Battle of the Barents Sea, 1942: the destroyers that saved JW 51B

The Battle of the Barents Sea was fought in the twilight of the Arctic midwinter, off the North Cape of Norway. It was small as naval battles go, but few have had such an outsized effect on the side that lost it: within a month the head of the German navy had resigned.²

Who won the Battle of the Barents Sea and why?

The British won. Five destroyers under Captain Robert Sherbrooke kept a German heavy cruiser, a pocket battleship and six destroyers away from convoy JW 51B for some four hours, using the threat of their torpedoes, until two British cruisers arrived and drove them off. The German commander, bound by orders to avoid risk, broke off; no merchant ship was sunk.³

Background: the convoys to Murmansk

From 1941 the Allies shipped weapons and supplies to the Soviet Union around the north of Norway to Murmansk and Archangel. The worst disaster came in July 1942, when the British ordered convoy PQ 17 to scatter for fear of an attack by German heavy ships that never came. The counts differ: Guttman gives 23 of 35 ships sunk by submarines and aircraft, Roskill's official history 23 merchantmen and a rescue ship out of 36 that set out, two of which turned back early, and the Admiralty's foreword to Admiral Tovey's despatch 21 of 34. Guttman writes that Hitler was pleased with this success of a fleet in being, but still expected his surface ships to fight.⁴ › Channel Dash, 1942

Convoy JW 51B, fourteen merchant ships carrying war material, left Loch Ewe in Scotland on 22 December 1942, a week after JW 51A, which reached the Kola Inlet without loss on Christmas Day. After six quiet days a gale scattered part of the convoy, and the minesweeper Bramble was sent to look for the stragglers. Some found their way back, but on the morning of 31 December the main body was down to twelve ships.⁵

Armies and commanders

The close escort was commanded by Captain Robert Sherbrooke in the destroyer Onslow. It had sailed with six destroyers and five smaller ships, but one destroyer lost touch in the gale, so five destroyers, the Onslow, Obedient, Orwell, Obdurate and Achates, were with the convoy when the fighting began, with two corvettes and a trawler. Further off, as distant cover, sailed Rear Admiral Robert Burnett with the light cruisers Sheffield and Jamaica.⁶

A U-boat reported the convoy south of Bear Island on 30 December, and from Altenfjord at the top of Norway a German force put to sea at once under Vice Admiral Oskar Kummetz: the heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper, flying his flag, and the Lützow, each with three destroyers.⁷

Kummetz sailed under a handicap. Since the loss of the Bismarck in May 1941 Hitler had ordered his big ships to avoid unnecessary risks, and as Kummetz left he was told to use caution even against an enemy of equal strength; Roskill adds that he was not to risk his heavy ships in a night action in which British torpedoes could be used. Roskill remarks that the German naval staff showed a remarkable aptitude for depriving its sea commanders of all initiative. He also writes that the Lützow was under orders to break out into the Atlantic after the attack, which may explain the caution with which she was handled.⁸

The commanders' plans

Kummetz meant to approach from astern and attack from both flanks at once. The Hipper and three destroyers would come in from the northwest and draw off the escorts; the Lützow and the other three would then fall on the unprotected convoy from the south. Roskill points out that, although Kummetz was criticized for dividing his force, events worked out almost exactly as he had planned.⁹

Sherbrooke had settled his answer before he sailed and explained it at the convoy conference. If surface ships attacked, his fleet destroyers would gather on the threatened side and steer for the enemy, keeping between the attackers and the merchant ships, while the convoy turned away and the smaller escorts covered it with smoke. Tovey's despatch records that once in action he judged the enemy unwilling to face the risk of a torpedo attack, and made use of that for the next twenty-five minutes.¹⁰

Burnett, in Roskill's account, intended to cover the convoy from about forty miles astern and from the north, where enemy ships would stand out against what daylight there was in the southern sky. But a position he had been sent was badly wrong, and his cruisers crossed ahead of the convoy instead of astern. At 8:30 a.m. on 31 December none of the four separate British groups, the convoy, the cruisers, the Bramble and a trawler with a straggler, knew exactly where the others were.¹¹

The battle, phase one: first contact

At about 8:20 a.m. on New Year's Eve the corvette Hyderabad sighted two strange destroyers astern of the convoy; taking them for Russian reinforcements, she made no report. The destroyer Obdurate sighted and reported them soon after and closed to identify them. At 9:30, when she was within about four miles, they opened fire on her. It was freezing hard, and visibility was seven to ten miles except in the snow squalls. The British cruisers were then some 25 miles north of the convoy by Tovey's account and 30 by Roskill's. Roskill adds that Sherbrooke, on the first report, sent his ship's company to breakfast and told them to change into clean underclothing, the traditional order before battle.¹²

Phase two: destroyers against a heavy cruiser

Sherbrooke turned toward the gun flashes and called his destroyers together, while the Achates and the smaller escorts laid smoke over the merchant ships and the convoy turned away. At about 9:40 the Hipper herself appeared and opened fire on the Achates. Again and again the Onslow and Orwell turned in as if to fire torpedoes, and each time the German cruiser drew off; Sherbrooke sent the Obedient and Obdurate back to guard the convoy against the German destroyers. His Victoria Cross citation records that four times the enemy tried to attack the convoy and each time was forced to withdraw behind a smoke screen to avoid the threat of torpedoes.¹³

At about 10:20 the Hipper found the Onslow's range. She was hit four times in quick succession: two of her guns were put out of action, her engine room was holed and fire broke out forward. Sherbrooke was badly wounded in the face, and Tovey's despatch says the wound disabled his left eye so that he could not see. He went on directing his ships until a further hit forced the Onslow to disengage, and left the bridge only when he knew that the next senior officer, Lieutenant Commander D. C. Kinloch of the Obedient, had taken over; from his cabin he went on receiving reports until the convoy was out of danger.¹⁴

Phase three: the Lützow in the snow

Kummetz's plan very nearly worked. While almost all the escorts were fighting the Hipper to the north, the Lützow and her destroyers came up on the convoy from the south, within a couple of miles of it. Then a snow squall closed in, and her captain stood away to wait for the weather to clear. Roskill believed that only that caution saved the convoy from destruction; Guttman blames the Lützow's captain, Rudolf Stänge, for two fainthearted attacks that undid the whole operation.¹⁵

The escort paid for its stand. The minesweeper Bramble, still searching for stragglers, ran into the Hipper and was sunk. Soon after 11 a.m. the Hipper came out of the murk again and crippled the Achates, killing her captain, Lieutenant Commander A. H. T. Johns. Under her first lieutenant she went on screening the convoy with smoke until early afternoon, when she called for help and then capsized before the trawler Northern Gem could come alongside.¹⁶

Turning point: the cruisers arrive

Then Burnett's cruisers came down from the north. They sighted the Hipper at about 11:30 and opened fire at about seven miles; Tovey's despatch says they seem to have taken her completely by surprise, for she did not reply until the Sheffield's fourth salvo. She was hit at once and twice more as she turned away. Caught between the British destroyers and cruisers, Kummetz ordered his ships to break off and withdraw to the west.¹⁷

In the confusion two German destroyers appeared about 4,000 yards from the British cruisers. The Sheffield turned on the nearer one, the Friedrich Eckoldt, and quickly left her sinking; Guttman notes that her last signal accused the Hipper of firing on her.¹⁸

The Lützow found the convoy again at about 11:40 and opened fire, but damaged only one merchant ship before a smoke screen hid the convoy, and at 11:49 Kummetz repeated his order to withdraw. The British cruisers shadowed the retiring German ships into the afternoon, until it was clear they were heading home. The main body of JW 51B entered the Kola Inlet on 3 January 1943 and the ships bound for Archangel arrived three days later.¹⁹

Counting the losses

The British lost two ships: the Achates, with her captain and many of her crew, and the Bramble. The Onslow was badly damaged. The Germans lost the destroyer Friedrich Eckoldt, and the Admiral Hipper was damaged. Not one merchant ship was sunk; one was damaged by the Lützow. Tovey's despatch summed it up: an enemy force of at least one pocket battleship, one heavy cruiser and six destroyers, with all the advantage of surprise and concentration, had been held off for four hours by five destroyers and driven from the area by two 6-inch cruisers, without any loss to the convoy.²⁰

The German side paid in other ways. The Hipper was repaired but, Roskill writes, never sent on active service again, and she was among the ships decommissioned that spring under Hitler's order; the Lützow's planned sortie into the Atlantic was abandoned.²¹

Aftermath

In Berlin the result turned to rage. The editors of the German naval conference records note that Hitler first heard of the action from a British news broadcast, before the navy's own report reached him, and that he condemned the navy for not fighting it through to a finish. The accounts differ in degree: Guttman writes that Hitler ordered the entire surface fleet scrapped, and Roskill quotes his "firm and unalterable resolve" to pay off the big ships.²²

At the conference on 6 January 1943 Hitler talked for an hour and a half about the history of the German navy, declared that the big ships tied down aircraft and small craft that were needed elsewhere, and ordered proposals for decommissioning them; he called his decision final. Grand Admiral Erich Raeder, who had commanded the navy since 1928, argued against it and resigned on 30 January. Hitler replaced him with the head of the U-boat arm, Admiral Karl Dönitz, and, as Guttman notes, Dönitz kept the battleship Tirpitz and the battlecruiser Scharnhorst for Arctic operations but put the weight of the navy's war on the submarines.²³

Legacy and memory

The official historian was not uncritical of his own side. Roskill judged that Burnett's cruisers should have intervened earlier: a wrong estimate of the convoy's position sent them across its path ahead instead of astern, and two turns to the east to chase radar contacts cost precious time. Through all the fighting, he notes, Burnett never once sighted the convoy he was protecting. Guttman, for his part, notes that the bad weather made the German ships lose track of each other too.²⁴

Roskill called the result a considerable seismic disturbance in the enemy camp, caused by two British cruisers and half a dozen destroyers in the Arctic twilight. Guttman draws the lessons plainly: a vague order to avoid risk robbed the German admirals of their initiative, the two halves of the attack lost each other in the weather, and a bold escort commander turned a hopeless position into a victory.²⁵

Sherbrooke survived his wounds and was awarded the Victoria Cross, gazetted on 12 January 1943, for valor in the defense of the convoy.²⁶

Visiting today

Sherbrooke is buried in the Sherbrooke family plot in the churchyard of St Peter and St Paul at Oxton, Nottinghamshire, where the Victoria Cross Trust repaired his grave memorial in 2023.²⁷ › 31 December in military history