Battle of the North Cape (1943): The Sinking of the Scharnhorst

The Battle of the North Cape was fought in the Arctic darkness of the Barents Sea on 26 December 1943, when a British force under Admiral Sir Bruce Fraser trapped and sank the German battleship Scharnhorst. She had sailed to attack an Allied convoy carrying supplies to the Soviet Union. The battle ended the last serious threat from German heavy surface ships to the Arctic convoys and was the final big-gun clash between British and German capital ships.

Background

From 1941 Britain and later the United States sent tanks, aircraft, fuel and food to the Soviet Union by sea around northern Norway to Murmansk and Archangel. These Arctic convoys faced U-boats, aircraft and the threat of German warships based in Norwegian fjords. After the disaster of convoy PQ 17 in 1942 and the loss of the Bismarck the year before (see the sinking of the Bismarck), the German navy was cautious with its big ships.

By late 1943 the battleship Tirpitz had been damaged by British midget submarines, leaving the Scharnhorst, a fast 32,000-ton battleship armed with nine 28 cm (11-inch) guns, as the main German striking force in the north. Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz, head of the navy, wanted to show that it could still support the war on the Eastern Front, and he approved an attack on the next convoy when German aircraft reported it.

The opposing forces

Convoy JW 55B, of 19 merchant ships, left Loch Ewe in Scotland on 20 December 1943 with a destroyer escort. A homeward convoy, RA 55A, was at sea at the same time. Covering them were two British groups. Force 1, under Vice-Admiral Robert Burnett, had the cruisers Belfast, Norfolk and Sheffield. Force 2, under Fraser, Commander-in-Chief of the Home Fleet, had the battleship Duke of York, the cruiser Jamaica and four destroyers, including the Norwegian Stord.

The British had an important advantage: signals intelligence from Ultra decrypts warned them that the Scharnhorst was preparing to sail. Rear-Admiral Erich Bey commanded the German force from the Scharnhorst, captained by Fritz Hintze, with five destroyers.

What happened

The Scharnhorst left Altafjord on the evening of 25 December in a rising gale. Early the next morning Bey sent his destroyers ahead to search for the convoy; in the heavy seas and darkness they lost contact with the battleship and took no further part in the fight.

At about 09:30 on 26 December Burnett’s cruisers picked up the Scharnhorst on radar and opened fire. A shell from Norfolk destroyed the battleship’s forward radar, a serious loss in near-total darkness. The Scharnhorst turned away, then swung round to try again for the convoy. Around midday the cruisers met her a second time; Norfolk was hit and damaged, and Bey broke off and headed south for home, shadowed by the cruisers’ radar.

Fraser’s force had been closing from the south-west. In the late afternoon the Duke of York’s radar found the German ship and, at about 16:50, with star shell lighting up the target, she opened fire with her 14-inch guns. The Scharnhorst fought back hard, sending shells through the Duke of York’s masts, and for a time her speed let her draw away. Then a hit put one of her boiler rooms out of action and she slowed.

British and Norwegian destroyers closed in and hit her with several torpedoes. The Duke of York and the cruisers kept firing, and further torpedoes from Jamaica, Belfast and the destroyers followed. The Scharnhorst sank at about 19:45 with her flag still flying, in the dark and freezing water north of the North Cape.

Losses and survivors

Of a crew of around 1,930–1,970 men, only 36 were pulled from the sea, by the destroyers Scorpion and Matchless. Bey and Hintze were among the dead. British losses were light, with casualties on board Norfolk and the destroyer Saumarez. That evening Fraser told his officers that he hoped they would always fight their ships as gallantly as the Scharnhorst had been fought, a tribute recalled in many accounts.

Consequences

The sinking left Tirpitz, still damaged, as Germany’s only battleship in Norway, and she was sunk by RAF bombers in November 1944. Without a battleship able to sortie, the German navy posed little surface threat to the Arctic convoys, which continued to the end of the war. The battle confirmed that in poor visibility radar and intelligence had changed naval warfare. It was among the last battleship-against-battleship actions of the Second World War.

Timeline

• 1943, 20 December: Convoy JW 55B leaves Loch Ewe, Scotland, for the Soviet Union.
• 1943, 25 December: The Scharnhorst and five destroyers sail from Altafjord, Norway.
• 1943, 26 December, about 09:30: Burnett’s cruisers make first radar contact and engage.
• 1943, 26 December, about midday: Second cruiser action; the Scharnhorst turns for home.
• 1943, 26 December, about 16:50: The Duke of York opens fire.
• 1943, 26 December, about 19:45: The Scharnhorst sinks after torpedo hits.
• 2000: A Norwegian expedition locates the wreck at a depth of about 290 metres.

Why it matters

The Battle of the North Cape removed the last active German battleship from the war against the Arctic convoys, safeguarding a key supply route to the Soviet Union during the Battle of the Atlantic era of convoy warfare. It also showed how radar and codebreaking had tipped the balance at sea.