German Destroyers 1939–45

This extract is from the chapter ‘Wartime service’.On the outbreak of war in September 1939, all but three of the available German destroyer fleet were positioned in the Baltic. Here they provided a screening force intended to prevent Polish warships or merchant vessels from escaping. Leberecht Maas was involved in a firefight with Polish warships in the port of Hela, during which the Polish shore batteries scored a hit on the German destroyer, killing or wounding eight crewmen. The weak Polish naval forces available meant that the large German naval force present in the Baltic was not really necessary, and only provided targets for the small number of Polish submarines lurking in the area. The destroyer force was therefore withdrawn into western waters.The new task allocated to the destroyer force was in laying the huge defensive minefield intended to protect the German Bight from incursions by British warships. 16 of the fleet were involved in this successful minelaying campaign, which lasted until late September whilst the remaining destroyers were used to stop and search merchant ships in the Skagerrak looking for contraband, and seizing several ships under prize rules. After the cessation of their involvement in the Polish campaign, almost all of the available units of the destroyer fleet were moved onto minelaying duties off the English coast. These operations were highly successful, with several enemy merchantmen and warships being sunk.On 7 December, Hans Lody and Erich Giese were on such a minelaying sortie when, after depositing their payload, they encountered the British destroyers Juno and Jersey. As yet unnoticed by the enemy, the Germans immediately attacked but, having seriously damaged the Jersey with a spread of torpedoes, took advantage of the apparent British assumption that the attack had been by submarine rather than surface units, and withdrew. During this early part of the war, the Germans had adopted the practice of using their light cruisers to provide a cover force for destroyer units returning from minelaying operations. It was this rather strange policy of providing large ships as escorts for smaller vessels, rather than the more normal situation of using smaller faster vessels and escorts for larger ships, which was to combine with the notoriously unreliable powerplant of the German destroyers, to cause one of Germany’s first major naval catastrophes.