The Sinking of the Scharnhorst

the long version

On Christmas Day, 1943, blinded by the fury of an Arctic blizzard, encircled by enemy destroyers, the German battleship Scharnhorst fought for her life. The luck of the Scharnhorst had become a legend. In 1942 she had slipped unscathed through the Channel under the very bows of the British fleet to harry the Arctic convoy routes. The British convoy which sailed for Murmansk on Christmas Eve, 1943, seemed a perfect target for another lightning raid. In fact it was a trap to lure the battleship into the open and then destroy her. This is the story of the Scharnhorst's dramatic sortie from her Norwegian lair, rhe story of a battle fought with Dutstanding courage against impossible odds until the most feared of all Hitler's battleships sank at last off North Cape.