Second Front

Chapter 13

Admiral Sheer had come about and was running west now, with a destroyer running parallel to her course, about 11 nautical miles to the south. Behind him, he could still feel the impending shadow of that British battleship, and he knew it had also turned in his direction. He was unquestioningly being shown the door, and now he had to decide what to do. He still had sea room to the west, but eventually, he would begin to run into floes of ice. Now he could either repeat his loop to the north, or describe the same maneuver to the south. Either choice would most likely put him well behind the convoy, and that damn destroyer would duly mark it down. So at 18:38 he opened fire with secondary guns in an effort to chase it off. This is what it’s like to fight the Royal Navy, he shrugged. The hunter behind me had a big shotgun, and he always hunts with hounds.

The destroyer he was firing at was the Onslow, and the bigger German ship succeeded in discouraging its approach. Krancke saw the enemy destroyer making smoke and turning away, but the hunter behind it already had the range on Scheer, and the sea around the ship erupted with accurate fire from those 14-inch guns. It was a case of ‘pick on someone your own size,’ and it didn’t take much for Krancke to get the message. His ship was straddled, and one round of the four flung at him by Howe struck home, penetrating the hull well forward. It had been a stroke of very bad luck, and speed fell off to 23 knots as the engineers struggled below decks to try and stop the flooding. Now, hobbled by that hit, it was looking to be a very bad day for Krancke, but two things played in his favor.

The first was the smoke that had been laid down by the Onslow. It temporarily masked the scene, and Krancke correctly deduced that the British gunners were having difficulty getting the range again. They fired, but found nothing but seawater in the gloom, the shots coming in very wide. The second, unknown to Krancke, was a frantic message that came in from Group B in the merchant sailing order, the very same group that had first suffered the bite of U-376. There were four groups of eight ships each in the convoy, labeled A through D. Down to just six ships, the delay in getting back into cruising order after that attack had seen PQ-17B fall off to the tail of the convoy column. It was now some 50 nautical miles behind the other three groups, and suddenly under attack again.

Captain Charles Woodhouse aboard the battleship Howe got just a fragment of the message before it was cut off. “PQ-17B—Under attack—on fire—need help with all speed….” Thinking there might be yet another German surface raider about, Woodhouse reasoned that he could turn now for the merchantmen and still keep his ship between them and the Admiral Scheer. But what was out there? He knew the Tirpitz and Scharnhorst were spotted the previous day. If it was either of those two, things could get very ugly here soon.

As it happened, the Captain had little to fear, and he would have been better minded to send his destroyers back in his place. In turning, he gave Krancke just the brief interval he needed to slip away to the southwest. For it was not the Tirpitz feasting on PQ-17B, but yet another unseen marauder in the person of Max Teichert on U-456. While the British had raced after Admiral Scheer with three destroyers and a battleship, U-456 had slipped right into the midst of the fold, and torpedoes were soon flying in all directions, ripping into the thin skinned merchant ships and wreaking havoc. Ships were wheeling in all directions, and many of Teichert’s shots missed, but Olpana, Honomu, Rathlin and Pan Kraft would all take hits. The Kapitan was single handedly wrecking what was still left of PQ-17B, the prey Krancke had been maneuvering to get at for so very long.

When word reached Admiral Scheer, it came with mixed emotions for Krancke. Here I spend the better part of two days trying to get at the tail of that convoy, while Teichert slips right into the kitchen unnoticed and has himself a feast! Admiral Scheer does all the work, harried by battleships and destroyers of every stripe, and I’ve a nice little scar on the hull to prove it, but U-456 gets the laurels. My engineers are still pumping water, but I’m getting speed up again, and the range is opening. Thank God—that battleship is turning to the east.

He would later learn that the destroyer failed to return to a friendly port, and that would be his only consolation. Indeed, HMS Onslow would not survive the night. The ship was not making smoke willfully, it had been struck twice by those 11-inch guns from Admiral Scheer, and the fires were soon uncontrollable. The ship sunk at 23:30, the lone tally for the German raider, and the salt in the wound was that Krancke didn’t even know he had done even that.

He turned, chastened by his enemy again, and skulked away to the southwest, but his little drama had done one thing that would make a very big difference in the battle. It had force the British to detach the battleship Howe from the Home Fleet covering force, and now it was here, 40 miles behind the tail of the convoy chasing the smoky grey raider, while far to the north, the vanguard of a long procession of British ships was finally approaching the Cape.

All hell was about to break loose.

Captain Harold Richard George Kinahan was an Irishman through and through. Born in Belfast in 1893, he had just celebrated his 49th Birthday eleven days earlier as he prepared to join Home Fleet for one of the first major sorties of the war for his ship, the new battleship Anson. Kinahan had served on the staff of Home Fleet since 1940, and this was his second command at sea after a stint on the cruiser Orion before the war. A specialist in gunnery, he was about to be taught another lesson in that regard—from the battleship Tirpitz.

After the air strike earlier that day, it seemed that the Royal Navy had the enemy on the run. While they had failed to find the German carrier, and sunk only a lowly destroyer, the effect seemed to be that the Germans were now running east for the safety of land based air power. But appearances can be deceiving, for the early evening had also seen a well coordinated air strike aimed at the British carriers.

Home Fleet, with Anson, Ark Royal, Sheffield, Nigeria, Jamaica, and a hand full of destroyers, had been the farthest east, coming up from Scapa Flow. The assigned distant covering force was west with Victorious, Hood, Cumberland, Shropshire and more destroyers. As the two covering forces pressed on north, it was Home Fleet that was suddenly in the vanguard, and Anson seemed to be driving the Germans on before him. Their afternoon air strike had cost them seven Stukas, and but all it took was one good hit with a 500 pound bomb to severely ruffle Ark Royal’s feathers. To make matters worse, a group of He-111s had also flown from Tromso carrying 1000 pound bombs, and both arms of the strike caught the British unawares.

There were six fighters up near Ark Royal, but no visual sightings were made until the Stukas were only ten miles out. By then it was almost too late for the fighters to break up the attack. They came in, paid a heavy price in losing seven of the twelve planes that made the attack, but they got that single hit, and couple near misses. The resulting damage to planes parked all over the rear flight deck was considerable. When the skies finally cleared, Ark Royal had only 3 more fighters and a half dozen Barracudas left in mission ready order, and one of the four fighters she had up was shot down in a duel with the six German Messerschmitts that escorted the strike.

That was the first setback, a turn of fate that took out almost 40% of British sea based air power in one throw. Ark Royal was ordered to withdraw to a secondary role, where she might get some time to repair many of those damaged planes. For a time, Anson was then the only credible threat in that advanced covering force, and as if they could sense their enemies weakness at that moment, Admiral Carls decided to make a sudden turn. He had collected the disparate squadrons of his fleet as they approached the Norwegian coast, and now, he came about, guns ready, hoping to follow up that air strike with a surprise surface engagement.

At 30 minutes past midnight he spotted the tall silhouette of the Anson, more prominent than any other ship on his horizon, and Tirpitz opened fire. Fifteen minutes later, he scored a particularly telling blow, one that struck Anson amidships, penetrating to the engineering powerplant below decks.

Kinahan cursed inwardly when he felt the blow shake his brand new battleship. Nothing like scuffing up the pain the first time out of port, he thought. But that was the least of it. The loss of speed in an engagement like this was more than a tactical inconvenience—it could be fatal. Anson fired back bravely, and saw the bright flashes of at least two hits on Tirpitz. That gave Kinahan heart, the first bite for his ship in the war, and the first taste of blood.

The German ship took light damage, with a twin 152mm gun turret put out of action, one flak gun lost, but more significantly, the surface search radar was a total loss, flayed by shrapnel from the hit on that secondary battery.

Anson’s damage was equivalent, with a hit on one of her 5.25-inch secondary batteries, but the difficulties in the propulsion plant at this critical moment were a grave concern for Kinahan. More German ships were spotted, and now he realized there was grave danger here. He turned to his Executive Officer and whispered something quietly, so the other officers on the bridge would not overhear him. “Where is Hood? We need her—and that quickly.” Then he turned calmly to his helmsman and ordered the ship to come about.

Where was Hood?

She was 123 nautical miles away, slightly northwest of the Anson, returning to her watch with the carrier Victorious. The carrier was actually closer to the battle, some 97 miles off on that same heading, and with her were the heavy cruisers Kent and Cumberland. Nigeria and Jamaica were also slowly converging on the carrier’s position, but all these ships were now too far off to be of any immediate help to Kinahan on the Anson. After getting a fleet status update, the Captain leaned over the chart table with a decision to make.

Laddie, he said to himself inwardly. We’ve a gimpy leg now, and we cannot run. No use holding the destroyers and Sheffield here, but it looks as though we’ll simply have to stand and fight. “signal all destroyers to take a heading of 340, Sheffield to follow,” said Kinahan. “Step lively now, and run it up on the halyards.”

The destroyers were already running, with the Marne taking a pounding from the Admiral Hipper and what looked like another smaller cruiser coming up from the south. If Kinahan actually knew what he was now facing, he might have put his money on the engineers getting the engines sorted out, and not on his guns. The entire German surface fleet had reached a predetermined rendezvous point, and now they had turned, forming a wide line of steel on the sea, and they were charging west. One of the two Type 275 radar sets had been smashed aboard Anson, and so she was like a fighter with one eye closed, and could not see the danger looming from the east. Then the ship shuddered heavily, another hard blow struck by two rounds from the Tirpitz. This time fires and flooding resulted. A 5.25-inch turret magazine had exploded.

The fires were not serious, but the flooding was. That round from Tirpitz that had penetrated to the engineering plant had opened a good sized hole in the hull, and the ship was soon in a ten degree list. Kinahan counter flooded, but this did nothing to help his situation with the engines. Anson merely settled more deeply in the water, and he could make no more than 8 knots.

Anson fired another full broadside, the tall spray of the shells straddling the dark silhouette of the Tirpitz in the distance. He saw no obvious hits, but suddenly the lookouts reported the Germans seemed to be breaking off to the north, and he breathed a sigh of relief.

They’ve got that one good ship up here, he thought. Perhaps they have orders not to mix it up with our battleships, but from the looks of this encounter, we’ve taken the worst of it. In spite of that, there’s at least hope that we can control that flooding and get the ship west to rejoin Holland and the Hood.

There the British had been pulling together all the elements of the distant covering force, the carrier Victorious with three destroyers and cruisers Kent and Cumberland. Jamaica coming up from the southwest, just a little east of Hood’s position now, and Nigeria bringing up the rear to the west.

Kinahan had it in mind to try and limp back to join them, but he realized the situation with his propulsion system was going from bad to worse by the minute. No Captain ever wants to consider what was on his mind now—the fate of his crew of over 1500 men in the cold water. If he could just keep the ship afloat, he could spare them that fate. The engineers reported that they had finally managed to seal off the flooded compartments below, though the gash in the hull could not be repaired at sea.

That was the game insofar as Anson was concerned. With her speed down to 8 knots, the ship was useless as any part of the distant covering force. He might limp west to stand with the merchantmen, as 8 knots was their cruising speed, but when he reported his ship’s condition to Holland and Scapa Flow, the order that came back was not unexpected. He looked at it, blinked, and clenched his jaw. ‘HMS Anson is to avoid any further contact with the enemy and immediately withdraw to Scapa Flow.’

So much for our maiden voyage, he thought grimly. It’s back to the dry docks for us now.

Chapter 14

The problem Holland had now, was the dispersion of his force in fending off these initial challenges from the Kriegsmarine. With Anson ordered home, he now had only two battleships forward, his own ship and the American battleship Massachusetts with the close covering force. Howe was still at the tail of the convoy keeping an eye out for that German pocket battleship, and that was 300 nautical miles to his southwest. Arc Royal was also retiring towards the convoy, though that ship still had 11 planes operational.

The only thing to do was to consolidate the force he had, bring up the close covering force to combine his forces into one strong battlegroup. Victorious sent up a fighter to have a look around, and soon reported where at least a part of the enemy force had gone. The plane overflew what looked like a pair of fast heavy cruisers, but to Holland’s mind they had to be something more.

“Heavy Cruisers? Hipper is the only ship that’s been up here of late. No. That has to be those two fast battlecruisers, Rhineland and Westfalen—nothing to be trifled with, though he was confident he could back those ships off if it came to an engagement. No enemy planes had been seen aloft, and so thinking he had a slight edge with Victorious on the scene, he gathered his ships and steeled himself for the confrontation that lay ahead.

Unknown to him, a Korvettenkapitan with a famous name was lurking right in the midst of his task force. Karl Brandenburg had taken U-457 in from the north, and sailed right through the heart of the British force at periscope depth. He was one of the boats in this North Cape group that was loosely organized as Wolfstrudel Eisteufel, the “Ice Devils.” At one point he lined up on the Hood, elated at the thought that he might get off a shot, but the speedy battleship was simply too fast. He was able to ascertain several ships by type and silhouette, identifying Kent and Cumberland, with four other ships, mostly destroyers. That dampened his ardor for a torpedo attack, but he lurked about, undiscovered, and then continued south to get to a safer position to key off a report to Admiral Carls on the Tirpitz.

His intelligence gave the Germans a very good idea of what they were up against, and Carls, already confident in having beaten off the threat from Anson, decided to attack.

“Let’s see how much stomach they have,” he said to Kapitan Topp. “They hardly put a scratch on us in that last engagement, but I think we hurt that battleship. We will swing slightly north, consolidate, and then move west again.”

Peter Strasser was about 80 miles to the south, but with only five Ju-87s and six Messerschmitts remaining operational. He decided to commit those planes, hoping one of those Stuka pilots might get a lucky hit. If nothing else, the six Bf-109s up for air cover would do him some good.

The Stukas lined up on the deck, taking off in the wet windblown sea spray. They did not have far to go before spotting the leading British ship, clearly a cruiser, and then seeing the much more menacing Hood not far behind. They put in their attack, prompting heavy AA fire from Hood and Jamaica, but the best they could do was get several near misses on the battleship. One enterprising pilot interpreted his bomb as having scored a hit off the starboard bow, but it was merely the close underwater explosion that gave him more to see than actual damage to report.

More valuable to Admiral Carls was the information those planes obtained on the composition of the enemy force. He now knew that he was facing the Hood with three cruisers, and followed by two more cruisers and two destroyers. The presence of enemy fighters harassing and driving off the last of those Stukas also told him a British carrier was still close at hand. Against this force of eight enemy ships he had an equal number, and the scene was now set for what might be the decisive battle in the north. If he could prevail here, stop or savage this convoy, then he might close the sea lanes to Murmansk, choking off the only viable supply route to the Soviets. He gave immediate orders to begin the engagement, with the super heavy cruiser Westfalen engaging the lead enemy ship, and Tirpitz to fire on the Hood as soon as range permitted.

Aboard Hood, they received the sighting report from Sheffield at 05:53 in the morning, the 17th of June—One German battleship, course 270, range 10 nautical miles. That was over 20,000 yards, and both sides were closing on one another at high speed. Captain Arthur Wesley Clark was on Sheffield, and minutes later the watchman called out three more sightings, believed to be enemy heavy cruisers. His position in the vanguard was now feeling just a bit uncomfortable, and when the ship suddenly took a direct hit from a 5-inch gun off the Westfalen, he ordered a quick evasive turn, hard to starboard. That hit had already knocked out one of his own secondary 4-inch twin gun mounts and a 40mm Bofors. He ordered all guns to return fire, and turned.

The ship would not come out of that turn unscathed. German fire was exceptionally accurate, rocking ‘Shiny Shef” with four more hits that damaged one of her 6-inch guns, several more Bofors mounts, and the 533mm torpedo mounts on the port side, where a fire looked particularly threatening. The ships Huff Duff directional finding antennae was clawed by shrapnel, but the worst of it was a round that penetrated the forward hull, causing substantial flooding and immediate loss of speed.

Yet Hood and the heavy cruiser Kent had the range now, and began pouring on fire. The dark form of the lead German ship was unmistakable, the Tirpitz. Holland sat in the Captain’s chair, a sudden queasy feeling coming over him. He had already faced this ship once before, and under the withering assault of Stukas that seriously damaged his ship. But there was something more, an unaccountable feeling of presentiment clawing at him now. It was as if he could somehow sense that his fate had been decided in a very similar duel at sea against a ship in this class, the Bismarck. It was an unreasonable fear, but he could feel it nonetheless, a coldness in his chest, a sense that doom was nigh at hand.

Then Kent laid down a beautiful straddle of the German ship with her 8-inch guns and one of them got lucky. The range was about 20,000 yards, at the outer limit of what her guns could make. The sighting had been perfect, with calm seas, clear skies, and the wind fallen off to near zero. At that range, the plunging angle of fire was enough to penetrate the aft deck armor, and the resulting explosion below decks did serious damage to the main propulsion conduits when a secondary magazine went up as part of the bargain. It was a critical hit, most unexpected, certainly unlooked for given the toughness of a ship like Tirpitz at sea. But damage to propulsion meant sudden loss of speed, and that could be fatal.

It was some minutes before Captain Topp got the bad news, the main turbines were seriously damaged, and within minutes the ship would be dead in the water… And Hood had the range. Westfalen and Rhineland could see the big battleship slowing, and knew there was trouble. They immediately began to concentrate fire on Kent, hoping to take that ship out of the fight quickly. Added to the fire by Tirpitz, which was still engaging both Kent and Hood, the British cruiser was soon awash in tall geysers from shellfall.

A serious fire amidships was enough to prompt Captain Angus Graham to come about and attempt to withdraw to the northwest. He had put in his magic hit aft on Tirpitz, but now he was taking serious damage, with the fires expanding and difficult to control. He soon found that he could make no more than 8 knots, limping away from the fight, as was Sheffield. That cruiser had recovered speed to 14 knots, controlled her fires, and was now moving due west

Holland could see what the Germans were trying to do. Tirpitz had lost propulsion, and the three other German heavy ships were now moving rapidly to positions where they could cover that ship and aid its withdrawal. In the meantime, there was nothing wrong with those 15-inch guns on Tirpitz, and added to the 11-inch guns of Scharnhorst and those of the other German ships, Holland decided he would do better here to maneuver with those cruisers to the west. The action ended at little before 06:00, with the Germans clustering around their stricken battleship, and the British falling off to the west. There would come Cumberland and Nigeria, and Holland had a mind to reconstitute his covering force, and possibly effect a rendezvous with the Americans.

Captain Topp was lucky in that. It was reported that the damage to the propulsion shaft was so bad, that the ship would have to be towed. Admiral Carls ordered Scharnhorst to do the job, with the two heavy cruisers on either flank. Destroyers Grimhild, Gondul, and Odin were hovering as a screen. The cruisers Hipper and Koenig brought up the rear, and the entire formation lumbered off at 5 knots as Scharnhorst labored to get his stricken charge to safe water. A flight of five Me-109s off Peter Strasser were overhead for added protection, but both sides had had enough that day. Now it would be up to the U-Boats and German land based planes in the next layer of the defense.

It was then that the freighter Hartlebury radioed that it was under fire from what looked like a German heavy cruiser. That ship had been detached from PQ-17B, and ordered back to Iceland, but it would never get there. That ‘cruiser’ was the Admiral Scheer, and Krancke finally had some solace for his lot in life, notching his belt with yet another merchantman. But he was still missing the Lutzow, and that wound festered.

At 11:06 local time on the 17th, spotters aboard Hood detected a periscope wake. The formation had been slowly assembling and preparing to move north to meet the American close covering force, but Holland immediately ordered Hood ahead full and into an evasive zig-zag course to the east. Destroyer Meteor was closest to the scene, and it went to flank speed, its sonar actively pinging out a warning as it searched. Both Kent and Sheffield were detached, heading south to join the wounded destroyer Marne en-route to Scapa Flow. They would make easy prey to any lurking U-boat. Low on fuel, minesweeper Halcyon was also detached to join them.

The boat was U-251 under Kapitan Heinrich Timm, a cautious commander who never shirked from a combat opportunity, but one who valued his boat and the lives of his crew as well. He heard that destroyer pinging, and the rapid churn of its screws, and immediately dove deep, altering course to 218. His Sonarman heard the destroyer sweep by behind him, and then Timm came around to 308, intending to try and get behind the covering forces where the real meat was. He knew he would have to surface again soon to recharge his battery, so the last thing he needed now was a bothersome destroyer. This was the beginning of the next phase of the game, for the Ice Devils were still out there, in a widely dispersed wolfpack.

One of his brothers, U-457, was only about 18 nautical miles to the south, and its Kapitan, Karl Brandenburg, was fortunate to be right in the path of those detaching British cruisers. Sheffield was making 14 knots, so he let that ship pass. Kent was limping along at just 8 knots, a perfect target, and he began to slowly maneuver into position, moving to periscope depth. It was then that he spotted a destroyer, but after watching it cautiously for some time, he determined it, too, was moving very slowly. There was no active sonar, and so after lining up on an intercept course for the British cruiser, he dove shallow, retracting his periscope to avoid any chance of it being spotted. It was going to be very close.

The destroyer suddenly increased speed and turned, making a high speed run, its sonar starting to ping. It was a complete bluff, for the ship was a minesweeper, with no ASW depth charges aboard at that time. Yet her Captain, Collin Singleton, was determined, immediately executing another turn, and ordering his deck guns to fire at the water. He wanted to add the sound of those rounds exploding to his screw noise, and see if he couldn’t frighten this U-boat off. It worked.

Rattled by those explosions, Brandenburg went deeper, just over the layer, but his speed at that depth was no more than 4 knots on battery power. He executed a ten point turn, adjusting to 185 south, and running as quietly as possible. He could hear the enemy ship right on top of him, wincing inwardly, but no depth charges fell. Again it turned, hunting him very skillfully. The sound of the screws slowed considerably, as if the ship was trying to match his speed. Halcyon was right on top of him, but no attack came. Then he heard yet more explosions from above, thanking his stars that he had chosen to go deep.

In desperation, Brandenburg decided survival was preferable to a hit on that cruiser, and quietly gave the order to come about. He turned northeast, intent on joining his brethren, U-251, U-255, and now U-703 slowly arriving from the east. Their mission was to stop the convoy, and now he would forsake these straggling elements of the enemy covering force. Singleton’s bluff had just saved the heavy cruiser Kent, though he would not really know that, nor would he get any medals for his skillful attack on the unseen submarine. For him it was all in a day’s work.

At 13:00, a Kondor departed Tromso, heading northwest to see about finding the enemy convoy so it could vector those U-boats in. Peter Strasser, now heading south for Tromso, also sent up a pair of fighters to provide protection. They flew right over Sheffield and Kent, noting their positions but continuing on west to look for the real fish. The Kondor was already getting long range radar returns, turning to investigate, even as those fighters did the same.

The Bf-109s took a good look, classifying the contact as a battleship. The second pass, now receiving flak, gave them a better look. It was A King George V class ship, completely alone. They had come across the battleship Howe, returning to the covering force after its duel with the pocket battleships.

By 15:30, that Kondor had finally scored the jackpot, reporting two large formations of merchant ships escorted by three destroyers. Most of the Ice Devils were too far away to do anything about it, except U-255 under Kapitanleutnant Reinhart Reche. He was only about 16 miles away, and cleverly maneuvering his boat into a gap between the lead group of enemy ships and the two groups following. At about 18:40, he began to line up on the freighter Azerbaijan, and no one in the convoy saw the sleek eel in the water ahead. Once his first torpedo was in the water, the alarm was raised, but he was already calculating how to get at the ships following in the long line.

Bellingham was next, then Bolton Castle. He missed the first, and his next lance raced right past that second ship only to strike the next vessel in the line, the Daniel Morgan. He was right in the midst of the formation, with ships on either side of him now, a wolf in the fold. He would turn easily and put out a full spread of four torpedoes, that last striking the Grey Ranger. Racing on, the sea spray awash at his bow, eyes lost in his field glasses, Reche fired a single fish at the next ship in the line, the Hoosier. It was only now that he began to receive fire from the merchantmen. Grey Ranger, hit badly with both flooding and fire scourging her decks, managed to get a 20mm Oerklion into action and began riddling the seas around the U-boat. Reluctantly, Reche gave the order to dive to periscope depth to avoid damage or casualties to his men on the sail.

The feast had begun, and all the drama and hand wringing of the surface action counted for naught. The heavy ships with their thunderous guns would not weigh in on this little battle. It was just a single U-boat, reveling in the midst of those merchant ships, and the torment of PQ-17 was only just beginning. Yet out on the glowering grey to the south, three British destroyers had seen the explosions, particularly when Hoosier was finally hit. Ashanti, Martin and Onslaught were racing to the scene as fast as their screws would turn. Reche would notch three kills, with Daniel Morgan and Hoosier still afloat and burning, near dead in the water, but his joyride through the convoy would soon come to a most unhappy end.

Chapter 15

Kapitan Krancke was still not satisfied, but things were getting a little better. After sinking the Hartlebury, he had turned to stalk the Allied convoy again from behind, coming upon yet another straggler, the Honomu. He wasted little time, engaging and sinking that ship with his 152mm guns. Yet the wireless operator had gotten off a distress call, warning that the German raider was back in the hunt, which now posed a real problem for the covering forces, just over 150 nautical miles to the east. There was nothing to be done in the short run, but Hood abandoned its planned rendezvous, and Holland decided to take his entire group west to investigate.

In the meantime, the German surface group had passed on south, with Scharnhorst slowly towing the Tirpitz under good German air cover. Admiral Carls decided he could then detach his fast raiders, and sent Rhineland and Westfalen northwest. Two groups of Heinkels had sortied from Tromso an hour earlier, vectored in to the location of the convoy by Reche’s boat before it went missing. There they found and bombed the Winston Salem, which exploded spectacularly when its cargo of ammunition was set off by an 800 pound bomb. That ship would sink in short order, and though two of the six Heinkels were shot down, the remaining four headed home, surprised to find ships beneath them as they approached the Norwegian coast. They had found the British cruisers detached earlier, and now cruising about 130 miles off the coast.

This sighting led to the sortie of yet another Kondor to keep an eye on them and fix their position, and when Kapitan Böhmer on the Peter Strasser learned their location, he decided to do something about it with his last six Stukas. They were up in short order, heading southwest where they were vectored in by the Kondor.

The restless Captain of Sheffield, Wesley Clark, was getting quite uncomfortable with all these German planes overflying his position, and no friendly air cover in sight. He put in a coded message to the Ark Royal, complaining, and was soon told a pair of Fireflies were on the way… but they would arrive too late.

Those six Stukas found the wounded warriors, and focused their attack on Kent, each with a pair of 500 pound bombs. With Kent slowed to 8 knots, unable to maneuver, four of the twelve bombs would score hits, with another near miss only 20 feet off the port side. That was going to end the war for that ship, and the doughty cruiser went down at a few minutes before midnight on the end of that very long day’s action.

Clark stared at it, knowing he could not linger here, but seeing the men in the water, and realizing he had to do what he could to help them. But the trouble was only just beginning. Those two German raiders detached by Admiral Carls had sallied forth at good speed, just passing the British group in the murky grey. They spotted Sheffield, turned on a parallel course, angling in to close the range, which was about 27,000 meters at first sighting.

The British cruiser soon had to abandon its rescue effort and put on all speed to make a run for it. Undaunted, the plucky minesweeper Halcyon would brave the enemy charge turning to fire with everything it had. It was a brave action, hoping to give Sheffield time to break away, but this time, Captain Singleton’s bluff would be called by the secondary guns of the Westfalen. His ship would take numerous hits, and was soon lost in the smoke they were trying to make, but would never be seen again.

The combined fire of those two raiders was going to also put an end to Sheffield’s war, and the last hapless destroyer on that ill-fated group would die with her, the Marne. Captain Clark and Sheffield that had led the engagement the previous day, fighting bravely with Kent at her back. That cruiser had done what no man among them thought possible—it had stopped Tirpitz near dead in the water with that lucky hit. Now the two German raiders had their revenge, and Admiral Carl’s smiled when he got the news: “Sunk all ships in contacted group. Our compliments to the Admiral. Continuing on planned route.”

When Holland got the news he clenched his fist. They were still just over 90 miles to the northeast, and too late to intervene. But he had a good idea where the German raiders were going now, angry at himself for not anticipating what the enemy had just pulled here.

Damn their shadows, he thought. They broke off and ran for the coast under their land based air power. When I moved north to look for the Americans, they snookered me, running south along the Norwegian coast and then turning out to sea again. But I know where they’re going now, don’t I. Yes, and I’m a good deal closer to the main body of PQ-17 than they are, so let them come. They’ll find me waiting there with Hood if they get bold enough to approach. Then we’ll see them pay for what they did to Sheffield and Kent. Yes….

Krancke was pacing on the bridge of the Admiral Scheer. Ahead of him lay the entire British convoy, and here were a pair of impudent destroyers thinking to try and stop him. The action had started five minutes ago, hot and furious, with the sharp report of the 152mm secondary batteries resounding with each rapid salvo. He would show them what they were dealing with, and shook his head as they bravely dodged and maneuvered to get after him. But his gunners were too good. He would get them both, two more trophies to set on the shelf in payment for Lutzow, but they would be very valuable kills, destroyers Martin and Onslaught.

As he approached the convoy from behind, he had already left the Winston Salem burning in his wake, damaged the boilers on William Hooper and set that ship on fire, but he had paid a price. The destroyers had put damage on his own engines, and the engineers were frantically trying to get it repaired. In that interval, his speed fell off to six knots, and he clenched his jaw, seeing the hulking merchant ships ahead actually slipping away.

“Come on!” he shouted down the voice tube. “Get those engines turning over!”

It was a long twenty minutes before he could work up to 14 knots again, and he steered north to run parallel to the convoy where he could pick them off at his leisure. Those 14 knots were just going to be good enough to give him that position, and now he could even bring his torpedo tubes to bear.

“Let’s put a nice straight runner into that ship there,” he pointed, and minutes later that is what he did—the Troubadour would sing its swan song that hour, her hull blasted open by that torpedo. He smiled at that, the smell of the kill in the air. There he was, single handedly doing what Tirpitz and all the others had set out to do. He could see five more ships in this group, and four more eight miles ahead. He could run right alongside their formation, gunning them down. But his plans were to be interrupted by yet another British destroyer, charging in from the south all guns blazing, the Oribi.

Thinking he would deal with this ship as easily as he had dispatched the last two, he was shocked when the enemy got in the first telling blows. “What are you doing?” he shouted at his chief gunnery officer. “You let them strike us like this? Get after that ship!”

Admiral Sheer rocked again, with yet another hit, and now it seemed that almost all the secondary batteries on the starboard side of the ship had been put out of action. Some had light damage, some heavy, but none could return that fire. Oribi was even putting hits on his aft main turret, guns he would not normally used against a small, fast moving target like this.

The man racing about like a wild banshee on Oribe was Captain John Edwin Home McBeath. Educated in South Africa, he had come to the Royal Navy as a 23 year old Boatswain’s Mate in 1928. Now a Captain of 37 years, he had learned the fate of Martin and Onslaught, and was determined to cut off a pound of flesh from the enemy. Elated when he got those first hits, he swung about, making a high speed turn at near 36 knots, his forward batteries continuing to fire. Like an angry bees stinging a bear cub, he was putting so much damage on the superstructure of Admiral Scheer that Kapitan Krancke cursed aloud, then ordered a 15 point turn to the north, and all speed possible.

Amazingly, the Oribe had driven off the German raider to lick its wounds and see if they could get those secondary batteries back in order. Then, realizing that the convoy was also being stalked by enemy U-boats, McBeath came about, not wanting to press his luck when he had the enemy on the run. He steered the ship south, and then a watchman spotted a periscope, very near the stricken merchant ship John Witherspoon. It looked as though the U-boat was diving deeper, intending to get right under the ship it had just torpedoed, and that was exactly what Kapitan Brandenburg was up to. It would not work—not with Oribi fired up and racing in for blood. Another explosion resounded to the northeast, where Bolton Castle was being hunted by Kapitan Timm on U-251.

“Come on lads!” shouted McBeath. “Let’s get the bloody devils before they sink the whole lot!”

He would.

Oribi made a perfect ASW run, heedless of the risk to John Witherspoon, which was a doomed ship in any case. McBeath dropped numerous depth charges, shaking U-457 from stem to stern, until a bad leak started in the engine room, then another, and a third on the bridge. Flooding badly, Brandenburg had no choice but to surface, and when he did, Oribi was waiting for him.

Just when it seemed that the defense was collapsing and the convoy would be ripped apart, this single British destroyer had pressed such a gallant and persistent attack that Oribi would drive off Scheer and sink U-457. A DSO was in order for McBeath, and one day, well after this war, they would place thick gold stripes on his cuff, call him “Admiral.”

A lull settled over the action, the oil thick on the sea, the fires licking at it, and the men in the water rolling over with their suffering, the cold stopping their breath. Some died in those flames, others died from the frigid chill of the water. The group now under attack was an amalgam of PQ-17C and 17D. There had been 16 ships between them, but now there were only eight still underway. Among the stricken ships were Bolton Castle, Daniel Morgan, Grey Ranger, Hoosier, William Hooper, Winston Salem, Troubadour, and finally John Witherspoon. The stragglers Hartlebury and Honomu had also died that day, along with Kent, Sheffield, and three destroyers, Martin, Onslaught, Marne. The minesweeper Halcyon, her final bluff called, was also never seen again.

It was as black a day as there had ever been in the war at sea, save the terrible losses off Fuerteventura. Added to these was the fact that Anson had also been forced to retire, but so had Tirpitz. With all those supply ships weighing heavily on the scales, the Admiralty was chilled to the bone when the day’s report came in, Admiral Pound excused himself from the conference table, retired to his private office, and locked the door. That would not spare him from receiving the final report on PQ-17. Of the 32 ships that had set out to make that dangerous run, only six would eventually make a Russian port with their cargo intact. What the German surface raiders had failed to destroy, was left for the planes out of Tromso, Petsamo and Kirkenes. The damage was so grave that the British immediately cancelled PQ-18, and all further Murmansk convoys for the foreseeable future.

Another man contemplated the day aboard the German battlecruiser Scharnhorst, Kurt Hoffmann. He was on the aft weather deck off the bridge, smoking a cigar as he often did, and thinking things over. Now he stood there, leaning on the gunwale and watching the wide dark shape of Tirpitz in his wake.

Topp and the Admiral must be fit to be tied, he thought. Who would have thought I’d be towing Tirpitz home like this? We’ve also lost Lutzow, and more than one U-boat won’t be coming home. Yet there’s one consolation we take from this—not a single naval rocket was fired in all these engagements—not one. So the latest rumors on that demon we faced last year must be true. It’s gone to Murmansk, and from there to the Pacific. The damn thing was a Russian ship all along, and not British at all! But what was it doing there, sinking its teeth into us before Hitler even invaded the Soviet Union last year, fighting us in the Atlantic as well? That was the ship that got our tanker, the same ship that chased Krancke and Admiral Scheer out of the Kara sea.

Well… While the cat is away….

I’m told Krancke is getting a few kills today, feasting on the herd while I’m stuck here towing the mighty Tirpitz. Raeder will be none too happy to hear about this. Yet considering the situation, it will make my ship the best surface combatant in the northern fleet. Where will they plant the flag the next time we go out, on Scharnhorst or Peter Strasser? I’d just as soon give the honor to the carrier. The last thing I need is a troublesome Admiral aboard.

He took another long drag on his cigar. Things could be worse, he thought, far worse. So back to Nordstern we go, where Tirpitz will likely sit in the new dry dock they’ve built there for a good long while. Who knows, perhaps the British will think twice about these convoy runs to Murmansk after we’ve finished with this one. Rhineland and Westfalen were the lucky ones. They got cut loose to do some hunting while I play footman to that battleship. But one day I’ll get my chance, and with no damn naval rockets in the mix.

However, with my luck, I’ll probably run into the Hood. He smiled, grimly, not knowing then just how much of a prediction he had just made. Time had a way of balancing her books, and she was thinking… thinking….