The Battle of the Barents Sea Read online

  Naval Warfare

  outside

  The Pacific

  The Battle of the Barents Sea.

  By

  M. J. Bourne

  Naval Warfare Outside the Pacific:

  The Battle of the Barents Sea

  Copyright M J Bourne 1996

  Published 1996 by

  Vandering Publications

  1 Lindal St,

  Barrow-in-Furness

  Cumbria

  LA14 1AY

  Reprinted 2012 by

  Vandering Publications

  29 Dumfries St,

  Barrow-in-Furness

  Cumbria

  LA14 2DA

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without prior permission in writing from the copyright holder.

  Main map copyright J. Watson.

  Introduction

  The outbreak of the Second World War found Nazi Germany with much the same kinds of problems at sea that Imperial Germany had faced during the 1914-18 conflict. Great Britain, building on a lengthy naval tradition, had undoubted naval supremacy. The geographical positioning of the two countries favoured the British. If Germany was to meet its expansionist objectives it would have to challenge the Royal navy. There were many ways of doing this, but the obvious one was to build up a large surface fleet themselves. It was partly this building up of a powerful naval force that had increased the tensions between the two nations prior to the First World War. During the thirties a new surface fleet was constructed to replace the ships that had been scuttled at Scapa Flow, and to once more challenge the British at sea.

  On the last day of 1942 strong elements of this vaunted force, on which so many resources had been lavished, suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of a Royal Navy squadron that was vastly its inferior in firepower. It was a major watershed in the war at sea, ending forever the grandiose ambitions of Germany's surface fleet.

  The defeat was the culmination of several ongoing factors that were affecting the German navy. At the most fundamental level, heavily armoured and expensive gun armed surface ships were in long-term decline. Increasingly air power was becoming the dominant factor at sea. Secondly, German morale was slowly being rotted away by years trapped in harbours by the numerically superior British Home fleet. Thirdly, it had been expected that individual raiders would be able to infiltrate out into the Atlantic from the Baltic with an acceptable level of risk. In fact it proved enormously difficult to run surface ships through the narrow northern waters, which both sides riddled with mines and ceaselessly patrolled with aircraft.

  Most important of all was the fear of torpedo attacks. In the early years of the war British destroyers has shown that they were prepared to take almost suicidal risks in engaging large German warships. A prime example was HMS Glowworm’s heroic ramming attack during the Norway campaign. The Kriegsmarine was acutely aware that a single torpedo could cripple even the largest ship, and that any such injured vessel could then be picked off at leisure by British reinforcements that the German navy could never hope to match in numbers.

  Then there was the morale effect of a lost sea battle. Large surface ships had a high profile. They were very visible, and the loss of one had a correspondingly high effect both at home and abroad. This had been amply demonstrated at the battle of the River Plate and the chase for the Bismarck, and the third Reich was in no hurry to repeat those experiences. Paradoxically, the Germans had invested so much into the capital ships that they had essentially become too valuable to risk, and thus ineffective.

  All in all, it could be argued that psychologically the Kriegsmarine's surface fleet was already a spent force - but materially it still had the potential to inflict serious damage.

  The chance was to come with the Arctic convoys.

  The Rationale behind the Arctic Convoys.

  The Arctic convoys were started because the Russians were in dire straits on the Eastern front. Huge areas of the Ukraine and the Caucasus had been overrun by the Germans. Moscow was threatened, Leningrad besieged. Stalin demanded assistance from his allies, and under this pressure Churchill agreed to send supplies. The best route was by the Middle East, but for political reasons the Russians were loath to admit the British into Iraq. The only alternative was to run convoys through the Arctic sea, an immense distance within easy reach of German occupied north Norway.

  The unique characteristics of the area both helped and hindered possible surface ship sorties. Weather conditions were bad all through the year and positively appalling in winter. Sea mists, squalls and short days reduced visibility to sometimes less than two miles, point-blank for naval guns of the time. A ship's survival could depend on recognising an enemy a few split-seconds before being positively identified itself. Temperatures could reach minus fifteen degrees centigrade, the sea so cold that spray frequently froze on contact with the deck of a ship. The harsh conditions tested both men and machinery to their limits. On the plus side, the weather frequently dispersed convoys and produced easy to pick off stragglers.

  The outward bound Arctic convoys were designated by the letters "PQ", and the return convoys by the letters "QP". PQ1 sailed for Archangel on September 28th 1941, the first of forty Arctic convoys run right up to the end of the war. It arrived safely and without incident thirteen days later.

  Indeed the Axis was remarkably slow to react to the Arctic convoys and the first dozen or so were hardly molested. By January 1942 however, the increasingly paranoid Hitler, beset on all sides by the rapidly expanding armies of his enemies, had become convinced that an allied invasion of Norway was imminent. He feared an Anglo-American link up with the Russians. The resultant pressure might persuade Sweden to join the allied cause, which would outflank the Finnish front. His obsession was fed by Allied diplomatic efforts in Stockholm, and by increasingly successful British commando raids on the Norwegian coast.

  Unwilling to commit ever more of his increasingly scarce troops to Norway, Hitler decided to use the Luftwaffe and the Kriegsmarine to counter the perceived threat. Specialist anti-shipping aircraft were stationed at airbases in north Norway, and submarines were redeployed from the Atlantic into the North Cape area. More significantly, the pocket-battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, with the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen, sailed from Brest and in the daring "Operation Cerebrus" returned to the Baltic sea via the English channel (the so-called “channel dash").

  The commander in chief of the Kriegsmarine, Admiral Raedar, strongly disapproved of these measures. He was of the opinion (subsequently justified) that the allies would launch their counterattack in North Africa, not in Norway. The heavy concentration of force did however enable the Germans to severely maul convoy PQ-17 in June of 1942. Spurred by this success, and with the fuel situation improving, Raedar planned an even greater strike on PQ–18 using the surface fleet. It would be an opportunity to justify its existence.

  The blow never came. Hitler knew that a surface attack would be opposed, and feared the effect losing another naval battle would have on both German prestige and morale at this stage of the war. At the last moment he vetoed the sailing of the big ships. Raedar had to leave PQ-18 to the Luftwaffe and to the U-boats, which together very satisfactorily sank thirteen of the convoy's forty merchants in September. After PQ-18 the North African landings started, and with the demands for merchant shipping that this operation entailed the allies were forced to temporarily suspend the Arctic convoys.

  The target is selected.

  The resumption of the convoys in December was greeted with deep misgivings by British nava
l strategists. Admiral Tovey, the CinC of the Home Fleet, was particularly concerned. In the face of the German build up in north Norway it was proving difficult to provide sufficient escorts for the Murmansk runs. There simply were not enough cruisers and destroyers to escort Arctic convoys, guard the western approaches, and prosecute the battle of the Atlantic. The Germans had already shown what damage they could do with just U-boats and aircraft. With their surface fleet now potentially adding its weight, the British would have to deploy capital ships of their own in order to counter a possible sortie. Keeping battleships at sea was expensive however. In the confined areas of the Arctic seas they would be vulnerable to air and submarine attack, and even more escorts would have to be found to provide a screen for them. Furthermore it was now winter, and the spread of the ice edge southwards forced convoys to take routes closer to the German bases. In short, the whole concept of running supplies to Russia by sea was strategically unsound, but for political reasons they had to continue.

  By this time the designation of the outward bound convoys had been altered from PQ to JW, and the homeward bound ones from QP to RA. The next Russia-bound convoy was to be JW-51. Tovey argued desperately and successfully for this large group to be split into two, on the grounds that there was no safety to be had in numbers in the face of a surface attack. Accordingly, JW-51A of sixteen merchant vessels sailed from Loch Ewe in Scotland on December 15th, arriving without incident at the Kola inlet a week and a half later. JW-51B, of fourteen merchant vessels, was to sail from Scotland on December 22nd. The first of the return convoys, RA-51, was to sail from Murmansk on December 30th, using the escorts from JW-51A. The Germans decided to target the outward bound JW-51 B.

  Area of Operations – The Arctic Seas.

  A comparatively small convoy, JW-5 I B had three sets of escorts. Firstly there was a distant covering force operating out of Akureyri in Iceland under the command of Vice-Admiral Sir Bruce Fraser, consisting of the battleship Anson, cruiser Cumberland, and three destroyers. They would only provide cover at long range and only then for the first part of the voyage.

  Secondly there was a support force, especially formed by Tovey, whose job was to trail convoys and intervene German surface units attacked. Called Force R, it consisted of the cruisers Jamaica and Sheffield under the command of Rear-Admiral Burnett, a veteran of the summer convoy battles. They were instructed to keep at least fifty miles from the coast in order to minimise the risk of air attack.

  Finally there was the close escort group which sailed with file convoy, and thus formed the most immediate force that the Germans would have to contend with. It was to initially consist of only eight small vessels. The three small "Hunt" class escort destroyers of this group were to be replaced at sea by the six big "Fleet" destroyers of the 17th flotilla, under Captain R Sherbrooke.

  Sherbrooke was an experienced officer, but he had been in command of the 17th flotilla for only four weeks. He quickly built up a rapport with his entire force however. He well realised the danger of surface attack and formulated a planned defence. On spotting a German surface raider, the Achates was to lay a smoke screen to hide the merchant vessels. The other destroyers would speed to interpose themselves, and the minor escorts would close up on the convoy itself. These tactics were extensively practiced during the early part of the voyage.

  The British Order of Battle.

  Convoy JW-51B Close Escort. (Sherbrooke)

  Fleet Destroyers.

  Achates (Acasta class).

  Obdurate (Onslow class).

  Obedient (Onslow class).

  Orwell (Onslow class).

  Onslow (Onslow class) [Flagship].

  Oribi (Onslow class).

  Escort Destroyers.

  Blankney (Hunt class).

  Chiddingfold (Hunt class).

  Ledbury (Hunt class).

  Minesweepers.

  Bramble (Halcyon class).

  Circe (Algerine class).

  Corvettes.

  Hyderabad (Flower class).

  Rhodedendron (Flower class).

  Trawlers.

  Northern Gem.

  Vizalma.

  The Hunt class destroyers provided the initial escort until replaced by the Fleet destroyers east of Iceland of December 25th. They and Circe were then detached. In addition, the destroyer Bulldog was to have part of the escort, but was damaged in a storm and never joined.

  Convoy JW-51B. (Melhuish)

  Merchantmen.

  Ballot (Panamanian).

  Calobre (American).

  Chester Valley (American).

  Daldorch (British).

  Empire Archer (British) [Flagship].

  Empire Emerald (British).

  Executive (American).

  Jefferson Myers (American).

  John H. B. Latrobe (American).

  Puerto Rican (American).

  Pontfield (British).

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (American).

  Vermont (American).

  Yorkmar (American).

  Two other merchants originally scheduled to be part of the convoy were unable to join due to defects.

  Force R. (Burnett)

  Cruisers.

  Sheffield (Southampton class) [Flagship].

  Jamaica (Fiji class).

  In addition, a patrol line of nine submarines was deployed off the northern Norwegian fjords to watch for German surface units. These were Graph, O14 (Dutch), P49, P216, P223, P312, P339, Sokol (Polish) and Torbay.

  The voyage begins.

  Apart from the initial loss of one destroyer and two merchants, the first part of the operation went according to plan for JW-5 I B. The swap over of destroyers was affected without incident just cast of Iceland, and good time was made. Then, six days into the voyage, the weather intervened. A fierce gale blew up and in the heavy seas and ferocious snow squalls the five merchant ships of the port column lost contact with the rest of the convoy. Oribi suffered a gyro-compass failure, also lost contact, and eventually sailed on to Russia alone. More importantly, the storm drove the convoy behind schedule and south of its intended route, bringing it closer to the German base at Altenfjord. This was to have profound consequences, the most serious of which from the British side was that the gale missed Force R, which was therefore unaware of the deviation in course of the convoy and was still expecting to rendezvous with it southwest of Bear Island.

  The next day, 29th December, Bramble was detached to make a radar search for the missing ships, three of which almost immediately regained contact. The trawler Vizalma, which had also been separated by the ferocious gales, fell in with another of the missing merchants, the Chester Valley. Together they actually succeeded in overtaking the convoy whilst trying to catch it up, reaching Russia ahead of schedule.

  Because of all these delays it was not until December 30th that the convoy turned fully east. The German submarine U-234 made contact and shadowed for nearly eight hours, sending constant positional reports, before she was spotted and nearly rammed by Obdurate. Sherbrooke now knew he had been spotted. More worryingly, he had received a signal from London informing him that German radio traffic on the Norwegian coast had increased markedly, which was compatible with an imminent movement of large ships.

  The German flotillas set out.

  Indeed, with the convoy's position supplied by U-234, at 1800 that night a German surface strike force sailed from Altentjord under the command of Admiral Kummetz. They adopted a course slanted to the north west that avoided waiting British submarines. Kummetz's orders were to "avoid a superior force, otherwise destroy according to tactical situation", a rather vague instruction open to wide interpretation. He was also under orders not to waste time by picking up survivors of any ships he sank, or even, gruesomely enough, to allow survivors to be picked up by Allied ships. For operational reasons his flotilla was now in close company, but in fact they were soon to be divided into two separate forces.

  Northern Force. (Kummetz)

  Heavy Cruiser
r />   Admiral Hipper

  Destroyers

  Freidrich Eckholdt

  Richard Beitzen

  Z-29

  Southern Force. (Stange)

  Pocket-Battleship

  Lutzow

  Destroyers

  Theodor Riedel

  Z-30

  Z-31

  The German destroyers were all of the formidable “Maas” class, considerably larger and more powerful than their British counterparts.

  Kummetz's plan for the forthcoming engagement could be described as the most cautious way of being bold. It reflected the immense fear the Germans had of risking any big ship and yet still enabled them to take offensive action. The flotilla was to split at around 2000 and the two forces to operate approximately seventy-five miles apart. Hipper's group was to lead off to the north while the Lutzow force moved eastwards. Each group was to string its destroyers ahead in a line fifteen miles long straddling the convoy's anticipated route. Once the convoy was located, Hipper would attack from the north, draw off the escorts, and drive the merchant ships onto Lutzow in the south. The departure time and speed of the flotilla were carefully set so that interception would take place in the forenoon, when there were the only few hours of good light in the Arctic winter.

  It was a good plan and if pressed energetically enough could have done serious damage to JW-51B, but the Kriegsmarine was to be shackled by caution and operational constraints. One hour after sailing, at Hitler's insistence, another directive signal was passed to Kummetz. It warned him to "exercise caution against an enemy of equal strength". Certainly losing another large surface warship at this stage in the war would have been politically damaging to the Third Reich, but this order was almost impossible to interpret. What, after all, constitutes an enemy of equal strength? One thing Kummetz could be sure of was the main thrust of these orders. He determined to take no risks at all.