Disaster at Stalingrad: An Alternate History

CHAPTER 5 The Battle of Bear Island

At two in the morning the cruiser covering force put to sea to shadow PQ-17. In command was Rear Admiral Louis ‘Turtle’ Hamilton, of whom it was said that he was a ‘bachelor wedded to the White Ensign, courteous, unflappable and popular’. He was also an aggressive commander who believed along with Churchill that the best place for the German surface fleet was on the bottom. That was about all he agreed on with Churchill, castigating him for his failure to use the RAF to help clear the sea of Kriegsmarine vessels rather than bombing Germany.¹ He had been heartened to know that the USS Wasp would add its airpower to that of HMS Victorious in this operation.

He had been more than pleased at the enthusiasm and cooperation of his two American cruiser captains. His orders were not to engage any force heavier than his. Unfortunately that order was a conundrum of sorts. Of the seven major German ships that were expected to challenge the convoys, according to the report from Sweden, only two, Hipper and Prinz Eugen, matched his own 8-inch guns. The problem was that both ships were part of task forces that included ships with heavier guns. In effect, his orders were not to fight anything larger than a destroyer. He would see about that.

‘Anything larger’ was to be handled by the Home Fleet covering force following at a distance of 200 miles.

In issuing his operations order, Hamilton directed that, ‘The primary object is to get PQ-17 to Russia, but an object only slightly subsidiary is to provide an opportunity for the enemy’s heavy ships to be brought to action by our battlefleet and cruiser covering force.’ He also clearly stated that, ‘It is not my intention to engage any enemy unit which includes Tirpitz, which must be shadowed at long range and led to a position at which interception can be achieved by the Commander-in-Chief.’² Now, only if the Germans would cooperate, he could pull off the classic role of the cruiser and pull Tirpitz towards its destruction at the hands of the battleships. Any other group of German ships he would not hesitate to fight it out with.

Reporting aboard Wichita was Admiral Giffen’s flag lieutenant ‘for temporary additional duty’, whose job it was to write an ‘hour by hour chronicle’ of the voyage. Lieutenant Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., USNR, was an intelligent and perceptive man, and his chronicle would do much to untangle the events that were to come.³

That night Fairbanks recorded the address of the executive officer in the hangar deck aft on the coming operation to the entire crew who listened with ‘solemn, tense faces’. Later that evening Captain H. W. Hill gathered his officers in the wardroom and in an impersonal command tone reminded them of the importance of the convoy to the war effort, that it was worth $700,000,000, and that there was intelligence that there was likely to be a knock-down, drag-out naval battle to protect it. Now that they had this warning, they were to do their utmost. Discipline had to be perfect. Fairbanks then recorded that Hill ‘leaned on the table and smiled: “Do you realize, I’ve been in the Navy since before many of you were born?” His eyes glistened visibly as he went on, “All my life I’ve been studying, training, and waiting for this one moment — and now it’s come!” He sighed, wagged his head, and with a wave added, “Good luck to you all!’”⁴

Both sides were rolling for the whole pot; every available heavy ship had put to sea. The Germans were determined to destroy the convoy. The Allies were equally determined to defend the convoy and fight it out with the Germans. The British particularly were haunted by the lost opportunity in the great naval battle of the First World War at Jutland in 1916 when the German High Seas Fleet was allowed to escape and serve as a threatening fleet in being for the rest of the war. For too long the German surface fleet centred on the Tirpitz had filled the same role as its ancestor.

The determination to prevail is vital in any military or naval contest, but there were concrete obstacles in its way. The closer the Allied forces approached Norway, the closer they came to the reach of Luftflotte 5’s aircraft. For the two Allied carriers to support the big ships, they in turn had to come within range of the same German aircraft and that included JG 26’s Fw 190s, at that time the finest fighters in the world.

And therein lay a problem. The Vindicator dive-bombers aboard Wasp were already obsolete before the war. Their crews disparagingly referred to them as Vibrators or Wind-indictors. The Royal Navy had taken over a French order for Vindicators and renamed the aircraft the Chesapeake and had to up-gun and up-armour the aircraft. Aircrews referred to it as the Cheesecake. They were withdrawn from British service in late 1941. The Wasp’s fighter squadron was equipped with Grumman F4F Wildcats. Its torpedo-bombers were the Devastator TBD-1, nicknamed the Torpecker by its crews. It was slow and scarcely manoeuvrable, with light defensive weaponry and poor armour relative to the weapons of the time; its speed on a glide-bombing approach was a mere 200mph, making it easy prey for fighters and defensive guns alike. The aerial torpedo could not even be released at speeds above 115mph. Torpedo delivery requires a long, straight-line attack run, making the aircraft vulnerable, and the slow speed of the aircraft made them easy targets for fighters and antiaircraft guns.⁵ Wasp’s air wing counted 75 aircraft–27 F4F fighters, 33 Vindicators, and 15 Devastators.

The Royal Navy’s Fleet Air Arm was equipped with Fairey Albacore biplanes capable of level, dive- and torpedo-bombing roles but whose maximum speed was barely 140mph. They were already relics. Fighters were Sea Hurricanes of 885 Squadron, which were easily worn out in the stress of carrier operations. Victorious’s air component consisted of Albacore Squadrons 817 and 832 and Sea Hurricane Squadron 885, for a total of 42 aircraft.⁶

The signalmen of the Luftwaffe’s 5th Signals Regiment thought they had been assigned to the back of beyond in the frozen Norwegian north where their primary mission was to intercept Allied and Russian aircraft radio communications. As unappreciated as they may have felt in such an isolated posting, they were worth their weight in gold. Their equally priceless counterparts in the Navy’s B-Dienst had laid bare enough Allied signals to give the Germans an enormous advantage. They were aided by a strong agent network in Iceland and enough local sympathizers to give them advance warning of every convoy sailing. The Germans knew exactly when PQ-17 and Hamilton’s cruisers had left Iceland.⁷

Because of their warnings, the German 1st Battlegroup had departed from Trondheim early to avoid British air reconnaissance. Tirpitz and Hipper had arrived in Narvik to join the other two battlegroups under battlegroup commander Admiral Schniewind. His flag flew from mighty Tirpitz. The combined fleet would move farther north the next day to Altenfjord. From there they would be able to throw themselves across the path of the convoy in the quickest time as it passed between Bear Island and the southern tip of Spitzbergen. The absence from Trondheim of the German battleship was itself of great intelligence value to the Allies. The ogre was loose upon the seas, just as the intelligence from Sweden had predicted.

The Home Fleet was cruising northeast of Iceland when the report was received that the Tirpitz was loose. Admiral Tovey was more than concerned for, if Tirpitz and Hipper were gone, that meant they had either moved up the coast to join the other German heavy ships or that they had struck directly northwest to intercept the convoy. If the former were true, the original operational plan would hold. If it were the latter, his battleships and carriers would have to race to intercept them for the Germans had at least one day’s head start and less distance to go. At least the lack of signals from the convoy escorts and Hamilton’s cruisers indicated that the enemy had not made contact. In the absence of any further information, he turned his force to speed towards where the enemy might be. He desperately hoped he would not find them already savaging the sheep in the fold.

To his immense relief a scout plane found the convoy just off Jan Mayen Island. At the same time, observers on the convoy saw the masts of the battleships, and for a while the convoy feared it was Tirpitz until a trawler properly identified them as the Home Fleet.

At noon that same day, just as the convoy had passed Jan Mayen Island heading northeast, the convoy escorts sighted their first U-boats. They were driven off, but the escorts broke radio silence alerting the B-Dienst to their location.⁸

Early in the afternoon, PQ-17 passed its counterpart QP-13 heading home. There were now three German reconnaissance aircraft shadowing the convoy, and they hung stubbornly on the rim of the horizon. Late that afternoon one of Hamilton’s destroyers reached the convoy and came alongside a tanker to refuel.

Suddenly eleven He 115 floatplane torpedo-bombers made a half-hearted attack under the low overcast only to be driven off by the gunfire from the escorts. The squadron commander’s Heinkel was shot down, its crew scrambling into their yellow liferaft. Another German aircraft turned back from the retreating squadron and raced towards the bobbing crew. It was obviously a rescue mission to which the Allied antiaircraft gunners gave no sympathy. They concentrated their fire on the He 115 as it skimmed over the wavetops at zero feet and:

It was a brazen deed of great courage in the face of which the Allied crews could only gape in amazement.⁹

Their amazement was about to turn into something far less edifying. The submarines that had been shadowing them had been trying to attack but had either been driven off by the very active escorts or found themselves socked in by dense fog. When U-255 surfaced it found the convoy had disappeared into the fog. U-456 trailed after by following the convoy’s oil slick. The U-boats were now reinforced with another six which all took up position as a screen across the convoy’s path. That same day Dönitz issued the order for the fleet to attack the convoy the next day.

In the early morning hours, the German fleet slipped out of Altenfjord screened by a dozen destroyers and two E-boats. Hipper led the way with Admiral Carls flying his flag from it. The day was bright in the perpetual light of the Arctic summer. The fiord was tricky to navigate, full of hidden rocks, but Admiral Carls had ordered his commanders to defer to their Norwegian pilots as they wended their way to the open sea. As it was, Lützow nearly smashed into a ledge of jagged rocks barely under the surface. They sailed directly north towards Bear Island and the convoy, which was reported to be heading east to pass 30 miles north of it. Bear Island, a rocky and uninhabited 70 square mile Norwegian possession, was 240 miles from Altenfjord. It would be the fulcrum of the coming clash.

For two days now German reconnaissance aircraft had been skimming around the convoy radioing its location as it moved steadily east at 8 knots. Its escorts darted around the convoy’s edge driving off the U-boats in a game of cat and mouse in which neither side had scored a kill, though it was not for lack of trying. A number of torpedoes were only stopped by the concentrated fire of the escorts and the guncrews on the merchant ships, blowing them out of the water sometimes at the very last minute. The mood was tense among the convoy and escort crews, but their morale had been boosted by their success. It would never be higher.

Broome received a signal from the commander of the submarine HMS P.614¹⁰ which stated that ‘if heavy enemy surface units attacked, he intended to remain on the surface, receiving the reply from Broome, “So do 1.”’¹¹

On the bridge of Tirpitz Schniewind looked up to follow the noise of engines. Overhead a formation of twenty-three He 111 torpedo-bombers from KG 26 at Bardufoss was flying towards the convoy led by the Geschwader’s acting commander Hauptmann Eicke. The admiral did not see another thirty Ju 88 dive-bombers of KG 30 that were flying ahead of the torpedo-bombers. Eleven of the Kriegsmarine’s He 115 torpedo-bombers had also set out to attack the convoy. At the bases from which all these aircraft had just departed another mixed strike force was preparing to launch on order after the first had struck and was on the way home. The mission of the strike forces was to sink as many ships as possible and so disorganize the convoy that it would fall easy prey to the surface ships and the gathering wolf pack of U-boats codenamed Ice Devil.

A Gruppe from JG 26 would join the fleet as it approached Bear Island to fly top cover, an ever mindful reminder of the Führer’s admonition to watch out for the carriers. With a round-trip range of 500 miles, the Fw 190s could just reach Bear Island and have a little precious loiter time. This would require the other two Gruppen of JG 26 to relieve each other in rotation. A patrol pattern SSW of Bear Island would also likely serve to intercept any Allied carrier aircraft.

Gruppenkommandeur Major Josef ‘Pips’ Priller’s III./JG 26 of thirty Fw 190s would have the honour of the first rotation. Priller was a killer in the sky with seventy kills to his credit, most of them against the RAF, having shot down more Spitfires than any other German ace.¹² He was a stocky, little man, jovial by nature, well-liked by his men, and with a penchant for talking back to his superiors. His three squadron commanders were the best in the Luftwaffe.

They need not have worried at that time about the carriers. The Home Fleet with HMS Victorious and USS Wasp had not even passed Jan Mayen Island, 600 miles (1,000km) west of Altenfjord and almost as far to Bear Island, and was unaware of the location of the German ships, only that the Tirpitz and Hipper were missing from Trondheim. Fog along the Norwegian coast had prevented RAF reconnaissance of the naval bases at Narvik and farther north. It had also blanketed the convoy route intermittently. Tovey and Hamilton both knew that the German surface fleet had orders to be at sea, and signals intelligence indicated that German communications were spiking. It was not much to go on, but Tovey made some shrewd guesses based upon what he knew of the Germans and the location of the convoy. Within half an hour the Home Fleet had changed course and was steaming for Bear Island at 28 knots. From the decks of his two carriers, reconnaissance aircraft took off to scour the sea between the Home Fleet and Bear Island.

If Tovey was far away, Hamilton and his cruisers were parallelling the convoy only 40 miles to the north. So far as he knew, the German reconnaissance planes did not know where he was.

Major Erich Bloedorn, commanding KG 30’s Ju 88 dive-bombers, caught the convoy in its eight-column formation just west of Bear Island just as it was turning northeast to go around the island. Bloedorn could not help but shout to himself, ‘Ausgezeichnet! [Excellent!]’

The Ju 88 dive-bombers climbed high in order to gain the altitude from which they could come screaming down on the enemy to drop their bombs. This would distract the enemy guncrews from the attacks made by the He 111 torpedo-bombers as they came skimming right over the waves. They would come in from the southern flank of the convoy and from the rear at an oblique angle. The He 115s were to attack the head of the convoy, also from an oblique angle, at the same time.

But plans have a way of going awry in wartime, especially in matters of coordination. Despite Hitler’s orders for the Kriegsmarine and Luftwaffe to cooperate in this operation, old animosities still lingered, animosities that had become habits. So the strike of the He 115s came in too early and did not wait for Bloedorn’s dive-bombers to start the show and draw British and American eyes upward.

Instead, they were drawn to the water as the lumbering He 115s came in for the attack. They were spotted quickly by one of the antisubmarine trawlers of the escort. Within minutes Broome signalled the escorts, ‘to close the convoy at best speed to give antiaircraft support’. Air attack warnings sounded and the guncrews on the merchant vessels flew to their guns. The escorts swiftly drew in from their normal 3,000 yards perimeter to 1,000 yards. So well-drilled was the escort force that the torpedo-bombers could not find a way through the streams of lead to attack any of the merchant ships. The antiaircraft ships Palomares and Pozarica were particularly effective in sending up such a hail of fire that the Heinkel crews dared not drive home their attacks. Chastened, they pulled away in defeat, jettisoned their remaining torpedoes and flew off, to the relief of the escorts.

Bloedorn’s initial elation had lasted only seconds until he realized that the convoy was already in action against a torpedo-bomber attack. ‘Who the hell can that be?’ he muttered. Whoever it was had just ruined his plan of attack. He thought quickly and decided simply to revise the attack sequence. He radioed the He 111 torpedo force to wait as he led his dive-bombers up to attack altitude.

The Ju 88 was a formidable aircraft able to deliver a pinpoint attack with a 2,000kg bomb big enough to smash any merchant or escort vessel. Bloedorn’s planes fell on the convoy seemingly out of nowhere. Each of his squadrons struck as prearranged on the flanks or centre of the formation. Bloedorn led the attack into the centre of the convoy, down, down, down, with a big ship in his crosshairs, then released the bomb and hauled the control column back hard to pull his aircraft up and out of the way. He had not seen a single puff of antiaircraft fire, but now he felt the blast wave roll past his plane from the bomb he had just dropped. He looked back to see a cloud of black smoke rising from the centre of the ship. He would learn later that it was the Soviet ship Donbass that he had struck, one of the larger ships in the convoy at almost 8,000 tons. Its cargo of ammunition started exploding, and then with a thunderclap that pulsed over the sea and ships around, it blew to pieces.

From the bridge of the Keppel, Broome could see that at least four more of his ships had been hit and were burning. The British oiler, the 8,400-ton Aldersdale, had not been touched. Luck had nothing to do with it. The German Navy had hopes to capture oilers and live off their heavy oil which was in such short supply. Oilers were not to be attacked.

The Ju 88s regrouped to the south. Bloedorn was amazed that there appeared to be no losses. He led his planes back to the convoy to simulate another run as the air around them filled with black puffs of smoke and tracer. Good, he thought, keep watching us. The half dozen Ju 88s that had not released their bombs now hurtled down in a screaming high dive. One exploded in an orange burst and another trailed smoke and then broke apart.

But already the He 111s had begun to make their runs. The Allied lookouts were still scanning the sky when the torpedoes began to splash into the water. Signalman Taylor aboard the Palomares saw a Heinkel approach, drop its fish, and climb quickly. A few of the ship’s Oerlikons and pom-poms opened fire to no avail. Captain Jauncey was in the process of throwing the helm over when the torpedo struck. The ship shuddered with the explosion in the engine room. The seawater rushing in flooded the boilers. The Palomares was dead in the water and listing when another torpedo surged by to hit the American Liberty ship Christopher Newport, destroying its engine room. The rescue ship Zamalek quickly steamed over to take off survivors. Zamalek’s flinty Welsh captain was surprised as the Liberty ship’s mostly black crew cheerfully boarded his vessel in their best shoregoing clothes.¹³

The Christopher Newport drifted abandoned now as other ships swerved to avoid it. Elsewhere another torpedo ‘skimmed the stern of Aldersdale to hit the Russian tanker Azerbaijan which disappeared behind a huge sheet of flame’. Amazingly, Azerbaijan emerged at 9 knots still going. Its largely female crew had stood by their ship. The day had started out hard on the Russians.¹⁴

The Americans and British were not denied their share of the Furor Teutonicus. Leutnant Hennemann, a squadron leader, was just about to become legend. This daring young officer had already received a letter of commendation from Goring for destroying 50,000 tons of Allied shipping. Now he came in just over the water in an interval between the ship columns, dropped a bomb on a ship ‘then banked across the bow of the Pozarica with all the panache of a medieval Landsknecht, apparently contemptuous of the shell bursts of the ack-ack ship’s pom-poms’. His aircraft now burning from a number of hits, Hennemann flew so low that ship’s gunners fired level, many of their rounds striking other ships. He released his torpedoes which bounced over the water then submerged to hit the British Navarino. Hennemann’s plane crashed into the water just ahead of Broome’s Keppel. The polyglot crew of the passing Panamanian El Capitán could see the crew writhing in the flames. The seamen cursed them and cheered in a brutal lack of chivalry. Only later would the survivors of the British and American ships who had also observed the hero’s death uniformly praise the courage of Hennemann and his crew. Hennemann was posthumously awarded the Knights Cross.¹⁵

Behind them another torpedo struck the American William Hooper, blowing its boiler clear out of the ship to hit the water with an enormous splash. Astern many of the crew of the Navarino had fallen into the water from capsized lifeboats. As the Bellingham ploughed right through the struggling seamen, one of them raised a fist and shouted defiantly, ‘On to Moscow… See you in Russia!’¹⁶

Broome had broken radio silence as soon as the air attack began, alerting both Tovey and Hamilton. At the same time, Bloedorn had radioed the fleet that his attack was beginning. That also triggered the dispatch of the second strike group from its airbases in Norway. Now all three surface groups were converging, unknown to each other, on the stricken convoy off Bear Island.

Broome was immensely relieved two hours later to see the arrival of Hamilton’s cruisers. Eight of his ships had either been badly damaged or sunk. The additional protection of the cruisers would be a great help should the enemy attack again. Both Broome and Hamilton launched their scout planes to patrol to the south and southeast of the convoy. Tovey’s scout planes by now had also come within range. They broke radio silence to report that the entire German surface force was heading straight for Bear Island. The report stunned the command group on the bridge of the Duke of York. Tovey realized that the Germans would strike the convoy a good four hours before he would get there. He radioed Hamilton this news and ordered him to screen the convoy until the Home Fleet arrived. Hamilton had just given the same order having received the same warning from his own scout plane. Hamilton would have his cruiser screening mission, just as he had anticipated. He then told Broome to keep his ships moving east to put as much distance between them and the oncoming German ships. He detached submarines P.614 and P.615 to his own cruiser force. If their original mission was to defend the convoy against German capital ships, they would have the best chance of that by operating with his cruisers.¹⁷

As word spread of the approaching German fleet, near panic set in among many of the merchant crews. On the Troubador the crew mutinied and overwhelmed the naval armed guards. At gunpoint they forced the captain to alter course — due south towards the German ships.¹⁸

The convoy escorts were still close in, in case of another air attack. For proper antisubmarine protection, they should have been several thousand yards farther out from the convoy. That was just the opening that the Ice Devil pack needed. A dozen U-boats moved to attack. First to be sunk were the disabled ships left in the convoy’s wake. The William Hooper disintegrated, sending a fiery shock wave over the sea as its 10,000 tons of ammunition exploded. The first of the steaming ships to be struck was the ungallant El Capitán. It fell out of line and began to sink by the stern. That exposed Pozarica, which took two torpedoes, stopped dead in the water and began to list. Broome quickly ordered his escorts farther out to drive off the U-boats. As he watched his ships swinging towards their new positions, his own ship shuddered with one torpedo hit then another. The Keppel sank so quickly hardly a man survived. The convoy was now without a commander.¹⁹

Hamilton’s reconnaissance floatplane never saw the Fw 190 that shot it down. The admiral only knew that it had stopped transmitting. Tovey’s scouts suffered the same fate, all but one, and it was able to radio its sighting of the German fleet as still on course to Bear Island.

The next Hamilton knew of the Germans was when his own destroyers sighted their counterparts screening Carls’s fleet. The destroyers reported the Germans as coming in three columns, each in line ahead, with Tirpitz in the centre column. Hamilton’s plan was to protect the convoy by pulling the Germans to the northwest away from Bear Island.

The destroyers began the show. Hamilton’s ships shot forward to pierce the German screen and launch their torpedoes at the German capital ships. The German destroyer captains were just as aggressive, launching their own attacks on the British to throw off their torpedo strikes. Carls had the advantage now that Hamilton was blinded from the air. Luftwaffe reconnaissance aircraft reported that the convoy was steaming north of Bear Island while the cruiser force was southwest. He told off his port column, 2nd Battlegroup’s Lützow and Scheer, to engage the Allied cruisers while he went after the convoy with the 1st and 3rd Battlegroups.

From the bridge of HMS London it was clear to Hamilton what the enemy was doing. Carls had thrown a spanner into his plan to pull the German fleet northwest away from the convoy. Hamilton now knew that Tovey was approaching quickly with the Home Fleet, but it would be a good four hours before he could arrive. Hamilton had no choice but to attack with such force as to compel the rest of the German ships to engage. If he had followed his orders and not engaged, he would never have lived down the shame of leaving the convoy to the mercy of the German surface ships.

First though he had to get through Lützow and Scheer, and that problem was emphasized as strikes from their 11-inch guns began to splash around his cruisers. They outranged his 8-inch guns by several thousand yards. Although he had four ships to these two, his would have to cross this beaten zone in which the German guns could hammer them before they could reply.

Clouds of mosquitoes hung about the woods throughout which the buildings and huts of the Wolfsschanze were scattered. As Goring got out of the staff car that had brought him from the airstrip, a cloud of the tiny tormentors, attracted by his heavy cologne, fell upon him with more fury than his own Luftwaffe over Rotterdam or London. He fled inside Hitler’s headquarters waving his baton as if it would drive the mosquitoes away. Goring joined Hitler and soon puffed himself up as the reports came in of the Luftwaffe’s success in striking the convoy. He reminded Hitler that another strike force was now in the air and a third waiting to follow. Goring could see that Hitler was also pleased, but he was pacing back and forth nervously. ‘All well and good, Goring, but what about the enemy aircraft carriers?’

He was prescient. While Hamilton charged, dive- and torpedo-bombers from Victorious and Wasp were taking off for a strike at the Germans. They formed up and headed out in separate formations so as to come in from different directions.

Dönitz had also taken his Führer’s anxiety on board. He had directed that U-boat Flotilla 10 screen Carls’s ships far to the west. One of these boats reported large air formations heading northeast. The flotilla commander ordered his boats to head in the direction from which the planes had come.

The convoy was leaderless when the second Luftwaffe strike force attacked. There had hardly been time for command to pass to the next senior officer, captain of the British destroyer escort Offa, as the dive- and torpedo-bombers swooped in. With Palomares and Pozarica gone, a huge hole had been left in the air defences of the convoy, which the Germans were quick to exploit as the convoy’s formation began to break down.

There were victims enough for both aircraft and U-boats though the submariners were all too often angered when a carefully lined up target was taken out by the Luftwaffe. One such was the 5,400-ton American Pan Atlantic, with its cargo of tanks, steel, nickel, aluminium, foodstuffs, two oil stills, and a great deal of cordite, which was about to take a pair of torpedoes from Kapitänleutnant Bohmann’s U-88 when a Ju 88 swooped down and hit it with two bombs. They struck the cordite hold blowing the bow off the ship. Water rushed in through the gaping hole, and down it went its stern hanging in the air, its propeller still turning as it disappeared beneath the waves. The 7,200-ton John Witherspoon, loaded with tanks and ammunition, next took a spread of four torpedoes from U-255. A 200-yard cloud of smoke rose from the ship as it seemed to drift away. The crew were barely able to escape in lifeboats before the John Witherspoon broke in half and sank.²⁰

By now the convoy had completely come apart with merchant ships running their engines to speeds the builders had never contemplated just to flee from the slaughter. The British Earlston fled north with its cargo of explosives and crated aluminium. Several Ju 88s followed and dropped their bombs but missed. A third put its bomb close enough to the target’s port side to rupture the hull and the engine-room steam fittings, shifting the engines from their mounts and bringing the ship to a halt. The crew abandoned ship as it settled. Just then U-334 surfaced and put a torpedo into it. The German captain watched as:

The messages were crowding in to the communications sections of the Kriegsmarine and Luftwaffe staffs in Berlin and at the Wolfsschanze. From U-703 came: ‘Pinpoint AC.3568. 5,476-ton River Afton sunk. Cargo aircraft and tanks. Three torpedoes.’ Hitler was grinning as his aide read off every kill. Goring’s smile faded when it was a Navy kill. It reappeared whenever a Luftwaffe kill report came in. He jumped up and clapped his chubby hands when the report of the sinking of three more ships by Ju 88s came in.

‘SS Pankraft blazing.’ A flight of Ju 88s attacked from 4,000 feet and left the ship a mass of flames. The 5,600-ton freighter carried a cargo of TNT and 5,000 tons of crated aircraft parts, with bombers lashed to the deck The crew abandoned ship, the captain and the chief officer the first into a lifeboat. The second officer stayed with the ship to ensure the evacuation of the rest of the crew. He was killed as the last man off the ship as a Ju 88 flew by and strafed him. When the fire reached the TNT cargo, the Pankraft blew up.

An American merchantman, the Daniel Morgan, carrying a cargo of food and leather, was destroyed by a combination of air and submarine attacks. Its hull was split open by Ju 88 attacks and it was finally sent to the bottom with four of its crew by the torpedoes of U-88. U-703 had fired four torpedoes at the British Empire Byron and missed but finally hit with a fifth fish which sent the cargo of army trucks on deck flying through the air. Empire Byron sank stern first, taking eighteen of its crew down too.²²

The Germans did not quite have everything their own way. The American Peter Kerr fleeing eastward threw up such an effective wall of antiaircraft fire that repeated attacks by seven He 115s were beaten off and two of them shot down. A Royal Navy corvette depth-charged U-457 as it was lining up a shot on the burning Dutch Paulus Potter. Far more embarrassing for the Germans was the attack of an unidentified Ju 88 on a German U-boat riding on the surface. An investigation would later be launched, but for want of a culprit it had to be dropped. Apparently no crew admitted to the error.

Hamilton was happily ignorant of the disaster that had fallen on the convoy as he attacked the German fleet. Perhaps if had known what little help he could have offered, he would have cancelled his attack and pulled back to screen for Tovey’s Home Fleet. The point was moot. The enemy was there, and he had to gain time for the battleships to arrive. He thought of Nelson’s instruction to his captains before Trafalgar. ‘Our country will, I believe, sooner forgive an officer for attacking an enemy than for letting it alone.’²³

The cost of that decision came home when shells from the 11-inch guns of the Lützow straddled the London. He would not be within range for another ten minutes. The next German salvo struck a few yards to port sending huge geysers of red water from the sighting dye to drench the ship. Hamilton could see the water spouts from Scheer’s salvoes perilously close to the nearby Norfolk. The Americans, he could see, were keeping up smartly. Although the German guns were heavier, their two cruisers had only twelve of them. His own four cruisers disposed of thirty-four 8-inch guns. His ships would actually be delivering a much greater weight of metal than the Germans when they closed the distance. He was counting on that as well as the fact that the big-gunned German cruisers were weakly armoured compared to the American cruisers.²⁴

His three destroyers had raced ahead to throw themselves at the enemy, veering only to launch spreads of torpedoes. The two Germans had to steer nimbly to dodge them, throwing off their gunfire. Still the cruisers had not yet closed the range. Their guncrews sweated under their hoods counting their own heartbeats as they strained for the moment when they could feed their guns.

The Germans were too good not to get the range. They turned hard to port crossing Hamilton’s ‘T’, presenting all their gun turrets to only the forward turrets of Hamilton’s cruisers. He saw Wichita stagger from a direct hit by two shells, but it kept on going despite the flames licking from its superstructure. Aboard the American ship, damage control parties were fighting the blaze. The damage could have been worse. One of the enemy shells had struck the 6-inch armour belt and failed to penetrate but some hull plates had been sprung.²⁵

The grim look on Hamilton’s bridge turned bright when an observer pointed to a torpedo hit on Lützow. The German ship slowed and fell out of line, though its fire did not slacken. Seemingly in revenge for that injury, one of its secondary-gun shells smashed into the destroyer USS Rowan, followed by another two until the smaller ship was a shattered, burning hulk.

By this time, Hamilton had turned his ships to port to parallel the Germans; they were finally in range. He had directed the Americans to take on Lützow while the British cruisers dealt with Scheer. The guns on all his ships seemed to go off at once so eager had the guncrews been. Thirty-four 8-inch shells converged on the two German ships. Most missed but two struck the Lützow just above the damage done by the British torpedo, penetrated the thin 3-inch armour belt:

The shells had also cut the electricity supply needed to work the ship’s main guns. The turrets were now stuck in their last firing position.²⁶

Scheer’s gunners were also eagerly working their guns and poured shells into Norfolk, but amazingly most simply went through and through its thin armour without exploding, but one tore into the aft turret just as the powder bags were coming up the ammunition hoist. The explosion blew the turret out of its well and over the side. Norfolk staggered out of line and fell behind as its crew fought the fires set by the giant puncture wounds to their ship. London pressed on, duelling with Scheer, neither landing a crippling punch.

London’s chief engineer came to the bridge and reported to Hamilton that he was worried because the hull plates had been loosened and rivets popped from the stress of action. ‘I’m worried, sir, that we are taking on too much water.’ Just then one of the ratings shouted to look up. Flying over them in the direction that Tirpitz had taken were the torpedo- and dive-bombers of the Victorious and Wasp.²⁷

Carls and his command staff aboard Hipper stood transfixed by the shattered detritus of the convoy — burning and sinking ships that had been left behind in the wake of the fleeing survivors that were still being harried by the Luftwaffe and U-boats. Debris, lifeboats, burning oil drifted between the dying ships. Already the admiral’s force had taken a prize, the SS Troubador sailing towards them as they sailed around Bear Island, flying every white bedsheet on the ship instead of its colours. A destroyer had stopped it and put a prize crew aboard, and now it steamed back towards Narvik.

The rest of the Allied vessels were within his grasp. His ships could take prizes where aircraft and submarines could not. At that moment he was reminded by the Luftwaffe liaison officer that Priller’s planes were about to reach the limit of their fuel and had to turn back. Carls was not overly concerned at this point, sure that his force was beyond reach of any carrier-based aircraft. Priller’s group had already turned back before it reached the point of no return. The admiral was almost immediately corrected by the arrival of a message from Scheer that a large flight of enemy aircraft were heading in his direction.

Priller’s only reaction as his radio crackled with the news was to tap his fuel gauge and laugh, ‘At last, something worth killing!’ as he turned his group back to intercept the enemy. He was calculating how many minutes of fuel his planes would have — ten at the most, ten minutes of combat time, to destroy or drive away whatever was making for the ships and then race back to the Norwegian airfields, gliding the last on fumes, no doubt. Right now they had to climb in order to drop down on the enemy like so many falcons among pigeons.

He followed a bearing based on Scheer’s signal, and within two minutes located the incoming flight. Chugging along incredibly slowly were 28 Albacores and 14 Sea Hurricanes with the latter flying cover above the torpedo-bombers. It was going to be very one-sided, Priller thought. The Fw 190 had long since outclassed the Hurricane, and the Albacore was just so much flying poultry, a biplane in 1942! Priller led the attack, leaping down upon them from 2,500 feet and coming up behind the last aircraft in the formation. Like all successful pilots he knew that the secret of success was to get as close to the enemy as possible, virtually ramming distance. He almost flew into the Hurricane before firing and saw large pieces of it fly off as it shuddered and started to burn. Priller pulled up and over the dying plane and right up to another, fired and saw the pilot’s canopy shatter before the aircraft spiralled down. He was now coming through the Albacores, who were still unaware of the Germans. Death was upon them.

He pulled up and climbed again to rejoin the fight. The British formation was scattered everywhere by now with Fw 190s chasing the Albacores and duelling with the Hurricanes. It did not last long. He had to call off his pilots lest they use too much fuel for the return to base. That was the only thing that saved the handful of British planes, three Hurricanes and five Albacores. HMS Victorious was now an almost useless ship with the sad remnants of its three squadrons fleeing home.

Priller’s group flew away elated at their glorious last-minute victory. They had no idea that the first strike group from the Wasp was approaching Bear Island on a different course than the ill-fated British. Priller did pass II./JG 26 commanded by Hauptmann Connie Meyer on its way to fly cover for the surface ships. Galland’s little brother, Wilhelm-Ferdinand commanded one of its Staffeln and was an ace twice over. Priller was surprised to hear another Galland voice over the radio. ‘You just can’t help yourself, hey, Pips, can you?’ It was Adolf Galland congratulating him on his victory. Priller was not surprised that his old boss was back in the air. Sitting at Kirkenes must have been an agony for him.

Priller keyed in the radio, ‘Well, if it isn’t the General der Jagdflieger himself. I’m surprised your staff job hasn’t fattened your behind too much to fit into a cockpit!’

‘Ach, Pips, du Schwein, you haven’t changed a bit, and if you keep shooting down the British like this, no one will care. I just hope you left something for poor Meyer and his boys.’

‘Enough to go around, alte Junge, Two carriers, remember, there are two carriers out there.’ He looked at his watch again and only then realized to his surprise that it was near midnight, yet the sun flooded through his cockpit canopy with an afternoon’s lazy brightness.²⁸