He turned, chastened by his enemy again, and skulked away to the southwest, but his little drama had done one thing that would make a very big difference in the battle. It had force the British to detach the battleship Howe from the Home Fleet covering force, and now it was here, 40 miles behind the tail of the convoy chasing the smoky grey raider, while far to the north, the vanguard of a long procession of British ships was finally approaching the Cape.
All hell was about to break loose.
Captain Harold Richard George Kinahan was an Irishman through and through. Born in Belfast in 1893, he had just celebrated his 49th Birthday eleven days earlier as he prepared to join Home Fleet for one of the first major sorties of the war for his ship, the new battleship Anson. Kinahan had served on the staff of Home Fleet since 1940, and this was his second command at sea after a stint on the cruiser Orion before the war. A specialist in gunnery, he was about to be taught another lesson in that regard—from the battleship Tirpitz.
After the air strike earlier that day, it seemed that the Royal Navy had the enemy on the run. While they had failed to find the German carrier, and sunk only a lowly destroyer, the effect seemed to be that the Germans were now running east for the safety of land based air power. But appearances can be deceiving, for the early evening had also seen a well coordinated air strike aimed at the British carriers.
Home Fleet, with Anson, Ark Royal, Sheffield, Nigeria, Jamaica, and a hand full of destroyers, had been the farthest east, coming up from Scapa Flow. The assigned distant covering force was west with Victorious, Hood, Cumberland, Shropshire and more destroyers. As the two covering forces pressed on north, it was Home Fleet that was suddenly in the vanguard, and Anson seemed to be driving the Germans on before him. Their afternoon air strike had cost them seven Stukas, and but all it took was one good hit with a 500 pound bomb to severely ruffle Ark Royal’s feathers. To make matters worse, a group of He-111s had also flown from Tromso carrying 1000 pound bombs, and both arms of the strike caught the British unawares.
There were six fighters up near Ark Royal, but no visual sightings were made until the Stukas were only ten miles out. By then it was almost too late for the fighters to break up the attack. They came in, paid a heavy price in losing seven of the twelve planes that made the attack, but they got that single hit, and couple near misses. The resulting damage to planes parked all over the rear flight deck was considerable. When the skies finally cleared, Ark Royal had only 3 more fighters and a half dozen Barracudas left in mission ready order, and one of the four fighters she had up was shot down in a duel with the six German Messerschmitts that escorted the strike.
That was the first setback, a turn of fate that took out almost 40% of British sea based air power in one throw. Ark Royal was ordered to withdraw to a secondary role, where she might get some time to repair many of those damaged planes. For a time, Anson was then the only credible threat in that advanced covering force, and as if they could sense their enemies weakness at that moment, Admiral Carls decided to make a sudden turn. He had collected the disparate squadrons of his fleet as they approached the Norwegian coast, and now, he came about, guns ready, hoping to follow up that air strike with a surprise surface engagement.
At 30 minutes past midnight he spotted the tall silhouette of the Anson, more prominent than any other ship on his horizon, and Tirpitz opened fire. Fifteen minutes later, he scored a particularly telling blow, one that struck Anson amidships, penetrating to the engineering powerplant below decks.
Kinahan cursed inwardly when he felt the blow shake his brand new battleship. Nothing like scuffing up the pain the first time out of port, he thought. But that was the least of it. The loss of speed in an engagement like this was more than a tactical inconvenience—it could be fatal. Anson fired back bravely, and saw the bright flashes of at least two hits on Tirpitz. That gave Kinahan heart, the first bite for his ship in the war, and the first taste of blood.
The German ship took light damage, with a twin 152mm gun turret put out of action, one flak gun lost, but more significantly, the surface search radar was a total loss, flayed by shrapnel from the hit on that secondary battery.
Anson’s damage was equivalent, with a hit on one of her 5.25-inch secondary batteries, but the difficulties in the propulsion plant at this critical moment were a grave concern for Kinahan. More German ships were spotted, and now he realized there was grave danger here. He turned to his Executive Officer and whispered something quietly, so the other officers on the bridge would not overhear him. “Where is Hood? We need her—and that quickly.” Then he turned calmly to his helmsman and ordered the ship to come about.
Where was Hood?
She was 123 nautical miles away, slightly northwest of the Anson, returning to her watch with the carrier Victorious. The carrier was actually closer to the battle, some 97 miles off on that same heading, and with her were the heavy cruisers Kent and Cumberland. Nigeria and Jamaica were also slowly converging on the carrier’s position, but all these ships were now too far off to be of any immediate help to Kinahan on the Anson. After getting a fleet status update, the Captain leaned over the chart table with a decision to make.
Laddie, he said to himself inwardly. We’ve a gimpy leg now, and we cannot run. No use holding the destroyers and Sheffield here, but it looks as though we’ll simply have to stand and fight. “signal all destroyers to take a heading of 340, Sheffield to follow,” said Kinahan. “Step lively now, and run it up on the halyards.”
The destroyers were already running, with the Marne taking a pounding from the Admiral Hipper and what looked like another smaller cruiser coming up from the south. If Kinahan actually knew what he was now facing, he might have put his money on the engineers getting the engines sorted out, and not on his guns. The entire German surface fleet had reached a predetermined rendezvous point, and now they had turned, forming a wide line of steel on the sea, and they were charging west. One of the two Type 275 radar sets had been smashed aboard Anson, and so she was like a fighter with one eye closed, and could not see the danger looming from the east. Then the ship shuddered heavily, another hard blow struck by two rounds from the Tirpitz. This time fires and flooding resulted. A 5.25-inch turret magazine had exploded.
The fires were not serious, but the flooding was. That round from Tirpitz that had penetrated to the engineering plant had opened a good sized hole in the hull, and the ship was soon in a ten degree list. Kinahan counter flooded, but this did nothing to help his situation with the engines. Anson merely settled more deeply in the water, and he could make no more than 8 knots.
Anson fired another full broadside, the tall spray of the shells straddling the dark silhouette of the Tirpitz in the distance. He saw no obvious hits, but suddenly the lookouts reported the Germans seemed to be breaking off to the north, and he breathed a sigh of relief.