The Second World War

From 1938 to Narvik

The launching of the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen was the one of the greatest showpiece events for the German Navy since the First World War. On 22 August 1938, in the presence of Adolf Hitler and other high-ranking guests, Dr Seyss-Inquart, Reich Governor of Ostmark (as Austria had then been renamed), delivered the pre-launch speech. The attendance of the Hungarian Regent, Vice-Admiral Nikolaus Horthy de Nagybanya—from 24 November 1917 to 1 March 1918 commander of the Austro-Hungarian battleship Prinz Eugen, and subsequently the last fleet commander of the Austro-Hungarian Navy—lent the launching the character of a state occasion of special significance. Prinz Eugen was launched by Horthy’s wife.

For the Kriegsmarine to bestow this particular name was a sign that the tradition of the once-proud Austro-Hungarian Navy had been absorbed into that of the German Navy. Originally it had been intended to name the cruiser Tegetthoff. A battleship of this name had taken part in the annihilation of the Italian Fleet at the Battle of Lissa on 20 July 1866, but as fascist Italy and National Socialist Germany were now close allies, it was decided not to risk offending Mussolini. The launching was followed by the greatest—and last—Naval Review in Kiel Bay. Every destroyer in commission and not under repair was present.

Although several of the vessels exercised with fleet units in Spanish waters during that country’s civil war, the only show of force involving German destroyers prior to the Second World War was the two-day mission commencing on 23 March 1939 to reoccupy the former East Prussian territory of Memel, which had been incorporated into Lithuania under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. The three ‘pocket battleships’ (Hitler was aboard Deutschland) and the light cruisers Leipzig (flagship of Admiral Raeder for the occasion) and Köln, plus the destroyers Z 1 Leberecht Maass, Z 2 Georg Thiele, Z 3 Max Schultz, Z 4 Richard Beitzen, Z 14 Friedrich Ihn, Z 16 Friedrich Eckholdt, Z 17 Diether von Roeder and Z 19 Hermann Künne and nine torpedo boats put into Memel without incident.

On the outbreak of war with Poland on 1 September 1939, Germany had sixteen destroyers available for duty. Of the 21 in commission, Z 3, Z 5, Z 7 and Z 21 were in dock and Z 13, recently commissioned, had not yet joined the Fleet. Six destroyers—Z 6, Z 12, Z 17, Z 18, Z 19 and Z 20, were based on the North Sea coast. The remaining ten were in the Baltic, where, following manoeuvres there in August 1939, Z 1 (flag, FdT Vize-admiral Lütjens) assembled with Z 2, Z 4, Z 14, Z 15 and Z 16 of the 1st Flotilla and Z 8, Z 9, Z 10 and Z 11 of the 4th Flotilla, at Pillau naval base on the eastern side of the Bay of Danzig, in the final days of the month in preparation for the attack on Poland. On 1 September the destroyer squadron formed up off the Gulf of Danzig near Hela for anti-contraband duty off Polish coast. During the day several ships—Greek and Norwegian neutrals—were examined and released. Polish submarines were active in the area and a number of sightings were made, Leberecht Maass avoiding torpedoes fired by the submarine Wilk.

Early in the morning of 3 September, off Gotenhafen, Leberecht Maass and Wolfgang Zenker encountered the destroyer Wicher (1,920 tons 4×5.1in guns, 6 torpedo tubes, 33 knots) and the Polish flagship, the minelayer Gryf(2,250 tons, 6×4.7in, 20 knots). Against a combined armament of 10×5in and sixteen torpedo tubes, the Poles were evenly matched, but the German destroyers quickly drew the fire of the Cyplowa battery. A 15cm round hit Leberecht Maass on the starboard side by No 2 12.7cm gun, killing four—the first Kriegsmarine shipboard deaths of the war—and wounding four. The action was broken off at 0735 hours. Stukas were called up, and the aircraft sank Wicher and forced Gryf ashore near Hela. Leberecht Maass put into Swinemünde on 4 September for repairs.

At the end of August 1939 Konteradmiral Densch (flag, light cruiser Nürnberg) had spread a task force of 38 warships, including LeipzigKöln, destroyers, torpedo boats and numerous support vessels, across the western and central Baltic to prevent the escape of Polish naval units. No hostile action had been permitted before 1 September, however, and in the last remaining hours, as the destroyers GromBurza and Blyskawica made their way across the Baltic bound for Britain, the German naval force could do nothing but shadow them. On 2 September Densch entered the North Sea, and on the 3rd, in company with Leipzig, destroyers and torpedo boats, began work mining the German Bight from the Dutch coast to the Skagerrak so as to extend the defensive Westwall seawards. On the 4th and 5th the state yacht Grille and more destroyers and torpedo boats joined the force. The operation, based on Wilhelmshaven, continued until 20 September.

The first offensive mining operation by German destroyers against the coast of Britain took place on 17/18 October 1939 when Z 16, Z 17, Z 18, Z 19, Z 20 and Z 21 laid 300 mines off the Humber estuary. On 7 November 1939 the newly appointed FdZ, Kommodore Bonte, raised his pennant aboard Z 21 Wilhelm Heidkamp and prepared to set out from Wilhelmshaven with Z 5, Z 6, Z 7, Z 14, Z 16, Z 18 and Z 20 formed in three groups. Z 21 dropped out with engine trouble and the FdZ transferred to Z 20 Karl Galster. The next day the operation was postponed because of storm-force winds and heavy seas.

On 9 November, Z 21 was declared ready for sea and the FdZ returned to his flagship. The force at Wilhelmshaven now comprised Z 6, Z 7, Z 12, Z 14, Z 16, Z 19, Z 20 and Z 21. Z 5 and Z 18 had reported defects, and so Z 12 replaced Z 5 and Z 20 shipped the mines from Z 18. However, the meteorologists reported winds force 7 and the vessels remained in port. On 10 November Z 19 had engine trouble but Korvettenkapitän Friedrichs reported Z 18 clear to sail and she loaded mines that night, but the operation was again postponed.

On 11 November Z 21 (FdZ flag) together with Z 6, Z 7, Z 12, Z 14, Z 16, Z 18 and Z 20 lined up in the Schillig Roads. There was thick fog in the North Sea and no fuel replenishment was possible. Korvettenkapitän Kothe reported Z 19 clear to sail; Z 8, Z 10, Z 14, Z 15 and Z 16 were detached for other duties. The remaining force, consisting of Z 6, Z 7, Z 12, Z 18, Z 19, Z 20 and Z 21 (flag) sailed in two groups. Z 6 and Z 7 soon reported engine problems and were detached, Z 7 requiring Z 12 to act as escort back to port.

Mining operations by German destroyers against the East Coast of England, 1939–40.

During the night of 12 November 1939 four destroyers set out and laid 180 mines off Harwich, being met on the way back by the light cruisers NürnbergKöln and six torpedo boats. Z 10 and Z 15 returned to Wilhelmshaven on the 13th to replace Z 6 and Z 7. A low degree of engine readiness meant that no operation was possible on 14 November, and the destroyers moored in the Schillig Roads in fog so thick that it was decided unsafe even to attempt to find them.

The force put into Wilhelmshaven on 15 November. Z 10, Z 19 and Z 21 loaded with mines, but Z 18 reported engine trouble and was held in reserve. Marinegruppe West ordered a rest day for the crews as urgently necessary. On the 16th Z 11 joined the group.

On 17 November Z 11, Z 19 and Z 21 laid 120 mines off the Thames estuary, escorted by two light cruisers on the return voyage. Z 16 re-joined the group that night, and the next evening Z 10, Z 15 and Z 16 laid 180 mines off the Humber estuary.

There was now a brief pause in mining operations until the 6/7 December 1939, when Z 10 Hans Lody and Z 12 Erich Giese laid 120 mines off the Norfolk coast before making contact with the Royal Navy’s 36-knot ‘J’ class destroyers Juno and Jersey (1,690 and 1,965 tons respectively, 6×4.7in guns and ten torpedo tubes). The British vessels maintained a course of 325°, suggesting that they were not aware of the German ships which were converging on them. At a range of 5,000yds seven torpedoes were fired, and Jersey was hit and badly damaged.

The skirmish with British destroyers off Cromer, 7 December 1939.

A fiasco occurred following the minelaying operation of 12 December 1939. Z 4 Richard Beitzen, Z 8 Bruno Heinemann, Z 14 Friedrich Ihn, Z 15 Erich Steinbrinck and Z 19 Hermann Künne (flag, FdZ) sortied in two groups to lay 240 mines off the Tyne, after which they headed for a rendezvous in the German Bight with three light cruisers to escort them home. Heinemann had an engine malfunction and wallowed for an hour and a half in sight of the English coast with Steinbrinck standing by. Three British aircraft which arrived to investigate at about 1030 the following morning were beaten off.

At 1730 on 12 December NürnbergLeipzig and Köln had left Schillig Roads for the north-west corner of the Westwall mine barrage. Vizeadmiral Lütjens, who had replaced Vizeadmiral Densch as BdA (CinC Cruisers) on 21 October and was aboard Nürnberg, had orders from Marinegruppe West (Naval Command West) to rendezvous there with the five returning destroyers at about 1130 on the morning of 13 December. The wind was variable, force 2–3, with sea state 2, cloudy but with good visibility, and Nürnberg’s and Leipzig’s shipboard aircraft were catapulted up to fly anti-submarine escort. Since a light cruiser rates more highly than a destroyer, the logic of using three such warships to protect five destroyers seems incomprehensible. As stated by Lütjens in his report, although the proper escort for a destroyer is a torpedo boat, both torpedo-boat flotillas were in the shipyard for refit or engine overhaul; only Seeadler and Jaguar were operational, and these were in the Baltic. The only destroyers operational in the entire Navy were the five engaged in the minelaying operation, although it was ‘hoped’ that two more would be ‘repaired in time’. Admiral Marschall, Fleet CinC, stated in his ‘G.Kdos B. Nr. 296/40 Anlage 2 zu 1/SK1 1745/40’ that although it was clear to him from the outset of this operation that the presence of British submarines in the North Sea presented a risk to the cruisers, that risk was justified. Until then British submarines had had no success, and in his opinion it was preferable to have a cruiser torpedoed now and again rather than that destroyers crews gained an impression of cruisers just lying at anchor while smaller units were thrown into action against all manner of superior forces without any support. Moreover, the morale of cruiser crews suffered severely in the long run if they were always ready to sail but never received orders to do so. Thus the drawbacks of this type of operation had to be accepted, there being no successful warfare without risk.*

Lütjens had investigated the Danish freighter Charkov sending suspicious radio codes, but he did not have her stopped and examined when he saw she was on the Free List of neutrals. Shortly afterwards a British aircraft began to shadow the cruisers. The five destroyers were sighted bearing north-east by German reconnaissance aircraft, the three cruisers with which they were to rendezvous being north of them and below the horizon. At 1120 their position was about 40 miles west-south-west of the cruisers, and Lütjens ordered the three cruisers to steer 240° to meet the destroyers. Five minutes later Leipzig and Nürnberg received one torpedo each from a fan of three, the third having missed the latter ship. Four to five minutes after Nürnberg was hit, three more torpedo tracks were sighted astern of the cruiser, but the torpedoes exploded harmlessly on the sea bed. Shortly afterwards Nürnberg sighted a partially surfaced submarine directly astern about 5,000yds off. The wireless monitoring section reported that the submarine was HM Submarine Salmon, with six bow torpedo tubes. Following the hit Nürnberg reduced speed to about 18 knots: her AA fire control was out of commission but her seaworthiness was not affected. Meanwhile Leipzig had been left alone heading south-east, making 12 knots on her cruising diesel because all her boiler furnaces had been extinguished.

The detonations and smoke had been observed aboard Hermann Künne and Friedrich Ihn. The bearing was so far off the expected rendezvous point, however, that the FdZ decided that the activity did not involve the cruisers and must be between aircraft and a submarine, and for this reason the destroyers did not approach. A signal ‘1126 Nürnberg and Leipzig torpedoed grid square 3747. BdA.’ had not been transmitted on all bands because of a defective aerial and a simultaneous telegraphist error. The FdZ did not receive this signal since he had not tuned in on the long-wave close zone in accordance with standing instructions, for which he was later reprimanded. At 1137 Lütjens requested the rendezvous through the Navy short-wave band. For the critical ten-minute period after the attack, complete confusion had reigned ashore, but even now the destroyers remained unaware of what was amiss. Between 1212 and 1222 three Hampden bombers—possibly those beaten off ninety minutes or so earlier by Bruno Heinemann—attacked Nürnberg, but without success.

More than an hour after Nürnberg and Leipzig had been torpedoed, the destroyers had still not effected the rendezvous, and as it seemed to Lütjens that a navigational problem existed he decided to wireless the FdZ his position, course and speed and a homing signal as from 1245, and he sent off the aircraft circling Leipzig to scout for the destroyers. However, the aircraft failed to establish contact because of poor visibility.

At 1250 the FdZ detached Friedrich Ihn (boiler trouble) and Erich Steinbrinck (contaminated fuel oil) while he proceeded with Hermann KünneBruno Heinemann and Richard Beitzen to the original rendezvous position. A few moments later his telegraphists intercepted a message from an aircraft with the call sign ‘S4EH’ reporting damage to a light cruiser. This was the first he knew of the incident, and he decided not to recall the two detached destroyers since his force of three would be sufficient to cover the damaged ship. At 1340 the three German destroyers finally steamed up on the casualties. Beitzen and Heinemann took up station on Leipzig while Nürnberg received the protection of Künne, with Köln off the port quarter. Three low-flying aircraft aircraft circled the group. Strict radio silence was imposed since it was considered possible that enemy submarines or destroyers might infiltrate the German Bight behind the mine barrier for a night attack.

Nürnberg could make 15 knots and reach coastal waters by nightfall and thus was sent on with only Hermann Künne for escort, the two ships steering 135° and homing in on the Hornum coastal beacon.

At 0702 Marinegruppe West ordered Leipzig to make for Wilhelmshaven. The two destroyers led, with Köln astern. When Friedrich Ihn and Hermann Schoemann arrived directly from the dockyard, Köln took station ahead of Leipzig with the four destroyers abeam. Between 0730 and 0815 the escort was further strengthened by F 7, F 9, six motor minesweepers of the 3rd R-Boat Flotilla, four boats of the 2nd Minesweeping Flotilla and several aircraft.

At 0951 Köln was ordered by Marinegruppe West to make for Wilhelmshaven at once and was detached at high speed with Friedrich Ihn and Hermann Schoemann as escorts. At 1235 the British submarine Ursula fired successive torpedoes at Leipzig; one missed and the other hit the escort vessel F 9. Leipzig’s diesel was restarted for full ahead. F 9 foundered quickly on her port beam, the motor minesweepers R 36 and R 38 picking up 34 survivors.

At 1429 the convoy passed Lightship H and at 1728 anchored in the roadstead at Brunsbüttel. The cruiser proceeded to Deutsche Werke shipyard at Kiel for repair. Later, Admiral Raeder, CinC Kriegsmarine, observed: ‘The use of cruisers to escort destroyers or other light forces in the manner undertaken on 13 December 1939 proved unsuitable and inappropriate.’

Offensive mining operations off the East Coast of England were resumed on 6 January 1940 when 180 mines were laid near the Shipwash by Z 4, Z 7, Z 14, Z 15, Z 16 and Z 20; four nights later Z 4, Z 14, Z 20, Z 21 and Z 22 laid 240 off Newcastle, and on the 11th of the month Z 8, Z 9 and Z 13 mined Cromer. The last of these missions took place on 10 February 1940 when a total of 480 mines were sown off Happisburgh and the Shipwash by a force consisting of Z 21 (flag, FdZ), Z 1, Z 4, Z 6, Z 7, Z 8, Z 9, Z 13 and Z 16.

Loss of Z 1 and Z 3

The first wartime German destroyer losses occurred allegedly as the result of a Luftwaffe error. On 21 February 1940, KG 26/II’s 4Staffel, based at Neumünster in Schleswig-Holstein, received orders to fly a mission against shipping between the estuaries of the Thames and Humber. Crews were to be at readiness from 0600, and the first aircraft took off at 1600 on 22 February. Visibility over the North Sea was 30 miles, with a full moon to the south-east. Aircraft of 4. Staffel followed one another into the air, oriented on the south point of the island of Sylt and then at an altitude of 1,000m headed for the Humber.

The He 111 in question had a crew of four—a sergeant pilot and three NCOs as observer, radio operator and air gunner. Towards 1900 the gunner reported a distinctly visible wake in the water to port. The pilot drifted the aircraft to starboard and saw below him a ship running at high speed and bearing north-west. It was the crew’s first night mission and hence their first sight of a ship at night, and the pilot somehow came to the conclusion that it must be enemy. According to his report, he brought the aircraft to 1,500m and made a bombing run, dropping a stick of four. The ship replied with her AA. Two bombs went into the water, a third hit full amidships with a large explosion and the fourth was not observed. The attack was timed at 1945. The stricken ship lost speed but remained afloat. A second bombing run resulted in another hit and the ship sank.

The aircraft turned at once for Neumünster, where the crew made their report. These papers were sent from Gruppe to Geschwader headquarters and from there to Fliegerkorps in Hamburg. The same evening the crew was summoned to Hamburg for a personal interview with X. Fliegerkorps Chief of Staff, Major Harlinghausen. They set out in high spirits, dreaming perhaps of some sort of recognition in the form of a small decoration, and if so it must have hit them all the harder to discover that the ship they had sunk was a German destroyer. What passed for the full circumstances were later determined by a Committee of Inquiry composed of Generalmajor Coeler, Kapitän zur See Heye, commander of the cruiser Admiral Hipper, and Oberstleutnant Loebel, commodore of KG 30.

For some time the German Navy had suspected that British fishing vessels north of the Dogger Bank were really spy trawlers. On 22 February 1940, the destroyers Z 1 Leberecht Maass; flag, Flottillenschef Fregattenkapitänc Berger), Z 16 Friedrich Eckholdt, Z 4 Richard Beitzen, Z 13 Erich Koellner, Z 6 Theodor Riedel and Z 3 Max Schultz were assembled to investigate. A number of prize crews were embarked and the six destroyers sailed to raid the British trawler fleet. As the German Westwall defensive minefield lay across their path to the south of the Dogger Bank, they had to navigate through a clear channel. In the evening of 22 February the flotilla was steering 300° at relatively high speed through the channel when the attack came from the air, as a result of which two destroyers sank.

The OKW had laid down unequivocal instructions for Luftwaffe-Kriegsmarine co-operation regarding operations at sea, which in this case affected Marinegruppe West and X. Fliegerkorps. In essence, all operations had to be declared between themselves, and with sufficient advance warning to ensure that there was no overlapping or other activity to endanger the other arm of service. This meant, for example, that the Luftwaffe could not attack any ship east of the Westwall mine barrier unless Marinegruppe West requested it, or the ship was definitely known to be the enemy. With the exception of attacks on submarines, which could not be identified with any degree of certainty, any attack west of the mine barrier was permitted even if Marinegruppe West had its own units at sea in the area. But this would have to be reported. So far the arrangement had worked well. Unfortunately, on this occasion the responsible Admiral staff officer had not relayed X. Fliegerkorps’s declaration, and the destroyer flotilla remained unaware that there would be friendly aircraft in the area. This error should have become apparent when Marinegruppe West requested X. Fliegerkorps in the afternoon of 22 February to supply an air escort for the destroyers returning to port on the 23rd.

A telephone call at about 1800 on the 22nd made with the authority of Admiral Ciliax, Chief of Staff, Marinegruppe West, requested X. Fliegerkorps to order the aircraft airborne only to attack shipping off the coast of England, but this could not be done because Fliegerkorps did not have the codes. There now began a wrangle in which Marinegruppe West insisted that the Luftwaffe order the aircraft by radio, while the Luftwaffe wanted Marinegruppe West to instruct the destroyers—and in the event neither occurred.

Late in the evening of the 22nd, X. Fliegerkorps received the report from KG 26 that one of their aircraft had attacked a steamer about 20nm north of the Terschellingerbank lightvessel. The aircraft had been fired on and had probably sunk the steamer. The report was sent at once to Marinegruppe West and Göring, head of the Luftwaffe, and almost at once Generaloberst Jeschonnek, Chief of the Luftwaffe General Staff, asked whether there could be any connection between the bombing of the steamer and the sinking of the destroyers Leberecht Maass and Max Schultz.

The various eyewitness and logged accounts of what happened do not tally. None of the destroyers—the aircraft crew always spoke only of one steamer—fired a recognition flare. The destroyer commanders stated that the first, fiery explosion occurred beneath Leberecht Maass’s forecastle; all thought it was a mine. The second explosion was amidships. There was flame, and a large column of water reared up, and, again, it was thought that the cause was a mine. The explosion which sank Max Schultz almost immediately was very powerful. A mine or torpedo hit was suspected; there had been a number of submarine sightings with torpedo tracks, all false. Strangely, on a night of the full moon, none of the commanders had seen or heard an aircraft, and the ‘bomb hits’ on Z 1 and Z 3 had not been observed, while on that same brightly moonlit night, with visibility all around for 30 miles, the crew of the He 111 crew saw only the rear destroyer—which they thought was a merchant ship—in a formation of six such ships steaming in line ahead, each vessel no more than two or three lengths apart. How could it have been possible for an aircraft to have crept up on six warships in line and dropped a stick of four bombs on and around one of them unnoticed?

The question of whether the aircraft was fired on was not resolved. Here the story was that an antiaircraft gun had opened fire on a suspected submarine, and the other flak crews then joined in. There had been no aircraft recognition signal because the presence of friendly aircraft in the area had not been advised by Marinegruppe West. The commanders, including the Flottillenchef, were quite adamant that the cause of the sinking had been mines or torpedoes and that an aircraft being responsible was ‘impossible’. This belief was underscored by the reports of torpedo tracks and periscope heads causing the rescue operation to be abandoned, resulting in many more deaths.

Commanders and crew members interviewed at a later date made statements which contradicted the earlier evidence. The flagship -indeed heard, and then sighted, an aircraft at 1913. As it flew past the squadron the fifth and sixth destroyers in line—Max Schultz and Leberecht Maass—opened fire on it. At 1921 it was heard again and the air raid alarm was given. As it flew past the squadron, it dropped bombs which exploded with great fountains of water near the third and fourth destroyers, Erich Koellner and Theodor Riedel, according to crewmen from those two ships. Between 1922 and 1927 an ultra short-wave conversation ensued involving Friedrich Eckholdt, the lead ship, Erich Koellner and Max Schultz as to whether this was a friendly or an enemy aircraft. The explosions at 1921 were described as ‘bomb explosions’.

At 1944 or 1945 the first explosion occurred aboard Leberecht Maass, forward. This time coincides precisely with that of the first attack made by the Heinkel on a ‘fast-moving ship’. Similarly, the time of the aircraft’s second attack, 1958–2000, is very close to the time when the second explosion occurred aboard Leberecht Maass.

The Committee of Inquiry finally came to the conclusion that the reports about submarine sightings, the wild firing of the anti-aircraft guns and the general excitement all contributed to the air of uncertainty about times and so forth. It was determined that there had been four bombing attacks: (i) at 1921 three bombs fell about 400m abeam of Max Schultz; (ii) at approximately 1944 Leberecht Maass was bombed and hit forward; (iii) at about 1956 there was a huge explosion on board Leberecht Maass amidships; and (iv) at 2004 Max Schultz broke up and sank following a massive explosion. The contradictory evidence of the aircraft crew was that only two bombing runs were flown, at 1945, apparently scoring a hit on the forecastle, and between 1958 and 2000, apparently resulting in two hits amidships.

The reason for the discrepancy between these accounts remains unresolved, as do many questions about what really happened that night. The Heinkel crew was absolved from all blame. They had not been warned of the destroyer movements, no recognition signal had been fired from below, and they had, accordingly, made the justifiable assumption that the target was hostile.

The Gruppe West War Diary for 22 February 1940 recorded that at 2255, ‘as FdM West has already mentioned in his War Diary, the mine situation in the approaches to the Heligoland Bight is very serious. The lack of minesweepers makes regular or even infrequent passages impossible.’ It is now known that on the night of 10 January 1940 the British destroyers Ivanhoe and Intrepid laid 120 anchored mines approximately where Z 1 and Z 3 foundered. It is therefore certain that Leberecht Maass was damaged by the bomb at 1945 but that the second explosion, at 2000, was a mine. Max Schultz also hit a mine, for she turned with the remaining four destroyers to render assistance to Z 1 just outside the swept channel. Altogether 286 crewmen from Leberecht Maass and all aboard Max Schultz—over 320 men—were lost.

The tragedy had far-reaching consequences: there were no more destroyer operations in the North Sea. The next mission was ‘Weserübung’, the invasion of Norway in April 1940, when ten more were sunk. Of the 22 name-bearing destroyers in commission before the outbreak of war, only ten would still be afloat on 13 April to patrol a coastline that stretched for thousands of miles around Norway, and from the Westwall to Estonia—to which would soon be added the coastlines of the Low Countries and France. Three new destroyers entered service in 1940, but it would be the second half of 1943 before the number had risen once more to 22.

The sinking of Z 1 Leberecht Maass and Z 3 Max Schultz, 22 February 1940.

‘Weserübung’: The Invasion of Norway

At the beginning of April 1940 fourteen destroyers were put on notice to transport occupation troops to Norway in two warship groups. The six units which took no part in the operation were Z 4 (in reserve in the German Bight for escort duty to the heavy ships on their return), Z 7 (originally listed for Group 2 but replaced by Z 16 because of suspect machinery and put on standby with Z 4), Z 10 (under repair at Wesermünde), Z 14 (at the disposal of the Torpedo Test Branch and in dock): Z 15 (laid up under repair at Blohm & Voss) and Z 20 (in dock at Wilhelmshaven). The heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper was at the Steubenhöft, Cuxhaven, where, at the beginning of April, she began to embark Army units for Operation ‘Weserübung’, the occupation of Norway. This cruiser and the destroyers Z 5, Z 6, Z 8 and Z 16 formed Group 2, which had been given the objective of taking Trondheim.

Z21 Wilhelm Heidkamp was the flagship of Group 1, which consisted of the ten destroyers destined for Narvik. The FdZ, Kommodore Bonte, and his staff were embarked aboard Z 21 together with Generalmajor Dietl, CO 3rd Gebirgsjäger” Division. In Group 1 were Z 18 (lead ship, 3. Zerstörerflottille), Z 22, Z 2 (lead ship, 1. Zerstorerflottille), Z 11, Z 9 (lead ship, 4. Zerstörerflottille), Z 12, Z 13, Z 17 and Z 19.

Troops and equipment were embarked at Wesermünde and Wilhelmshaven on 6 April and the operation began the following day when the two groups joined up in the German Bight and forged northwards. The battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were to sail at the centre of the armada to provide cover for the troop-laden convoy, making it arguably the largest and most formidable German naval force to put to sea in the Second World War. A gale set in from the northwest and strengthened later to storm force, and the destroyers began to find the going rough, experiencing frequent engine breakdowns. The sailing orders had to be relaxed, and stragglers were left to cope as well as they could.

Steaming order of Kriegschiffgruppen (Warship Groups 1 (Narvik) and 2 (Trondheim), 7April 1940. During the day the wind increased, and near-hurricane conditions set in during the night. The armada gradually began to drift apart, some destroyers losing contact altogether. The group re-formed on 8 April. Those ships destined for Trondheim—Hipper, Z 5, Z 6, Z 8 and Z 16—had their hulls painted black.

HMS Glowworm (Lt-Cdr G B. Roope) was one of four escort destroyers accompanying the battlecruiser Renown as part of Operation ‘Wilfred’, the objective of which was to mine the Norwegian inshore waters. Glowworm had a man washed overboard in heavy seas on 6 April and, having abandoned the search, now found herself west-north-west of Trondheim and attempting to re-join the British group. She was a ‘G’ class destroyer of 1,345 tons, capable of 35½ knots and armed with five 4.7in guns and ten torpedo tubes.

Passing through the Shetland Narrows at 0900 on 8 April in a south-westerly gale 7-8 with gusts of near-hurricane force, Z 11 Bernd von Arnim suddenly sighted Glowworm about 7,000yds abeam on her starboard side. At 0922, when the range had closed to some 6,000yds, von Arnimopened fire. The action was reported by Z 18 Hans Lüdemann, which with Z 5 Paul Jacobi changed course to assist Z 11. Z 5 heeled to 55° in the enormous seas, five men were swept overboard (though subsequently rescued) and water came into the boiler room through the ventilation shafts, extinguishing five boilers and putting the port turbine out of action.

Despite the conditions, Z 11 scored hits on Glowworm, but the British destroyer was also shooting well and forced von Arnim to increase speed and make smoke. At 35 knots her bows drove under in the mountainous seas, damaging the bridge and forward command stand coamings and smashing the wheelhouse windows. No 2 gun became jammed in the hard a-starboard position and the torpedo aiming gauge on the port side became unseated. Two men disappeared overboard. The bridge was awash to knee height, and only after stopping both engines and putting the rudder hard over did the destroyer begin to recover. Her top speed was by now reduced to 27 knots.

Following receipt of the signal from Lüdemann, the Fleet Commander had ordered Admiral Hipper to detach and search for von Arnim, and at 0950 a lookout in the cruiser’s foretop reported mastheads off the port bow; a second destroyer was soon made out to starboard. Neither ship could be identified, but at 0956 the starboard ship blinked a string of ‘A’s to Admiral Hipper, this being the standard British request for a ship’s identity. Lt-Cdr Roope had been misled by Hipper’s lofty mainmast and, as no German units were expected in the area, had erroneously assumed that he had spotted a British cruiser.

Admiral Hipper opened fire on the British destroyer at 0959, eventually sinking her after a difficult struggle in which the cruiser was rammed and damaged, in position 67° 12’N 06°28’E.

The Trondheim Group Detaches

Group 2, Trondheim-bound, re-formed and detached from the main force. At 1450 on 8 April, and in position 64°12’N 06°25’E, Admiral Hipper and her four destroyer escorts were reported by an RAF Sunderland flying boat, but the intruding aircraft was shot down by the cruiser.

The blacked-out ships entered the fjord at Frohavet at 0030 the following morning, two destroyers leading with anti-mining gear streamed from the bow and Hipper following in their wake, escorted by the other two destroyers as anti-submarine escort on either flank. The five passed Flesa Light at the entrance to the dangerous Kragvagfjord at 0255 in line astern and, having been warned that the Norwegians were about to extinguish all coastal lights, increased speed to maximum revolutions.

At 0404, when leaving Kragvagfjord, the Germans set navigation lights when a Norwegian patrol vessel came out from Beian on the port side. Admiral Hipper responded to the demand for her identity with the delaying routine of a small Varta lamp. She was posing as the British battleship Revenge—which she vaguely resembled—and stated that she had the permission of the Norwegian government to pursue a German steamer. A short distance ahead lay the mouth of Trondheimfjord: the channel had a 90-degree bend at its mouth, and at Brettingnes, on the east bank, were a searchlight battery and a number of coastal guns two 21cm, two 15cm and three 6.5cm coastal guns); further down, at Hysnes, was the master battery with a similar complement of weapons.

The Norwegians seem to have hesitated, for at 0404 Brettingnes fired up some red starshell, enabling the Germans to identify the gun emplacements, and it was not until 0412 that the Hysnes guns opened fire on the German destroyers, to which Admiral Hipper replied. The shells threw up large clouds of dust, dirt, sand and smoke, and in the resulting confusion the German formation picked up speed and broke away. At 0525 on 9 April the cruiser dropped anchor at Trondheim. Z 5 Paul Jacobi had suffered storm damage and engine trouble and was short of fuel; Z 6 Theodor Riedelrequired repairs to her port turbine and had gone aground while disembarking her invasion troops; Z 8 Bruno Heinemann was otherwise engaged until about 14 April; and Z 16 Friedrich Eckholdt reported limited readiness.

During the course of 9 April Kapitän zur See Heye, Admiral Hipper’s commander, attended a situation conference. The picture presented was a gloomy one, and afterwards he signalled Marinegruppe West that he was proposing to make the run home alone, at least as far as the German Bight, sailing on the 10th. Initially permission to do so was withheld, but, after the coastal batteries fell into German hands and four U-boats entered the fjord, Gruppe West ordered that all fleet units able to sail were to leave—and by night. Riedel and Jacobi had 40 tonnes of fuel between them, and after this had been pumped aboard Eckholdt the cruiser and destroyer weighed anchor at 2130.

At 2320 Hipper fired on U 32 in error and forced her to dive. On account of the submarine threat, Heye had taken the decision to exit via Ramsöyfjord, one of the most dificult channels in Norway for a ship to negotiate. Once this had been achieved he released EckholdtKorvettenkapitänSchemmel having signalled that his ship could not maintain the required speed of 29 knots. Off Trondheim the destroyer survived an attack by torpedo aircraft from the carrier Furious intended for Hipper. The cruiser rendezvoused in German waters with Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, and all three made Wilhelmshaven without incident at 2300 on 12 April.

On 14 April Heinemann and Eckholdt returned to Wilhelmshaven. Paul Jacobi completed repairs using her own facilities by 21 April and then landed her contingent of Gebirgsjäger at a location up-fjord. She eventually sailed for home on 8 May, docking at Wilhelmshaven for repairs on the 10th. Theodor Riedel was beached in shallow water in Strömmen Bay on 10 April for use as a defensive battery against a British landing force, but ten days later she was refloated and towed to Trondheim, where she was patched up and became the first German destroyer to be fitted with radar. On 7 June she sailed for Wilhelmshaven to undergo permanent repairs.

The Main Group Heads for Narvik

The epic voyage of the German destroyers to the north was described in a memoir by Kapitanleutnant (Ing) Heye, chief engineer aboard Z 13 Erich Koellner:

Our destroyer was one of those fitted with the sophisticated Benson boiler. The pressures and temperatures made great demands of the ship—and just as much of the engine room personnel. During our trials the Engineering Director at the shipyard told me, T am familiar with how this boiler system works, but I wouldn’t have any confidence that I could get it running and put to sea with it.’

Every Benson boiler room had more than thirty auxiliary machines, all driven by the main turbines, and, because of the narrowness of the room, access to some of them could only be gained by crawling . An unusually high level of expertise was required by the entire engineroom staff, expert technical knowledge having to make up for a lack of experience. In January 1940 Z 13 joined the front-line fleet. The North Sea operations proved the great power of the machinery, but also exposed its extraordinary susceptibility to the least irregularity in service. Leakages, split tubes, fires and other breakdowns had to be overcome on every voyage.

I will give an example. We stood by anxiously, impotent in the face of a seemingly insoluble riddle. We had a high, inexplicable loss of boiler feedwater. When you think that at high speeds feedwater circulated at the rate of 200 cubic metres an hour, the allowance of 120 cubic metres was not much. There was no reserve, and the slight but unavoidable steam losses had to be made up for by the sea water evaporating equipment. On Z 13, however, the feedwater content reduced so rapidly that after about 36 hours at sea the engines were practically unserviceable. This meant that [the ship’s] range was only a few hundred miles. All the searching revealed nothing—not the least clue existed to explain the huge feedwater loss. That was how we stood twenty-four hours before we were due to sail for Narvik, a voyage of about 1,000 miles.

Converting fuel bunkers to feedwater tanks was not allowed, and, in any case, instead of the usual 85 per cent load per bunker, they were to be filled to the very top. The day before we went, the Chief Engineer of a sister ship advised me to reinforce the tubes in the boiler at the joints: he had had the same problem. It was an insidious leak which hadn’t been spotted. That same night I got the shipyard to the look at the reinforcing and—lo and behold—the problem was solved. We took on almost 800 [cubic] metres of heating oil, but to be on the safe side I filled some of the washing-water tanks with additional feedwater.

On the morning of 6 April we were clear to sail. We came through the locks and made fast at the Columbus Quay in Wesermünde, where 200 mountain troops came aboard. At 2300 we left for the Weser. For the requfred top speed of 27 knots only two boilers were needed, and the other four we left cold.

On 7 April Fregattenkapitan Schulze-Hinrichs informed the crew of our mission and our destination. Towards midday it got cloudy and began to blow hard, the sea got up and the first spindrift appeared. Towards 1700 the pumpmaster’s mate was washed overboard and lost. At 1800 we got two more boilers fired; with four boilers we could make 32 knots. Shortly before 2300 a superheater tube tore apart with a loud bang. The boiler was shut down, the pressure was released, and we had to crawl in and repair the fault. The boiler was ready by 0200 next morning. Meanwhile we had got the remaining two boilers going, and, having all six, we were now capable of 30 knots.

Outside, huge rollers were running which coursed over the deck. Water was coming into turbine room No 1 through a ventilation shaft like a waterfall. E-Plant No 1 took in water, short-circuited and broke down. This cut the whole electrical output by a third. The ventilation shafts on the upper deck had to be plugged by whatever means available, resulting in an intolerable damp heat in the turbine room.

Suddenly the E-Plant 2’s switchboard in the forward turbine room failed, followed at once by all command elements, machine telegraphs and the rudder gear. Z 13 slewed broadside to the sea. All orders had to be relayed by means of a runner making his way over the upper deck—in these seas a breakneck operation. After an hour the cause was identified as a short circuit in the gunnery gyro gear. After disconnecting the gyro we got E-Plant 2 going again.

The damage sustained that night was considerable. The breakdown of a 24V transformer for the telephone installation and the breakdown of electrically driven spring pump No 1. In all machinery spaces the water level rose because of the seas coming aboard. The suction mechanism of the spring pumps in turbine room No 2 and boiler room No 2 was blocked; we tried everything we could to reduce the water in the engine room, including using the cold-water pumps of the condensers. That had to be done very cautiously to make sure the condensers didn’t fail with a resultant loss of engine output. We also tried the three big damage control pumps, but No 3 pump wasn’t working and the starter valve of another one broke. Finally we opened up the connecting valves in the various compartments to spread the water through the ship and also to get all available pumps involved.

Meanwhile the boilers were having to be supplied from fuel tanks further away, for which two demand pumps were used. A critical situation arose here when boiler room 3 demand pump refused to function on account of the rolling of the ship and the pump shaft of boiler room 1 support pump seized. This had to be removed and repaired on a lathe.

The grey dawn came and the commander tried to reestablish contact with the main convoy, but only Z 19 Hermann Künne was nearby. The sea was still running very high and breaking across the ship. In this situation a stoker crawled across the deck to the machinery workshop hatch to repair the pump shaft. He came back the same way a couple of hours later, was caught by a sea but managed to hold on. While returning to the workshop he was not so lucky and this time was washed overboard. The sea seized another stoker on the companionway down to turbine room No 2, and he suffered a fractured coccyx. During the change of watch another was thrown against the superstructure and broke his collarbone.

In the ‘tween deck forward the water was ankle deep at this time. The swell had risen, we were shipping more sea, and it was no longer possible to relieve the men on watch. At about 0300 on 9 April we got under the lee of the land and at 0530 began ferrying the mountain troops ashore off Elvegarden north of Narvik. We might have reached our destination, but there was no rest for the crew: we had to repair the storm damage, refuel and get back to operational efficiency. Then a fresh difficulty came along: while on patrol on the night of 12 April we struck an uncharted rock which tore open the hull from forward to amidships. That really sounded the death knell for Z 13, since she could never have made it home in that condition.

And how did other destroyers fare? During the near-hurricane, Z 21 Wilhelm Heidkamp yawed up to 40 degrees off her rudder, large amounts of equipment were swept over the side, railings and stanchions proved too weak, both cutters were wrecked and the hoisting tackle for the picket boat and the boat itself were made unusable. Z 22 Anton Schmitt yawed up to 40 degrees and heeled, her decks under water as far as the starboard 3.7cm AA guns, the guardrail for which became buckled, preventing the gun from being trained. Fittings, Army equipment and motorcycles went overboard, a cutter was wrecked and one man was washed away. Z 18 Hans Lüdemann broached 90 degrees, the starboard guardrail parted and two cutters were destroyed. Three men were lost overboard. Z 19 Hermann Künne received damage when she heeled 50 degrees, water pouring through ventilation shafts and into the boiler rooms. Z 17 Diether von Roeder lost a man overboard, and her starboard cutter was wrecked when she heeled 50 degrees. With rolls of up to 40 degrees, Z 9 Wolfgang Zenker lost one man and the ship’s dinghy overboard and most of her rail and stanchions were ripped away. Z 12 Erich Giese heeled up to 50 degrees, losing her ship’s dinghy and guardrail; fittings, depth charges, boxes of lifejackets and even lashed-down motorcycles went over the side. This was the quantifiable damage: in the engine rooms it was little better.

Once the convoy began to bear down on Narvik, the scattered units gradually re-established contact with the main group. Giese was an exception. She was well adrift of the convoy and had water in 90 cubic metres of fuel, her range thereby cut down accordingly. Her chief engineer had calculated that at 21 knots she could reach Narvik in three or four hours. Once he was under the coast a careful sounding revealed that he had more fuel than he first thought, but even so he had to reduce speed to 15 knots and shut down all unnecessary power if he were to make port.

Entering the approaches to Narvik, the ships were cleared for action. Speed was 27 knots, though some destroyers were making up to 36 knots to regain formation. Von Roeder suffered rudder failure and only avoided running aground by reversing full out.

As the penetration into the fjord proceeded, a number of Norwegian patrol boats were seen. At 0510 Kommodore Bonte offered talks to the Norwegian coastal armoured vessel Eidsvold* under a white flag of truce, but an honourable surrender was declined. Heidkamp thereupon sank the ship with a single torpedo. Bernd von Arnim was confronted by Norge, a sister ship of Eidsvold, and a short exchange of fire occurred in which Georg Thiele also became involved. A single torpedo from von Arnim was enough to settle the issue.

Meanwhile the scheduled disembarkation of the Army units had begun at preselected places along the fjord. Narvik harbour was full of merchant vessels of all nations, and a number of them—including some German ships, the crews not understanding the naval operation—were scuttled. The destroyer crews began working feverishly to restore their ships to full operational readiness. The most important task was to refuel as soon as possible so that the homeward run could be started at a moment’s notice … and that was when things began to go sour.

There was only one oiler in the harbour, the Jan Wellem, and she had more diesel fuel in her tanks than heating oil, which meant that the destroyers would not receive a complete replenishment. However, the two fuels could be mixed in the right ratio, and this was done as an expedient. Next the actual transfer of fuel presented a problem. Only two destroyers could be refuelled at a time, one on either side of the oiler, or two in line alongside. There were insufficient connections and the pump pressure was too low, with the result that the whole procedure dragged. Another oiler, the 12,800dwt Kattegat, was expected: she had left Wilhelmshaven on 3 April for Narvik and was a shade overdue, while on 4 April her sister ship Skagerrak had left Wilhelmshaven for Trondheim. Unfortunately, neither would arrive: Kattegat was sunk by the Norwegian patrol boat Nordkapp on the 9th and Skagerrak fell foul of the British heavy cruiser Suffolk on the 14th.

Although the Norwegian garrison at Narvik surrendered at 0800 on 9 April, German Army units were in urgent need of heavy weapons, anti-tank guns, tanks and ammunition in order to secure the area against enemy landings. These were aboard the freighter Rauenfels, which, on 10 April while en route for Narvik, was scuttled by her crew upon the approach of the Royal Navy destroyer Havock. Other supply ships met a similar fate around the fjord entrance, where British warships were congregating.

The timely and rapid departure of the ten German destroyers from the trap of Narvik was becoming ever less likely. Gradually they took on their fuel quota, after which they took up waiting positions in the arms of the fjord or maintained a watch mid-fjord.

Gruppe West was pressing for a rapid departure, but by the evening of 9 April only two destroyers had been fully replenished. If the refuelling had gone as planned, the operation would have been ended towards midnight on 10 April, when the FdZ and his flotilla could have set out straight away. This was indicated in a signal to the CinC Fleet and Gruppe West at 1457. A further contributory factor to the impending disaster was the U-boat ‘torpedo crisis’ of early 1940, when U 51, U 25 and U 48 all made attacks on British vessels off Narvik with torpedoes which proved to be duds.

During 9 April the FdZ called several situation conferences, at which some decisions were made:

1. It is to be expected that the enemy will make a counterattack. Last evening a British cruiser and destroyer were reported in Westfjord. Other enemy units, including battleships and aircraft carriers, may have reached this area in the meantime. At 2100 on 9 April a U-boat reported five enemy destroyers on a south-west heading in Westfjord (i.e., towards the open sea).

2. The enemy may content himself with launching his counter-attack against German ships in the harbour, but it is also possible that an enemy force may attempt to penetrate Ofotfjord with the intention of wiping out the German destroyers. It is not considered very likely that the enemy will attempt to land troops.

3. In any case, it is risky for the German naval units to remain with Jan Wellem in Narvik Bay. This massing of targets increases the possibility of air attack alarmingly. The narrowness of the bay itself and the fjord exit also involve loss of time if the German units have to take on enemy naval forces.

4. The assumption that shore batteries were emplaced at the entrance to Ofotfjord as envisaged in the battle plan was incorrect. This fact had escaped the German reporting service, but we cannot rely on the enemy not knowing. This increases the danger of the entry of enemy naval forces.

5. On the other hand, the U-boats inside the fjord offer outstanding protection. They will report enemy naval vessels entering and probably inflict heavy damage on them. Possibly the presence of U-boats may have caused the enemy to abandon any idea of penetrating the fjord.

6. We must not tolerate any more delay in the refuelling operation obstructing the departure of the eight to ten (seaworthy) destroyers.

The arrival of the German destroyer flotillas at Narvik, 9 April 1940 (after Fechter and Schomakers, Der Seekrieg 1939/1945 in Karlen, Preetz, 1967).

As regards the refuelling, the Type 1934/1934A destroyers had to have a full load of oil because of their stability problems. Maximum bunkerage was not vital for the Type 1936, and so these ships would be replenished first, to get them out of the way.

That night it began to snow heavily, calling for a high state of vigilance by the destroyers posted on lookout duty. The snow and poor visibility proved favourable for the attack by a handful of British ‘H’ class destroyers of the 2nd Flotilla—Hardy (flag, 1,505 tons, 5×4.7in guns, 8 torpedo tubes, 36 knots) and HunterHotspurHavock and Hostile (all 1,340 tons, 4×4.7in guns, 8 torpedo tubes, 35.5 knots). They had not been given specific targets, but it was known that German destroyers were alongside the oiler Jan Wellem and others at the quayin the inner harbour.

Hardy, the leading British destroyer, fired two fans of torpedoes into the mass of shipping. It was difficult to see clearly what had been achieved, although they were fairly sure of a hit on the stern of one destroyer, while another sank. The German destroyers were taken completely by surprise, no report having been made by the lookout vessels, perhaps because it was about the time when the watches were being changed.*

The gun and torpedo attack began at about 0530. Before the exhausted German crews could react, the worst had already occurred: a torpedo hit Z 21 Wilhelm Heidkamp in compartment III astern, the after magazine exploded, the stern was torn off as far forward as No 1 turbine room and the destroyer’s hull settled to her upper deck. The Führer der Zerstörer, his staff and 83 crewmen died in their sleep. Z 22 Anton Schmitt was torpedoed amidships, broke in two, capsized and sank. Her stern collided with Z 19 Hermann Künne, which, after casting off the lines and pumps from Jan Wellem, lay motionless in the harbour with heavy smoke pouring from her innards. Z 17 Diether von Roeder suffered a serious fire as a result of a shell hit but was under sufficient control to take part in the ensuing battle, while Z 18 Hans Lüdemann was also damaged by shellfire.

The British ships had now turned to escape and were heading westwards for Ofotfjord at 15 knots. As they passed across the entrance to Herjangsfjord they ran into the path of three destroyers from 4. Z-Flottille approaching at high speed, Z 9 Wolfgang Zenker, Z 13 Erich Koellner and Z 12 Erich Giese. A furious running battle ensued in which Hunter was seriously damaged and eventually sank after being rammed by Hotspur, fifty survivors from her crew being picked up by the three German destroyers. Z 2 Georg Thiele and Z 11 Bernd von Arnim, which had been in an arm of the fjord to the south-west, near Ballangen, sailed to intercept the British flotilla and opened fire on the leading ship, Hardy, at 0657 at a range of 4,500yds. The British destroyer was hit, set ablaze and so seriously damaged that her captain decided to run her ashore, allowing her crew to escape.

The German force had suffered the following battle damage and casualties:

Z 22 Anton Schmitt: Sunk; 50 dead.

Z 21 Wilhelm Heidkamp: Constructive total loss; 81 dead.

Z 17 Diether von Roeder. Five shell hits; boiler room No 2 unserviceable; heavy damage to hull plating; manoeuvrable but no longer seaworthy; 13 dead.

Z 18 Hans Lüdemann: Shell hits on No 1 gun (gun unserviceable) and in compartment III (fire); magazine flooded; 2 dead.

Z 19 Hermann Künne: Splinter damage; torpedo blast on Z 22 and shells exploding nearby put out main and auxiliary machinery and electrical plant temporarily; ship not clear to sail until after battle ended; 9 dead.

Z 2 Georg Thiele: Seven hits; gunnery data and fire direction centres and No 1 gun unserviceable; magazine flooded; fires forward and astern; 13 dead.

Z 11 Bernd von Arnim: Five hits; boiler No 3.2 unserviceable; very limited seaworthiness, with shell holes in side plating and foreship; 2 dead.

Z 9 Wolfgang Zenker, Z 12 Erich Giese and Z 13 Erich Koellner had no battle damage but had used considerable amounts of fuel and 50 per cent of their ammunition. Especially serious was the loss of the FdZ, who would be replaced later by Fregattenkapitän Bey, commander of 4. Z-Flottille.

The inner harbour at Narvik during the British destroyer attack, 10 April 1940 (after Fechter and Schomakers, Der Seekrieg 1939/1945 in Karten, Preetz, 1967).

Signals indicated the known activity of the enemy and his naval build-up, and, once a reasonably clear view of the situation in Narvik had been obtained, a signal was transmitted to Gruppe West at 1050: ‘Surprise attack Narvik 0530 in mist and snow by British destroyers. Sunk Heidkamp, Schmitt. Serious damage Roeder. Thiele, Lüdemann, Künne limited readiness. Kommodore Bonte dead, three British destroyers sunk. At 1406 Gruppe West replied: ‘To leader 4. Z-Flottille. Destroyers ready to sail, full load fuel;’ and, at 1516, ‘To leader 4. Z-Flottille. Personnel and material from unserviceable destroyers for support Army.’ Finally, at 1544, came the signal: ‘To everybody. All cruisers, destroyers and torpedo boats able to do so sail tonight. Narvik destroyers form on C-in-C Fleet. Will be left up to commander Hipper and three destroyers because of speed limit battleships 25 knots. Break-out if necessary after refuelling at sea or per orders at sea if grouping up. Do not go to Basis Nord.* CinC Cruisers and Hipper report intentions. Gruppe West.’

Phase I of the battle following the British destroyer attack, 10 April 1940 (after Fechter and Schomakers, Der Seekrieg 1939/1945 in Karten, Preetz, 1967).

This order was binding on the Narvik destroyers, and at about 2040 on 10 April Fregattenkapitän Bey ordered Wolfgang Zenker and Erich Giese to sail for home. They had been under way only for a short time when they ran across patrolling British vessels and turned back. On 11 April a signal instructed the ships to use any subterfuge, including the flying of the White Ensign, to get out.

The day was spent by other units in a frantic effort to get repairs completed. At 1359 Bey signalled that ZenkerKoellnerKünne and Lüdemann were ready for sea and that Thiele and Arnim were at conditional readiness. The survivors from Heidkamp and Schmitt, and some from Roeder’scomplement, had been put ashore to reinforce the Army, he stated. From about 1800 those destroyers that were ready mounted a form of picket duty, the other ships keeping to the fjord inlets. Z 13 Erich Koellner ran aground while manoeuvring and stuck fast, suffering such serious damage in the process that she was deleted from the list of four ships ready sail. Z 9 Wolfgang Zenker touched bottom but came free.

The routine of 11 April was similar to that of the previous day: everything was now being concentrated with a view to repelling the arrival of enemy naval forces in the harbour with a troop landing, all indications—supported by running situation reports from Gruppe West—promising that this was the case. To cope with that eventuality, it was decided to take the following measures: (i) Position Koellner as a defensive battery at Taarstad (he should arrive there by the afternoon); (ii) Order all destroyers able to sail distribute themselves around the fjord inlets from where they could surprise enemy units, as had occurred on 10 April; (iii) order even destroyers not yet able to sail to be at immediate readiness from 1300 (Erich Giese on one engine, the other for emergency use only).

Phase II of the battle following the British destroyer attack, 10 April 1940 (after Fechter and Schomakers, Der Seekrieg 1939/1945 in Karten, Preetz, 1967).

Z 19 Erich Koellner left for her allotted position at 1030, escorted through the harbour by Hermann Künne. Some of her crew had been landed, others put at the disposal of Z 19. Koellner did not reach Taarstad, for the British had guessed her intention, and she put into Djupvik Bay instead. Meanwhile Künne signalled the enemy presence, reporting nine destroyers and the battleship Warspite. Thus began the final battle of the German destroyers at Narvik.

At 1217 on 13 April Z 19 Hermann Künne opened fire at a range of 17,000yds and laid a smoke screen. At 1245 and 1259, respectively, Z 18 Hans Lüdemann and Z 13 Erich Koellner followed suit, but the latter fell almost at once under straddling salvos from Warspite and her destroyer escort. Without U-boats the battle was obviously hopeless, and all the German destroyers were either sunk or scuttled after expending all their ammunition during the course of the afternoon. Kapitanleutnant (Ing) Heye, Z 13 Erich Koellner’s chief engineer, recalled:

During the morning of 9 April we disembarked our mountain troops and put into the inner harbour at Narvik to repair and refuel for the return voyage. When you think of the sophisticated engine rooms we had to run, and the terrible weather conditions, it was a miracle that all ten destroyers had actually got here. Nevertheless, we chief engineers—with some reservations—thought it was possible to get the ships ready for the voyage home. Our oiler had not arrived; only the U-boat tanker Jan Wellem was in the harbour. We could burn the right mix of diesel and heating oil, but she had such relatively small pumping gear that it was bound to be a slow business. Each destroyer needed about 800 tonnes, which meant that it would take twenty-four hours to refuel two destroyers. Since there were ten destroyers, our stay in Narvik—which we were supposed to leave on 10 April—was going to be longer than expected.

All destroyers were low on fuel, and what was left could not be used because it served as liquid ballast. On board Z 13 we only had 60-70 cubic metres. During the night of 10 April we went alongside Jan Wellem to ship fuel just to move about the fjord, but we didn’t get any since we had to wait our turn in the queue. That morning we were surprised by the British, who came in and fired blind into the harbour. We were in a fjord inlet, weighed anchor straight away, but then had to turn back because the heating oil pump of the bunker used for combat would not work when the tank was critically low.

During the night of 12 April we were sent to picket and ran aground on an uncharted submerged skerry. This tore open the hull from forward to midships. The rock held us and prevented the ship sinking, which enabled us to plug her up from inside. Once we got free we crept back to Narvik with the spring pumps in the flooded rooms running full out. Z 13 was no longer of much use in a fight. We needed a dockyard for the repairs, and there wasn’t one here—and a return to Germany was out of the question. Thus, during the 12th, the commander, the No 1 and I discussed what was to be done. We decided that there was only one solution: dismount the guns and set up the battery ashore together with the ammunition and weapons personnel. Then Z 13 could be towed by a patrol boat over a bar into the southern arm of Ofotfjord. This was Beisfjord. There she could be placed in the farthest extremity out of harm’s way, since no warship could cross the bar and Z 13 would be out of gun range.

Hardly had we got to Narvik than the No 1 and I began to put the idea into practice, and we started the job of unshipping. At about 1100 Fregattenkapitän Bey appeared and looked with astonishment at what we were doing. The commander was sent for and had to explain. Bey ordered him to put absolutely everything back on board again. All this was incomprehensible to the ship’s company. They had been through an indescribably hard voyage in a hurricane and lost two men overboard. And on top of all the physical exhaustion they knew after the first few days at Narvik that they wouldn’t be going home—at least, not on this ship. Now this. We started shifting it all back.

We were no longer battleworthy. The gunnery data centre was flooded and we were reduced to firing our guns individually by the backsight. Two of our boiler rooms were unserviceable, the feedwater was completely salinated, there were no mechanical reserves, the forecastle deck only held with props and our top speed was five knots. The task envisaged for us now was ‘advanced gunnery observation point’. In the front line with our broken-down gunnery equipment! Nobody had thought of using us as a an advanced torpedo battery. We had given our reserve to other destroyers, but on the 13th we could have made good use of them.

Later I found out the reason for Bey’s decision. There had been a lot of signals traffic between Bey and HQ about the fate of the Narvik destroyers. Apparently Gruppe West still thought it possible to get the destroyers out of Narvik and bring them down the ‘free’ North Sea, by using, for example, North Base near Murmansk. Finally it turned out as it had to, and Z 13 went down under the fire of a numerically superior British naval force.*

Throughout the history of naval warfare, in all theatres of war, allegations have been laid from time to time concerning the murder of survivors in the water. The German naval authorities, after evaluating statements from various witnesses, concluded that there was evidence of an atrocity committed by the Royal Navy at Narvik, and on 25 June 1940 a senior civil servant requested the OKM to investigate. For tasks of this nature there existed at the time a legal office known as the Wehrmachtuntersuchungsstelle (WUSt), or Wehrmacht Investigation Bureau, which investigated all allegations of war crimes, even those supposedly committed by German forces. The commission was headed by a serving naval judge, Sieber, whose terms of reference from OKM requested speed and thoroughness.

Before his inquiry began, on 8 August 1940, ten crew members of the sunken Z 22 Anton Schmitt had made depositions under oath to a naval officer at Wilhelmshaven. These were repeated to Judge Sieber on 15-16 August together with depositions from four crew members from the sunken Z 12 Erich Giese. Subsequently, Sieber had to travel to Paris to take the affidavit of Korvettenkapitän Smidt.

The interim report to the OKM on 27 August 1940 stated:

Up to 6 August 1940, as a result of draftings of, and leave by, Narvik destroyer crews, it had not been possible to secure the names of those allegedly fired on in the water by the British. Before Judge Sieber was appointed to investigate the allegations, only the crews of Erich Giese and Georg Thiele were said to be involved. Inj the process of the inquiry, it now transpires that crew members from Anton Schmitt were fired on in the water on 10 April.

Other witnesses came forward alleging the machine-gunning in the water of crewmen from Z 9, Z 21, Z 19 and Z 2. These men were requested on 22 August to forward their statements to Judge Sieber. On 9 September, in Swinemünde. several officers and men from Z 2 Georg Thiele gave affidavit evidence, as did the ship’s commander, Korvettenkapitän Wolff, at Kiel the next day. On 16 September the papers were forwarded with a summary to OKM and WUSt.

The painstaking and reserved evaluation of the documentation concluded that only in the case of Z 12 Erich Giese was their clear evidence of a war crime having been committed. In all the other cases—Z 2, Z 22, Z 11 and Z 9—crewmen in the water gained the impression of being fired upon when shrapnel and splinters resulting from the battle fell around them. In the case of Z 22 Anton Schmitt, for example, the distance between the nearest British destroyer and the men in the water was over three kilometres—far too distant for the act complained about to have taken place—besides which it was snowing hard and misty. However, a rider was added that the men might have been fired on with handguns from British freighters in Narvik harbour. Nevertheless, a control carried out immediately afterwards discovered no supporting evidence.

Wolff, of Z 2 Georg Thiele, stated in his sworn deposition:

Throughout the action the British destroyers were at least four kilometres off. It is clear that at this range their shells would not only hit the German destroyer, but would also fall long and short, and one can understand that the men in the water were in danger from these shells. On the contrary, whilst the crew was abandoning ship, the enemy fire on the burning and sinking ship ceased, and was aimed instead on crew men climbing over the rocks near where the ship was grounded and seeking cover there. They were using not only 12cm but also their 4cm pompoms [sic], which because of their flat trajectory we could hear whistling over heads. To keep our casualties down we tried to climb up using depressions and fissures in the rock face. A 12cm shell exploded amongst a group, killing six. This proves, however, that the British were not firing on the men in the water, but those who had got ashore. I would add that our men were unarmed and were intent only on saving their own lives, carrying their wounded with them.

WUSt concluded that shooting at the men who had got ashore, although it might not be chivalrous, so to speak, did not constitute a breach of international criminal law.

In his sworn declaration delivered on 23 August 1940, Korvettenkapitän Smidt of Z 12 Erich Giese declared:

When the crew were in the water—about 200 of us—the British destroyers opened fire with guns and MGs. Several times I distinctly felt the pressure wave from an exploding shell close to me. From my observations none of our men were hit. We lost many men to MG fire; the bullets could be heard distinctly. Easy to identify were the British pompoms. From reports made to me by crewmen immediately after we got ashore, it was obvious that several of our men had been cut down in the water by MG fire. Zivilsteward Masula had a bullet graze. Some days after the battle the body of Obermaschinenmaat Ospelkaus was found. He had a bullet in the back of his head, which he can only have received in the water.

Hits Scored on Z 12 Erich Giese, 13 April 1940

Location

Consequences

Remarks

Compartment XV, waterline

-

-

Compartment XIII, forecastle near No 1 gun

Casualties No 1 gun

Hit made towards end of battle, all ammunition expended, forecastle on fire

Compartment XI, at base of No 2 gun, shell exploded nearby, starboard side

Casualties, 2cm ammunition set alight

Hit made towards end of battle

Compartment XI, near Seaman NCOs’ deck

Casualties, fire below forecastle

Gunnery data centre companionway blocked, personnel used emergency exit

Compartment X, on wheelhouse

Helmsman and engine-room telegraphist killed, command equipment destroyed

No further effect as engine room already out of commission

Compartment X, in cipher room

Casualties, radio room out of commission

Hit made early in action

Compartment X, in radio room

Equipment rendered unserviceable

-

Compartment X, on bridge

Casualties, damage to bridge area

-

Compartment X, in boiler room 3

Casualties, serious danger from steam and fire in boiler room 3

Boiler room evacuated

Compartment IX, hit in forecastle down to sick bay

Casualties, fire in compartment IX

-

Compartment IX, in boiler room 2

Casualties, danger from gases and steam, main feedwater pump and lighting fail

Boiler shut down from upper deck, port boiler in boiler room 2 still working, starboard boiler just reached turbine start-up stage

Compartment VIII, hit in auxiliary engine room

Heating oil leaks into electrical plant 3

Room evacuated

Compartment VII, in boiler room 1

-

Room shut down

After funnel

After rangefinder unserviceable because of smoke and oil

After torpedo tubes impeded by smoke

3.7cm flak, starboard side

Casualties, damage, ready ammunition on fire

Compartment VI, in turbine room 2

Casualties, chief engineer seriously wounded, serious damage from steam, turbine room and E-plant 2 shut down

Room abandoned

Compartment V, in stabiliser room

Casualties, danger from steam

-

In AA magazine

Casualties, ammunition explosions

-

Compartment III, on after deckhouse

Casualties, ammunition supply for Nos 3 and 4 guns unserviceable

Ammunition already spent

Compartment II, near ammunition ready room

Casualties, No 4 gun and ammunition supply for No 5 gun unserviceable (later repaired, enabling the last ten rounds to be fired)

-

Compartment I, through weather deck abaft bulkhead, Compartment I

Splinter damage to smoke-gernerating room, rendered unserviceable.

-

From numerous other reports after the battle I concluded that many men had been fired on in the water and had lost their lives in that manner. It was repeatedly described by comrades close by how they would suddenly cease swimming, their heads streaming blood. Corroborating statements indicated that the British concentrated their fire on the liferafts, one of which had no paddle and was adrift in the fjord. For some reason they took nine prisoners from this raft.

At the time, of course, propaganda was made out of the allegations, and in this way the British Admiralty must have been aware that something improper had occurred. On 16 April 1940 the commander of HMS Icarus stated that, contrary to the conduct of the commanders of HMS Cossack(already known to WUSt investigators following the Altmark incident in February 1940*) and HMS Bedouin, he had never taken part in warfare fought in such a manner. Icarus’s commander had found it necessary during the battle to signal the commander of the destroyer Foxhound: ‘If you are not otherwise engaged, pick up any Germans in the water’, and it was Foxhound that picked up the survivors from the unmanoeuvrable raft.

From Narvik to the Capitulation

In the wake of the disaster at Narvik on 13 April 1940, the four existing Z-Flottillen were disbanded and reformed under a caretaker FdZ, Fregattenkapitän Alfred Schemmel, between 18 April and 14 May 1940. Kapitän zur See Erich Bey was appointed on the latter date, and he held the post until his death aboard the battleship Scharnhorst on 26 December 1943.

The two new flotillas were numbered 5 and 6. 5. Z-Flottille consisted of the former 1. Z-Flottille based at Swinemünde—Z 4 Richard Beitzen, Z 14 Friedrich Ihn, Z 15 Erich Steinbrinck and Z 16 Friedrich Eckholdt. 6. Z-Flottille comprised the remaining survivors, Z 5 Paul Jacobi, Z 6 Theodor Riedel, Z 7 Hermann Schoemann, Z 8 Bruno Heinemann, Z 10 Hans Lody and Z 20 Karl Galster. These flotillas had little real significance because the small number of ships and their lack of operational readiness led to units being sent wherever the necessity for them arose. During 1940 three new destroyers, Z 23, Z 24 and Z 25, entered service, but they were not combat-ready until March 1941.

No destroyer operations were carried out in the Baltic east of the Kattegat in 1940, and there were no further German destroyer losses during 1940.

The immediate priority following the occupation of Norway was to close down the Skagerrak, and on 28 April Z 4 Richard Beitzen and Z 8 Bruno Heinemann took part in the first day’s operation to lay the Sperre 17 mine barrage in company with the minelayers RolandKaiserPreussenand Cobra. The torpedo boats LeopardMöwe and Kondor were also present, though Leopard was sunk in a collision with Preussen. After an improvement in the weather, the work was completed on 17 and 19 May, Z 4 being accompanied by Z 7 Hermann Schoemann on these two latter occasions.

At the beginning of June an operation codenamed ‘Juno’ was begun, the objective of which was to penetrate to the end of Andfjord and attack the town of Harstad, which British forces had invested as a naval base with a view eventually to re-taking Narvik. At 0800 on 4 June a German formation led by the battleship Gneisenau, flagship of Admiral Marschall, set out northwards from Kiel. In line astern followed the battleship Scharnhorst, the heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper and the destroyers Hans LodyHermann SchoemannErich Steinbrinck and Karl Galster. The attack on Harstad was planned for the early hours of 9 June, but once it had been confirmed that the British and French occupation force had abandoned the town, and a full evacuation from Norway was in progress, Gruppe West ordered Marschall to attack a reported convoy instead. A scouting line with 10nm between each ship was formed, and at 0605, in position 67°20’N 04°00’E the sweep encountered a westbound tanker, Oil Pioneer (5,666grt), escorted by the 530-ton ‘Tree’ class corvette Juniper—’an unwelcome stop in our search for the valuable convoy with its cruiser and destroyer escort’, Marschall recorded. While Gneisenau dealt with the tanker, leaving Hermann Schoemann to rescue the eleven survivors, Admiral Hipper finished off the corvette. Juniper’s depth charges exploded as she sank, leaving only one survivor to be picked up by Hans Lody.

The search line re-formed, and shortly after 1000 Lody reported smoke from several ships to the north which proved to be the hospital ship Atlantis, which was allowed to proceed unmolested, and the empty troop transporter Orama (19,840grt). The latter was suspected to be an AMC, and when, at 1104, movement on deck was interpreted as an attempt to man her guns, Hipper turned broadside-on and opened fire with tailfused salvos from all her main turrets at a range of 13,000yds. Lody began shooting at the same time, and, just as she was being ordered via ultra-short wave radio to cease firing, Hipper’s, foretop rangefinder operator reported that the Orama had struck her flag and was being abandoned by her crew. Lody had the Orama on a bearing from which it was not possible to see the transport’s lifeboats being lowered—and her ultrashort wave radio was not functioning. She therefore received neither the order from Hipper to cease firing nor one from the fleet commander not to fire torpedoes. Hans Lody unfortunately continued to shell the stricken ship and, to hasten her demise, loosed off two torpedoes. Both of these were rogues, but although one was a surface-runner which hit a loaded lifeboat at 40 knots and failed to explode, the other deviated and detinated prematurely close to Hipper. At 1220 the Orama sank by the stern, leaving fourteen survivors to be picked up by the heavy cruiser and 98 by the destroyer. An hour later the cruiser and destroyers were sent into Trondheim to refuel.

On 10 June the cruiser sortied in company with the battleship Gneisenau and the same four destroyers— Z 7, Z 10, Z 15 and Z 20—to attack British shipping, but as a result of adverse Luftwaffe reconnaissance reports were back at their moorings the next day. Bomber aircraft attacked the German units on several occasions.

Between 14 and 17 June, in an operation codenamed ‘Nora’, the cruiser Nürnberg, Z 15 Erich Steinbrinck and a minesweeping flotilla escorted the troopship Levante with 3. Gebirgsjager Division from Trondheim to Elvegardsmoen in Narvikfjord, returning with the paratroop force relieved there.

On 20 June the battleship Scharnhorst, which had been torpedoed during the action in which she and her sister-ship Gneisenau sank the aircraft carrier Glorious and three destroyers, left Trondheim for Kiel flanked by Z 7 Hermann Schoemann, Z 15 Erich Steinbrinck, Z 10 Hans Lody and several torpedo boats; that same evening Admiral Hipper and Gneisenau sailed from Trondheim escorted by Z 20 Karl Galster and a seaplane on an operation to ‘roll up’ the British Northern Patrol, this having the secondary purpose of distracting attention from the departure of Scharnhorst. Shortly before midnight, at the entrance to Trondheimfjord, the submarine Clyde torpedoed Gneisenau forward of ‘A’ turret and the German force had to turn back.

On 25 July Hipper left Trondheim in company with the homebound damaged Gneisenau and her escort, consisting of the cruiser Nürnberg, Z 5 Paul Jacobi, Z 14 Friedrich Ihn and Z 20 Karl Galster. As arranged, Hipper was soon detached and steered north alone for anti-contraband reconnaissance in polar waters, and the force for Kiel was reinforced the next day by the torpedo boats SeeadlerIltisJaguarLuchs and T 5. Luchs was sunk when she intercepted a torpedo intended for Gneisenau from the British submarine Swordfish, but the remainder of the convoy reached Kiel on 28 June.

Between 31 August and 2 September Z 5 Paul Jacobi, Z 15 Erich Steinbrinck, Z 20 Karl Galster and four torpedo boats assisted the minelayers TannenbergRoland and Cobra to lay the Sperre 3 barrage in the south-western North Sea.

From 13 September 1940 Admiral Hipper was on standby at Kiel for Operation ‘Seelöwe’ (Sealion), the planned invasion of Britain, for which her task was to make a diversionary break-out to the north of either Scotland or Ireland to lure the Home Fleet out of the English Channel. All operational destroyers were sent to the French Channel ports of Brest and Cherbourg during September and October for ‘Seelöwe’ : Z 6 Theodor Riedel, Z 10 Hans Lody, Z 14 Friedrich Ihn, Z 16 Friedrich Eckholdt and Z 20 Karl Galster sailed from Germany on 9 September, followed on the 22nd by Z 5 Paul Jacobi and Z 15 Erich Steinbrinck. Z 6 Theodor Riedel was of little use on account of persistent problems with her port engine. Z 4 Richard Beitzen arrived on 21 October.

The principal operations carried out against the British south coast occurred on the night of 28 September, when Falmouth Bay was mined by Paul JacobiHans LodyFriedrich Ihn and Friedrich Eckholdt; on 17 October, when Hans LodyFriedrich IhnErich SteinbrinckKarl Galsterand 5Torpedobootflottille skirmished briefly with a mixed force of Royal Navy cruisers and destroyers in the Western Approaches (Lody was struck twice by shells); and in the early morning of 19 November when, off Plymouth, Richard BeitzenHans Lody and Karl Galster engaged the destroyers JupiterJavelinJackalJersey and KashmirGalster suffering light splinter damage and Javelin being torpedoed forward and aft.

With the abandonment of ‘Seelöwe’ in October, German destroyers had begun to trickle away from Brest and Cherbourg to Germany to refit and repair, and by early December Z 4 Richard Beitzen, at Brest, was the only German destroyer operational anywhere.

Six new destroyers (Z 23–28) became operational during 1941, and, as no destroyers were lost, the total available for duty at the end of the year rose to sixteen. Z 4 Richard Beitzen remained the only destroyer active off the French coast until March. She escorted Admiral Hipper out of Brest at the commencement the cruiser’s second raiding operation and met her on her return to the French port on 14 February.

Z 4 left for Germany on 16 March and was replaced in early April by Z 8 Bruno Heinemann, Z 14 Friedrich Ihn and Z 15 Erich Steinbrinck, which were based at La Pallice. From 22 to 24 April these destroyers escorted Thor across Biscay to Cherbourg on the completion of the raider’s successful Atlantic cruise. In May Z 8 and Z 15 repeated the exercise for the naval oiler Nordmark after her six-month sojourn in mid-Atlantic replenishing the pocket battleship Admiral Scheer. In the morning of 1 June all three destroyers met the cruiser Prinz Eugen as she put in at Brest astern of Sperrbrecher 13 at 1525 to conclude the disastrous ‘Rheinübung’ operation (in which the battleship Bismarck was sunk).

In mid-June the new destroyers Z 23 and Z 24 arrived at Brest and together with Z 8 and Z 15 ran escort for the battleship Scharnhorst on her occasional movements down the Breton coast. On 24 July, while engaged in gunnery practice off La Pallice, Scharnhorst was bombed and had to return to Brest for repair. From 21 to 23 August Z 23, Z 24, Erich Steinbrinck and Bruno Heinemann escorted the raider Orion across the Bay of Biscay and into the Gironde estuary after her epic seventeen-month cruise (all incoming prizes and steamers headed for St-Nazaire or the Gironde estuary using the so-called ‘Prize Channel’. By the end of October all the destroyers based in France had returned to Germany.

Meanwhile, further north, between 26 and 28 March Z 23 escorted Admiral Hipper into Kiel after the latter’s break-out from Brest, and the same destroyer met Admiral Scheer returning from the Indian Ocean on 30 March, the voyage finishing at Kiel on 1 April. At 1125 on 19 May, off Cape Arcona, Rügen Island, the battleship Bismarck and heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen moved off astern of a protective screen formed by Z 15 Erich Steinbrinck, Z 23 and two Sperrbrecher for the southern entrance to the Great Belt, where Z 10 Hans Lody, several minesweepers and eight aircraft joined for the crossing of the Skagerrak. At 0900 the next morning Prinz Eugen and the destroyers put into Korsfjord and refuelled in Kalvenes Bay. At 2000 the battle group assembled behind the destroyer screen, reaching the open sea by way of Hjeltefjord at 2200 on 21 May. The destroyers were released into Trondheim at 0510 the following morning.

On 11 June 1941 the light cruiser Leipzig, the destroyers Z 16 Friedrich Eckholdt and Z 20 Karl Galster, three torpedo boats, two U-boats and a large air escort set out from Kiel to accompany the heavy cruiser Lützow (formerly the pocket battleship Deutschland) on the first stage of Operation ‘Sommerreise’, a raiding cruise to the Indian Ocean. The naval escort terminated at Oslofjord, and Lützow continued alone. She got as far as Egersund before being crippled by an RAF torpedobomber. Z 10 Hans Lody and Z16 Friedrich Eckholdt escorted her back to the yards at Kiel on 14 June.

With the opening of the campaign against the Soviet Union—‘Barbarossa’—a two-part Baltic Fleet was formed. On 23 September 1941 the northern group, comprising the battleship Tirpitz, the cruisers Nürnberg and Köln and the new destroyers Z 25, Z 26 and Z 27, left Swinemünde for the Gulf of Finland to intercept Russian warships seeking internment in Sweden. On 27 September the force appeared off the Aba-Aaland skerries, but, as it turned out, the Red Fleet had no intention of leaving Kronstadt.

Shortly after the outbreak of war with the Soviet Union, 6. Z-Flottille (Kapitän zur See Alfred Schulze-Hinrichs), consisting of Z 4 Richard Beitzen, Z 7 Hermann Schoemann, Z 10 Hans Lody, Z 16 Friedrich Eckholdt and Z 20 Karl Galster, set out for northern Norway, arriving on 10 July at Kirkenes, a port in the Barents Sea close to the Kola peninsula and Murmansk. On 12 July the force split into two groups and on the first foray attacked a small Russian convoy of tugs, sinking the Soviet patrol ship Passat and a trawler. In a three-day sortie near the port of Iokanga on the Kola peninsula near the mouth of the White Sea, Z 4, Z 7, Z 16 and Z 20 sank the Soviet survey ship Meridian, but a similar raid which set out on 29 July was broken off after the Luftwaffe reportedan approaching British force of two carriers, two cruisers and four destroyers which subsequently attacked Kirkenes.

On 9 and 10 August 1941 BeitzenLody and Eckholdt operated in the Kildin-Kola Inlet area, where, in a short engagement, the Soviet patrol vessel SKR-12 was sunk. Beitzen was straddled by enemy fire but not hit. When Z 4 and Z 7 returned to Germany for repairs in August, the remaining three destroyers were limited to escort duties following the British attack on the Bremse convoy of 6 September.

By November the Seekriegsleitung had recognised the frequency of the British Murmansk convoys and decided to adopt a far more aggressive policy in the Arctic. For this purpose 8. Z-Flottille (Kapitän zur See Gottfried Pönitz), composed of five new destroyers together with four E-boats and six U-boats, was sent to Kirkenes to relieve 6. Z-Flottille, the heavy ships following shortly afterwards.

From 16 to 18 December Z 23, Z 24, Z 25, and Z 27 — Z 26 turned back with engine trouble—sailed to lay a minefield north of Cape Gordodetzky on the Kola peninsula at the entrance to the White Sea but were disturbed by the Murmansk-based Halcyon class minesweeping sloops Speedyand Hazard, which had set out to escort convoy PQ.6. Speedy was hit and seriously damaged by four 15cm shells, but the German destroyers broke off the action when two Russian destroyers and the heavy cruiser Kent steamed out of the Kola Inlet to engage. On Boxing Day Z 23, Z 24, Z 25 and Z 27 operated off the Lofoten Islands following the British commando raid there at Christmas when an important radio mast had been destroyed and the small German naval base at Vaagso attacked.

During the course of 1942 Z 7 Hermann Schoemann, Z 8 Bruno Heinemann and Z 16 Friedrich Eckholdt, plus Z 26, were lost, and Z 29, Z 30 and Z 31 became operational, as did ZG 3 Hermes in the Mediterranean. By the end of the year sixteen destroyers were available—the same number as on 31 December 1941. Throughout 1942 all destroyer operations were concentrated in Norwegian waters: even Operation ‘Cerberus’ — the ‘Channel Dash’ — in February having as its primary object the removal of three heavy units from Brest to Norway.

The year opened with the laying of a 100-mine EMC field by the Kirkenes-based destroyers Z 23, Z 24 and Z 25 on 13 January in the western channel of the entrance to the White Sea near Cape Kocovsky. Meanwhile the battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau and the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen had been at Brest for between six and nine months, and it was decided to extricate them by sailing them through the English Channel in broad daylight—the so-called ‘Channel Dash’. Final discussions on the planned break-out from Brest were held in Paris on 1 January, those present including Admírale Saalwächter, Schniewind and Ciliax and the commanders of the three heavy units. Hitler gave his consent to the operation on 12 January. Towards the end of the month seven destroyers were despatched to Brest, but on 25 January, off Calais, Z 8 Bruno Heinemann, sailing in a group with Z 4, Z 5 and Z 7, struck two mines and sank—the first German destroyer lost since Narvik. Later Z 14, Z 25 and Z 29 arrived at Brest without incident. It was suspected that the principal target during the ‘Channel Dash’ would be Prinz Eugen, because of her part in sinking the battlcruiser Hood the previous May, and she was fitted with an extra five quadruple AA guns and allocated Z 14 Friedrich Ihn, which carried an unusual amount of sophisticated technology, as escort. Notice for steam was given for 2030 on 11 February. In command of the squadron was Vizeadmiral Ciliax, on board the flagship Scharnhorst.

Sailing was delayed by an air raid warning, and when the ships weighed anchor at 2245 their departure went unnoticed, the British submarine keeping watch off the port being engaged in recharging her batteries offshore. Escorting the three heavy ships—steaming in the order ScharnhorstGneisenauPrinz Eugen—were the destroyers Z 4 Richard Beitzen, Z 5 Paul Jacobi, Z 7 Hermann Schoemann, Z 14 Friedrich Ihn, Z 25 and Z 29; the torpedo boats T 11, T 2, T 5, T 12 and T 4 of the 2nd Flotilla, T 13, T 15, T 16 and T 17 of the 3rd Flotilla and SeeadlerFalkeKondorlitisand Jaguar of the 5th Flotilla; and the 2nd, 4th and 6th E-boat Flotillas. Luftwaffe air cover comprised 176 Bf 110s and fighters.

The British were not alerted to the passage of the German armada until it was beyond Calais. The wind was south-west force 6 and the sea state 5. The first MTB attacks began at 1320, after the ships were beyond the range of the Dover batteries. Next came a suicidal low-level attack by six Swordfish torpedo bombers, all of which were shot down, one by the Luftwaffe, two by Friedrich Ihn and three by Prinz Eugen firing in barrage. In the North Sea the German units had the advantages of favourable weather and a heavy air umbrella.

In the entire action, 42 of the 600 British aircraft engaged were destroyed. When Scharnhorst was mined off the Scheldt, Ciliax transferred to Z 29, but, finding she had engine and other battle damage, he raised his flag aboard Z 7 Hermann Schoemann for the run to port.

At 0245 on 20 February Prinz Eugen (flagship of Vizeadmiral Ciliax) and Admiral Scheer left Brunsbüttel for Norway accompanied by BeitzenJacobiSchoemann and Z 25. When reported by air reconnaissance before midday, the group reversed course for a while to throw the enemy off the scent. An unsuccessful air attack resulted in one aircraft being shot down. The ships put into Grimstadfjord on 22 February and left for Trondheim the same evening, but the escort was reduced by 50 per cent when Beitzen and Jacobi were forced into Bergen on account of damage cause by the heavy weather.

At 0702 the next morning, Trident—one of four British submarines positioned off the coast—hit Prinz Eugen’s stern with a torpedo which knocked off her rudder though left her propellers undamaged. The after section was almost severed, and tne cruiser was unmanoeuvrable. Defensive measures prevented further attacks, and the unfortunate vessel limped into Lofjord during the night of 24 February. The scale of the damage was such that repairs in a German shipyard was dictated, and emergency work was begun at once alongside the workshop vessel Huascaran.

On 5 March German aircraft south of Jan Mayen reported a fifteen-ship convoy sailing on an eastward heading. This proved to be PQ. 12, and at the same time convoy QP.8 was sailing westwards for Iceland. The battleship Tirpitz, in company with Z 14 Friedrich Ihn, Z 7 Hermann Schoemannand Z 25, sailed from Trondheim to intercept the merchantmen but missed the convoys in storm and fog, their only victim being the straggling Soviet freighter Izora, sunk on 7th March by Ihn.

On 19 March Admiral Hipper sailed north from Brunsbüttel in company with the destroyers Z 24, Z 26 and Z 30 and the torpedo boats T 15, T 16 and T 17 and on the 21st joined the heavy cruisers Admiral Scheer and Prinz Eugen in Lofjord near Trondheim. In the evening of 28 March the Kirkenes destroyers Z 24, Z 25 and Z 26 took on the role of light cruisers to attack convoy PQ.13. After having sunk the straggler Bateau—which was stopping to rescue her crew and that of the Empire Ranger found adrift in lifeboats—the trio were surprised in poor visibility in the morning of 29 March by the cruiser Trinidad (8,000 tons, 33 knots, 12×6in guns, 2 torpedo tubes) and the destroyer Fury (1,350 tons, 36 knots, 4×14.7in guns, 8 torpedo tubes). Z 26 was seriously damaged and set on fire after hits from Trinidad but found refuge in a snow squall. When contact was renewed, the British cruiser attempted to torpedo Z 26. Her tubes were iced over, however, and the only torpedo to come free was a rogue which circled back and hit the ship which had fired it. Z 24 and Z 25 missed the cruiser with torpedoes. Short exchanges occurred in the poor visibility between snow showers, culminating in a second British destroyer, Eclipse (1,375 tons, 4×4.7in, 8 torpedo tubes) shooting Z 26 to a standstill. Z 24 and Z 25 rained shells down on to Eclipse but eventually allowed her to escape, preferring to save Z 26’s crewmen before the destroyer sank in waters which the human body could not survive for more than a minute or so. Even so, the death toll aboard Z 26 was grievous: 283 men failed to return home.

On 9 April 1942 Z 7 Hermann Schoemann sailed for Kirkenes as a replacement for the sunken Z 26, and on 1 May she sortied with Z 24 and Z 25 to attack convoy QP. 11, which had already been intercepted by U-boats. The convoy was relatively well protected. Close in was the light cruiser Edinburgh (10,000 tons, 32 knots, 12×6in guns) and the destroyers Forester and Foresight (1,350 tons, 36 knots, 4×4.7in, 8 torpedo tubes), the remaining escort being composed of the destroyers Bulldog and Beagle (1,360 tons, 35 knots, 4×4.7in, 8 torpedo tubes), Amazon (1,352 tons, 37 knots, 4×4.7in, six torpedo tubes) and Beverley (1,190 tons, 25 knots, 3×4in, 3 torpedo tubes), plus four corvettes and a trawler. Well to the rear were some Soviet vessels coming up from Murmansk. Edinburgh had been torpedoed by U 456 on 30 April.

In thick snowfall and drift ice, the three German destroyers clashed first with the four outer destroyers, damaging Amazon. Shortly afterwards they came across the motionless Edinburgh. Her guns were still intact, and she soon had Hermann Schoemann wallowing, one of the first hits knocking out the destroyer’s main steam feed, causing her current and both turbines to fail. Attempts by Z 24 and Z 25 to finish off Edinburgh with torpedoes were frustrated by iced-up tubes, only one torpedo getting clear. After laying a smoke screen to protect Z 7, they then took on Forester and Foresight, inflicting serious damage on both, but Z 25 had four dead in her radio room as a result of a direct hit. Edinburgh later sank. After picking up what survivors from Schoemann she could find, Z 24 scuttled Z 7 with explosives. U 88 found a number of the destroyer’s survivors in boats and on rafts, her final tally of dead being eight.

In Operation ‘Walzertraum’ (Waltz Dream), the heavy cruiser Lützow set out on 15 May with Z 4, Z 10, Z 27, Z 29 and a fleet escort boat to join Kampfgruppe I (Battle Group I) at Trondheim. The voyage was interrupted at Kristiansand to allow the completion of a minelaying operation by Z 4 Richard Beitzen, and then the convoy proceeded, arriving at Trondheim to join Admiral Scheer on 20 May as Kampfgruppe II. Bogen Bay near Narvik was reached on the 26th.

On 13 June Admiral Hipper moved up to Bogen Bay to form part of Kampfgruppe I under the fleet commander Admiral Schniewind aboard his flagship Tirpitz. The next stage of the process was Operation ‘Musik’, the transfer northward to Altaford, and, on arrival in Grimsöytraumen, LützowTheodor RiedelHans Lody and Karl Galster all struck uncharted shallows and were ruled out of the main operation.

On 3 July the two Kampfgruppen joined forces to attack the heavily escorted convoy PQ.17, which consisted of 36 freighters, one tanker and three rescue ships and was heading for Murmansk. The operation was codenamed ‘Rösselsprung’ (Knight’s Move). TirpitzAdmiral HipperAdmiral Scheer, six destroyers—Z 14 Friedrich Ihn, Z 24, Z 27, Z 28, Z 29 and Z 30—and two torpedo-boats put to sea on 5 July. They were beyond the North Cape steering north-east when the recall order was transmitted at 2200 that evening, and by 7 July the fleet was back at anchor. The Seekriegsleitung and the British Admiralty made a similar decision to withdraw naval surface forces from the area at about the same time. The preparations of the combined German battle group had been observed by British aerial reconnaissance, resulting in the recall of the naval escort and the controversial order to the convoy to disperse, which was to prove its death knell. On the German side, the wireless monitoring service had decoded British signals traffic reporting the German preparations, and SKL ordered the formation at sea to return to harbour on the grounds of the risk incurred. PQ.17 was then savaged by U-boats and the Luftwaffe.

On 17 August Richard BeitzenErich Steinbrinck and Friedrich Eckholdt escorted Admiral Scheer towards Bear Island for her solitary anti-shipping cruise, Operation ‘Wunderland’, into the Kara Sea, where she bombarded Port Dickson on the North Siberian mainland. On 29 August she met up with the same three destroyers off Bear Island for the return to Kirkenes. Z 4, Z 15 and Z 16 had escorted the minelayer Ulm to Bear Island to sow a field north west of Novaya Zemlya. On the way back Ulm fell foul of the British destroyers MarneMartin and Onslaught and was sunk after a brief engagement.

Operation ‘Doppelschlag’ (Double Blow) was a continuation of ‘Wunderland’. It was planned that Admiral ScheerAdmiral Hipper and three destroyers would operate off the estuaries of the Ob and Yenisei rivers on the north Russian coast before hunting for independent shipping on the Novaya Zemlya-Spitz-bergen track. The operation was cancelled because of ice and the state of Scheer’s diesels.

On 13 September Hitler issued an order forbidding the employment of surface warships against eastbound convoys. Between 4 and 8 September Richard Beitzen, Z 29 and Z 30 had laid mines at the entrance to the Kara Strait. On the 24th of the month, as the flagship of Admiral Kummetz, Hipper set out with BeitzenSteinbrinckEckholdt and Z 28 steering north-northeast into the Barents Sea and during the evening of 26 September laid 96 mines off the Matoshkin Strait at the centre of Novaya Zemlya. The purpose of this operation, codenamed ‘Czarin’ (Empress) was to force enemy convoys closer to the coast of Norway and thus nearer to German naval units. The group dropped anchor in Altafjord on the 28th.

Between 13 and 15 October Friedrich Eckholdt, Z 24, Z 27 and Z 30 laid a minefield off the Kanin peninsula at the mouth of the White Sea, and this quickly claimed a victim when the Soviet icebreaker Mikoyan blew up. On 5 November Hipper sortied from Kaafjord into the Barents Sea in company with BeitzenEckholdt, Z 27 and Z 30 on Operation ‘Hoffnung’ (Hope) with the idea of criss-crossing the convoy tracks in search of merchant vessels sailing alone. Whilst in pursuit of a tanker sighted by Hipper’s shipboard Arado, Z 27 sank the Soviet submarine-chaser B0-78, picking up 43 crew members: the same destroyer, at the far end of the patrol line, also sank the Russian tanker Donbass (8,000grt) with three torpedoes, the crew being brought aboard. The German ships returned to Altafjord on 9 November.

Following the discovery by U 85 on 28 December of what was reported to be a lightly defended convoy of ten ships 70 miles south of Bear Island, all available surface units in northern Norway were brought to readiness on 29 December, and, in a conference the following day, C-in-C Cruisers, Vizeadmiral Kummetz, explained Operation ‘Regenbogen’ to the commanders. The first destroyer to detect the convoy would shadow it while the remainder of the destroyer force closed in. The cruisers would stand off until first light. The first objective was to destroy the convoy escort before attacking the merchantmen. A superior enemy was to be avoided.

On 30 December, the German Kampfgruppe, consisting of the flagship Admiral Hipper, the heavy cruiser Lützow and six destroyers—Richard BeitzenTheodor RiedelFriedrich Eckholdt, Z 29, Z 30 and Z 31, headed north on course 60° once clear of the coast. Kummetz ordered a 65-mile scouting line to be formed as from 0830 on 31 December, the six destroyers combing forward in a south-easterly direction 15nm apart. Hipper and Lützow would keep station astern of and to seaward of the northern and southern ends of the line respectively for an 85-mile width of search, while the destroyers would advance in the order Eckholdt-Z 29-Beitzen-Z 31-Z 30-Riedel. Whilst the warships were forming into their allotted positions in the scouting line, Hipper detected by radar two shadows at 60° which could not be German vessels, and Eckholdt was detached as contact keeper. Thus at the start of the engagement the German group was effectively divided into two sections, the northern of which consisted of Hipper and the destroyers Beitzen, Z 24 and Eckholdt.

At 0842—daybreak—Friedrich Eckholdt reported ten vessels steering 90°, and at 0910, at a range of 18.000yds bearing 140°, Hipper sighted a number of vessels, including destroyers, consituting the main convoy escort on its northern flank. The destroyers were OnslowObedientObdurateOrwell and Achates. The fourteen ships of convoy JW.51B were steaming initially on an easterly bearing and bore round south at 1020. At 0930 Z 4, Z 16 and Z 24 fired on Obdurate. Spotting and rangefinding were very difficult in the poor light and poor visibility and because of the icing and misting over of instruments.

At 1018 the destroyer Onslow was hit by a salvo from Admiral Hipper and at 1027 was reported by Richard Beitzen as burning fiercely and down by the stern. At 1030 Hipper was about 15nm to the north of the convoy and steering east. The convoy was now on a course to the south towards Lützow, but Hipper was entrammelled with the escorts and having to concentrate on the destroyer Achates and the radar-equipped minesweeper Bramble.

At 1135, on ultra-short wave radio, Friedrich Eckholdt asked a series of questions to establish the identity of a warship she had just sighted. In a batch of replies at 1136 Kummetz signalled, ‘In combat with escort forces—no cruisers’, although two minutes earlier Admiral Hipper had been surprised by fire from a cruiser with large bridge, a raked forefunnel and turrets fore and aft, making 31 knots and identified as probably a Southampton or Fiji class cruiser. Hipper had been hit and had her speed reduced, so that at 1137 Kummetz, who was in any case in two minds because of an ambiguous signal from ashore, decided to abandon the operation. At 1143 the destroyer Eckholdt, ignorant of Richard Beitzen’s, warning radio message, decided that the cruiser she was facing must be German, and was sunk with all hands by Sheffield. The German force returned to Altafjord, where it dropped anchor on 1 January 1943.

The unforeseen outcome of the operation had the most serious consequences for the German surface fleet. Although the Kampfgruppe commander was bound by orders which required him to abandon the mission if heavy enemy forces appeared, the attack had already been reported as a great success, and when news of a fiasco was conveyed to Hitler instead, he reacted by decommissioning all ships of the size of light cruiser and above. Raeder resigned a few days later and was replaced by Grossadmiral Dönitz. The latter obtained some concessions, but on the whole the directive remained in force until the course of the war determined otherwise.

At the end of 1943 the number of operational Kriegsmarine destroyers was twenty, with ZH 1, Z 32, Z 33, Z 34, Z 37 and Z 38 now in commission. ZG 3 Hermes was lost off Tunisia in May, while Z 27 became a casualty in December.

On January, in Operation ‘Fronttheater’, Scharnhorst and Prinz Eugen were met off Hela by Paul JacobiFriedrich Ihn and Z 24 for the run to Norway, but when the squadron was sighted off the Skaw by RAF Coastal Command on the 11th the operation was broken off; a repeat attempt, code-named ‘Domino’, on the 25th with the destroyers JacobiErich Steinbrinck, Z 32 and Z 37 was similarly unsuccessful, the units repairing to Gotenhafen on the 27th.

On 24 January Richard Beitzen, Z 29 and Z 30 sailed with Admiral Hipper and the light cruiser Köln from Altafjord to Bogen Bay and then Trondheim, leaving on 7 February for Kiel.The minelayer Brummer and the destroyers Z 6 Theodor Riedel and Z 31 laid the only offensive field of 1943 in the roadstead near Kildin Island, Kola Bay, between 4 and 6 February.

On 6 March Scharnhorst sailed from the Baltic. Having set out with JacobiSteinbrinck, Z 24, Z 25 and Z 28, plus five torpedo boats as escort, she arrived at Bogen Bay on 9 March with only Z 28 for company, the remainder following eight days later after having had weather damage repaired at Trondheim.

Between 31 March and 2 April Paul JacobiTheodor Riedel and Karl Galster waited near Jan Mayen for the blockade-runner Regensburg returning from Japan. The meeting never took place, the freighter having been sunk in the North Atlantic by the light cruiser Glasgow.

The major offensive of the year was the occupation of Spitzbergen, which was carried out between 6 and 9 September. While Lützow, Z 5 Paul Jacobi and Z 14 Friedrich Ihn remained in the anchorage at Altafjord to cover the numerous absences for the benefit of Allied air reconnaissance, the battleships Tirpitz and Scharnhorst and nine destroyers—Z 6, Z 10, Z 15, Z 20, Z 27, Z 29, Z 30, Z 31 and Z 33—headed for Barentsburg. During the approach to the town three destroyers were hit by coastal artillery: Z 29 suffered four hits, damage to outer plating, three dead and three wounded, Z 31 received eight hits on the upper deck, with one dead and one wounded, and Z 33 received no fewer than thirty-three hits to her hull and bridgework, resulting in 28 casualties, three of them fatal.

The last anti-convoy sortie by any German heavy warship ended in disaster on 26 December after Scharnhorst, accompanied by Z 29, Z 30, Z 33, Z 34 and Z 38 left Kaafjord on Christmas Day. Once the destroyer escort had been released because of the bad weather, the battleship continued alone and ran foul of the convoy escort—of capital-ship strength—off the North Cape. The FdZ, Bey, was commanding the operation aboard Scharnhorst and went down with his ship.

During 1943 the Kriegsmarine found it necessary to strengthen the escort force in the Bay of Biscay both for U-boats based there and for inbound merchantmen. Germany was not reliant on imports by sea as was Great Britain, but the occasional blockade-runner making the voyage to France from the Far East with high-value raw materials was of such importance that as many as five destroyers would sail to meet an inbound ship. For example, in July 1943 Z 23, Z 32 and Z 37 came in with Himalaya, in early August Z 23 and Z 32 actually entered the Atlantic beyond the longitude of Cape Ortegal to meet up with Pietro Orsedo, and on 23 December Z 23, Z 24, Z 27, Z 37 and ZH 1 escorted Osorno into the Gironde.

Late on Boxing Day 1943, Z 23, Z 24, Z 27, Z 32 and Z 37 sailed with six torpedo boats of 4. T-Flottille—T 22, T 23, T 24, T 25, T 26 and T 27—to meet the blockade-runner Alsterufer. However, this large freighter had already been sunk by the Royal Navy, and on 28 December the German force encountered the light cruisers Glasgow (9,100 tons, 32 knots, 12×6in guns) and Enterprise (7,580 tons, 33 knots, 7×6in guns) in what the Germans refer to as Das Gefecht in der Biskaya (The Battle of Biscay). The German vessels had several knots’ more speed in ideal sea conditions than the two British cruisers, and also mounted a superior number of guns of the same calibre, but Glasgow and Enterprise were far more seaworthy in heavy weather. The latter factor was decisive. There was a big sea running which slowed the German force considerably, and as gun platforms the German destroyers were inferior on the day because of the wild rolling motion. Glasgow and Enterprise put their speed and manoeuvrability to better use and sank Z 27 and the torpedo boats T 25 and T 26. Of the 740 men aboard these three ships, only 293 could be saved—21 by U 618, 34 by U 505, six by Spanish destroyers, 64 by British minesweepers and 168 by an Irish freighter.

The Battle of Biscay, 28 December 1943.

The battle off the coast of Brittany, 9 June 1944.

Kapitän zur See Max-Eckart Wolff, who had been deputizing for Konteradmiral Bey as FdZ since 30 October 1943, took over the post in a caretaking capacity on 27 December. On 26 January 1944 Vize-admiral Leo Kreisch was appointed the last FdZ, relinquishing the appointment on 29 May 1945. At the beginning of 1944 the five destroyers of 8. Z-Flottille—Z 23, Z 24, Z 32, Z 37 and ZH 1—were operating out of Biscay ports as U-boat escorts and were frequently under air attack. By the end of August all five were either beyond repair or sunk.

During a flotilla exercise on 30 January Z 32 and Z 37 collided and both ships were badly damaged. Z 32 was laid up for repair until May and Z 37, listing heavily, was towed into Bordeaux, where it was decided not to repair the damage. Her guns were landed and earmarked for coastal defence use, and the ship decommissioned on 24 August.

On D-Day, 6 June, Z 24, Z 32, ZH 1 and the torpedo boat T 24 set out from the Gironde for Brest. After surviving determined air attacks en route, the flotilla headed for Cherbourg, from where mines were to be laid off Brest. The enemy had got wind of this operation, and off Wissant a superior force of British destroyers was waiting for the four German ships. ZH 1 received such heavy damage that she was scuttled that same day, and the other three dispersed and made a run for it. Z 24 and T 24 returned to Bordeaux, but Z 32, after initially making for St-Malo, reversed course and ran once more into the enemy destroyers. She received such serious damage that her commander was forced to sacrifice his ship by running her aground on rocks off the Île de Bas, Roscoff.

On 12 August Z 23, in dock at La Pallice, was bombed beyond repair during an air raid, She was decommissioned on 2 August. On 2 August Z 24 and T 24, anchored in the roadstead at Le Verdon, were attacked by bomb- and rocket-carrying Beaufighters of Nos 236 and 404 Squadrons RAF. T 24 was sunk; Z 24 managed to get alongside the quay at Le Verdon but capsized and sank there next day.

When not in the shipyard, Richard BeitzenTheodor RiedelFriedrich Ihn and Karl Galster, together with Z 30, worked out of southern Norwegian ports during 1944 on escort and minelaying duties. Mines were shipped at Fredrikshaven in Denmark and brought to Horten in Oslofjord to be distributed amongst the various units. Acting under instructions from the light cruiser Emden (flagship, C-in-C Minelayers), on 1 October Z 4, Z 14, Z 20 and Z 30 laid the Skagerrak XXXIIb Caligula field, the group coming under constant air attack while doing so. On 5 October the same ships laid the XXXIIa Vespasia field, also in the Skagerrak. On 20 October Z 30 struck a mine in Oslofjord and was towed to the shipyard by IhnGalster and UJ 1702. The repair work was still incomplete at the time of the capitulation.

Apart from a single sortie from Altafjord as far as Bear Island by Z 29, Z 31, Z 33, Z 34 and Z 38 on 30 May, the destroyers’ main task was to defend the battleship Tirpitz, principally against air attack. Following her demise in October and the decision to abandon the ‘Polar Front’, the destroyers escorted troop transports southwards and mined a number of fjords and sounds. No destroyers were lost in this theatre during 1944.

By early March 1944, Z 25, Z 28, Z 35 and Z 39 had all arrived in the eastern Baltic and begun minelaying operations in the Gulf of Finland. A major sortie was carried out there on dates between 13 and 25 April by Z 28, Z 35 and Z 39, the torpedo boat T 30, the minelayers BrummerRolandand Linz and various minesweepers and R-boats. The new Z 36 joined the flotilla in June, but Z 39 returned to Germany for a long drawn-out repairs to bomb damage.

From 7 to 28 June, in Operation ‘Tanne West’, the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen patrolled the Finnish coast north of Utô in the Aaland Sea in a show of strength to cover the German withdrawal. She was relieved by the heavy cruiser Lutzow, escorted by the destroyers Z 25, Z 28, Z 35 and Z 36.

Between 30 July and 1 August 1944, in the Gulf of Riga, the same four destroyers were placed under Army direction for the bombardment of Soviet positions inland. On 5 August all four escorted Prinz Eugen from Riga to the island of Oesel to fire inland, and on 19 August, off Kurland in the Gulf of Riga, Prinz Eugen rained 265 rounds of 20.3cm on Soviet positions at Tukkum, a road and rail junction 25 kilometres inland, while the four destroyers and two torpedo boats engaged other targets.

During September 1944 Z 25, Z 28 and four boats of 2. T-Flottille covered the withdrawal from Reval, six freighters evacuating over 23,000 people. On 21 September Z 25 and Z 28 brought out 370 evacuees from Baltisch Port to Libau, and on the 22nd they escorted the remaining German ships in the Aaland Sea to Goten-hafen.

On 10 October Kampfgruppe II Thiele—comprising Prinz Eugen and the four destroyers—sailed from Gotenhafen. Z 25 had as an additional task the delivery of 200 Army personnel to Memel, returning overnight with 200 female naval auxiliaries. The ship re-joined the group on the 11th, and over the next five days Prinz EugenLützow and the destroyers attacked 28 land targets in the defence of Memel. On 15 October, off Gotenhafen, Z 35 and Z 36 stood by the cruisers Prinz Eugen and Leipzig after they had become locked together following a collision in the approach channel. On the 24th of the month Z 28, Z 35 and Z 36, in company with Lützow and three torpedo boats, bombarded inshore targets around Memel and on the Sworbe peninsula. They came under attack from Soviet aircraft for the first time on this day: Z 28 was hit by five bombs and suffered nine dead and numerous wounded, while Z 35 received splinter damage from a near miss.

On 22 November 1944, Z 25, Z 43 and 2. T-Flottille, together with the heavy cruiser Admiral Scheer, relieved Prinz Eugen and 3. T-Flottille off Oesel, covering the withdrawal until its completion on 24 November despite constant Soviet air attacks; 4,700 German soldiers were evacuated.

On 9 December, 6. Z-Flottille, consisting of Z 35 (flag), Z 36, Z 43 and two torpedo boats, left Gotenhafen to lay a mine barrier off the Estonian coast in Operation ‘Nil’ (Nile). On their arrival in the scheduled area on 12 December there was a thick ground fog, and as a result of poor navigation and the ‘confused, inflexible and deficient operational plan’ drawn up by Kapitän zur See Kothe (for which he was blamed posthumously), Z 35 and Z 36 entered the German-laid Nashorn minefield, where they were mined, blew up and sank with all hands. The situation offered no prospect for a rescue.

At the beginning of 1945, Z 33 was under repair at Narvik, and after enduring the occasional battering from the air in her attempts to get back to Germany, she sailed on 26 March from Trondheim for Swinemünde—the last German destroyer to leave the northern Norwegian theatre. After laying mines in Laafjord and the Mageröy and Brei Sounds during the latter part of January, Z 31, Z 34 and Z 38 had left Tromsö for German Baltic waters on the 25th. By the 28th they had reached Sognefjord, where they were intercepted by a British squadron which included the light cruisers Mauritius (8,000 tons, 12×6in guns, 6 torpedo tubes) and Diadem 5,770 tons, 8×5.25in guns, 6 torpedo tubes). Z 38 broke off the action with a funnel fire and split boiler tubes, and she made Kiel via Aarhus later with Z 34. The latter carried out three torpedo attacks on the British cruisers and received a shell hit on the waterline. Z 31 came off worst in the encounter. She was hit seven times, her 15cm twin turret was totally destroyed and she suffered 55 dead and 24 wounded. She put into Bergen for repair and eventually left the Oslo yard for Germany in mid-March.

Until the capitulation on 8 May 1945, and even afterwards, German units worked on a naval evacuation programme which dwarfed anything ever seen previously. Destroyers were involved in escorting refugee sships and boats of all kinds, and often embarked thousands of refugees themselves. Actual combat in the Baltic in 1945 was limited to gunnery engagements with Soviet troop dispositions and armour and artillery inland, the last rounds being fired on 4 May, after which a partial ceasefire came into effect, enabling the evacuation to proceed as agreed.

The end: Z 33 at Wilhelmshaven after the war, flanked by Otto Wünsche (right) and the torpedo boat T 17 (left).

Between January and May 1945 1,420,000 individuals were evacuated by sea to the west, most of them refugees or Wehrmacht wounded, although fighting troops numbered more prominently amongst those brought out towards the end. On 2 May a report from Hela spoke of 150,000 soldiers and 26,000 refugees awaiting transport, plus 75,000 troops and 9,000 refugees in the Vistula lowlands.In the evening of 5 May numerous vessels arrived in Gotenhafen from Copenhagen and embarked refugees and troops to capacity, setting off westwards in four large convoys. These included the auxiliary Hansa (12,000 refugees), the minelayer Linz (4,900), the destroyers Karl GalsterHans LodyTheodor Riedel and Z 25 (6,000 in all) in Convoy 1; the troopships Ceuta (4,500) and Pompeii (5,400) with three torpedo boats (1,975 total) as Convoy 2; the destroyer Friedrich Ihn, T 28, the depot ship Isar and V 2002 (5,500 total) as Convoy 3; and M 453, V 303 and the training ship Nautik (2,700 total) as Convoy 4. During the night of 7 May small boats and naval launches brought 14,590 Wehrmacht personnel plus 1,810 wounded and refugees from the Vistula plain to Hela, and the following night the destroyers Karl GalsterFriedrich IhnHans LodyTheodor Riedel, Z 25, Z 38, Z 39 and five torpedo boats embarked another 20,000, the steamers Weserberg and Paloma carrying 5,730 more. A total of 100,000 persons on Hela and in the Vistula area could not be brought out, and these became prisoners of the Soviets.

By the time the surrender came into effect, a total of 116,692 soldiers and 5,397 refugees were still at sea in German warships, heading for either Copenhagen or Kiel.


* For further details of this incident see German Light Cruisers of World War II by the same authors (Greenhill Books, 2001).

Eidsvold and Norge were 4,233-ton Norge class coast defence vessels built in 1900. They could make only 16 knots but outgunned the German destroyers with their two 21cm and six 15cm guns plus two torpedo tubes.

* There are a number of questions which remain unanswered here. The Germans had assumed, incorrectly, that there would be a fort overlooking the Ramnes Narrows, which were only 2–2½ miles wide and twenty miles west of Narvik. Although having understood the importance of the position, they failed to post lookouts ashore there equipped with radio. All the destroyers were equipped with hydrophones, but why no hydrophone watch was kept is a mystery.—Tr.

* Basis Nord was a bay near Murmansk at which, under a secret protocol concluded between the German and Soviet governments, German ships—blockade runners and also U-boats requiring fuel—were allowed to call for short stays before making the run home to Germany.

* This force consisted of the 30,600-ton Queen Elizabeth class battleship Warspite (8×15in, 24 knots), the 1,350-ton ‘F’ class destroyers Foxhound and Forester (4×4.7in, 8 torpedo tubes): the 1,690-ton ‘K’ class destroyer Kimberley (6×4.7in, 10 torpedo tubes): the 1,340-ton ‘H’ class destroyer Hero (4×4.7in guns, 8 torpedo tubes), the 1,370-ton T class destroyer Icarus (4×4.7in, 10 torpedo tubes) and the 1,870-ton ‘Tribal’ class BedouinPunjabiCossack and Eskimo (8×4.7in, 4 torpedo tubes). All these destroyers could make 36 knots.

* During the Altmark incident in Jössingfjord on 16 February 1940, crewmen on HMS Cossack had shot down eight crew members from Altmark who had left their ship and were running across the ice towards the shore.—Tr)

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