Pocket into Pocket

A Blenheim reconnaissance plane skimmed in and out of the overcast above the North Sea one midnight last week chasing a Nazi seaplane. The seaplane dodged into a cloud. The Blenheim followed, lost touch with its quarry, emerged suddenly into a clear patch over the sea just off Egersund, Norway.

There, big as life, shining in the full June moon, lay the sleek, clean form of a German pocket battleship.

The Blenheim wirelessed its base. R.A.F. torpedo bombers roared out to sea. The pilots were taut-eyed, for this was a prize not to miss. The scuttling of the pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spec off Montevideo in December 1939, enforced by inferior British vessels, was one of Britain's proudest episodes in the war. There were only two more of these Panzer ships, as the Germans call their 10,000-tonners designed to outgun or overrun every British ship of their weight. This cornered ship must be either the Admiral Scheer or the Luetzow (formerly Deutschland).

Sinking or even crippling her as she set out to raid Britain's supply lines would be a victory. It would be particularly pleasing to the Coastal Command of the R.A.F., for previously all the spectacular British torpedo-bombing had been done by the Fleet Air Arm with Fairey Sword-fishes--rickety biplanes trussed up with as many outside stays as grandma's corset. (These "string bags" nicked the French battleship Strasbourg as she fled from the Battle of Oran, had crippled three heavy units of the Italian Fleet at Taranto, slowed the Vittorio Veneto in the Battle of Matapan, had crippled the Bismarck.) But this operation was being carried out by brand-new, twin-engined monoplane Bristol Beauforts, clean as whistles.

The first Beaufort to reach the designated bearing was piloted by a flight sergeant from flattened Coventry and navigated by a sergeant from peaceful Saskatchewan. The pair saw the streamlined Panzer ship, closely screened by one destroyer to the fore and two on each flank. The destroyers on the flanks hung close abeam--so close that putting a torpedo home would not be easy.

The pilot dropped to 100 feet, skidded his Beaufort around the stern of one of the port-flanking destroyers, squared away, launched a tin fish, and sheered off to the left within 100 yards of the pocket battleship's bow. There was a tense pause. Then the rear gunner shouted: "There's a column of water!" The pilot banked to have a look, and all he could see was what seemed to him a beautiful cloud of dirty white smoke.

At 10 o'clock that morning, R.A.F. reconnaissance found the ship lying motionless off Mandal, the southernmost point of Norway. Shepherded by her destroyers, she soon limped away at greatly reduced speed into the safety of the Skagerrak, probably so strongly protected by German land-based fighters that the British bombers--too far from home to bring a fighter escort--did not dare strike again. However, one pocket battleship would not raid for some time to come.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.