Breakout

(Conspicuous Gallantry Medal).

The five destroyer captains who took part in the action against the battleships were also given decorations.

Captain Mark Pizey of HMS Campbell was made a C. B. (Commander of the Bath), Captain J. E Wright of HMS Mackay was given a bar to his DSO, and a DSO went to Lt.- Cdr. R. Alexander (Vivacious), Lt.-Cdr. W. A. Juniper (Whitshed) and Lt.-Cdr. Colin Coats (Worcester).

The Germans awarded medals for their side of the battle. Both Captain Hoffmann and Admiral Ciliax were awarded the Knight's Cross. One of Germany's highest awards, it is only given to someone who already has the Iron Cross, 1st and 2nd Class. Ciliax was awarded the Knight's Cross because he had been the commander of Operation Cerberus. His task was to carry out the detailed orders of Naval Group West in Paris and he had done that well. Captain Otto Fein of Gneisenau, who had commanded the squadron for most of the voyage, received nothing.

The sailors had no illusions about Ciliax's conduct during the battle. Someone composed a ribald song about him which was sung to a popular tune on all the ratings' mess-decks. Soon the rude song penetrated to the wardrooms.

The captains of the three ships tried to stop this song being sung. Captain Helmuth Brinkmann of the Prinz Eugen came out with the direct command 'This song is not to be sung.' But this was one order the well-disciplined German sailors never obeyed.

While the controversy still raged, Churchill for once remained totally out of sympathy with the British public. Although certain RAF officers like Joubert were quietly shunted aside, he refused to make any open criticism of the Navy's conduct of the battle.

This was understandable in wartime because — like The Times editorial — it would only add to the Germans' joy. But he consistently refused to criticize them later in either speeches or his published works.

This was obviously due to the fact that as a former First Lord of the Admiralty in both World Wars he had a special, almost blind, affection for the Royal Navy. Yet, unlike the German Fuhrer, he was a 'sea animal,' and his naval strategic sense in the long run proved better than Hitler's.

Churchill stated after the war: 'Viewed in the after-light and in its larger aspects the episode was highly advantageous to us.' His view proved to be the correct one. The battleships, effectively bottled up in German ports, meant the threat to the Atlantic which had existed so long as they remained in Brest had disappeared.

One man who agreed with him was Grand-Admiral Raeder, head of the German Navy, who commented, 'It was a tactical success but a strategic defeat.'

The Channel battle was not a total defeat for Britain. The German battleships, although they achieved victory, soon ended their careers as fighting ships.

A fortnight later Bomber Command revenged themselves by finishing off Gneisenau. Damaged by the mine, she was in dry dock at Kiel when the RAF made her the target of a massive attack. For three nights between 25 and 27 February bombers pounded her. On the first night 61 bombers came over, 49 arrived on the second night and on the third 68 bombers attacked. On this same night, 33 bombers also attacked Scharnhorst in Wilhelmshaven. She escaped unscathed, but British bombs smashed Gneisenau's bows and foredecks. It was the end. Her hulk was eventually towed to Gdynia in Poland, and filled with concrete to become a block-ship fort.

Ciliax was also proved right about the dangers of Norwegian waters. Just before dawn on 23 February Prinz Eugen was approaching Trondheim when a torpedo from HMS Trident, commanded by Cdr. G. M. Sladen, ripped off her stem. She managed to limp into the sheltered anchorage at Aasfiord, but she never went to sea operationally again during the war. In 1948, as part of the United States Navy in the Allied share-out, she was sunk at Bikini Atoll in the atomic bomb tests.

Although Scharnhorst was ready for sea again after six months, her fate was to be the worst. On Boxing Day, 26 December 1943, the twilight of noon was fading to the darkness of an Arctic afternoon when she was cornered off North Cape by Admiral Sir Bruce Fraser and the Home Fleet.

She was first detected by two British cruisers, Norfolk and Belfast, who began to hold her steadily in their radar. Then Admiral Fraser aboard his flagship, Duke of York, picked her up on his own radar at twenty-two nautical miles.

At 4:45 p.m. the Duke of York's first 14-inch salvo fired from six miles away straddled her and made one hit. Scharnhorst continued to steam away eastward, turning briefly at intervals to fire a broadside, then resuming headlong flight. For an hour it looked as if she would escape.

In the chase the Duke of York made three more hits — so did the cruisers. No Royal Naval ship received any serious damage, though the flagship was frequently straddled, and one of her masts was smashed by an 11-inch shell.

In complete darkness, five hundred miles north of the Arctic Circle, through strong winds and heavy seas, the running battle went on for two hours. At 6 p.m. Scharnhorst's main battery went silent. But battered and crippled as she was, with half her crew dead or wounded, she continued to fight like a wounded shark. Her secondary armament was still firing wildly as the British ships closed in to sink her with torpedoes.

At 7 p.m. the squadron commander, Vice-Admiral Bey— the same officer who had commanded the destroyers in the Channel break-out — exchanged a last greeting with the German Admiralty and Hitler which said, 'Long live Germany and the Fuhrer!' At 7:28 p.m. Duke of York fired her 77th salvo at her. Fifty-two torpedoes had already been fired but the last three — fired at 7:37 p.m. by HMS Jamaica from just under two miles range — finished her.

At 7:45 p.m. Scharnhorst exploded and sank in a dense cloud of smoke. Only thirty-six survivors — not one of them an officer — were recovered alive from the icy, turbulent sea. The rest of her crew of 1,940 men, including Admiral Bey, went down with her.

APPENDIX

The sister ships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were launched within two months of each other in 1936, Scharnhorst at Wilhelmshaven, Gneisenau at Kiel. Their full load displacement was 32,000 tons. Standard displacement was 26,000 tons, and overall length 741 feet. They reached thirty-two knots on trials, and were heavily armoured with steel twelve inches thick in places. Their two armoured decks were 2.5 and 4.5 inches thick. Both carried nine 11-inch guns, twelve 5.9s, fourteen 4.1s and sixteen 1.45 A.A. guns in twin mountings. They also carried six 21-inch torpedo tubes, which had no war-heads at the time of the Brest break-out.

Prinz Eugen, a heavy cruiser of the 'Hipper' class, was launched in the summer of 1938. She had a displacement of 10,000 tons with eight 8-inch guns, twelve 4.1 A.A. guns and twelve 37-mm A.A. guns. Her armour was 5 inches thick in places, and she carried twelve 21-in. torpedo tubes. Her top speed was also thirty-two knots.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The following is a selected list of the books I consulted in the preparation of this book:

Busch, Fritz Otto: The Drama of the Scharnhorst. London: Robert Hale, 1956.

---The Story of the Prinz Eugen. London: Robert Hale, 1950.

Cameron, Ian: Wings of the Morning. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1962.

Churchill, Winston: The Hinge of Fate. London: Cassell, 1950.