Holocaust At Sea: The Drama Of The Scharnhorst

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Text originally published in 1956 under the same title.

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Publisher’s Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

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THE SINKING OF THE SCHARNHORST

BY

CORVETTE-CAPTAIN FRITZ-OTTO BUSCH

A Factual Account from the German Viewpoint

translated from the German by

Eleanor Brockett and Anton Ehrenzweig

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 4

DEDICATION 5

PLANS 6

FOREWORD 7

INTRODUCTION 8

I—BIOGRAPHY OF A BATTLESHIP 10

II—THE NAVAL AND MILITARY SITUATION IN 1943 25

III—J.W. CONVOY EN ROUTE FOR MURMANSK 28

IV—THE SCHARNHORST PUTS TO SEA 30

V—THE ROYAL NAVY AND THE CONVOYS 42

VI—THE BRITISH RADAR APPARATUS 44

VII—ADMIRAL SIR BRUCE FRASER SETS THE TRAP 46

VIII—THE DUKE OF YORK SAILS WITH FORCE 2 49

IX—THE NET IS CAST 51

X—THE SCHARNHORST ON HER SORTIE 54

XI—VICE-ADMIRAL BURNETT ATTACKS WITH THE 10TH CRUISER SQUADRON, FORCE 1 61

XII—THE SECOND ENCOUNTER WITH FORCE 1 65

XIII—ADMIRAL SIR BRUCE FRASER CLOSES THE NET 77

XIV—THE SCHARNHORST UNDER FIRE 80

XV—THE DESTROYER SUB-DIVISIONS OF FORCE 2 ATTACK 84

XVI—THE DUKE OF YORK ATTACKS FOR THE SECOND TIME; FORCE 2 AND FORCE 1 CLOSE IN FOR THE FINAL BATTLE 87

XVII—IN THE CONTROL POSITION AND PORT IV 5.9-INCH TWIN TURRET OF THE SCHARNHORST 89

XVIII—JAMAICA, BELFAST AND THE BRITISH DESTROYERS SINK THE SCHARNHORST WITH TORPEDOES 93

XIX—TO ALL STATIONS. FROM THE CAPTAIN: ABANDON SHIP! 95

XX—THE RESCUE OF SURVIVORS BY THE BRITISH DESTROYERS MATCHLESS AND SCORPION 99

XXI—THE SURVIVORS OF THE SCHARNHORST ABOARD THE BRITISH FLAGSHIP DUKE OF YORK 104

XXII—COMPARISON OF THE FORCES PARTICIPATING IN THE BATTLE 107

CHARTS 109

BIBLIOGRAPHY 112

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 113

DEDICATION

TO DEAD OF THE BATTLESHIP SCHARNHORST

PLANS

Sinking of the Scharnhorst—Cruiser Operations 0840-1500 hours

Sinking of the Scharnhorst—Cruiser shadowing and Battleship action 1500-1900 hours

Sinking of the Scharnhorst—1845-1945 hours

The above plans are reproduced by permission of the Controllers of H.M. Stationery Office from Admiral Sir Bruce Fraser’s despatch on the sinking of the Scharnhorst, published as a supplement to the London Gazette on the 5 August 1947.

FOREWORD

ON 7 January 1939, the day the Scharnhorst was commissioned, her commanding officer, Captain (as he then was) Ciliax, told his officers: The important thing to remember is this—that the whole life and character of this ship will rest upon the spirit which you officers are able to inculcate in your men. No one could have foreseen how literally true these words were to prove.

In the few months still left before the outbreak of war, the newly assembled crew had to be shaped into a team; under the impact of the manifold operations in which the battleship was subsequently engaged, operations successfully completed in spite of often serious damage, there developed among the men a spontaneous comradeship of rare quality, the true team spirit. Every man of the two thousand who formed the ship’s complement was inspired by one conviction, that their ship sailed under a lucky star.

The author has made full use of all factual material available from both British and German sources and has produced a vivid account of the action off North Cape on 26 December 1943, when the proud ship succumbed to a vastly superior opponent. The exemplary conduct and unflinching devotion to duty of every man on board the Scharnhorst were in accordance with the highest traditions of the German Navy.

HELMUTH GIESSLER (Captain, retired)

Navigating Officer and First Officer of the Battleship Scharnhorst from 1938 to 1943

Wilhelmshaven, October 1951

INTRODUCTION

THE sinking of the Scharnhorst is to many people little more than a dim memory; few know what actually happened, for owing to the strict censorship of wartime the details were not published at the time. As, however, the events of that dark Arctic Christmas of 1943 will occupy an important place in the history of naval warfare and as their full significance can now be properly assessed, I have felt justified in telling for the first time the full and authentic story of the sinking of this valiant ship.

In 1940 the names of the German battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were appearing with some frequency in the British Press. The aircraft-carrier Glorious had been sunk and the Scharnhorst, whose name had first been in the news in connexion with the sinking of the auxiliary cruiser Rawalpindi, had again taken part in the action, as German sources also reported. Unfortunately no survivors could be saved either from the aircraft-carrier or from her two escorting destroyers Acasta and Ardent. After this incident nothing was heard of the Scharnhorst for a while.

Then suddenly, in the spring of 1941, her name was in the news once more. Merchant shipping was being sunk in the Atlantic, and British naval and air forces searched for the German battleship for months on end. But the Scharnhorst had disappeared somewhere in the vast expanses of the Atlantic, swallowed up no doubt by the ocean mists or hidden in the heavy swells which ploughed the Atlantic at that time of the year.

Then came the news that the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau had put into Brest. Cornered at last! The British were confident that the RAF would seek them out and destroy them. Bombs crashed down on the French Atlantic port as the RAF went into action, sending over spotting planes and bombers, while all England waited for the news of the battleships’ destruction. But it did not come. The Scharnhorst was too well concealed. Trees and shrubs grew on her decks, and camouflage netting intertwined with leaves obstructed the view from the air. True, she did not go completely unscathed at La Pallice, but the hits the RAF were able to score caused no serious damage. The RAF persevered for months, but in vain. The ship lay well hidden, preparing for future action and waiting her chance. Then one day the anchorage lay deserted.

It was on 12 February 1942 that the news broke: "German naval units in the Channel—Scharnhorst, Gneisenau and Prinz Eugen!" The Admiralty was astounded, incredulous.

Everyone wondered how they could possibly have left harbour unnoticed. All the British forces which were available were immediately thrown into action, but these were not formidable, for the naval units most needed lay too far north and it was impossible for them to intervene in time. One or two torpedo-boats and a few out-of-date torpedo-planes and bombers engaged the German units. The coastal artillery fired. In vain. The break-through succeeded. Once more, in company with the destroyers, torpedo-boats, E-boats, mine-sweepers and patrol vessels which covered the break-through in co-operation with the Luftwaffe, this almost legendary ship, the Scharnhorst, had slipped from the enemy’s grasp.

A little less than two years after this, the BBC broadcast the news that the Scharnhorst had been sunk by British naval forces 60 miles NW of North Cape. It happened at a quarter to eight on the evening of December 26th, Boxing Day 1943.

I—BIOGRAPHY OF A BATTLESHIP

TO the sailor a ship is a living thing with a life and character of its own, and there are ships that seem sombre and even malevolent, just as there are people whose personalities lack vitality and warmth. The Scharnhorst definitely had a soul. Furthermore, she was beautiful, and she sailed with that wonderful, gently swaying motion characteristic of a battleship in a following sea. She seemed always a happy ship, and her spirit pervaded the whole crew, giving rise to a certain fierce pride which was felt by all old Scharnhorst men from the Captain down to the humblest rating.

With the grace, elegance and balance of her lines, the Scharnhorst was to the sailor’s eye a particularly lovely ship. With her sister-ship the Gneisenau, she had, right from the early days of the war, taken part in numerous sweeps and sorties and so had become more familiar to the German public than many other ships; indeed in Germany her name was a household word. It had become legendary in the First World War when another Scharnhorst, an armoured cruiser, had fought and conquered in the battle of Coronel and later gone down fighting against superior opponents off the Falkland Isles. In the four eventful years of her wartime career the second Scharnhorst became a veritable symbol of fortune and success. Seen against the shifting background of the war the Scharnhorst did indeed seem to be favoured by fortune to a quite extraordinary degree, an impression confirmed by the war diary of Captain Giessler, who served in the Scharnhorst from the day of her commissioning until shortly before she was sunk.

The outbreak of war found the Scharnhorst, after a long period in dock, engaged in trials between Heligoland and the River Jade. She and the Gneisenau were the first battleships to be constructed after the lifting of the limitations imposed by the Treaty of Versailles. She was laid down in Wilhelmshaven in 1935, launched on 3 October 1936, and commissioned on 7 January 1939. Captain Ciliax became her first captain. The Scharnhorst at this time was not ready for operational duty, still less for front-line action, and in contrast to other newly commissioned ships her complement was drafted from various shore divisions. She was equipped with experimental high-pressure superheated steam boilers. The time available for testing this new machinery and other novel and as yet untried apparatus, as well as for target practice by the ship’s guns, was cut short by the outbreak of war. Furthermore the Captain had to go on sick-leave and was replaced by Captain Curt Caesar Hoffmann, who was to take his ship prudently and successfully through her many operations right up to 1942.

It was evident from the offensive measures taken by the German Navy immediately following the outbreak of war, that the much maligned big ships, the chained watch-dogs of the First World War, were not again to lie idly in their bases but were to come out and attack British merchant shipping. Anti-aircraft action against British planes in early engagements of the war was not the only trial by fire which the new, powerful, beautifully built ships had to undergo. Unfortunately—from the German point of view—as the heavier guns had not yet been re-introduced, their main armament consisted only of three 11-inch triple turrets.

At the beginning of September 1939, after passing through the Kaiser-Wilhelm Canal—the first 26,000-ton battleship to do so, work on deepening the canal having only just been completed—the Scharnhorst reached Kiel. Here a new secret apparatus, known at the time as Dete or E.M.2, was mounted; it was the Radar equipment which, after being perfected by the British, was to play such an important role in the ultimate sinking of the Scharnhorst.

At midday on 21 November 1939 the two battleships, which had been moved to Wilhelmshaven at the beginning of November, sailed down the River Jade. The Commander-in-Chief, Vice-Admiral Marschall, flew his flag in the Gneisenau. Aboard the Scharnhorst Captain Hoffmann announced the object of the operation over the loudspeaker system; it was to be a sweep against the patrol forces operating between Iceland and the Faroes. Officers and men were taken by surprise; no vessel of the high-seas fleet had ever ventured so far during the First World War.

We are like rats coming out of their holes, a Sub-Lieutenant remarked happily. And we’ll show them we can bite.

The Force first shaped course to the northward, proceeding behind the so-called West Wall, the mine-belt which protected the North Friesian islands from attack. Orders were given for war watches to be posted. Destroyers formed a screen against hostile submarines. The great Radar grid revolved in ghostly fashion on the foretop, but picked up nothing. On the 22nd at 2 a. n., the mine-belt was crossed and the destroyers were dismissed. The Force now proceeded on its own without lights through the pitch-dark night at roughly twenty-seven knots. Around noon the battleships passed through the narrowest stretch of water between the Shetland Isles and the Norwegian coast. Luftwaffe cover extended thus far.

The weather soon began to deteriorate. A south-west wind, force 7/8, and a long and high ground-swell made the ships roll badly, bringing on the first cases of seasickness. The guns suffered some small structural damage from the vast masses of water which were breaking on board. All this was new, unfamiliar experience, but it helped to establish a more intimate contact between ship and crew. Altering course to the north-west the Force proceeded. During the night of November 22nd-23rd it passed the Faroes at a distance of thirty sea miles and made for Iceland. Though on the following day visibility was excellent, nothing was sighted. The