Despite the success of the submarine campaign in the First World War and the failure of its surface fleet, Germany decided to pin its hopes on surface ships in the 1930's. The German naval commander Admiral Raider had developed a plan to complete a fleet of super battleships by 1942. At the outbreak of war the German's had three 10,000 ton pocket battleships which were in reality cruisers and two 30,000 ton battle cruisers. A further two super battleships the Bismarck and Tirpitz were due to be completed in 1941. (The U boat force consisted of only 30 vessels)
Raider decided on a campaign, which would use his surface ships to sink, allied merchant shipping. This book is an examination of whether that was a sensible decision. It examines two of the major naval campaigns, Operation Berlin which was the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau's raid in the Atlantic and Operation Rheinburg which was the unsuccessful sortie which resulted in the destruction of the Bismarck.
The author makes the point that although superficially Operation Berlin had some success it had significant problems. Those problems were that surface ships faced considerable problems in locating enemy merchants without air assistance. The commander of Operation Berlin Lutjzens had to use captured merchant ships to from a reconnaissance line.
The sinking of the Bismarck in fact ended German fleet operations in the Atlantic. In short what happened was that British Cruisers using radar were able to track the Bismarck and Prince Eugen as they sailed in the Denmark Straight. The Germans had not realised the efficiency of British radar and had overestimated the ability of surface ships to use bad weather to escape detection. As a result of this detection the British were able to direct two heavy ships the Prince of Wales and Hood to intercept the German ships. The battle of the Denmark Strait should have been the end of the Germans. Instead a freak shot sunk the Hood and the Germans were able to sail on. The British cruisers were still able to follow and Swordfish aircraft flown from aircraft carriers were so able to cripple the Bismarck that she was easily sunk by British capital ships.
Rhys-Jones shows that the destruction of the Bismarck was if not inevitable due to a floored operational plan. Not only was the Bismarck sunk but the battle cruisers Scharnhorst and Geneisu were vulnerable to air attack and were repeatedly damaged in French harbors. Later the pocket battleships were also shown to be vulnerable to air attack. The actual Rheinburg operation was planned very poorly. News of the operation was made available to large numbers of civilians and the ship was even given an official send of which was seen by Norwegian civilians.
The author shows clearly that Raider had little knowledge of the effectiveness of British radar and how it changed the game rules. He also was not willing to ensure that German air surveillance was available to assist his ships in avoiding enemy capital ships.
This is a short and reasonably expensive book but it is an interesting examination of the surface navel war and contains material not available eslewhere.
