12th February -13th February 1942 – Operation Odin
Even in the months after the loss of
Bismarck and
Prinz Eugen Admiral Raeder had not entirely abandoned his plans for further sorties into the Atlantic by his surface fleet, though whether this was motivated by a genuine expectation of success or simply the need to be seen to be doing something is still a subject for argument. His plan now centred around linking up
Tirpitz and
Scharnhorst, possibly acting in co-operation with a repaired
Gneisenau. This latter possibility had crumbled as the extent of the damage inflicted by the RAF air raids became clear, and further attacks in the following months had undone much of what work had been carried out. By the end of 1941 the efforts to rebuild
Gneisenau had been unofficially abandoned for the time being and Hitler had now decided that Norway was a ‘zone of destiny’ that must be protected at all costs. So rather than
Tirpitz departing Norwegian waters to link up with
Scharnhorst, the
Scharnhorst was now required to head from north from Brest and link up with
Tirpitz, meaning that
Scharnhorst would have to run the gauntlet of the English Channel with only a quartet of destroyers and a force of E-Boats as an escort [1].
Raeder’s anxieties about this plan were increased by the fact that he had received reports of several Royal Navy capital ships departing from the Mediterranean. Such reports often tended to inflate the class of ships involved, with cruisers frequently being described as battleships or even carriers, however that the British had withdrawn one or more battleships back to home waters was all but certain. Raeder’s anxieties were ignored by Hitler, who had little faith in the Admiral’s opinions and was not in the mood to revisit his decision. Raeder was right to be worried as the reports were accurate and one battleship had been correctly identified as such,
HMS Queen Elizabeth.
This venerable battleship was withdrawn from the Mediterranean in early December, with the intention of having her undergo maintenance and a modest refit to upgrade her anti-aircraft defences. This plan was delayed at the beginning of January when the British received intelligence that
Scharnhorst was possibly going to sortie from Brest. This also meant that plans for the deployment of the
King George V class battleship
HMS Anson, recently returned from ferrying Churchill to the USA, to Ceylon were delayed in the hopes of intercepting and destroying Scharnhorst. The British formulated a plan that aimed to integrate action by the Royal Navy, RAF and FAA, Operation Fuller [2].
That the British had so much advance information about the planning for what the Germans called Operation Odin [3] was due to a mixture of signals intelligence, aerial reconnaissance, and a pair of spies inside Brest itself. The aftermath of the loss of most of the Marine Nationale had fuelled resistance activities in and around the major French dockyards and made obtaining human intelligence from inside France easier, though never easy, with the agents risking their lives every time they made contact. The British did their best to protect their agents, ensuring that neither of those monitoring activities in the dockyards at Brest knew the other existed.
Doenitz had spent much of January trying to scrape up more of an escort for Scharnhorst, the problem was that the Kriegsmarine was running out of surface ships to use. Given this reality much of the responsibility for defending
Scharnhorst would fall on the Luftwaffe. Goering promised heavy air cover for the battleship, and for once he delivered on his promise. Conversely the RAF contribution to Operation Fuller fell somewhat short of what might have been expected, with units having been dispatched overseas and redeployed to airfields in the north of Britain, ironically in response to the perceived threat of a breakout by
Tirpitz. This meant that available squadrons able to intercept a potential breakout from Brest were thin on the ground and the situation was exacerbated by miserable weather and some northerly airfields being snowed in. That communications between the RAF and Royal Navy were still far from satisfactory did nothing to help in co-ordinating a response [4].
A further issue was that the RAF bomber groups around Dover intended to deploy AP bombs as these were theoretically the only bomb the RAF had that could seriously damage the Scharnhorst. General Purpose (GP) bombs would simply explode when they struck armour, and the blast would do little damage to an armoured target like Scharnhorst. The significant drawback to the AP bombs was that they had to be dropped from at least 7000ft, making it hard to hit a moving target at the best of times. When fog and low cloud limited visibility this meant they either had to be dropped too low to be effective, or dropped blind in the hope they hit home. Doenitz knew nothing of these problems and was filled with apprehension, but under pressure to launch Operation Odin he finally gave the order for
Scharnhorst and her escorts to depart. With the operation under the command of the captain of the
Scharnhorst, Kapitän zur See Kurt-Caesar Hoffmann the force departed Brest on the night of the 12th-13th February.
The Germans had been doing their best to jam any unauthorized radio transmissions out of the Brest area, one of the agents inside the dockyard did manage to get a message out advising that
Scharnhorst had left the dockyard. This priceless piece of intelligence was almost squandered as it took hours for the information to be relayed to the Royal Navy and the RAF, and it was nearly dawn on the 13th before
Queen Elizabeth and
Anson received orders to proceed to try and intercept the Kriegsmarine flotilla. They had already been at sea after earlier warnings about Operation Odin, but they were not well positioned to respond and it would take some hours for them to close, assuming they could locate
Scharnhorst at all before night fell on the short northern European day [5].
This meant that for the time being stopping the Scharnhorst fell to the RAF and the FAA, and all the potential problems mentioned above afflicted the RAF attempts to bomb the battleship. They also had to contend with the presence of the Luftwaffe, making the most of their temporary air superiority over the channel as RAF fighters were either in the wrong place or poorly co-ordinated with the bombers. The RAF bomber groups assigned to attack
Scharnhorst were hastily reloaded with GP bombs considering the conditions in the channel, delaying their take off for over an hour. When they did take to the air, they either failed to find the ship, withdrew in the face of incessant attacks from the Luftwaffe, or dropped their bombs to no effect, despite the usual claims of multiple hits from overeager crews. In the end it fell to a single FAA torpedo bomber squadron to spare the British from humiliating failure, and they paid a high price for their efforts.
FAA 825 Squadron had recently been re-equipped with Fairey Monarch Barracuda’s and after several delays they were finally provided with fighter cover and the eight available aircraft of the squadron finally took off just after 12:20 hours on the 13th. The fighter protection however was soon stripped away as the Spitfire’s were drawn into engagements with Bf 109s and Fw 190s covering the
Scharnhorst and the Barracudas came under fighter attack themselves as they approached the Kriegsmarine force. Only two of the Barracudas survived long enough to get their torpedoes away, and none survived to return to base. Of the two torpedoes launched only one appears to have hit home, though some reports suggest the other torpedo struck but failed to detonate. The damage done by the one confirmed hit was serious but not fatal. It had detonated on the port side of
Scharnhorst, aft of amidships. The battleship did take on water, though efforts to shore up the damage combined with her pumps allowed
Scharnhorst to stave off any major flooding [6].
Given the complete failure of the other air attacks it began to seem to Captain Hoffmann that the
Scharnhorst had weathered the worst of what the British had to throw at them especially with dusk swiftly approaching. However the same poor weather that had helped mask the
Scharnhorst had also allowed the
Queen Elizabeth and the
Anson to proceed undetected and unmolested. This changed about 15:20 hours when a report from a prowling Luftwaffe spotting plane advised that what was identified as one battleship supported by a cruiser and several destroyers was steaming towards
Scharnhorst’s position. This news was greeted with shock on the bridge of the
Scharnhorst. With his ship already damaged and fearing that he was facing a repeat of the fate of the
Bismarck Hoffman had little choice except to alter course and try to evade contact during the night. Turning back to Brest was out of the question, even if it had been possible tactically any such request would have been inevitably vetoed from Berlin. The
Scharnhorst instead altered course while still staying on a northerly heading, unwittingly turning towards uncharted British minefield.
In the next two hours the Scharnhorst hit two mines, the damage from the first was severe, again though probably survivable by itself, the second mine exploded practically next the existing damage from the torpedo strike. The hastily patched damaged was not only reopened but massively worsened as previously weakened plates cracked and tore open [7]. The flow of water into
Scharnhorst increased from a trickle to a flood that the pumps could not keep up with and there was no prospect this time of patching the damage. The ship was fighting a losing battle against the flooding and when a pump failed at 16:40 hours
Scharnhorst’s fate was sealed. Beginning at 17:20 hours Captain Hoffman ordered the destroyers
Z8 Bruno Heinmann and the
Z7 Herman Schoemann to come alongside and take off all except a skeleton crew who continued to try and save the
Scharnhorst until 19:00 hours when Hoffman ordered all hands to abandon ship. The captain and his remaining crew shut off the remaining pumps and were taken off even as
Scharnhorst began to list to port. Hoffman watched from the deck of the
Herman Schoemann as
Scharnhorst finally went down at around 20:10 hours [8].
For the Germans Hoffman would carry much of the blame for the loss of the
Scharnhorst, and in some respects he was fortunate to get away with nothing worse than a ruined career. Even six months later he would probably have faced being shot for cowardice or ‘sabotage’. Admiral Raeder did not escape unscathed either. Hitler’s patience was finally exhausted and he dismissed Raeder, replacing him with the more politically reliable Doenitz, though the promotion did not provide any sudden improvement in the performance of the U-Boat force [9].
The British placed the entire credit for the destruction of the
Scharnhorst on the actions of 825 Squadron, which was an exaggeration, though since it ensured that the squadrons sacrifice was properly commemorated it is perhaps forgivable, and it is the case that without their attack
Scharnhorst would almost certainly have survived. The commander of 825 Squadron, Lieutenant Commander Eugene Esmonde, was credited with scoring the crucial hit and awarded the Victoria Cross. At the time lionizing 825 Squadron had more to do with covering up the poor execution of Operation Fuller than with honouring the dead and there would be considerable recriminations behind the scenes about who should shoulder the blame for what had come close to being a complete debacle. One tangible outcome was a renewed determination on the part of the RAF and the Royal Navy to send the
Tirpitz to the bottom of Bogen Fjord [10].
[1] Most of the other major ships that took part in OTL Operation Cerberus are either sunk or out of action, so less anti-aircraft support for
Scharnhorst for one thing.
[2] So owing to the more secure situation in the Med and ships commissioning sooner there are battleships available for Operation Fuller.
[3] Called Odin rather than Cerberus because there is only one capital ship rather than several. Also given a tougher German line in France the British are getting more info.
[4] So some of the issues with Fuller, such as the weather, can’t be fixed and with operations in North Africa only just finishing up and the demands of the Far East the RAF are still stretched thin despite having more aircraft overall.
[5] It’s still better than OTL Fuller.
[6] Still an appalling loss but ITTL they managed to land some damage. OTL 825 Squadron were still flying Swordfish during the attack.
[7] This is what happened IOTL, except with the previous torpedo damage the effect is much worse.
[8] Another bad for the KM, though the British have hardly covered themselves in glory. IOTL
Z8 Bruno Heinmann hit a mine and sank in January, here it avoided that and took part in Odin.
[9] Doenitz gets the top job sooner, for all the good it will do him.
[10] You may assume that is the same sort of ongoing project it was OTL.
