1941, Saturday 08 March;
They had been tracking the distant ships for the last three hours, to see if the British battleship was still with the convoy. They’d first made contact with the convoy yesterday, and had spotted a battleship, before pulling back undetected. Vice Admiral Gunther Lutjens had been specific, there was to be no engagement with any British major units. But following the discovery of the convoy, he had liaised with a couple of U-boats, who had attacked the convoy last night and sunk five ships, it was hoped they’d bagged the battleship too.
This wasn’t the best way of doing it, ideally, he’d have used one of the four Arado Ar 196 floatplanes they were equipped with, but with one flown off to Norway, very early in the campaign, and the other three now unusable, he was left with no other choice. On the edge of the horizon, among the grey smudges, one smudge began to take shape, a more distinctive form, a battleship. Ah, she was still there then, and gamely positioning herself between him and the convoy, with some destroyers in attendance no doubt.
That big fat 10 knot convoy was a tempting target, why not split his ships, send
Scharnhorst around the other side of the convoy and attack, while he remained here on his flagship,
Gneisenau, holding the British battleship. She was closer now, at extreme range, and could be identified, a
Queen Elizabeth class, she didn’t have anywhere near the speed to catch him, but one lucky long range shot from her 15-inch guns could ruin his afternoon.
However, they were roughly 150 miles off the West African coast, north of the Cape Verde islands, and this would be a convoy heading to Britain from Freetown, no doubt full of raw materials, but not carrying the high value war weapons from the USA. And with night approaching, he could face a destroyer attack. No, caution was the better part of valour, he’d not risk the ships, and hope for better opportunities elsewhere, later. Increasing speed, he turned his battle group out into the Atlantic, and disappeared.
After another sortie north in which they both sank a number of merchant ships, both battlecruisers headed for France, and were safely docked in Brest by 22 March, but in need to repair with serious mechanical problems. Some of
Gneisenau's auxiliary systems needed maintenance that was estimated to take four weeks to complete.
Scharnhorst was in a worse condition, as her boiler
superheaters were defective and the pipes that moved steam around the engines had been damaged. The disruption to Allied shipping, and diversion of the Royal Navy, searching for them, allowed both the
Admiral Hipper and
Admiral Scheer to take advantage, and return from their raiding sorties in the Atlantic, making it back safely to Germany by the end of the month.
It concluded the Kriegsmarine’s most successful raid into the Atlantic so far, with
Scharnhorst and
Gneisenau sinking or capturing 22 Allied merchant vessels for no lost. Thanks to good planning, there had been plenty of supply ships positioned out in the ocean, allowing the battlecruisers to refuel and restock supplies. Allied supply routes crossing the Atlantic, from Greenland down to West Africa had been badly disrupted, and only bad luck had prevented the Germans from coming across an unescorted convoy, and wiping it out.
Lessons were to be taken from the cruise, for the Germans, further raids offered to bear considerable success, and Lutjens, now a master of this strategy would command the next one. The big ships would now be allowed to engage escorting warships of comparable size, allowing their consorts to attack the convoys freely, supply ships would remain with the battle group for as long as possible, extending the width of search, when looking for convoys, and submarines would be stationed at strategic points, to help scout for the convoys.
For the British, the raid had caused considerable consternation, feeling thankful they hadn’t had a convoy wiped out. They would have to assign more battleships to convoy escort, but what really alarmed them was the ease in which German ships had passed through the northern gates to the Atlantic, unnoticed. A lot more cruisers and AMCs would have to be assigned to patrolling the seas both north and south of Iceland, to detect the raiders as they entered the Atlantic.
