The night I helped sink Hitler's battleship

“Perched at his freezing post above the bridge of the destroyer HMS Scorpion, 21-year-old sub-lieutenant Tony Ditcham stared through his binoculars into the midwinter Arctic darkness, searching for the German battlecruiser.

Suddenly star-shells burst overhead 'and where there'd been nothing but black there was this enormous ship, brilliantly illuminated'. Ditcham radioed 'Enemy in sight!' to the gun team below.

Thus, 80 years ago, began the final phase of the last great battle of the Royal Navy's war, a clash of giants that will never be seen again.

Ditcham is one of the very few survivors of the Battle Of The North Cape, fought in the terrible cold and mountainous seas of the Arctic winter on December 26, 1943.

At the age of 101, he is still full of energy, eyes twinkling as he sits in the oak-beamed lounge of a friend's house overlooking the rolling Shropshire countryside recalling in detail the now all-but-forgotten showdown between the leviathan Scharnhorst and the British fleet led by Admiral Sir Bruce Fraser in his flagship Duke of York. …”

Full article at this DailyMail link:
https://mol.im/a/12911441

Good read. Thanks for posting this.

While you 'areading about derring-do by the Royal Navy in the Northern Seas, spare a few minutes to read how the tiny destroyer, HMS Glowworm, took on the mighty 'Hipper' and ended up ramming it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Glowworm_(H92)

Not to take away the heroism that is written here, but the editors at the “Daily Mail” need to do better with their proofreading.

It’s is Wilhelmshaven, not Wilhalms Haven, and that 4-stacker ship is the WW1 version of the armored cruiser SMS Scharnhorst sunk at the Battle of the Falklands in December 1914.