Death of the Scharnhorst

Warship Battles of World War Two

By: John Winton

Narrated by: Alex Wyndham

An epic account of how the Royal Navy tracked down, cornered, and sank one of the most fearsome German warships of the Second World War.

The Scharnhorst was a state of the art capital ship of Nazi Germany's navy. Launched in 1936 she had terrorized Allied shipping since the beginning of the war, famously destroying the aircraft destroyer HMS Glorious in June 1940. Since then she had made numerous sorties into the Atlantic to raid British merchant fleets and had evaded destruction in the Channel Dash of 1942 in order to interrupt convoys to the Soviet Union.

The danger posed by the Scharnhorst to the Arctic convoys was monumental. Admiral Sir Bruce Fraser, commander-in-chief of the Home Fleet, devised a plan to lure their enemy from its Norwegian base and pound it with shells from the battleship HMS Duke of York and supporting cruisers and destroyers.

John Winton's comprehensively researched book, drawing on British and German eyewitness accounts, uncovers how the threat of the Scharnhorst was eventually brought to an end at the Battle of the North Cape in the freezing conditions of the Barents Sea.

©1983 The Estate of John Winton (P)2023 Tantor

Overall, quite good.

One of the few battles between battleships, the story of the Scharnhorst is exciting and deserves it's own story despite often being overshadowed by the Bismarck chase. Winton told the story brilliantly! This book seems to be well researched. The author included backgrounds on the significant people - not too detailed, but interesting. The narrator did a fantastic job!

Overall I'd recommend this to anyone interested in naval history. I wish Audible had more books like this!