The Drama of the Scharnhorst / German Battleship, World War II / Fritz-Otto Busch / AllNavyBooks.com

"Scharnhorst sunk by British naval forces 60 sea miles N.W. of North Cape. 26th December, 1943 at 19 hours 45." So ran the radio announcement that told the world of the end of the German battleship Scharnhorst. The implications of this short message, in terms of human experience, remained unknown until the end of World War II when the story was told by the few German survivors and the officers and men of the British Navy. While the epic of the final battle forms the core of this book, Fritz-Otto Busch also depicts life aboard the 32,000-ton warship and records her short, eventful history from her launching in 1939 to her fateful demise in 1943. Busch relates how Scharnhorst sank the British aircraft carrier Glorious in 1940, menaced Allied shipping in the Atlantic throughout 1941, and made her impudent, flaunting dash up the channel to the safety of the Norwegian fjords in 1942.

Considered by her crew to be a "luck ship", her luck ran out in 1943 when she found herself outnumbered in Artic waters by superior Allied naval forces. The British ships were equipped with Radar, the Scharnhorst was not—a fatal disadvantage that was to prove decisive. Using German and British sources, the author has compiled a "biography" of the Scharnhorst, infamous in Britain for its staunch resistance to gunfire, but eventually torpedoed and sunk in 1943. Fritz-Otto Busch, an officer on the doomed warship, makes use of top-secret details hidden from public view during World War II.

New softbound edition. 186 pages, 21 black and white photographs, 3 maps and an index.

New Book --- $12.99

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