Disaster at Stalingrad Read online

  The Royal Navy’s Fleet Air Arm was equipped with Fairey Albacore biplanes capable of level, dive- and torpedo-bombing roles but whose maximum speed was barely 140mph. They were already relics. Fighters were Sea Hurricanes of 885 Squadron, which were easily worn out in the stress of carrier operations. Victorious’s air component consisted of Albacore Squadrons 817 and 832 and Sea Hurricane Squadron 885, for a total of 42 aircraft.6

  Kirkenes, Norway, 1 July 1942

  The signalmen of the Luftwaffe’s 5th Signals Regiment thought they had been assigned to the back of beyond in the frozen Norwegian north where their primary mission was to intercept Allied and Russian aircraft radio communications. As unappreciated as they may have felt in such an isolated posting, they were worth their weight in gold. Their equally priceless counterparts in the Navy’s B-Dienst had laid bare enough Allied signals to give the Germans an enormous advantage. They were aided by a strong agent network in Iceland and enough local sympathizers to give them advance warning of every convoy sailing. The Germans knew exactly when PQ-17 and Hamilton’s cruisers had left Iceland.7

  Because of their warnings, the German 1st Battlegroup had departed from Trondheim early to avoid British air reconnaissance. Tirpitz and Hipper had arrived in Narvik to join the other two battlegroups under battlegroup commander Admiral Schniewind. His flag flew from mighty Tirpitz. The combined fleet would move farther north the next day to Altenfjord. From there they would be able to throw themselves across the path of the convoy in the quickest time as it passed between Bear Island and the southern tip of Spitzbergen. The absence from Trondheim of the German battleship was itself of great intelligence value to the Allies. The ogre was loose upon the seas, just as the intelligence from Sweden had predicted.

  The Home Fleet was cruising northeast of Iceland when the report was received that the Tirpitz was loose. Admiral Tovey was more than concerned for, if Tirpitz and Hipper were gone, that meant they had either moved up the coast to join the other German heavy ships or that they had struck directly northwest to intercept the convoy. If the former were true, the original operational plan would hold. If it were the latter, his battleships and carriers would have to race to intercept them for the Germans had at least one day’s head start and less distance to go. At least the lack of signals from the convoy escorts and Hamilton’s cruisers indicated that the enemy had not made contact. In the absence of any further information, he turned his force to speed towards where the enemy might be. He desperately hoped he would not find them already savaging the sheep in the fold.

  MAP №2 BATTLES OF BEAR ISLAND AND 20° EAST 3–4 JULY 1942

  To his immense relief a scout plane found the convoy just off Jan Mayen Island. At the same time, observers on the convoy saw the masts of the battleships, and for a while the convoy feared it was Tirpitz until a trawler properly identified them as the Home Fleet.

  At noon that same day, just as the convoy had passed Jan Mayen Island heading northeast, the convoy escorts sighted their first U-boats. They were driven off, but the escorts broke radio silence alerting the B-Dienst to their location.8

  73° North, 3° East in the Norwegian Sea, 2 July 1942

  Early in the afternoon, PQ-17 passed its counterpart QP-13 heading home. There were now three German reconnaissance aircraft shadowing the convoy, and they hung stubbornly on the rim of the horizon. Late that afternoon one of Hamilton’s destroyers reached the convoy and came alongside a tanker to refuel.

  Suddenly eleven He 115 floatplane torpedo-bombers made a half-hearted attack under the low overcast only to be driven off by the gunfire from the escorts. The squadron commander’s Heinkel was shot down, its crew scrambling into their yellow liferaft. Another German aircraft turned back from the retreating squadron and raced towards the bobbing crew. It was obviously a rescue mission to which the Allied antiaircraft gunners gave no sympathy. They concentrated their fire on the He 115 as it skimmed over the wavetops at zero feet and:

  …throttled back to a perfect halt amidst the giant spouts of salt water thrown up by the shells crashing down around them. Within moments the three airmen had climbed into the rescue plane; its pilot opened up the throttle wide, and careered across the sea between the shell bursts until it had gathered enough speed to lift off and vanish into the clouds.

  It was a brazen deed of great courage in the face of which the Allied crews could only gape in amazement.9

  Their amazement was about to turn into something far less edifying. The submarines that had been shadowing them had been trying to attack but had either been driven off by the very active escorts or found themselves socked in by dense fog. When U-255 surfaced it found the convoy had disappeared into the fog. U-456 trailed after by following the convoy’s oil slick. The U-boats were now reinforced with another six which all took up position as a screen across the convoy’s path. That same day Dönitz issued the order for the fleet to attack the convoy the next day.

  Altenfjord, Norway, 3 July 1942

  In the early morning hours, the German fleet slipped out of Altenfjord screened by a dozen destroyers and two E-boats. Hipper led the way with Admiral Carls flying his flag from it. The day was bright in the perpetual light of the Arctic summer. The fiord was tricky to navigate, full of hidden rocks, but Admiral Carls had ordered his commanders to defer to their Norwegian pilots as they wended their way to the open sea. As it was, Lützow nearly smashed into a ledge of jagged rocks barely under the surface. They sailed directly north towards Bear Island and the convoy, which was reported to be heading east to pass 30 miles north of it. Bear Island, a rocky and uninhabited 70 square mile Norwegian possession, was 240 miles from Altenfjord. It would be the fulcrum of the coming clash.

  For two days now German reconnaissance aircraft had been skimming around the convoy radioing its location as it moved steadily east at 8 knots. Its escorts darted around the convoy’s edge driving off the U-boats in a game of cat and mouse in which neither side had scored a kill, though it was not for lack of trying. A number of torpedoes were only stopped by the concentrated fire of the escorts and the guncrews on the merchant ships, blowing them out of the water sometimes at the very last minute. The mood was tense among the convoy and escort crews, but their morale had been boosted by their success. It would never be higher.

  Broome received a signal from the commander of the submarine HMS P.61410 which stated that ‘if heavy enemy surface units attacked, he intended to remain on the surface, receiving the reply from Broome, “So do 1.”’11

  On the bridge of Tirpitz Schniewind looked up to follow the noise of engines. Overhead a formation of twenty-three He 111 torpedo-bombers from KG 26 at Bardufoss was flying towards the convoy led by the Geschwader’s acting commander Hauptmann Eicke. The admiral did not see another thirty Ju 88 dive-bombers of KG 30 that were flying ahead of the torpedo-bombers. Eleven of the Kriegsmarine’s He 115 torpedo-bombers had also set out to attack the convoy. At the bases from which all these aircraft had just departed another mixed strike force was preparing to launch on order after the first had struck and was on the way home. The mission of the strike forces was to sink as many ships as possible and so disorganize the convoy that it would fall easy prey to the surface ships and the gathering wolf pack of U-boats codenamed Ice Devil.

  A Gruppe from JG 26 would join the fleet as it approached Bear Island to fly top cover, an ever mindful reminder of the Führer’s admonition to watch out for the carriers. With a round-trip range of 500 miles, the Fw 190s could just reach Bear Island and have a little precious loiter time. This would require the other two Gruppen of JG 26 to relieve each other in rotation. A patrol pattern SSW of Bear Island would also likely serve to intercept any Allied carrier aircraft.

  Gruppenkommandeur Major Josef ‘Pips’ Priller’s III./JG 26 of thirty Fw 190s would have the honour of the first rotation. Priller was a killer in the sky with seventy kills to his credit, most of them against the RAF, having shot down more Spitfires than any other German ace.12 He was a stocky, little man, jo
vial by nature, well-liked by his men, and with a penchant for talking back to his superiors. His three squadron commanders were the best in the Luftwaffe.

  They need not have worried at that time about the carriers. The Home Fleet with HMS Victorious and USS Wasp had not even passed Jan Mayen Island, 600 miles (1,000km) west of Altenfjord and almost as far to Bear Island, and was unaware of the location of the German ships, only that the Tirpitz and Hipper were missing from Trondheim. Fog along the Norwegian coast had prevented RAF reconnaissance of the naval bases at Narvik and farther north. It had also blanketed the convoy route intermittently. Tovey and Hamilton both knew that the German surface fleet had orders to be at sea, and signals intelligence indicated that German communications were spiking. It was not much to go on, but Tovey made some shrewd guesses based upon what he knew of the Germans and the location of the convoy. Within half an hour the Home Fleet had changed course and was steaming for Bear Island at 28 knots. From the decks of his two carriers, reconnaissance aircraft took off to scour the sea between the Home Fleet and Bear Island.

  If Tovey was far away, Hamilton and his cruisers were parallelling the convoy only 40 miles to the north. So far as he knew, the German reconnaissance planes did not know where he was.

  74° North, 5° East, Norwegian Sea, 3 July 1942

  Major Erich Bloedorn, commanding KG 30’s Ju 88 dive-bombers, caught the convoy in its eight-column formation just west of Bear Island just as it was turning northeast to go around the island. Bloedorn could not help but shout to himself, ‘Ausgezeichnet! [Excellent!]’

  The Ju 88 dive-bombers climbed high in order to gain the altitude from which they could come screaming down on the enemy to drop their bombs. This would distract the enemy guncrews from the attacks made by the He 111 torpedo-bombers as they came skimming right over the waves. They would come in from the southern flank of the convoy and from the rear at an oblique angle. The He 115s were to attack the head of the convoy, also from an oblique angle, at the same time.

  But plans have a way of going awry in wartime, especially in matters of coordination. Despite Hitler’s orders for the Kriegsmarine and Luftwaffe to cooperate in this operation, old animosities still lingered, animosities that had become habits. So the strike of the He 115s came in too early and did not wait for Bloedorn’s dive-bombers to start the show and draw British and American eyes upward.

  Instead, they were drawn to the water as the lumbering He 115s came in for the attack. They were spotted quickly by one of the antisubmarine trawlers of the escort. Within minutes Broome signalled the escorts, ‘to close the convoy at best speed to give antiaircraft support’. Air attack warnings sounded and the guncrews on the merchant vessels flew to their guns. The escorts swiftly drew in from their normal 3,000 yards perimeter to 1,000 yards. So well-drilled was the escort force that the torpedo-bombers could not find a way through the streams of lead to attack any of the merchant ships. The antiaircraft ships Palomares and Pozarica were particularly effective in sending up such a hail of fire that the Heinkel crews dared not drive home their attacks. Chastened, they pulled away in defeat, jettisoned their remaining torpedoes and flew off, to the relief of the escorts.

  Bloedorn’s initial elation had lasted only seconds until he realized that the convoy was already in action against a torpedo-bomber attack. ‘Who the hell can that be?’ he muttered. Whoever it was had just ruined his plan of attack. He thought quickly and decided simply to revise the attack sequence. He radioed the He 111 torpedo force to wait as he led his dive-bombers up to attack altitude.

  The Ju 88 was a formidable aircraft able to deliver a pinpoint attack with a 2,000kg bomb big enough to smash any merchant or escort vessel. Bloedorn’s planes fell on the convoy seemingly out of nowhere. Each of his squadrons struck as prearranged on the flanks or centre of the formation. Bloedorn led the attack into the centre of the convoy, down, down, down, with a big ship in his crosshairs, then released the bomb and hauled the control column back hard to pull his aircraft up and out of the way. He had not seen a single puff of antiaircraft fire, but now he felt the blast wave roll past his plane from the bomb he had just dropped. He looked back to see a cloud of black smoke rising from the centre of the ship. He would learn later that it was the Soviet ship Donbass that he had struck, one of the larger ships in the convoy at almost 8,000 tons. Its cargo of ammunition started exploding, and then with a thunderclap that pulsed over the sea and ships around, it blew to pieces.

  From the bridge of the Keppel, Broome could see that at least four more of his ships had been hit and were burning. The British oiler, the 8,400-ton Aldersdale, had not been touched. Luck had nothing to do with it. The German Navy had hopes to capture oilers and live off their heavy oil which was in such short supply. Oilers were not to be attacked.

  The Ju 88s regrouped to the south. Bloedorn was amazed that there appeared to be no losses. He led his planes back to the convoy to simulate another run as the air around them filled with black puffs of smoke and tracer. Good, he thought, keep watching us. The half dozen Ju 88s that had not released their bombs now hurtled down in a screaming high dive. One exploded in an orange burst and another trailed smoke and then broke apart.

  But already the He 111s had begun to make their runs. The Allied lookouts were still scanning the sky when the torpedoes began to splash into the water. Signalman Taylor aboard the Palomares saw a Heinkel approach, drop its fish, and climb quickly. A few of the ship’s Oerlikons and pom-poms opened fire to no avail. Captain Jauncey was in the process of throwing the helm over when the torpedo struck. The ship shuddered with the explosion in the engine room. The seawater rushing in flooded the boilers. The Palomares was dead in the water and listing when another torpedo surged by to hit the American Liberty ship Christopher Newport, destroying its engine room. The rescue ship Zamalek quickly steamed over to take off survivors. Zamalek’s flinty Welsh captain was surprised as the Liberty ship’s mostly black crew cheerfully boarded his vessel in their best shoregoing clothes.13

  The Christopher Newport drifted abandoned now as other ships swerved to avoid it. Elsewhere another torpedo ‘skimmed the stern of Aldersdale to hit the Russian tanker Azerbaijan which disappeared behind a huge sheet of flame’. Amazingly, Azerbaijan emerged at 9 knots still going. Its largely female crew had stood by their ship. The day had started out hard on the Russians.14

  The Americans and British were not denied their share of the Furor Teutonicus. Leutnant Hennemann, a squadron leader, was just about to become legend. This daring young officer had already received a letter of commendation from Goring for destroying 50,000 tons of Allied shipping. Now he came in just over the water in an interval between the ship columns, dropped a bomb on a ship ‘then banked across the bow of the Pozarica with all the panache of a medieval Landsknecht, apparently contemptuous of the shell bursts of the ack-ack ship’s pom-poms’. His aircraft now burning from a number of hits, Hennemann flew so low that ship’s gunners fired level, many of their rounds striking other ships. He released his torpedoes which bounced over the water then submerged to hit the British Navarino. Hennemann’s plane crashed into the water just ahead of Broome’s Keppel. The polyglot crew of the passing Panamanian El Capitán could see the crew writhing in the flames. The seamen cursed them and cheered in a brutal lack of chivalry. Only later would the survivors of the British and American ships who had also observed the hero’s death uniformly praise the courage of Hennemann and his crew. Hennemann was posthumously awarded the Knights Cross.15

  Behind them another torpedo struck the American William Hooper, blowing its boiler clear out of the ship to hit the water with an enormous splash. Astern many of the crew of the Navarino had fallen into the water from capsized lifeboats. As the Bellingham ploughed right through the struggling seamen, one of them raised a fist and shouted defiantly, ‘On to Moscow… See you in Russia!’16

  On the approaches to Bear Island, 3 July 1942

  Broome had broken radio silence as soon as the air attack began, alerting
both Tovey and Hamilton. At the same time, Bloedorn had radioed the fleet that his attack was beginning. That also triggered the dispatch of the second strike group from its airbases in Norway. Now all three surface groups were converging, unknown to each other, on the stricken convoy off Bear Island.

  Broome was immensely relieved two hours later to see the arrival of Hamilton’s cruisers. Eight of his ships had either been badly damaged or sunk. The additional protection of the cruisers would be a great help should the enemy attack again. Both Broome and Hamilton launched their scout planes to patrol to the south and southeast of the convoy. Tovey’s scout planes by now had also come within range. They broke radio silence to report that the entire German surface force was heading straight for Bear Island. The report stunned the command group on the bridge of the Duke of York. Tovey realized that the Germans would strike the convoy a good four hours before he would get there. He radioed Hamilton this news and ordered him to screen the convoy until the Home Fleet arrived. Hamilton had just given the same order having received the same warning from his own scout plane. Hamilton would have his cruiser screening mission, just as he had anticipated. He then told Broome to keep his ships moving east to put as much distance between them and the oncoming German ships. He detached submarines P.614 and P.615 to his own cruiser force. If their original mission was to defend the convoy against German capital ships, they would have the best chance of that by operating with his cruisers.17