When Scharnhorst left Altenfjord in northern Norway on what was to be her last voyage, she was probably the Royal Navy’s most hated enemy. This 32,000-ton German battleship had been the killer of the armed merchant cruiser Rawalpiridi; she had sunk the aircraft-carrier Glorious together with her escorts, the destroyers Ardent and Acasta, with dreadful loss of life. Even while Scharnhorst was holed up in a Norwegian base, powerful Royal Navy units had to be used as cover for the Murmansk convoys to Russia to protect them from the threat of attacks by her nine 11 in guns, backed by a formidable array of AA armament and torpedo tubes.

Similarly in the Atlantic. The U-boat menace was grave enough—in November 1942 U-boats sank more than 700,000 tons of Allied shipping in the Atlantic in one month —but Scharnhorst could do more damage to a convoy than a whole pack of U-boats.

The Germans for their part, could be more relaxed. Christmas Day 1943 found Scharnhorst‘s crew ignoring the blizzard that raged at the fjord’s mouth. Christmas parcels had been distributed, cigar-smoke wreathed the mess-decks and even the presence of the admiral himself did not cramp the celebrations. For Rear Admiral Erich Bey was an old destroyer man, accustomed to the more free-and-easy manners of small ships. He was a real ‘old salt’, with a friendly smile, a bluff manner and a broad sense of humor—as well as a first-class fighting sailor with a record to prove it.

“Lucky” Scharnhorst

With Vice Admiral Oscar Kummetz, his immediate superior, on leave, Bey was about to hoist his flag in Scharnhorst, known as the German Navy’s ‘lucky ship’ ; a ship with four years of combat in which she had been damaged by mines, torpedoes, aircraft and shells from British capital ships—and had always emerged to fight on. Bey believed in her; Captain Hintze, still new to his command, loved her; her veteran crew worshipped her.

Bey came aboard from the battleship Tirpitz, crippled by a British midget submarine attack, and lying some 10 miles back in Kaafjord at the base of Altenfjord. At 1400 he gave the order : ‘Make ready for sea’. The Christmas celebrations were over for the battleship’s crew of nearly 2,000 men.

Bey had received his directive from Admiral Otto Schniewind, commander of Naval Group North, based at Kiel, who had received it in turn from the Commander-in-Chief, Grand Admiral Doenitz, in Berlin. A British convoy had been reported, Murmansk-bound with arms for Russia, where the Red Army was about to launch a massive counterattack on the Leningrad front.

Earlier that year, Adm. Schniewind had declared: ‘All my commanding officers are in no doubt that the main purpose of their ships is to fight’. But now that Tirpitz had been permanently crippled and unable to move, and Gneisenau had been smashed by the RAF at Kiel, Scharnhorst was his only major unit. And Adm. Doenitz, harassed by Hitler’s rages at the Navy’s lack of success and his threats to ‘scrap all the big ships—draft their crews to the Eastern Front—use their guns for coastal defense—’, ordered Scharnhorst, his last battleship, to sea.

In the worst of Arctic weather, Bey was ordered to take Scharnhorst out with an escort of five destroyers. The target was convoy JW55B, heading towards Russia from Scotland. In November 1943, Bey had said that Scharnhorst should not be committed to action until Tirpitz could accompany her. Lightning destroyer raids were all that could be contemplated, he warned, adding ‘. . . experience in this war which, despite our weakness, has produced many favorable situations for us, justifies the hope that we may have luck on our side’. Now he must push his luck to the limit. As Scharnhorst and her destroyers left Altenfjord, at about 1900, in the face of blizzards, strong winds and mountainous seas, Bey received a direct message from Doenitz : ‘Attack and destroy the convoy to alleviate the struggle of your comrades on the Eastern Front’.

The 19 ships that made up convoy JW55B were not ill-protected. Their close escort of two corvettes and 15 destroyers, led by Captain J. A. McCoy in Onslow, was supported by three cruisers under the command of Vice-Admiral Robert Burnett in Belfast, in company with Sheffield and Norfolk. This, German Naval Command believed, was the sum of the convoy’s escort. Adm. Doenitz, in his memoirs, said: ‘A convoy carrying war material for Russia … protected by a cruiser escort that was no match for our battleship … could not hope to avoid our attack’. He had no doubt that Scharnhorst, with a speed advantage in a heavy sea, could deal with all three cruisers. He may have decided that the British destroyers would be ineffectual in such weather, because Scharnhorst had already reported that her own destroyers were near-helpless in the angry seas.

The first report on the exact position of the convoy had been made as early as 0900 on 25 December by the submarine U-601. Subsequent reports from U-boats and reconnaissance aircraft (when weather allowed them to fly) kept Doenitz, Schniewind and Bey informed on the convoy’s movements. Bey had planned to hit the convoy at ‘first light’; a vague phrase, since the maximum ‘daylight’ to be expected in the Arctic winter is an uncertain murk between 0830 and 1530. Otherwise, it is near-total darkness. What the Germans did not know was that on 24 December, Admiral Sir Bruce Fraser, C-in-C of the British Home Fleet, had ordered the convoy on to a reverse course for some three hours and had subsequently increased its speed. These factors were seriously to affect the German calculations.

After receiving a report from U-601 stating: ‘Wind south, Force 7 (up to 33 knots), rain, visibility two miles’, Schniewind asked Doenitz to call off the whole operation, since there were signs that the weather would grow even worse. Doenitz ordered that the attack go on. Schniewind complied, but sent Bey a curious signal… a concerted attack will only be delivered if conditions are favorable. If conditions do not suit Scharnhorst, destroyers will attack alone’. Then, remembering that Bey had already hinted that his destroyers could not operate in the heavy seas, Schniewind suggested that Bey should ‘consider’ an attack by Scharnhorst alone. Schniewind was trying to have it both ways: whatever happened, he could now show that he had both urged an attack—and also advocated caution.

The three-cornered exchange of signals between the German admirals had unfortunate results. First, Bey’s signals had been picked up and deciphered by the British; they knew by 0400 on 26 December that Scharnhorst was at sea with the destroyers Z-29, Z-30, Z-33, Z-34 and Z-38. As Adm. Fraser had feared, it was obvious that the Murmansk convoy was threatened. Second, in the buzz of talk between the German admirals, a most important message had failed to reach Scharnhorst in its entirety. This warning, sent by an aircraft soon after Scharnhorst sailed, spoke of ‘five warships, one apparently a big ship, north-west of Norway’.

The message reached the admirals by way of Luftwaffe intelligence at Kiel. But the Luftwaffe officer who took the report was a little too efficient. Knowing of the dreadful weather conditions off Norway (which were to ground most of the Luftwaffe on 25 and 26 December), he doubted the accuracy of the report—and censored it! The message as it reached the admirals omitted the phrase ‘one apparently a big ship’. Bey assumed, with the tacit agreement of Doenitz and Schniewind, that the sighting referred to his own five destroyers, which he had sent ahead on a scouting run.

But the report was accurate. And the ‘big ship’ was the Royal Navy’s 44,500-ton battleship Duke of York, whose main armament was ten 14in guns; she was some four knots slower than Scharnhorst but even more heavily armored. The flagship of Fraser’s Home Fleet, the Duke of York, was accompanied by the cruiser Jamaica, the destroyers Savage, Saumarez, Scorpion and the Royal Norwegian Navy ship Stord. Six ships in all; and although Fraser (like Bey) had broken radio silence, his messages had not been intercepted by the Germans.

The trap is set

The battle of North Cape, off the northernmost point of Scandinavia, began on the morning of 26 December 1943 at 0825, when the destroyer Z-29 signalled to Scharnhorst: ‘Silhouette sighted distance four miles’. The destroyers had made contact with Burnett’s cruisers and thus, presumably, with the convoy. Scharnhorst drove at 32 knots—full speed —towards the scene. But she was heading into a trap: Burnett’s cruisers were well east of the convoy, and now steered to intercept Scharnhorst. Fraser, now some 150 miles south-west of the convoy, was heading north-east, also on an interception course. The convoy itself lay farther west than either Fraser or Burnett.

But could the British close the jaws of their trap swiftly enough both to save the convoy and cut off Scharnhorst? And could the British destroyers, which were intended to play an important part in the action, operate in a sea so rough that Bey was later to send his destroyers back to base?

The battle was to last for around 12 hours, and Scharnhorst’s first encounter with Burnett’s cruisers was to lead to her eventual destruction. At 0922, when all three cruisers had made radar contact at ranges between 16 and ten miles, Belfast signalled: ‘Enemy in sight’. At 0927 Burnett gave the order to open fire. Within three minutes, shells from Norfolk‘s 8in guns had scored hits—wrecking Scharnhorst‘s forward radar equipment.

Radar in the British ships was superior to that of the German navy. It enabled the Norfolk to find the range of the Scharnhorst in near-darkness, while the German’s inferior installations meant that reliance had to be placed on optical range-finding methods.

Now, in near-total darkness, Scharnhorst‘s forward vision was blinded. The British cruisers saw her as a bright ‘blip’ on their radar screens, but to Scharnhorst her adversaries were no more than shadows glimpsed occasionally through the half light. Only in the little daylight that could be expected if the weather improved would Scharnhorst be able to exploit her superior fire-power. Now she could only rely on her speed to dodge around the cruisers, rather than fight a way through them, strike at the convoy, and then head back to base.

But in Duke of York, still some distance from the cruisers, Adm. Fraser had guessed what Scharnhorst would do. At 0958 he signalled to Captain McCoy, commanding convoy JW55B’s destroyer escort and thus much closer to the cruisers than Fraser, ordering: ‘Send four destroyers to join Belfast‘. For Scharnhorst had broken off her action with the cruisers and, with her greater bulk giving her about a five-knot advantage in such a sea, was heading north. The cruisers could hope to do little more than shadow her—but destroyers might get close enough to launch a torpedo attack. And once Scharnhorst was slowed down, Duke of York would be upon her for the kill.

The four destroyers sent by McCoy—Musketeer, Matchless, Opportune and Virago, commanded by Commander R. L. Fisher—joined Belfast at 1024. Adm. Burnett now took his reinforced squadron to a station some ten miles ahead of the convoy, where he hoped Scharnhorst might again be encountered. By 1044, he was forced to tell Fraser that he had completely lost contact with the German battleship. At 1103, Fraser was signalling to Burnett: ‘Unless touch can be regained, there is no chance of finding enemy’.

But in the next half-hour, a new report came from the convoy itself; the destroyer Onslaught signaled: ‘Radar contact at 62 miles’. The ensuing excitement was quashed by Belfast‘s signal four minutes later: ‘Onslaught’s contact is me!’ Had Bey decided to abandon the attack? Were Scharnhorst‘s radio operators chuckling as they picked up fragments of the British game of ‘hide-and-seek’, while their own ship dashed back to base?

The answer came just after noon, when Belfast reported: ‘Unidentified radar contact, 13 miles’. At 1220, Sheffield signaled: ‘Enemy in sight’. For although Bey had now received a report of an unidentified vessel, thought to be Duke of York, in the area, he had not abandoned his attack. But once again he had run slap into the cruiser screen, now strengthened by four destroyers.

A gun-duel began immediately. The British cruisers opened fire at 11,000 yards, while the destroyers attempted to edge closer in order to launch torpedoes. But visibility was somewhat improved, and so Scharnhorst was no longer ‘blind’—and her 11 in guns were manned by veterans. Within 20 minutes, Norfolk had lost her 8in after-turret and all her radar sets bar one. Seven men had been killed. Sheffield had suffered less damage, although enough to put her out of the action with engine trouble. Scharnhorst, according to official German sources, was not hit. The British destroyers, laboring in huge seas, had no chance of launching torpedoes or of doing any damage with their main armament of 4.7in guns.

It is difficult, therefore, to understand Bey’s next move. According to Fritz-Otto Busch, whose book ‘Holocaust at Sea’ claims to be based on interviews with survivors, Bey told Captain Hintze: ‘We must get out of this !’ and ordered the action to be broken off. Since hits on both Norfolk and Sheffield had been observed, together with ‘straddles’ on Belfast, it has been suggested by both German and British naval historians that Bey should have fought it out—with a good chance of success.

But it must be remembered that Bey now had reason to believe that Duke of York might be approaching. On him lay the grave responsibility of preserving Germany’s most powerful active ship. He had been informed that the Luftwaffe was grounded by bad weather and, at 1418, he sent his destroyers home for the same reason. It is difficult to blame him for deciding to live to fight another day, to abandon the attack and head for Norway. Scharnhorst‘s presence in Altenfjord was enough to keep powerful warships tied down to defend the Murmansk convoys. Hitler’s unfair verdict, given later, was to accuse Bey of having run away from an inferior force, saying that ‘too much thought is given to the safety of our ships, as in the case of the Graf Spee.’

With Burnett’s cruisers and destroyers dropping astern once more, Bey headed back towards Norway. He believed that he had an excellent chance of escape. So did his crew, for when Captain Hintze announced ‘We are returning to base’, he was answered by enthusiastic cheers. Had they not damaged two British cruisers without loss to themselves? Scharnhorst was a lucky ship!

But Scharnhorst‘s luck had run out. Duke of York and her consorts now lay across her homeward course, and without forward radar the Germans had no way of knowing what lay ahead. The brief daylight hours were fading. Scharnhorst was now more than 400 miles inside the Arctic Circle, off Norway’s North Cape.

A burst of star-shell, turning night to bright day, came from Belfast at 1646—just ten minutes after Duke of York, ahead of Scharnhorst, had recorded radar contact at 13 miles. One of the destroyer Scorpion‘s officers later recalled: ‘I could see Scharnhorst so clearly that I noticed her turrets were facing fore and aft. This showed she was not prepared for action. And what a lovely sight she was at full speed. Then, at 1650, she was almost obliterated by a wall of water from Duke of York’s first salvo . . . .’ And each of Duke of York’s 14in shells weighed 1,4001b.

As Duke of York’s first salvo scored a perfect ‘straddle’, including a possible hit, Scharnhorst‘s men again raced to the action stations from which they had been briefly stood down after nine hours. Even so, it was some minutes before the German battleship was able to bring her guns to bear. And while Bey ordered Hintze to turn northeast at full speed, to break the British ring, both Duke of York and Jamaica were scoring hits. Fraser had ordered the destroyers to prepare for a torpedo attack—but first Scharnhorst must be slowed down by gunfire.

It was almost certainly the 14in guns of Duke of York that crippled Scharnhorst‘s forward 11 in turret and caused her other fore-turret to cease fire temporarily. Bey signalled to Schniewind: ‘In action with heavy battleship.’ Schniewind’s response was to order all U-boats in the area to concentrate ahead of the convoy (which got through unscathed) or close on Scharnhorst. There was little hope of their arrival in time. At 1724, Scharnhorst signalled: ‘Surrounded by a strong force’.

Scharnhorst still had teeth. She drew far enough away from the smaller British ships to engage Duke of York alone. The battleships exchanged broadsides at ranges of between 17,000 and 20,000 yards. Scharnhorst scored hits on both Duke of York’s masts, threatening the all-important radar installations with two 11 in shells—but both failed to explode. Duke of York’s aim was just as good—and her ammunition more effective. By 1820 she had fired 52 broadsides, of which no fewer than 31 were ‘straddles’, including possible hits, and a further 16 were spotted as falling within 200 yards of the German ship. Yet Scharnhorst’s speed did not slacken: the destroyers Savage and Saumarez, on the port side, and Scorpion and Stord to starboard, could not close to deliver their torpedoes.

The German ship continued to lengthen the range. Paradoxically, this gave Duke of York a better chance of delivering a crippling blow. The closer the two ships were, the flatter the trajectory of their heavy shells—which would tend to strike the thick side-armor rather than the thinner deck-armor. As the range increased, Duke of York’s 14in armor-piercing shells fell near-vertically on to Scharnhorst‘s more vulnerable decks.

The turning point came between 1830 and 1900. What actually happened is not clear. German sources speak of a torpedo hit on Scharnhorst‘s boiler-room at about 1715, but this is unlikely. The British official history simply states that ‘the enemy’s guns fell silent and her speed dropped at about 1820 and in the next 20 minutes the destroyers closed to within five miles’. This seems to imply that it was Duke of York’s fire that crippled Scharnhorst.

Certain of defeat

What is certain is that by 1800 Bey knew that he had lost. Although Scharnhorst‘s 5.9in guns continued to fire on the oncoming destroyers, her main armament was almost completely silent and her speed had fallen to about 10 knots. The German admiral had two alternatives left: to surrender and scuttle his ship, hoping to save the maximum number of lives—or to uphold the honor of the German Navy by fighting to the end. His choice was given in his last signal, sent direct to the German Admiralty and Hitler himself:

WE SHALL FIGHT TO THE LAST SHELL. LONG LIVE GERMANY AND THE FUEHRER. SCHARNHORST ¬ONWARDS.

At the same time, Capt. Hintze broadcast his last message to his crew: ‘I shake you all by the hand for the last time’.

Fraser ordered Duke of York and the cruisers to hold their fire as Savage and her consorts closed in on the stricken giant. But the battleship was not finished: her 5.9in fire killed or wounded 22 men aboard Saumarez and put four of her eight torpedoe-tubes out of action. The destroyers still came on, closing to inside 3,000 yards. At that range Scharnhorst loomed like a colossus, seeming to fill the whole horizon in the brilliant light of reddish-pink star-shell. A sailor on Scorpion remarked: ‘Get out wires and fenders. We’re going alongside the bastard!’

At 1849 Scorpion and Stord fired their torpedoes. Scorpion claimed one hit, Stord none; German survivors’ statements give a single hit. But magnificent work by her engineers had brought Scharnhorst‘s speed up to about 22 knots. Perhaps she might still escape into the night. She changed course—only to put herself closer to Savage and Saumarez, who fired torpedoes (eight from Savage, four from Saumarez) at 3,500 and 1,800 yards respectively. Savage claimed three hits, Saumarez one. German sources speak of three in all. Scharnhorst‘s speed fell again to a crawl.

The destroyers withdrew and Duke of York and Jamaica re-opened fire at about 10,000 yards, while Belfast and her consorts kept the target brilliantly lit by star-shell. With the few guns she had left, Scharnhorst made a ragged return, throwing shells into the shadows where the British gun-flashes showed her enemies to be lurking. But Scharnhorst’s men were blinded by the star-shells, choking in the fumes from their own guns and from the fires which were breaking out all along the decks. Splinters from near-misses cut down men in exposed positions, and one by one her guns fell silent. Bey ordered the torpedo-men to prepare for one last gesture of defiance. Hintze repeated the ship’s motto—’Scharnhorst immer voran’ (‘Ever onwards’)—as the torpedoes leapt away, but they all missed the British ships.

Musketeer and her companion destroyers drawn from the convoy now closed for their own torpedo attack. Three more hits were made. At about 1937, Fraser ordered Jamaica to go in and ‘finish her off with torpedoes’. Three more hits. At last Scharnhorst‘s crew were ordered to abandon ship. The battleship was blazing from end to end, down by the bows, with a heavy list to starboard, and rolling helplessly the raging sea. Waves were breaking right over her, snatching men from their precarious hand-holds.

The last men to go over her side saw Bey and Hintze still standing calmly on the tilting bridge. One survivor later claimed that many men had refused to leave unless Bey and Hintze would also save themselves. Hintze repeated the order to abandon. ‘I’ve got no life-jacket’, said a young rating. ‘Then have mine’, said Hintze, ‘I’m a good swimmer. I’ll come afterwards, never fear’.

Scharnhorst sank at approximately 1944 hours. She had been hit by at least 11 torpedoes out of 55 fired at her; some 13 shells from Duke of York’s 14in guns had struck, and at least 12 hits were received from the 8in, 6in and smaller guns of the cruisers and destroyers. A German survivor reported that as she rolled over and sank an officer on a raft called for ‘Three cheers for our Scharnhorst‘.

Final, triumphant signal

Fraser did not know she had gone. At 1954, after a long silence from Scharnhorst, he ordered Scorpion in for a searchlight sweep. Scorpion reported: ‘Lots of wreckage on sea, closing now’; then, at 2012, ‘Am picking up German survivors’. At 2015 Fraser signalled: ‘Please confirm Scharnhorst sunk’. Scorpion replied: ‘Survivors are from Scharnhorst‘. Yet again, at 2019, Fraser demanded confirmation of the sinking. This time it was Belfast who answered: ‘Satisfied Scharnhorst has sunk’. But not until 2100 did Fraser feel able to make a triumphant signal to the Admiralty. The Admiralty’s answer was: ‘Grand. Well done!’

Of Scharnhorst‘s crew of just under 2,000 (including 40 unfortunate teenage cadets on sea-training) only 36 were rescued from the freezing, snow-swept sea. Not one officer was found: it seems probable that many of them had followed the example of Bey and Hintze and had gone down with their ship. For the pitiful remnant of Scharnhorst‘s crew—’ … punch-drunk with their terrible experience’, reported one British officer—there was an unpleasant shock when they were transferred from Scorpion to Duke of York. Adm. Fraser was waiting to receive them aboard—and he bore a striking physical resemblance to Admiral Bey. Many of the rescued Germans were struck into a state of complete mental and physical collapse by this cruel irony.

Both German and British sources are unstinting in their praise of Scharnhorst‘s last fight, and of the care lavished on the few survivors. But Fraser himself was to pay his enemy the greatest honor. Some days later, Duke of York passed again through the battle area. While a guard-of-honor presented arms, a large wreath was dropped into the sea.

The action off North Cape was the last great gun duel fought between battleships. It was the end of an era.

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