Chapter 1
The German Surface Fleet
The surface forces are so inferior in numbers and strength that they can do no more than show that they know how to die gallantly.
Grand Admiral Erich Raeder, 3 September 1939
The starting point for any serious evaluation of Operation Sealion must be consideration of the strength of the German surface feet. Whatever the anti-shipping capabilities of the Luftwaffe may have been in 1940, the fact was that the invasion force would need to be both transported and protected by surface vessels. In order to understand how the German Navy had reached the position in which it found itself in the summer of 1940, it is necessary to go back some twenty years, to the end of the First World War and the Treaty of Versailles.
The navy of Kaiser Wilhelm II no longer existed, and the victorious Allies, although they had not gone so far as to impose complete demilitarization, had imposed severe restrictions on the German armed forces in general, and the Navy in particular. Article 181 of the Treaty of Versailles restricted the surface fleet to six armoured ships, six cruisers, twelve destroyers and twelve torpedo boats. Construction of submarines was forbidden, as was the possession of military aircraft. Furthermore, Article 190, which regulated the replacement of obsolete ships, decreed that battleships and cruisers should only be replaced after twenty years service, and destroyers and torpedo boats after fifteen. Additional restrictions were placed on the displacements of any replacement vessels, so that new armoured ships could not exceed 10,000 tons, cruisers 6,000 tons, destroyers 800 tons and torpedo boats 200 tons.
To give some idea of how severe these restrictions were, the final design for the Royal Navy G3 battlecruisers of late 1921 envisaged a displacement of 48,400 tons, and the N3 battleships of the same time 48,500 tons, although the Washington Naval Treaty of 1921-2 (involving Great Britain, the United States, Japan, France and Italy) eventually restricted the displacements of future battleships to 35,000 tons, and of cruisers to 10,000 tons. As part of this Treaty, it was agreed that there would be no new battleship construction for ten years, except for two new British battleships, Nelson and Rodney, which were completed in 1927 and displaced around 33,500 tons. As the major naval powers also produced cruisers displacing 10,000 tons, and the first new Royal Navy destroyer, Ambuscade, constructed in 1926, displaced 1,200 tons, the severity of the restrictions imposed by the Versailles Treaty on future German naval construction is clear.
In the event, Germany retained six elderly pre-dreadnought battleships, and a number of equally antiquated Gazelle class light cruisers. The first new warship, the cruiser Emden, was launched early in 1925, and was basically a development of the last light cruisers built during the First World War, with eight 15cm (5.9-inch) guns in single mountings. Twelve new torpedo boats, six each of the Möwe and Wolf Classes, were also constructed between 1926 and 1929. Again, these were developments of the wartime torpedo boats of the Imperial Navy, although they were officially classed as destroyers in order to conform to the Versailles Treaty restrictions. In fact, their actual displacements exceeded the 800 tons limit by around 125 tons.
The first new designs (as opposed to developments of First World War types) were the three cruisers of the ‘K’ Class, Konigsberg, Karlsruhe and Köln, which were constructed between 1926 and 1930, and with nine 15cm guns in three triple turrets, director fire control and cruising diesels as well as turbines, compared well with the Leander Class light cruisers being introduced into service with the Royal Navy in 1931–3. Subsequently, two more light cruisers developed from the ‘K’ design were to appear: Leipzig, launched in 1929, and Nurnberg, launched in 1934.
The replacement of the six antiquated pre-dreadnought battleships which Germany was allowed to retain after the First World War was a difficult challenge. The intention of the 10,000 tons restriction for armoured ships imposed by the Treaty of Versailles was clear enough. New vessels could be either well armoured but slow and short range, effectively coastal-defence ships (the type actually favoured by Raeder himself, when in command of the Baltic station), or faster but more lightly armed and armoured, more akin to a cruiser. The head of the German Navy between 1924 and 1928, Admiral Zenker, eventually recommended the latter, resulting in a vessel capable of 26 knots, armour capable of resisting 8-inch shellfire and armed with six 28cm (11-inch) guns in two turrets. Such a vessel should be able to outfight the typical ‘Washington cruiser’ of 10,000 tons displacement and a main armament of eight 8-inch guns, which would be some five knots faster and outrun any battleship which it encountered.
At the time, German military thinking believed that any future war would be against Russia or France and the ‘armour-clads’, as they were called by the German Navy, would be particularly suitable for deployment against French trade routes in the eastern Atlantic – with the added benefit of drawing French naval strength into this area and away from the north Atlantic routes used by German shipping. In addition, of course, if Great Britain was not involved, then the three Royal Navy battlecruisers which could catch and sink an armour-clad – Hood, Renown and Repulse – would be out of the picture.
Admiral Raeder, as previously stated, had himself preferred the coastal-defence ship which would have been more suited for operations in the Baltic, but when he became head of the German Navy on 1 October 1928, he made no attempt to change the design, and construction of the first three armour-clads (or ‘pocket battleships’ as they came to be called) – Deutschland, Admiral Scheer and Admiral Graf Spee – began in February 1929, June 1931 and October 1932 respectively.
Thus, when Adolf Hitler became Chancellor in January 1933, the German Navy consisted of four light cruisers with a fifth under construction, one old light cruiser suitable for training purposes only, twelve small destroyer/torpedo boats, and one pocket battleship about to commission with two more under construction. Initially, Hitler held to the ‘Conversion Plan’ of November 1932, which envisaged a total of six pocket battleships, and in 1934 two were authorized for construction. Hitler had already said in 1933 that it was his wish never to go to war with Britain, Italy or Japan, and he was eager to conclude a naval agreement with Britain.
The imminent appearance, however, of the French battleships Dunkerque and Strasbourg, the first of which was already under construction, had already demonstrated to Raeder that something more powerful than the pocket-battleship design was essential. In June 1934, therefore, he urged that the new ships be more heavily armoured and be fitted with a third triple 28cm turret. Hitler authorized an increase in size to 19,000 tons displacement, but instructed Raeder to refer only to ‘improved 10,000 tons ships’. Construction work on both vessels began in 1935 and they eventually emerged as the 32,000-ton battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau.
By the time work on these vessels commenced, the Anglo-German Naval Agreement, which Hitler described to Raeder on 18 June 1935 as ‘the happiest day of my life’, had been signed. This permitted Germany to build naval forces up to 35 per cent of the Royal Navy in each category of ship, other than submarines where 45 per cent was allowed, with the opportunity to increase submarine strength to parity at a later date. The significance of this agreement to the German Navy was that it seemed to rule Great Britain out as a future naval adversary. Even in Britain, Earl Beatty (commander of the Battlecruiser Fleet at Jutland and subsequently commander of the Grand Fleet) claimed in the House of Lords that there was at least one country in the world with which Britain need not fear an arms race.
The signing of this agreement and the earlier repudiation of the Treaty of Versailles now made it possible for Germany to commence naval expansion. The battleships Bismarck and Tirpitz, each displacing some 42,000 tons, were laid down in 1936, work on the first of five heavy cruisers of the Hipper class began, and between 1937 and 1939 twenty-two large destroyers of the Leberecht Maass and the Von Roeder Classes were constructed.
The Anglo-German Naval Agreement was eventually repudiated by Hitler in April 1939, but during the almost four years it existed it exercised significant influence over German naval planning. In an order of the day of 15 July 1935, the Chief of Naval Staff, Rear Admiral Guse, stated that the agreement made a repeat of the former naval rivalry between Britain and Germany impossible, and Admiral Raeder himself did not permit even theoretical studies into naval operations against Great Britain. Provisional battle orders given to the German Navy on 27 May 1936 (ironically five years to the day before the sinking of the Bismarck) omitted any contingency for war with Britain. Despite what must surely have been clear evidence to the contrary, Raeder seems to have remained convinced that war with Britain would not take place, at least in the immediate future.
It must therefore have been a dramatic development for him when in late May 1938 he was summoned to a meeting with Hitler, who told him that Britain must be reckoned as a probable enemy and a major expansion of the Navy was required. In order to ascertain what form this expansion should take, the strategic role of the new fleet needed to be determined and Raeder took two immediate steps. Firstly, one of his youngest staff officers, Commander Heye, was given the task of devising a plan of action against Britain, and secondly, a planning committee of senior admirals under the chairmanship of Guse (by now promoted to Vice Admiral) was to draw up proposals on the strategy the Navy should follow, and consequently what types and numbers of ships would be required.
The first meeting of the committee took place on 23 September 1938 and the plan of action put forward by Heye must have caused a considerable stir. His argument was that even a powerful battle fleet operating out of the German Bight could not make significant inroads into the overall strategic position at sea. In other words, a second Jutland, even if favourable to Germany, would serve no purpose. The proper course, he argued, would be to provide a striking force to wage war against the shipping lanes upon which Britain depended, rather than to seek a confrontation with the British battle fleet. However, in order to carry out this attack, Germany needed both the right kind of ships and the ability to break out of the North Sea into the North Atlantic, and it was in the breakout element of the argument that Heye was vulnerable. When asked how he envisaged that the breakout would be achieved, his response was that high speeds and a great deal of luck would be needed, which would require light forces rather than heavily armoured capital ships. In common with most naval opinion at the time, Heye placed little reliance in submarines, believing that improved anti-submarine techniques and the use of sonar (known by the British as asdic) had significantly reduced their effectiveness.
The admirals on the planning committee immediately identified the flaws in the case put forward by Heye. A breakout could only be achieved, they argued, by utilizing powerful capital ships, and Guse summed up by expressing the view that whether these heavy ships themselves should be the striking force, or whether they should be used to effect the breakout of the striking force, did not need to be decided at that time. This in itself was a remarkable statement in that it seemed to propose that the actual role the heavy ships were to fulfill could be decided after they had been built!
The final conclusions of the planning committee were put to Raeder on 31 October 1938, and between 1 November 1938 and 29 January 1939 Raeder presented these recommendations to Hitler. In his post-war memoirs, Raeder stated that he put forward two alternatives: a force of submarines and pocket battleships, which could threaten the sea lanes to Britain and be constructed comparatively quickly; or a much more powerful fleet, with a nucleus of heavy capital ships, which, though it would take longer to build, would not only threaten the sea lanes but could also challenge the British battle fleet itself. If the alternatives were indeed expressed in these terms (and German Admiralty records seem to suggest that the submarine/pocket battleship option was never seriously even considered), then it was not difficult to deduce which Hitler would choose. Raeder claims to have been reassured by Hitler that the longer building time would not be a problem as the fleet would not be required before 1946.
In this way, on 29 January 1939, the idea of the Z Plan Fleet (Z standing for Ziel, or ‘Target’) came about, and three months later Hitler repudiated the Anglo-German Naval Agreement. For the record, Cajus Bekker, in Hitler’s Naval War, states that the numbers of warships to be constructed by 1947 were as follows:
Of the ships of cruiser size and above, Gneisenau and Scharnhorst were complete, as were the three pocket battleships. Three of the heavy cruisers were in the early stages of construction, whilst the battleships Bismarck and Tirpitz were still around two years from completion. The existing light cruisers do not actually appear in this list as, together with some of the older torpedo boats, they were to be relegated to training purposes from 1942.
Although the Z Plan proposals look impressive, they were a fantasy, to all intents and purposes. Aside from the ambitious aim of producing six 56,000-ton ‘super battleships’ before the teething troubles of the much smaller Gneisenau class had been ironed out, let alone the Bismarck and Tirpitz completed, there were other more practical problems. On 31 December 1938, even before the plan was officially accepted, a marine architect from the naval ordnance department had produced a report titled ‘The Feasibility of the Z Plan’, pointing out the organizational problems involved in such an immense undertaking, whilst the requirements in materials and manpower were such that it appeared that the German Navy high command must have assumed that virtually the whole of German industry was at its disposal. Given the expansion of the German Army and the Luftwaffe taking place at the same time, this would clearly not have been the case. In the event, only one of the large ships, the aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin, was even launched and work on her ceased in 1942.
The feelings of Admiral Raeder when the British Admiralty radioed the two words ‘Total Germany’ in an uncoded signal to British ships at sea, on 3 September 1939, can be guessed at. The Z Plan Fleet, which he had been informed would not be required until 1946, existed only on paper, and the few available surface vessels would, in his words, ‘just about be able to show that they could die with dignity!’
The months between September 1939 and July 1940, when Raeder must somehow produce a workable plan for Operation Sealion, had not been kind to his surface fleet. The ships which he had had available at the start of the War, and their status by August 1940, were as follows:
Gneisenau
Torpedoed off Trondheim on 20 June 1940 by HM Submarine Clyde. Left Trondheim on 25 July 1940 to return to Kiel in company with the cruiser Nurnberg. On the following day the torpedo boat Luchs, part of her escort, was torpedoed and sunk by HM Submarine Swordfish. Repairs on Gneisenau were estimated to be completed by early November 1940, but her next operation did not commence until 22 February 1941.
Scharnhorst
On 8 June 1940, together with Gneisenau, encountered and sank the aircraft carrier Glorious and her escorting destroyers Ardent and Acasta, 300 miles west of Narvik. Acasta, though crippled, managed to score a torpedo hit on Scharnhorst which ripped open her side near her aft gun turret. She returned to Trondheim, and subsequently to Kiel, for repairs which were expected to complete in late October 1940. Her next operation took place in company with her sister ship in February 1941.
Deutschland
Was at sea when war was declared, having left Wilhelmshaven on 24 August for operations in the North Atlantic. She was soon recalled to Germany, having achieved little, and passed through the Denmark Strait on 8 November, arriving in Kiel on 15 November 1939. She was immediately renamed Lützow, to avoid the potential propaganda benefits to the Allies should she be lost under her original name. She took part in Operation Weserubung (the German occupation of Norway) and on 11 April 1940, shortly after leaving Oslo, she was hit in the stern by a torpedo from HM Submarine Spearfish. Her damage was severe (her stern was almost broken off) but she was returned to Kiel. Repairs were not expected to be completed until April 1941.
Admiral Scheer
Refitting in Danzig and not expected to be completed until mid-September 1940. She actually left Danzig on 23 October 1940 on a commerce-raiding operation from which she returned in April 1941.
Admiral Graf Spee
Was at sea when war was declared, having left Wilhelmshaven on 21 August for the mid and South Atlantic. On 13 December 1939 she was engaged by one of the hunting groups searching for her (the 8-inch gun cruiser Exeter and the 6-inch gun cruisers Ajax and Achilles) at the Battle of the River Plate. She took shelter in Montevideo, Uruguay, and was scuttled off Montevideo on 17 December 1939.
Admiral Hipper
Although rammed and damaged by the destroyer HMS Glowworm on 8 April 1940, she was still able to take part in the invasion of Norway. She subsequently refitted in Wilhelmshaven but was operational by mid-September 1940. She did, however, in common with the other ships of her class, have a sophisticated high-pressure boiler system which, although when working enabled her to operate at high speed (in the region of 32 knots), was highly unreliable and frequently broke down.
Blücher
Took part in Operation Weserubung when not fully worked up. On 9 April 1940 she was hit by torpedoes and shellfire from Norwegian shore batteries in Oslofjord and sank.
Emden
Had taken part in the invasion of Norway and was operational in August 1940. She was, however, the oldest and weakest of the light cruisers and was normally only used as a training ship.
Köln
Operational in August 1940.
Karlsruhe
Torpedoed and sunk by HM Submarine Truant whilst en route from Kristiansand, Norway, back to Germany on 9 April 1940.
Konigsberg
Damaged by Norwegian shore batteries on 9 April 1940, and dive-bombed and sunk in Bergen harbour by Fleet Air Arm Skua dive-bombers operating at extreme range from Hatston in the Orkneys on the following day.
Leipzig
Torpedoed and severely damaged by HM Submarine Salmon on 13 December 1939 in the North Sea whilst operating, together with Nurnberg and Köln, as a covering force for five destroyers which had laid mines off Newcastle. The damage was so severe that she was never fit for use again as anything other than a training ship.
Nurnberg
Torpedoed at the same time as Leipzig, she was less badly damaged. On 25 July 1940 she accompanied Gneisenau on her return from Trondheim to Kiel and was fully operational in August 1940.
Destroyers
Although twenty-two destroyers were in service with the German Navy at the outbreak of war, two were sunk north-west of Borkum by a German bomber on 22 February 1940, and ten were lost in the first and second Battles of Narvik on 10 and 13 April 1940. In August 1940 three more were undergoing refits not due to complete until late September/early October 1940. One new destroyer, Z23, actually commissioned on 15 September 1940, but would obviously need some considerable time to work up to an operational state, especially as she was the lead ship of a new class.
Torpedo Boats
Of the twelve pre-war torpedo boats of the Wolf and Möwe Classes, one (Tiger) had been rammed and sunk by the German destroyer Z3 on 25 August 1939, and a second (Luchs) was torpedoed and sunk by HM Submarine Swordfish whilst escorting Gneisenau and Nurnberg on 26 July 1940. Möwe was undergoing repairs in Wilhelmshaven which were due to complete early in October 1940.
A new class of torpedo boat, the Elbing Class, had also begun construction in late 1936, and twelve had commissioned (though not all were properly worked up) by August 1940. As with the Hipper Class cruisers, their high-pressure boilers and turbines were a constant source of trouble and they proved to be poor seagoing vessels. They carried a powerful torpedo armament, but only one 105mm (4.1-inch) gun. Very little use was made of them until much later in the war, although T1, T2 and T3 each took part in one, and T5, T6, T7 and T8 in three minelaying operations in the Dover Straits and North Sea areas between 1 and 16 September 1940.
The German surface fleet at the time of Sealion, therefore, consisted of one heavy cruiser with unreliable engines, two light cruisers and one training cruiser, seven or eight destroyers and nine torpedo boats. There were, of course, the elderly battleships – two (Schliesen and Schleswig-Holstein) were still in use, and the latter had fired the first shots of the Second World War when bombarding at point-blank range the Polish garrison of the Westerplatte at Danzig on 1 September 1939 – but as warships they had been obsolete for over thirty years, and their involvement in Sealion would have been inconceivable, especially as both had been largely stripped of their crews to release men for the Sealion fleet.
Neither was there much comfort in the progress of new warships under construction. Bismarck and Tirpitz were still either fitting out or completing construction, as was the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen. None would be available until well into 1941. In the event, other than these three, no new ship bigger than a destroyer was to be completed for the German Navy in the whole of the war.
Thus, as the above demonstrates, the German surface fleet in the summer of 1940 was in a parlous state. The invasion of Norway, however successful in strategic terms, had deprived the naval planners of the ability to provide anything more than a token escort for an invasion feet. The next chapters, dealing with the genesis and evolution of the Sealion plan, reveal only too clearly how the German Navy struggled to overcome this insurmountable problem.