What tactics could have been used for using heavy cruisers against convoys in conditions of enemy dominance at sea?
Let's consider the combat path of the heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper. Of course, it was not a "Washington" cruiser of the first series, which my materials are devoted to, and, according to the plans of its creators, it was not intended for raider operations against the British fleet. Due to the fact that the power plant of ships of this type turned out to be very capricious and gluttonous, this cruiser was generally very poorly suited for operations on ocean communications. Nevertheless, the operations in which the Admiral Hipper took part, illustrate well the capabilities of heavy cruisers of the Second World War in terms of countering a stronger enemy.
Admiral Hipper's Raids
The combat path of this ship began with Operation Weser Exercise, in which the cruiser took part in the capture of the Norwegian port of Trondheim. Together with the Hipper, the main forces of the Kriegsmarine participated in it, including the battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, but it still remained extremely dangerous, since it was carried out, one might say, under the noses of the British, who had overwhelming naval power.
The unit that included the Hipper was quickly discovered - the ship went to sea shortly before midnight on April 6, 1940, and on April 7 it was spotted by British air reconnaissance. The subsequent air raid was not successful. Some time later, the heavy cruiser received an order to destroy the British destroyer Glowworm, which was discovered by German ships of the same class. The Hipper intercepted the Glowworm, but was unable to fully realize its artillery potential – the weather was an obstacle, so it was only possible to open fire on the British destroyer from 45 cable lengths. The commander of the Hipper acted aggressively – he went straight for the British ship, although he could only fire from the bow main caliber turrets, and continued to approach, despite the smoke screen laid by the Glowworm. As a result, the British destroyer was sunk, but not before he managed to ram the Admiral Hipper.
Despite some damage, the German cruiser continued to carry out its combat mission, entered Trondheim Fjord, suppressed the fire of Fort Husnes and landed troops. Then, alone, it was able to return to Germany, slipping under the stern of a large formation of the British Home Fleet, including three battleships and the same number of heavy cruisers. Of course, the "Weser Exercises" were not an operation to interrupt or protect shipping. But they serve as an excellent demonstration of the capabilities of a heavy cruiser to operate in conditions of enemy dominance at sea and in the air.
Then Admiral Hipper took part in Operation Jumo (Juno?), the purpose of which was to attack from the sea the British strongholds in Norway, including Harstad. The attack did not take place, since the commander of the German squadron, after going to sea, based on data on the movement of British ships, assumed that the British were evacuating.
Accordingly, he reoriented himself to actions against the British convoys. The German ships deployed on a wide front in search of the convoy and managed to catch and sink the naval tanker Old Pioneer, the armed trawler Juniper and the troop transport Orama, with both Juniper and Orama being claimed by Hipper. It is noteworthy that a large German naval group was operating in the North Sea, in the zone of dominance of the Royal Navy, but even after the sinking of the three ships mentioned above, the British were unaware of its presence.
Then the Hipper tried to reach the ocean communications, but the raid from July 27 to August 11, 1940 was unsuccessful - as a prize it got only a small dry cargo ship Esther Thorden of 1940 register tons. True, almost 2 tons of gold were found on it. Another sortie, in which the heavy cruiser had to draw away the British ships to support Operation Seelewe, but there the Hipper's chassis broke down, and they did not carry out Seelewe.
The next sortie of the Admiral Hipper on November 29 – December 27, 1940 turned out to be much more interesting. The cruiser not only went out to the ocean, but also managed to intercept the military convoy WS-5A. The latter, however, was well covered: it was protected by the heavy cruiser Berwick, the light cruisers Bonaventure and Dunedin, several destroyers and frigates. The British also had the aircraft carrier Furious, but it should not be taken into account – in this case, it played the role of an air transport and did not carry an air group. However, even without the Furious’s aircraft, the convoy’s forces clearly surpassed the Admiral Hipper in firepower.
The Hipper approached the convoy, where it came across the Berwick and, remaining undetected, attempted to attack it with torpedoes. But during the preparations for the attack, other British warships were discovered, and in the end, everything did not go according to plan: the Hipper opened fire on the Berwick and was forced to retreat. Of course, the British tried to catch up with the German cruiser, but after the Berwick received 4 hits from 203-mm shells, they abandoned the pursuit.
On the one hand, all this is a clear failure of the German raider, since it was unable to reach the convoy ships. But, on the other hand, this episode can be seen as the Admiral Hipper's compliance with the task assigned to it. A cruiser on a raid risks encountering superior enemy forces, and in this case, that is what happened. But the good training of the German gunners, combined with an excellent fire control system and sufficient speed, allowed it to break away from pursuit, avoiding damage. Already on the retreat, the Hipper accidentally encountered and sank the British ship Jumna (6078 reg. tons).
The next sortie from 1 to 14 February 1941 became the finest hour of the Hipper - it managed to intercept the convoy "SLS-64" in the area of the Azores Islands, consisting of 19 ships without combat escort. But the effectiveness of its attack is absolutely impossible to assess based on Russian-language sources. Thus, according to V. L. Kofman, it turns out that it is reliably known about 7 sunken and 5 surviving ships, the fate of the remaining 7 ships is unclear: there is no reliable information either about their death or about their arrival in port. At the same time, the commander of the "Admiral Hipper" Meisel claimed 13 sunken ships. Based on this, V. L. Kofman, moreover, with reference to unknown German specialists, builds a theory that perhaps the Germans really destroyed not 7, but 13 or even 14 ships. But the cunning British did not show this, because these ships were not sailing under the British or allied flag, but under the flag of neutral countries.
In fact, information about these 7 “conspiracy” ships is present in foreign literature – they survived the massacre at the Azores. This fact, unfortunately, serves as another example of how dangerous it is to rely on the naval theory in studying stories foreign fleets of World War II exclusively on Russian-language sources.
But let's return to the Admiral Hipper. This raid was the last of its Atlantic campaigns. The cruiser then went to Germany for modernization, and then, in March 1942, was redeployed to Norway. In July, the Hipper was part of a squadron led by the battleship Tirpitz to destroy the PQ-17 convoy, but the operation was cancelled. Then it was planned to use it in Operation Doppelschlag - a repeat of Operation Wunderland, carried out by Admiral Scheer, but now with the forces of two heavy cruisers, including Scheer. This operation also did not take place.
In September, the cruiser went out to lay mines, which was successfully carried out in the Matochkin Shar Strait - 96 mines were laid. It is possible that our submarine "K-1" was blown up and destroyed by one of them. And then the cruiser made its last two attempts to operate on communications.
From November 5 to 9, Admiral Hipper and four destroyers carried out Operation Hoffnung, the idea of which was to try to catch ships that had fallen behind the convoys. According to V. Kofman and M. Morozov, the result of the operation was the sinking of SKR-23 and the tanker Donbass (8 GRT). But there is some uncertainty here, because according to A. Sergeev, SKR-000 perished on October 23, 11, having struck a German mine.
Then, from December 30, 1942 to January 1, 1943, Admiral Hipper made her final contact with the British during Operation Regenbogen, which later became widely known as the "New Year's disgrace".
The Kriegsmarine unit consisting of Admiral Hipper, Lützow and 6 destroyers managed to detect and attack the Arctic convoy JW-51B, which was guarded by 2 light cruisers, 6 destroyers, 2 corvettes, a minesweeper and 2 armed trawlers. At the same time, the main force of the British - the cruisers Sheffield and Jamaica - formed a distant cover and could not immediately appear on the battlefield.
The Germans spotted the convoy and engaged its immediate escort, sinking the destroyer Ecates and the minesweeper Bramble, but fought with extreme caution despite being confronted by ships from a destroyer down. In contrast, Admiral Burnett, commanding the British cruisers, acted decisively. Using radar, he moved his cruisers to a position north of the Admiral Hipper and closed to within 60 cables: only then did the German cruiser become visible through optics. The Sheffield and Jamaica immediately opened fire.
Radar undoubtedly gave the British an advantage, but the problem was that visibility to the north that day was much better than to the south. Admiral Hipper could not detect the British cruisers for some time even after they opened fire. Almost immediately, fate smiled on the brave British - Hipper received a "golden hit". A shell that hit under the armor belt caused flooding of the boiler rooms, as a result of which the cruiser took on about 1000 tons of water and lost up to 2/3 of the power of the power plant.
Quite by chance, two German destroyers came upon the British cruisers. The British were the first (predictably) to take their bearings, opening fire and sinking one of them, the second managed to escape. After that, the Germans retreated, and the British did not pursue them.
What do the results of the "New Year's Battle" indicate? The attack by the German heavy cruisers was not spontaneous: the convoy was discovered by German submarines. With intelligence, the Germans were able to attack the important convoy with superior forces, taking by surprise its main cover, which managed to appear on the battlefield only after 4 hours from the moment of the first contact. At 07.20, the Germans discovered the enemy and began to concentrate forces on it, but it was only at 11.31 that the British cruisers opened fire.
Despite the Germans' extremely cautious actions, the British forces directly protecting the convoy had essentially exhausted their ability to counteract the German raiders by the time the light cruisers arrived. If the British light cruisers had been delayed any longer, the convoy could have suffered heavy losses.
But the Sheffield and Jamaica, having appeared on the battlefield, thanks to the competent actions of Admiral Burnett, luck and superiority in radar, managed to deliver a sudden and powerful blow to the Hipper. Nevertheless, even after this success, the British could still have been defeated if the Germans had acted decisively. In this case, the German sailors would have received a prize in the form of 14 transports carrying 120 combat aircraft, 202 tank, more than 2000 transport vehicles, 24 tons of fuel and aviation fuel, not counting 150 tons of other cargo. The fact that the commander of the German squadron was overly cautious and failed the task assigned to him cannot be blamed on the performance characteristics of the Kriegsmarine heavy cruisers. They were quite capable of delivering a fatal blow to convoy JW-54B.
Some statistics
Let us consider the raids of German heavy cruisers on the British Atlantic communications. There were, in fact, very few of these:
"Admiral Hipper" - 3 raids;
"Prince Eugen" - 1 raid;
"Admiral Graf Spee" - 1 raid;
"Deutschland"/"Lutzow" - 2 raids;
"Admiral Scheer" - 1 raid.
In total, there were 8 campaigns. Two of them (Admiral Graf Spee and Deutschland) began before the war – the ships were sent out to the ocean in peacetime. Accordingly, during the war, the Kriegsmarine heavy cruisers went on Atlantic raids 6 times. But the British managed to prevent only one of the 6. The British discovered the advancing Lützow and attacked it with torpedo bombers: it received a torpedo in the side, which, in fact, ended the “raid”.
In 8 campaigns, the Germans had three contacts with equivalent British warships: Admiral Hipper fought with Berwick, Prinz Eugen, sailing with Bismarck, was intercepted by British cruisers and battleships, and finally, Admiral Graf Spee met one heavy and two light British cruisers near La Plata. If we take into account that contact with Berwick occurred on the initiative of Admiral Hipper, and that Lützow received an aerial torpedo before it could be intercepted by surface ships, it turns out that British warships managed to intercept German heavy cruisers only in two cases out of seven.
I do not have exact data, but I can assume that out of 8 Atlantic campaigns of German heavy cruisers, the interception of convoys was seriously planned in maximum 6 cases or less. I exclude the first raid of the Deutschland, because the orders that the commander of this ship received were extremely contradictory, including a ban on engaging in combat with British warships, which, in general, made the fight against convoys impossible. Also excluded is one of the sorties of the Hipper, when it was tasked with distracting British ships, providing for the failed Seelewe.
It turns out that six sorties of heavy cruisers (including the ill-fated "raid" of "Lützow", which ended before it began) were crowned with three contacts with British convoys. Two of these contacts led to an unequivocal success for the Germans - "Admiral Hipper" intercepted convoy JW-51B and sank some of its ships, and "Admiral Scheer" did the same with convoy HX-84. In another raid, "Hipper", having come upon a British convoy, was forced to retreat in the face of superior forces of its escort.
At the same time, the heavy cruisers of the Kriegsmarine demonstrated a fairly good survival rate - only one ship (Admiral Graf Spee) was lost in 8 raids. Let me remind you that of the 8 specially built German cruisers that operated on Britain's ocean communications in World War I, not a single one survived.
Here is another interesting point. In all three cases, when the Germans managed to intercept British convoys, this happened relatively quickly after the ships set out to sea. Admiral Scheer intercepted NH-84 on the 9th day after setting out on a raid. Admiral Hipper: in the first case – on the 24th day of the raid, in the second – on the 12th day. Moreover, in the first, 24-day case, Admiral Hipper was simply unlucky. Its commander planned to attack the convoy no later than 10 days after the cruiser set out to sea, but the attack on that and the following convoy did not take place.
"Anti-convoy" tactics of heavy cruisers
It can be stated that heavy cruisers demonstrated the ability to successfully operate, including against enemy convoys in conditions where the enemy had control of the sea. But heavy cruisers were not self-sufficient for such a fight.
Firstly, the heavy cruisers' own reconnaissance assets were not always sufficient to detect the convoy. Secondly, and this is the most important thing, even in cases where the convoy had a nominal escort (the attack on Admiral Scheer NH-84, which was protected by the auxiliary cruiser Jervis Bay) or had no escort at all (convoy SLS-64, attacked by Hipper), the heavy cruisers could not destroy all or most of its ships on their own. The transports, seeing the ship attacking them, scattered in different directions, and thus a significant number of ships managed to escape the attack.
Even without spending much time on destroying the escort (the Jervis Bay was destroyed within 20 minutes), the heavy cruisers managed to destroy no more than 5-7 ships from the convoy. Theoretically, the raider could "catch" more, but it was limited in interception time. The attacked ships of the convoy immediately radioed about the attack, and it was, naturally, impossible to suppress all radio stations. It is obvious that the heavy cruiser a priori exposed itself by attacking the convoy and had to manage to get away as far as possible by the time the forces sent to intercept it could approach.
In view of the above, I see the role of a heavy cruiser in the “anti-convoy” struggle on the communications of the Second World War not only and not so much in the destruction of merchant ships, but in destroying the escort and forcing the convoy to disperse. Then, sailing alone, the ships can become easy prey for submarines, as well as aviation, if the routes of these ships pass within its combat radius, of course.
In my opinion, the operation to destroy the British convoy in the Atlantic had to be carried out in approximately the following sequence:
1. Discovery of the main convoy routes through intelligence, data from deployed submarines and regular flights of long-range reconnaissance aircraft;
2. Deployment of a heavy cruiser (or several, depending on the strength of the expected escort) and support vessels (tankers) into the ocean unnoticed by the enemy;
3. Search for the target of attack - a convoy in the ocean by submarines, aircraft and the cruiser itself, including the use of seaplanes based on them. At the same time, the heavy cruiser must do everything possible not to violate the stealth regime - radio silence, avoiding meeting with any ships they notice, etc.;
4. In general, if a convoy is detected by an aircraft or submarine, the planning of the operation and deployment of available forces is organized through a headquarters located on land. But this is not a dogma. Thus, if a convoy is detected by a heavy cruiser and there is a threat of losing its stealth, an immediate attack is possible;
5. It is obvious that after attacking the convoy, the enemy will try to bring superior forces to intercept the heavy cruiser. Accordingly, the raider's main task at this stage of the operation is to return to base as quickly as possible. And only if the escape routes are blocked by enemy patrols, it will be permissible to go to remote sea or ocean areas for some time. Hunting for single merchant ships can only be carried out within limits that do not contradict the main task: returning the heavy cruiser "to its native land";
6. The merchant ships of the convoy that survived the attack by the heavy cruiser are captured using submarines deployed to carry out the operation, and, if possible, aircraft.
In fact, the same method is quite suitable for actions in the Mediterranean, if it is necessary to stop shipping between France or Italy and Africa. It is also quite efficient in the north, in the fight against Arctic convoys. Perhaps the only place where its use looks questionable is the Pacific Ocean, due to the enormous distances and the general specifics of military actions there.
For the reasons stated above, the tactics of using heavy cruisers to fight against communications had to be radically different from the tactics of ocean raids in World War I. What kind of heavy cruiser should it be to successfully implement the tactics of fighting convoys during World War II?
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