WEB SPECIAL - The Hunt is On
THE HUNT IS ON
In this edited extract from his book, ‘H.M.S. LONDON’, Iain Ballantyne tells the story of the Royal Navy’s attempt to bring the Tirpitz to battle in the spring of 1942. The article was carried in the November edition of WARSHIPS IFR magazine, as part of of a special section marking the 60th anniversary of the British mini submarine attack on the German battleship.
HMS London's bows dig into a heavy sea as she chases the Tirpitz.
Photo: Graham Bramley Collection.
The presence of German heavy ships in Arctic waters was a cause of great anxiety for the British. They were not only battling to keep their own lifelines across the Atlantic to the USA open, but were also burdened with supporting the Soviet war effort by running convoys of sorely needed supplies to northern Russia.
Joining the battleship Tirpitz by the end of February 1942 in Norwegian waters were the pocket battleship Admiral Scheer, and the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen, making for a powerful striking force.
The latter was hit by a torpedo from the British submarine Trident as she approached Trondheim, and would return to Germany that May for repairs, but the pocket battleship Lutzow and heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper also migrated north. German surface warship strength was formidable, plus U-boats were operating from submarine pens in Norway and Luftwaffe airfields were being reinforced.
Against this build-up the depleted Home Fleet - sapped of strength by the need to replace ships lost in the Mediterranean and maintaining a presence in the Indian Ocean to counter the Japanese - was only able to field the battleship King George V, battle-cruiser Renown, aircraft carrier HMS Victorious, several cruisers (including HMS London) and a mixed bag of destroyers. The new battleship Duke of York had only been completed in November 1941 and was on sea trials, while the other new King George V Class capital ships (Anson and Howe) would not be finished until the summer of 1942. The big worry, above all others, was the Tirpitz and in early March 1942, the Home Fleet made a determined attempt to eliminate her. On March 1 1942, convoy PQ12, consisting of 16 merchant ships, had set sail from Iceland, with QP8, made up of 15 supply vessels, coming in the opposite direction from the Kola Inlet.
The Tirpitz lurking in her Norwegian Fjord lair.
Photo: USNHC.
A Luftwaffe scout plane sighted PQ12 on March 5, when it was less than 100 miles south of Jan Mayen Island and the Germans decided to mount a foray by the Tirpitz.
Hitler, who was keeping his heavy ships on a tight leash following the loss of Graf Spee and Bismarck, and the damage to the Prinz Eugen, reluctantly gave permission.
So Tirpitz, with a trio of destroyers as her screen, left Trondheim and headed north. HMS London had returned to Hvalfjord from a Patrol White on March 7 and was taking on fuel. In his journal the cruiser’s Leading Telegraphist Hibbit recorded a dramatic development: “At about 23.00 the same day we put to sea under urgent orders of the Admiralty. Travelling all night at high speed.”
Shortly after 10am the following day London’s CO, Captain R. M. Servaes went on the public address system to tell his crew what was happening:
“Sometime yesterday afternoon, one of our submarines sighted the German battleship Tirpitz, sister ship of the Bismarck, under way off the coast of Norway. The Tirpitz was reported to be steering in a northerly direction. It is thought that she is endeavouring to intercept an important Russian convoy of ours. The Duke of York, and Renown are already on their way to join the convoy and we, together with the Kent, and the Sheffield have been ordered to proceed to a position near the convoy, where we shall rendezvous with the escorting destroyers for the twofold purpose of oiling the destroyers and going into action against the Tirpitz, should our assistance be required.”
THE British submarine that spotted Tirpitz was the Seawolf, off Trondheim, and her sighting report allowed Home Fleet commander Admiral John Tovey to steam hard for an interception somewhere south of PQ12’s position.
Most important of all were the Albacore torpedo-bombers of Victorious.
But progress was slow, the weather so dreadful British scout planes could not find the Tirpitz to fix her for an Albacore strike and the Germans failed to find PQ12.
Another image of Tirpitz in Norwegian waters.
Photo: USNHC.
The ship the Tirpitz was scared of: The aircraft carrier HMS Victorious.
Photo: Goodman Collection.
Giving up, Tovey sailed his force south to a position parallel with Trondheim, hoping Victorious would be able to launch her planes as the Tirpitz returned to her lair. At dawn on March 9, the carrier launched two of her aircraft on an air search, with the scout planes discovering the German battleship 60 miles off the Norwegian coast, heading for the Vestfjord. At around 9am a British strike force of more than a dozen Albacores arrived and scored two hits on Tirpitz, for the loss of two aircraft.
Unfortunately the torpedoes were duds and, with the Home Fleet’s battleships still too far away to intervene, the Tirpitz was able to seek refuge in the Vestfjord unharmed.
While the Home Fleet failed in its attack on the Tirpitz, at least both PQ12 and QP9 got through with light casualties and Hitler was so alarmed by such a close call that he barred any further sorties by Tirpitz , unless the British carrier had been located and destroyed.
In HMS London, the 1st Cruiser Squadron commander, Rear Admiral Louis Hamilton, wrote home on March 14, giving his own thoughts on the Home Fleet’s vain attempt to sink the German battleship.
“We have been doing a lot of sea-time and joined in the ‘Tirpitz’ hunt the other day. That ship is an infernal nuisance and the most important business of the war at present time is to cripple or destroy her - it would just make the whole difference in the way of freeing ships for other theatres.’
Leading Telegraphist Hibbit told his journal the Tirpitz chase had been ‘very unsuccessful’ and he was still deeply depressed about being aboard the leaky old London. He had noted on March 11: “... arrived back at Iceland...Very nice weather all following week - Just like summer but unfortunately cannot take any photos as no films can be obtained aboard this rotten ship.”
Like many officers in the Home Fleet, Rear Admiral Hamilton was frustrated by the lack of assistance from the RAF.
Its Bomber Command was mounting 1,000-aircraft raids on German industrial areas and centres of population.
However, Coastal Command was being starved of the aircraft it needed to mount long-range Anti-Submarine patrols and German warships were sneaking out of the Baltic without being spotted by the RAF.
The Germans had been allowed to build submarine pens in Norway with no significant RAF response and, aside from three totally ineffective high-level raids early in 1942, no serious effort was being mounted to destroy Tirpitz in her fjord.
The Royal Navy would have carried out the job with relish, but the RAF’s wilful sabotaging of the Fleet Air Arm between the wars had left the British navy with not enough carriers to form a strike group in northern waters, nor with a dive-bomber suitable for the task.
Admiral Tovey ruffled plenty of feathers in the Air Ministry and the Government by writing a number of scathing letters about the RAF’s selfish and pig-headed conduct.
Rear Admiral Hamilton revealed to his mother, in a letter written shortly after joining HMS London, that he felt it hopeless to believe “...we could win the war by bombing German women and children instead of defeating their Navy and Army.”
In his letter of March 26 Rear Admiral Hamilton returned to this theme:
“I am afraid I feel that there is a grave risk of losing the war unless it is realised: -
- That it is primarily a maritime war.
- That wars are won by killing the enemy’s soldiers or sailors.
- The aeroplane is just as much a naval weapon as a submarine or destroyer.”
IN the meantime, as Bomber Command sucked in vast resources to build the fleets of planes needed for its campaign against German cities and industry, the Royal Navy gritted its teeth and took all the punishment the Arctic could throw up.
That included the disaster of convoy PQ17, in the summer of 1942.
Merchant ships on the run to northern Russia scattered and were picked off by U-boats and the Luftwaffe, while their escorts turned to face an allegedly rampaging Tirpitz, in reality still in her fjord.
The Operation Source midget submarine attack on the Tirpitz in September 1943 was a product of the desperate need to winkle the German battleship out of her lair.
And even the RAF was eventually persuaded that it would be worth devoting some of its heavy bombers to the task.
Extract from 'H.M.S. LONDON' © Iain Ballantyne, 2003.
‘HMS LONDON’, by Iain Ballantyne, is the second book in Pen & Sword Books Limited’s ‘Warships of the Royal Navy’ series. The first volume in the series, ‘WARSPITE’, was also written by Iain Ballantyne. ‘HMS LONDON’ and/or ‘WARSPITE’ can be ordered from
Pen and Sword Books Ltd, FREEPOST SF5,
47 Church, Barnsley,
South Yorkshire, S70 2BR.
TEL: 00 44 (0) 1226 734222
or 00 44 (0) 1226734555.
Visit the publisher’s web site at www.pen-and-sword.co.uk.
Or E-Mail: sales@pen-and-sword.co.uk