Total Germany: The Royal Navy's War against the Axis Powers 1939?1945

Copyright © 2015 by David Wragg

First published in Great Britain in 2015 by Pen & Sword Maritime, an imprint of Pen & Sword Books Ltd

First Skyhorse Publishing edition 2016

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Cover design by Rain Saukas

Cover photo credit by AP Images

Print ISBN: 978-1-5107-0860-0

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-0872-3

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Glossary

1. ‘Total Germany. Total Germany.’

2. A Strong Navy but Thinly Spread

3. The Belligerent Navies

4. The Royal Navy Goes to War

5. Early Losses and Successes

6. The Norwegian Campaign and Dunkirk

7. At War with an Ally

8. Night of Judgement

9. Destroying Germany’s Capital Ships

10. Battle of the Atlantic

11. War in the Mediterranean

12. Disaster and Revenge in the Far East

13. The Siege of Malta

14. Fighting the Weather and the Enemy in the Arctic

15. The Submarine War

16. Changing Ships and Aircraft

17. The Invasion Fleets

18. NEPTUNE and OVERLORD

19. Returning to the East

20. A Balanced Fleet

Bibliography

Index

Photo Insert

Acknowledgments

In writing any book, an author is grateful for the help and assistance of many others, and especially those who have placed on record their wartime achievements, many of them in the invaluable Imperial War Museum Sound Archive.

No work on something as vast as our wartime navy can cover every inch of ground, and for those whose appetite has been whetted by this book, I hope that the bibliography at the back is helpful. This text concentrates mainly on the Royal Navy’s war against Germany and Italy, but it is impossible to ignore events in the Far East and the Pacific as this was truly a world war.

David Wragg

Edinburgh

Spring 2015

Introduction

Neither the United Kingdom nor Germany was in a position to fight a major war in 1939 but the reality was that the former was better prepared, having put the time bought by the Munich Agreement the previous year to much better use. The imbalance was most marked at sea but although the Royal Navy was by far the larger, better-equipped and more balanced force, it was also thinly spread across the world, as in 1914.

The Germans had very ambitious plans for a much-expanded and modernized navy – so ambitious that many doubted their practicality – and these were hardly even started in 1939. Priority had been given to creating the Luftwaffe, a large and modern air force, and the army. Even here, there were weaknesses. The Luftwaffe was not a strategic air force, although Hitler’s war plans assumed that it would act as one. It lacked heavy bombers. The Germany army, unlike the British army, had not mechanized between the wars and was heavily dependent on horses for transport.

The German navy, the Kriegsmarine, lacked aircraft carriers or even adequate numbers of destroyers and, contrary to popular belief, had very few ocean-going U-boats in 1939. Yet, senior officers were secure in Hitler’s assurances that war would not break out until 1944. Chamberlain’s speech to the British people on 3 September, followed by the Admiralty signal ‘Total Germany. Total Germany’ declaring all-out war against that nation came as a shock to the Kriegsmarine’s leaders.

Glossary

Allies: A term dating back at least to the early nineteenth century but used commonly during the First World War to describe the members of the Triple Entente, more properly known as the ‘Entente Powers’, which were the United Kingdom, France and Imperial Russia. During the Second World War it was used for just the UK and France initially, later including the Soviet Union and then the United States.

ASDIC: Derived from the initials for the Anti-Submarine Detection Investigation Committee originating in the First World War and today known as sonar. Such equipment emits audible pings and then traces submerged objects through their echoes.

Auxiliary carrier: Term applied by the Royal Navy to what are commonly called escort carriers; see below.

Auxiliary cruiser: Merchant vessel taken up from trade and armed with a naval crew. The British used these as convoy escorts, but the Germans used them as surface raiders. In neither case could they survive contact with major warships.

Axis Powers: The alliance formed by Germany, Italy and Japan. Unlike the Allies, there was very little co-ordination at times, especially between Japan and Germany or Italy, or cross-fertilization of ideas or technical developments.

BARBAROSSA: Code-name for Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union.

Battle-cruiser: A warship usually with battleship-calibre armament, but in which armour was sacrificed to give greater speed. The German battle-cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau had guns of just 11in calibre; these were supposed to be replaced by guns of 15in calibre, although this never happened.

Battleship: Designation given to large heavily-armed and heavily-armoured ships. Second World War battleships generally had guns of 15in calibre, but some British battleships had 14in or 16in and some Japanese ships had 18in guns.

CAM ship: Catapult-armed merchantman, a merchant vessel with a fighter aircraft that could be catapulted off to shoot down enemy aircraft. The fighter pilot was usually from the RAF, but a number of Fleet Air Arm personnel also flew such aircraft. The weakness of the concept was that the aircraft had to be sacrificed at the end of a single sortie unless within sight of land, and this meant that there was always a reluctance to use it in case a greater need came later in the voyage.

Capital ship: A major warship such as a battleship or battle-cruiser, but by the end of the war the aircraft carrier had joined these as a capital ship and many would say had even usurped their position.

Case White (Fall Weiss): German code-name for the invasion of Poland.

Coastal Command: Royal Air Force command that provided maritime-reconnaissance and anti-submarine patrols as well as search and rescue (SAR) in the open seas, and was generally meant to be tasked by the Admiralty. SAR in coastal waters was provided by RAF Fighter Command.

Corvette: During the Second World War this term was adopted for a warship specifically designed for convoy escort duties, smaller than a frigate or destroyer and also slower and of broader bream than the latter, as well as less heavily-armed.

Cruiser: Warship smaller than a battleship or battle-cruiser but much larger than a destroyer. The Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 laid down that light cruisers had a main armament of 6in guns and heavy cruisers a main armament of 8in guns (displacement tonnage was not taken into account). The Royal Navy’s Town-class cruisers had up to twelve 6in guns in four turrets but were classified by the service as ‘heavy’. In addition there were auxiliary (see above) or armed merchant cruisers, and anti-aircraft cruisers that were usually older ships modified to allow continued use.

Cruiser war: A term sometimes used for commerce raiding.

Destroyer: Small fast warship, and by the Second World War much larger than its First World War counterpart. Armament varied between 4in and 4.5in on British ships, but some German ships were larger and the French had their contre-torpilleur destroyers with 5.5in armament.

DYNAMO: code-name for the evacuation of British and French forces from Dunkirk.

E-boat: Enemy fast motor gunboat or motor torpedo-boat, known to the Kriegsmarine as S-Boot for Schnellboot or ‘fast boat’.

Electro U-boat: German U-boat development that appeared from 1943 onwards, with an enlarged hull to enable additional batteries to be fitted for higher underwater speeds.

Empire: A prefix given to the name of a merchant vessel owned by the British government but managed and crewed by a commercial ship-owner. Such ships included enemy vessels seized either on the high seas or caught in an Allied port on the outbreak of war; ships that were built at government expense to compensate for losses or ships taken up for use by the armed services; or US-built ‘Liberty’ vessels supplied to the United Kingdom under the Lend-Lease Programme.

Enigma: Code used by all the German armed forces, but broken once a machine and codebooks fell into British hands. The breaking of the Enigma codes was a major factor in the Allied victory and especially in countering the U-boat threat to Atlantic and Arctic convoys.

Escort carrier: small aircraft carriers sometimes converted from merchant vessels, but later increasingly using merchant vessel hulls to allow conversion to a merchant vessel post-war. Limited in the number of aircraft that could be carried and in operational speed. Sometimes known as ‘auxiliary carriers’ and indeed, many were used as aircraft transports, maintenance carriers and as carriers for aircraft providing cover for invading troops.

FELIX: Code-name for a planned invasion of Gibraltar should Spain have seized the territory; however, it soon became clear that Spain intended to be neutral, although much used as a base by German agents.

Fleet Air Arm: Originally that part of the Royal Air Force deployed aboard British warships, but it reverted to Admiralty control in May 1939 and naval airmen gradually replaced their RAF counterparts, although a large number of RAF personnel transferred to the Royal Navy.

Flotilla: A command of smaller warships such as destroyers, corvettes or submarines. No definition of the number of ships, but usually it would be between six and nine.

Frigate: Originally a general-purpose sailing warship much smaller than a ship of the line (predecessor of the battleship). Frigates disappeared from the world’s navies during the late nineteenth century. They were reinvented during the Second World War as a convoy escort larger than a corvette and slower than a destroyer, and were usually dedicated to anti-submarine or anti-aircraft duties. In more recent times, they have reverted to their general-purpose role.

JUDGEMENT: code-name for the Fleet Air Arm attack on the Italian Fleet in its major base at Taranto.

Kaiserliche Marine: ‘Imperial Navy’, the old name for the German navy.

Kriegsmarine: ‘War Navy’, the official name given by Adolf Hitler to the German navy in 1935 to replace the post-First World War name of Reichsmarine or ‘State Navy’.

Lend-Lease: A programme under which the United States provided ships, aircraft and other war matériel without payment from the British government and on condition that the equipment be returned to the United States at the end of the war (naturally, anything that had been lost on war service could not be returned). In return, the United States armed forces were allowed to use bases in British colonies, mainly in the Caribbean.

Luftwaffe: German Air Force or Air Arm that controlled all German service aviation from the early 1930s to the end of the Second World War. Although autonomous, it developed as primarily a tactical air force without long-range heavy bombers until too late in the war for them to make an impact.

MAC-ship: Merchant aircraft carrier, a ship that continued as a grain carrier or oil tanker with a Merchant Navy crew, but with a wooden flight deck built over the cargo areas and the superstructure moved to starboard so that naval personnel could fly Fairey Swordfish on anti-submarine patrols around a convoy. Most were British-manned, but two were manned by Dutch personnel including air-crew and maintainers from the Royal Netherlands Navy.

NAS: A suffix following a squadron number to denote ‘naval air squadron’.

Reich: The German state (‘realm’).

Reichsmarine: Official name of the German navy after the abdication of the Kaiser and the creation of a republic or ‘Reich’.

Reverse Lend-Lease: Equipment provided by the United Kingdom to the United States. While much smaller in quantity than that received by the UK, this included some warships equipped with ASDIC and radar.

RMS: Royal Mail Ship, a designation allowed the fast ocean liners that, as well as conveying passengers in comfort, also carried the mails. Not to be confused with the Royal Mail Line, a shipping company; ships prefixed ‘RMS’ always belonged to ship-owners, i.e. private enterprises.

Squadron: In naval use, a command of major warships such as battleships, battle-cruisers, cruisers or aircraft carriers, sometimes comprising as few as two ships.

U-boat: In German, Unterseeboot, a submarine.

Wardroom: Royal Navy name for the officers’ mess, also used by some merchant shipping lines such as P&O.

Wolf pack: A group of submarines deployed against a convoy.

Chapter 1

‘Total Germany. Total Germany.’

‘Total Germany. Total Germany.’ The message was short and succinct. It was also uncoded. It was the signal from the Admiralty in London to all warships, naval bases, fleets, flotillas and stations that war had broken out between the United Kingdom and Germany.

Communications are rarely secure. Some were not expected to be: they were public. That fateful morning of 3 September 1939, at 11.15, millions listened to British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain when he broadcast to the British people telling them that the Anglo-French ultimatum to Germany demanding that she withdraw her forces from Poland had expired and that none of the assurances demanded from Germany had been received. He told them that this country was now at war with Germany. The signal sent out from the Admiralty was transmitted throughout the world. It was a simple message. The Germans picked up both the radio, or as it would have been known at the time, wireless broadcast, and the signal.

Immediately, the news was passed to the senior officers of the Germany navy, the Kriegsmarine or ‘War Navy’, as Adolf Hitler had renamed it in 1935, changing the title from Reichsmarine or ‘State Navy’, just over fourteen years after it had changed from Kaiserliche Marine or ‘Imperial Navy’.

Two of the recipients were Grossadmiral Erich Raeder, the chief of the Kriegsmarine, and his Führer der U-Boote, Admiral Karl Dönitz. The two men were not together at the time, but they were both at meetings. On reading the message, Raeder was so moved that he had to leave the room. Minutes later, Dönitz also received the message. Holding the signal in his hand he paced backwards and forwards, muttering to himself in consternation: ‘Mein Gott! Also wieder Krieg gegen England!’ (‘My God! So it’s war against England again!’). He too then left the room to compose his thoughts.

Later, Raeder noted in a memorandum that:

Today the war breaks out against England-France which, according to the Führer we need not have reckoned with before about 1944 and which until the last minute the Führer believed he should prevent… [the Kriegsmarine] could only show that it understood how to die with honour in order to create the foundations for later reconstruction.

Many in the United Kingdom listened to Chamberlain speaking over the radio with an air of resignation. Others were bitterly disappointed. Appeasement, in which the United Kingdom and France sacrificed the Czech Sudetenland in 1938 for another year of peace after tense negotiations with the German Chancellor Adolf Hitler at Munich, has since been criticized. Nevertheless, Mass Observation, which had started its polling of British public opinion in the late 1930s, found that appeasement was very much in tune with public attitudes. Those who remembered the First World War were prepared to pay almost any price to avoid another conflict.

Neither the United Kingdom nor Germany was in a position to fight in 1938. The UK put the extra year of peace to better use than did Germany, which was already having problems financing its massive expansion of the armed forces. Among the most important measures that the UK completed was the ‘Chain Home’ air defence radar network. Appeasement has frequently been misunderstood by later generations as there were other factors at work. Before going to Munich, Chamberlain had informed King George VI that he saw Great Britain and Germany as the two pillars in a defence against the spread of Russian Communism. Some today present Chamberlain as being sympathetic to the peace movement within the British establishment that would have collaborated with Nazi Germany, but his strenuous efforts to improve Britain’s defences indicate that this was not the case.

The Kriegsmarine in 1939

Why were these two senior German naval officers so concerned that war had broken out? After all, their country had gone to war against Poland, something which they knew about. Germany had also been asserting her rights, real or imagined, for a year or so before the invasion of Poland. The country had claimed the Czech Sudetenland on the grounds that its population were ethnic Germans; had annexed Austria; and finally taken the rest of Czechoslovakia. All this had been without much more than a murmur of protest from the British and the French.

The lack of protest was fundamental to the problem. In 1936, Britain and France had stood by while the Italians had ravaged Abyssinia (present-day Ethiopia), despite the United Kingdom preparing for war against Italy. The League of Nations had refused to act because of French reluctance to enter a war against Italy, even though the Abyssinian problem could have been brought under control by barring use of the Suez Canal to Italian shipping. The British had considered this, and had even prepared plans for an attack on the major Italian naval base of Taranto in the ‘instep’ of Italy, using aircraft from the Mediterranean Fleet’s aircraft carrier. Neither had the Western Powers done anything when Japan had invaded China.

Although the League of Nations had been proposed by an American president after the First World War, the United States was not a member. The League of Nations was toothless: in its entire existence, it did not intervene effectively and was never supported by its members. There was no such thing as a ‘League of Nations Peace-Keeping Force’, in contrast to a number of efforts by the United Nations in recent years.

In short, the Germans from Adolf Hitler downwards believed that they could invade Poland without any reaction from the United Kingdom or France. The secret Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939 had meant that there would be no challenge from the Soviet Union, and in fact the Soviets would soon join the invasion, taking the eastern areas of Poland. The Germans also believed that they could once again argue their way out of trouble. The invasion of Poland was popular with many Germans, not all of them supporters of the Nazi regime, as it meant Germany regaining territory lost after the First World War when the boundaries of Poland and Russia both moved westwards.