Disaster at Stalingrad

CHAPTER 6 The Battle of 20° East

Goring was riding high. If this had been anywhere else, he would have ordered the best champagne to celebrate the Luftwaffe’s unparalleled successes in what was to be called the Battle of Bear Island. But Hitler was a puritanical teetotaler, and you would wait a long time to see anything more interesting than a glass of water at his table.

Hitler might as well have had a bottle or two, though, so high was he on the roll of victories that were flowing into his communications centre. The convoy was all but destroyed and a large flight of planes from an aircraft carrier shot out of the sky. ‘See, Goring, See! I foretold how dangerous the aircraft carriers would be. If it had not been for my admonition, they would have sunk every one of our ships!’¹

He was rubbing his hand at the booty that Carls’s ships were taking among the wreckage of the convoy. The admiral had detached the light cruiser Nürnberg and three destroyers to finish off what was left of the convoy escort and take the surrender of the remaining ships that could not outrun them. Incomplete reports indicated a dozen or so ships had been sunk or were sinking. A half dozen more scuttled themselves when it looked like the Germans would capture them. The rest were being rounded up and boarded by prize crews. The biggest prize was the oiler Aldersdale. Only one ship had put up a fight to the very end, the Soviet tanker Azerbaijan. It continued to attempt to outrace the German destroyer sent after it and, when overtaken, its largely female crew depressed their antiaircraft guns to fight it out. The destroyer’s 12.7cm guns settled the matter quickly, and when the prize crew came on board, there was no one alive except a few very badly wounded women. Before the German sailors could inspect the ship, it shuddered from an internal explosion, its hull burst open, and a river of bright yellow linseed oil gushed into the sea.²

Hitler just shook his head, ‘Such racial filth to use women to fight.’ Goring thought to himself that it was actually an example of defiant courage at its best. This flicker of chivalry was all that was left of the gallant WWI fighter ace, now a morphine-addicted brute.

But Hitler had not lost the thread of the operation. He was speaking to Dönitz on the phone at the Admiralty in Berlin. ‘What is Carls doing, now? There are still carriers out there, are there not?’

‘Yes, mein Führer, but according to the JG 26 report, they destroyed almost all of the British planes. Victorious is without any aircraft. It might as well be sunk as far as this battle is concerned.’

‘Well, what about the American carrier?’³

Yes, what indeed about the American carrier? Carls’s ships had turned about after arriving at the scene of the convoy’s destruction and headed back the way they had come to rescue Lützow and Scheer in their battle with Hamilton’s cruisers. He had been surprised by the air attack that Priller had just barely intercepted. The American carrier, with twice as many planes as Victorious, was still out there. But where? He had ordered Meyer’s group to patrol in the direction that the British planes had come from on the assumption that the American planes would follow the same flight path. He was now racing in that direction in any case to come to the aid of his two hard-pressed cruisers. That would put him within cover range of Meyer’s planes, but they could not linger long. He must see off the British cruisers and sail for home. By then the third group from JG 26 should be in the air to cover his ships. A lot of assumptions, he thought to himself.

Still, it was an immensely successful operation in general, though disappointing in that the one light cruiser and three destroyers he had left behind were the only part of the surface fleet that had done anything, and in the end that was nothing more than sweeping up after the Luftwaffe and the U-boats, who would be insufferable in boasting of their laurels. If anything the reputation of the surface fleet would diminish with this victory.

There was still time to pluck a few of those laurels for his big ships if he could sink those enemy cruisers.

A hundred miles to the southwest, instead, it was the U-boats that saw another chance to gather laurels. U-boat Flotilla 10 fresh from Lorient, France, was patrolling in wolf packs of six boats the approaches to Bear Island along the path most likely to be taken by the Home Fleet. Their positioning was astute, and the Home Fleet sailed right into the patrol screen of the wolf pack, consisting of U-155, U-166, U-172, U-506, U-509, and U-514. The signal of the sighting went out and included the information that one carrier’s deck was full of aircraft.⁴

The Allied destroyers quickly detected the Germans and pounded on them in a furious depth-charge attack before any of them could lay a good firing plot. Antisubmarine aircraft launched from both carriers to join the hunt. The first kill went to the British. Depth charges burst open U-506 sending the telltale huge oily bubbles, debris, and the ultimate sign of a kill — bodies — to the surface. Leaving three destroyers behind to keep the U-boats occupied, the Allied capital ships continued on at 28 knots sweeping past the slower submarines and screened by the remaining escorts still throwing depth charges. They were going somewhere fast.⁵

That somewhere was southeast of Bear Island across the expected path of the German ships returning to their bases in Norway. The frantic radio messages in the clear from the convoy begging for help had stopped. Tovey realized that disaster had overtaken the merchant ships. There was only one chance to retrieve something from this debacle and that was to do just what Churchill had demanded — put the Germans on the bottom.

He had hoped that the two carrier strike groups might find Tirpitz and the other ships and hurt them enough to give his own battleships and cruisers an advantage. But now he was getting news of the decimation of the British strike group. It was going to be up to the Americans.

Wasp’s strike group had come in on a longer, different route than Victorious’s ill-fated planes. A few miles ahead they could see the German ships steaming south in two parallel columns. The sixteen Vindicators climbed to dive-attack altitude as the fifteen Devastators dropped to run above the water. There were only a half dozen F4F fighters because Tovey had no knowledge that the Fw 190s had joined Luftflotte 5. The naval Enigma remained unreadable, and the Luftwaffe Enigma had nothing to say about it. In any case, events were moving faster than messages could be decoded.

Carls, on the other hand, was by now completely aware that there was another swarm of planes out there. The Luftwaffe reconnaissance aircraft shadowing the convoy had been directed to cover the German ships to the west and southwest. One of them, a lumbering Focke Wulf 200 Condor reconnaissance bomber, sighted the incoming American strike force and radioed it immediately to Carls as well as the patrolling group from JG 26.

Tirpitz had been repeatedly briefed to the American crews as the prime target. Now the huge ship with its long guns was easily picked out, heading south at high speed. Heavy cruiser Hipper followed. The Americans attacked with torpedo-bombers first to pull German attention to the deck and then the dive-bombers. The lessons of Midway where just such an approach, albeit entirely by accident, had devastated the Japanese carrier force, had not been lost on the crews of the American carrier wings.

Carls had already pulled in his destroyer screen tight around his big ships to mass their antiaircraft fire. Every antiaircraft gun on every ship was fully manned and ready for action. Every man was at his defence against air attack or battle damage station. So it was when the Americans pounced they were met by well-aimed and concentrated fire. The slow Devastators were the first to feel it. Their limping speed attracted the fire of the escorts, and here and there they began to fly apart and crash into the water, spewing debris. The crew of the destroyer Karl Galster cheered as one of the Devastators skimmed right over it in flames to crash on its port side. The crew of the Friedrich Eckoldt were also cheering as another torpedo-bomber burst into flames several hundred yards to starboard. Their cheers turned to panic when they saw that the explosion that had killed the plane had also released its torpedo to bounce into the sea, submerge and run. There was no time to escape, and the torpedo struck Eckoldt amidships. Its engines crippled, it caught fire and fell away from the battle group.

Seven torpedo-bombers survived to get close enough to Tirpitz to drop their fish. Three were badly aimed and simply missed. Tirpitz’s captain pulled his ship hard to port to dodge another two which left their white wakes streaking just past the ship’s turning bow. He was not fast enough to dodge a third torpedo which struck the stern.

The dive-bombers had lined up 4,000 feet above Tirpitz and wheeled over one by one to dive into the attack. The trick worked just as it had at Midway. No one on the ships saw them coming. The first Vindicator, piloted by the squadron commander, made a perfect hit on the deck ahead of A turret. The bomb crashed through the thin deck armour and exploded in the storage spaces below, sending a cloud of debris and flames a hundred feet into the air. The second bomb fell immediately to the port side and exploded. On any riveted ship, that would have split the armour belt and hull plates, but Tirpitz’s welds held.⁶

The third Vindicator pilot never got to find out if he would have hit the ship. A Fw 190 caught him with a burst of fire just as he was about to release his bomb. Dead at the controls, he fell into the sea. Meyer’s group had arrived, drawn immediately to the defence of Tirpitz by the Condor’s warning. The Americans did not have a chance. Galland did not hang back and quickly found one of the four Wildcat fighters flying in to protect the dive-bombers. He deftly got on the enemy’s tail, closed up, and fired. The Wildcat flamed and went down. He looked about for another target, but the feral Fw 190s had hunted everything out the sky it seemed; only three Vindicators and two Devastators were to survive that action of the thirty-one aircraft that had begun the attack.

They too would have been shot out the sky had not Meyer’s group also been short of fuel. Meyer called them back as the Americans fled southwest. As his group departed, they flew past Tirpitz, and each Fw 190 shook its wings in salute. Galland brought up the rear, elated with the performance of his old command, but looking down on the battleship he was unsettled to see fire burning from a gaping hole in its forward deck and oil trailing from its stern.

Tirpitz and its companions continued sailing to the sound of battle. Carls could see the smudge of smoke from the stricken Lützow and another smoke cloud beyond. The cruiser was making only 5 knots and still absorbing round after round from the two American cruisers.

Scheer’s fight against the two British cruisers was going better. Norfolk was out of action and listing from holes smashed in its hull by the German’s 11-inch shells; fires sent their smoke upwards for Tirpitz to observe. Scheer had turned all its attention now to London, which kept closing the distance.

Hamilton had that pugnacious English battle sense that propelled him to come to grips with the enemy. He would destroy Scheer if he had to ram it. Suddenly his ship was straddled by enormous geysers of water. A 15-inch salvo from Tirpitz 14 miles away found his range. The bridge was blown into fragments that fell like hail into the surrounding sea. Another round plunged through the deck and into the engine room smashing everything and killing everyone. Fires leapt from severed fuel lines. It would not be long before the fires reached the magazines, but there was no one left to order them flooded. The men on the bridge of the Tirpitz watched as they saw the strike of each round glow orange and red on its victim. There was that almost but not quite restrained pleasure of a well-struck blow. Then the magazines blew.

Wichita and Tuscaloosa were now alone against the entire German surface fleet. They had pounded Lützow into a flaming wreck that was not long for the surface, but with Tirpitz and Hipper coming down from the northeast and Scharnhorst, Gneisenau and Prinz Eugen coming down on a parallel course four miles away, they were about to become the meat in a German sandwich. Captain Hill’s big moment had come.

As the senior of the two American cruiser captains, he ordered Tuscaloosa to follow and swing hard to port until they were heading straight for the Germans. A signalman rushed up to the bridge to hand him a message. It was from Tovey to HMS London; the communications room had deciphered it. It read: ‘Proceed southeast to 72° 30′ North, 20° East. It is imperative you delay enemy as long as possible.’

Hill could only think that as long as possible was only minutes away. Splashes from Scharnhorst‘s guns were already leaping from the water around them as the German ship ranged in on them. Scharnhorst and its sister Gneisenau were in effect battleships with 11-inch rather than 15-inch guns. While Hill had been able to pound it out with Lützow because of its thin armour, he would have no chance at all against their 14-inch belt and turret armour. At best he could sting them. And that’s what he did by his rapid turn. He crossed the ‘T’ of the German Battlegroup 3 coming towards him line ahead and concentrated the fire of his two ships on Scharnhorst. Eighteen guns roared as their almost 400-pound projectiles converged on the German ship. Three struck. Yet, the 32,000-ton behemoth just kept coming. Its forward turrets fired, and their shells straddled Wichita. They had the cruiser’s range; the next salvo would hit.

Hill had sent the two remaining destroyers, HMS Somali and USS Wainwright, on a desperate torpedo run at the oncoming German ships. Already Scharnhorst was turning its column to present its guns broadside as the destroyers closed at 32 knots, their engines straining for everything they could give. Their torpedoes splashed and ran towards the Germans as the destroyers turned away. The battleship turned quickly aside to let the torpedoes pass but in doing so was unable to train its guns for the killing salvo on Wichita.

But the attack sacrificed Wainwright which was struck repeatedly by 12.7cm shells from the German destroyers. One shell hit at the waterline, flooding forward compartments. Another cut through to an ammunition storage area and exploded starting a fire. Others burst on the starboard boat davit, the port motor whaleboat, in the galley, scullery, engine room, after crew’s berthing compartment, and the forward stack. Fires raged through the sinking ship among the dead and wounded. Its own little 5-inch aft turret kept firing as long as the gun could bear. The captain, Lieutenant Commander Thomas L. Lewis, was the last man alive on the bridge as the destroyer went under.⁷

Gneisenau‘s guns joined the fight, then Prinz Eugen’s. Lieutenant Fairbanks on Wichita‘s bridge had a ringside seat for everything that was happening, his chronicle for now forgotten. He saw Gneisenau’s first round hit on Tuscaloosa that smashed its aft battery. Then the sea around Wichita erupted as Tirpitz and Hipper joined in. Only the cruiser’s swift manoeuvring was able to make it dodge every hit. Tuscaloosa was not so nimble or lucky. Two of Tirpitz‘s 15-inch shells struck amidships and exploded. The cruiser gushed flames and black smoke, slowed and began to list. Where the shells had hit was a gaping red inferno that was spreading beneath decks. The captain ordered the magazines flooded, then ‘Abandon Ship!’ The lifeboats had all been shattered, but desperate men leapt into the frigid water. Others tried to help the wounded who filled the companion ways. Now shells from the other German ships struck home one after another until Tuscaloosa turned over and sank.

Captain Hill got the last hit in. One of Wichita‘s shells struck Scharnhorst’s bridge, a perfect shot through the armoured viewing aperture, wiping out the entire command group, including Admiral Ciliax. It was the resulting confusion from the now leaderless Battlegroup 3 that allowed Wichita to flee at top speed southeast to rendezvous with brave Somali.⁸

Carls took a moment now to reassess the situation. His fleet had succeeded in its mission. At least fifteen of the Allied merchant ships had been captured and were sailing to Narvik in convoy with Nürnberg and three destroyers. The rest of the convoy was on the bottom or burning and about to sink. His surface fleet had destroyed three of the enemy’s heavy cruisers and two destroyers compared to the loss of his own heavy cruiser Lützow and one destroyer, and moderate damage to Tirpitz and Scharnhorst.

He watched as Lützow burned and finally capsized. His destroyers had transferred the surviving crew as well as scouring the surrounding water for the crews of the sunk British and American cruisers. His staff urged him to leave the destroyers behind to do this or simply abandon the enemy survivors as the British had done to the Bismarck‘s crew, of whom all but 114 out of 2,200 had perished. Most died of hypothermia. A U-boat and a trawler were only able to find three men still alive. The British had claimed that they had spotted a U-boat and thus could not risk their ships while stopping to pick up German survivors. That excuse had stunk to high heaven the Germans thought. Carls put a firm stop to that line of thinking. ‘Meine Herren, may I remind you that the German Kriegsmarine fights a knightly war. We will save these men, and let it be a reproach to the English.’⁹

Just to prove that life is unfair, Carls’s chivalry was going to cost him dear. After the fight with the cruisers, the time it took to rescue survivors proved costly. It was as if, by lingering at the site of his victory, he was trailing his coat past both the Royal and US Navies. It was time that Tovey used to position the Home Fleet right across Carls’s way home. Tovey had calculated the most direct route from the last sighting of the German fleet as it sank Hamilton’s cruisers and then marked just where he wanted to be to intersect it — right on the meridian of 20° East.

Carls’s staff and the captain of the Hipper, Karl Topp, remonstrated with him but to no avail about the dangers of remaining in the area. Topp was outspoken, ‘With respect, the enemy carriers have not been accounted for. They are still out there and able to launch more strikes.’

The admiral was a firm man but not a martinet. He did not shut down Topp with an order but chose to reply:

He did not know that Tovey’s ships had barrelled right through the U-boat screen and left enough destroyers to keep them dodging depth charges and not able to surface and signal.

Topp would not give up. ‘I would feel a lot safer if we set a course for home directly.’

Carls thought the expression of a firm opinion from a subordinate was to be encouraged. He threw the man a bone. ‘Just in case, then, Captain, we will send a few of our floatplanes from Tirpitz and Gneisenau to search to the west. We will also request the Luftwaffe to hurry up its support for our return home.’ He saw that Topp still wanted to argue:

He turned away and stepped out onto the weather bridge, and that was that.

Carls’s message to the Luftwaffe unfortunately went through Headquarters, Naval Group North, to commander of Naval Forces Norway to the commander of Luftflotte 5. When it finally reached KG 26 and KG 40 at the airfields at Bardufoss and Banak, most of the planes had been pulled into their hangars for maintenance, and the crews were off celebrating, as only aviators can. The maintenance crews were swarming over the aircraft separating out those with battle damage and beginning first echelon maintenance on the rest. Only Priller’s group of JG 26 was in relatively good shape.

About three hours later, Carls was to be the recipient of too much intelligence too late. In quick succession he received reports from U-boat Flotilla 10, the B-Dienst, and his own floatplanes that the enemy had indeed stolen a march on him and was cruising between him and his Norwegian bases. The U-boats had finally broken free of the British destroyers and surfaced to report the passage of the Home Fleet. The B-Dienst had decrypted Tovey’s message to the late Hamilton telling him to rendezvous at 72° 30′ North, 20° East. Finally one of the floatplanes radioed the enemy presence just a few miles to the southeast.¹⁰

Wasp’s Wildcats had pounced on the rest of the floatplanes within range before they could radio the presence of the Home Fleet. The American pilots were out for blood after the loss of most of their first strike force, as were the few surviving British air crews. There were still 23 fighters aboard Wasp as well as 20 dive-bombers and 3 torpedo-bombers. The Wasp still had more than one sting, as Churchill had said in May. Victorious had another few aircraft left and was still game for the next round. Aboard Wasp was Lieutenant David McCampbell, who was beside himself that he had not been able to accompany the first strike on the Tirpitz. He was convinced that he could have accounted for a few of those Fw 190s and got back too, not an inconsiderable concern.

The planes seemed to leap off the carrier decks to circle until they were all in the air before heading off. Tovey was determined to fix or slow down the Germans with this air attack while his big ships closed the distance. No one was more surprised than Carls when the air attack alarms were sounded. He rushed out to the weather bridge to see for himself, just in time to watch the Vindicators diving on to the fleet. He ordered immediate evasive action and for the destroyers to move in close to provide more antiaircraft protection for the big ships. It became plain that Tirpitz was the object of the dive-bombers’ special attention. The huge ship was still nimble and threw up a leaden storm, dodging bomb after bomb and plucking a plane or two out of the air. The last pilot in the attack felt the 20mm shells stitch through his plane just as he dropped his bomb. He knew it was off target as he pulled away, the plane sluggish to the controls. He looked back and down as the 1,0001b bomb fell and fell to strike not the sea, but at the very last moment the battleship’s prow. The fuze worked perfectly, and the prow disappeared in a mushroom of black smoke. When it cleared, all that was left of its elegant shape was twisted metal.

The handful of torpedo planes, three Devastators and two Albacores, also went after Tirpitz. The close-in destroyers shot down the low-flying biplanes, but a Devastator got through to drop its fish. It slid under the water with a splash and disappeared, its path marked only by a trail of bubbles. It struck Tirpitz amidships and blew through the hull into the crew spaces. Luckily they were empty. The ship rocked with the blow but did not slow down. The damage-control parties sealed off the damaged areas quickly.

The Hipper, consort to Tirpitz, received some of the attention meant for the bigger ship and took a bomb that blew a hole in its forward deck and another that knocked out its forward turret. It was all Kapitän Topp could do to keep his ship in the battle line as fires licked out of the twisted holes.

The Home Fleet was barely 30 miles away sailing at 28 knots line ahead. Aboard USS Washington, Vice Admiral Giffen addressed the crew. ‘We go into battle on the 166th anniversary of our Declaration of Independence. We sail with a ship bearing the name of our first president. All of America sails with us today. It is up to us to show the world that we are worthy of the men of 1776 and Washington himself.’¹¹

As he closed in Tovey turned the line to port to run roughly parallel to the disorganized course the Germans were on as they tried to fight off the stinging cloud of dive-bombers. At 24,000 yards, the gun captains gave the order to fire. ‘The fire gong sounded its “ting ting” and the director layer, his left hand automatically spinning and elevating the hand-wheel, squeezed the trigger with his right hand, and the electric circuits from the turrets were completed.’¹² Twenty British 14-inch guns and nine American 16-inch guns thundered, long flames, the residue of their propellant charges, shooting fiery tongues from the barrels after their huge projectiles raced ahead at almost three times the speed of sound.

Tirpitz was their target. Tovey and the officers on the bridge of Duke of York cheered as they saw that the German ship was wreathed in splashes but marked also by orange bursts of flame where it was hit. Tirpitz’s well-trained damage-control parties quickly got the fire from the hit in the superstructure under control, but the aft turret had been pierced by two of the big American shells. The explosion found the powder bags for another salvo just lifted up through the magazine well. It blew the top and back off the turret; the great guns were blown loose from their mounts and crashed onto the deck. Fire danced out of the split turret as huge chunks of armour and debris fell into the ocean on either side of the ship.

Then the Tirpitz‘s own guns spoke before the next enemy salvo could be fired, and it was Duke of York and King George V’s turn to take a very hard punch. It was a tribute to the German ship and its crew that after absorbing such punishing blows they could coolly hit back. Washington absorbed repeated hits from the 11-inch guns of Scharnhorst and Gneisenau which profited from the enemy’s concentration on Tirpitz. Washington’s thick, tough armour was proof enough against the German shells. Aside from superstructure damage, its armour belt and turrets only showed serious gouges and scorch marks.

Into the beaten zone between the two thundering lines of ships the destroyers charged to make torpedo attacks on the enemy’s ships. The sea was filled with white wakes as torpedoes were launched. When they had expended their fish, the destroyers would get in close to fight it out with their guns. The ever-observant Lieutenant Fairbanks would later record that ‘they resembled nothing more than mailed knights in wild charges’. In short order the German Z-30 was on fire and sinking while HMS Obdurate caught a stray torpedo and quickly went down.

German destroyers Richard Beitzen and Z-24 slipped through the mêlée to launch torpedoes on Duke of York. The battleship tried to turn hard to port to avoid them, and one passed a hundred yards to its stern, but the other struck the stern and jammed the rudder in such a position that the ship was now locked into a wide circle. Beitzen swung back and circled around to come up right alongside King George V at less than a hundred yards on a parallel course. Beitzen raked the British superstructure with its fire, destroying antennas, radars and antiaircraft guns, and driving fragments through the bridge’s armoured viewing slit to wound the captain and most of the officers and men with him. Following behind, the Washington was already hotly engaged with the two sister battlecruisers but pulled to starboard enough to depress its forward battery as low as possible. One salvo and Beitzen disintegrated. Washington just ploughed through the wreckage; it did not include a single survivor.¹³

To the rear, the three Allied cruisers pulled out of line to strike northwest and come up on the other side of the German battleline. Instead, Scheer and Prinz Eugen took the same course to head them off leaving the six battleships to themselves to pound each other to bits. At this point neither admiral was able to influence the battle. Tovey was desperately trying to find a destroyer to take him off the circling Duke of York while Carls found that the damage to Hipper had knocked out its radios. Signalling by flags was possible but difficult in all the smoke.

Priller had been the first to get his group into the air. It took barely thirty minutes to fly the 150 miles to the battle. He had only to guide on the columns of smoke and the gun flashes. Behind him those of the Ju 88s and He 111s that were not too badly damaged from their attack on the convoy were rolled out, refuelled and rearmed. Enough crews were found who had not yet replaced their blood supply with alcohol to get about fifty planes into the air.

No aircraft were visible over the battle, but along their flight path there appeared the top heavy bulk of aircraft carriers and two destroyers. Priller said to himself, ‘The Führer will enjoy the gun camera film I am about to shoot.’ He could do little to aid battleships in battle, but he could keep the enemy from tormenting them with his carrier planes. He led his twenty Fw 190s into the attack straight out of the sun. They were in among the Sea Hurricanes and Wildcats so unexpectedly that three of them went down in the first pass. The Germans turned and hunted their targets.

Priller flamed his first Wildcat, amazed at how slow and clumsy it was, and then looked down to see the two carriers. One had at most a half dozen aircraft on its flight deck. The other must have had thirty or more. These were the Devastators and Vindicators from the first strike on the German fleet, now refuelling and rearming for a second strike. He said to his wingman over the radio, ‘Follow me down!’ They came up from the fantail right over Wasp‘s flight deck strafing the packed aircraft with 20mm cannon fire. Fuelled planes and bowsers burst into flames behind them. As Priller and his wingman pulled up and around, they could see the explosions of ordnance carried by the aircraft on the flight deck. He said with a laugh to his longtime wingman, Heinz Wodarczyk, ‘Shall we go again or do you think they’ve had enough of the glory of the German Luftwaffe?’

By the time he had gained altitude, most of the British and American fighters had been shot down or chased away — all except one. And this one had shot down two of Priller’s experienced pilots, amazing in light of his aircraft. McCampbell now found himself the object of a dozen Fw 190s. His safety was in the fact that so many of them were after him that they endangered each other. He slipped down to the deck and around the Victorious hoping to lead any of his pursuers through the ship’s antiaircraft fire. Priller now felt the challenge of the chase and followed the American down and around, ignoring the fire from the ship. His wingman was not so lucky and began to trail smoke. ‘I am hit, Pips!’ he shouted into this radio. That pulled Priller back to shepherd his wingman to safety. Heinz Wodarczyk and he had been together too long for Priller to abandon him.

By now Priller had lost three of his planes to air combat and another to antiaircraft fire while two more were damaged and had to be guided home. Another pilot pointed to the east where a flight of a dozen Junkers and Heinkels was coming in. They had homed in on the fight, and so Priller made room for them as they attacked. This was their second air battle in twenty-four hours, and many of them were tired. Audacity in battle is a factor of strength, and strength comes from rest. Most of their attacks were not pressed home with the elan of their fight with the convoy. Yet the Ju 88s did make several hits on both carriers. The armoured steel deck of Victorious absorbed the explosions. Nothing penetrated to the hangar deck or fuel and ammunition. The Wasp’s teak decks were no barrier at all to the German bombs, which crashed through to explode inside the hangar deck, filled with bombs and torpedoes ready to be sent topside. The explosions ripped through the ship igniting aviation fuel in turn. Piling on misery were the torpedoes dropped by the He 111s. Two of them hit home. Within minutes the carrier was listing to port as flaming wreckage from the splintered deck fell overboard.¹⁴

Confident that Wasp would soon go under, that Victorious had taken repeated hits to its flight deck to make it useless, and having expended their bombs, the German fighters and bombers headed back to their Norwegian bases. Another flight of Ju 88s and He 111s passed them coming out and were told to go in the direction of the battleships.

Lieutenant McCampbell had landed on Victorious as soon as the German planes had flown off to be refuelled. He taxied down the deck dodging the jagged steel where the German bombs had hit, following the surviving Sea Hurricane and made it into the air. They flew after the German dive- and torpedo-bombers, heading north. The Wildcat and the Hurricane fell on the last two Heinkels in the formation. McCampbell came up close before pressing the firing button. The plane’s wing tore off, and it plummeted to the sea. He saw that the Hurricane had splashed another one.¹⁵

By the time the two fighters reached the naval battle, McCampbell had shot down two more Heinkels and was on the tail of a Ju 88. The presence of an unknown number of Allied fighter pilots panicked the Ju 88s. They scattered, jettisoned their bombs, and headed for home. The Wildcat and the Hurricane followed. McCampbell watched one enemy catch fire and explode. He saw that the Hurricane had scored another kill. They saluted each other as they turned back to Victorious to rearm.¹⁶

Among the capital ships the battle had broken into three parts. King George V and Tirpitz were slugging it out while Washington duelled with the two battlecruisers. The cruisers were pounding each other as they moved off on a northerly course. A destroyer had finally picked up Admiral Tovey, but the action was too hot to put him on another of the big ships. Admiral Carls was still unable to communicate with his ships. Each captain just fought it out.

The two German heavy cruisers were evenly matched with the Allied cruiser force. The three British ships concentrated on Scheer while Wichita took on Prinz Eugen. Scheer was bigger-gunned and more heavily armoured than the British heavy cruisers. Its shells were more powerful and destructive than those of the British 8-inch guns; its armour belt of 3.1 inches and turrets of 5.5 inches compared lethally to Kent‘s and Cumberland’s 1 inch for belt and turret. Their only advantage was that they had more than twice as many guns. In the end, Scheer was just plain luckier. It gutted Cumberland which burned and drifted away.

The big guns were gaining the upper hand in the other fights as well. Tirpitz’s remaining turrets were firing heavier metal than King George V and scoring hits at the waterline, piercing the armour belt and flooding interior compartments till the British ship slowed perceptibly. The German armour-piercing shells were better made, and their propellant more powerful. Watertight hatches failed as the big German shells gutted the British battleship. It slowed and began to settle.

Washington had battered Scharnhorst into a wreck at closer and closer range with its 16-inch shells. Gneisenau was not in much better shape with turrets out of commission and fires raging below decks. Washington’s own armour had been largely proof against the smaller German guns. The Kriegsmarine would rue the day it had decided to postpone the fitting out of these two battlecruisers with 15-inch guns. Washington moved on past them to come up on Tirpitz from the stern where one turret had been knocked out. The two forward American turrets pumped a rapid salvo into the German ship at short range. The Tirpitz’s superstructure crumpled, spewing debris in every direction into the sea, shutting down the ship’s electrical system that controlled the guns. Fires were burning everywhere as the crew scrambled out of the wreckage dragging their wounded to the deck. Washington came up on the port quarter, firing at the unheard-of distance of half a mile. There were no misses at that range.

Tirpitz was a dying beast, crippled but dragging itself forward on engines that still ran while every other ship’s function had been killed. The crew were spilling over the side as Washington fired again and again, tearing great jagged holes. Then Tirpitz perished in an explosion that broke its back and seemed to lift the ship from the centre. The German battleship broke in two and each part began to sink. Washington circled its fallen prey.¹⁷

Carls was a realist and knew that Tirpitz was doomed as soon as Washington struck that first crushing blow. He ordered Hipper out of the fight and signalled by flag to Scharnhorst and Gneisenau to follow. Only Gneisenau was able to do so. Scharnhorst was adrift, its captain and other senior officers dead, its engines shattered. The surviving destroyers formed a rearguard on the heavy ships. Kent might well have gone the same way as Cumberland had not Carls pulled the German cruisers after him as he withdrew at top speed back to Norway. Light cruiser Nigeria had had little part in the fight among the heavies, but now would get in the last lick, following close on the retreating Germans to release a spread of torpedoes. Two struck Prinz Eugen, the last ship in line. The German cruiser stopped as its engines quit and the sea rushed in. In fifteen minutes it sank.¹⁸

That was the last engagement in the struggle that would be named the Battle of 20° East. The only task left for both sides was to get their stricken survivors back to port. The remnants of the Home Fleet lingered only to save what they could and pick up survivors. For this the destroyers did yeoman work, picking up over 3,000 men from the sea, British, American and German. The Allies could claim victory since it was the Germans who abandoned the field, but the losses on both sides were numbing. It was a victory only on a very narrow counting of the points. For the Allies, the news that they had lost the battleship King George V, the carrier Wasp, heavy cruisers Cumberland, London, Norfolk, and Tuscaloosa, and five destroyers was grim. The British Cabinet was stunned.

Kent took Duke of York in tow and gathered up the remnants of the Home Fleet to sail home to Scapa Flow. Tragically, on the way home they encountered the wolf pack they had barged through two days before. Lieutenant Hans-Günther Kuhlmann acquired the British battleship through the periscope of U-166. It was barely making 8 knots, about what a merchant ship might make. How perfect, Kuhlman thought. The escorts coursed alongside the battleships and carrier, but now there was that perfect gap. ‘Torpedo los,’ he said, and two torpedoes shot out of the bow tubes in a burst of bubbles. Both hit. The great ship was mortally wounded and would slowly sink. Kuhlman and the other U-boat captains forbore to attack the destroyers that came alongside the settling battleship to take off the crew. But they did circle the remaining capital ships and dart in repeatedly to attack. Here again the escorts proved their worth, dashing back and forth to depth-charge the enemy. Victorious had a few planes left that managed to dodge the damaged portions of the hull to take off and assist in spotting the U-boats. In the end Duke of York was avenged when depth charges smashed open U-155 and U-514. Still, the Kriegsmarine had come out well ahead.¹⁹

Without a doubt the two battles — Bear Island and 20° East — had been an Allied strategic disaster of the first order. The losses suffered by the Allies were only the beginning of the dividends the operation would pay the Germans. To add insult to injury the Germans were to make enormous propaganda points by filming the arrival in German ports of the fifteen captured Allied merchant ships and their cargoes and the parading of their crews.²⁰

Dönitz flew in late at night to report to Hitler. The leader of the Third Reich kept very late hours so the admiral was ushered right in to see him. Hitler was waiting for him, a report in his hand. The only other man in the room was Heydrich. The look on Hitler’s face was grim. He looked up over his bifocals and said, ‘The British are claiming a victory over our fleet. The BBC is saying nothing else. It is Jutland all over again, Dönitz. Our fleet sailed out and ran home after getting beaten.’

Without hesitation, Dönitz replied, ‘Then may God grant the British another such victory!’

Hitler looked puzzled. Dönitz immediately pointed out that the Allies, and particularly the British, had suffered a strategic catastrophe. They had lost the entire convoy and in such a way to discredit them not only with the rest of the world but with their own people. The naval battle south of Bear Island had gutted the Home Fleet, and embarrassed the Americans with the loss of their carrier while under British command. It was sure to lead to dissent between them or an outright falling out. ‘I would also wager, mein Führer, that it will be next to impossible for them to recruit merchant crews for another convoy. We have slammed the door to Russia shut for you.’ Dönitz was happy to have this time alone with Hitler. He was fortunate that Goring had grown weary and retired or he would be greedily claiming all credit for the Luftwaffe.

While Hitler paused to consider this, Dönitz opened his valise to show Hitler the preliminary reports on the war booty on the captured ships taken from their manifests. He began reading off the lists till Hitler’s eyes grew bright with greed. ‘Five thousand tons of aluminium, 2,500 Studebaker trucks and a year’s worth of parts, 22,000 tons of explosives, 40,000 tons of food; and a myriad of other precious resources that would feed war’s voracious appetite.

Heydrich deftly added more lustre to the Kriegsmarine’s accomplishment by praising it for originating and planning this operation. How fat Goring would pout the next day as Hitler sang the Navy’s praises. He added slyly, ‘Do not forget, mein Führer, that this victory was won on the Americans’ national day of independence. Salt in the wound, salt in the wound.’

By now Hitler’s imagination was racing to the moon with the consequences of this victory.