In The Iron Sea, Simon Read takes readers into true stories of anti-Nazi swashbuckling adventure.
This is a recounting of the bloody and complicated allied effort to sink the four major German battleships of World War II; Tirpitz, Gneisenau, Scharnhorst, and Bismarck. Read’s book is an exciting read. His narrative easily accessible and representative of obvious passion for the subject. But there’s no doubt that this is a history book of depth and sourcing rather than excited embellishment. Relying on official reports, eyewitness testimony, and order of battle details, the Iron Sea illuminates the battles which broke the back of Germany’s power projection fleet.
And there’s more here than just a story of pursuits and battle at sea.
As an example, we join the commandos who launched the hugely daring March 1942 St. Nazaire Raid. Designed to keep the German fleet blocked from the Atlantic Ocean, the raid saw hundreds of British commandos launch a lightning attack on the major German dry dock located on France’s western coast. While many commandos were killed or captured, they succeeded in destroying the dock, jeopardizing German maritime operations for the remainder of the war. Read’s narrative makes clear the heroism and dedication to the mission which defined the raid. “Machine gun and small-arms fire chipped the concrete at their feet as they ran beneath the weight of their rucksacks, weapons, and explosives. One corporal, a man named Johnson, took a round but kept pace despite the pain. There was no time to care for the injured. ‘It had been impressed upon us,’ remembered one Commando. ‘You must get to your target, doesn’t matter how many are killed, don’t stop to help anybody, just get to that target and lay your charges.'”
With the battleships, Read masters the difficult art of elucidating, but also navigating us through, the chaos behind smoke-filled battles. Still, Read’s is never a history defined by glee for war and death. We learn how “Five minutes of relentless hammering reduced the Scharnhorst to a nightmare vision of flames and exploding ammunition. ‘Once the Duke of York got in there with those tremendous guns, it was horrendous to watch,’ said Seaman Bob Shrimpton on board Belfast, closing in from the north with the Norfolk. ‘She just smashed the thing to pieces, it was just ablaze from one end to the other.’ But Scharnhorst’s guns kept firing, despite the horrific conditions on board. ‘The ship’s port side deck,’ noted one survivor, ‘was littered with dead bodies being washed overboard.'” Only 36 of the Scharnhorst’s complement of 1,968 were rescued.
We learn how Gneisenau was damaged after being struck by a Royal Air Force bomb and kept docked for the remainder of the war. She was eventually sunk in the closing days of the war as part of a desperate effort to block Soviet forces from capturing a strategic port. Bismarck was scuttled by her crew after being encircled following a chase through the Atlantic Ocean. But coming after her earlier destruction of a British battleship, Hood, Bismarck’s defeat offered a much needed morale boost to the British public.
Then there is the Tirpitz. “Twenty four times between October 1940 and November 1944, the British attacked her from the air and from the sea. Churchill’s prize, the focus of his obsession, had at last been claimed. The beat was dead. The struggle had pushed men — cramped in frigid bombers or sweltering in the sweat-and-vomit fog of mini subs — to the limits of their endurance. Her superstructure lay buried in the mud of the fjord. Overhead, the bombers had by now disappeared. Wing Commander Tait would write the ship’s eulogy in his post-operational report. ‘The inglorious career of the Admiral von Tirpitz came to a sudden and equally inglorious end.'”
Tirpitz was finally obliterated after successive Royal Navy mini-sub attacks, and RAF bombers scored direct hits. One bomb eventually detonated the ship’s ammunition stores.
Read’s book is well worth the read. An enjoyable testimony, The Iron Sea will appeal to military history readers, both expert and casual. It reminds us that the defeat of this greatest threat to humanity was not easily won.
