wadinga wrote: For Terje: I guess Marschall didn't have the benefit of fearless seekers of truth from the BBC World Service or CNN giving him up to the minute reports on the Allied withdrawal. He went out again (after escorting S to comparative safety) because he thought the enemy might be at sea. His Army specified original mission had been fixated with sailing right into Harstad fjord, in very dangerous constricted waters, to attack the Allied supply base, and save Dietl's troops. He thought it was a bad idea to take capital ships in there and when it became obvious the plan was obsolete he dropped it. Offshore he had searoom and the freedom to attack targets of opportunity.
Neither do I suspect he had such sources to provide him with an update but I have decided to put my faith in the possibility that Whitley might have carried out the efforts of acquiring a reasonable motive behind Marschall's actions at the time being. They were stated as following:
"By the following day, (that would be 10 June) it had become clear to Marschall that the Allies were in fact evacuating Norway and with no time to lose, he ordered a strike against enemy shipping..."
It doesn't appear to me that the Admiral knew that the British already had evacuated the area. And I do acknowledge the plausible motive that he wanted to prevent an airstrike from being launched as he moved in against HMS Glorious but by doing this, he did in fact also increase the chances of an airstrike actually being launched since he had no way of knowing the readiness of the Glorious or whether his own ships had been detected during the first sighting. Further postings, like RF's notice: We shall attack all the same, (even if the contact was a battleship) also seems to appear not as an order to prevent an airstrike but more or less an offensive against a unidentified heavy enemy unit, and so forth a violation of his operational orders.
wadinga wrote: Marschall went back into harbour on the 11th, after his second sortie and was turfed out of command shortly afterwards. Good news for the Allied Cause. Lucky Lutjens (He Alvays Obeyed Precisely Ze Orders!) took G out on the 20th June heading home and managed to get his Flagship torpedoed by HMS Clyde the very same day!
Whitley states that the Gneisenau actually headed north to create a diversion for the Scharnhorst heading south. A very unfortunate clash of coincidences it seems as HMS Clyde had her bows out for the light cruiser Nürnberg, returning to Trondheim after operation Dora. Instead she spotted the Gneisenau in the midst of her diversion and of course dispatched her torpedoes. Lütjens management has little to do with it.
wadinga wrote: Gneisenau's apparent but minor success in scoring a higher hit rate than Renown is just a matter of luck, with similar equipment Scharnhorst apparently scored none. Also you should realize the Germans were shooting aft ie away from the the spray and snow whilst Renown was sighting and shooting into the worst of it.
I would hardly call it a matter of luck to strike the target two times. And equipment alone means nothing without a crew to handle it. Gneisenau was simply better than the Scharnhorst at that part. It was not my intention to compare the Gneisenau and HMS Renown and make a case that Gneisenau had better gunnery but rather draw attention to the differences in performance between the Scharnhorst and the Gneisenau.
wadinga wrote: If you attack hard enough you don't get hit. Gloworm, Acasta and Ardent all attacked, and they didn't have any armour at all! They had guts, Lutjens didn't.
Glowworm, Acasta and Ardent had torpedoes and that was a powerful weapon against the twins and Hipper. Guts does indeed have very much something to do with this, (all honour to the daring destroyers) but without torpedoes, no daring attack would probably have taken place either. There's no need to highlight the threat of a destroyer to a battleship. The Royal Navy could risk the destroyers, the Kriegsmarine could not risk the battleships.
Tiornu, these broadside figures were meant to illustrate the expenditure of shells, and so forth the differences in their performance. Both ships fired most of their rounds with their Caesar-turrets, due to the course of the action.