Memory of a Christmas Past
were sleeping when, in the early hours of Boxing Day morning, a voice came over the intercom, “This is the Captain speaking.” There was a hush of expectation on all decks. “We have just received news from Norway that the German battlecruiser Scharnhorst has sailed from Altenfiord, apparently on a course to intercept and attack the convoy.” For most of us this heralded the prospect of our first engagement with the enemy. All hearts beat a little faster. Belfast gave a shudder and a deep rumble indicating that she was increasing speed. Swinging to port she set a course to put the cruisers between the enemy force and the convoy.
The following first-hand account was given to Mike and Tess Bowen almost 40 years ago by their friend and neighbour, Reg Dean, a retired WW2 era Royal Navy officer. ‘It was the approach of another Christmas and a telephone conversation with my daughter which led my thoughts back to a Christmas 36 years ago. She had recently taken some pupils to see the warship HMS Belfast anchored in the river Thames near Tower Bridge, and she was ‘rather tickled’ to see my signature as officer of the watch on an old entry in the ship’s log dated 26th December 1943.
350 miles away to the west, the Commander in Chief Admiral Fraser, in the battleship Duke of York, with the cruiser Jamaica and four destroyers, also received the message from Norway and immediately set course eastwards towards the convoy. The relative positions caused Admiral Fraser some doubt as to whether he could intercept the German force in time. Huge waves whipped up by a force 8 gale from the south west put the destroyers in danger of broaching to and at times the battleship seemed partially submerged like a huge submarine as she tried to maintain a speed of 24 knots. In desperation, he decided to risk detection and break radio silence. He radioed the convoy to alter course to the north. A U boat shadowing the convoy reported the alteration of the convoy’s course to the Scharnhorst. She altered course accordingly and flashed a signal to her destroyers but in the foul weather conditions they never received it. Through this error, Scharnhorst lost her escort and never regained it.
Early in the morning of that day began the last act of a drama which reached its awful climax at 7:45 pm that night. Surrounded by warships of the British Home Fleet and pin pointed by their radar scanners, the German battlecruiser Scharnhorst was battered by gun and torpedo fire until she became visible in the Arctic night as a dull red glow and finally sank beneath the icy waves with almost all of her 1800 crew. On Christmas night, cruising at 17 knots in line abreast, in stormy Arctic seas west of Bear Island, was the British 10th Cruiser Squadron under Admiral Burnett in HMS Belfast together with HMS Norfolk and HMS Sheffield. Some 200 miles to the east, a convoy of 18 heavily laden merchant ships closely escorted by destroyers and minesweepers, was heading towards Northern Russia at 8 knots with valuable war equipment for the Russian forces.
Around 8:30 am, the 10th Cruiser Squadron with all radar sets eagerly scanning the Arctic gloom picked up the echo of a large ship 20 miles to the south. When the range closed to around 7 miles it
In heavy seas, few of the off-watch crew in Belfast 27
