How a Saltcoats man and his crew disabled one of Nazi Germany’s most feared ships
David Milloy
Although the failure of the Luftwaffe to achieve air supremacy over Britain in 1940 had caused Hitler to abandon his plans for invasion, this country’s survival remained anything but guaranteed.
The war now lay at sea, where convoys of merchant ships bringing much-needed food and armaments to the United Kingdom were savaged by the dual menaces of U-boats and surface raiders.
In the early part of the war, surface raiders were feared more than U-boats. Although smaller than the Royal Navy, the German Kriegsmarine was equipped with some of the most modern and powerful ships of any navy, including the two battleships of the Scharnhorst class.
The Scharnhorst and her sister ship Gneisenau may have been smaller and carried less powerful main guns than Germany’s largest battleship then in service, the Bismarck, but their combination of speed and hitting power made them perfectly suited to commerce raiding. And that was exactly the purpose for which Germany intended to use them.
And so it proved, with both ships inflicting significant losses on Allied shipping. Having sunk the British aircraft carrier HMS Glorious and her accompanying destroyers in 1940, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau ventured into the Atlantic Ocean in January 1941, where they sank a total of 19 merchant vessels and captured three tankers. They then made for the French port of Brest, which was under German control, reaching it on 22nd March. Gneisenau entered dry dock for maintenance but was moved back into the harbour on 5th April after an armour-piercing bomb dropped by an RAF bomber narrowly missed her. This now offered the RAF the opportunity to attack her using torpedoes rather than bombs.
After leaving dry dock, Gneisenau was berthed against a wall on the north side of the inner harbour and was shielded by a stone mole about 500 yards to the north. This meant that an aircraft making a torpedo attack would have to come in from the north, fly low over the mole, drop its torpedo as soon as it had a clear run to the Gneisenau, and then try to make good its escape.
The usual evasive tactic for aircraft fleeing after making a torpedo attack was to remain at low level and weave to avoid anti-aircraft fire. However, an aircraft attacking Gneisenau would have to negotiate the high ground which lay in its path; it would not be possible to escape by remaining at low level. And with up to 1000 guns of varying calibres doing their utmost to shoot it down, the odds of an aircraft making a successful attack and making it back to base were desperately long.
In the early hours of 6th April 1941, three Bristol Beaufort torpedo bombers of 22 Squadron RAF took off from St. Eval in Cornwall with orders to attack the Gneisenau. They were to have been joined by three more Beauforts carrying mines, which were to be dropped on any anti-torpedo nets the Germans might have deployed to protect the Gneisenau, but heavy rain had turned part of the airfield into a quagmire and only one of the mine-carrying Beauforts managed to get airborne.
One of the torpedo-carrying Beauforts was flown by 23-year-old Flying Officer Kenneth Campbell. Born in Saltcoats, he had graduated with a degree in Chemistry from Cambridge University, where he was a member of the University Air Squadron. In September 1939, he was mobilised for service with the Royal Air Force. He joined 22 Squadron a year later, where he took part in numerous anti-shipping patrols, torpedoing two Axis merchant vessels in the spring of 1941.
The flight to Brest was undertaken in foggy conditions. The plan called for an attack at first light, but in the event only the Beaufort flown by Kenneth Campbell located Brest in time to press home an attack before sunrise. Arriving at around 5am GMT, Campbell overflew Brest from the south, his presence masked by heavy cloud, before heading out to sea, descending to an altitude of 50 feet and swinging back around towards the harbour. Flying at below the height of their masts, Campbell passed the three heavily armed anti-aircraft ships that guarded the harbour, skimmed over the mole, dropped his torpedo, and tried to make his escape.
In spite of the volume of anti-aircraft fire directed towards his Beaufort, Campbell might well have made it to safety had he not needed to turn to avoid the high ground that lay before him. As the Beaufort banked to the left, it presented a much larger and easier target for the anti-aircraft guns. It was struck by 20mm cannon shells and crashed into the outer harbour, killing all four crew members on board. Their bodies were recovered and laid to rest by the Germans, who accorded them full military honours.
Campbell and his crew would never know it but their torpedo had caused significant damage to the Gneisenau, holing her below the waterline, damaging her propulsion system and causing considerable flooding. Had she been at sea instead of in a harbour where help could quickly reach her, she might well have sank. As it was, she was returned to dry dock for repairs, where she sustained further damage in a bombing raid by the RAF.
It would be eight months before Gneisenau returned to sea. Crucially, this meant that she was unable to take part in Operation Rheinübung, in which she was intended to have accompanied the battleship Bismarck on a commerce-raiding operation.
Had the Bismarck ventured to sea with either or both of the Scharnhorst-class battleships, the consequences for Allied merchant shipping and the knock-on effect on Britain’s ability to continue to stay in the fight against Nazi Germany might well have been dire. That such a scenario never occurred was due in no small part to Kenneth Campbell and his crew’s brave solo attack on the Gneisenau.
Kenneth Campbell was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross, Britain’s highest award for valour, for his actions. However, no medals were awarded to the rest of the Beaufort’s crew – Sergeants James Philip Scott, Ralph Walter Hillman, and William Cecil Mulliss. This was a perverse decision, albeit one that was in keeping with the RAF’s practice at the time, given that all four men aboard the Beaufort shared the same risks and met their fate together.
The Gneisenau remained at Brest until February 1942, when she and the Scharnhorst made what became known as the ‘Channel Dash’, a high-speed run from Brest to Kiel in Germany. Having safely negotiated the relatively narrow English Channel, she was damaged by a magnetic mine off the Netherlands. She entered dry dock on reaching Kiel but was further damaged by RAF bombing raids. She made only one more voyage, this time to Gotenhafen (now known as Gydnia) but thereafter never again left port. She was sunk as a blockship in 1945 and was salvaged for scrap after the war. Her story, and that of the war at sea, might have been very different but for the skill and courage of Kenneth Campbell and his crew.
The Victoria Cross awarded to Kenneth Campbell is unique in that it is the only VC to have ever been awarded to a member of any of the RAF’s torpedo squadrons, although a pilot in the Royal Navy’s Fleet Air Arm, Lieutenant Commander Eugene Esmonde, was also awarded a posthumous VC for leading a torpedo attack on the Gneisenau and Scharnhorst during the Channel Dash.
Kenneth’s older brother, James, a solicitor who practiced law in Saltcoats for many, many years, presented Kenneth’s VC to 22 squadron in 2000, rightly stressing that the medal should be regarded as an award made not just to his brother but to the entire crew of the Beaufort.
A memorial bench in Saltcoats was dedicated to Kenneth Campbell in 2000, and he and his crew are remembered on other memorials in Britain, France, and Canada. In addition, a limited edition 1:72 scale model of their Beaufort torpedo bomber is manufactured by Corgi. A handful of real Beauforts remain, one of which is on display at the RAF Museum at Hendon. If you should ever see it or any of the other surviving Beauforts, take a moment to remember four young men whose courage and skill undoubtedly saved many lives.
