{"id":5868,"date":"2015-12-22T21:33:33","date_gmt":"2015-12-23T03:33:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/?p=5868"},"modified":"2016-01-11T07:09:47","modified_gmt":"2016-01-11T13:09:47","slug":"this-week-in-the-war-20-26-december-1943-sinking-of-the-scharnhorst","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/?p=5868","title":{"rendered":"This week in the War, 20&#8211;26 December 1943: Sinking of the Scharnhorst"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><div id=\"attachment_5866\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/?attachment_id=5866\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-5866\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-5866\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-5866\" src=\"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/Wscharnhorst-300x198.jpg\" alt=\"The Scharnhorst [Bundesarchiv, DVM 10 Bild-23-63-07\/ CC-BY-SA 3.0]\" width=\"300\" height=\"198\" srcset=\"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/Wscharnhorst-300x198.jpg 300w, https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/Wscharnhorst-150x99.jpg 150w, https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/Wscharnhorst-768x507.jpg 768w, https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/Wscharnhorst.jpg 800w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-5866\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Scharnhorst [Bundesarchiv, DVM 10 Bild-23-63-07\/ CC-BY-SA 3.0]<\/p><\/div>This week in the war, on 26 December 1943, the famous German battlecruiser <em>Scharnhorst<\/em> attempted to intercept an Allied convey heading through the Arctic Ocean towards Russia.<\/p>\n<p>Having\u00a0decoded German naval signals, the British were able to locate the <em>Scharnhorst<\/em> and she was attacked by the cruiser <em>HMS Norfolk<\/em> and followed by cruisers and destroyers throughout the afternoon. The Royal Navy\u2019s superior radar and radar-controlled gunnery gave the British\u00a0an advantage in the arctic darkness.<\/p>\n<p>The British battleship <em>HMS Duke of York<\/em> arrived and scored a direct hit on the German ship which, nonetheless, escaped and headed east and directly north of North Cape.<\/p>\n<p>The pursuing destroyers scored hits with torpedoes that slowed the <em>Scharnhorst<\/em> and enabled the <em>Duke of York<\/em> to catch her. The <em>Scharnhorst<\/em>\u2019s\u00a0nine 11inch guns were no match for the <em>Duke of York<\/em>\u2019s ten 14inch guns. The cruisers <em>HMS Jamaica<\/em> and <em>HMS Belfast<\/em> finished off the Scharnhorst with torpedoes. She sank at 19:45.<\/p>\n<p>Of her complement of almost 2,000 sailors, only 36 survived.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This week in the war, on 26 December 1943, the famous German battlecruiser Scharnhorst attempted to intercept an Allied convey heading through the Arctic Ocean towards Russia. Having\u00a0decoded German naval signals, the British were able to locate the Scharnhorst and &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/?p=5868\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[949,950,765,948,947],"class_list":["post-5868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world-war-ii","tag-belfast","tag-cape-north","tag-hms-duke-of-york","tag-hms-jamaica","tag-scharnhorst"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5868"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5868\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5891,"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5868\/revisions\/5891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}