Winston Churchill deemed the 32,000-ton German battlecruiser Scharnhorst, armed with nine 11-inch guns and a top speed of 31 knots, a “target of supreme consequence.” On Dec. 26, 1943, she went head-to-head with HMS Duke of York off Norway’s North Cape.

By Simon Read

AT 7 P.M. on Christmas Day 1943, the German battlecruiser Scharnhorst weighed anchor, the black Norwegian waters of Altafjord breaking in a white froth against her bow.

As the ship gained momentum and the powerful thrum of her turbines shook underfoot, chief gunnery officer Walter Bredenbreuker and Scharnhorst’s second-in-command, Ernst Dominik, summoned the gun crews to the quarterdeck. As the men stood at attention with the wind whipping around them, they learned they were putting to sea to attack a British supply convoy bound for Russia.

The Allies had suspended shipping between the United Kingdom and Soviet Union the previous summer. The near round-the-clock sunlight in the Arctic during June, July and August made it easier for German fighters, U-boats and surface ships operating out of Norway to locate and decimate convoys. But with the onset of the almost perpetual darkness of the Arctic winter, Allied vessels enjoyed some measure of protection. But the season also brought its own risks. Treacherous ice flows in northern waters forced the convoys to steam south of Bear Island on their journey, bringing them to within 250 miles of German naval forces stationed in Norway.

Scharnhorst, having received her orders earlier in the afternoon to attack the 19-ship convoy JW-55B, sailed in the company of five warships of the 4th Destroyer Flotilla. They navigated the fjords and outer sounds at 17 knots before breaking into the open sea shortly after 11 p.m. and increasing speed to 25 knots.

Captain Fritz Hintze shared a radio message from Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz with the crew that made clear their mission to destroy an “important enemy convoy carrying food and war material to the Russians [that] further imperils our heroic Army on the Eastern Front.”

The conditions at sea punished men and equipment. Snow settled on the guns and decks; ice choked the lenses of range finders and directors. The sound of waves breaking and foaming over the bow thundered in the crews’ ears, as strained and weary eyes peered hour upon endless hour into the darkness. In the miserable conditions, the Scharnhorst and her destroyer escort were soon separated, leaving the battlecruiser isolated.

At 8:40 a.m. on Dec. 26, the radar on HMS Belfast—one of three cruisers, along with HMS Norfolk and HMS Sheffield, protecting the convoy—picked up a vessel approaching from 35,000 yards. The distance between Belfast and the mysterious contact shrank rapidly to a mere 13,000 yards by 9:15 a.m. The size of the radar echo suggested a ship of considerable size yet on the Belfast’s bridge, Captain Frederick Parham could see nothing ahead but darkness and snow.

On board Sheffield, the radar officer also reported a contact. All eyes on watch focused out to sea in search of something. Under normal conditions, a ship of Scharnhorst’s size would have been easy to spot, but the gloom of the Barents Sea in late December was impenetrable.

Then, out of the filthy murk, form slowly took shape. Although nothing more than a smudge against the darkness, it was enough. At 9:21 a.m., Sheffield signalled Belfast and Norfolk: “Enemy in sight!”

Moments later, Belfast opened fire with star shell, throwing an eerie light over the black sea. To the men on Scharnhorst, it looked like “the appearance and disappearance of many golden-yellow suns between the sea and the sky.” At 9:30 a.m., having closed to 9,800 yards, the Norfolk opened fire.

Scharnhorst responded. The “acrid fumes” of cannon fire wafted across her deck as her massive guns lit the darkness in vibrant shades of red and orange. The British guns, having found their range, did their damage. One shell slammed into Scharnhorst’s foretop and knocked out her forward radar. For 15 minutes, both sides slugged it out under the ghostly luminescence of British star shell fire before Scharnhorst turned and fled on a southerly course.

The British cruisers gave chase. The hunter had now become the hunted but with heavy seas on her side. Waves slammed the cruisers as their engines, topping out at 24 knots, strained against the swell. The ships staggered against the heavy punches of the sea. As the cruisers struggled, Scharnhorst powered through the foaming black waters at 30 knots. Meanwhile, some 200 miles away to the north, the 42,000-ton battleship HMS Duke of York—flagship of Admiral Sir Bruce Fraser—steamed toward the fray.

Believing Scharnhorst would circle back, Vice Admiral Robert Burnett on Belfast ordered the cruisers on a northwest heading to get between the German ships and the convoy. Nearly two hours later, at 12:05 p.m., Scharnhorst reappeared on Belfast’s radar. The two sides battered one another at ranges of 16,000 to 9,000 yards.

“The scene was majestic,” remembered a sailor on Sheffield. “All ships were using tracer shell, and those could be followed from muzzle to target when fired by our own ships.”

One German shell struck Norfolk, killing seven men before Scharnhorst veered away towards the safety of Norway. The German vessel had suffered significant damage. The tween and battery decks had both been hit; one shell had destroyed her aircraft hangar, while another had punched a hole in her starboard side and knocked out the ventilation system in ‘B’ turret.

“The whole turret filled with choking smoke every time the breeches were opened,” recalled one survivor. “This, combined with the motion of the ship in heavy weather, rendered nearly every man in the turret violently seasick.”

Scharnhorst fled into the Arctic night and, in doing so, blundered into HMS Duke of York. The time was 4:50 p.m. the British titan opened fire with her 14-inch guns at a range of 12,000 yards.

“You could hear the whistles of the shells from the Duke of York and the Scharnhorst,” said Corporal Frederick Weston, a Royal Marine on the Norfolk. “You could hear the roar of the salvos, and although it was pitch black—the salvos were tracers. You could see them rising from what appeared to be one horizon and you couldn’t see where they were landing.”

Shell after shell punished Scharnhorst with devastating effect.

“Explosions and fires ravaged the doomed ship,” one German sailor later wrote, “but each gun fired until it was shot out.”

Bulkheads bent and twisted out of shape, steam pipes ruptured, smoke stung the eyes and choked the lungs. Her compartments were “full of mangled bodies and swilling with sea water.”

A Royal Marine on the destroyer HMS Jamaica called it “a slogging match between giants. Appalling in its might and fury.” Neither adversary relented. British destroyers moved in to try and finish Scharnhorst off with torpedoes.

“I’d never seen anything like it,” remembered Captain Parham onboard Belfast. “The Scharnhorst . . . simply streaming fire at these destroyers with every small gun she had.”

One torpedo struck Scharnhorst aft and flooded three compartments, forcing a grim decision.

“The watertight doors,” noted one survivor, “had to be closed on the 25 men inside.”

British shells continued hammering the German ship.

 “Once the Duke of York got in there with those tremendous guns, it was horrendous to watch,” recalled a sailor on Norfolk. “She just smashed the thing to pieces. It was just a blaze from one end to the other.”

But Scharnhorst’s guns kept firing, despite the horrific conditions on board. The ship’s portside deck, noted one survivor, “was littered with dead bodies being washed overboard.”

Scharnhorst and her crew remained defiant. Through the ear-splitting maelstrom of battle, the thunder of bombardment and the cries of the injured, Captain Hintze addressed his men through the ship’s loudspeaker: “I shake you all by the hand for the last time. I have sent this signal to the Fuhrer: ‘We shall fight to the last shell.’ Scharnhorst onwards!”

To crews on the British ships closing in, Scharnhorst’s suffering presented a nightmarish sight.

“She must have been hell on earth,” said one British sailor. “The 14-inch shells from Duke of York were hitting or rocketing off from a ricochet on the sea. Great flashes rent the night, and the sound of gunfire was continuous, and yet she replied, but only occasionally now with what armament she had left.”

British destroyers delivered the final deathblow via torpedoes. No one on the British side saw the Scharnhorst sink when she went under at about 7:45 p.m.

“All that could be seen of the Scharnhorst was a dull glow through a dense cloud of smoke,” notes an after-action report, “which the star shells and searchlights of surrounding ships could not penetrate.”

They did, however, feel the concussion of a heavy underwater explosion. Out of Scharnhorst’s crew of 1,968, only 36 men—with not a single officer among them—survived.

The ship Winston Churchill had deemed a “target of supreme consequence,” that had plagued Britain’s sea lanes in the early days of the war, wreaking havoc on Allied convoys, was no more.

Admiral Fraser of Duke of York struck a gracious tone in his eulogy for Scharnhorst and her crew.

“Gentlemen, the battle against Scharnhorst has ended in victory for us,” he told his men. “I hope that if any of you are ever called upon to lead a ship into action against an opponent many times superior, you will command your ship as gallantly as Scharnhorst was commanded today.”

Simon Read is a British-born author and journalist currently living in the United States. His most recent book is The Iron Sea: How the Allies Hunted and Destroyed Hitler’s Warships out now from Hachette Books. You can reach him through his website at simonreadwriting.com.