Sept Iles and North Cape

[33LIMA]

Re-fighting two real-life battles in Atlantic Fleet! 

 

One of my favourite features in Killerfish Games's PC port of its excellent WW2 naval wargame is the inclusion of thirty historical sea battles. This short mission report features two of these - one a victory for the Kreigsmarine (said to be its last), the other a defeat.

 

The victory is the Battle of Les Sept Iles ('the seven isles'). This was a night action, fought between light forces off the northern coast of Brittany, France, on 23 October 1943. The defeat is the better-known Battle of the North Cape on 26 December 1943, which resulted in the loss of the battlecruiser Scharnhorst.

 

Les Sept Iles

My interest in this battle was picqued after reading an account of it in the excellent wartime memoir Destroyer Captain by Roger Hill. The book is an account of Hill's wartime service in that role. He commanded first HMS Ledbury, participating in the debacle of Arctic convoy PQ17, then, in the Mediterranean, playing a significant part in getting the damaged tanker Ohio into Malta, during the equally famous Pedestal convoy action. Hill certainly had an eventful war, finishing off Normandy on HMS Jervis. In between those commands, he was captain of HMS Grenville, and, in the Bay of Biscay, was on the receiving end of one of the first attacks by Hs 293 glider bombs; the book includes a dramatic picture of one of these heading for Grenville, and another of the bow of sloop Egret, sinking after a devastating hit.

 

By autumn 1942, Grenville was based in Plymouth and was a regular participant in Operation Tunnel. This was laid on as requred in an effort to intercept German blockade runners trying to sneak along close to the French coast during the hours of darkness. Hill hated the operation because it was usually undertaken with a mis-matched force which hadn't trained together and along the same lines every time, subject to regular radar tracking by the Germans. The naval staff refused any idea for a better-trained, more imaginative, less dangerously predictable approach...with sadly predictable consequences.

 

One such operation was laid on, on 22 October 1943, when intelligence reported a German blockade runner (the Munsterland) had slipped out of Brest to make a run up-channel. This time, the hastily-formed British sweep had a cruiser in the lead, HMS Charbydis, but she was an AA cruiser, with more but less powerful guns than on the two participating fleet destroyers, Grenville and Rocket. The rest of the force comprised four 'Hunt' class escort destroyers, slower than the others and thus unable to keep up in a fast action.

 

After the war, a friend of Hill's met a German destroyer captain in South Africa, who told him the blockade runner was used as bait for a trap. The radar contacts Charybdis picked up early on the 23rd weren't the blocakde runner and escort, but a division of big German 'Elbing' class torpedo boats (small destroyers, with lighter gun armament but six torpedo tubes apiece).  These launched their fish while still head-on, without turning broadside. Charybdis, in the lead, was stopped by one torpedo hit, then sunk by another, with heavy loss of life. Coming up behind her, Limbourne, one of the Hunts, had her bows blown off. Grenville likely only escaped because Hill, just astern of the cruiser and anticipating mines or torpedoes, had pre-planned a full-power turn to starboard in the event of a contact, which only just took him out of trouble. The Germans turned away and were gone before the British could make any effective counter-move, leaving them to pick up the few survivors and sink the wreck of Limbourne.

 

The Atlantic Fleet version of Sept Iles

Here's the map for the battle. I decided to play for the Germans, though I was fairly sure that the element of surprise might not do me much good. In Atlantic Fleet, battles start well within gun range, which is a big disadvanatge if (for example) you are playing a German surface raider and find that you have come up against a convoy with a battleship escort, as I have found to my cost!

 

 

And here is the opening tactical situation. I was surprised to find that there are only two enemy ships, which turned out to be the AA cruiser Charybdis and the fleet destroyer Rocket. At this stage, they are just radar contacts. Also, the blockade runner was in the middle of my formation. Just to cap it all, my torpedo boats were in two lines, with the leading line rather in the way of the second one.

 

 

At this point, I found that I was unable to immitate the real German tactics. They could and this night, did, fire their torpedoes imediately they were within range, without turning broadside on, with the fish then turning onto the gyro course set. In Atlantic Fleet, you have less of an arc of fire for torpedoes, with none straight ahead or straight astern. So I was probably going to lose rather quickly most or all or of my advantage of surprise. To hell with it! I turned one boat and the blockade runner to starboard, towards the French coast, the others beginning full-speed turns to port, prior to cutting loose with torpedoes. Knowing I could be detected at any moment - if I hand't been, already - I started firing starshell, to illuminate the enemy.

 

 

The opposition were evidently caught unaware, steaming straight ahead, guns trained fore and aft. But the battle was now on!

 

 

...to be continued!

[33LIMA]

Torpedos, los!

 

Charybdis, seen above in the foreground, was a later ship in the 'Dido' class of anti-aircraft cruiser, one of those who didn't ship the third twin turret (though she has it, in Atlantic Fleet, which uses the same 3-d model to represent all ships in a class; I'm not sure if differences in weight of broadshide are, neverthess, implemented). And she was one of those armed with 4.5-inch guns, due to shortages with the intended 5.25-inch armament. Still, she has a lot of them; not a ship to mess with, given my 'Elbings' have only four 4.1-inch, all but one mounted astern. She and Rocket were soon training their guns onto us.

 

 

It took me a while to find the range and my first starshells weren't much help. Nevertheless, better late than never, I stuck to Plan A and started cutting loose with full salvoes of torpedoes. Even if they did no more than cause the enemy to turn away, they would give me time to escape. And that was my intention. I like to play my games like real lives and real ships are at stake, and I've generally no time for Keyboard Heroics.

 

 

It wasn't long before the enemy, too, was firing starshells, and his seemed to be better placed, lighting up my blockade runner as she turned away.

 

 

 

We were soon under quite accurate fire from both British ships, and to make matters worse, turning all but one of my torpedo boats to port at the same time more or less guaranteed that only the leading boats could launch torpedoes. I should have steamed the rear line ahead for a turn, before going to port. It would have taken longer, but they would have all ended up roughly in a single line astern, with clear arcs of fire.

 

 

This seemed to be one of those battles where I just couldn't find the range. There's no auto-gunnery option, so with each ship you move to, you have to re-assess the firing solution, all over again. This can make multi-ship fights a bit of a headache, unless you are prepared to be patient and not rush. Me, I'm a rusher. The enemy's starshells and salvoes seemed to be on target, while mine mostly weren't.

 

 

 

Charybdis seemed intent on getting my blockade runner, which was soon hit and burning, to sink soon afterwards. The enemy had turned into us rather than away, which not only caused those torpedoes I had been able to get away to miss, but soon brought the range right down. Now, it was the turn of my torpedo boats to get a hammering.

 

 

 

The single boat I had turned in the opposite direction to the others was able to come in behind Charybdis but her torpedoes missed, too. I wasn't going to escape, clearly, so there was no longer any point in running. Attack had become the most effective form of defence, and so my other boats now turned to close the rapidly-advancing enemy in a series of zig-zags.

 

 

As the range wound down, one of my own boats was first to go, smashed to a burning hulk and then sunk. Revenge followed, though, with Rocket soon going the same way.

 

 

Now, we were trading rounds with Charybdis at close range. By this time, the cruiser had been hit several times, and seemed to have settled onto a steady course. Taking a chance, I turned one of my boats broadside on, and let fly with another salvo of tin fish.

 

 

The boat was hit next turn by a broadside from the cuiuser and left sinking, but her torpedoes hit home, and at last, it was all over!

 

 

Three torpedo boats and the blockade runner lost, was a high price to pay for a cruiser and a destroyer, though with less erratic shooting and better division-handling on my part, things might have been different. Just as well maybe, that Atlantic Fleet left out the rest of the British force!

 

Next up, we will see if I managed any better in a real fight against odds, with Scharnhorst.

 

...to be continued!

[33LIMA]

Will the Atlantic Fleet Battle of the North Cape be Scharnhorst's last?

 

'I didn't know the Navy had such a lovely boat!', said an RAF pilot in a post-war interview, recording his memories of the Channel Dash. They didn't. The 'lovely boat' was Scharnhorst, Gneisenau or possibly Prinz Eugen, the three major waships the Germans ran up the English Channel in daylight during February 1942, to get them away from the French ports before they were sunk or wrecked there by bombing. And surely, the Scharnhorst-class battlecruisers must, to most eyes, be one of the most visually-pleasing warship designs ever built. And Atlantic Fleet's Scharnhorst certainly does the class full justice (though Gneisenau should have her main mast stepped against the rear of her funnel).

 

 

This daring move left the Kriegsmarine's surviving major surface units in northern waters for the rest of the war, a major threat in particular to the Arctic convoys which supplied the Soviet Union much vital war matériel. Their first major sortie against the convoys in December 1942 was a shambles; at the Battle of the Barents Sea, in bad visibility, Hipper, Lutzow and destroyers failed to hurt convoy JW51B, sinking a destroyer and a minesweeper but losing a destroyer of their own, when two of them mistook British cruisers for their own, in bad weather. Hitler ranted and called for the scrapping of the surface fleet. That didn't happen, and they made a valiant contribution to the defences and evacuations from the Batlic seaboard late in the war. But by that time, the last major surface action, a year after the Barents Sea fiasco, had seen Scharnhorst go down fighting after being caught by superior forces in another failed convoy attack. Having sent her accompanying destroyers off to locate convoy JW55B, Scharnhorst was alone when intercepted by a covering force of British cruisers. She abandoned the hunt after a second encounter and turned south for home, but by then it was too late. The powerful 'KG Five' class battleship Duke of York and more light units had been vectored in to intercept by the shadowing criusers. Scharnhorst might stil have escaped but a long-range hit disabled a boiler, her speed fell off and she was shelled and torpedoed to destruction, with very few suvivors. This oil painting by Charles Pears, in the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, hauntingly captures the drama of Scharnhorst's last fight.

 

 

 

The Atlantic Fleet battle

Here's the launch screen for Atlantic Fleet's version of the Battle of the North Cape. There's no option to hide what you are up against, which of course the Germans didn't know in the real fight...not that this would be much use, to anyone with prior knowledge of the historical battle. We don't get the two preliminary skirmishes with the British cruiser force, so we are straight into the final fight, where the shadowers have called in the big guns of Duke of York. As in real life, this action begins with the British in two groups, and holding the initiative.

 

 

Here's the tactical situation. The enemy units are unidentified radar contacts, but I will soon find out that the force astern of me is the trio of shawowing cruisers - Norfolk, Sheffield and Belfast - while the contacts off my port beam are battlestip Duke of York cruiser Jamaica, and the destroyer Gurkha (just one of the several which took part). All are headed right for me.

 

 

So, the party kicks off with me having to watch as all the British ships move...and then fire, most of 'em, with me unable to do anything but watch. A click of the mouse lets you see things only from your ship's point of view, wvich is more realistic of course, but I have got into the habit of letting the auto-cam track each ship as it does its thing. Anyway, 'watch', from any angle, is all I can do at first, as the starshells arrive first, then the main armament salvoes arc in towards my solitary ship, a lovely one, but for how much longer?

 

 

Now, it's my turn. I do the only thing I can do. I go to full revolutions, turn to show them my stern, and run for it, as shells spash close astern.

 

 

...to be continued!

[33LIMA]

"We will fight on until the last shell is fired"

(Admiral Erich Bey's last signal from Scharnhorst)

 

With the help of a starshell fired from my secondary battery, I soon identified the contact astern as Duke of York and turned hard-a-port at full speed. This put much the more dangerous opponent dead astern, although I now had a force of cruisers closing fast from port.

 

 

I kept a close check on my speed and soon saw that I was making thirty knots, which I knew was fast enough to out-run the British battleship. However, it would take a while to get out of range, all the time under fire from her six for'ard 14-inch guns, and unable to reply to the cruisers shooting me from my left - it's at times like this, that you really miss the ability for Atlantic Fleet to allow secondary and main guns to engage different targets at the same time.

 

 

Having staked survival on making a run for it, I engaged Duke of York with turret Caesar, making an evasive turn only as a last resort, so as to keep opening out the range. The cruiser fire was mostly 6-inch stuff at longer range, apart from the occasional more dangerous salvo from Norfolk's 8-inch guns. I got some hits on the battleship, astern initially but then amidships too. But I started taking the occasional 14-inch hit in return. It all felt rather like the real battle. Whatever other damage these hits did, so long as they didn't affect my speed, I had a fighting chance of living to fight another day. But if they took even a few knots off my top speed, my goose was well and truly cooked.

 

 

My hits seemed to encourage Duke of York to jink, which helped me open the range. But she kep on shooting, kept on getting the odd hit. Scharnhorst's speed fell slightly, still fast enough to get away, but only just. This couldn't go on much longer.

 

 

Just when I needed it most, I seemed to get my eye in with the gunnery, using both the map and on-screen plotting tools to judge the fall of shot and allowing carefully for the crosswind. Duke of York came on, and she kept shooting, but her accuracy seemed to fall off, after several hits about the forepart of the big battleship. A fire burning amidships was extinguished, but another sprang up between her bridge and 'B' Turret.

 

 

But now the cruisers, led by Norfolk, were getting dangerously close on my port beam. Hoping against hope that Duke of York was struggling and could be left alone for a bit, I swung to port and gave Norfolk a series of devastating broadsides. After that it was the turn of Sheffield, and then Belfast. I jinked to avoid Duke of York's now-erratic salvoes and to keep all three 11-inch turrets bearing on each cruiser in turn. Down they went, one after the other. There aren't ooo many screenshots from this phase of the battle, because I was fighting hard to keep hold of what suddenly seemed like just a chance of survival, of victory even.

 

 

The fourth cruiser, Duke of York's consort Jamaica and the destroyer Gurkha had got ahead of the battleship and they were my next two targets, and my next two victims.

 

By this time, Duke of York had cut the corner and was begining to bear down on my. Scharnhorst started taking big gun hits again, and began to list to starboard. Now, it was time to stop running from her, and take her on in earnest. I managed to 'cross her T' and salvo after salvo ripped into her.  Soon she was ablaze amidships again - and slowly sinking by the stern!

 

 

I'd done it! It had been the proverbial close run thing, but some fortunate early hits on Duke of York had bought me just enough time and opportunity to deal with the cruisers before turning at bay and managing to finish off the battleship, before she finished off me. It could just as easily have gone the other way, a few more hits on Scharnhorst and a few less on Duke of York and the ending would almost certainly have been very different. Scharnhorst was hard hit and listing badly but still afloat and in action. I had made a bit of a mess of Sept Iles, but had somehow managed to win the Battle of the North Cape! 'Lucky Scharnhorst lives to fight another day!

 

[Silberpfeil]

Great action reports, 33Lima!

[33LIMA]

Thanks, Silberpfeil! If anything and to my surprise, I'm actually enjoying the dynamic campaign a lot too, maybe even more than the single missions. The ten-ship-per-side limit means convoys are rather small and the AA-only armed merchantmen make life a bit too easy but I'm having a ball.

 

 

After a period re-arming and refitting back at Wilhelmshaven, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau teamed up with Blucher and Scheer, for a breakout into the North Atlantic.

 

 

There, they will re-join and re-inforce the valiant efforts of my U-Boats, who have been keeping the war going in the meantime...with a little help from their friends, including this airstrike called in against HMS Valiant, with most satisfactory results...

 

 

 

The plan was for the two battlecruisers to get into the mid-Atlantic, while Scheer and Blucher carried on, headed for the southern trade routes. However, the full force had an unexpected early encounter while still together, with a lightly-escorted convoy. Unfortunately, the escort included a Sunderland flying  boat, which damaged Blucher, forcing me to send her back to a friendly port.

 

 

However, ships are not entirely safe anywhere, and while the captured ports in Norway (now joined by those in occupied France) are useful, none of them is immume from the attentions of the RAF, which can cause more damage or set back repairs...

 

 

Despite the damage to Blucher, the renewed submarine-surface attacks are exacting a heavy toll from the convoys, so things are going pretty well to plan, for the Kriegsmarine.

 

 

 

 

I could probably hasten things along by launching more U-Boats and putting them to sea, but I'm not sure I'm in any hurry to end this, even with a victory - the Atlantic Fleet dynamic campaign just is far too much fun. Terrific stuff!