3. Operation Catherine: The End of Bloody February
22 February - March 1942
The Royal Navy had yet more reckonings to endure and sacrifices to offer upon the altar of Churchill’s ego through the end of February and early March. With Force O in retreat, another fleet of cruisers and destroyers attempted to sabotage the German trade with Sweden and Norway as well as attempt to catch any units of the Kriegsmarine sleeping that they could. The Royal Navy believed that their opponents would have retired to their bases after the fights of the previous several weeks, as they would--apparently falling victim to what could only be charitably described as “mirror image bias”--and thus leaving some of the Kattegat open to the predations of a cruiser flotilla.
HMS Calypso
from the air. Little more than a flotilla leader, the light cruiser
managed to survive the actions that sank much of her compatriots.
This flotilla was formed around four heavy cruisers:
Cumberland and
Suffolk, of the
County-class,
York, of the eponymous class, and
Effingham, of the
Hawkins-class. Two light cruisers,
Calypso (a C-class light cruiser) and
Galathea (
Arethusa-class) led two destroyer groups, 31 and 32, a group of eight old V-class destroyers. Another group had been formed from the heavy cruiser
Norfolk, light cruisers
Emerald and
Enterprise, and two destroyer groups (27 and 28), this group was approximately a week behind the other force. Somehow, the Royal Navy’s reasons that--despite the previous losses to the Kriegsmarine--considering late Great War and treaty cruisers and destroyers a suitable task force for steaming unnoticed into the Kattegat and from thence to the Baltic to possibly cause damage to Norwegian, Swedish and German shipping is lost to history.
Admirals Warzecha and Bachmann. Both gained notoriety worldwide for
the drubbing that they gave to the Royal Navy.
Their opponents in the Kriegsmarine mustered two powerful surface action groups, MKGs Warzecha and Bachmann. MKG Bachmann remained the
Bismarck,
Tirpitz, and
Pommern, escorted by
Leipzig,
Albatross,
Königsberg and
Mainz; MKG Warzecha held the
Blucher as force flag, but the remainder of the makeup of the surface action group is unknown.
The Albatross
. Her loss was a surprise to the naval command,
but did not prevent the victory that followed.
The British crept along the Norwegian side of the Kattegat. Using the weather (foggy and raining) to their benefit, they evaded the majority of the Germans’ air reconnaissance and their collaborators in Norway. Through the use of radio deception, the Royal Navy passed themselves off as a fishing fleet, and steamed at a slow speed to lend itself to their ruse. It worked, after a fashion: the
Albatross had been detached from the group after one of those fishermen had requested an “escort” from the Kriegsmarine because they had been attacked by the British. HMS
Suffolk lured the
Albatross close enough before engaging with torpedoes, but the German ship managed to maintain enough buoyancy to fire off a rapid contact report before sinking and thus the battle was engaged.
Pommern had been closest to the stricken light cruiser and managed to return fire rapidly enough to catch the
Suffolk before she could accelerate to combat speeds. Two 15-inch shells smashed the bridge and forward turrets, causing the magazine to detonate and snapping the keel below the B-turret.
Suffolk foundered just around 1030, with only a handful of sailors being rescued. None of the other vessels were able to penetrate the long arm of the German battle cruisers:
Cumberland sank under fire from
Tirpitz, while
Effingham was wrecked by Blucher.
Kent stubbornly refused to sink, and when the battle ended,
Lubeck was again called upon to put several torpedoes into her to send her to the bottom. Later that night, the British destroyers had managed to sneak around the Oresund and catch the Kriegsmarine vessels moving towards Kiel and home; while several hits were recorded, none of the destroyers survived their assault. Only the two light cruisers
Calypso and
Galathea survived the actions, though more through distance, luck and targeting errors than through actual skill.
A view of the force which had left from Hull to meet its demise in the
Kattegat. None of these vessels would survive.
The second flotilla which arrived off Denmark on the evening of 5 March attempted to follow the plan from the previous fleet action: remain undetected, pick off any enemy units which might stumble their way under the guns and across the paths of their torpedoes. Unfortunately for the British, the advantages which had allowed the previous force to penetrate deep into the Kattegat (slow speed, weather and fog) were no longer present, and so aerial reconnaissance had been tracking their movements, vectoring a smaller task force lead by Saalwachter (two of the
Bluchers, and three light cruisers) towards the force. Marinefliegergeschwader 128 showed their capabilities well, accounting for four destroyers, while
Blucher sank the
Norfolk and
Enterprise.
Hindenburg took credit for the Emerald the following morning, and the other four destroyers were handled by the light cruisers
Nautilus,
Stettin, and
Koln.
The Royal Navy, suitably chastised for their hubris, withdrew from the North Sea for almost two months. The loss of so many of their vessels for a mere light cruiser in exchange caused a deep review of the forces arranged and dispatched to fight the Kriegsmarine, and from Wilhelmshaven in mid-April a new threat emerged: the u-boat.
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