In desperation, Brandenburg decided survival was preferable to a hit on that cruiser, and quietly gave the order to come about. He turned northeast, intent on joining his brethren, U-251, U-255, and now U-703 slowly arriving from the east. Their mission was to stop the convoy, and now he would forsake these straggling elements of the enemy covering force. Singleton’s bluff had just saved the heavy cruiser Kent, though he would not really know that, nor would he get any medals for his skillful attack on the unseen submarine. For him it was all in a day’s work.
At 13:00, a Kondor departed Tromso, heading northwest to see about finding the enemy convoy so it could vector those U-boats in. Peter Strasser, now heading south for Tromso, also sent up a pair of fighters to provide protection. They flew right over Sheffield and Kent, noting their positions but continuing on west to look for the real fish. The Kondor was already getting long range radar returns, turning to investigate, even as those fighters did the same.
The Bf-109s took a good look, classifying the contact as a battleship. The second pass, now receiving flak, gave them a better look. It was A King George V class ship, completely alone. They had come across the battleship Howe, returning to the covering force after its duel with the pocket battleships.
By 15:30, that Kondor had finally scored the jackpot, reporting two large formations of merchant ships escorted by three destroyers. Most of the Ice Devils were too far away to do anything about it, except U-255 under Kapitanleutnant Reinhart Reche. He was only about 16 miles away, and cleverly maneuvering his boat into a gap between the lead group of enemy ships and the two groups following. At about 18:40, he began to line up on the freighter Azerbaijan, and no one in the convoy saw the sleek eel in the water ahead. Once his first torpedo was in the water, the alarm was raised, but he was already calculating how to get at the ships following in the long line.
Bellingham was next, then Bolton Castle. He missed the first, and his next lance raced right past that second ship only to strike the next vessel in the line, the Daniel Morgan. He was right in the midst of the formation, with ships on either side of him now, a wolf in the fold. He would turn easily and put out a full spread of four torpedoes, that last striking the Grey Ranger. Racing on, the sea spray awash at his bow, eyes lost in his field glasses, Reche fired a single fish at the next ship in the line, the Hoosier. It was only now that he began to receive fire from the merchantmen. Grey Ranger, hit badly with both flooding and fire scourging her decks, managed to get a 20mm Oerklion into action and began riddling the seas around the U-boat. Reluctantly, Reche gave the order to dive to periscope depth to avoid damage or casualties to his men on the sail.
The feast had begun, and all the drama and hand wringing of the surface action counted for naught. The heavy ships with their thunderous guns would not weigh in on this little battle. It was just a single U-boat, reveling in the midst of those merchant ships, and the torment of PQ-17 was only just beginning. Yet out on the glowering grey to the south, three British destroyers had seen the explosions, particularly when Hoosier was finally hit. Ashanti, Martin and Onslaught were racing to the scene as fast as their screws would turn. Reche would notch three kills, with Daniel Morgan and Hoosier still afloat and burning, near dead in the water, but his joyride through the convoy would soon come to a most unhappy end.
Chapter 15
Kapitan Krancke was still not satisfied, but things were getting a little better. After sinking the Hartlebury, he had turned to stalk the Allied convoy again from behind, coming upon yet another straggler, the Honomu. He wasted little time, engaging and sinking that ship with his 152mm guns. Yet the wireless operator had gotten off a distress call, warning that the German raider was back in the hunt, which now posed a real problem for the covering forces, just over 150 nautical miles to the east. There was nothing to be done in the short run, but Hood abandoned its planned rendezvous, and Holland decided to take his entire group west to investigate.
In the meantime, the German surface group had passed on south, with Scharnhorst slowly towing the Tirpitz under good German air cover. Admiral Carls decided he could then detach his fast raiders, and sent Rhineland and Westfalen northwest. Two groups of Heinkels had sortied from Tromso an hour earlier, vectored in to the location of the convoy by Reche’s boat before it went missing. There they found and bombed the Winston Salem, which exploded spectacularly when its cargo of ammunition was set off by an 800 pound bomb. That ship would sink in short order, and though two of the six Heinkels were shot down, the remaining four headed home, surprised to find ships beneath them as they approached the Norwegian coast. They had found the British cruisers detached earlier, and now cruising about 130 miles off the coast.
This sighting led to the sortie of yet another Kondor to keep an eye on them and fix their position, and when Kapitan Böhmer on the Peter Strasser learned their location, he decided to do something about it with his last six Stukas. They were up in short order, heading southwest where they were vectored in by the Kondor.
The restless Captain of Sheffield, Wesley Clark, was getting quite uncomfortable with all these German planes overflying his position, and no friendly air cover in sight. He put in a coded message to the Ark Royal, complaining, and was soon told a pair of Fireflies were on the way… but they would arrive too late.
Those six Stukas found the wounded warriors, and focused their attack on Kent, each with a pair of 500 pound bombs. With Kent slowed to 8 knots, unable to maneuver, four of the twelve bombs would score hits, with another near miss only 20 feet off the port side. That was going to end the war for that ship, and the doughty cruiser went down at a few minutes before midnight on the end of that very long day’s action.
Clark stared at it, knowing he could not linger here, but seeing the men in the water, and realizing he had to do what he could to help them. But the trouble was only just beginning. Those two German raiders detached by Admiral Carls had sallied forth at good speed, just passing the British group in the murky grey. They spotted Sheffield, turned on a parallel course, angling in to close the range, which was about 27,000 meters at first sighting.
The British cruiser soon had to abandon its rescue effort and put on all speed to make a run for it. Undaunted, the plucky minesweeper Halcyon would brave the enemy charge turning to fire with everything it had. It was a brave action, hoping to give Sheffield time to break away, but this time, Captain Singleton’s bluff would be called by the secondary guns of the Westfalen. His ship would take numerous hits, and was soon lost in the smoke they were trying to make, but would never be seen again.