A Home on the Rolling Main : A Naval Memoir 1940-1946 by Ditcham Tony

Author:Ditcham, Tony
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HISTORY / Military / Naval: HIS027150
ISBN: 9781473826250
Publisher: Naval Institute Press
Published: 2013-06-16T16:00:00+00:00

Poor Stord had been close astern of us and had probably had even less warning than us of Scharnhorst’s abrupt reversal of course, and had not had time to alter the deflection setting. This may be one reason – apart from Germanophobia – that she went even closer than we did, and passed her at only about 1200 yards. The Norwegians took courage to extreme lengths.

We described a circle and followed Scharnhorst at about 3 miles, going much slower now. We were thus able to watch as Duke of York came up, reducing speed and at 1901 fired a broadside at an easy target. It was an awe-inspiring sight. At five miles, the trajectory was comparatively flat and the 14 inch ‘tracer’ shells leaped across the sea and all of them appeared to smash into her in a colossal explosion. Some of them may have gone over and hit the sea some miles further on, but they were not visible.

She continued to dish out this punishment in a series of broadsides and Scharnhorst became a burning shambles.

One of the 36 survivors (out of 1980) was the messenger to the Gunnery Officer at the top of the superstructure. He told me that when the shells hit, the order was broadcast:

‘Damage control parties to such & such position’.

The men would dutifully appear, more shells would arrive and ‘bits of them’ would go up past him in the gunnery tower. The methodical Germans would repeat the order and the same thing would happen again.

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