Hitler’s Pre-Emptive War: The Battle for Norway, 1940, Henrik Lunde [new ebook reader TXT] 📗

hours, the order to abandon ship was given and the Germans ceased firing at the sinking ship at 1843 hours as the carrier was showing a 40-degree list. It sank at 1908 hours.

With Ardent sunk and Glorious sinking, no one would have faulted Lieutenant Commander C. E. Glasfurd, the captain of Acasta, if he had tried to disengage and save his destroyer. For a while, it appeared to the crew that he had chosen this course. Leading Seaman C. Carter, the only survivor from Acasta tells the story:

On board our ship, what a deathly calm, hardly a word spoken, the ship was now steaming full speed away from the enemy. Then came a host of orders, prepare all smoke floats, hose-pipes connected up, various other jobs were prepared. We were still steaming away from the enemy, and making smoke, and all our smoke floats had been set going. The Captain, then had this message passed to all positions: “You may think we are running away from the enemy, we are not, our chummy ship has sunk, the Glorious is sinking, the least we can do is make a show, good luck to you all.”23

After that message to his crew, Lieutenant Commander Glasfurd made a 180-degree turn into his own smoke. As the destroyer exited the smoke, it made a starboard turn and fired its port torpedoes against Scharnhorst at a distance of 14,000 meters. Despite evasive action, one torpedo hit the battleship on the starboard side near the aft turret at 1840 hours as she was coming back to her original course, killing two officers and 46 men. The explosion put the aft turret out of commission and caused flooding that forced the shutdown of the amidships and starboard main engines. This reduced the battleship’s maximum speed to 20 knots. Acasta reentered the smoke screen without receiving fire but as she emerged from the smoke for another torpedo attack, the Germans were ready. The Gneisenau, which had tried to keep the enemy in sight, sent a rain of projectiles from her secondary armament at a range of 10,000 meters against the destroyer, registering a number of hits. One hit in the aft of the ship caused a violent explosion. Acasta, making only five knots and partially shielded in the smoke, kept firing her guns at the adversary and scored a hit near Turret C on the Scharnhorst without causing any severe damage. Gneisenau turned away at 1916 hours to look after Scharnhorst, leaving Acasta motionless with fires covering two-thirds of the ship. Acasta sank shortly thereafter. Leading Seaman Carter continues his story:

I will always remember the Surgeon Lieutenant [Lieutenant H. J. Stammers], his first ship, his first action. Before I jumped over the side, I saw him still attending to the wounded, a hopeless task, and when I was in the water I saw the Captain leaning over the bridge, take a cigarette from a case and light it. We shouted to him to come on our raft, he waved “Good-bye and good luck”–the end of a gallant man.

The German reports are full of praise for the gallant and skillful actions of the two British destroyers. The two German battleships had fired a total of 387 11-inch and 1,448 6-inch shells against the British. This was a lot of munitions but represented only 20% of what they had available and there was therefore plenty left to continue the operation.

Instead, Marschall decided to break off the operation and escort the damaged Scharnhorst to Trondheim. Based on the information at hand, his decision is understandable. However, the wisdom of his earlier decision to send Hipper and the four destroyers to Trondheim to refuel in preparation for a secondary mission is questionable. If he had not done so, he could have sent the damaged Scharnhorst back to Trondheim with a destroyer escort and continued the operation with the Gneisenau and the heavy cruiser. There is a high probability that these ships would have encountered the second troop convoy steaming unknowingly towards the scene of the disaster. However, this is only apparent in retrospect.

Hindsight is not needed to see the grievous mistakes made by the British Admiralty and Forbes. While the British were preoccupied with events in France and the threat of a cross-Channel invasion, this does not explain why the heavy units of the Royal Navy were kept at anchor in Scapa Flow or in the waters north of Scotland. The Home Fleet was not responsible for either the operations in the Channel or off Norway but, as pointed out by Moulton, the “cover for both was surely its prime responsibility.” Admiral Forbes had the battle cruisers Repulse and Renown, the battleships Rodney and Valiant, and several cruisers and destroyers at his disposal. Part of this powerful force was sent north to reinforce the Northern Patrol and to investigate reports of a German landing in Iceland.

It appears that the battleship Valiant and four destroyers were sent out to meet the first troop convoy more as an afterthought. When Valiant learned from the hospital ship Atlantis on June 9 that two German battleships were in the waters off Norway, she headed for the second convoy at full speed. Valiant also notified Forbes who finally left with the Rodney, Renown, and six destroyers. He also ordered the Repulse, two cruisers, and three destroyers, still near Iceland, to join him.

In the official British history, Derry concludes that Operation Juno “achieved by luck a considerable success for which it was not designed.” This may be technically true but it is also misleading. The British were the ones who were lucky. Had it not been for the gallant self-sacrifice of the two destroyers and Glasfurd’s lucky torpedo, Marschall would have continued his operation and probably located and destroyed the Devonshire as well as the second convoy. The sinking of Devonshire would have had far-reaching political repercussions and would have been a severe blow to Britain’s naval reputation. The loss of this ship, a second carrier, and