Blood, Tears and Folly: An Objective Look at World War II

and Dönitz was promoted to admiral and appointed BdU, Befehlshaber der Unterseeboote (C-in-C of U-boats). The whole German U-boat arm rightly rejoiced in this proof that the Royal Navy were unable to protect their battleships even in their fleet anchorage.

Benefiting from their First World War experience, the British started convoys as soon as war began. It paid off: between September 1939 and the following May, 229 ships were sunk by U-boats but only twelve of these were sailing in convoy. The organization of the convoys was managed, despite the difficulties of making the civilian ships’ captains do things the Royal Navy way, and there were fast and slow convoys to accommodate ships of varying performance. The layman usually supposes that it was the protection given by escort vessels that made it safer to go in convoy, but this was not so. Churchill provided the true reason:

The size of the sea is so vast that the difference between the size of a convoy and the size of a single ship shrinks in comparison almost to insignificance. There was in fact very nearly as good a chance of a convoy of forty ships in close order slipping unperceived between the patrolling U-boats as there was for a single ship; and each time this happened, forty ships escaped instead of one.

The basic Dönitz tactic was to have surfaced submarines patrol across known shipping routes until one of the lookouts spotted a convoy. The radio monitoring service in Germany, with its ability to read the secret British merchant ship code, helped Dönitz to position his ‘rake’ of boats. The first submarine to sight a convoy sent high-frequency radio signals to a master control room ashore, and made medium-frequency signals to nearby submarines to bring them to the convoy.

At night on the surface the U-boats engaged the merchant ships independently, and often at point-blank range. Before daylight came, they ran ahead to concentrate for another attack on the following night, the submarine’s surface speed being faster than its speed underwater.

The Admiral Graf Spee action

Submarines were not the only threat to Britain’s sea lanes. Admiral Graf Spee and Deutschland had put to sea a few days before war began. Construction of these cruisers had been started before Hitler came to power, when the peace treaty restricted Germany to ships of less than 10,000 tons. Perhaps in reaction to the way in which the Royal Navy had lost three cruisers at Jutland by single well placed shots, these Panzerschiffe (‘armour ships’) were given thick armour and big guns. Newspaper writers called them ‘pocket battleships’ but they were designed to prey upon merchant shipping. Their innovations included electrically welded hulls. Welding requires metal to be heated to an even temperature; for that reason the welding of thick steels is vastly more difficult than welding light aircraft alloys. The new ships had very shallow draught, and their honeycombed hulls reduced the danger from torpedoes. Heavy top-side armour protected them from air attack and their 11-inch guns had a range of 20 miles. They were powered by diesel engines – which until that time had only been used as auxiliary engines in such vessels – and could steam at 26 knots, an unimpressive speed for a cruiser but suitable for a raider. Each warship had a tanker at its disposal.

The Deutschland was assigned to raid the routes of the North Atlantic. She sank two merchant ships and captured a third (the City of Flint sailing under a US flag) and then returned to Germany, skilfully using the long November nights to elude the Royal Navy blockade. Her two-month voyage had destroyed 7,000 tons of small shipping; it was a disappointing debut for the ‘pocket battleship’. Soon she was renamed Lützow because Hitler feared the propaganda effect of a mishap to a ship named Deutschland.

Admiral Graf Spee was sent to the sea lanes of the South Atlantic and the Indian Ocean. By 7 December 1939, in a voyage that included the South African coast and South America, she had sunk nine merchant ships. The captain, Hans Langsdorff, a handsome fifty-year-old, had strict ideas about the rules of war. His targets were sunk without loss of life, his prisoners were all treated well and German morale was high. His only setback was a cracked engine block in the battleship’s spotter plane and no spare to replace it.

When Graf Spee sank the Trevanion in the South Atlantic on 2 October 1939, the men in the Admiralty had looked at their charts and guessed that the raider would head for the shipping lanes of South America. They stationed HMS Ajax off the River Plate, the New Zealand warship Achilles off Rio de Janeiro, and HMS Exeter off Port Stanley in the Falklands. But the next signal was an RRR – ‘raider sighted’ – from the tanker Africa Shell off the East African coast. Had Graf Spee’s captain immediately sent a signal to inform Berlin of his success things might have ended quite differently for him; there would have been no way of guessing whether he was bound for the Indian Ocean or back into the South Atlantic. But Langsdorff waited ten hours, and when his signal was transmitted, three British Direction Finding Stations took a bearing on the signal. These bearings were sent to London on priority channels but even the Hydrographic Section at the Admiralty had no charts large enough to plot them.

FIGURE 3 (#ulink_2cc92c0d-1f6f-5809-800e-9e9a9417140d)

HMS Ajax (#ulink_2cc92c0d-1f6f-5809-800e-9e9a9417140d)

Fortunately Merlin Minshall, a young officer of the Volunteer Reserve, had bought a globe four feet in diameter. It was, he calculated, ‘equivalent to a flat chart nearly twelve feet from top to bottom … Within seconds I had placed three thin loops of rubber round my newly acquired globe. Their intersection clearly showed that the Graf Spee was heading not north up into the Indian Ocean but south back into the Atlantic.’

It was 4 o’clock in the morning. Rear Admiral ‘Tom Thumb’ Phillips, the vice-chief of naval staff, arrived dressed in a scruffy kimono to see the globe which was too big to be moved. ‘Good idea using the globe,’ he said. (Admiral Dönitz had come to the same idea as Lieutenant Minshall and was using a similar globe in his situation room.)

FIGURE 4 (#ulink_c69cadce-c218-56fa-a817-75333e11e7d3)

HMS Exeter (#ulink_c69cadce-c218-56fa-a817-75333e11e7d3)

More sinkings confirmed this route. Graf See was in the southern hemisphere and 13 December 1939 was an idyllic calm summer’s day. Visibility was perfect and at 0614 hours Graf Spee’s spotters saw the heavy cruiser HMS Exeter (8-inch guns) and turned towards her. The Graf Spee had six 11-inch guns and Langsdorff assumed that the two vessels with Exeter were destroyers escorting a merchant shipping convoy of the sort that Graf Spee was seeking as prey, but without the use of his spotting aircraft he was unable to confirm this.

In fact Langsdorff was heading towards one of the many ‘hunting groups’ that were looking for him. Exeter had seen Graf Spee’s smoke and had turned towards it. And the destroyers Langsdorff had spotted were actually light cruisers: HMS Ajax and the New Zealand navy’s Achilles (each with eight 6-inch guns). He was probably misled by the fact that both ships were of unusual profile, having single funnels serving boilers sited together so as to economize on weight.

These three ships provide three different answers to the question that had plagued the world’s navies for half a century: what should a cruiser be? Should it be a light vessel, fast at 32 knots with small 6-inch guns like the Ajax and Achilles; should it be of medium weight like the Exeter, with 8-inch guns; or should it be a heavy ship with massive 11-inch guns that make it so formidable that it is called a pocket-battleship but unable to exceed 26 knots? No wonder the camouflage experts had painted a huge white wave curling from the Graf Spee’s bow. It would never make such a wave in real life – and now it could not speed away.

Ajax – the group’s flagship – catapulted a Seafox aircraft into the air. The difficulties of launching and recovery made this the only time such a warship used aircraft in a surface action.

On most Royal Navy ships, space designed for aircraft, catapults and hangars was soon to be occupied by radar and AA guns. With the reconnaissance plane in the air searching for her, Graf Spee turned away and made smoke. The encounter presented tactical problems for both sides. The Graf Spee’s guns far outranged her adversaries, but with enemy ships to both port and starboard the German captain hesitated before choosing his target.

Eventually Graf Spee opened fire at maximum range. At first one turret was firing to port and the other to starboard but then all six big guns were concentrated on the Exeter, whose 8-inch guns were the most dangerous threat. While the British force had no radar, the German Sextant radar provided hits on Exeter’s turret and then on her main steering. Had it not been for the fact that some of the German shells failed to explode, she would have been sunk. After an unsuccessful riposte with torpedoes, the badly damaged Exeter withdrew, listing to starboard and taking in water forward. There were serious fires below decks and a near miss had put enough water through the shell holes in her side to short-circuit the electricity to her last remaining turret. Telephones and radio links were also lost. There was a real chance that Exeter would sink.

Langsdorff might have closed and finished off the stricken vessel had the two 6-inch-gun ships not dashed in close and forced the Graf Spee to switch her attention to them, moving fast enough to avoid mortal hits by the big German guns, which could not change elevation and bearing fast enough.

After one and a half hours, during which the British warships got close enough to use even secondary armament, all four ships had suffered damage. Having taken hits from two 11-inch shells, the Ajax lost two of her four turrets, while the hoist failed in a third turret. The main top mast was chopped off by one of Graf Spee’s last salvoes. Three of her guns were still operating but she had used up 80 per cent of her ammunition. Achilles had suffered the least damage but she had no radio gunnery control in operation. Graf Spee had been hit many times but all her armament was still in operation.

The action was broken off by the British commander, who put up a smokescreen. There is no doubt that Langsdorff would have done better to have pressed home his attack on the battered trio but he did not, and afterwards it was said he had suffered flesh wounds and been knocked unconscious during the encounter. This might have been enough to affect his decision to head for a neutral port.

According to one account the Exeter had suffered more than one hundred serious hits. Five of her six big guns were out of action and there was so much smoke and flame that the Germans expected her to blow up and sink at any moment. With 61 dead, and many wounded, she made for the Falkland Islands while the two light cruisers trailed Graf Spee to the neutral South American port of Montevideo in Uruguay.

Had the Germans gained access to the sort of port facilities that the British had provided for themselves at strategic spots throughout the world, Graf Spee could have been replenished with ammunition and her minor battle damage – which might have proved dangerous in heavy seas – quickly repaired. But Germany was unable to provide for such needs in distant seas. With a more audacious captain the Graf Spee might have turned north and braved the northern seas in winter despite the battle damage and her 36 dead and 59 wounded. It was not to be.

When the Graf Spee docked in Montevideo, many local people, many of them expatriates, warmly welcomed the Germans but diplomats began arguing fiercely about the rights of belligerent warships in neutral ports. The Uruguayan government gave Langsdorff permission to remain in port for no more than 72 hours, the minimum permitted by international law. It was not enough time for repairs to be effected. Langsdorff tried, and failed, to charter a plane from which to see any Royal Navy ships that might be waiting for him.

To deter Langsdorff from fighting his way past them, the British were keen to give the impression that a large naval force was waiting for Graf Spee. A deception plan included the BBC radio bulletins and the British naval attaché who, knowing that the phones were tapped, called the ambassador in Buenos Aires and told him the Admiralty wanted 2,000 tons of fuel oil to be made available for two capital ships that evening at the Argentine naval base of Mar del Plata. It was enough to get the story circulated. There can be little doubt that Langsdorff believed that a sizeable naval force was ready to pounce on him.

On the evening of 17 December the Graf Spee moved out of harbour watched by the world’s Press and newsreel cameras. At sunset the great ship came to a standstill and, to the astonishment of most of the spectators, blew up. Torpedo heads had been suspended above open ammunition hatches which led to the main magazines. Petrol was ignited to burn through the ropes. The explosion in the forward part of the ship went as planned but seawater came in and doused the aft fires. Graf Spee lurched forward and settled fo’c’sle down. Langsdorff shot himself. The German crew were interned but many of them escaped and got back to Germany to fight again.

Those ship designers who said the German pocket battleships were misconceived had been proved right. A commerce raider did not need 11-inch guns to sink merchant ships. With smaller guns the specifications would have been lighter and considerably faster. Raiders which fight and run away live to fight another day.

Still today little is said of the contribution that German gun-laying radar made to this or any other sea battle. Frequently throughout the war, German naval gunners seemed to enjoy ‘lucky shots’ for which we might read accurate gun-laying. In London the Admiralty was sufficiently impressed by Graf Spee’s performance to offer the government of Uruguay £14,000 for the Graf Spee’s smoking hulk, whose decks remained above water. British radar experts rowed out and boarded her to examine, sketch and dismantle the Seetakt radar. HMS Exeter and Ajax were eventually fitted with British Type 79, an air defence radar that could be used for gun-laying and gave a performance not unlike the German Seetakt.

While Raeder, the German naval chief, said the Graf Spee should have run rather than fight, Hitler found the loss of his battleship intolerable, but neither man was deterred by the sinking. During the winter of 1940–41 the Scheer, the Gneisenau and the Hipper left their ports to raid Atlantic shipping. The men in the Admiralty had cause to worry, for the German naval Enigma code

remained unbroken and the spectre of the German surface raider was given new substance by the trouble that Graf Spee had given them. Precious warships – including battleships, cruisers and carriers – were to spend the next few years chasing phantom German commerce raiders ‘seen’ by nervous merchant seamen on distant horizons.

The changing map of Europe

At the start of the war the only fully updated operational maps in Whitehall were to be found in the Admiralty’s Upper War Room. This 300-year-old library had been made into a map room which was manned round the clock. The maps were coloured in pastel shades (because Churchill said primary colours gave him headaches) and pins showed the position of every British and Allied warship and convoy as well as the position of every German vessel reported by intelligence. The U-boat war, complete with a day-by-day account of shipping sunk and the import figures, was the room’s most important concern.

The map room became a regular treat for guests after Churchill’s Tuesday evening dinner parties. He was first lord of the Admiralty

at this time, slept nearby, and would appear suddenly in his multicoloured dressing-gown inquiring about the latest news. Last thing at night and first in the morning he was briefed. When in May 1940 he became prime minister he no longer had this map room close at hand but the same officers provided a similar early morning briefing to him throughout the war.

In September 1939 Germany went to war with only minimal need for ocean trading. Agriculture, which the Nazis had encouraged, supplied enough food; and German mines enough coal and iron-ore. When and if some special top-grade ores were needed by the armaments industry Sweden was very close and willing to sell. Other imports came from Switzerland and Italy. Rubber and oil were the most vital necessities but German scientists were already able to provide adequate synthetic versions of both, and the Romanian oilfields were on the doorstep. Furthermore Germany had a new friend and trading partner – the USSR – which had oil to spare. Poland had been invaded by both countries, split down the middle and shared between them. Direct cross-border trade began. The Germans could now reach the whole of Asia without worrying about the Royal Navy’s blockade.

All this was evident from a map, but there was little sign that many members of the British government looked at a map. In March 1940 Prime Minister Chamberlain was calling blockade ‘the main weapon’. Britain’s Ministry of Economic Warfare said, and believed, that the German economy was on the point of breakdown. On 27 May 1940 Britain’s chiefs of staff predicted that Germany’s economic collapse would take place by the end of 1941. By September 1940 – with Hitler controlling Europe from Norway to the Spanish border, and the Battle of Britain still undecided – the chiefs of staff had not changed their mind. The prevailing opinion was that Germany’s inevitable collapse would now be speeded by the rebellious people of the occupied countries. The role of the British army in 1942, they cheerfully predicted, would merely be to keep order in that chaotic Europe left by the German disintegration! We must not be too hard on those wishful thinkers: such fantasies kept Britain and her Dominions fighting in a situation that more realistic minds would have pronounced hopeless.

The division of Poland, between Germany and the Soviet Union, and the trade between them was not the only bad news that the admirals had to swallow in that 1940 summer. The Admiralty had always assumed that in the event of war it would enjoy port facilities in Ireland. From fuelling bases at Queenstown (Cobh) and Berehaven and the naval base at Lough Swilly on the west coast, anti-submarine flotillas would have ranged far out into the Atlantic. Without them every escort vessel would add 400 miles to its patrol. The use of the bases in wartime had been confirmed in a conversation between the Irish patriot Michael Collins, Admiral Beatty and Winston Churchill as long ago as 1922, when Churchill, as colonial and dominions secretary, was concerned with the Irish Settlement.

The story behind this change has still to be told to everyone’s satisfaction. In April 1938 the Chamberlain government renounced the right to use the ports which it had been granted under the 1922 Irish treaty. Churchill was appalled and said that it would be hard to imagine a more feckless act at such a time. In the House of Commons he spoke against what he called a ‘gratuitous surrender’ and a ‘lamentable and amazing episode’. He found himself unsupported. Virtually the whole Conservative party, and the Labour (Socialist) and Liberal opposition, sided with Chamberlain. But when war came, the Irish Republic remained neutral and Churchill’s warnings proved exactly true. Ireland’s government resisted Britain’s requests to use the ports, although some of the material brought in the convoys was destined for neutral Ireland.

The convoys, channelled into the narrow waters around Ireland, provided rich pickings near home for bold U-boat captains. The Admiralty was still coming to terms with these difficulties when, in the summer of 1940, an even worse change came to the operational maps. The Germans conquered Denmark, so providing a gate to the Baltic, and Norway, with its bases and access to the North Atlantic. The only alleviation of this gloom was that the Norwegian merchant fleet – one of the world’s largest – sailed to England to evade the Germans. This enormous addition to the shipping tonnage was to become the margin by which Britain survived in the dark days to come.

When in the summer of 1940 France was conquered by the Germans its fleet did not sail to British ports to continue the fight. In the Atlantic and Mediterranean the Royal Navy took on the whole load the French navy had shared. France’s Atlantic coast also provided magnificent submarine bases, well away from RAF bomber airfields. From these ports the U-boats could sail directly into the world’s oceans.

When Admiralty radio interceptions and bearings indicated that U-boats were using French ports the Foreign Office insisted that it was impossible; the French would not permit it. Lt Minshall RNVR, the same young officer who had provided the globe for the Admiralty, volunteered to investigate. One of the Royal Navy’s submarines took him to the French coast, where he spotted and commandeered a French boat which he sailed into the mouth of the Gironde. He stayed there for six days, noting the U-boat movements and enough details to convince even the men of the Foreign Office that the ports were being used.

He got back to England in the sailing boat and was awarded a ‘mention in dispatches’.

Britain’s armed forces had gone to war expecting to fight in the way they had fought in 1914. The British Expeditionary Force would go to France and hold a small section of the Western Front while the Royal Navy – aided by the French fleet – protected the sea routes and waited to re-fight the battle of Jutland. Now everything was changed. Britain was isolated and the Germans held most of Europe, including the Channel coast just twenty-one miles away. With Italy fighting alongside Hitler the Mediterranean sea routes were fiercely contested and Britain’s army in Egypt was under constant threat. By the summer of 1940 no one could continue to believe that this war would much resemble the previous conflict.

Cracking the naval codes: Enigma

In 1920 the organization known in the First World War as I.D. 25, and usually referred to as Room 40, changed its name to the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS). This name served to hide its true purpose, which was to protect British official communications and intercept foreign ones. It was a part of the Secret Intelligence Service, and in 1925 it was moved from a building behind Charing Cross railway station to the SIS headquarters at 54 Broadway, London, near St James’s Park underground station, a site conveniently close to the Foreign Office. A few days before the outbreak of war its name was again changed – to Government Communications Headquarters – and it moved to an endearingly ugly but conveniently secluded Tudor-Gothic Victorian house at Bletchley Park, about fifty miles north of London. Its principal task was to read German radio messages encoded on Enigma machines.

The Enigma started its career as a commercial enciphering machine, a sort of typewriter that scrambled text using notched wheels or rotors. The message could be unscrambled by a recipient using an identical Enigma with its rotors adjusted to the same settings, known only to the sender and the receiver. When the Germans bought some Enigma machines they adapted them to make them more difficult to counter. The improved machine had plugs, varying the circuits, which the operators changed every twenty-four hours according to a dated instruction book of ‘keys’. This gave an astronomical number of alternatives for each letter.