He had been warned, yes, warned about an unseen ship of war by Hoffmann, Kapitan of the Scharnhorst…. “It stuck a fast moving rocket right into Gneisenau’s belly. It was astounding, Krancke! You would have to see it to believe it, but I saw the whole thing with my very own eyes, and I will never forget it. This was the same weapon that sunk Sigfrid, and hit Bismarck. We had the heart of the fleet with us, yet this ship forced Lindemann to back off. Now they are sending you? Be careful!”
Krancke never liked the way Hoffmann said that—now they are sending you? I was in line for a battlecruiser, he thought. I had my eye on Kaiser Wilhelm, but they gave that ship to Heinrich. At the very least, I should have been moved up to Rhineland or Westfalen, but after Operation Wunderland, I suppose I am lucky they didn’t ship me off to Berlin to command a desk. I have never forgotten that experience, the humiliation, the sense of utter helplessness to feel rounds striking this ship from a vessel we could not even see! Raeder was kind enough to give Admiral Scheer back to me after we patched it together again, yet the message was clear. Class was again in session, and if I ever expect a higher command, a better ship, then I had better make the next sortie count. Well, here I am, with Lutzow in her watery grave, and now an impudent little British destroyer squawking my position to the entire Royal Navy.
They gave me the dirty work this time—slip through, find the convoy, and shadow it north. Yes, we knew there would be destroyers, and possibly cruisers in escort, but nobody said anything about battleships in this close to the merchantmen. They usually hold forth in the covering forces. Remember when Hoffmann handed me those three cigars? I always saved the third one after surviving that encounter in the Kara Sea. Smoke that one if you get back alive, he told me. That’s what this will soon become for me, another case of survival.
Part V
North Cape
“The complete or partial destruction of the enemy must be regarded as the sole object of all engagements…. Direct annihilation of the enemy’s forces must always be the dominant consideration.”
Chapter 13
Admiral Sheer had come about and was running west now, with a destroyer running parallel to her course, about 11 nautical miles to the south. Behind him, he could still feel the impending shadow of that British battleship, and he knew it had also turned in his direction. He was unquestioningly being shown the door, and now he had to decide what to do. He still had sea room to the west, but eventually, he would begin to run into floes of ice. Now he could either repeat his loop to the north, or describe the same maneuver to the south. Either choice would most likely put him well behind the convoy, and that damn destroyer would duly mark it down. So at 18:38 he opened fire with secondary guns in an effort to chase it off. This is what it’s like to fight the Royal Navy, he shrugged. The hunter behind me had a big shotgun, and he always hunts with hounds.
The destroyer he was firing at was the Onslow, and the bigger German ship succeeded in discouraging its approach. Krancke saw the enemy destroyer making smoke and turning away, but the hunter behind it already had the range on Scheer, and the sea around the ship erupted with accurate fire from those 14-inch guns. It was a case of ‘pick on someone your own size,’ and it didn’t take much for Krancke to get the message. His ship was straddled, and one round of the four flung at him by Howe struck home, penetrating the hull well forward. It had been a stroke of very bad luck, and speed fell off to 23 knots as the engineers struggled below decks to try and stop the flooding. Now, hobbled by that hit, it was looking to be a very bad day for Krancke, but two things played in his favor.
The first was the smoke that had been laid down by the Onslow. It temporarily masked the scene, and Krancke correctly deduced that the British gunners were having difficulty getting the range again. They fired, but found nothing but seawater in the gloom, the shots coming in very wide. The second, unknown to Krancke, was a frantic message that came in from Group B in the merchant sailing order, the very same group that had first suffered the bite of U-376. There were four groups of eight ships each in the convoy, labeled A through D. Down to just six ships, the delay in getting back into cruising order after that attack had seen PQ-17B fall off to the tail of the convoy column. It was now some 50 nautical miles behind the other three groups, and suddenly under attack again.
Captain Charles Woodhouse aboard the battleship Howe got just a fragment of the message before it was cut off. “PQ-17B—Under attack—on fire—need help with all speed….” Thinking there might be yet another German surface raider about, Woodhouse reasoned that he could turn now for the merchantmen and still keep his ship between them and the Admiral Scheer. But what was out there? He knew the Tirpitz and Scharnhorst were spotted the previous day. If it was either of those two, things could get very ugly here soon.
As it happened, the Captain had little to fear, and he would have been better minded to send his destroyers back in his place. In turning, he gave Krancke just the brief interval he needed to slip away to the southwest. For it was not the Tirpitz feasting on PQ-17B, but yet another unseen marauder in the person of Max Teichert on U-456. While the British had raced after Admiral Scheer with three destroyers and a battleship, U-456 had slipped right into the midst of the fold, and torpedoes were soon flying in all directions, ripping into the thin skinned merchant ships and wreaking havoc. Ships were wheeling in all directions, and many of Teichert’s shots missed, but Olpana, Honomu, Rathlin and Pan Kraft would all take hits. The Kapitan was single handedly wrecking what was still left of PQ-17B, the prey Krancke had been maneuvering to get at for so very long.
When word reached Admiral Scheer, it came with mixed emotions for Krancke. Here I spend the better part of two days trying to get at the tail of that convoy, while Teichert slips right into the kitchen unnoticed and has himself a feast! Admiral Scheer does all the work, harried by battleships and destroyers of every stripe, and I’ve a nice little scar on the hull to prove it, but U-456 gets the laurels. My engineers are still pumping water, but I’m getting speed up again, and the range is opening. Thank God—that battleship is turning to the east.
He would later learn that the destroyer failed to return to a friendly port, and that would be his only consolation. Indeed, HMS Onslow would not survive the night. The ship was not making smoke willfully, it had been struck twice by those 11-inch guns from Admiral Scheer, and the fires were soon uncontrollable. The ship sunk at 23:30, the lone tally for the German raider, and the salt in the wound was that Krancke didn’t even know he had done even that.