Hitler’s Pre-Emptive War: The Battle for Norway, 1940 Henrik Lunde (general ebook reader txt) 📖

his starboard bow and the distance had decreased to 15,000 meters. A 15-inch shell hit the Gneisenau, destroyed her forward fire control system, and made her main armament temporarily inoperable. Gneisenau sustained two more hits. One damaged the door to her forward turret and this caused the seas that were sweeping over the forward portions of the battleship to flood the turret, resulting in severe electrical damage. Three 11-inch projectiles also hit Renown but the damage was not serious. Scharnhorst was not hit and was able to assist Gneisenau by crossing behind her and laying smoke. The German battleships increased speed to 28 knots and Renown started falling behind. Frequent snow squalls also reduced the visibility. Renown increased her speed to 29 knots for a few minutes but after some ineffective salvos by both sides, the Germans disappeared from sight at 0615 hours. Whitworth thereupon detached the destroyers to guard the entrance to Vestfjord. Repulse and her accompanying ships, still more than seven hours away, were given the same mission.

Renown continued on a northwesterly course in the hope of reestablishing contact with the German ships in case they turned south. At 0900 hours, Admiral Whitworth received orders from the Admiralty to undertake operations to prevent German landings in Narvik and he thereupon concentrated all his forces on this mission. The southern approach to Narvik was finally closed, but long after the Germans had sailed through and attacked that city.

Admiral Lütjens has been criticized for lack of aggressiveness in not turning his battleships around and destroying his adversary. This criticism is unfair. His mission, after detaching TF 1, was to draw main surface units of the British fleet away from the Norwegian coast and the landing areas. Lütjens looked upon the engagement with Renown (the Germans identified their opponents as two or three large ships) as proof that he had successfully carried out his mission. His further orders were to avoid enemy contact and bring his ships back to Germany. It was possible for Lütjens to score a spectacular victory if he had turned on his opponent and approached him from different directions thereby dividing the enemy fire, but this was by no means certain. The British destroyers would have joined such an engagement and they presented a serious torpedo threat. Admiral Raeder, in his report to Hitler on April 13, fully endorsed Lütjens’ conduct:22

The Commander in Chief, Navy fully endorses the conduct of the Fleet Commander. It would have been wrong to have all-out battleship operations off the Lofoten Islands; the tactical situation was very unfavorable, with the enemy disposed along the dark western horizon, our ships along the clear eastern horizon, and the wind strength 10.

Group Command West and reports from aircraft and submarines kept Lütjens informed during the day about British fleet movements and he started his return voyage to Germany in the evening of April 9. The battleships linked up with Hipper and reached Wilhelmshaven in the afternoon of April 12 without encountering British naval forces. It was planned that the destroyers from Narvik would join the battleships for the return voyage but this was not possible.

British Hesitation

The Home Fleet was on a north-north-westerly course away from the Norwegian coast at 1600 hours, slightly north of Trondheim’s latitude. This allowed TF 2 to slip safely into Trondheim during the night. The Admiralty informed Admiral Forbes at about 1500 hours that a large German naval force had been observed in the Kattegat and Skagerrak on a northerly course.23 These were the ships in TF 5. This complicated the situation for Forbes. He knew there were sizable German forces to his north. He did not expect to catch up with these but he hoped Admiral Whitworth would intercept them.

The battle cruiser Repulse, the cruiser Penelope, and four destroyers had been sent ahead since their higher speeds gave them a better chance to catch up with the German ships. These ships were formally detached from the Home Fleet at 2000 hours and placed under Admiral Whitworth’s operational control. In addition to serving as reinforcements for Whitworth, they also served as an assurance that the Germans would be intercepted if they turned south. At the same time, Forbes turned the rest of the Home Fleet around and headed south.

Most British writers imply that the decision to turn south was Admiral Forbes’, influenced by his view, as opposed to his colleagues in the Admiralty, that a full-scale German invasion of Norway was in progress.24 There are reasons to question this conclusion.

First, the Admiralty sent Forbes a message at 1842 GMT laying out their objectives, which were to prevent the return of the German ships to his north and to intercept the force reported heading north in the Kattegat and Skagerrak. It appears that both the Admiralty and Admiral Forbes considered these forces a more promising target for the Home Fleet. This is a strange assessment since the logical targets for the ships steaming north through the Skagerrak were ports in southern or southwestern Norway. However, it seems that both Forbes and his colleagues in the Admiralty continued to be haunted by fears of a German breakout into the Atlantic. A look at the composition of the reported forces (included torpedo boats, small minesweepers, and trawlers), taken together with the Admiralty’s own conclusion as to the target of the German forces to the north, should have put these fears to rest.

A second reason to doubt that Forbes had concluded that a full-scale invasion of Norway was in progress at the time Glowworm was sunk is the disposition he made of the forces at his disposal. If he had reached the stated conclusion, his logical action would have been to position his forces to cover the obvious targets on Norway’s west coast: Trondheim, Bergen, and Stavanger. Instead, he turned away from the Norwegian coast, kept his fleet 80 to 100 miles from the Norwegian coast, even after turning south, and kept the 1st, 2nd and 18th Cruiser Squadrons that had been attached