But before any of the warships summoned by Sherbrooke had a chance to make their presence felt, another urgent call was put out. This time it came from the mouth of the destroyer Achates’ Lieutenant Commander Arthur Johns, demanding that his crew should live up to their pre-ordained responsibilities. They were to move the ship from the convoy’s port quarter, where she had been sailing, to interpose her between the German guns and the back of the merchant ships. Then they were supposed to forget that she had once been a proud destroyer. She was to be transformed into a form of floating bonfire, making as much smoke as ever had been seen in a maritime conflagration until the 12 slow-moving freighters were out of sight at least as far as the Germans were concerned.35

  But first Achates’ men had to reach their action stations. George Charlton, the captain of the ship’s hedgehog team on the forecastle deck (the exterior deck), was in the head (toilet) when Achates’s alarms rang. ‘I cannot write the adjectives that were said… not only by myself, but by all who were there…’ Charlton wrote afterwards. ‘[We were] pulling up our long johns… thick woolen ones, [our] overalls over our thick woolen sweaters,’ then putting on ‘sheepskins plus gloves and mittens with a few puffs into our lifebelts’.36

  That final touch suggests that at least some members of the crew appreciated the risks they were running, as in the words of the ship’s 24-year-old First Lieutenant, Loftus Peyton Jones: ‘dense clouds of thick black smoke started pouring from our funnel’.37

  Perhaps it was as well that during those first heart-stopping minutes, nobody on the British side knew what they were up against. The penny would only drop some ten minutes after the German ships first fired their guns. We know that thanks to the testimony of Tom Marchant, the 34-year-old lieutenant commander who at the time was Onslow’s second-in-command, as well as her torpedo officer. After the war he would describe the lead up to the moment when the scales fell from his eyes in the following terms:

  ‘The rear of the convoy was approximately abeam of us… We could see… very little. [However] on stepping on the compass platform from the after end of the bridge… I was amazed to see a large shape, apparently bows on, away to the north-west… almost indiscernible in the dark horizon.

  ‘Captain (D) (Sherbrooke, the captain of destroyers) had spotted this too. And course was altered about 30 [degrees] to starboard to bring the vessel right ahead, and speed increased to 25 knots. By now of course everyone was keyed up, for it was obvious that “summat was going on somewhere”, or would be pretty soon. For three minutes nothing happened, except for [the taking of] an occasional range, which was with difficulty being obtained. And so far as light would permit of accuracy, the first was 14,000 [yards and] closing. Then suddenly the “object” dead ahead, which was considerably bigger than a destroyer, turned broadside on us, and almost simultaneously opened fire.

  ‘The first salvo revealed her [class] identity… so far as I was concerned, for the eight flashes from the four symmetrically spaced twin turrets suggested Hipper, Prinz Eugen or Lützow (it was Hipper, whose main armament was eight 8-inch guns). Her first salvo fell in the vicinity of Achates, and thereafter broadsides were fired about every 25 seconds.’38

  Hipper’s gunfire would not go unanswered. Ross would later recall: ‘We could hear [the following] orders coming from the Director to the TS (Transmitting Station): “All guns broadside. All guns load, load, load!” ’ Then he felt ‘the ship shuddering and recoiling as each salvo spat into the darkness’.39

  Unfortunately for the British close escort ship crews, the conditions were not in their favour. That was particularly the case for those in Achates, which attracted Hipper’s gunners’ attention because of all the smoke she was emitting, while not being concealed by it thanks to the west-north-westerly wind that blew the smoke to the south-east.40 The smoke clouds covered up the merchant ships all right but left its emitter exposed.

  The following words from Achates’ Lieutenant Peyton Jones’ memoir highlight how the destroyer’s position was rendered even more dangerous on account of the distribution of the light: ‘Though the southern sky was slowly lightening, to the north, the black snow clouds merged into the sea, leaving no horizon… Suddenly out of the blackness appeared… gunflashes,… and great fountains of water were thrown up a cable’s length (around 200 yards) away… [They were made by] big shells… which exploded on impact.

  ‘I felt the added vibration as the Captain increased speed, and the ship heeled under helm. Orders came down for guns to load, and we opened fire, though at extreme range. Then the next salvo arrived, much closer this time with eight huge splashes, some on either side of the ship. The enemy had found the range, and we had been straddled.’

  There were, he said, two more salvos like that. Then at around 9.45 a.m., while the merchant ships, with Achates steering across their wakes, were still heading towards the east, the inevitable happened: there was a near miss on Achates’ port side, abreast the bridge, which according to Peyton Jones, ‘sent showers of splinters scything across the deck’. It also, he added, ‘drenched the guns’ crews in icy spray’ (see 2 in Map 17 for the approximate location relative to the convoy where Achates at this stage was sailing).41

  But that was nothing compared to the mayhem on the decks below. According to Peyton Jones: ‘Many of the shell splinters had cut through the ship’s side… The port side was riddled with holes, many of them on and even below the water line, and water was pouring in fast. Electric leads had been cut, and lockers and mess tables, broken loose from their fastenings, were sliding about all over the place. In the dim light it was difficult not to trip over the bodies of the killed and wounded.’

  Peyton Jones’ account also makes it clear there was much screaming and groaning by the latter before, with emergency lighting rigged, the ship’s doctor was able to have the injured removed to the first aid post, after ‘quieting the more seriously injured with shots of morphia’.

  Patching up the damage to the ship’s hull was not so easily accomplished, at least for the holes below the water line. It was eventually agreed that the stokers’ mess deck, on the second deck down from the top open-air deck, along with the magazine and shell room below it, would have to be sealed off and left to flood even though that meant the ship proceeded henceforth trimmed down by the head.42

  At first Achates was the only British ship targeted by Hipper’s guns, and even that was restricted to what could be achieved by the German gunners firing at the destroyer when there was more than eight miles of clear water separating the two vessels. Kummetz might have insisted Hipper was brought in closer had it not been for the way Sherbrooke had craftily persuaded the Germans that their cruiser might be torpedoed if they gave the British flotilla half a chance.43 In fact, so successful was Sherbrooke’s approach, or so nerve wracking was the prospect of punishment if Hipper’s crew did not comply with the German command that nothing should be done to put at risk their precious cruiser’s safety, that a lookout on the cruiser’s deck ‘saw’ a line of bubbles made by a torpedo streaking through the water even though no British torpedo had been fired.44

  As the German cruiser looped round to the east, keeping well to the north of the convoy (see Map 17 for the general direction of travel), Sherbrooke had Onslow, and the other British destroyers following her, mirror Hipper’s movements while always remaining between the German cruiser and the merchant ships. The strategy worked for a while. Although during the early stages of the battle, every so often the Germans would manoeuvre Hipper so her teams of gunners could fire broadsides in the general direction of the merchant ships, she invariably remained more than 9,000 yards away from the British destroyers, putting her beyond the range of their torpedoes. This was living proof that Sherbrooke had correctly deduced that the Germans would be much more likely to keep their distance if the British destroyers did not fire their torpedoes, retaining the prospect that they would be used if Hipper did not take care.45

  However, shortly after 10.15 a.m., by which time the commanders of two of the British destroyers had been instructed to reinforce the merchant ships following the freighters’ turn to the south-east, Hipper’s gunners finally singled out Sherbrooke’s ship. The threat was existential: either Kummetz or Hartmann had finally seen fit to loosen if not to wholly cut the shackles holding back the German cruiser. This time when Hipper’s guns were fired, they were only 8,500 yards (less than five miles) away from her target, the closest the German warship came to a British destroyer during the operation.46

  Ross, who happened to be out on deck when the shelling of his ship began, would later write: ‘As I walked aft to peer out in the half-light, we slewed violently [and I saw] repeated flashes of gunfire stabbing the horizon on our port beam.’47 The first salvo fired on the correct bearing sailed 150 yards over Onslow’s forecastle, to be followed by a second in the same place.48 By this stage Hipper was firing shells ‘about every half minute’, Marchant reported, and ‘they were getting closer and closer’.49

  It was not long before Ross, who had once again taken refuge in the W/T Room, realized that their luck must surely run out, and they would be hit; all he could do was to listen, transfixed, to the commentary being relayed down from the bridge, and pray. If Ross’ recollection is accurate, the commentator’s disembodied voice hid nothing, announcing in quick succession: ‘Salvo coming towards… going left… going right… coming towards!50

  ‘Hardly had the last words been uttered, than the ship seemed to heave up out of the water, rock wildly and then plunge,’ Ross reported in his memoirs.51 Onslow, which had been zig zagging violently, had not moved sufficiently out of the line of advance Hipper’s gun teams had been predicting, and had suffered the consequence: the near miss from Hipper’s sixth salvo, resulted in projectiles punching holes in the port side of Onslow’s torpedomen’s mess deck and engine room (see 3 in Map 17 for Onslow’s approximate location relative to Hipper and the convoy when hit).52

  According to Marchant: ‘Soon after, one 8-inch shell of the 7th salvo exploded on the top of the funnel, splitting it open almost to the level of the upper deck, making a pepper dredge of the after side of the bridge… completely wrecking the RDF (radar) hut.

  ‘At this stage, the surviving RDF operator in a most calm, unperturbed and apparently unconcerned voice, yet with a touch of annoyance and regret, reported to the Gunnery Officer that he was afraid that further RDF ranges would not be forthcoming as the “set had blown up”. His colleague was killed outright.

  ‘At this time, I was standing facing approximately forward with the magnetic compass between Captain (D) (Sherbrooke) and me. I had no knowledge of any casualties having been sustained on the bridge, until odd sounds made me look round. Then I saw that Captain (D) had been hit in the face, and was in a pretty bad way… As far as I could see… a splinter had… passed over the bridge from the burst on top of the funnel and struck Captain Sherbrooke… He was bleeding badly and… his left eye was hanging down his cheek.

  ‘Almost at the same time, though I cannot recollect any shock, we were hit immediately in front of the bridge under B and A guns (the main armament gun in front of the bridge, and the main armament gun for’ard of B gun respectively). B gun was put out of action, and most of its crew either killed or wounded. The shell under A gun had penetrated just below the upper (exterior) deck, and exploded on the mess deck (below), killing or wounding most of the forward damage control and repair party.

  ‘Fire immediately broke out in the vicinity of both hits, and the ready use ammunition, which caught alight.’53

  In short, Sherbrooke’s ship was in a parlous state. According to the commander of Orwell, the destroyer following Onslow, Sherbrooke’s ship looked ‘wretched’.54 Fortunately from the British point of view, in spite of being half-blinded, Sherbrooke had somehow managed to remain at his post long enough to have the ship turned away from her eastern course to starboard.55 By all accounts she and her crew were also fortunate in that she was at least partially concealed by the clouds of smoke produced by the fires below her decks and her funnel.56 That might explain why three more salvos fired by Hipper’s gun teams at this point narrowly missed her. Only then did Hipper’s gunners rotate their guns so that they were pointed at Orwell.57

  Ominously, Orwell was also straddled by some of the first salvos Hipper’s gunners fired at her.58 However, Hipper’s Kapitän Hans Hartmann’s report reveals that minutes later he was distracted, and Orwell and Onslow were saved, not thanks to the arrival of the two British cruisers, which by this time were approaching from the north-north-west, but as a result of the sighting by the Germans of a British ship to the south-east that was not even part of the convoy’s main fighting force.59 Unbeknown to the sailors in Hipper, the ship they had spotted in the wintry gloom, and which they started to bombard at around 10.36 a.m., was the 245-foot-long minesweeper HMS Bramble, which prior to the arrival of the Germans had been sent out to round up some of the scattered merchant ships, and was now caught just over three miles away from what was to be her nemesis like a startled owl in a car’s headlights as she was coming home to roost (see 4 in Map 17 for Bramble’s approximate location at this stage relative to Hipper and the convoy).60

  Bramble’s telegraphist’s reaction to Hipper being sighted was to send out at 10.39 a.m. a mayday signal in the form of an enemy report. It consisted of just six digits and letters as in: ‘1CR/300’ (1 Cruiser bearing 300 degrees).61 But rarely has such a brief message been so pregnant with horror and suspense. It encapsulated the moment when, lost and lonely in the Arctic twilight, the crew in a diminutive minesweeper had just seen a monstrous 665-foot-long German heavy cruiser sail into view, from whose gunfire, in the absence of a miracle or a gutless surrender, there could be no escape. Bramble might just as well have been a lame gazelle spotted in the African bush by a hungry lion for all the hope she had of getting away once Hipper’s gunners targeted her.

  As it turned out, the message appears to have only been intercepted by a telegraphist in one of the JW51B escorts, which was not in a position to come to Bramble’s aid.62 But at least that meant the crew members would not die without trace. The only other record of the ship’s last moments is in the German chronicles of events.

  These chronicles appear to suggest that the Germans in Hipper initially approached Bramble with almost as much caution as they had shown when facing up to all four of the convoy’s free-ranging destroyers. ‘At first we thought she was a corvette,’ Hipper’s Hartmann reported, ‘but then we decided she must be a destroyer. We fired at her with both heavy artillery and our heavy flak guns, while the enemy, who was very nippy, tried to get away by making frequent changes of course and by releasing smoke. However she was soon on fire, and we quickly began to catch up with her because her speed was reduced as a result of what we’d done to her.

  ‘Hipper was then turned away to avoid being torpedoed. But when explosions and the fires showed how badly the other ship was damaged, Hipper was turned to the south so that she could at the same time finish her off, and approach the convoy. More salvos from Hipper’s artillery and flak were on target, and there were more fires and explosions. By the time our firing ceased at 11.10 a.m., it was clear the ship was mortally wounded.’63

  33 We Must Take the Current When it Serves

  Main Action: 31 December 1942

  Battle of the Barents Sea, JW51B part 2

  (See Map 17)

  GMT + 1

  Even as the tragic events on board Bramble were unfolding, members of the crew in the burning Onslow were already counting the cost of having taken on Admiral Hipper, the heavy German cruiser. According to Onslow’s Tom Marchant, who had replaced Sherbrooke as the destroyer’s commander:

  ‘The appearance of things produced a very alarming picture… We were… making thick black smoke… The ship was gradually taking up a list to port… The bridge was almost uninhabitable due to the choking smoke from the fires for’d. The noise (from the raised safety valve in the semi-destroyed funnel) rendered speech practically impossible. And then came a phone call from the engine room to say that there was a fire in one of the boiler rooms, and that water was making its way into the engine room.’1

  Luckily for those on board, a mixture of preventative action and good fortune would save the ship’s main engines, but for some time the crew in various compartments below decks found themselves caught up in what initially must have appeared to be an unwinnable battle against the debilitating effects of the flames and smoke.2 Indications of the kind of conditions under which those below decks were operating, and the terrible injuries they were witnessing, are conveyed by the following extract from a post-war verbal account spoken, stream of conscious-style, by Thomas Hanley from Bolton, Onslow’s sick berth attendant:

  ‘I go into the sick bay… and all the bunkheads were ablaze. We had to keep down on our knees because of the smoke. A fire party arrived and got a hose going… The fire… was put out in the sick bay. But there’s fire down below.

  ‘A “body” comes up the ladder (from the mess decks), pulling himself up with his hands. He has one leg shot off and the other is shattered below the knee… Most of his clothes [had been] blown off. I recognized him as the petty officer cook… He’d been down below in charge of the shell supplies which had been hit… [I] grabbed him, pulled him up, laid him on the deck,… made sure the arteries which were fractured were tied off. All you can do in a case like that is put a blanket under him, give him a shot… – in the Navy we had ampoules of morphine… – just push it in, squeeze it, put a mark on his wrist [to indicate] he has had a shot of morphine so he is not killed by morphine if someone else [with morphine] comes along…

  ‘Then a message came from back aft: “Sick berth attendant wanted back aft. Urgent! Urgent! Casualties back aft!” I make my way along the… deck… I got down to the wardroom, where the secondary sickbay was… to find chaos… They started bringing bodies up from for’ard… The immediate job was to get rid of the dead. One came along, a leading stoker, one of my own mess… Put my hand under his head. My hand sinks into his brain. Doesn’t affect you. Too much going on. He’s dead. Take him away. I want the living. I don’t want the dead.