Target Tirpitz: X-Craft, Agents and Dambusters - The Epic Quest to Destroy Hitler’s Mightiest Warship. Patrick Bishop
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All their large ships were bigger than they were supposed to be. The Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were actually 6,000 tons heavier than officially claimed. The extra weight came from the thick armour plating which reduced the danger from the heavier guns of the British battle cruisers. They were also faster than claimed and could muster thirty-one knots, which gave them the edge over their counterparts if forced to run.
It was in the top class – the battleships – that German superiority was most marked. Since Tirpitz and her sister ship Bismarck were laid down in 1936, the Germany Embassy in London, on Räder’s instructions, had lied to the Foreign Office about their specifications. Instead of being 35,000 tons, the upper limit agreed in the Anglo-German Naval Agreement, they would both weigh in at 42,500 tons. The British stuck to the rules. As a result the battleships under construction of the King George V (KGV) class were nearly 12 per cent lighter.
It was not merely a question of size. When finished, Tirpitz and Bismarck would best the Royal Navy’s new ships in every department. They each mounted eight 15-inch guns against the 14-inch main armament of the King George V. They were faster and could travel far greater distances without refuelling. They were also immensely well protected, with thick layers of steel armour encasing decks and hull, turrets, engine rooms and magazines. It was often said by their enemies that the Germans had declared their battleships ‘unsinkable’. The claim does not seem to have been made officially. Their constructors revealed after the war that the Kriegsmarine often intervened during the building of Tirpitz and Bismarck to ‘raise their levels of unsinkability’.7 The result was that, in the case of Tirpitz, 40 per cent of her overall weight was made up of armour plating. The belief grew that Tirpitz and Bismarck could survive any torpedo, shell or bomb that British ships or aircraft could hurl at them, and it was not unfounded. The British navy had been starved of funds in the post-war years, and little effort had been put into developing new weaponry. Torpedoes and shells carried feeble charges and lacked penetrative power. The greatest failure to keep pace with technological developments lay in the area of naval aviation. The Admiralty was only now regaining control of the Fleet Air Arm from the RAF, whose equipment programmes had given priority to fighters and bombers. The navy was entering the war equipped with biplanes that looked like survivors from the previous conflict.
Even with his long-term plan in tatters and Tirpitz and Bismarck still far from completion, Räder could still cause Britain great harm. The Royal Navy suffered from a crucial strategic disadvantage. Britain depended for survival on its seaborne trade. The navy had the duty of protecting a web of routes that stretched to all corners of the globe. Germany, as a continental power, was far less reliant on overseas supplies. If it came to war, its navy’s responsibility was clearer and narrower. Its function was not to protect but to attack, ravaging the sea lanes that linked Britain to the rest of the world.
As the countdown to hostilities accelerated, it was powerful German warships rather than the U-boat fleet that the Admiralty most feared. ‘Nothing would paralyse our supply system and seaborne trade so successfully,’ wrote the First Sea Lord Sir Dudley Pound, just before the outbreak, ‘as attack by surface raiders.’ It was to their detection, pursuit and destruction that the Home Fleet turned as the long overture finished and the curtain went up on the war.
* Von Hassell was a conservative patriot who had been wounded in the First World War and still carried a French bullet in his heart. He was executed for his part in the 20 July 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler.
* All displacements are given as standard, minus the weight of fuel, water and stores that would be carried on voyage.
Caked with the salt of the northern seas, her flanks streaked with rust, HMS Suffolk slid gratefully towards the Icelandic haven of Hvalfjord. The heavy cruiser had been patrolling the Denmark Strait between Greenland and Iceland and her crew were looking forward to a quiet evening in harbour. Then a signal arrived warning them that their respite might be a short one. Bismarck, the ship they had been watching for, had been sighted at the Norwegian port of Bergen.
On arrival in Hvalfjordur Suffolk went straight off to refuel. The company were eating supper when another signal arrived. They were to return immediately to the Denmark Strait. The following morning, Friday, 23 May 1941, they met up with their sister ship Norfolk in the harbour at Isafjordur on the north-west coast of Iceland and headed off to take up their patrolling positions. The Strait was the most distant of the possible routes German warships could take from their own ports to the Atlantic. It was 300 miles long and 180 miles wide at its narrowest point, but even at this time of year it was still choked with pack ice which stretched eighty miles eastward from the Greenland coast.
The cruisers spent the day criss-crossing the sleeve of green water, flecked with floes, but saw nothing. Then, early that evening, the voice of Captain Robert Ellis sounded over the tannoy. He broadcast news that was both exciting and alarming. Bismarck had left Bergen. Her destination was unknown but there was a strong chance she was heading their way. The ship’s officers did not allow the revelation to disturb their sangfroid. They gathered, as usual, in the wardroom for a drink before dinner. The captain had just walked in to join them when a klaxon blared, calling all hands to their action stations. The officers slammed down their sherries and pink gins and dashed to their posts. ‘It was the enemy!’ Lieutenant Commander Charles Collett recorded afterwards. ‘[And] they were only six miles away, slinking along the edge of the ice in a snowstorm.’1
The moment that Winston Churchill and the Admiralty had been waiting for had arrived. Bismarck was at sea. Simultaneously, a great threat and a great opportunity had materialized. Sinking her would count as a magnificent naval victory. It would also provide some longed-for good news after a succession of setbacks, failures and disappointments. The relief of surviving the Battle of Britain had given way to the bleak realization of the nation’s isolation and the immensity of the difficulties ahead. The country was now engaged in another struggle for existence, which Churchill had christened the Battle of the Atlantic. Having failed to bring Britain to terms by the threat of invasion, Germany had switched strategy and was trying to starve her into submission, by cutting the lifelines that connected her with the rest of the world. Churchill was to judge later that ‘amid the torrent of violent events one anxiety reigned supreme … dominating all our power to carry on the war, or even keep ourselves alive, lay mastery of the ocean routes and the free approach and entry to our ports’.
It was the navy’s principal duty to defend these routes but the task was overwhelming. It no longer had the resources of the French fleet, a large part of which lay at the bottom of Mers-el-Kebir harbour, sunk by British guns. America gave all the help it could, but had yet to enter the war. Early engagements, in the battle for Norway and on the high seas, had failed to neutralize the threat from the German navy. Instead, in the spring of 1941, the Kriegsmarine was setting the pace in the struggle.
The main battleground was the vital sea lanes of the North Atlantic. In March and April 1941, nearly half a million tons of Allied shipping had been sent to the bottom. Most of it was sunk by U-boats, whose effectiveness had been badly underestimated by a complacent Admiralty in the interwar years. Until now the surface raiders that Admiral Pound had feared would ‘paralyse’ the sea lanes had played a secondary part in the campaign. That seemed about to change. A foray by the battle cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau in February and March had resulted in the destruction or capture of twenty-two ships totalling 115,600 tons. Now it was Bismarck’s turn and the transatlantic convoys, already ravaged by bombardment from land-based bombers and ambush by prowling U-boats, would be at the mercy of the most powerful German warship yet put to sea.
When the news of the sighting came through, Churchill was embarked on a weekend at Chequers with his wife Clementine, his daughter Sarah and her husband, the comedian Vic Oliver, as well as the devoted Major General Hastings ‘Pug’ Ismay, his Chief of Staff as Minister of Defence. He had also invited Averell Harriman, President Roosevelt’s special representative. Before dinner that Friday