They’ve got that one good ship up here, he thought. Perhaps they have orders not to mix it up with our battleships, but from the looks of this encounter, we’ve taken the worst of it. In spite of that, there’s at least hope that we can control that flooding and get the ship west to rejoin Holland and the Hood.
There the British had been pulling together all the elements of the distant covering force, the carrier Victorious with three destroyers and cruisers Kent and Cumberland. Jamaica coming up from the southwest, just a little east of Hood’s position now, and Nigeria bringing up the rear to the west.
Kinahan had it in mind to try and limp back to join them, but he realized the situation with his propulsion system was going from bad to worse by the minute. No Captain ever wants to consider what was on his mind now—the fate of his crew of over 1500 men in the cold water. If he could just keep the ship afloat, he could spare them that fate. The engineers reported that they had finally managed to seal off the flooded compartments below, though the gash in the hull could not be repaired at sea.
That was the game insofar as Anson was concerned. With her speed down to 8 knots, the ship was useless as any part of the distant covering force. He might limp west to stand with the merchantmen, as 8 knots was their cruising speed, but when he reported his ship’s condition to Holland and Scapa Flow, the order that came back was not unexpected. He looked at it, blinked, and clenched his jaw. ‘HMS Anson is to avoid any further contact with the enemy and immediately withdraw to Scapa Flow.’
So much for our maiden voyage, he thought grimly. It’s back to the dry docks for us now.
Chapter 14
The problem Holland had now, was the dispersion of his force in fending off these initial challenges from the Kriegsmarine. With Anson ordered home, he now had only two battleships forward, his own ship and the American battleship Massachusetts with the close covering force. Howe was still at the tail of the convoy keeping an eye out for that German pocket battleship, and that was 300 nautical miles to his southwest. Arc Royal was also retiring towards the convoy, though that ship still had 11 planes operational.
The only thing to do was to consolidate the force he had, bring up the close covering force to combine his forces into one strong battlegroup. Victorious sent up a fighter to have a look around, and soon reported where at least a part of the enemy force had gone. The plane overflew what looked like a pair of fast heavy cruisers, but to Holland’s mind they had to be something more.
“Heavy Cruisers? Hipper is the only ship that’s been up here of late. No. That has to be those two fast battlecruisers, Rhineland and Westfalen—nothing to be trifled with, though he was confident he could back those ships off if it came to an engagement. No enemy planes had been seen aloft, and so thinking he had a slight edge with Victorious on the scene, he gathered his ships and steeled himself for the confrontation that lay ahead.
Unknown to him, a Korvettenkapitan with a famous name was lurking right in the midst of his task force. Karl Brandenburg had taken U-457 in from the north, and sailed right through the heart of the British force at periscope depth. He was one of the boats in this North Cape group that was loosely organized as Wolfstrudel Eisteufel, the “Ice Devils.” At one point he lined up on the Hood, elated at the thought that he might get off a shot, but the speedy battleship was simply too fast. He was able to ascertain several ships by type and silhouette, identifying Kent and Cumberland, with four other ships, mostly destroyers. That dampened his ardor for a torpedo attack, but he lurked about, undiscovered, and then continued south to get to a safer position to key off a report to Admiral Carls on the Tirpitz.
His intelligence gave the Germans a very good idea of what they were up against, and Carls, already confident in having beaten off the threat from Anson, decided to attack.
“Let’s see how much stomach they have,” he said to Kapitan Topp. “They hardly put a scratch on us in that last engagement, but I think we hurt that battleship. We will swing slightly north, consolidate, and then move west again.”
Peter Strasser was about 80 miles to the south, but with only five Ju-87s and six Messerschmitts remaining operational. He decided to commit those planes, hoping one of those Stuka pilots might get a lucky hit. If nothing else, the six Bf-109s up for air cover would do him some good.
The Stukas lined up on the deck, taking off in the wet windblown sea spray. They did not have far to go before spotting the leading British ship, clearly a cruiser, and then seeing the much more menacing Hood not far behind. They put in their attack, prompting heavy AA fire from Hood and Jamaica, but the best they could do was get several near misses on the battleship. One enterprising pilot interpreted his bomb as having scored a hit off the starboard bow, but it was merely the close underwater explosion that gave him more to see than actual damage to report.
More valuable to Admiral Carls was the information those planes obtained on the composition of the enemy force. He now knew that he was facing the Hood with three cruisers, and followed by two more cruisers and two destroyers. The presence of enemy fighters harassing and driving off the last of those Stukas also told him a British carrier was still close at hand. Against this force of eight enemy ships he had an equal number, and the scene was now set for what might be the decisive battle in the north. If he could prevail here, stop or savage this convoy, then he might close the sea lanes to Murmansk, choking off the only viable supply route to the Soviets. He gave immediate orders to begin the engagement, with the super heavy cruiser Westfalen engaging the lead enemy ship, and Tirpitz to fire on the Hood as soon as range permitted.
Aboard Hood, they received the sighting report from Sheffield at 05:53 in the morning, the 17th of June—One German battleship, course 270, range 10 nautical miles. That was over 20,000 yards, and both sides were closing on one another at high speed. Captain Arthur Wesley Clark was on Sheffield, and minutes later the watchman called out three more sightings, believed to be enemy heavy cruisers. His position in the vanguard was now feeling just a bit uncomfortable, and when the ship suddenly took a direct hit from a 5-inch gun off the Westfalen, he ordered a quick evasive turn, hard to starboard. That hit had already knocked out one of his own secondary 4-inch twin gun mounts and a 40mm Bofors. He ordered all guns to return fire, and turned.
The ship would not come out of that turn unscathed. German fire was exceptionally accurate, rocking ‘Shiny Shef” with four more hits that damaged one of her 6-inch guns, several more Bofors mounts, and the 533mm torpedo mounts on the port side, where a fire looked particularly threatening. The ships Huff Duff directional finding antennae was clawed by shrapnel, but the worst of it was a round that penetrated the forward hull, causing substantial flooding and immediate loss of speed.