Big Gun Battles

Warship Duels of the Second World War

Robert C. Stern

• Publisher: Seaforth Publishing
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781848321533
• eBook ISBN: 9781473849358
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

This naval history of WWII explores the advancing technology and tactics of battleships through a fascinating survey of ship-to-ship duels.

While many naval battles of the Second World War were decided by the torpedo or the aerial bomb, there was a surprising number of traditional ship-to-ship engagements involving the big guns of battleships and cruisers. Big Gun Battles recounts some of the most significant and technically fascinating of these gunfire duels in a narrative that combines lively storytelling with an in-depth understanding of the factors influencing victory or defeat.
Covering all theatres of the naval war from 1939 until the Japanese surrender, the selected incidents demonstrate the changing face of surface warfare under the influence of rapidly improving fire-control systems, radar, and other technologies. By 1945, battleships achieved the pinnacle of gunnery excellence.

1	THE CURTAIN RISES ROYAL NAVY VS KRIEGSMARINE IN THE ATLANTIC AUGUST 1939–JUNE 1940

JUST OVER TWENTY YEARS EARLIER, A dominant Royal Navy had watched the German High Seas Fleet steam into captivity in the Firth of Forth. Except for five American battleships forming the 6th Battle Squadron, and a smattering of ships representing France and the other Allies, the vast majority of the warships present to witness the German surrender on 21 November 1918 were British. The Royal Navy’s Grand Fleet was one of the most powerful military forces of any kind assembled to date.¹

However, this appearance of power was more than a little illusory. Many of the Grand Fleet’s largest ships – battleships and battlecruisers – had been built early in the naval arms race with Imperial Germany and were obsolescent (and worn-out) by 1918. Gun calibre had increased from 12in in the earliest Dreadnoughts to 13.5in starting with the Orion-class in 1909, but even the ships of this interim generation were overshadowed by the 15in main batteries of the war-construction Queen Elizabeth- and Revenge-class battleships and Renown-class battlecruisers, and would be of questionable value in battle against any future opponent.

The Grand Fleet had been horribly expensive to create and maintain, and it was inevitable that this massive fleet would be dismembered soon after its great victory. The defeat of Germany and the fact that the nations possessing the next four largest navies (United States, France, Italy and Japan) were now nominally allies, removed a great deal of the impetus to maintain such a large fleet. Politically and economically, it would be hard to convince voters in Great Britain that the dozens of great ships sent to the breakers in the immediate post-war period would need to be replaced.

Despite the general euphoria at the war’s end, it was obvious that the alliances forged against Imperial Germany would be unlikely to survive long in the years to come. In particular, the US and Japan had continued to build fast, modern capital ships during the war and, with economies unaffected by the conflict, were planning continued naval expansion. The Royal Navy drew up plans for a class of large, fast battlecruisers armed with 16in guns and another of battleships armed with an 18in main battery, but neither was ever started. With massive debt accrued from the war, politicians in Great Britain, supported by many in the US, opted in favour of a naval arms limitation process that started with the convening of the Washington Naval Conference in November 1921. Dragging along Japan, France and Italy, all reluctant to accept lesser status, the resulting Five Power Treaty set fleet sizes for the five nations, set tonnage and gun calibre limits for various ship types and declared a ten-year ‘holiday’ on the construction of new battleships. To compensate Great Britain for the capital ships not ordered in 1921, the Royal Navy was allowed to design and build two battleships that conformed to the treaty’s 35,000t displacement and 16in main-battery limits.

The Royal Navy of 1939

While a dramatic reduction in the size of the Royal Navy may have been inevitable following the end of the First World War, it was in no way inevitable that when Britain found itself at war with Germany again on 3 September 1939, the Royal Navy would be inadequate to meet the demands it would face. This sad state of affairs came about because the British had put too much faith in the arms limitation process and because, at the point in the early to mid-1930s when the newest of the First World War era warships still in service were in need of rebuilding or replacement, the political will did not exist to spend the necessary funds. The only major warships added to the Royal Navy between the wars were the two less than completely satisfactory battleships of the Nelson-class (Nelson and Rodney), three aircraft carriers constructed on light battlecruiser hulls (HMS Furious (47), Courageous (50) and Glorious (77)), one purpose-built aircraft carrier (HMS Ark Royal (91)) and forty cruisers of varying quality. Of the First World War vintage warships still in commission (ten battleships, three battlecruisers, five aircraft carriers and several dozen cruisers), the quality also varied considerably. Some, such as HMS Warspite (03), had been fully modernised with a new powerplant, upgraded armour, increased main-battery range and a rebuilt superstructure, but most of these older ships had received few, if any, similar upgrades. Simply put, the Royal Navy that went to war in September 1939 had too few of all types of ships to both protect the worldwide trade network on which the nation’s survival depended and dominate the waters around Great Britain. This problem remained even if the excellent, but small, French Marine Nationale was added in on the British side, and Japan and Italy remained neutral, but within the first nine months of the war France had been defeated and Italy had come in on the German side, stretching the Royal Navy even thinner.

The British had a number of new warships under construction when war broke out, including a class of five new battleships, five large and one smaller aircraft carriers, and a score of light cruisers, though it would be mid-1940 before the first of these was commissioned, much less reached operational status.²

Problematical Panzerschiffe

To make matters worse, the British knew full well that by 1939 the Germans had rebuilt their Kriegsmarine – with British acquiescence – with several classes of large powerful ships for which they had no good answer. The ships that probably most alarmed the British were the large armoured ships (Panzerschiffe) of the Deutschland-class. At least nominally in conformance with the Versailles and Washington treaties when they were built, these were publicly declared to displace 10,000t and were armed with six 28cm/54 guns in two triple turrets.³ This was an extremely heavy main battery for a ship the size of a heavy cruiser. Their propulsion was equally as revolutionary. They were powered by four sets of MAN nine-cylinder, double-acting, two-stroke diesel motors producing 54,000shp for a designed speed of 26kt.⁴ The decision to power these ships with diesel motors was made because the resulting powerplant was far smaller than a steam turbine installation generating similar power. It was hoped that it would also be lighter in weight, saving displacement, but this proved not to be the case.

So unique was the Deutschlands’ combination of speed and armament at the time they were built that the British seemed to be at a loss as how to classify them and eventually came up with the term ‘pocket battleship’. They truly embodied Sir Jacky Fisher’s concept for the original battlecruisers, in that they were, when built, faster than anything stronger and stronger than anything faster.⁵ By 1939, this was no longer the case, as several nations had built warships that were both stronger and faster. These included the French Dunkerque-class and German Scharnhorst-class battlecruisers.⁶

What made the Deutschland-class Panzerschiffe such a great concern at the outbreak of the war, even after they had been eclipsed by larger and faster German designs – not only the recently completed Scharnhorst-class, but also the two massive Bismarck-class battleships near completion – was their extraordinary endurance combined with high cruising speed due to their diesel propulsion. They could cruise at least 15,000nm at 13kt and between 8,900nm and 10,000nm at 20kt. (Contemporary Royal Navy cruisers had at least one-third less endurance.) With this range and speed, they would make ideal commerce raiders, exactly the type of vessel most feared by an understrength Royal Navy tasked with protecting distant trade routes.

Panzerschiffe into the Atlantic

The German naval leadership (Seekriegsleitung – SKL) was well-aware of the relative weakness of the Kriegsmarine compared to the Royal Navy, both in terms of numbers of ships and geographical position. (The British Isles were perfectly located astride the routes from Germany to the Atlantic. Any German warship would have to use the English Channel or one of several passages between Scotland, Norway, Iceland and Greenland to reach open water.) Early in 1939, Hitler had committed to the construction of a large and powerful navy to be completed by 1945, but when war broke out in September, none of the hundreds of promised ships had even been started. With the navy Germany possessed at the outbreak of hostilities, the best strategy available to Admiral Erich Raeder, head of the Kriegsmarine, was to maintain a ‘fleet in being’ while beginning an aggressive campaign against Allied commerce with the few U-boats then in service and his fast and long-legged Panzerschiffe.⁷ With this in mind, as tensions rose in Europe over the ‘Polish Crisis’, the Kriegsmarine was put on a war footing. In April, the Kriegsmarine held a training exercise in the North Atlantic with the three Panzerschiffe and the battlecruiser Gneisenau and, afterwards, the newest of the Panzerschiffe, Admiral Graf Spee, had ostentatiously returned to Germany through the English Channel, attracting a great deal of attention.⁸ She then operated as normal out of her home port of Wilhelmshaven, often leaving port for a day or two to exercise her weapons.

6. In April 1939, having completed a major fleet exercise in the North Atlantic, the newest of Nazi Germany’s three Panzerschiffe (pocket battleships), Admiral Graf Spee, made a highly visible daylight passage up the English Channel, as if taunting the British. This view from off her starboard beam shows two of the type’s most easily identifiable characteristics: the two massive turrets, each mounting three 28cm guns, and the long, uninterrupted row of scuttles from her quarterdeck to her bow, indicating that her armour belt did not extend very far above her waterline. (via Bob Cressman)

The approach of war triggered a carefully orchestrated plan, the first move of which was the departure from Germany on 5 August of Altmark, a modern motor oiler/supply ship purpose-built for the Kriegsmarine.⁹ Designed to carry almost 10,000t of fuel oil and 2,000t of ammunition, stores and spare parts at a cruising speed of 15kt and a maximum speed of 21kt, she left Germany with her storage tanks nearly empty.¹⁰ Taking the shortest possible route, she passed down the English Channel and then headed west across the Atlantic, making for Port Arthur, Texas.¹¹ After taking on 9,400 tons of diesel, she sa...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 The Curtain Rises (August 1939–June 1940)
• 2 Light in the Darkness (June 1940–March 1941)
• 3 Pyrrhic Victory (October 1940–May 1941)
• 4 A Clean Sweep (February–March 1942)
• 5 An Old-Fashioned Gunfight (March 1943)
• 6 An Unfair Fight I (March 1942–December 1943)
• 7 An Unfair Fight II (October 1944)
• Afterword
• Notes
• Sources