Hitler’s Pre-Emptive War: The Battle for Norway, 1940 (96 page)

Glorious
and her escorts were thus about 100 nautical miles behind
Devonshire
when one of the worst calamities in British naval history began to unfold. The catastrophe could have been far worse if the Germans had their reconnaissance aircraft aloft since they would undoubtedly have discovered both the
Devonshire
and the second troop convoy.

At 1645 hours on June 8, the lookout on
Scharnhorst
sighted smoke off the starboard bow. The Germans immediately altered course and headed towards the sighting. As they approached they recognized the silhouette of an aircraft carrier.
Glorious
, recognizing the danger, turned away and tried to escape from her pursuers. Admiral Marschall continued on a course that would bring his battleships to the windward of the carrier, forcing that ship to turn towards the Germans if she attempted to turn into the wind to launch her aircraft.

Gneisenau
opened fire with her secondary armament against the escorting destroyers at 1728 hours and
Scharnhorst
opened fire on the carrier with her 11-inch guns four minutes later, at a range of 25,000 meters.
Gneisenau
opened fire on the
Glorious
with her main armaments at 1746 hours. This distance far exceeded the range of the 4.7-inch guns on the aircraft carrier. The radio operators on
Glorious
tried to report the presence of the Germans but the Germans believed that they had succeeded in jamming the transmission. The British version is that the initial report was interrupted when a salvo from
Scharnhorst
struck the bridge. No signals were received from the two destroyers, which is strange. The
Devonshire
received a garbled and incomplete message with the words “2 PB” (2 Pocket Battleships). Its authenticity was suspect and Cunningham decided not to break radio silence and possibly give away his position because of the important passengers the cruiser was carrying.

Scharnhorst
found the range with her third salvo and a projectile penetrated and exploded in the forward hanger among the Hurricanes that were stored there. The spreading fire made it impossible to get any of the Swordfish aircraft aloft. About 1800 hours, an 11-inch shell hit the carrier’s bridge, killing the captain and destroying the steering controls. The two destroyer escorts laid a smoke screen that successfully concealed the carrier, now on a southeasterly course, for about 20 minutes.

The destroyer
Ardent
turned back through the smoke and launched her torpedoes at
Gneisenau
. The German battleship avoided the torpedoes by evasive maneuvers that bought the carrier a few more minutes of survival but both German ships opened fire at the British destroyer with their secondary armaments. The devastating German fire tore the British destroyer apart and caused her to capsize and sink within four minutes.

Glorious
now emerged into view from behind the smoke and both German battleships opened fire on her with their main armaments. An 11-inch shell struck the aft part of the carrier and this sealed her fate. At 1820 hours, the order to abandon ship was given and the Germans ceased firing at the sinking ship at 1843 hours as the carrier was showing a 40-degree list. It sank at 1908 hours.

With
Ardent
sunk and
Glorious
sinking, no one would have faulted Lieutenant Commander C. E. Glasfurd, the captain of
Acasta
, if he had tried to disengage and save his destroyer. For a while, it appeared to the crew that he had chosen this course. Leading Seaman C. Carter, the only survivor from
Acasta
tells the story:

After that message to his crew, Lieutenant Commander Glasfurd made a 180-degree turn into his own smoke. As the destroyer exited the smoke, it made a starboard turn and fired its port torpedoes against
Scharnhorst
at a distance of 14,000 meters. Despite evasive action, one torpedo hit the battleship on the starboard side near the aft turret at 1840 hours as she was coming back to her original course, killing two officers and 46 men. The explosion put the aft turret out of commission and caused flooding that forced the shutdown of the amidships and starboard main engines. This reduced the battleship’s maximum speed to 20 knots.
Acasta
reentered the smoke screen without receiving fire but as she emerged from the smoke for another torpedo attack, the Germans were ready. The
Gneisenau
, which had tried to keep the enemy in sight, sent a rain of projectiles from her secondary armament at a range of 10,000 meters against the destroyer, registering a number of hits. One hit in the aft of the ship caused a violent explosion.
Acasta
, making only five knots and partially shielded in the smoke, kept firing her guns at the adversary and scored a hit near Turret C on the
Scharnhorst
without causing any severe damage.
Gneisenau
turned away at 1916 hours to look after
Scharnhorst
, leaving
Acasta
motionless with fires covering two-thirds of the ship.
Acasta
sank shortly thereafter. Leading Seaman Carter continues his story:

The German reports are full of praise for the gallant and skillful actions of the two British destroyers. The two German battleships had fired a total of 387 11-inch and 1,448 6-inch shells against the British. This was a lot of munitions but represented only 20% of what they had available and there was therefore plenty left to continue the operation.

Instead, Marschall decided to break off the operation and escort the damaged
Scharnhorst
to Trondheim. Based on the information at hand, his decision is understandable. However, the wisdom of his earlier decision to send
Hipper
and the four destroyers to Trondheim to refuel in preparation for a secondary mission is questionable. If he had not done so, he could have sent the damaged
Scharnhorst
back to Trondheim with a destroyer escort and continued the operation with the
Gneisenau
and the heavy cruiser. There is a high probability that these ships would have encountered the second troop convoy steaming unknowingly towards the scene of the disaster. However, this is only apparent in retrospect.

Hindsight is not needed to see the grievous mistakes made by the British Admiralty and Forbes. While the British were preoccupied with events in France and the threat of a cross-Channel invasion, this does not explain why the heavy units of the Royal Navy were kept at anchor in Scapa Flow or in the waters north of Scotland. The Home Fleet was not responsible for either the operations in the Channel or off Norway but, as pointed out by Moulton, the “cover for both was surely its prime responsibility.” Admiral Forbes had the battle cruisers
Repulse
and
Renown
, the battleships
Rodney
and
Valiant
, and several cruisers and destroyers at his disposal. Part of this powerful force was sent north to reinforce the Northern Patrol and to investigate reports of a German landing in Iceland.

It appears that the battleship
Valiant
and four destroyers were sent out to meet the first troop convoy more as an afterthought. When
Valiant
learned from the hospital ship
Atlantis
on June 9 that two German battleships were in the waters off Norway, she headed for the second convoy at full speed.
Valiant
also notified Forbes who finally left with the
Rodney
,
Renown
, and six destroyers. He also ordered the
Repulse
, two cruisers, and three destroyers, still near Iceland, to join him.

In the official British history, Derry concludes that Operation
Juno
“achieved by luck a considerable success for which it was not designed.” This may be technically true but it is also misleading. The British were the ones who were lucky. Had it not been for the gallant self-sacrifice of the two destroyers and Glasfurd’s lucky torpedo, Marschall would have continued his operation and probably located and destroyed the
Devonshire
as well as the second convoy. The sinking of
Devonshire
would have had far-reaching political repercussions and would have been a severe blow to Britain’s naval reputation. The loss of this ship, a second carrier, and the second convoy with approximately 20,000 troops, passengers, and crewmembers would truly have been calamitous.

The Admiralty and Forbes made the dangerous error of assuming that the lack of evidence for actual or intended German naval operations off Norway meant that they did not intend or were incapable of such operations. As in the case of the invasion in April, they based their decisions on what they viewed as the most likely German course of action rather than on German capabilities and the most dangerous course of action.

Captain MacIntyre may be correct in his conclusion that divided authority on the British side contributed to the disaster. Churchill’s appointment of Admiral Cork, much senior to Admiral Forbes, to command an area within the Home Fleet’s region of responsibility was bound to create confusion and misjudgments but it is also a damaging conclusion about the professionalism at the highest levels of the Royal Navy at this stage of the war. Marschall was recalled for his perceived errors during Operation
Juno
. No action was taken against commanders of the Home Fleet.

The loss of one of the four carriers available was severe for the British Navy. Few survivors were rescued. The Norwegian ship
Borgund
rescued 38 men from
Glorious
and the lone survivor from
Acasta
on June 11 and brought them to the Faeroe Islands. Two were also rescued by a German seaplane. In all, 1,515 lost their lives. All aircraft and pilots from Norway that could have been used in the looming Battle of Britain were lost.

Admiral Marschall took the
Gneisenau
,
Hipper
, and four destroyers back to sea on June 10 to continue the operation against the convoys. The sortie did not lead to any contacts and was cancelled by Naval Group West when it concluded that the Allied evacuation was completed and there was therefore nothing of importance to be accomplished in the north. Marschall brought his ships to Trondheim in the morning of June 11. On that day, 12 aircraft from Bomber Command carried out an unsuccessful attack against the German ships. Early on 13 June, 15 Skuas from
Ark Royal
attacked the German ships in their anchorage in Trondheim. One 500-lb bomb struck
Scharnhorst
but rolled overboard without detonating. Eight British aircraft were downed by antiaircraft fire and fighters.

Admiral Lütjens took
Gneisenau
and
Hipper
back to sea on June 20. He headed for the Iceland-Faeroe Island gap in an attempt to divert British attention from
Scharnhorst’s
return to Germany.
Gneisenau
was hit by a torpedo from the British submarine
Clyde
shortly before midnight on June 20 while 40 nautical miles off the Norwegian coast. The torpedo tore a large hole through both sides of the forward portion of the battleship. No armaments were affected and there were no casualties. However, the sortie was aborted and the ships returned to Trondheim to make emergency repairs.

It was decided that the battleship needed to return to Germany in order to make more extensive repairs. A fleet consisting of
Gneisenau
,
Hipper
, the light cruiser
Nürnberg
, and the destroyers
Galster
,
Ihn
,
Lody
, and
Jacobi
left Trondheim on July 25. Five torpedo boats were later added as escorts. The torpedo boat
Luchs
happened to be in the track of a torpedo fired at
Gneisenau
by a British submarine. The torpedo boat sank after a violent explosion. The German ships arrived in Kiel in the morning of July 28. Operation
Juno
was concluded after eight weeks.

The Human and Material Costs of the Campaign

In comparison to other theaters of operations in World War II, the losses in lives in Norway were small. However, when viewed against the number of combatants involved (about 100,000 German, 55,000 Norwegians, and 38,000 Allied), the number of casualties in the 62-day campaign came to over six percent. Even today, some of the statistics covering losses vary and are misleading, particularly as they apply to specific actions. Ash’s statement that “German Army casualties were a good third higher than the casualties of the Norwegians and all the Allied units put together,” even when losses at sea are discounted, is not supported by figures released by the various participants. Norwegian and Allied casualties on land were about 25% higher than those of the Germans.