Total Germany: The Royal Navy's War Against the Axis Powers 1939 - 1945

295 Pages·2015·12.45 MB·English

by  Wragg

Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Glossary
1. ‘Total Germany. Total Germany.’
2. A Strong Navy but Thinly Spread
3. The Belligerent Navies
4. The Royal Navy goes to War
5. Early Losses and Successes
6. The Norwegian Campaign and Dunkirk
7. At War with an Ally
8. Night of Judgement
9. Destroying Germany’s Capital Ships
10. Battle of the Atlantic
11. War in the Mediterranean
12. Disaster and Revenge in the Far East
13. The Siege of Malta
14. Fighting the Weather and the Enemy in the Arctic
15. The Submarine War
16. Changing Ships and Aircraft
17. The Invasion Fleets
18. NEPTUNE and OVERLORD
19. Returning to the East
20. A Balanced Fleet
Bibliography
Acknowledgements In writing any book, an
author is grateful for the help and assistance of
many others, and especially those who have
placed on record their wartime achievements,
many of them in the invaluable Imperial War
Museum Sound Archive.
No work on something as vast as our wartime navy can cover every inch of
ground, and for those whose appetite has been whetted by this book, I hope that
the bibliography at the back is helpful. This text concentrates mainly on the
Royal Navy’s war against Germany and Italy, but it is impossible to ignore
events in the Far East and the Pacific as this was truly a world war.
David Wragg
Edinburgh
Spring 2015
Introduction Neither the United Kingdom nor
Germany was in a position to fight a major war
in 1939 but the reality was that the former was
better prepared, having put the time bought by
the Munich Agreement the previous year to
much better use. The imbalance was most
marked at sea but although the Royal Navy was
by far the larger, better-equipped and more
balanced force, it was also thinly spread across
the world, as in 1914.
The Germans had very ambitious plans for a much-expanded and modernized
navy – so ambitious that many doubted their practicality – and these were hardly
even started in 1939. Priority had been given to creating the Luftwaffe, a large
and modern air force, and the army. Even here, there were weaknesses. The
Luftwaffe was not a strategic air force, although Hitler’s war plans assumed that
it would act as one. It lacked heavy bombers. The Germany army, unlike the
British army, had not mechanized between the wars and was heavily dependent
on horses for transport.
The German navy, the Kriegsmarine, lacked aircraft carriers or even adequate
numbers of destroyers and, contrary to popular belief, had very few ocean-going
U-boats in 1939. Yet, senior officers were secure in Hitler’s assurances that war
would not break out until 1944. Chamberlain’s speech to the British people on 3
September, followed by the Admiralty signal ‘Total Germany. Total Germany’
declaring all-out war against that nation came as a shock to the Kriegsmarine’s
leaders.
Glossary
Allies: A term dating back at least to the early nineteenth century but used
commonly during the First World War to describe the members of the Triple
Entente, more properly known as the ‘Entente Powers’, which were the United
Kingdom, France and Imperial Russia. During the Second World War it was
used for just the UK and France initially, later including the Soviet Union and
then the United States.
ASDIC: Derived from the initials for the Anti-Submarine Detection
Investigation Committee originating in the First World War and today known as
sonar. Such equipment emits audible pings and then traces submerged objects
through their echoes.
Auxiliary carrier: Term applied by the Royal Navy to what are commonly
called escort carriers; see below.
Auxiliary cruiser: Merchant vessel taken up from trade and armed with a naval
crew. The British used these as convoy escorts, but the Germans used them as
surface raiders. In neither case could they survive contact with major warships.
Axis Powers: The alliance formed by Germany, Italy and Japan. Unlike the
Allies, there was very little co-ordination at times, especially between Japan and
Germany or Italy, or cross-fertilization of ideas or technical developments.
BARBAROSSA: Code-name for Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union.
Battle-cruiser: A warship usually with battleship-calibre armament, but in
which armour was sacrificed to give greater speed. The German battle-cruisers
Scharnhorst and Gneisenau had guns of just 11in calibre; these were supposed to
be replaced by guns of 15in calibre, although this never happened.
Battleship: Designation given to large heavily-armed and heavily-armoured
ships. Second World War battleships generally had guns of 15in calibre, but
some British battleships had 14in or 16in and some Japanese ships had 18in
guns.
CAM ship: Catapult-armed merchantman, a merchant vessel with a fighter
aircraft that could be catapulted off to shoot down enemy aircraft. The fighter
pilot was usually from the RAF, but a number of Fleet Air Arm personnel also
flew such aircraft. The weakness of the concept was that the aircraft had to be
sacrificed at the end of a single sortie unless within sight of land, and this meant
that there was always a reluctance to use it in case a greater need came later in
the voyage.
Capital ship: A major warship such as a battleship or battle-cruiser, but by the
end of the war the aircraft carrier had joined these as a capital ship and many
would say had even usurped their position.
Case White (Fall Weiss): German code-name for the invasion of Poland.
Coastal Command: Royal Air Force command that provided maritime-
reconnaissance and anti-submarine patrols as well as search and rescue (SAR) in
the open seas, and was generally meant to be tasked by the Admiralty. SAR in
coastal waters was provided by RAF Fighter Command.
Corvette: During the Second World War this term was adopted for a warship
specifically designed for convoy escort duties, smaller than a frigate or destroyer
and also slower and of broader bream than the latter, as well as less heavily-
armed.
Cruiser: Warship smaller than a battleship or battle-cruiser but much larger than
a destroyer. The Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 laid down that light cruisers
had a main armament of 6in guns and heavy cruisers a main armament of 8in
guns (displacement tonnage was not taken into account). The Royal Navy’s
Town-class cruisers had up to twelve 6in guns in four turrets but were classified
by the service as ‘heavy’. In addition there were auxiliary (see above) or armed
merchant cruisers, and anti-aircraft cruisers that were usually older ships
modified to allow continued use.
Cruiser war: A term sometimes used for commerce raiding.
Destroyer: Small fast warship, and by the Second World War much larger than
its First World War counterpart. Armament varied between 4in and 4.5in on
British ships, but some German ships were larger and the French had their
contre-torpilleur destroyers with 5.5in armament.
DYNAMO: code-name for the evacuation of British and French forces from
Dunkirk.
E-boat: Enemy fast motor gunboat or motor torpedo-boat, known to the
Kriegsmarine as S-Boot for Schnellboot or ‘fast boat’.
Electro U-boat: German U-boat development that appeared from 1943 onwards,
with an enlarged hull to enable additional batteries to be fitted for higher
underwater speeds.
Empire: A prefix given to the name of a merchant vessel owned by the British
government but managed and crewed by a commercial shipowner. Such ships
included enemy vessels seized either on the high seas or caught in an Allied port
on the outbreak of war; ships that were built at government expense to
compensate for losses or ships taken up for use by the armed services; or US-
built ‘Liberty’ vessels supplied to the United Kingdom under the Lend-Lease
Programme.
Enigma: Code used by all the German armed forces, but broken once a machine
and codebooks fell into British hands. The breaking of the Enigma codes was a
major factor in the Allied victory and especially in countering the U-boat threat
to Atlantic and Arctic convoys.
Escort carrier: small aircraft carriers sometimes converted from merchant
vessels, but later increasingly using merchant vessel hulls to allow conversion to
a merchant vessel post-war. Limited in the number of aircraft that could be
carried and in operational speed. Sometimes known as ‘auxiliary carriers’ and
indeed, many were used as aircraft transports, maintenance carriers and as
carriers for aircraft providing cover for invading troops.
FELIX: Code-name for a planned invasion of Gibraltar should Spain have
seized the territory; however, it soon became clear that Spain intended to be
neutral, although much used as a base by German agents.
Fleet Air Arm: Originally that part of the Royal Air Force deployed aboard
British warships, but it reverted to Admiralty control in May 1939 and naval
airmen gradually replaced their RAF counterparts, although a large number of
RAF personnel transferred to the Royal Navy.
Flotilla: A command of smaller warships such as destroyers, corvettes or
submarines. No definition of the number of ships, but usually it would be
between six and nine.
Frigate: Originally a general-purpose sailing warship much smaller than a ship
of the line (predecessor of the battleship). Frigates disappeared from the world’s
navies during the late nineteenth century. They were reinvented during the
Second World War as a convoy escort larger than a corvette and slower than a
destroyer, and were usually dedicated to anti-submarine or anti-aircraft duties. In
more recent times, they have reverted to their general-purpose role.
JUDGEMENT: code-name for the Fleet Air Arm attack on the Italian Fleet in
its major base at Taranto.
Kaiserliche Marine: ‘Imperial Navy’, the old name for the German navy.
Kriegsmarine: ‘War Navy’, the official name given by Adolf Hitler to the
German navy in 1935 to replace the post-First World War name of Reichsmarine
or ‘State Navy’.
Lend-Lease: A programme under which the United States provided ships,
aircraft and other war matériel without payment from the British government
and on condition that the equipment be returned to the United States at the end
of the war (naturally, anything that had been lost on war service could not be
returned). In return, the United States armed forces were allowed to use bases in
British colonies, mainly in the Caribbean.
Luftwaffe: German Air Force or Air Arm that controlled all German service
aviation from the early 1930s to the end of the Second World War. Although
autonomous, it developed as primarily a tactical air force without long-range
heavy bombers until too late in the war for them to make an impact.
MAC-ship: Merchant aircraft carrier, a ship that continued as a grain carrier or
oil tanker with a Merchant Navy crew, but with a wooden flight deck built over
the cargo areas and the superstructure moved to starboard so that naval personnel
could fly Fairey Swordfish on anti-submarine patrols around a convoy. Most
were British-manned, but two were manned by Dutch personnel including air-
crew and maintainers from the Royal Netherlands Navy.
NAS: A suffix following a squadron number to denote ‘naval air squadron’.
Reich: The German state (‘realm’).
Reichsmarine: Official name of the German navy after the abdication of the
Kaiser and the creation of a republic or ‘Reich’.
Reverse Lend-Lease: Equipment provided by the United Kingdom to the
United States. While much smaller in quantity than that received by the UK, this
included some warships equipped with ASDIC and radar.
RMS: Royal Mail Ship, a designation allowed the fast ocean liners that, as well
as conveying passengers in comfort, also carried the mails. Not to be confused
with the Royal Mail Line, a shipping company; ships prefixed ‘RMS’ always