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World Battlefronts: BATTLE OF THE SEAS: The Nelson Touch

4 minute read
TIME

Aboard the Victory, off Cadiz, on Oct. 9, 1805, Lord Nelson issued his Memorandum for the decisive battle that was to be fought twelve days later off Cape Trafalgar. The great Admiral warned his commanders to keep to their line of battle, then added a word of historic advice:

“But, in case Signals can neither be seen or perfectly understood, no Captain can do very wrong if he places his Ship alongside that of an Enemy.”

In after years Nelson’s words took on a special meaning, came to stand as the essence of a naval theory: to force the enemy to action anywhere and any time, not to harass or divert him, but to drive him into a battle of final decision. In World War II, British naval commanders have acted as though they had Nelson’s words tattooed on their hearts.

Victory & Defeat. That policy brought one disaster when the Prince of Wales and Repulse sought a surface battle and ran instead into crushing Japanese air power. It brought a rueful success when the unarmored merchant cruiser Jervis Bay tackled a heavy raider force and went down with her guns blazing, saving a convoy by her sacrifice. But it paid off richly in the destruction of the Graf Spee, paid off again in the trapping and sinking of the Bismarck, paid off in every engagement with the hapless Italian Fleet, paid off in the timely sinking of the battleship Scharnhorst (TIME, Jan. 3). Last week it paid off once more: in the Bay of Biscay, two British warships closed with and sank three enemy destroyers, damaged several others, also sank a heavily laden blockade runner.

Battle & Retreat. Early in the week a U.S. Liberator bomber on ocean patrol had spotted the blockade runner. The ship must have been of immense value to the Germans; eleven destroyers put out from French bases to meet and escort it to port. The resultant fight involved a perfect cross-section of Allied operations: British warships and U.S., British, Canadian and Czechoslovak airmen. Aircraft dogged the incoming ship relentlessly; a Liberator manned by Czech airmen bombed it and left it sinking. By this time the German destroyers, some 200 miles to the east, had ventured too far. Next morning they were suddenly boxed in by the British light cruisers Glasgow and Enterprise.

The German flotilla included five destroyers of the Narvik class, mounting five 5.9-inch guns, and six of the smaller Elbing class, with four 4.1-inchers. As a force they outweighed the British but they showed little stomach for battle. After a running fight, in which the cruisers scored several hits, the Germans split into three sections and fled. The British picked out one group of four, standing northward, and ran out the chase until three were sunk and the fourth escaped in darkness.

Triumph Complete. News of the victory was an extra fillip to the British public, still savoring the destruction of the Scharnhorst. Admiral Sir Bruce Fraser reported that his victory north of Norway was due in large part to the daring attack and pursuit of the German ship by cruisers and destroyers, which slowed the Scharnhorst and brought her to bay under the 14-inch guns of his flagship, Duke of York.

In the darkness of Arctic winter, the cruisers Belfast, Norfolk and Sheffield had first sighted the Scharnhorst steering for a Russia-bound convoy. They attacked at once. After two engagements, in which both sides scored hits, the Scharnhorst fled southward only to be intercepted by the Duke of York and a task force somewhere above the North Cape. Hits by the British battleship gave the destroyers a chance to slip in for a torpedo attack, after which the Duke of York pounded the Scharnhorst to a helpless hulk, and a final torpedo attack by the cruiser Jamaica, the Belfast and four destroyers sank her. One destroyer picked up 30 survivors, another six—apparently the only men saved from the Scharnhorst’s crew of 1,460. Three British ships had suffered minor damage. The Germans lost their only capital ship in fighting trim, will now have to rely mainly on submarines and airplanes in fighting off the Allied invasion fleets they must soon expect to face.

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