea Volume 1, pp. 407–8. 93. ADM 199/1187, p. 16. 94. Roskill, The War at Sea Volume 1, p. 408. 95. ADM 239/261, p. 49. 96. Victorious is described by Tovey in ADM 199/1187, p. 162. 97. Roskill, The War at Sea Volume 1, p. 408. 98. Quotation from ADM 199/1187, p. 162. 99. See ADM 199/1187, p. 163. 100. Barnett, Engage the Enemy More Closely, p. 299. The difference between warmth and cold was very real, as an 8-inch salvo had shattered the windows of his bridge and left he and his staff exposed to the elements. 101. Quotation from Barnett, Engage the Enemy More Closely, p. 298. 102. ADM 199/1187, p. 163. 103. The story is related in a letter from Lord Tovey to Roskill, 14 December, 1961 in ROSK 4/17. By the spring of 1942, Churchill wanted Tovey out, but could not convince Cunningham to take his place. 104. Quotation from ADM 239/261, p. 19. 105. ADM 199/1187, p. 164.

184 Notes 106. 107. 108. 109. 110. 111. 112. 113. 114.

115. 116. 117.

118. 119. 120. 121. 122. 123. 124.

125. 126. 127.

128. 129. 130. 131. 132.

133. 134.

Barnett, Engage the Enemy More Closely, p. 302. Simpson, Somerville Papers, p. 267. Quotation from ROSK 4/17, Tovey to Pound, 30 May, 1941. L. Kennedy, Pursuit, p. 32. Tovey’s thoughts and actions are discussed by him in ADM 199/1187, pp. 164–5. ADM 199/1187, p. 166. For a fine account of Rodney’s part in the Bismarck chase, see Hattendorf (ed.), On His Majesty’s Service, pp. 204–7. Simpson, Somerville Papers, p. 271. The reasons for the mistake in fixing Bismarck’s position are in Rhys-Jones, Loss of the Bismarck, appendix. It would appear that the Master of the Fleet (chief navigator) used the wrong measuring tool, not the wrong type of chart, in making his critical error. This section is based on Rhys-Jones, ‘Loss of the Bismarck’, pp. 39–40, and Hinsley, British Intelligence in the Second World War Volume 1, p. 343. Admiralty signal is found in Hattendorf, On His Majesty’s Service, p. 207. Bletchley Park had broken the Luftwaffe Enigma months before. Confirmation that Bismarck was headed to France in Hinsley, British Intelligence in the Second World War Volume 1, pp. 344–5. Barnett, Engage the Enemy More Closely, p. 306. Simpson, Somerville Papers, p. 271. Simpson, Somerville Papers, p. 272. Quotation from Simpson, Somerville Papers, p. 55. Barnett, Engage the Enemy More Closely, p. 307. Quotation from letter, Tovey to Roskill, 20 November, 1954 in ROSK 4/17. Tovey is referring to Vice Admiral John Byng, who, after his poor performance at the Battle of Minorca in 1756 was court martialled and shot to, as Voltaire wryly put it, ‘encourage the other admirals’. Captain L. E. Maund’s Report of Proceedings in ADM 199/1187. Quotation from Mullenheim-Rechberg, Battleship Bismarck, p. 206. Quotation from Barnett, Engage the Enemy More Closely, p. 309. Damage to the Bismarck can be found in Mullenheim-Rechberg, Battleship Bismarck, pp. 206–9; Mullenheim-Rechberg thought that Bismarck was hit by three torpedoes, not two. Recent evidence from the wreck indicates that he may have been correct. Letter, Tovey to Pound, 30 May, 1941 in ROSK 4/17. This same letter also appears in ADM 178/322. For Tovey’s thoughts and actions during the approach to battle, see L. Kennedy, Pursuit, pp. 200–1. Quotation from letter, Tovey to Pound, 30 May, 1941 in ROSK 4/17. Quotation from Roskill, The War at Sea Volume 1, p. 415. For an eyewitness account of the Bismarck’s sinking, see MullenheimRechberg, Battleship Bismarck, pp. 246–86; for a well-researched modern account see Barnett, Engage the Enemy More Closely, pp. 311–14. Quotation from Mullenheim-Rechberg, Battleship Bismarck, p. 256. Dorsetshire’s part in the Bismarck operation is found in ADM 199/1187, pp. 16–17.

Notes 185 135. The evidence for what caused the Bismarck to sink is in W. H. Garzke, Jr and R. O. Dulin, Jr, ‘Who Sank the Bismarck?’, Naval Institute Proceedings 117 ( June 1991): 48–57; quotation from page 53. 136. Quotation from Tovey to Pound, 30 May, 1941 in ROSK 4/17. 137. L. Kennedy, Pursuit, p. 218. 138. Quotation from L. Kennedy, Pursuit, p. 209. 139. Quotation from ADM 234/321, p. 35. 140. Quotation from L. Kennedy, Pursuit, pp. 221–2. 141. Quotation from Mullenheim-Rechberg, Battleship Bismarck, p. 289. 142. The Yamato incident is recorded in Russell Spurr, A Glorious Way to Die (New York: Newmarket Press, 1981), p. 285. 143. Admiralty signal taken from Barnett, Engage the Enemy More Closely, p. 315. 144. See Tovey to Roskill, 14 December, 1961 in ROSK 4/17. 145. Quotation from Tovey to Roskill, 20 November, 1954 in ROSK 4/17. 146. For losses in the Mediterranean and the strategic situation see M. Simpson, ‘Wings over the Sea’, in N. A. M. Roger (ed.), Naval Power in the Twentieth Century (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996) pp. 134–50. 147. The American ships arrived on 10 July, 1941. See ADM 199/409, p. 53. The occupation of Iceland gave the Americans the excuse of escorting convoys all the way there. Hitler’s decision to declare war on the USA, often portrayed as insane or inexplicable, made some sense – the USA, for all intents and purposes, was already at war with him. See T. Bailey and P. Ryan, Hitler vs Roosevelt: The Undeclared Naval War (New York: Free Press, 1979) esp. pp. 171–87. 148. For the Bomber Command raids, see Roskill, The War at Sea Volume 1, p. 487. 149. Hinsley points out that in mid-June 1941 Bletchley Park began reading German naval Enigma signals on the day of their transmission, giving the Admiralty timely tactical intelligence for the first time. See Hinsley, British Intelligence in the Second World War Volume 1, p. 346. The failed sortie of the Lutzow is in ADM 199/409, p. 51, and Hinsley et al., British Intelligence in the Second World War Volume 2 (London: Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 164–5, and Roskill, The War at Sea Volume 1, p. 484. 150. German armed merchant raiders are discussed in Hinsley, British Intelligence in the Second World War Volume 2, pp. 165–7; statistics on losses are found in Roskill, The War at Sea Volume 1, p. 616. 151. Hitler’s thinking is well documented in Bullock, Hitler and Stalin, pp. 687–720; for a powerful argument that Britain’s position should not have been helped, because the Germans had victory in their grasp that summer and threw it away, see R. H. S. Stolfi, Hitler’s Panzers East (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992). If the Germans had won a crushing victory that summer, Hitler’s Directive No. 32 of 11 June, 1941 envisioned an immediate switch of economic resources to naval and air armaments. This included a huge ship building programme. In twelve years, the Naval Staff believed, they could build a fleet that, in alliance with Japan, could defeat the USA and whatever was left of the British Empire (interestingly, none of this involved a discussion of a cross-channel invasion) and expel all Anglo-American influence from continental Europe, Africa, Asia, and the world’s oceans. For these plans see

186 Notes Militargeschichtiches Forschungsant, Germany and the Second World War Volume 3 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), pp. 630–6. Such plans strike this author as a bit far-fetched. 152. Quotation from Churchill, The Second World War Volume 3: The Grand Alliance (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1950), p. 372. 153. Ibid., p. 381

7 The Hard Road to Murmansk: June 1941–May 1943 1. Quotation from P. Paret (ed.), Makers of Modern Strategy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), p. 200. 2. Quotation from P. Kemp, Convoy!, & p. 12. 3. Kemp, Convoy!, p. 14. 4. Roskill to Hinsley, 10 July, 1982 in ROSK 5/72. 5. A. Lambert, ‘Seizing the Initiative: The Arctic Convoys 1944–45’, in N. A. M. Roger, Naval Power in the Twentieth Century, p. 160. Lambert, however, because of his stress on the overall struggle with the U-boats, sees the Arctic Campaign in a different light than this author. 6. For Tovey’s strategic dilemma, see Barnett, Engage the Enemy More Closely, pp. 695–6. 7. Tovey knew that the Home Fleet could not do two jobs at once when he wrote to the Admiralty: ‘no disposition of the Home Fleet could adequately protect both the Russian convoys and the northern passages . . .’ Roskill, The War at Sea Volume 2, p. 119. 8. Numbers are from Kemp, Convoy!, p. 235. 9. The Soviets produced 157,261 planes and 105,251 tanks in World War II, and received 21,906 planes and 12,755 tanks, respectively. They produced 197,100 trucks and received 409,000. Statistics for planes are taken from Kemp, Convoy!, pp, 235–7 and J. Ellis, World War II: Encyclopedia of Facts and Figures (Military Book Club, 1993), p. 278. Tank figures are from Kemp, Convoy!, pp. 236–7, and Ellis, Encyclopedia, p. 277. The number of trucks produced and received are from Ellis, Encyclopedia, p. 278 and W. Murray and A. Millett, A War to be Won: Fighting the Second World War (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2000), p. 388. 10. Quotation from F. W. von Mellenthin, Panzer Battles (New York: Ballantine Books, 1984), p. 333. 11. Quotation from Murray and Millett, A War to be Won, p. 388. 12. The details of Operation E. F. can be found in ADM 199/447, Home Fleet War History, especially Tovey to the Admiralty, 12 September, 1941 and ‘Commanding Officer HMS Furious Report on Operation “E. F.” 30 July 1941’. Also of interest is Roskill, The War at Sea Volume 1, pp. 485–6, and Winton, Find, Fix, and Strike!, pp. 54–6. 13. Fleet Air Arm Order of Battle can be found in Winton, Find, Fix, and Strike!, p. 54. 14. The British did have the hybrid Barracuda torpedo bomber/dive bomber in the development pipeline, but it was slow and proved a poor performer. 15. Quotation from ‘Commanding Officer HMS Furious Report on Operation “E. F.” 30 July 1941’ in ADM 199/447. 16. Losses are from Winton, Find, Fix, and Strike!, p. 55.

Notes 187 17. Tovey to Admiralty, 12 September, 1941 in ADM 199/447. 18. Table 7.1 is compiled from Roskill, The War at Sea Volume 3 Part 2, pp. 432–3, and Kemp, Convoy!, pp. 17, 18, 28, and 35. 19. For German U-boat operations and Hitler’s fear for Norway, see Doenitz, Memoirs, pp. 197, 206–9. 20. Hinsley et al. British Intelligence in the Second World War Volume 2, p. 202. 21. For Churchill’s thinking and the opposition of both Pound and Tovey to it, see Roskill, Churchill and the Admirals, pp. 196–7; for the debate over deployment and the subsequent fate of the deterrent force, see M. Stephen, Sea Battles in close-up: World War II (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1988), pp. 99–114. 22. Greene and Massignani, Naval War in the Mediterranean, pp. 202–4. 23. For an overview of that untapped potential and how it was translated into military power, see Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, pp. 347–57. 24. Churchill’s famous lines read as follows: ‘Hitler’s fate was sealed. Mussolini’s fate was sealed. As for the Japanese, they would be ground to powder. All the rest was merely the proper application of overwhelming force.’ Kennedy, Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, p. 347. Churchill was dead on target. 25. This account of the raid on Vaagso Island is based on CAB 106/343, Operation ‘Archery’, 27 December, 1941. 26. Kemp, Convoy!, p. 27. 27. ADM 199/429, p. 4. 28. ADM 199/429, p. 10. 29. ADM 199/429, p. 5. 30. ADM 199/429, pp. 8–10. 31. Quotation from Roskill, The War at Sea Volume 2, p. 116. 32. Table 7.2 is taken from ADM 234/369, Appendix D. 33. Roskill, The War at Sea Volume 2, p. 115. 34. For the Channel Dash, see Stephen, Sea Battles in close-up, pp. 115–36. 35. Kemp, Convoy!, p. 28. 36. Quotation from Roskill, Churchill and the Admirals, p. 124. 37. For Churchill’s thoughts on Tirpitz, see Langenberg, ‘The German Battleship Tirpitz: A Strategic Warship?’, p. 82; Roskill, The War at Sea Volume 2, p. 117; Kemp, Convoy!, pp. 26–8. 38. For Bomber Command raids on Tirpitz, see Roskill, The War at Sea Volume 2, pp. 117, 127. 39. Signal, Tovey to Admiralty, 1801, 25 February, 1942 in ADM 199/347. 40. Signal, Tovey to Curteis, 1412, 27 February, 1942 in ADM 199/347, and ADM 199/1427 p. 24. 41. Signal, Curteis to Tovey of 2207, 1 March, 1942 in ADM 199/347. 42. Signal, Tovey to Curteis of 1735, 2 March, 1942 in ADM 199/347. 43. Curteis did not prove a fully satisfactory VA2 and was soon to be replaced by the Third Sea Lord, Vice Admiral Bruce Fraser. 44. For Ciliax’s problems and PQ 12, see Roskill, The War at Sea Volume 2, pp. 120–4, and Kemp, Convoy!, pp. 30–6. 45. ADM 199/429, p. 22. 46. ADM 199/429, p. 22. 47. ADM 199/429, p. 22. 48. ADM 199/1427, p. 25.

188 Notes 49. ADM 199/429, p. 23. 50. M. Evans, Great World War II Battles in the Arctic (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999), p. 66. 51. ADM 199/429, p. 24. 52. Tovey to Secretary of the Admiralty, 14 March, 1942 in ADM 199/721. 53. For an interesting discussion of the role of Tirpitz in Grand Strategy, see Langenberg, ‘Tirpitz: A Strategic Warship?’, pp. 81–92. 54. Roskill, The War at Sea Volume 2, p. 125. 55. Roskill, The War at Sea Volume 2, p. 120. 56. ADM 199/429, pp. 28–9. 57. Kemp, Convoy!, p. 42. 58. Kemp, Convoy!, p. 44. 59. Kemp, Convoy!, p. 44; Roskill, The War at Sea Volume 2, p. 127. 60. ADM 199/721, p. 5. 61. CS10’s activities are reported in ADM 199/721, pp. 78–80. 62. Kemp, Convoy!, p. 45. 63. Kemp, Convoy!, p. 45. 64. N. Friedman, U.S. Battleships (London: Arms & Armour Press, 1985), p. 347. 65. Kemp, Convoy!, p. 47. 66. Roskill, The War at Sea Volume 2, p. 128. 67. ADM 199/721, pp. 62–4. 68. Roskill, The War at Sea Volume 2, p. 129. The Operations Branch of the German Naval Staff was miffed that their destroyers had not gone all-out to destroy the convoy, but very happy that they had pressed the attack and (they hoped) sunk the Edinburgh. TM-100-E May 1942, pp. 32–3. 69. Kemp, Convoy!, pp. 53–4. 70. Tovey’s influence with Churchill was rapidly approaching nil. In April, Churchill asked Admiral of the Fleet Sir Andrew Cunningham to replace him, but Cunningham refused, stating ‘If Tovey drops dead on his bridge I will certainly replace him, otherwise not.’ As late as June, Churchill was trying to get Alexander, the First Lord of the Admiralty, and Pound to back him in his quest to fire Tovey. See Roskill, Churchill and the Admirals, p. 142. 71. ADM 234/369, p. 46. 72. Kemp, Convoy!, pp. 56–60. It should be noted that at the time of PQ 16, the Royal Navy was finally doing some limited refuelling of warships at sea. ADM 199/1427, p. 75. 73. Quotation from R. Woodman, Arctic Convoys (London: John Murray, 1994), p. 185. 74. For British losses, see Dull, A Battle History of the Imperial Japanese Navy, pp. 35–44, 71–111, and Conway’s, p. 12. 75. Roskill, The War at Sea Volume 2, p. 97. 76. ADM 187/19. FAA strength was slowly raising: Eagle had two Sea Hurricanes and 17 Swordfish embarked; Victorious, 12 Fulmars and 21 Albacores; Formidable, 12 Fulmars, 12 Martlets, 12 Albacores; Illustrious, 16 Martlets, 21 Swordfish; Indomitable, 18 Fulmars, nine Hurricanes, 24 Albacores. Total: 81 fighters, 95 torpedo bombers. By contrast, the Japanese and Americans were both able to field over 200 carrier planes that month at Midway. 77. Greene and Massignani, The Naval War in the Mediterranean 1940–1943, pp. 232–41.

Notes 189 78. Task Force 99, Order of Battle from ADM 199/427, p. 98. 79. This account of Convoy PQ 17 is based primarily on: ADM 199/427, Home Fleet War Diaries 1942, esp. pp. 92–100; ADM 1/20,021; letters from ROSK files 5/50 and 5/72; Roskill, The War at Sea Volume 2, pp. 130–44; Hinsley et al. British Intelligence in the Second World War Volume 2, pp. 215–22; D. Irving, The Destruction of Convoy PQ 17 (New York: Richardson & Steirman, 1987); and Evans, Great Battles of World War II in the Arctic, pp. 71–84. 80. See Roskill, The War at Sea Volume 2, p. 130, and Barnett, Engage the Enemy More Closely, pp. 701–2. 81. Irving, The Destruction of Convoy PQ 17, p. 30. 82. Pound to King, 18 May, 1942, US Naval Historical Center: Operational Archives, E. J. King Correspondence, Box 1. 83. For Churchill and Roosevelt’s communication, see Churchill, The Second World War Volume 4: The Hinge of Fate (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1950), pp. 230–4, and Irving, Destruction of Convoy PQ 17, pp. 30–1. 84. The orders to Tovey and the convoy can be found in ADM 1/20,021 and in Irving, Destruction of Convoy PQ 17, Appendix. 85. Quotation from ADM 1/20,021, p. 5145. 86. Irving, Destruction of Convoy PQ 17, pp. 59, 68. 87. See Roskill to Hinsley, 10 July, 1982 in ROSK 5/72. 88. Evans, Great World War II Battles in the Arctic, pp. 72–3. 89. Roskill, The War at Sea Volume 2, pp. 134–7. 90. The activities of the two American destroyers while with the convoy can be found as File A16–3 FE 24–99 in the US National Archives, College Park, Maryland. 91. Roskill, The War at Sea Volume 2, p. 136. 92. Roskill, The War at Sea Volume 2, p. 135. 93. Air Ministry, The Rise and Fall of the German Air Force 1933–1945, p. 114. 94. Barnett, Engage the Enemy More Closely, p. 701. 95. Kemp, Convoy!, pp. 68–71. 96. For a discussion of the Ultra intelligence Pound was receiving and his actions during this period, see Hinsley et al. British Intelligence in the Second World War Volume 2, pp. 215–22. 97. Hinsley et al., British Intelligence in the Second World War Volume 2, p. 216. 98. Hinsley et al., British Intelligence in the Second World War Volume 2, p. 217. 99. For these orders and counter-orders, see ADM 1/20,021, p. 5146. 100. These orders can be found in ADM 1/20021, p. 5146. 101. Quotation from Kemp, Convoy!, p. 76 102. For Broome’s reasoning when he left the scattering convoy and headed off with Hamilton, see his letter of 8 July, 1942 in ADM 205/22A. 103. Tovey to Roskill, 12 December, 1954 in ROSK 5/50. 104. Losses are given in ADM 199/427, p. 99. 105. Barnett, Engage the Enemy More Closely, p. 718. 106. Irving, Destruction of PQ 17, pp. 197–8. 107. For the mood of the surface fleet, see Bekker, Hitler’s Naval War, pp. 278–9. 108. No less an observer than Admiral of the Fleet Sir Andrew Cunningham noted that ‘I thought in this war the German navy was a very pale shadow of that of 1914.’ British Library Add Mss 52581B, p. 106. 109. Roskill to Hinsley, 10 July, 1982 in ROSK 5/72.

190 Notes 110. Quotation from R. Humble, Fraser of North Cape (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983), p. 153. 111. Quotation from Evans, Great Battles in the Arctic, p. 86. 112. ADM 199/427, p. 98. 113. ADM 199/429, pp. 176–89. 114. ADM 199/427, pp. 114–16. 115. ADM 234/369, p. 169. 116. ADM 199/758, p. 3. 117. ADM 199/1427, pp. 137–8. 118. ADM 199/1427, p. 136. 119. TM-100-F, September 1942, p. 119. 120. ADM 199/758, pp. 116–18. 121. TM-100-F, p. 143. 122. Woodman, Arctic Convoys, p. 271. 123. TM-100-F p. 175. 124. Woodman, Arctic Convoys, pp. 272–3. 125. ADM 199/758, p. 3. 126. TM-100-F, p. 154. 127. Winton, Find, Fix, and Strike!, p. 102. 128. TM-100-E, May 1942, p. 62. 129. We know that in March 1942 Anthony Eden was ‘nervous lest Russia should make peace with Germany’. Danchev and Todman (eds), Alanbrooke, War Diaries, p. 236. 130. TM-100-E, July 1942, p. 97. 131. ADM 199/427, p. 166. 132. ADM 199/1427, pp. 174–9. 133. Tovey to Secretary of the Admiralty, 4 December, 1942 in ADM 199/721. 134. Air Ministry, Rise and Fall of the German Air Force, p. 115. 135. ADM 199/427, p. 197. 136. A. W. Clarke (Captain of HMS Sheffield) to Roskill, 20 December, 1954 in ROSK 5/50. 137. Clarke to Roskill, 20 December, 1954. 138. Tovey to Secretary of the Admiralty, 9 February, 1943 in ROSK 5/50. 139. Armament statistics are from Stephen, Sea Battle in close-up Volume 1, pp. 183, 196–7. and Conway’s, pp. 232–4. 140. Quotation from Stephen, Sea Battle in close-up Volume 1, p. 183. 141. See letter, Tovey to Secretary of the Admiralty, 9 February, 1943. 142. Tovey to Secretary of the Admiralty, 9 February, 1943. 143. ADM 199/429, p. 124. 144. Tovey to Secretary of the Admiralty, 9 February, 1943. 145. Stephen, Sea Battles in close-up Volume 1, p. 188. 146. Tovey to Secretary of Admiralty; see also E. P. von der Porten, The German Navy in World War II (London: Arthur Barker, 1970), p. 209. 147. Clarke to Roskill, 20 December, 1954. 148. von der Porten, The German Navy in World War II, p. 209. 149. Stephen, Sea Battles in close-up Volume 1, p. 193. 150. Tovey to Secretary of the Admiralty, 9 February, 1943. 151. Clarke to Roskill, 20 December, 1954. 152. Stephen, Sea Battles in close-up Volume 1, p. 194.

Notes 191 153. The following is based on Raeder, My Life, pp. 368–73. 154. For Doenitz’s actions upon taking over as C-in-C, see his Memoirs, pp. 310–11. 155. Resistance inside the pocket collapsed between 31 January and 2 February, 1943. 156. Statistics are drawn from the following sources: for the Indian Ocean, see Roskill, The Navy at War, pp. 186–91; for ‘Pedestal’, see Roskill, War at Sea Volume 2, Map facing p. 305; for PQ 18, see Kemp, Convoy!, pp. 100–1; for ‘Torch’ see Roskill, The War at Sea Volume 2, pp. 464–5. I count Argus as an escort carrier. 157. For the magnitude of the US naval building programme, see H. P. Willmott, The Barrier and the Javelin (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1983), p. 522. The Americans completed 10 battleships, 14 fleet and nine light fleet carriers during the war, and six heavy and 27 light cruisers, and 291 destroyers just from December 1941 through the end of 1944. The Royal Navy commissioned five battleships, six fleet and four light fleet carriers, 29 light cruisers, and 227 fleet and ‘Hunt’ class destroyers from September 1939 to the end of the war. ADM 209/5 Blue List of ships built and building for the RN. 158. ADM 199/632, p. 3. 159. Kemp, Convoy!, pp. 143–9. 160. Kemp, Convoy!, pp. 149–51.

8 The Path to Victory: May 1943–May 1945 1. ADM 199/632, p. 66. 2. For the state of the Home Fleet on Fraser’s appointment, see Humble, Fraser of North Cape, pp. 164–5. 3. ADM 196/51, p. 96. 4. ADM 187/25, 10 May, 1943. 5. ADM 199/632, p. 60. S. E. Morison in the ‘semi-official’ History of US Naval Operations in World War II Volume 10 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1956), pp. 229–33 covers the operation of US naval forces with the Home Fleet in 1943. However, he is perfunctory and caution should be applied in reading his account. 6. ADM 199/632, p. 78. 7. ADM 199/632, p. 89. 8. ADM 199/632, p. 92. 9. R. Humble, United States Fleet Carriers of World War II (Dorset, England: Poole Press, 1984), p. 31. 10. Doenitz, Memoirs, p. 374. 11. Hinsley et al., British Intelligence in the Second World War Volume 3 Part 1, pp. 254–5. 12. Ibid., p. 255. 13. Churchill, The Second World War Volume 4: The Hinge of Fate, p. 112. 14. Kemp, Convoy!, p. 245. 15. ADM 234/348, p. 5. 16. ADM 234/348, pp. 6–7. This account is based on ADM 234/348; E. J. Grove, Sea Battles in Close-up: World War II Volume 2 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1993), pp. 122–31.

192 Notes 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32.

33.

34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41.

ADM 234/348, p. 9. Grove, Sea Battles in Close-up Volume 2, p. 129. ADM 234/348, p. 11. ADM 234/348, p. 14. Grove, Sea Battles in Close-up Volume 2, pp. 129–31. Hinsley et al. British Intelligence in the Second World War Volume 3 Part 1, p. 261. ADM 199/1440, pp. 4–5. US National Archives, College Park, Maryland, RG 38 Box 1365, War Diary USS Ranger, p. 353. RG 38 Box 1364, Aircraft Action Report of Carrier Group 4, p. 4. RG 38 Box 1364, Aircraft Action Report of Carrier Group 4, pp. 1–4. RG 38 Box 1364, Report of Commander Task Force 121, 18 October, 1943 by Rear Admiral O. M. Hustvedt, p. 3. Report of Commander Task Force 121, October 18, 1943, p. 1. Humble, United States Fleet Carriers of World War II, p. 31; Hinsley et al. British Intelligence in the Second World War Volume 3 Part 1, p. 282. Losses in RG 38 Box 136, Action Report of Captain Gordon Rowe of USS Ranger, 9 October, 1943. Report of Commander Task Force 121, October 18, 1943 p. 1. Letter, Rear Admiral Tully Sherry USN to Fraser recounting his days as captain of the USS Augusta with the Home Fleet in the Fraser Papers File 28/9. Sherry’s comments are some of the only interesting material in the Fraser Papers on Fraser’s time as C-in-C Home Fleet. Fraser seems to have been liked and respected by the Americans, and Sherry makes the important observation that even in August and September the weather in the North Atlantic was consistently bad, worse than one would encounter normally in the Pacific. This may seem obvious but it explains some of the differences between how ships and fleets were handled in the two theatres. Letter, King to Stark, 5 November, 1943 in E. J. King Correspondence Box 3, Naval Historical Center, Washington, DC. See also memo King to Knox, 23 October, same box, complaining about how the British had praised the actions of Ranger and her fliers in the press – King thought this a British trick to hold onto Ranger! The author is sure that if they had gone unmentioned, he would have seen it as a perfect example of ‘limey’ ingratitude. ADM 199/632, pp. 132–3. ADM 199/1440, p. 4. Barnett, Engage the Enemy, pp. 737–8. ADM 199/632, p. 128. For the Intelligence picture at that time, see Hinsley et al. British Intelligence in the Second World War Volume 3 Part 1, pp. 264–9. For Doenitz’s thoughts on the impending action, see his Memoirs, pp. 374–85. This account is based on ADM 199/913 and Stephen, Sea Battles in close-up Volume 1, pp. 198–218. Quote from Bey’s orders in letter Roskill to Doenitz, 9 November, 1960. See also Doenitz’s reply (no date), both in ROSK 5/77, in which Doenitz takes responsibility for the defeat. In the same file can be found a document titled ‘Background Information on the Circumstances Leading to Scharnhorst’s Last Operation’ which clearly shows that Bey was expected by his superiors to

Notes 193

42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53.

54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65.

66. 67.

fight. It also quotes a member of the German Naval Staff as appreciating that any German threats to Arctic convoys helped ‘the situation of our Japanese ally’. Stephen, Sea Battles in close-up Volume 1, p. 204. It should be pointed out that JW55B had a 15 destroyer escort and was hardly left defenceless. ADM 199/913, p. 7. Hinsley et al., British Intelligence in the Second World War Volume 3 Part 1, p. 266. Stephen, Sea Battles close-up Volume 1, p. 204. ADM 199/913, p. 8. ADM 199/913, pp. 8–9. ADM 199/913, p. 9. ADM 199/913, p. 13. ADM 199/913, p. 7. ADM 199/913, p. 13. ADM 199/913, p. 13. ADM 199/913, p. 14. The perennial problem with the 14-inch gun turrets seems to have been a classic case of overcorrecting. The British had suffered the catastrophic loss of 3 battlecruisers at Jutland caused by a flash fire propagating down through the shell hoists to the magazines. To prevent this from happening, the British had designed the 14-inch turret with flash-tight doors. However, these slowed the movement of shells and charges to the guns. Under combat conditions, the sailors would try to speed the process by keeping the hoist in neutral rather than locking it as every shell came up. This led to slack, which led to the flash-tight doors not closing properly, which automatically stopped the hoist as a safety precaution until the door was properly closed. Thus, any attempt to speed the process simply jammed up the works. ADM 199/913 pp. 84–5. ADM 199/913, p. 74. Stephen, Sea Battles in close-up Volume 1, p. 211. ADM 199/913, p. 74. ADM 199/913, p. 75. Stephen, Sea Battles in close-up Volume 1, p. 216. Figures are from ADM 199/913, p. 76 and Stephen, Sea Battles in close-up Volume 1, p. 203. ADM 199/913, p. 11. Fraser Papers file 18/21. Fraser Papers file 18/25. Woodman, Arctic Convoys, pp. 376–97. ADM 199/351, pp. 16–26. Barracuda performance: crew of two, capable of carrying one torpedo or one 1600 pound armour-piercing (AP) bomb, speed approximately 200 mph fully loaded with a combat radius of only 194 miles. ADM 239/365 Naval Aircraft Performance Data, pp. 14–15. For Fraser’s thoughts on the planning of the operation, see ADM 199/1440, p. 8. A comparison with US Navy organization and operational practices is illuminating. In November 1943, the US Navy was massing all its carrier strength in one formation, Task Force 50, with an escort of six modern

194 Notes

68.

69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91.

92.

battleships, three heavy and three AA cruisers, and 21 destroyers. During December, TF 50 hit Kwajelein Atoll. The available carrier force, four fleet and two light fleet carriers had an astonishing 386 planes embarked including 104 dive-bombers and 89 torpedo-bombers. Although the British did not have such a strong force (their six fleet carriers in the spring of 1944 could, however, embark at least 255 planes), they failed to mass the forces they did have. S. E. Morison, History of US Naval Operation in World War II Volume 7, pp. 116, 190. ADM 234/345, Staff Battle Summary Operation Tungsten, p. 1. This section is additionally based on ADM 199/941, ADM 199/942, and Roskill, The War at Sea Volume 3 Part 1, pp. 276–7. ADM 199/1440, p. 7. Hinsley et al., British Intelligence in the Second World War Volume 3 Part 1, p. 274. ADM 234/345, p. 4. ADM 234/345, p. 5. ADM 199/941, Report of Commanding Officer HMS Victorious; ADM 234/345, p. 7 ADM 234/345, p. 6. Roskill, The War at Sea Volume 3 Part 1, p. 277. ADM 199/941, Report of Commanding Officer HMS Victorious. ADM 234/345, pp. 7–8. ADM 234/345, p. 8. ADM 199/941, Report of Commanding Officer Victorious; ADM 234/345, pp. 7–8. Roskill, The War at Sea Volume 3 Part 1, p. 277. Hinsley et al. British Intelligence in the Second World War Volume 3 Part 1, p. 275. ADM 234/345, p. 9. ADM 234/345, p. 11. ADM 199/1440, p. 8. Quotation from Humble, Fraser of North Cape, p. 231. Ibid., p. 232. Dull, Battle History of the Imperial Japanese Navy, pp. 17–18. ADM 187/35. See ADM 199/942, Comments of Director of Naval Warfare ‘on the extreme weakness of German Air Forces in Norway during May–December 1944’. Roskill, The War at Sea Volume 3 Part 2, p. 451. In 1943, the British were still deeply divided about all aspects of carrier operations. ADM 1/15576, ‘Operational Grouping of Carriers’, shows that two of their most experienced carrier officers, Boyd and Lyster, did not agree on how many carriers could operate effectively together, whether they should operate as one unit, or each have its own screen. Boyd went so far as to say that the close operation of more than two carriers with large air wings ‘will prove impossible’. Analysis of American experience did not help much, since up to that point in the war each American carrier commander seems to have done things his own way. Humble, Fraser of North Cape, pp. 176–8; Roskill, Churchill and the Admirals, pp. 236–7.

Notes 195 93. For Operations ‘Planet’ and ‘Tigerclaw’, see ADM 199/1440, pp. 8–9. 94. For Moore’s career, see ADM 196/50, p. 329 and the Navy List. 95. C-in-C Home Fleet Report on Operation ‘Mascot’ in ADM 199/942; Roskill, The War at Sea Volume 3 Part 2, p. 156. 96. C-in-C Home Fleet Report on Operation ‘Mascot’, p. 3. 97. C-in-C Home Fleet Report on Operation ‘Mascot’, p. 4. 98. Details of Operation ‘Goodwood’ are found in ADM 199/942; Roskill, The War at Sea Volume 3 Part 2, pp. 159–60. 99. ADM 199/942, Report of Proceedings Operation ‘Goodwood’ (not paginated). 100. ADM 199/1440, p. 31. 101. Sir C. Webster and N. Frankland, The Strategic Air Offensive Against Germany 1939–1945 Volume III (London: HMSO, 1961), pp. 195–6. 102. ADM 199/1440, p. 32. 103. ADM 199/1440, p. 31. 104. Lambert, ‘Seizing the Initiative’, esp. p. 157. 105. ADM 199/1440, p. 36. 106. ADM 199/1440, p. 37. 107. ADM 199/1440, p. 51. 108. ADM 199/1440, p. 54. 109. ADM 199/1440, p. 52. 110. ADM 199/1440, p. 52. 111. ADM 199/1440, p. 53.

Conclusion 1. J. Corbett, in E. Grove (ed.), Some Principles of Maritime Strategy (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1988), p. 115. 2. Roskill, The Navy at War 1939–1945, p. 29. 3. A solid argument for why Ultra can be overrated is in Ponting, Armageddon, pp. 182–4. 4. Statistics are drawn from Roskill, The War at Sea Volume 1, pp. 615–16, and Roskill, The Navy at War 1939–1945, p. 447. 5. Quotation from Grove, Sea Battles in Close-Up Volume 2, p. 115. 6. Danchev and Todman (eds), Alanbrooke, War Diaries, p. 515. 7. In correspondence with M. Simpson, I was asked, ‘What was the alternative?’ A statement by Marshal Petain from 1917 came to mind. To paraphrase: France can do no more – we must hold out and wait for the Americans. See J. L. Stokesbury, A Short History of World War I (New York: William Morrow, 1981), p. 237. It is interesting that in July 1943, Alanbrooke, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, was arguing that Britain was fighting beyond her means, but Churchill would not face the implications. See Danchev and Todman (eds), Alanbrooke, War Diaries, pp. 427–30. 8. Quotation from Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery, p. 316. 9. Chamberlain laid out a clear theory of deterrence in a letter he wrote to his sister in July 1939. The point of rearmament was to create ‘defensive forces sufficiently strong to make it impossible for the other side to win except at such cost as to make it not worth while’. G. Stewart, Burying Caesar: The Churchill–Chamberlain Rivalry (Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press, 2001), p. 387.

196 Notes 10. This estimation is contested. A recapitulation of the Roskill–Marder debate on Pound would be futile. See ROSK 5/124 and R. Brodhurst, Churchill’s Anchor. 11. Pound justified this treatment of officers like Somerville and North as a tonic against the caution and indecision of the First World War navy as exemplified in Troubridge’s failure to engage the Goeben and Breslau. Pound to Cunningham, 12 December, 1940 in Add Ms 52561. Whether this was a wise way to cultivate initiative is another matter. 12. Roskill, The Navy at War, p. 99. 13. For some indication of the irrationality of the ‘bomber barons’, Arthur Harris wrote to Churchill claiming that ‘Coastal Command is therefore merely an obstacle to victory’. That Churchill took this seriously and denigrated Tovey is just one more example of his poor judgment. W. Murray, Strategy for Defeat: The Luftwaffe 1933–1945 (Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama: Air University Press, 1983), p. 130. 14. Fraser is shockingly absolute in his defence of the Pound–Churchill ‘line’. He refused to find fault in anything they did: Norway, Oran, the sacking of Dudley North, Singapore, PQ 17. See the Fraser Papers File 31/13 with Fraser’s comments on Roskill’s The War at Sea Volume 1, and Fraser’s answers to questions posed to him by Marder in File 38/14. 15. Quotation from Humble, Fraser of North Cape, p. 171. 16. See Ellis, World War II, p. 274. 17. Kemp, Convoy!, p. 235. 18. Barnett, Engage the Enemy More Closely, p. 748. 19. Tovey to Admiralty in ADM 234/578, Appendix 11. 20. J. Corbett, Some Principles of Maritime Strategy (New York: AMS Press, 1972), p. 14. 21. The author believes that although the Soviets would likely have held on in single combat against the Germans, it is very unlikely that they could have defeated the German Army and driven into Germany proper. The Soviets needed both the diversion of German resources to counter British and American military actions and critical aid in the form of trucks, radio equipment, and rolling stock to win in the East.

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198 Bibliography Hattendorf, J. (ed.), On His Majesty’s Service: Observations of the British Home Fleet from the Diary, Reports, and Letters of Joseph H. Wellings, Assistant US Naval Attaché in London 1940–1941 (Newport, RI: Naval War College Press, 1983). Simpson, M., The Cunningham Papers Volume 1: The Mediterranean Fleet 1939–1942 (Aldershot: Ashgate Press, 1999). Simpson, M., The Somerville Papers (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1995).

Memoirs Chatfield, Admiral of the Fleet Lord, It Might Happen Again (London: Heineman, 1947). Churchill, W., The Second World War Volume 1 (New York: Cassell & Co., 1948). Churchill, W., The Second World War Volume 3: The Grand Alliance (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1950). Churchill, W., The Second World War Volume 4: The Hinge of Fate (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1950). Colville, J., The Fringes of Power: 10 Downing Street Diaries 1939–1955 (New York: Norton, 1985). Doenitz, Grand Admiral Karl, Memoirs: Ten Years and Twenty Days (New York: Da Capo Press, 1997). Mellenthin, F. W. von, Panzer Battles (New York: Ballantine Books, 1984). Mullenheim-Rechberg, B. Baron von, Battleship Bismarck (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, new and expanded Edn, 1990). Raeder, E., My Life (Annapolis, MD: United States Naval Institute, 1960).

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Bibliography 199 Dull, P. S., A Battle History of the Imperial Japanese Navy (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1978). Ellis, J., Brute Force: Allied Strategy and Tactics in the Second World War (New York: Viking, 1990). Evans, M., Great World War II Battles in the Arctic (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999). Gallagher, T., The X-Craft Raid (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1969). Gardner, W. J. R., Decoding History: The Battle of the Atlantic and Ultra (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1999). Gibbs, N. H., Grand Strategy Volume 1 (London: HMSO, 1976). Gordon, A., The Rules of the Game: Jutland and British Naval Command (London: John Murray, 1996). Greene, J. and A. Massignani, The Naval War in the Mediterranean 1940–1943 (Rochester, Kent: Chatham Publishing, 1998). Grenfell, R., The Bismarck Episode (New York: Macmillan, 1949). Grove, E. (ed.), Some Principles of Maritime Strategy (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1988). Grove, E. J., Sea Battles in Close-Up: World War II Volume 2 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1993). Halpern, P. G., A Naval History of World War I (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1994). Harvey, M., Scandinavian Misadventure (Tunbridge Wells, Kent: Spellmount, 1990). Hattendorf, J. and M. Murfett, (eds), The Limitations of Military Power: Essays presented to Professor Norman Gibbs on his eightieth birthday (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1990). Hinsley, F. H., British Intelligence in the Second World War Volume 1 (London: HMSO 1979). Hinsley, F. H. et al., British Intelligence in the Second World War Volumes 2 and 3 (London: Cambridge University Press, 1981–84). Hobsbawm, E., Industry and Empire (New York: Pelican Books, 1969). Hooker, Jr, R. D. (ed.), Maneuver Warfare (Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 1993). Howarth, S. (ed.), Men of War: Great Naval Leaders of World War II (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1992). Humble, R., Fraser of North Cape (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983). Irving, D., The Destruction of Convoy PQ 17 (New York: Richardson & Steirman, 1987). Kemp, P., Convoy! Drama in Arctic Waters (London: Arms & Armour Press, 1993). Kennedy, L., The Death of the Tirpitz (Boston: Little, Brown, 1976). Kennedy, L., Pursuit: The Chase and Sinking of the Bismarck (London: Book Club Associates, 1974). Kennedy, P., The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery (London: Ashfield Press, 1995, rev. paperback edn). Kennedy, P., The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (New York: Vintage, 1988). Kersaudy, F., Norway 1940 (London: Collins, 1990). Kirby, S. W., The War Against Japan Volume 1 (London: HMSO, 1957). Lamb, R., Churchill as War Leader (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1993). Lambert, N., Sir John Fisher’s Naval Revolution (Columbia, SC: South Carolina University Press, 1999).

200 Bibliography Larkin, W. T., U.S. Navy Aircraft 1921–1941 (New York: Orion Publishers, 1988 edn). Lewin, R., Churchill as Warlord (New York: Stein & Day, 1973). Macksey, K., Why the Germans Lose at War (London: Greenhill Books, 1996). Maiolo, J. A., The Royal Navy and Nazi Germany 1933–1939 (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1998). Marder, A., From the Dardenelles to Oran: Studies of the Royal Navy in Peace and War 1915–1940 (London: Oxford University Press, 1974). Mearns, D. and R. White, Hood and Bismarck (London: Channel 4 Books, 2001). Middlebrook, M. and C. Everitt, Bomber Command War Diaries (New York: Viking, 1985). Militargeschichtiches Forschungsamt, Germany and the Second World War Volume 3 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995). Morison, S. E., History of US Naval Operations in World War II Volume 7 (Boston: Little Brown, 1955). Morison, S. E., History of US Naval Operations in World War II Volume 10 (Boston: Little Brown, 1956). Murfett, M., The First Sea Lords (London: Praeger, 1995). Murray, W., Strategy for Defeat: The Luftwaffe 1933–1945 (Maxwell Air Force Base, AL: Air University Press, 1983). Murray, W., The Change in the European Balance of Power 1938–1939 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984). Murray, W. and A. Millett, A War to be Won: Fighting the Second World War (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2000). Musicant, I., Battleship at War: The Epic Story of the U.S.S. Washington (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1986). O’Connell, R., Sacred Vessels: The Cult of the Battleship and the Rise of the US Navy (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1991). Paret, P. (ed.), Makers of Modern Strategy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986). Peden, G. C., British Rearmament and the Treasury 1932–1939 (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1979). Playfair, I. S. O., The Mediterranean and the Middle East Volume 1 (London: HMSO, 1954). Playfair, I. S. O., The Mediterranean and the Middle East Volume 2 (London: HMSO, 1956). Ponting, C., Armageddon (New York: Random House, 1995). Pratt, L. R., East of Malta, West of Suez (London: Cambridge University Press, 1975). Rhys-Jones, G., The Loss of the Bismarck (London: Cassell, 1999). Roger, N. A. M. (ed.), Naval Power in the Twentieth Century (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996). Roskill, S., Churchill and the Admirals (London: Collins, 1977). Roskill, S., The Navy at War 1939–1945 (Ware, Hereford: Wordsworth Editions, 1998). Roskill, S., Naval Policy Between the Wars Volume 1 (London: Collins, 1968). Roskill, S., Naval Policy Between the Wars Volume 2 (London: Collins, 1976). Roskill, S., The War at Sea Volume 1: The Defensive, Volume 2: The Period of Balance, Volume 3: The Offensive (London: HMSO, 1954–1961).

Bibliography 201 Spector, R., Eagle Against the Sun (New York: Free Press, 1985). Spurr, R., A Glorious Way to Die (New York: Newmarket Press, 1981). Stephen, M., The Fighting Admirals: British Admirals of the Second World War (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1991). Stephen, M., Sea Battles in Close-up: World War II Volume 1 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1988). Stewart, G., Burying Caesar: The Churchill–Chamberlain Rivalry (Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press, 2001). Stokesbury, J. L., A Short History of World War I (New York: William Morrow, 1981). Stolfi, R. H. S., Hitler’s Panzers East (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992). Sumida, J. T., In Defence of Naval Supremacy (London: Routledge, 1993). Taylor, A. J. P., English History 1914–1945 (London: Oxford University Press, 1965). Taylor, A. J. P., The Origins of the Second World War (New York: Atheneum, 1966). Till, G., Air Power and the Royal Navy 1914–1945 (London: Jane’s, 1979). van der Vat, D., The Atlantic Campaign (New York: Harper & Row, 1988). von der Porten, E. P., The German Navy in World War II (London: Arthur Barker, 1970). Webster, Sir C. and N. Frankland, The Strategic Air Offensive Against Germany 1939–1945 Volume III (London: HMSO, 1961). Willmott, H. P., The Barrier and the Javelin (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1983). Winton, J., Find, Fix, and Strike! The Fleet Air Arm at War 1939–1945 (London: Batsford, 1980). Winton, J., Carrier Glorious (London: Leo Cooper, 1986). Woodman, R., Arctic Convoys (London: John Murray, 1994).

Articles Garzke, W. H., Jr and R. O. Dulin, Jr, ‘Who Sank the Bismarck?’, Naval Institute Proceedings, 117 ( June 1991), 48–57. Gordon, A., ‘The Admiralty and Imperial Overstretch, 1902–1941’, Journal of Strategic Studies, 17 (1) (1994), 63–85. Grove, E. J., ‘A War Fleet Built for Peace: British Naval Rearmament in the 1930s and the Dilemma of Deterrence versus Defence’, Naval War College Review, (Spring 1991), 82–92. Handel, M., ‘Corbett, Clausewitz, and Sun Tzu’, Naval War College Review, 53 (4) (Autumn 2000), 107–26. Herwig, H., ‘The Failure of German Sea Power 1914–1945: Mahan, Tirpitz, and Raeder Reconsidered’ International History Review, 10 (1) (February 1988), 86–105. Jurens, W. J., ‘The Loss of HMS Hood – A Re-Examination’ Warship International, 24 (2). Lambert, A., ‘Seapower 1939–1940: Churchill and the Strategic Origins of the Battle of the Atlantic’, Journal of Strategic Studies, (1994), 86–108. Langenberg, Rear Admiral W. H., ‘The German Battleship Tirpitz: A Strategic Warship?’, Naval War College Review, 34 (4) ( July–August 1981), 81–92. Larew, K. G., ‘The Royal Navy and the Battle of Britain’, The Historian, 54 (2), 243–52.

202 Bibliography Levy, J., ‘The Inglorious End of the Glorious: The Release of the Findings of the Board of Enquiry Into the loss of HMS Glorious’, The Mariner’s Mirror, 86 (3) (August 2000), 302–9. Levy, J., ‘Ready or Not? The Home Fleet at the Outset of World War II’, Naval War College Review, 52 (4), 90–108. Maiolo, J., ‘The Knockout Blow against the Import System: Admiralty Expectations of Nazi Germany’s Naval Strategy, 1934–9’, Historical Research, 72 (178), 202–28. Rhys-Jones, G., ‘The Loss of the Bismarck: Who Was to Blame?’, The Naval War College Review, 45 (1) (Winter 1992), 25–44. Simpson, M., ‘Force H and British Strategy in the Western Mediterranean 1939–1942’, The Mariner’s Mirror, 83 (1) (1997), 62–75. Slessor, T., ‘The Tragedy of HMS Glorious’, Royal United Services Institute Journal (February/March 1999), 68–74. Sumida, J., ‘ “The Best Laid Plans”: The Development of British Battle-Fleet Tactics, 1919–1942’, International History Review, 14 (4) (November 1992), 681–700. Sumida, J., ‘A Matter of Timing: The Royal Navy and the Tactics of Decisive Battle, 1912–1916’, The Journal of Military History, 67 (1) (2003), 85–136.

Reference Works Archibald, E. H. H., The Fighting Ships of the Royal Navy (New York: Military Press, 1987). Chesneau, R., Aircraft Carriers of the World 1914 to the Present: An Illustrated Encyclopedia (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1984). Chesneau, R., Conway’s All the World’s Fighting Ships 1922–1946 (New York: Mayflower Books, 1980). Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships Volume 1 (Washington, DC: Navy Department, 1959). Dictionary of National Biography 1940 Dictionary of National Biography 1960 Ellis, J., World War II: Encyclopedia of Facts and Figures (Military Book Club, 1993). Fraccaroli, A., Italian Warships of World War II (London: Ian Allan, 1968). Friedman, N., British Carrier Aviation (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1988). Friedman, N., U.S. Battleships (London: Arms & Armour Press, 1985). Humble, R., United States Fleet Carriers of World War II (Dorset, England: Poole Press, 1984). Lenton, H. T. and J. J. Colledge, British and Dominion Warships of World War II (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1968). Preston, A., An Illustrated History of the Navies of World War II (New York: Gallery Books, 1985). Raven, A. and J. Robert, British Battleships of World War II (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1976). Taylor, J. C., German Warships of World War II (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966). Thetford, O., British Naval Aircraft Since 1912 (London: Putnam, 1962). Watts, A. J. and B. G. Gordon, The Imperial Japanese Navy (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1971). Whitley, M. J., Cruisers of World War II: An International Encyclopedia (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1995).

Index AA (anti-aircraft) cruisers, 19, 22, 49, 54, 59, 60, 76 AA (anti-aircraft) guns, 9, 32, 145 Abyssinian Crisis (1935–36), 23 Acasta (destroyer), xiv, 63, 66–7, 131 Achates (destroyer), 88, 125, 129–30 Admiral Graf Spee, see Graf Spee (pocket battleship) Admiral Scheer, see Scheer Admiralty fire control table (AFTC), 169n.29 Afridi (destroyer), 8, 42, 54 Afrika Korps, 180n.3 AFTC (Admiralty fire control table), 169n.29 Air force, see Royal Air Force (RAF) Aircraft carriers, 8, 11–13, 16, 18, 19, 21, 22, 27, 76, 85–6, 114, 147, 154, 191n.157, 193–94n.67, 194n.91; see also specific ships Alabama (battleship), 135 Alam Halfa, Battle of, 143 Alanbrooke, Lord, 155, 180n.3, 195n.7 Albacores, 12, 76, 110–11, 116–17, 121, 136, 138, 188n.76 Alexander, A. V., 73, 75, 178n.39, 188n.70 Alexandria, 37, 75, 113, 119, 124, 136 Altmark Incident, 45–6, 48 Amazon (destroyer), 14, 118 Ambuscade (destroyer), 14 AMC, see Armed merchant cruisers (AMC) American Civil War, 61, 87 Anaconda plan, 61 Anglo–German Naval Agreement (1935), 164n.15 Anson (battleship), 126, 128, 133, 135, 138, 144 Antelope (destroyer), 88 Anthony (destroyer), 88 Anti-aircraft (AA) cruisers, 19, 22, 49, 54, 59, 60, 76

Anti-aircraft (AA) guns, 9, 32, 145 Anti-submarine warfare (ASW), 32, 71, 143, 144, 145, 177n.19 Anton Schmidt (destroyer), 58 ANZAC troops, 82 AP (armour-piercing) bombs, 144, 146 Appeasement policy, 4–7, 156–7 Arctic convoys: casualties and losses of ships in, 114, 124–7, 130, 133; Dervish convoy, 112, 113, 160; difficulties faced by, 15–16, 109, 116, 118, 119, 120, 186n.7; and ‘E.F.’ Operation, 110–12; and Force P’s raids against Kirkenes and Petsamo, 110–12, 138; importance of, 109–10, 162; from June 1941–May 1943, 108–33; JW51A and B convoys, xiv, 113, 128–31; JW52 and JW53 convoys, 133; JW54A and B convoys, 138; JW55A and B convoys, 139–41; JW57–59 convoys, 143, 144; JW61 convoy, 150; political considerations of, 108–9; PQ 1–6 convoys, 112, 113, 114, 115, 160; PQ 7 convoy, 113, 114, 115; PQ 8 convoy, 113, 114, 116; PQ 9 convoy, 113, 115, 117; PQ 10 convoy, 113, 115, 118; PQ 11 convoy, 113, 115, 118; PQ 12 convoy, 113, 116; PQ 13 convoy, 113, 117, 121, 160; PQ 14 convoy, 113, 117–18, 126–7, 160; PQ 15 convoy, 113, 118, 160; PQ 16 convoy, 113, 119, 127, 160; PQ 17 convoy, xv, 108–9, 113, 120–5, 127, 128, 154, 157, 160, 196n.14; PQ 18 convoy, 113, 125–7, 128, 133, 157, 160; RA53 convoy, 133; RA54A and B convoys, 138; RA59 convoy, 143; suspensions of, 125, 133, 157; in winter 1943–44, 138–41, 143, 150

203

204 Index Ardent (destroyer), xiv, 63, 66–7, 131 Arethusa (light cruiser), 49, 88 Arizona (battleship), 146 Ark Royal (aircraft carrier): aircraft on, 11, 13, 53, 77; and Bismarck chase of and attack, xiv, 100–2, 106; displacement and main armament of, 8; first plane shot by carrier-based aircraft from, 31–2; in Force H, 76; at Gibraltar, 47, 49; and Norwegian Campaign (1940), 63, 66; and organization of Home Fleet in 1939, 22; at outset of war, 31–3; and Scharnhorst and Gneisenau sighting, 80; sinking of submarine by, 32; size and displacement of, 11; Swordfish and Skuas of, 170n.67; U-39’s unsuccessful attack on, 39 Arkansas (battleship), 106 Armament, see Guns Armed merchant cruisers (AMC), 77, 107 Armour of ships, 7 ASDIC (SONAR), 15 Ashanti (destroyer), 125 Augusta (cruiser), 135 Aurora (light cruiser), 8, 22, 31, 32, 42, 49, 59, 89, 96 Avenger (escort carrier), 126 Avenger torpedo-bombers, 138, 146 AWS, see Anti-submarine warfare (ASW) Backhouse, Sir Roger, 19, 20, 21, 23, 134, 148 Baker-Faulkner, Lt Commander R., 145 Baldwin, Stanley, 5, 164n.14 Barbarossa Operation, 85, 107 Barents Sea, Battle of, xiv, 124, 129–32, 141, 154, 159, 160 Barham (battleship), 9, 44, 171n.11 Barnett, Correlli, xvii, 52–3, 60, 62, 79, 92, 180n.9 Barracuda cypher, 140 Barracuda torpedo/dive bombers, 46, 144, 145, 149, 186n.14, 193n.65 Battle fleet concept, 26, 27, 169n.31

Battle of Britain, 68–9, 176n.3 Battle of France, 63, 67, 69 Battle of the Atlantic, 72, 107, 128 Battlecruiser Squadron (BCS), 21, 22, 59–60, 63, 76, 78, 86, 88, 90–3, 181n.39 Battlecruisers, 8, 16, 19, 21, 22, 45, 76, 85–6, 89, 114; see also specific ships Battleships, 7–10, 14, 16–19, 26, 45, 49, 83–6, 169n.31, 191n.157; see also specific battleships BCS, see Battlecruiser Squadron (BCS) Beagle (destroyer), 118 Bedouin (destroyer), 42 BEF, see British Expeditionary Force (BEF) Belfast (light cruiser), xvi, 22, 31, 38, 42, 135, 138, 139, 141, 142, 144 Bell, C. M., 165n.20 Bellona (light cruiser), 148, 150, 151 Benn, Captain W. G., 36, 37 Bermuda (light cruiser), 135 Berwick (cruiser), 41, 44, 49, 78, 116, 128, 135 Beverly (destroyer), 118 Bey, Rear Admiral, 140–3, 192–3n.41 Bi-planes, 12 Birmingham (light cruiser), 49, 60 Bismarck (battleship): in Battle of the Denmark Strait, xiv, 92–5, 105; damage to, and repair of, 95, 96, 97, 100, 102–3; and Lutjens, 87–8, 90, 92, 93, 95–100, 105, 106; operational career and British chase of, 83–5, 87–103, 105–6, 120, 157, 158, 182n.54, 183n.78, 183n.87, 184n.114; production of, 84, 165n.21; sinking of, xiii, xiv, xv, 68, 103–5, 132, 184n.127; size and capabilities of, 83–4; speed and endurance of, 153 Bison (destroyer), 54 Bisset, Rear Admiral, 144, 145, 147 Bittern (anti-aircraft sloop), 54 Blagrove, Rear Admiral Henry, 21–2, 36, 37 Blake, Vice Admiral, 20

Index 205 Blockade by Royal Navy Home Fleet, xvi, 25, 41, 44–5, 47, 86, 160, 168n.24 Blucher (heavy cruiser), 52, 57 Board of Admiralty, 2–3, 5–6 Bodo raid, 137–8 Bomber Command, see Royal Air Force (RAF) Bomber Command Bombers, 77, 88–9, 101, 115, 164n.14 Bonham-Carter, Rear Admiral, 118, 119 Boyd, Rear Admiral D., 194n.91 Bracken, Brendan, 72 Britain: and alliance with Japan, 4; appeasement policy of, 4–7, 156–7; and beginning of World War II, 30; economy of, 4, 5, 153, 156; lend-lease for, 12, 84, 100; rearmament of, 17, 18, 167n.50, 195n.9; shipbuilding industry in, 5, 37, 76, 83; threat of German invasion of, in 1940, 68–71, 176n.2; and three-front war scenario, 5–6, 15, 17; and Washington Naval Pact, 4, 83–4; see also Churchill, Winston; Royal Air Force (RAF); Royal Navy; Royal Navy Home Fleet Britannia (Royal Navy cadet school), 19, 34, 74 British Empire, 1, 6, 68, 77, 83, 156 British Expeditionary Force (BEF), 6, 63 British navy, see Royal Navy Brodhurst, Robin, 168n.8 Brooke-Popham, Sir Robert, 175n.79 Brooks, Joe, 104 Broome, Commander, 121, 123 Bulldog (destoyer), 118 Burke, Arleigh, 15 Burnett, Rear Admiral Robert, xiv, 126, 128–31, 139, 141, 159 Burrough, Rear Admiral H. M., 114, 118 Byng, Vice Admiral John, 101, 184n.124 ‘C’ class cruisers, 33, 41 Cairo (anti-aircraft cruiser), 49 Calabria, Battle of, xiii, 178n.38 Calcutta (anti-aircraft cruiser), 22, 49 California (battleship), 118

Campbell, Kenneth, 85 Canada, 44, 80 Caradoc (light cruiser), 148 Carls, Admiral, 48, 132 Casualties: British casualties in World War II, 37, 66, 85, 94, 95, 114, 124–5, 130; German casualties in World War II, 103, 104, 114, 142, 149; in World War I, 5 Catalina flying boats, 100 Catherine Operation, 157 Ceylon, 44, 119 Chamberlain, Neville: and appeasement policy, 5, 7, 156–7; assessment of, 156–7; and Churchill, 156–7, 175n.77; death of, 175n.77; as Prime Minister, 6–7, 63, 156–7; and rearmament of Britain, 18, 167nn.50–1, 195n.9; and Royal Air Force (RAF) budget, 67n.51 Channel Dash, 115, 116 Chatfield, Admiral of the Fleet Lord, 20, 21, 33, 75, 155, 167n.45, 168n.8 Chiddingfold (escort destroyer), 114 Chiefs of Staff (COS), 70, 139, 177n.8 China, 5, 44, 86 Christopher Newport (freighter), 122 Churchill, Winston: and air power, 164n.14; and Altmark Incident, 46; appointment of Lord Cork as naval C-in-C, Narvik, 59, 61, 63; and Arctic convoys, 108–9, 119, 120, 122, 125, 127, 133; assessment of, 155–7; and base for Home Fleet, 40–1; and Battle of the Atlantic, 72; and Bismarck, 97, 105, 157; and Chamberlain, 156–7, 175n.77; as Chandellor of the Exchequer, 165n.17; and commando units, 114; and completion of Lion and Temeraire, 181n.14; and Dakar Expedition, 63, 70; and defensive strategy of Royal Navy Home Fleet, 24–5; dislike of, and interest in replacing Tovey, 115, 134, 155, 183n.103, 188n.70, 196n.13; as First Lord of

206 Index the Admiralty, 2, 24–5, 47, 164n.6; and Forbes’s dismissal as commander of Home Fleet, 57, 72, 73; and Gallipoli landing in World War I, 62, 63; and German invasion of Soviet Union, 107, 108; and Japanese threat, 112–13, 180n.4, 187n.24; leadership abilities of, 63; and military strategy, 12–13, 60–1, 63, 72, 82, 155–6, 161–2, 175n.79, 195n.7; and mining of Norwegian territorial waters, 47–8; and Norwegian Campaign (1940), 25, 54–6, 58–63, 67, 174n.43; and offer of First Sea Lord’s chair to Fraser, 147, 155–6; Pound’s relationship with, 74, 155, 157; as Prime Minister, 62–3, 69–70, 175n.77; and Roosevelt, 106; and sinking of German submarines, 33; and Stalin, 172n.65; and threat of German invasion of Britain in 1940, 69–70, 177n.8; and Tirpitz battleship, xv, 115, 119, 122, 136; and Tovey’s appointment as commander of Home Fleet, 74, 75, 178nn.38–9; on victory in World War II, 114, 187n.24; and X-craft, 136 Ciliax, Admiral, 116 Civil War, American, 61, 87 Clarke, Captain, 131 Clausewitz, Karl von, 108 Claymore Operation, 86 Coastal Command, see Royal Air Force (RAF) Coastal Command Collier, Basil, 51 Colorado (battleship), 9 Colville, John, 177n.8 Commando units, 114 Condors, 70, 87, 121 Convoy escort ships, 14 Convoys: Arctic convoys, 108–33, 138–43, 160, 186n.7; Canadian troop convoys, 44; defence of ships in, 27–8; HX84, 77; HX106, 79; SL67, 80; SL74, 103; WS5A, 78; WS8B, 102

Corbett, Sir Julian, 153, 161 Cork, Admiral of the Fleet Lord, 59, 61, 63–4, 148, 155, 168n.10 Cornwall (heavy cruiser), 119 Corsair fighter-bombers, 144, 145, 149 COS, see Chiefs of Staff (COS) Cossack (destroyer), 45–6, 102 ‘County’ class heavy cruisers, 78 Courageous (aircraft carrier), 11, 13, 32, 76, 155, 166n.41 Crete, 83, 106, 116, 120 Crossing the ‘T’, 78–9 Cruiser Squadrons: 1st, 41, 49, 65, 122; 2nd, 21, 31–2, 41, 49; 10th, 114; 18th, 22, 86, 118 Cruisers, 8, 13–14, 16–19, 22, 49, 59, 76, 191n.157; See also specific ships Cumberland (heavy cruiser), 121, 128 Cunningham, Admiral Andrew B.: assessment of, 157; and Battle of Calabria, xiii; on Fighting Instructions, 169n.36; as First Sea Lord, 144, 145–7, 156, 157, 159; on Forbes, 72; and Fraser, 147; on German Navy, 189n.108; and Norwegian Campaign (1940), 55; and plans for sinking Tirpitz, 144; as possible replacement of Tovey, 183n.103, 188n.70; size of fleet under, 76, 106; and Tirpitz strikes, 145–8; and Tovey, 74, 75, 81, 178n.38; as Vice Chief of the Naval Staff, 168n.10 Cunningham, Vice Admiral J. H. D., 41, 65, 176n.84 Curlew (light cruiser), 8, 54 Currie, Captain R. A., 93 Curteis, Vice Admiral A. T. B., 16, 96, 99, 134, 187n.43 Czech Crisis (1938), 23 ‘D’ class cruisers, 33, 41 D-Day, 71, 147 Dakar Expedition, 63, 70 Dalrymple-Hamilton, Rear Admiral, 99, 150–1 Daring (destroyer), 47 Dauntless (light cruiser), 148

Index 207 Dauntless dive-bombers, 111, 138 De Gaulle, Charles, 177n.8 Delhi (light cruiser), 42 Denmark Strait, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90 Denmark Strait, Battle of, xiv, 68, 92–5, 105, 159 Denning, Commander, 123 Dervish convoy, 112, 113, 160 Destroyer Flotillas: 2nd, 49, 56, 57, 58; 3rd, 49; 4th, 49, 102; 7th, 41; 8th, 32; 17th, 129–30 Destroyers, xv, 8, 14–16, 18, 19, 22, 49, 59, 76, 114, 191n.157; see also specific ships Deutschland (pocket battleship), 30, 42, 43; see also Lutzow (pocket battleship) ‘Deutschland’ class pocket battleships, 11 Devonshire (heavy cruiser), 41, 42, 44, 49, 65, 110, 148 Diadem (light cruiser), 150–1 Dido (light cruiser), 151 ‘Dido’ class light cruisers, 126 Dietl, General, 60 Displacement of ships, 7, 8 Doenitz, Grand Admiral Karl, 35, 37–40, 48, 51, 70, 107, 112, 119, 132, 139–40, 150, 155, 160, 192n.41 Dornier Do flying boat, 31–2 Dorsetshire (heavy cruiser), 96, 103–4, 119 D’Oyly-Hughes, Captain Guy, 64–7 Drax, Admiral, 37, 64, 168n.10 Dreyer Table, 169n.29 Duke of York (battleship): and Arctic convoys, 116, 121, 126; beginning of operations of, 84, 181n.17; and Bodo raid, 138; and chase of Scharnhorst, 139, 141–2; off Norway coast, 135; and Pedestal Operation to Malta, 133; and strikes on Tirpitz, 144, 145–6, 148; and Torch landings in North Africa, 128 Dunbar-Nasmith, Admiral, 177n.9 Dunkirk evacuation, 63, 65, 67, 68, 116, 120

‘E.F.’ Operation, 110–12 Eagle (aircraft carrier), 11, 13, 119, 132, 188n.76 Echo (destroyer), 88, 110, 114 Eclipse (destroyer), 53, 110, 116, 117, 118 Eden, Anthony, 190n.129 Edinburgh (light cruiser), 22, 31, 42, 44, 86, 96, 114, 118, 188n.68 Edward-Collins, Vice Admiral George, 21, 32, 60, 74 Effingham (cruiser), 33, 59 Egypt, 70, 82, 177n.8 Electra (destroyer), 88 Ellis, J., 178n.26 Emerald (cruiser), 33 Emil Bertin (light cruiser), 50 Emperor (escort carrier), 144 England, see Britain; Churchill, Winston; Royal Air Force (RAF); Royal Navy; Royal Navy Home Fleet English Channel, 71–2 Enigma code, 30, 86, 87, 100, 122, 184n.117, 185n.149 Enterprise (cruiser), 33, 59 Escapade (destroyer), 110, 114 Eskimo (destroyer), 116 Esmonde, Lt Commander E., 97 Ethiopia, 5, 82 Excellent (Royal Navy gunnery school), 19, 134 Exeter (heavy cruiser), 86 Eyres-Monsell, Sir Bolton, 27 ‘F class destroyers, 32 FAA, see Fleet Air Arm (FAA) Faulknor (destroyer), 116, 126 Fegen, Captain E. S. F., 77 Fencer (escort carrier), 144 Fighting Instructions, 25–9, 91, 93, 97, 98, 169n.36 Finland, 110–12 Fire control table (AFTC), 169n.29 Firefly (fighter-bomber), 149 Fisher, Admiral ‘Jacky’, 1–2, 74, 76, 89 Fisher, Admiral W. W., 20

208 Index Fleet Air Arm (FAA): aircraft carriers in, 12, 166n.41; basic tactical unit of, 12–13; fighters and bombers of, 146–7; function of, 12; needs of, 37, 155; and Norwegian Campaign (1940), 53, 59, 61; and raids on Kirkenes and Petsamo, 110–12, 138; relationship of, to Royal Air Force (RAF), 12; Skuas and Swordfish of, xv, 12–13, 23, 49, 59, 60; squadrons of, 12–13; strength of, 49, 76–7, 106, 146–7, 188n.76; and Tirpitz strikes, 145, 146–7; training aircraft of, 166n.41 Fliegerkorps X (Air Corps 10), 52, 53 ‘Flower class corvette, 27 Forbes, Admiral Sir Charles: and Admiralty intervention in tactical operations, 28; and Altmark Incident, 45–6; and anti-submarine trawlers, 177n.19; assessment of, 158; and base for Home Fleet, 40–1; on blockade, 25; and British intelligence, 30–1, 33, 73, 170n.53, 173n.6; career of, 19–21, 62, 68, 74, 168n.8; Churchill’s dislike of, 72, 74, 155; as C-in-C Plymouth, 74, 181n.14; and Coastal Command patrols over North Sea, 23; criticisms of, 33; and defence of Great Britain from June 1940–December 1940, 68–74, 77–8; dismissal of, as commander of Home Fleet, 68, 72–4, 157, 158; and Fighting Instructions (1939), 25–8; and Norwegian Campaign (1940), 50–67, 73; from October 1939–March 1940, 41–9; at outset of World War II, 29–33; and pairing of battleship with battlecruiser, 45; and Rawalpindi sinking, 41–4, 73; reports and correspondence by, xvi; retirement of, 74; on Scapa Flow, 23–4, 37; and threat of German invasion of Britain in 1940, 69–70, 72, 177n.8; and Tovey, 74

Forbes, Elizabeth, 73, 178n.30 Force A, 125 Force B, 126 Force H, 76, 80, 96, 98–100, 119, 135 Force P, 110–12 Force Q, 126 Force R, 128–9 Force Z, 116 Formidable (aircraft carrier), 12, 35, 76, 106, 119, 128, 132, 133, 148, 188n.76 France: Allied forces in, during World War II, 63, 67, 69; British defence against, 1; German conquest of, 17, 61, 67, 68, 160; Navy of, 6, 16, 26, 50, 175n.68; and Washington Naval Conference (1921–22), 3 Fraser, Admiral Sir Bruce: and Arctic convoys, 126, 129, 133, 138–43; assessment of, 158–9; and Battle of North Cape, xiv, 139, 141–3, 158; and Bodo raid, 137–8; career and honors of, 143; career of, 134, 144; Churchill’s offer of First Sea Lord’s chair to, 147, 155–6; as commander of British Pacific Fleet, 148, 157, 196n.14; as commander of Home Fleet, 134, 158–9, 192n.32; and Cunningham, 157; and Home Fleet off coast of Norway, 135; and Lutzow incident, 139; from May 1943–May 1945, 134–51; and Moore, 148; and raid on Spitzbergen Island, 135–6; as replacement for Curteis as Vice Admiral, 134, 187n.43; reports and correspondence by, xvi; and Scharnhorst chase and sinking, 139–43, 160; and Tirpitz raids and sinking, 143–8; and Tungsten Operation, 144–7, 158 French Indochina, 106 Friedrich Eckholdt (destroyer), 131 Fulmar fighters, 12, 76, 89, 97, 110–11, 188n.76 Furious (aircraft carrier): aircraft on, 11, 13, 53, 76; Albacores of, 138;

Index 209 in April 1940, 49; at end of war, 150; and hunt for Graf Spee, 33; in North Sea, 32; and Norwegian Campaign (1940), 59; off Norway coast in July 1943, 135; and organization of Home Fleet in 1939, 22; at outset of war, 32, 33; and Pedestal Operation to Malta, 125, 132–3; in September 1940 at Scapa, 72; speed of, 11; Swordfish of, 170n.67; and Tirpitz strikes, 144, 145, 148 Fury (destroyer), 116, 117, 118, 126 Galatea (light cruiser), 20, 49, 89, 96 Gallipoli campaign, 62, 63 Garland (destroyer), 119 Geisler, General, 52 George V, King, 1–2 George VI, King, 143, 175n.78 German Army, 51–3, 62, 68, 71, 85, 107, 176n.2 German Navy: from April–June 1941, 82–107; and Arctic convoys, 60, 108–33, 133, 138–43, 188n.68; and Battle of Barents Sea, xiv, 124, 129–32, 141, 154, 160; and Battle of Britain, 176n.3; and Battle of Denmark Strait, xiv, 92–5, 105; and Battle of North Cape, xiv, 139, 141–3, 158; battlecruisers of, 11, 16; battles of, during World War II, xiii, xiv, xv; battleships of, 11, 16, 17, 114; and Bismarck battleship, xiii, xiv, 68, 83–5, 87–106, 120, 158; blockade of, by Royal Navy Home Fleet, xvi, 25, 41, 44–5, 47, 86, 160, 168n.24; Bodo raid against, 137–8; and British mining of Norwegian territorial waters, 47–8, 50, 51; casualties of, 103, 104, 142, 149; and Channel Dash, 115, 116; crossing the ‘T’ by, 78–9; cruisers of, 16, 17, 114; destroyers of, 14, 16, 114; Doenitz appointed as commander-in-chief of, 132; in early twentieth century, 1; at end of war, 150–1;

and Enigma code, 30, 86, 87, 100, 122, 184n.117, 185n.149; and First Battle of Narvik, 58–9, 159; ‘fleet in being’ strategy of, 117, 123–4, 135; hit-and-run raid by, 41–4, 47; initiative held by, during World War II, xv, 22–3; in inter-war years, 164n.15; and Luftwaffe, 17; Lutjen’s raiding cruise in Atlantic, 79–81; from May 1943–May 1945, 135–51; in Norway, 112, 114–15; and Norwegian Campaign (1940), 50–67; from October 1939–March 1940, 35–49; in October 1940–June 1941, 77–81; and Operation Weser, 48, 50–1; at outset of World War II, 32, 34; and raid on Spitzbergen Island, 135–6; rescue of German sailors by Home Fleet, 104–5; and resignation of Raeder, 132; and Second Battle of Narvik, 60, 63, 159; sinking of Bismarck by Home Fleet, xiii, xiv, xv, 68, 103–5, 132; sinking of Glorious by, 63–7, 73; sinking of Hood by, 94, 104; sinking of Jervis Bay by, 77; sinking of Rawalpindi by, 41–4, 73; sinking of Scharnhorst by Home Fleet, 142–3, 154, 160; strengths and weaknesses of, 6, 14–17, 23, 69, 71, 77, 81, 91, 92, 140, 153–4, 165n.21, 176n.3, 189n.108; and threat of invasion of Britain in 1940, 71; and Tirpitz battleship, xv, 84, 107, 109, 112, 114–17, 119, 120–4, 126, 136–7, 139, 144–9; in World War I, xv, 1–2, 117, 189n.108; X-craft used against, 136–7, 154, 160, see also German submarines (U-boats); and specific ships German submarines (U-boats): and Arctic convoys, 118, 121, 125, 126–7, 139–40, 143, 150; attack on Scapa Flow by, 35–7; British anti-submarine sweeps against, 32; detection of,

210 Index by ASDIC (SONAR), 15; in inter-war years, 164n.15; magnetic mines laid by, 38–9; in Norwegian waters, 112, 115; number of, in 1939, 16; from October 1939–March 1940, 35–40; and Operation Weser, 48, 50–1; at outset of World War II, 32; production of, 17; sinking of, 32; torpedoes of, 36, 39–40; Type XXI U-boats, 150; see also Submarines Germany: and beginning of World War II, 30; blockade of, xvi, 25, 41, 44–5, 47, 86, 160, 168n.24; intelligence activities of, 35, 43, 73–4, 90, 170n.51; invasion of Soviet Union by, 68, 84–5, 107, 124, 127, 180n.5; and magnetic mines, 37–9; pact between Soviet Union and, 25, 29, 160; possibility of peace with Soviet Union, 127, 190n.129; rearmament of, 5; shipbuilding industry in, 185n.151; threat of invasion of Britain by, in 1940, 68–71, 176n.2; and three-front war scenario against Britain, 5–6, 15, 17; and Washington Naval Pact, 83; see also German Navy; German submarines (U-boats); Hitler, Adolf Gibraltar, 37, 47, 76, 78, 86, 119 Giffen, Rear Admiral R. C., 120 Gladiators, 13, 49, 53, 64 Glasgow (light cruiser), 31, 42, 44, 49, 56, 135 Glorious (aircraft carrier): aircraft on, 11, 13, 53, 176n.88; Fraser as captain of, 134, 144; in Mediterranean, 49; mishandling of, 155; sinking of, xiv, 63–7, 73, 76, 131, 176n.84 Glowworm (destroyer), 50, 54, 131 Gnat acoustic homing torpedo, 143 Gneisenau (battlecruiser): blockade of, 85, 86; damage to, 106–7, 159, 181n.20; and defence of Norway, 50, 51, 52; location of,

on southern flank of convoy routes, 81; and Norwegian Campaign (1940), xv, 55, 58, 65; raiding cruises by, 46–7, 79, 87, 92; sightings of, 46–7, 50, 80; and sinking of Rawalpindi, 30, 41, 43; speed of, 23 Goddard, Noel, 89 Godfrey, Admiral J., 30–1, 170n.53 Goering, Hermann, 17, 37, 71 Goodwood Operation, 148–9 Gordon, Andrew, 6–7 Graf Spee (pocket battleship), 33, 41, 45 Grand Fleet, see Royal Navy Great Britain, see Britain; Churchill, Winston; Royal Air Force (RAF); Royal Navy; Royal Navy Home Fleet Greece, 82, 83, 155, 176n.1, 177n.8, 179–80n.3, 180n.9 Greenland, 87 Grey Ranger (oiler), 126–7 Greyhound (destroyer), 50 Grove, Eric, 95, 155, 164n.15 Grumman Wildcat, 76 Guadalcanal, Battle of, 183n.87 Guadalcanal, Second Battle of, 143 Guam, 124 Guderian, Heinz, 147 Guns: of aircraft carriers, 8, 11; anti-aircraft (AA) guns, 9, 32, 145; of battlecruisers, 8, 10, 89; of battleships, 7, 8–10, 83; Browning machine guns of Gloser Sea Gladiator bi-plane fighter, 13; of cruisers, 8, 14; of destroyers, 8, 14, 15; measurement of, 7; problem with 14-inch gun turrets, 142, 193n.53 Gurkha (destroyer), 42, 53 ‘H’ class ships, 57 Haakon, King, 57 Halifax, Lord, 172n.65, 175n.78 Hallifax, Rear Admiral Ronald H. C., 22 Hamilton, Rear Admiral L. H. K., 120–3 Hammer Operation, 61–2 Hankey, Lord, 60 Harding, Warren, 3–4

Index 211 Hardy (destroyer), 58 Harpoon Operation, 120 Harris, Arthur, 196n.13 Harwood, Sir Henry, 155, 178n.39 Havock (destroyer), 58 Hawaii, 26 Heath, J. B., 64 Hellcats, 112, 144, 145, 149 Henderson, Admiral Sir Reginald, 20 Hermes (aircraft carrier), 13, 119 Hermione (light cruiser), 89, 96 Hero (destroyer), 50 Hinsley, F. H., 108–9, 124, 136, 185n.149 Hipper (heavy cruiser), 30, 46, 52, 54, 78, 86, 107, 115, 121, 123, 125, 126, 129–32 Hitler, Adolf: aggression by generally, 5, 25; and Arctic convoys, 139; and attack on Yugoslavia and Greece, 83; and Battle of Barents Sea, 132; and Bismarck, 85; Churchill on, 63, 187n.24; declaration of war against United States, 185n.147; and German Navy, 126, 127, 132, 155; goals of, 162; invasion of Poland by, 11, 17; and invasion of Soviet Union, 107, 180n.5; and Norway, 112, 114–15, 125; and pact with Soviet Union, 25, 29, 160; and possibility of victory in summer 1941, 185n.151; and possible peace with Britain, 71; and Stalingrad defeat, 132 Holland, Rear Admiral Lancelot E., 21, 28–9, 74–5, 86, 88, 90–4, 102, 105, 159, 182n.57 Hollyhock (corvette), 119 Home Fleet of Royal Navy, see Royal Navy; and specific ships Hong Kong, 124 Hood (battlecruiser): in Battlecruiser Squadron (BCS) under Whitworth, 76; and Bismarck chase, 88, 89, 90–4; and Canadian troop convoy, 44; and chase of Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, 47; and Churchill’s

sailing on Rodney, 47; displacement and main armament of, 8, 10–11; and organization of Home Fleet in 1939, 22; at outset of war, 31, 32, 165n.21; pairing of, with Warspite, 45; and search for Scheer, 78; in September 1940 at Rosyth, 72; sinking of, by Bismarck, xiv, 94, 95, 104, 106; speed of, 11, 23; U-boat unsuccessful attack on, 39 Horton, Vice Admiral Max, 25, 44, 178n.27 Hostile (destroyer), 58 Hotspur (destroyer), 58 Howe (battleship), 128 Hungary, 110 ‘Hunt’ class escort destroyers, 18, 27, 114, 126, 191n.157 Hunter (destroyer), 58 Hurricane fighters, 53, 64, 70, 86, 89, 110, 111, 126, 188n.76 Husky Operation, 135 Hustvedt, Rear Admiral O. M., 138 Hyderabad (corvette), 129 Hyperion (destroyer), 50 Icarus (destroyer), 88, 110 Iceland, 88, 106, 160, 185n.147 Iceland–Faeroes gap, 78, 79, 80, 88, 89 Illustrious (aircraft carrier), 12, 35, 76, 106, 119, 132, 146, 188n.76 ‘Illustrious’ class aircraft carriers, 12 Implacable (aircraft carrier), 149 Impulsive (destroyer), 126 Indefatigable (aircraft carrier), 148, 149 India, 82 Indiana (battleship), 118 Indomitable (aircraft carrier), 112–13, 119, 132, 135, 188n.76 Inglefield (destroyer), 110 Inskip, Sir Thomas, 5 Intelligence activities: and Altmark Incident, 45; American intelligence, 112; and Barracuda cypher, 140; British code-breaking success, 86–7, 184n.117, 185n.149; British intelligence on

212 Index Lutzow, 107; British intelligence on Norwegian Campaign (1940), 173n.6; British intelligence on Scharnhorst, 141, 154; British intelligence on Tirpitz, 112, 122–3, 154; and Enigma code, 30, 86, 87, 100, 122, 184n.117, 185n.149; failures in British intelligence, 30–1, 33, 43, 73, 87, 122, 136, 154; German B-dienst code-breaking success, 73–4, 90; German intelligence, 35, 43, 170n.51; on German submarines and Arctic convoys, 139; and Norwegian Campaign (1940), 56; and Ultra decrypts, 30, 107, 136, 139, 140, 154 Intrepid (destroyer), 110, 126 Iraq, 83 Iron Duke (WWI battleship), 19 Ismay, General, 75 Italian Navy: attack on Greece in, 82; attack on Royal Navy by Italian frogmen, 13, 119, 136; in Battle off Calabria during World War II, xiii; destroyers of, 14, 16; at outset of World War II, 26; size of, 6, 16, 165n.21; strength of, in 1939, 16 Italian Somaliland, 82 Italy: aggression against Ethiopia by, 5; Churchill’s policy toward, 155; and three-front war scenario against Britain, 5–6, 15, 17; and Washington Naval Conference (1921–22), 3; and Washington Naval Pact, 83; in World War II, 59, 68; see also Italian Navy ‘J’ class destroyers, 14 Jackson, Thomas J. ‘Stonewall’, 87 Jamaica (light cruiser), xiv, 126, 128, 129, 131, 135, 139, 142, 144, 148 James, Admiral, 168n.10 Japan: aggression against China in 1930s, 5; and alliance with Britain, 4; and Churchill, 112–13, 180n.4, 187n.24; and fall of Singapore, 175n.79; Kate

torpedo-bombers of, 146; sinking of Repulse and Prince of Wales by, 113; and three-front war scenario against Britian, 5–6, 15, 17; and Washington Naval Pact, 4, 83; in World War II, 82–3, 106, 112; see also Japanese Navy Japanese Navy: and Battle of Guadalcanal, 183n.87; battleships of, 9, 16; destroyers of, 14, 16; losses of Royal Navy in encounters with, 119; at outset of World War II, 26; strength of, 6, 16, 165n.21, 188n.76; and Washington Naval Conference (1921–22), 3, 4; in World War II, xiv Jellicoe, Sir John, 19, 20, 93 Jervis Bay (armed merchant cruiser), 77 Jeschonnek, General, 99–100 Joint Planning Committee, 70, 177n.8 Jurens, W. J., 92 Jutland, Battle of, xiii, 2, 19, 26, 51, 74, 93, 148 ‘K’ class destroyers, 14 Karlsruhe (light cruiser), 52, 59 Kate torpedo-bombers, 146 Kelly, Admiral Sir John, 21 Kennedy, Captain, 41–2 Kennedy, Ludovic, 87–8, 92, 182n.57 Kennedy, Paul, 156, 168n.24 Kent (heavy cruiser), 135, 148, 150 Kenya (light cruiser), 89, 96, 114, 116 Kerr, Captain R., 88, 93 Keyes, Sir Roger, 64, 155, 168n.10 KG (Kampfgreschwader or bomber wing), 53 King, Rear Admiral Edward, 21, 192n.33 King, Admiral Ernest J., 120–1, 125, 138 King George V (battleship): and Arctic convoys, 118, 128; and Bismarck chase of and attack, xiv, 57, 89, 90, 96, 99, 102, 105; in Force H, 135; strike against Tirpitz by, 149; and Tirpitz, 116

Index 213 ‘King George V’ class battleships, 7, 10, 83, 153–4, 165n.21 Kingston (destroyer), 42 Kirishima (battlecruiser), 183n.87 Kirkenes raid, 110–12, 138 Koln (light cruiser), 52, 115, 126 Konigsberg (light cruiser), 52, 59 Kranke, Captain, 77, 78 Krebs (armed trawler), 86 Kriegsmarine, see German Navy Kummetz, Vice Admiral, 129, 131–2 Lambert, Albert, 160, 186n.5 Lancaster bombers, 149 Layton, Vice Admiral G., 44, 60 Leach, Captain J. C., 88, 91, 93, 94–5, 97–8, 157 Leda (corvette), 127 Lend-lease, 12, 84, 100, 110 Libya, 83 Lindemann, Captain, 93, 95, 102, 103 Lion (battleship), 181n.14 ‘Lion’ class battleship, 7–8, 10, 84 Liverpool (light cruiser), 118 Lloyd George, David, 156 Lofoten Islands, 86 London (heavy cruiser), 118, 121, 128, 135 Loveitt, Flight Sergeant R. H., 107 Luftflotten 2, 35 Luftwaffe: and Arctic convoys, 109, 112, 115, 116, 119–21, 124–7, 139–40, 160; bases for, in Norway, 48; and bombing of Britain, 71; British fear of, 37, 47; British intelligence on, 87; and German Navy, 17; in Norway, 138; and Norwegian Campaign (1940), 49, 52–4, 57, 61, 62, 173n. 17; skill of, 37, 47, 68; strength of, 121, 170n.56, 173n.17; and strikes against Tirpitz, 146; and threat of invasion of Britain in 1940, 69, 71; and Torch Operation, 128 Lutjens, Vice Admiral Gunther, 79–81, 85, 87–90, 92, 93, 95–100, 105, 106

Lutzow (pocket battleship), 52, 107, 115, 121, 123, 125, 129–32, 139 Lyster, Rear Admiral A. L. St. G., 25, 194n.91 Madden, Admiral Sir Charles, 20 Magnetic mines, 37–9 Maiolo, J., 165n.20 Malaya, 83, 175n. 79 Malaya (battleship), 9, 80 Malcolm (destroyer), 25 Malta, 06, 37, 82, 119–20, 125, 133 Manchester (light cruiser), 44, 56, 60, 88 Maori (destroyer), 102, 104 Marines, see Royal Marines Marne (destroyer), 118, 126, 144 Marschall, Admiral, 43, 66 Martin (destroyer), 126 Martin, B. C. S., 103–5 Martlet fighters, 76, 188n. 76 Maryland (battleship), 9 Mascot Operation, 148 Mashona (destroyer), 104 Matabele (destroyer), 114 Matchless (destroyer), 141, 144 Maund, Captain, 101 Mauritius (light cruiser), 150–1 Mayrant (destroyer), 120 McGrigor, Rear Admiral R. R., 148, 150, 151 Mediterranean, 75, 76, 86, 128, 133, 135, 160 Mediterranean Fleet of Royal Navy, 59, 70, 76, 82 Menace Operation, 177n.8 Merchant ships, 77, 83, 107, 112, 113; see also Arctic convoys Meteor (destroyer), 126 Middle East, 82, 83, 162 Midway, Battle of, 188n.76 Millett, Allan R., 110 Milne (destroyer), 126 Mines, 37–9, 47–8, 50, 51, 71, 150 Minorca, Battle of, 184n.124 Monoplanes, 13 Montgomery, Sir Bernard, 143 Moore, Vice Admiral Henry Ruthven, xvi, 144–9, 158, 159

214 Index Morison, S. E., 191n.5 Mountbatten, Louis, 155, 157 Mullenheim-Rechberg, B. Baron von, 184n.127 Murray, Williamson, 110, 168n.24 Musketeer (destroyer), 141 Mussolini, Benito, 82, 187n.24 Mutsu (battleship), 9 Nagato (battleship), 9 Nagumo, Vice Admiral C., 145 Naiad (light cruiser), 79, 179n.58 Nairana (escort carrier), 151 Narvik, First Battle of, xiv, xv, 57–59, 159 Narvik, Second Battle of, xiv, 60, 63, 159 Navy, see Royal Navy Home Fleet; and specific countries’ navies Nelson (battleship): armament of, 9–10; damage to, 38, 43; near Iceland, 80; and organization of Home Fleet in 1939, 22; at outset of war, 23, 30, 31, 32, 165n.21; and Pedestal Operation to Malta, 125, 132–3; at Scapa Flow, 76; and search for Scheer, 78; in September 1940 at Rosyth, 72; speed of, 153; and Torch landings in North Africa, 128; U-boat unsuccessful attack on, 39 ‘Nelson’ class battleships, 7 Neptune (light cruiser), 148 New York (battleship), 106 Newcastle (light cruiser), 22, 32, 33, 42, 43 Nigeria (light cruiser), 80, 118, 121 Night fighting, 91 Norfolk (heavy cruiser): and Arctic convoys, 121, 128, 139; and Bismarck chase and sinking, 91, 94–5, 98, 102, 105, 183n.78; and chase of Deutschland, 42; damage to, 43, 47, 141; in Denmark Strait, 87, 88; firing on Scharnhorst by, 141, 142; in 1st Cruiser Squadron, 41; to Norway in January 1945, 150; off Norway coast in July 1943, 135; and

organization of Home Fleet in 1939, 22; at outset of war, 33 Normandie (luxury liner), 96 North, Admiral Dudley, 97, 157, 196n.11, 196n.14 North Africa, 82, 124, 125, 128, 133 North Cape, Battle of, xiv, 139, 141–3, 158 North Carolina (battleship), 84 North Sea, 1, 29, 32–3, 40, 44, 47, 48, 49, 71–72 Norway: and Altmark Incident, 45–6, 48; and Arctic convoys, 109; and Bodo raid, 137–8; British mining of territorial waters of, 47–8, 50, 51, 150; British off coast of, in July 1943, 135; British raids on coast of, 110–12, 114; at end of war, 150–1; German conquest of, xvi, 17, 160; German ships in, 112, 114–15, 125; Hitler’s concerns about, 114–15; and strikes against Tirpitz, 148–9; see also Norwegian Campaign (1940) Norwegian Campaign (1940): Ark Royal in, 11; British evacuation of Narvik, 63–4; British intelligence on, 173n.6; British mistakes during, 62–3, 67; and cancellation of British attack on Bergen, 56, 63, 67; and Churchill, 25, 54–6, 58–63, 67, 174n.43; First Battle of Narvik, xiv, xv, 57–9, 159; Forbes’ strategic plans for, 61–2; German ground and air forces in, 51–3, 62, 176n.2; and German Navy, 17, 54–67; German plans for, 48, 49, 50–1; Konigsberg air attack on and sinking, 59; and Luftwaffe, 49, 52–4, 173n.17; Norway’s response to German invasion, 57; and Operation Hammer, 61–2; and Royal Air Force, 53–4; and Royal Navy Home Fleet, 54–67; Second Battle of Narvik, xiv, 60, 63, 159; sinking of Glorious during, 63–7, 73; submarines in, 59 Nurnberg, 115

Index 215 Obdurate (destroyer), 129 Obedient (destroyer), 129 O’Connor, General, 82 Offa (destroyer), 114, 116, 125 OIC, see Operational Intelligence Centre (OIC) Onslaught (destroyer), 125 Onslow (destroyer), 74, 125, 126, 129–30 Operation Barbarossa, 85, 107 Operation Catherine, 157 Operation Claymore, 86 Operation ‘E.F.’, 110–12 Operation Goodwood, 148–9 Operation Hammer, 61–2 Operation Harpoon, 120 Operation Husky, 135 Operation Mascot, 148 Operation Menace, 177n.8 Operation Pedestal, 125, 132–3 Operation Planet, 147 Operation ‘R4’, 48, 50, 54–5, 56, 61, 63, 67, 174n.43 Operation Rhine Exercise, 85, 98 Operation Sea Lion, 71 Operation Tigerclaw, 147 Operation Torch, 127, 128, 133, 135 Operation Tungsten, xiv, 144–7, 158, 160 Operation Vigorous, 120 Operation Weser, 48, 50–1 Operation Wilfred, 48, 49, 50, 54, 67 Operation Workshop, 157 Operational Intelligence Centre (OIC), 30–1, 87, 88, 122–3, 139, 141, 170n.53; see also Intelligence activities Opportune (destroyer), 125, 141 Oribi (destroyer), 114, 116, 118 Orkney Islands, 1 Orwell (destroyer), 129 Orzel (submarine), 59 Ouvry, J. G. D., 39 P-39s (fighter-bomber), 110 Pacific Fleet of Royal Navy, 148, 149, 157 Palestine, 82

Palmerston, Lord, 156 Pearl Harbor, 112, 124, 145, 146 Pedestal Operation, 125, 132–3 Pegasus (seaplane carrier), 36 Penelope (light cruiser), 49, 50, 54 Petain, Marshal, 195n.7 Petsamo raid, 110–12, 138 Philippines, 124 Phillips, Tom, 97, 148, 155, 178n.39 Phony War, 45, 48 Piorun (destroyer), 102 Planet Operation, 147 Poison gas, 164n.14 Poland, 11, 17, 29, 110, 160 Portugal, 28 Pound, Admiral Sir Dudley: and Altmark Incident, 46; and Arctic convoys, 109, 119–25, 157; assessment of, 157; and base for Home Fleet, 40–1; and Bismarck, 97–8, 104, 105, 106, 157; career of, 21; Churchill’s relationship with, 74, 155, 157; and completion of Lion and Temeraire, 181n.14; on dismissal of Forbes as commander of Home Fleet, 72–3, 157; and Fighting Instructions (1939), 25–9; as First Sea Lord, 3, 21, 28–9, 72, 155, 157, 168n.8, 196n.11; and Fraser, 134; on Holland, 92; and intervention in tactical operations, 28–9; and Japanese threat, 112; and magnetic mines, 39; military career of, 105; and Moore, 148; and Norwegian Campaign (1940), 51, 54–5, 56, 58, 62, 67, 157; personality of, 21, 157; replaced by Cunningham, 144, 157; and replacement of Tovey, 188n.70; and sinking of Glorious, 66; and sinking of Jervis Bay, 78, 179n.47; and Tovey, 72, 74, 75 PQ convoys, see Arctic convoys Premier (escort carrier), 151 Prien, Lt Commander Gunther, 35–7, 39–40.

216 Index Prince of Wales (battleship): armament of, 84, 94–5; and Bismarck chase, 84, 88–91, 93–7, 99; Churchill’s mistakes concerning, 63; completion date of, 84; damage to, 94, 99, 183n.87, 183n.100; Pound’s opposition to dispatch of, 157; repair of, 106; sinking of, 113, 175n.79; and war with Japan, 112, 113 Prinz Eugen (heavy cruiser), 85, 87–90, 92, 94, 96, 97, 106–7, 115 Prisoners by war, 45–6, 114, 137 Puncher (escort carrier), 151 Punjabi (destroyer), 116, 118 Pursuer (escort carrier), 144 Queen (escort carrier), 151 Queen Elizabeth (battleship), 9, 13, 19, 62, 119, 136, 165n.21 ‘Queen Elizabeth’ class battleships, 7, 9 ‘R’ class battleships, 22, 76, 153 ‘R4’ plan, 48, 50, 54–5, 56, 61, 63, 67, 174n.43 Radar, 15, 88, 98, 101, 129, 130–1, 142, 145 Raeder, Admiral, 17, 48, 49, 71, 78, 79, 83–5, 107, 114, 126, 132, 140, 178n.26 RAF, see Royal Air Force (RAF) Raikes, Vice Admiral, 44 Ramillies (battleship), 22, 79, 80, 96 Ramsay, Vice Admiral Bertram, 20 Ramsay, Vice Admiral C., 66 Ranger (aircraft carrier), 35, 137–8, 139, 192n.33 Rawalpindi (armed merchant cruiser), 30, 41–3, 47, 73, 77 Refueling at sea, 77, 116, 154, 188n.72 Renown (battlecruiser): in April 1940, 49; and Arctic convoys, 116; and Churchill’s sailing on Rodney, 47; and encounter with Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, xv, 55; and false report of German raider in North Atlantic, 63; in Force H, 76; and

mines laid off Norwegian coast, 50; and organization of Home Fleet in 1939, 22; at outset of war, 31, 33, 165n.21; and refuelling during Norwegian Campaign (1940), 60; size and displacement of, 10; speed of, 11, 23; and Torch landings in North Africa, 128, 133 Repulse (battlecruiser): in April 1940, 49; in April–June 1941, 85, 86, 88, 89, 90, 96, 99; and attack on Glowworm, 54; in Battlecruiser Squadron (BCS) under Whitworth, 76; and Churchill’s sailing on Rodney, 47; and false report of German raider in North Atlantic, 63; to Gibraltar, 86; in North Sea, 32; and organization of Home Fleet in 1939, 22; at outset of war, 31, 32; pairing of, with Rodney, 45; Pound’s opposition to dispatch of, 157; and R4 Operation to Norway, 50; and refuelling, 60, 99; and search for Scheer, 78; in September 1940 in Scapa, 72; sinking of, 113, 175n.79; size and displacement of, 10; speed of, 11, 23; and war with Japan, 112, 113 Resolution (battleship), 21, 134 Revenge (battleship), 7, 8–9, 96 Rhind (destroyer), 120 Rhododendron (corvette), 129 Rhys-Jones, Graham, 84, 182n.69 Rio de Janeiro (supply ship), 59 Robeck, Admiral Sir John de, 20 Rocs, 49 Rodney (battleship): in April 1940, 49; in April–June 1941, 85, 86, 96, 99; and Bismarck chase of and attack, xiv, 96, 99, 100, 102–3; and chase of Deutschland, 42; Churchill’s sailing on, 47; damage to, 43; displacement and main armament of, 8, 9–10; at end of war, 150; and organization of Home Fleet in 1939, 22; at outset of war, 23, 31, 32, 165n.21;

Index 217 pairing of, with Repulse, 45; and Pedestal Operation to Malta, 125, 132–3; and R4 Operation to Norway, 50; repair of, 106; at Scapa Flow, 76; and Scharnhorst and Gneisenau sighting and chase, 47, 80; and search for Scheer, 78; in September 1940 at Rosyth, 72; speed of, 153; and Torch landings in North Africa, 128, 133; Tovey as commander of, 74; U-boat unsuccessful attack on, 39 Romania, 160 Rommel, General Erwin, 83, 124 Roope, Lt Commander G. R. B., 54, 173n.27 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 100, 106, 109, 119, 120, 127, 133 Roskill, Stephen, xvii, 21, 41, 51, 73–4, 92, 108–9, 124, 154, 158, 166n.41, 168n.8, 169n.36 Rotherham, Commander, 89 Rowan (destroyer), 120 Royal Air Force (RAF): and Arctic convoys, 109; for defence of metropolitan Britain, 6; expenditures for, 67n.51; and Norwegian Campaign (1940), 53–4, 61, 62, 69; reconnaissance of, in April, 1940, 50; and role of Home Fleet in protection of British Isles from invasion, 152; strikes against Tirpitz by, 149; and threat of invasion of Britain in 1940, 69, 82; see also Fleet Air Arm (FAA) Royal Air Force (RAF) Bomber Command, xv, 31, 46, 53, 69, 71, 82, 106–7, 115, 136, 155, 177n.20 Royal Air Force (RAF) Coastal Command, 23, 31, 43, 44, 63, 71, 88, 100, 107, 139, 154–5, 160, 161, 168n.12, 196n.13 Royal Air Force (RAF) Fighter Command, 69, 70, 160, 161, 178n.26 Royal Marines, 60

Royal Navy: and appeasement policy, 4–6; battles of, during World War II, xiii, xiv, xv; command authority over, 2–3; in early twentieth century, 1, 163n.1; Eastern Fleet of, 119–20; expenditures for, 4, 18, 165n.17, 167n.51; historical victories of, xiii; in inter-war years, 3–18; and magnetic mines, 38–9; Pacific Fleet of, 148, 149, 157; strength of, 6, 16, 18, 119–20, 165n.21, 191n.157; in World War I, xiii, 1–2, 25, 134, 153, 196n.11; see also Royal Navy Home Fleet; and specific ships Royal Navy Home Fleet: aircraft carriers of, 8, 11–13, 16, 18, 19, 21, 22, 27, 76, 85–6, 114, 194n.91; American ships in, 135, 137–8, 139; from April–June 1941, 82–107; and Arctic convoys, 108–33, 138–43, 160, 162, 186n.7; assessment of performance of, 152–62; attack on Scapa Flow by German submarines, 35–7; base for, 1, 32, 40–1; and Battle of Barents Sea, xiv, 124, 129–32, 141, 154, 159, 160; and Battle of Britain, 176n.3; and Battle of North Cape, xiv, 139, 141–3, 158; battlecruisers of, 8, 10–11, 16, 19, 22, 45, 76, 85–6, 114; battleships of, 7–10, 16, 18, 19, 45, 49, 85–6, 114; blockade by, xvi, 25, 41, 44–5, 47, 86, 160, 168n.24; Bodo raid by, 137–8; and Canadian troop convoys, 44; casualties of, 37, 66, 94, 95, 114, 124–5, 130; collisions of ships in, 118; command authority over and command structure of, 2–3, 19–22, 27, 44, 59, 61, 63, 68, 74, 75, 155–9; cruisers of, 8, 13–14, 16, 18, 19, 22, 49, 76, 114; defeat of, in Denmark Strait, xiv, 68, 92–5, 105; and defence of Great Britain from June 1940–June 1941, 68–81, 178n.21; defensive

218 Index strategy of, 24–5; destroyers of, xv, 8, 14, 14–16, 18, 19, 22, 49, 76; disposition of major forces of, in May 1941, 85–6; at end of war, 149–51; Fighting Instructions for, 25–9, 91, 93, 97, 98, 169n.36; and First Battle of Narvik, xiv, xv, 58–9, 159; as ‘floating reserve’ for Royal Navy, 12–13, 33, 119, 125, 128, 132–3; handicaps of, 22–3, 33, 49, 77, 81, 106, 153–5; in inter-war years, 3–18; and keeping German surface fleet out of Atlantic, 153–9; from May 1943–May 1945, 134–51; and mining of Norwegian territorial waters, 50–1; and Norwegian Campaign (1940), 50–67; from October 1939–March 1940, 35–49; origins of, 1–2; at outset of war, 19–34; pairing of battleship with battlecruiser in, 45; and protection of British Isles from invasion, 152–3; and raid on Spitzbergen Island, 135–6; raids on Norwegian coast, 110–12, 114; and refuelling at sea, 77, 116, 154, 188n.72; rescue of German sailors by, 104–5; roles of, xiv–xv, xvi, 26, 152–62; and Scharnhorst chase and sinking, 139–43, 154, 160; and Second Battle of Narvik, xiv, 60, 63, 159; sinking of Bismarck by, xiii, xiv, xv, 68, 103–5, 132; sinking of Hood by German Navy, 94, 104; sinking of Jervis Bay by German Navy, 77; sinking of Rawalpindi by German Navy, 41–4, 47, 73; sinking of Scharnhorst by, 142–3, 154, 160; speed of ships of, 7, 22–3; strength and losses of, 16, 17–18, 49, 59, 75–6, 80, 83, 85–6, 89–90, 106, 114, 125, 135, 149, 150, 176n.3, 194n.67; submarines in, 16, 59; and threat of German invasion of Britain in 1940, 69–70, 177n.8; and Tirpitz raids and sinking, 143–9; World War II

battles of generally, xiv, xv; and X-craft, 136–7, 154, 160; see also specific commanders and ships Royal Navy Mediterranean Fleet, 59, 70, 76, 82 Royal Oak (battleship), 3, 21–2, 24, 32, 36–7 Royal Sovereign (battleship), 22, 134 Royalist (light cruiser), 144 Russia, see Soviet Union Russo–Finnish ‘Winter War’ (1939–40), 172n.65 Salmon (submarine), 44 SAP (semi-armour piercing) bombs, 144 Saumarez (destroyer), 142 Savage (destroyer), 142 Scapa Flow: attack on, by German submarines, 35–7, 39; as base of Royal Navy Home Fleet, 1, 2, 32, 40–1, 47, 71, 73; defences of, 23–4; distance from English Channel to, 72; at outset of World War II, 23–4, 28–33 Scharnhorst (battlecruiser): and Arctic convoys, 139–42; blockade of, 86; British chase and sinking of, 139–43, 160; damage to, 106–7, 141, 142; and defence of Norway, 15, 50, 51, 52, 133; location of, on southern flank of convoy routes, 81; Lutjens as commander of, 79, 87; and Norwegian Campaign (1940), xv, 55, 58, 65, 66; overhaul needed by, 85; RAF Bomber Command’s raids on, 106–7; raid on Spitzbergen Island by, 135–6; raiding cruises by, 46–7, 79, 87, 92; sightings of, 46–7, 50, 80; sinking of, xiv, 15, 142–3, 154, 160; sinking of Rawalpindi by, 30, 41–3; speed of, 23, 142; as X-craft target, 136–7 ‘Scharnhorst’ class battlecruisers, 11 Scheer (pocket battleship), 77–8, 107, 115, 121, 123, 125, 126 Schneider, Lt Commander Adalbert, 93 Schniewind, Admiral, 123, 126, 140

Index 219 Schnorkel, 150 Schoemann (destroyer), 118 Scorpion (destroyer), 142 Scotland, 31, 35, 40, 41, 59 Scott, Winfield, 61 Scylla (light cruiser), 126 Sea Gladiators, 12, 49, 53, 176n.88 Sea Lion Operation, 71 Seafires, 112, 149 Sealion (submarine), 59 Searcher (escort carrier), 144, 151 Seawolf (submarine), 116 Second Battle Squadron (Home Fleet), 22, 36 Semi-armour piercing (SAP) bombs, 144 Sheffield (light cruiser): accidental Swordfish attack on, 100–1; in April 1940, 49, 50; and Arctic convoys, 128, 129, 133; in Battle of the Barents Sea, xiv, 131; and chase of Deutschland, 42; and Norwegian Campaign (1940), 50, 56; and organization of Home Fleet in 1939, 22; at outset of war, 31, 32; and R4 Operation, 50; and Scharnhorst chase, 139, 141; and Tirpitz raid, 144 Sherbrooke, Captain R. St. V., xiv, 129–31, 159 Shermans (tanks), 110 Sherry, Rear Admiral Tully, 192n.32 Shipbuilding industry, 5, 37, 76, 83, 185n.151, 191n.157 Shore-to-ship communications, see Telegraphy Sicily, 128, 135 Sikh (destroyer), 102 Simpson, Michael, 12, 100–1, 195n.7 Singapore, 4, 6, 23, 33, 37, 83, 106, 112, 155, 175n.79, 180n.4, 196n.14 Sirius (light cruiser), 125 Skuas, xv, 12, 13, 32, 49, 53, 59, 66, 77, 111, 170n.67 Slessor, T., 176n.84 Smith, Ensign Leonard, 100 Snapper (submarine), 59 Somali (destroyer), 114, 125, 126

Somerville, Vice Admiral Sir James, 20, 75, 76, 97–101, 106, 119, 157, 196n.11 SONAR (ASDIC), 15 South Dakota (battleship), 135, 183n.87 Southampton (light cruiser), 31, 42, 43, 44, 49, 56, 59 Soviet Union: Anglo–American aid to, 109–10, 196n.9, 196n.21; and Arctic convoys, 108–33, 138–43, 160, 186n.7; and Battle of Stalingrad, 110, 127, 132, 191n.155; British defence against, 1; and Churchill, 155, 172n.65; German invasion of and offensive in, 68, 84–5, 107, 110, 124, 127, 180n.5; pact between Germany and, 25, 29, 160; and possibility of peace with Germany, 127, 190n.129; production of planes, tanks and trucks by, 186n.9; and Royal Navy in World War II, xv, xvi; victory of, against Germany, 196n.21 Spain, 160 Spearfish (submarine), 31, 59 Speed of ships, 7, 22–3, 153–4 Spitfires, 88, 136, 137 Spitzbergen Island, 135–6 Squadrons, 12–13 Stalin, Joseph, 29, 107, 119, 127, 133, 156, 172n.65, 180n.5 Stalingrad, Battle of, 110, 127, 132, 191n.155 Stanhope, Lord, 20, 168n.8 Stark, Admiral, 138 Stord (destroyer), 142 Stuarts (tanks), 110 Stuka dive bombers, 111, 121, 173n.17 Submarines: Arctic convoys and German submarines, 118, 121, 125, 126–7, 133, 139–40, 143, 150; attack on Scapa Flow by German submarines, 35–7; British anti-submarine sweeps, 32, 71, 177n.19; detection of German submarines, by ASDIC (SONAR), 15; German submarines

220 Index in inter-war years, 164n.15; German Type XXI U-boats, 150; in inter-war years, 164n.15; magnetic mines laid by German submarines, 38–9; in Norwegian Campaign (1940), 59; number of, in 1939, 16; from October 1939–March 1940, 35–40; Operation Weser and German U-boats, 48, 50–1; at outset of World War II, 32, 34; production of German submarines, 17; sinking of German submarines, 32; torpedoes of, xv, 23, 39–40 Suckling, Flying Officer, 88 Suez Canal, 82 Suffolk (heavy cruiser): in April–June 1941, 86, 87, 88, 90, 91, 94–5, 98; and Arctic convoys, 128; and Bismarck chase and sinking, 90, 91, 94–5, 98, 105, 182n.54, 183n.78; and convoy HN3, 43; damage to, 53–4, 62; in Denmark Strait, 86, 87, 88; and Deutschland chase, 42; displacement and main armament of, 8; in 1st Cruiser Squadron, 41; in Iceland–Faeroes gap, 86; in May 1943, 135; and Norwegian Campaign (1940), 53–4; at outset of war, 33; and raid on Kirkenes and Petsamo, 110 Sunfish (submarine), 59 Surigao Strait, Battle of, 143 Sweden, 47, 48, 50, 160, 172n.65 Swordfish biplanes, xiv, xv, 12, 13, 23, 49, 53, 59, 60, 65, 76, 89, 96, 97, 100–2, 110–11, 126, 145, 170n.67, 176n.88, 188n.76 Tankers, 77 Tartar (destroyer), 125 Task Force 99, 120, 125 Taylor, A. J. P., 164n.6, 167n.50 Telegraphy, 28 Temeraire (battleship), 181n.14 Tennessee (battleship), 118 Tigerclaw Operation, 147

Tirpitz (battleship): and Arctic convoys, 114–17, 119–24, 126; British attitudes toward, xv; British raids and strikes against, 115, 136, 143–9; and Churchill, 115; damage to, 137, 139, 143, 145, 147, 149, 154, 160; and defence of Norway, 115, 125; Fraser on plans for sinking, 143–4; and Operation ‘Tungsten’, xiv, 144–7, 158, 160; power of, xv, 109, 114, 117, 119, 120; production and sea-readiness of, 84, 107, 112, 154, 165n.21, 181n.17; and raid on Spitzbergen Island, 135–6; repair of, 137, 144; sinking of, xv, 115, 149; X-craft attack on, 136–7, 139, 154, 160 Torch Operation, 127, 128, 133, 135 Torpedo–Spotter–Reconnaissance (TSR) bi-planes, 12, 76 Torpedo tubes, 14 Torpedoes, xv, 10, 14, 23, 36, 39–40, 89, 101, 106 Torpex bombs, 145 Tovey, Admiral Sir John: accomplishments of summarized, 134; from April–June 1941, 86–9, 93, 96–105; and Arctic convoys, 109, 114–33, 157, 186n.7; assessment of, 158; and Battle of Denmark Straits, 93, 95; and Bismarck, xiv, 86, 88–90, 93, 96–106, 157, 158; and British intelligence, 86–7; career of, 74–5, 178n.38; Churchill’s dislike of, and interest in replacing, 15, 134, 155, 183n.103, 188n.70, 196n.13; as commander at The Nore, 134; as commander of Home Fleet, 68, 72, 74–6, 158; crossing the ‘T’ by German Navy, 78–9; and defence of Great Britain from June 1940–December 1940, 78–81, 179n.65, 179n.58; on failure of sea communications, 161; and Japanese threat, 112; on Pound and Forbes, 21; Pound’s assessment of, 74; and raids on

Index 221 Norwegian coast, 110–12, 114; replacement for, as commander of Home Fleet, 134; reports and correspondence by, xvi ‘Town’ class light cruisers, 49 Treaty of Versailles, 2, 5, 164n.15 Triad (submarine), 59 ‘Tribal’ class destroyers, 14, 19, 41, 45, 53, 114 Trinidad (light cruiser), 114, 117, 118–19 Truant (submarine), 59 Trumpeter (aircraft carrier), 51 Tsingtao (depot ship), 52 TSR bi-planes, 12, 76 ‘Tungsten’ Operation, xiv, 144–7, 158, 160 Turkey, 177n.8 Tuscaloosa (heavy cruiser), 118, 120, 121, 125, 135, 138 Type XXI U-boats, 150 U-16 submarine, 38 U-27 submarine, 32 U-29 submarine, 32 U-30 submarine, 32 U-33 submarine, 38 U-39 submarine, 32 U-47 submarine, 35–7, 39 U-56 submarine, 39 U-64 submarine, 60 U-134 submarine, 114 U-456 submarine, 118 U-589 submarine, 126 U-boats, see German submarines (U-boats) Ultra decrypts, 30, 107, 136, 139, 140, 154 United States: and Arctic convoys, 119, 120, 125; entrance of, into World War II, 113; and German invasion of Soviet Union, 180n.5, 196n.21; Hitler’s declaration of war against, 185n.147; intelligence activities of, 112; lend-lease from, 12, 84, 100, 110; and neutral rights, 47–8; shipbuilding industry in, 191n.157; and Washington

Naval Pact, 4, 83–4; see also US Navy US Marines, 106 US Navy: aircraft carriers of, 12, 16; and Arctic convoys, 119, 120–5; attack on Kwajelein Atoll by, 193–4n.194; battleships in, 9, 16; collisions of ships in, 118; destroyers of, 15, 16; in Iceland, 106, 185n.147; at outset of World War II, 26; and Pacific War, 27, 133, 135; ships from, in Royal Navy Home Fleet, 135, 137–8, 139; and SONAR, 15; strength of, 16, 133, 188n.76, 191n.157; Task Force 99 of, 120, 125; and Washington Naval Conference (1921–22), 3–4; in World War II, xiii–xiv USSR, see Soviet Union Vaagso Island, 114 Val (dive-bomber), 111 Valentines (tanks), 110 Valiant (battleship), 9, 19, 47, 49, 50, 63, 113, 119, 136, 165n.21, 176n.84 Vampire (destroyer), 119 Versailles Treaty, 2, 5, 164n.15 Vian, Captain Phillip, 05, 45–6, 57, 102 Victorious (aircraft carrier): aircraft on, 12, 89–90, 188n.76; and Arctic convoys, 116, 118, 119, 121–2; and Bismarck hunt, 88, 89–90, 96–7, 99, 101; and convoy for Gibraltar, 85–6, 89; in Pacific, 135; in Pedestal Operation to Malta, 125, 133; and raid on Petsamo and Kirkenes, 110–11, 138; speed of, 12; and Tirpitz raids and strikes, 136, 144; and Torch landings in North Africa, 125, 128, 133 Vigorous Operation, 120 Virago (destroyer), 141 Voltaire, 184n.124 Von Mellenthin, General F. W., 179–80n.3

222 Index Wainwright (destroyer), 120, 122 Wake Island, 124 Wake-Walker, Rear Admiral W. F., 87, 88, 90, 92, 96–9, 105, 110–11, 157 Warburton-Lee, Captain, xiv, xv, 57–8, 131, 159 Warspite (battleship), 9, 39, 42, 44, 45, 49, 59, 60, 132, 159, 165n.21 Washington (battleship), 26, 84, 118, 120, 121, 125, 153, 183n.87 Washington Naval Conference (1921–22), 2, 3–4, 9 Washington Naval Pact, 4, 83–4 Wavell, Archibald Percival, 180n.3 Wells, Vice Admiral Lionel ‘Nutty’, 21, 63, 64 Weser Operation, 48, 50–1 West Virginia (battleship), 9 Wheatland (escort destroyer), 126 Whitworth, Rear Admiral ‘Jock’: assessment of, 159; and blockade, 86; as commander of Battlecruiser Squadron (BCS), 21, 76, 86; and encounter with Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, xv, 159; and Norwegian Campaign (1940), xiv, 50, 51, 54, 55, 57–60; at Second Battle of Narvik, xiv, 60, 159 Wichita (heavy cruiser), 118, 120, 121, 125 Wildcat fighters, 138, 144 Wilfred plan, 48, 49, 50, 54, 67 Wilhelm Heidkamp (destroyer), 58 Wilson, Admiral Sir Arthur, 28 Wilton (escort destroyer), 126 Wireless telegraphy, 28 Woodman, Richard, 127 Workshop Operation, 157

World War I: Battle of Jutland in, xiii, 2, 19, 26, 51, 74, 93, 148; casualties in, 5; and Churchill, 59, 62, 105; Dreyer Table used during, 169n.29; German Navy in, xv, 117, 189n.108; Lloyd George’s accomplishments during, 156; magnetic mines in, 38; Royal Navy in, xiii, 1–2, 25, 134, 153, 196n.11 World War II: British declaration of war against Germany, 30; casualties of, 37, 66, 85, 94, 95, 103, 104, 114, 124–5, 130, 142, 149; Churchill on victory in, 114, 187n.24; German initiative during, xv; German invasion of and offensive in Soviet Union, 68, 84–5, 107, 110, 124, 127, 180n.5; Home Fleet at beginning of, 19–34; losses of merchant tonnage during, 155, 160; naval battles of, xiii–xiv, xv; Phony War during, 45, 48; prisoners of war during, 45–6, 114, 137; as two-front war, 162; United States entry into, 113; see also Royal Navy Home Fleet; and specific battles X-craft, 136–7, 154, 160 Yamato (battleship), 105, 165n.21 York (heavy cruiser), 49 ‘Yorktown’ class aircraft carriers, 12 Yugoslavia, 83, 176n.1 Z26 (destroyer), 117 Zahn, Lt Commander, 39 Zulu (destroyer), 102

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