The Battle of Dogger Bank

[ninjapacman]

8:25 One of the enemy battlecruisers’ escorts is struck by a bomb. The explosion is correlated by reports from the German battleships, but the bomb actually punched clean through her stern and sank into the sea before detonating in her wake. The Geyser combined with the smoke she had just started laying likely created the false reports.  Obusier didn't suffer major damage from the hit.  
Another one of our aircraft scores a hit on one of the two battlecruisers Which turned for home.  Marengo is hit by a 1000lb AP bomb from Graf Richtofen which punches through the deck into the engine room, causing heavy damage, but not compromising the watertight integrity of the ship. Marengo retires from the battle, turning for home. She'll take no more damage in the battle.




8:28 As Graf Zeppelin’s dive bombers score a hit on an enemy battlecruiser, the obsolete Me 183 Bs escorting Europa and Afrika’s strike groups get torn apart by the newer french craft. Germany is trying to push the newer Me 193 into service, but it was not yet ready to equip our carriers in this battle. Our veteran pilots are paying dearly for that.
  At this time Duquesne takes a 1000lb AP bomb from Graf Zeppelin, punching into the starboard secondary battery and blasting a secondary turret off the ship.

8:29 Despite the fearsome CAP, the valiant pilots of Europa’s veteran dive bomber squadrons make their attack run. The torpedo bombers also make a run, and for their efforts both are shredded. Of the forty aircraft from Afrika and Europa that made the strike, merely eight of the eighteen escort fighters and five of the dive bombers escaped without damage. All of the remaining torpedo bombers have more than a few flak or bullet holes.  Over half of the aircraft are not returning home at all. The Dive bombers from Europa score two hits on Painleve. The first is a 1000lb AP bomb to the rear flight deck. It punches through and into the rear deck armor, detonating a deck below. Splinters and fragments punch into the hangar and ignite ready aircraft. The second bomb is a dud, but when it punches into the hangar it goes through a loaded and fueled MB 111, which starts a serious fire in the hangar. She remains unable to launch or land aircraft due to the fire and damage until 10:32, nearly 2 hours later.

8:33 With the enemy battlecruisers now split into a north pair and a south pair, we’ll defeat them in detail. BatDiv 9 focuses their guns on the southern group, while the aircraft continue to harass the northern group.  Elsass watches a third and fourth torpedo strike her former target, the northern Ocean-class. In other good news, power is restored to Danzig’s Y turret. Montcalm is hit by two more torpedoes. Both torpedoes are from Graf Boelcke’s Do 192 Bs. The first strikes aft, damaging no major systems, but causing some flooding.  The second punches into a previous torpedo hit, with a one-in-a-million shot.  It blows a deep hole in her starboard side, letting in hundreds of tons of water, causing major flooding and forcing her to slow down and retire from the battle.

[ninjapacman]

8:42 A squadron of enemy Nieuport ND 103 torpedo bombers are spotted coming from the southwest. The first of them make their attack run. The anti-aircraft fire from the three battleships seems to deter them slightly, but none are shot down.




8:44 Another wave make their attacks, focusing on the battleship Elsass. It seems she is well known to the French by this point. Their pilots make the run successfully save for one, which bursts into flames and falls into the water with a great splash.


8:45 The last of the enemy pilots make their attack run, this time on the escorting destroyers a short distance ahead of the Battleships. As they come to torpedo drop altitude a flak burst from Their dual purpose 6-in primary guns tears the wing off of one aircraft, and it spins into the ocean amidst a trail of smoke and falling pieces. The aircraft next to it continues its run, but seems to start leaking something.

Elsass spots the torpedoes from the enemy aircraft. As she turns to avoid them, a shell from the enemy Ocean-class detonates in her upper superstructure, disabling Elsass’s famous radar. Repair crews are immediately sent up to assess the damage and find a solution, whatever it takes.
Toulouse. This was a 16" shell from the battlecruiser Toulouse. The shot knocks out Elsass’s radar for the remainder of the battle, and it takes time to replace in the weeks she remains in dry dock afterwards.

8:47 An enemy aerial torpedo finds its mark on the leading destroyer, Z-33. A cascade of water explodes up from her starboard beam, and a jet of water shoots out from the port beam. The detonation nearly splits the ship in two. The Commanding officer of Z-4 takes command of Desdiv 10 on the orders of Commander Althaus.  The hit was scored by an ND 103 B from the carrier Orne.

8:49 The enemy Marengo class battlecruiser [Duquesne] turned around to rejoin it’s northern companions, while the Ocean [Toulouse] seems to think it has no choice but to fight out the battle. Another squadron of enemy torpedo bombers is spotted from the southwest. This time they focus their first attack on Danzig. To make matters worse, Tirpitz’s A turret suffers from the shock of firing a simultaneous three-gun barrage, and is locked in place.

[ninjapacman]

8:51 A wave of bombers attempt to attack Tirpitz, but a series of Flak bursts from her 6-in dual purpose secondaries, and the 4-in dual purpose tertiary battery of all three battleships utterly demolishes the attacking force. Only one makes its torpedo run, and before it can drop, Tirpitz’s medium AA fire tears it apart, leaving only a variety of flaming chunks to crash into the ocean.



On our own carriers, faces fall as only 8 Torpedo/Scout Bombers from Graf Richtofen return to the carrier and make their landings, four of which are trailing smoke. They’re the first strike aircraft to return.


8:54 While Danzig and Elsass turn east to avoid the torpedoes launched by the few enemy aircraft which made it through, Tirpitz turns west to continue engaging enemy forces. Tirpitz reduces her speed to 20kts to allow Elsass and Danzig to catch up. In good news, the ship’s damage control crews and civilian engineers managed to get Danzig’s B turret working again, despite the damage. It sounds a powerful salvo against the enemy to mark the occasion.

[ninjapacman]

8:55 As cracks in the hull widen, Z-33 orders abandon ship. Unfortunately, we could not dispatch Z-29 to pick up survivors with enemy battlecruisers so close. We would only be losing the crew of Z-29 as well. With luck, the survivors of Z-33 will make it ashore. The Ocean-class [Toulouse] has turned north to rejoin her companions as well, using the chaos of the air attacks to make her move.




8:56 Seven Torpedo/Scout Bombers from the first strikes land on Graf Boelcke. One of the Arado aircraft is forced to ditch next to the carrier due to a fuel leak. A boat is sent for the aircrew.


8:57 Graf Richtofen’s dive bombers make their landing approaches. One with a shot up left wing dips the wing after touchdown and tears it off. There are no serious injuries, but the aircraft is unusable, and pushed into the sea. The ill-fated Torpedo/Scout Bombers from Afrika and Europa’s strike on the enemy carriers return. The six that make it back are all either horribly shot up, trailing smoke, or both.

[ninjapacman]

8:59 Of the eleven Dive bombers that struck the enemy carriers, six of Europa’s Aircraft returned. One of them came in too fast and damaged its landing gear. It managed to get airborne again rather crashing on the deck, but was forced to ditch near the carrier. A boat was sent for the aircrew.


9:01 Of the nine dive bombers Graf Zeppelin sent on the strike, eight return to land safely on the carrier, albeit two of them are at least a little beaten up.




9:02 Of Asien’s thirteen Dive bombers sent on the first strike, twelve return. One damaged aircraft suffers landing gear failure, and has to ditch. Once again a boat is sent for the aircrew. With all of the previous strike aircraft having landed, the carriers begin spotting and launching the new strike against the enemy carriers. Carrier Division 13’s aircraft, of Graf Richtofen and Graf Zeppelin, were all committed to the first strike, so they will not participate in the second. They are being refueled and rearmed to be held in reserve.




9:04 The enemy Ocean-Class’s gunnery finds its mark. Tirpitz is hit by three shells in the span of five seconds. The first is a 16-in shell which hits 15 yards forward of the A turret. The AP shell punches clean through the bow and detonates on the other side, outside of the ship, dealing minimal damage. The next two are almost simultaneous 6-in hits from the enemy secondary battery. The first punches into the thin bow just next to the 16-in hole and detonates in the ship, again with only superficial damage.

The second however, strikes Tirpitz’s starboard torpedoes. Luckily, an explosion did not occur, but the emplacement has been shattered and bent into oblivion. Soon after, another 6-in shell strikes the bow near the other two shell holes, detonating inside the ship for only superficial damage.

A 16-in shell from the enemy’s next salvo strikes at an estimated 13,000 yards, close enough that it punches most of the way through Tirpitz’s belt armor. It detonates without getting all the way through, but the spalling punches through the corridors of two decks on the inside of the ship. Some steam lines are severed, and Tirpitz is reduced to merely 23kts.

The two 16-in hits are from Toulouse, as well as the two 6-in projectiles that hit the bow. The 6-in shot that destroyed her torpedo tubes was fired from Duquesne.

[ninjapacman]

9:09 The enemy Marengo-class puts two main battery AP shells into Danzig. The first passes over her superstructure and hits the deck on the other side, ricocheting off the deck armor. The second detonates on the face of the Y turret, sending shards into the turret ring and jamming it. The damage control crews start working to clear the shards. These two 16-in shells were from Duquesne.

The lagging escorts of the first strike make it back to Afrika. Of the eighteen that sortied, seven were lost over the target, with three suffering critical damage. Of those, two were forced to ditch, and the last couldn’t catch the wire, and crashed in the water in front of the carrier.  The pilot did not survive.


9:11 Enemy Dive bombers strike at Elsass. Two of them are blasted out of the sky by the battleships’ dual purpose guns. The rest dive upon Elsass, but through careful maneuvering she avoids the bombs, and her light AA guns manage to saw off an aircraft’s wing as it pulls out of its dive.

Our own aircraft have finished forming up, and are making their way to the enemy carrier’s estimated positions.




9:13 Tirpitz’s A turret is restored to fighting condition, albeit they will no longer be firing all three guns in a turret at once, to avoid jamming it again. As Z-33 slowly sinks, the skeleton crew remaining on her use the working boilers, no longer connected to any turbine shafts, to lay smoke for Danzig as she and Elsass come under air attack and fire from enemy Battlecruisers. 



The smoke Z-33 produced shielded Danzig and Elsass from the air attack.  For this action, Commander Althaus of Z-33 was awarded the Pour le Merite.  Althaus recalls looking up at the mighty form of Danzig as she passed, and watching the radar controlled anti-aircraft guns light up her whole superstructure "Like fireworks" as they continued engaging into the smoke, sending a hail of death towards the blind french pilots.

[ninjapacman]

9:15 Torpedo bombers make runs on both the escorting destroyers and Tirpitz herself. Tirpitz’s AA knocks an aircraft out of the sky. Soon after, a 6-in secondary shell [from Duquesne] glances harmlessly off Tirpitz’s belt.


9:16 Five torpedo bombers make a run on Elsass, but distracted, she is unable to shoot any of them down.


9:17 Elsass avoids most of the torpedoes, but one strikes her amidships. A large geyser of water shoots up from her starboard beam. Preliminary damage assessments indicate that it hit the main torpedo belt, mitigating most of the damage. This torpedo came from Joffre’s MB 111s. The damage it did was not consequential to the battle, but it did settle Elsass a touch lower in the water. Joffre's aircraft will prove to be the most potent of the french attacking force.

9:22 An enemy recon aircraft is spotted over our fleet. Our CAP easily shoots it down, but we can not discount the possibility that our fleet has been spotted. The carriers change course north to avoid a potential enemy strike.


9:23 Our own strike against the enemy carriers reports that they see enemy ships. They’ve begun setting up their attacks. The first to find the enemy were the thirteen Torpedo/Scout Bombers from Europa.



Once again this strike actually found all six enemy carriers. At this time, Elsass reports that she completely stops the flooding from the torpedo hit.

9:24 At roughly 17,500 yds a 16-in shell from the Terrible hits Tirpitz just aft and a few yards to the port of Y turret. The shell digs a deep dent in the deck, ringing as it ricochets back up to splash a few hundred yards past the ship. The Damage dented Tirpitz’s deck, but didn’t penetrate, proving a remarkable strength of her armor. Meanwhile, Elsass and Danzig once again come under air attack. Danzig’s gunners manage to shoot down one of their assailants.


9:25 While the battleships come under air attack, Twenty five miles west of Batdiv 9, the brave German pilots engage the enemy carriers. The first attackers are the Torpedo Scout/Bombers from Europa. Curiously enough, they report that enemy CAP is sparse at best, a far cry from the first time these enemies were engaged. Unfortunately, enemy AA fire is furious, harrowing to even the most veteran of pilots.



The short range of the french aircraft forced them to land and rearm their CAP, leaving them vulnerable to air attack. However, due to their powerful anti-aircraft fire, accuracy of the German bombers was significantly reduced, and the strike was overall unsuccessful. What it did do was force the carriers to separate. CarDiv 18 turned north, and Cardiv 7 and Cardiv 20 turned south.

[ninjapacman]

At 9:26 Painleve’s AA continues firing, despite the flames licking through the hangar, and she shoots down no less than 3 german aircraft. At 9:28 Europa’s and Asien’s torpedo planes attacked at almost exactly the same time, and a torpedo hit is claimed by Europa, but it’s actually more likely Asien whose torpedo bombers scored the hit, according to Painleve’s crew accounts. They actually mention two torpedo hits from the second wave of torpedo bombers, but one of the torpedos was a dud. Since the dud torpedo struck right under her rear fuel lines and hangar magazines, had it detonated, Painleve likely would have sunk. As it played out however, a herculean damage control effort on what she had already suffered was able to bring Painleve back to port.


Afrika’s dive bombers claim to have hit a CVL at 9:27, but it actually was the fleet carrier Soule, who suffered a near miss from one of their AP bombs. It did little but cause some minor flooding. She was easily able to continue operations.



Graf Boelcke’s dive bombers record a hit on a light cruiser in this strike around 9:29, but with no light cruisers in the force, it’s far more likely that it was them who scored a bomb hit recorded by the destroyer Baliste. The 1000lb AP bomb punched into her starboard hull plating, cutting a line down the ship and ricocheting into the sea. It detonated next to her, acting as a near miss and causing flooding. It also sent splinters into her B turret, taking it briefly out of the fight. If the hit had been closer to the center of the ship, it might have sunk her.  As she later sinks Z-21, it's likely that such a hit would have saved more than 200 German lives.


9:32 Enemy Dive bombers engage Tirpitz. Her medium anti-aircraft guns blast one of them apart over the ship, but it doesn’t deter the others, clearly veteran pilots. They hold their aim true and score two hits on Tirpitz. One punches into the aft section, where there is very little armor, and detonates, blasting a 15-foot hole in the port side over decks 2 and 3.

The second was an armor-piercing bomb which punched through the superstructure and into the deck armor, barely passing the armor amidships before detonating in deck 2. Large armor splinters punched up through the superstructure’s wardrooms, but the bomb’s damage didn’t reach down to the ship’s vitals.

The next wave of dive bombers attacks Tirpitz immediately after, but her Heavy AA is ready, and the 6-in dual purpose guns destroy two of them before they start their dives. The others miss their bombs as the heavy Flak drives them off target.


The two bombs that hit Tirpitz were from Orne's Veteran MS. 108 pilots.  They struck near simultaneously.

9:35 All the striking planes finish their attacks on the enemy carriers, and start heading home.


9:37 For some time Z-33, split at the beam, has increased her angle. Finally with all crew evacuated, the Captain is the last to leave the ship as her bow and stern point ever closer to the sky. At 9:37, the two halves slip under the surface near simultaneously at 53°28’21”N 04°31’11”E

As this is the end of the first stage of the battle, and it's actually getting late where I am, I'll continue posting the remainder of the battle tomorrow.  To whoever stuck with reading this far, thanks.  Feel free to post your thoughts, and if you have any criticisms, I'll try to fix any problems before posting the next two stages.