Key Points and Summary – In a rare World War II naval upset, two German battleships, the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, ambushed and sank the British aircraft carrier HMS Glorious in 1940.
-The disaster was the result of a series of catastrophic errors by the British commander. The Glorious was “sailing blind” without combat air patrols or radar for early warning.
-Unable to launch its own aircraft in time, the carrier and its two escort destroyers were destroyed by the battleships’ heavy guns, resulting in the loss of nearly 1,600 lives.
-This failure served as a crucial cautionary tale for the Allies.
Yes, Battleships Can Sink an Aircraft Carrier
Force-on-force battles between naval ships are a thing of the past.
One could recall the Falklands War in which a British guided missile destroyer was damaged and eventually sunk by an Argentine Exocet air-launched anti-ship missile in 1982.
Flash-forward to the 21st century, and we witnessed Ukrainian ship-killing missiles sink the Russian flagship Moskva in the Black Sea at the beginning of the war in Ukraine.
It was different during World War II, when massive naval battles occurred regularly. The last battleship to be sunk in warfare was the Japanese Hyuga in 1945. But at the beginning of war, the tables were turned. Two battleships destroyed an aircraft carrier.
The HMS Glorious Carrier Was Sailing Blind
This encounter happened in the Norwegian Sea in 1940. The British aircraft carrier HMS Glorious was steaming along and not suspecting enemy ships to be in the vicinity. The Glorious didn’t know it was being tracked by the German battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau as it sailed toward its base at Scapa Flow.
Air patrols supporting the carrier to keep eyes on the German flotilla were not operational. Radar wasn’t present. The Glorious was sailing blind, and it was attacked on June 8.
Then German Battleships Appeared
Glorious was headed west, and lookouts spotted the two marauding German battleships 12 miles away, attempting to cut off the aircraft carrier. It looked like the Nazis were alerted to the position of the aircraft carrier before officers and sailors aboard the Glorious knew what was coming.
The Glorious did have two destroyers as escorts. The commander of the strike group sent one of the supporting vessels to investigate the two enemy ships on the horizon. Glorious did not change its speed or conduct evasive maneuvers. The destroyer HMS Ardent began its reconnaissance mission.
These Were Heavily Armed and Armored German Vessels
It didn’t take long for the Ardent to identify the enemy battleships. The pair could also be considered battlecruisers, but they were lethal with massive guns just the same. Then the British destroyer Acasta also turned to head toward the threat. Both tried to launch torpedoes at the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, but that failed. The British destroyers were outmanned and outgunned.
British Strike Group Was Destroyed
The Nazi sailors went to work and sighted in their guns. The resulting bombardment was too much for the British strike group. All three ships were destroyed, and the Glorious met a terrible fate, too, showing that battleships could overwhelm a carrier when needed.
There were 1,600 sailors on all three ships; only 39 British personnel survived to tell the tale.
What Caused the Disaster?
This sinking proved to be an anomaly because carriers were considered a superior type of ship. They could fly combat air patrols near the vicinity of battleships, forcing the massive vessels to stay out of gun range. Radar would later alert carriers of advancing enemy ships and enable follow-on attacks from airplanes carrying bombs and torpedoes.
So the Glorious sinking was questionable. Why weren’t the airplanes of the Glorious flying around the radius of the strike group to offer early warning? This was a big mistake made by the strike group’s commander, Guy D’Oyly-Hughes. The allies were sure not to make this gaffe again.
Carriers would never sail blind, and the battleship would become obsolete with better offensive and defensive tactics by flat-tops. Battleships would thereafter fail to get in range of aircraft carriers.
The Glorious had been converted to a carrier in 1924 from a British Courageous-class battlecruiser, so it wasn’t constructed from scratch. By World War Two, the Glorious deployed ancient Fairey Swordfish torpedo bombers and Gloster Sea Gladiator fighters. In 1940, the Glorious was trying to ship some of these airplanes to the Norwegians. This explained why they were operating in that area. After delivering the fighters to Norway, the Glorious was heading back to England when the German navy attacked it in a disastrous incident. It never made it home.
One of the reasons is that the commander of the strike group decided to head to the base at Scapa Flow for more fuel. This was a fateful decision that enabled the Nazi ambush. The Glorious had no airplanes to spot the two battleships, perhaps because all of its aviators were functioning on little sleep due to round-the-clock operations. Speed was also limited to save fuel.
During the confrontation with the Germans, Captain D’Oyly was late in sending his fighters into the air, and this was another mistake that contributed to the sinking of the Glorious.
Plus, the two battleships had their 11-inch guns focused on the Glorious. The Scharnhorst finally struck paydirt on the third firing of its large turret by hitting the flight deck. The British were not able to launch any more airplanes.
Then a German shell hit the bridge and killed D’Oyly and many of the officers who were attempting to control the carrier during the bitter fighting. Glorious listed to starboard and filled with water, eventually sinking.
This was a battle studied by the Allies. They would learn lessons from the sinking of the Glorious—mainly, do not keep airplanes on the deck for long periods and refuse to fly reconnaissance patrols. Give pilots ample rest and take evasive maneuvers quickly when spotting trouble. And keep an eye on fuel levels.
The Glorious was a cautionary tale that helped the Americans and their carrier operations in the Pacific. Battleships scored a victory against the British in 1940 but found very little success after. The days of battleships being victorious over carriers would be over for the rest of the war.
About the Author: Dr. Brent M. Eastwood
Brent M. Eastwood, PhD is the author of Don’t Turn Your Back On the World: a Conservative Foreign Policy and Humans, Machines, and Data: Future Trends in Warfare plus two other books. Brent was the founder and CEO of a tech firm that predicted world events using artificial intelligence. He served as a legislative fellow for U.S. Senator Tim Scott and advised the senator on defense and foreign policy issues. He has taught at American University, George Washington University, and George Mason University. Brent is a former U.S. Army Infantry officer. He can be followed on X @BMEastwood.
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