Scharnhorst, dark and dead on the water, began drifting broadside towards the coast. She was as helpless as Worcester. And the Terschelling shoals were perilously near. It looked like the end of the voyage. Yet in spite of the extensive damage, her position was not so critical as it had been in the afternoon. For she was within the Heligoland Bight and the inky black night protected her.
As the night became colder and flurries of snow began to fall on deck, aboard the destroyer Hermann Schoemann Ciliax retired to the captain's sea cabin, which had been put at his disposal. Col. Ibel, the Luftwaffe liaison officer, was also somewhere below. Captain Reinicke was puffing his pipe on the weather side of the destroyer's bridge when suddenly he heard the deep rumbling noises of an underwater explosion. As it was followed within seconds by vibrations against the destroyer itself he realized it was not at any great distance. It came from the direction of the Scharnhorst. There seemed to be more than one heavy detonation. Or were some of the noises echoes?
Captain Reinicke ran to call Admiral Ciliax. But Ciliax, who had also heard the explosion, bounded hastily out of his cabin excitedly demanding information. With their blue-darkened flashlamps the destroyer signalman called up Scharnhorst. They got no reply. It looked ominous. Had her boilers gone up this time? Was she sinking?
It was over five minutes before a lamp spelled out the report from Hoffmann in Scharnhorst, who signalled at 9:42 p.m.: "Have hit mine." Although his fears were quietened, Admiral Ciliax, impetuous as ever, asked angrily, "Why have they taken more than five minutes to give us the answering signal?"
The answer lay in the mine itself. The signalman's lamp in Scharnhorst had been broken by the force of the explosion. It had taken five minutes to produce another lamp. As there was silence after this laconic three-word message, Ciliax again thought she had gone down.
It was touch and go. The battleship drifted to starboard two miles from the perilous shoals as Chief Engineer Walther Kretschmer and his crew once again inspected the damage. They found rudder damage and three bolts sheared on the starboard engine. But at 10:15 p.m. — thirty-five minutes after the big explosion — the indefatigable Kretschmer was able to tell the captain, "Ship is ready with starboard shaft for fourteen knots and the middle one for sixteen knots. Port shaft still inoperative."
Slowly she began to steam again. But no more signals came from her. There were no details of damage, only silence.
Hermann Schoemann zigzagged through the inky darkness with her searchlight switched on looking for the flagship. Not for the first time in the operation Ciliax had lost touch. When nearly an hour had passed without finding her, he was certain Scharnhorst had sunk and ordered the destroyer to turn and steer for the starting point to try and pick up survivors of her crew. A strong smell of oil fuel drifting on to the destroyer's bridge deepened his fears. When their searchlight revealed a thick layer of oil on the water, the destroyer followed the oil-trail towards the navigational channel.
They found no sign of any wreckage. Had she sunk leaving only this trace? Keeping his searchlight trained ahead, Ciliax ordered the destroyer to increase speed. As destroyer and battleship circled round each other in the darkness both their blinker signals failed to be seen. It was not until 10:39 p.m. that Ciliax on the destroyer picked up a message from Scharnhorst: "Ready to proceed at twelve knots. Please pilot me as echo-sounder has failed."
For some reason Ciliax did not realize she was sailing under her own power again. At 10:46 he broke silence to radio shore installations in code: "Scharnhorst in urgent need of help. Also tugs." At the same time he asked for Scharnhorst's position from the escorting torpedo boats.
Hoffmann noted in his log: "I perceive from this that he is no longer in the picture over Scharnhorst's position." At 11:30 p.m. Ciliax cancelled his "urgent need of help" message. This was because a few minutes earlier Hermann Schoemann's searchlight had illuminated a dark shadow ahead—Scharnhorst.
Now the battleship kept close on Hermann Schoemann's stern as they steamed together towards the channel and the pilot ship which would guide her into Wilhelmshaven. She proceeded at reduced speed, as the special mine-sweeper to clear the way would not be ready until 7 o'clock next morning. They did not want to take any unnecessary risks in this mine-infested area.
Scharnhorst was safe but in a bad way. She reported: "(1) Starboard and middle engines operational for fourteen knots. Port engine temporarily inoperational. (2) Limited oil and water supplies but sufficient for returning to the River Elbe. (3) Greatly restricted supplies of shells including heavy A.A. shells. (4) Flooding causing no vital failures. (5) One man badly wounded."
But what about the rest of the Squadron? If they had sunk the operation had failed. In fact Prinz Eugen and Gneisenau were also safe.
Just before midnight Gneisenau made contact with Prinz Eugen and was ordered to go with her to the coastal town of Brunsbuttel on the north bank of the Elbe, sixty miles northwest of Hamburg. It was at the western terminus of the Kiel Canal, which connects the Baltic with the North Sea.
As the night wore on, the British admitted the Germans had made it. At 1 a.m. in London, First Sea Lord Sir Dudley Pound lifted the private telephone which connected him with 10 Downing Street. While embarrassed senior staff officers gazed intently at maps on the War Room walls he made one of the worst reports an English admiral ever had to make to an English Prime Minister.
Pound said, "I'm afraid, sir I must report that the enemy battle-cruisers should by now have reached the safety of their home waters." Churchill growled, "Why?" and slammed the phone down.
XII
THE SHIPS CRAWL HOME
While the German ships were steaming slowly through the black night towards the safety of their home ports, in another part of the North Sea HMS Worcester was crawling painfully like a wounded animal towards the east coast of England. With smoke pouring from the after-funnel, steam belching from a great rent in her starboard side and her engines noisily clanking and thumping, she went ahead at six and a half knots — until 7:15 p.m., when steam was lost for several minutes. At 9:30 p.m., after steam had been lost again, she began to move at three and a half knots, working gradually up to seven knots.
As the ship staggered through the night, "Doc" Jackson still tried to tend the wounded. He performed emergency operations with his hands torn and bleeding, and his instruments blunted. All the time came the call for help.
Eventually all the bad casualties had some sort of first aid. The next task was to place them in some reasonable comfort. The holes in the bulkhead between the cabin flat and the ward-room had been plugged with wooden leak stoppers and someone had managed to make the lights work. So the doctor decided to use this as a temporary sick-bay. But the cabin flat was at the bottom of a vertical steel ladder, which was very difficult to get a wounded man down, and many of them had compound fractures of the legs making it difficult to move them at all. While the doctor tried to cope with them, sick-berth attendant Shelley dealt with the minor casualties who were eventually coming aft for treatment after repeated orders.