St Alfege's, Greenwich and The Fuhrer's Birthday Present

St Alfege's Church in 2013 (author's photo)

April 19th is St Alfege's Day and to paraphrase Michael Caine it is probably true to say that "not a lot of people know that." The following day is perhaps better known, at least to Second World War historians as being the birthday of Adolf Hitler and whilst one would not normally mention two such opposite men in the same breath, let alone the same piece of writing, perhaps on this occasion an exception can be allowed as there is a connection between the two, albeit a slightly tenuous one.

Bishop Alfege was born in the year 954 in Weston, on the outskirts of Bath into a wealthy family. Despite his family's priveliged position in Anglo-Saxon society, he eschewed their wealth in order to enter a monastery. After becoming Abbot of Bath, he became Bishop of Winchester in 984 and in 1006, Archbishop of Canterbury. Alfege was a great church reformer and it was said of his time at Winchester that "There were no beggars in Winchester whilst Alfege was bishop."

During Alfege's time, Danish Vikings were regularly raiding the English coast and in the year 1011, they moved inland to sack Canterbury, pillaging the cathedral and massacring the local populace. In an attempt to restore peace and save innocent lives, Alfege offered himself as hostage and was taken in chains to Greenwich. On April 19th 1012, the Danes demanded 3,000 gold marks be paid in order to release the Archbishop but Alfege immediately let it be known that he would refuse to allow anyone to ransom him. As a result, the enraged Danes bludgeoned him to death with meat bones and stones and threw his body into the Thames. Alfege was the first Archbishop of Canterbury to die a violent death and following this outrage, the oar of a boat near to his body on the Thames foreshore reputedly blossomed into leaves and flowers. As a result of this miracle, the Danes allowed his body to be transferred to St Paul's Cathedral, where it remained for some eleven years before being moved to it's final resting place at Canterbury. Alfege was canonised in 1078 by Archbishop Lanfranc.

The site of Alfege's murder became a shrine and whilst it is not known exactly when the first church appeared on the site, it is fairy certain that a church of sorts was established fairly soon after his death. The present church is thought to be the third built on the site and was erected between 1712-1714 and is the work of the celebrated architect Nicholas Hawksmoor. There was a delay in consecration due to the parishioners' objections to the requirement of a 'seat of distinction' for the Royal Family. This opposition was eventually overcome and the church was duly consecrated in 1718. There are several famous people buried in and around the church, arguably the most famous being General James Wolfe, a Greenwich resident and victor of the Battle of Quebec in 1759, who died in that same battle and was returned home to Greenwich aboard HMS Royal William to be interred in the crypt of the church.

We now move forward nearly 200 years to the Greenwich of the Second World War during early 1941. The Blitz had been raging on London since the previous September and Greenwich, along with the rest of the capital city had been pounded mercilessly. Whilst the industry then prevalent along the river and in East Greenwich had undoubtedly been the main target, the historic buildings of Greenwich Town Centre had not been spared either. This 'collateral damage' to coin a modern phrase had included the Royal Naval College, damaged on 8th September 1940, which elicited a visit from no less a personage than Winston Churchill himself. Three months later came the turn of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich Park, grievously wounded in December 1940 and in between these incidents, even General Wolfe's statue had been pockmarked by shrapnel, the wounds showing to this day. Despite all of this, St Alfege's remained unscathed, looking watchfully over Greenwich.

By March 1941, apart from two minor incidents on the 9th and the 15th, the first eighteen days of the month passed without a major raid on London and some Londoners were beginning to become cautiously optimistic. The raids were no longer coming nightly as in the dark days of the autumn and winter of 1940-41 and perhaps the worst really was over. Unknown to Londoners, Hitler was turning his eyes eastwards towards Russia, then allied to Germany but whose vast expanses of land were already being looked at with envious eyes for the lebensraum he so coveted for the German people.

Before invading the Soviet Union though, a final series of raids was planned to perhaps finally smash Britain out of the war and leave the Nazis masters of Europe. Hitler's birthday was also approaching and there were some in the Nazi Party, such as Luftwaffe Chief and Reichsmarshall Hermann Goering, who ever the sycophant, saw these raids as a way of currying favour with the Fuhrer and celebrating his birthday with a major air raid. This new series of attacks, although not on a nightly basis were to culminate in the heaviest raids unleashed on the capital.

The ruins (Greenwich Heritage Centre)

The sirens sounded over London a little before 9pm on 19th March and it was not long before the high explosive and incendiary bombs were raining down upon London. As before, Greenwich was taking it's share of the punishment. The incendiaries, especially seemed to pour down on Greenwich and the old Town Centre around Trafalgar Road was soon in danger of being inundated. An hour into the raid, the incendiaries reached St Alfege's and a number of them penetrated the roof. The hard pressed Fire Brigade were unable to help and in an alarmingly short time, a blazing mass of timbers and molten lead from the roof collapsed down into the nave of the old church. At first sight, the destruction of the church seemed total but fortunately, the walls and clock tower remained intact. Despite this ray of hope for a future rebuilding, for the time being at least, St Alfege's Church was ruined. By a strange quirk of history, the destruction of the church had taken place one month to the day short of the 929th anniversary of Bishop Alfege's murder at the hands of an earlier pack of barbarians.

Following this great raid of 19th March, the remainder of the month saw no Luftwaffe activity over London. The next major attack came on the night of the 16th/17th April and such was the intensity of this raid that Londoners remembered it in years to come simply as 'The Wednesday'. This was the day when, elsewhere in London that crooner Al Bowlly was killed in his Piccadilly apartment and also when Chelsea Old Church joined the list of historic London places of worship to succumb to the Luftwaffe. Another short lull followed until the day of Hitler's birthday itself - the 19th/20th April. Another intense raid followed and once again Greenwich suffered grievously, as did the remainder of London. This raid also passed into folklore as 'The Saturday' and saw death and destruction raining down upon Greenwich once again.

The remainder of April 1941 passed without further incident but one further raid was to strike a terrible blow at London; the night of 10th/11th May, covered in this blog in July 2010, was to prove the heaviest raid ever mounted on the capital, when almost 2,200 fires were started and some 700 tons of bombs were dropped, leaving over 1,400 Londoners dead and another 1,800 seriously injured. From the guarded optimism of two months previously, the citizens of London began to fear for the worst and what the consequences of another raid like May 10th/11th might be.

Devastated Greenwich in 1945 (Greenwich Heritage Centre)

And yet the bombers failed to return. Hitler's will was to prevail as it always did and the attack would turn east. For the assault on the Soviet Union, the Luftwaffe would naturally be required to support the Army and as a result, units were transferred east despite the entreaties of senior Luftwaffe figures such as Milch, Kesselring and Sperrle to continue with the attacks on British cities. This would certainly have been possible as one complete Luftflotte - no. 3 under Hugo Sperrle was to remain in France in considerable strength and would have been quite capable of continuing the Blitz. Fortunately, it was not to be and the strength of the Luftwaffe was to be gradually depleted on the Eastern Front, in Italy and repelling British and from mid 1942, American air raids upon Germany and occupied Europe. An ill advised attempt to revive the air raids upon London in January 1944 only depleted the Luftwaffe's strength even more and the 'Baby Blitz' as it was somewhat contemptuously named by the British, petered out by May 1944 by which time the Luftwaffe was a shadow of it's former self and ill-equipped to counter the Allied invasion of Normandy in June 1944.

The coming of peace in May 1945 saw St Alfege's Church still in a ruined condition but plans were quickly put in hand for it's rebuilding. Work began in 1946 under the direction of architect Sir Albert Richardson, who was determined to preserve as much of Hawksmoor's work as possible. Each surviving fragment of cornice work, plaster mouldings and carvings were collected from the ruins and full scale drawings made of all of them. Some original materials were also reinstated and the painstaking work of combining the old with the new and restored was not to be completed until 1953, when the church was finally rededicated on St Alfege's Day.

Honourable Scars (author's photo)

Today, the famous old church remains watching over Greenwich and is well worth a visit, whether for a service, one of the classical concerts that are often staged there, or purely for sightseeing. The church contains a number of fascinating military memorials from both World Wars, perhaps most notably that of the London Territorial Field Ambulance from 1914-18 as well as several other standards and pennants 'laid up' in the church. General Wolfe's tomb, safe in the crypt, survived the bombing and remains in situ, resting in his home town. Outside, the building retains some honourable scars from the Blitz to rightly remind us of the troubled past of this centre of Britain's maritime history.

Published Sources:

A Wander Through Wartime London - Clive Harris & Neil Bright, Pen & Sword 2010

The City That Wouldn't Die - Richard Collier, Collins 1959

The Parish Church of St Alfege (handbook and guide) - Privately Published

Unpublished Sources:

Metropolitan Borough of Greenwich - Civil Defence Incident Log 1939-45

The Mighty Hood and the pursuit of Battleship Bismarck

I had planned to publish the following entry last weekend but laptop problems precluded this, hence the slightly belated recognition of the anniversary of this action.

KMS Bismarck (Bundesarchiv photo)

Last weekend marked the seventy first anniversary of the sinking of the German battleship Bismarck following an epic six day sea chase following her break-out from Norway, during which time just about every major unit in the Royal Navy was involved in the hunt for this threat to British sea power. During this chase, Bismarck also obliterated the pride of the Royal Navy, the battlecruiser HMS Hood in a short action which saw the loss of over fourteen hundred of her ship’s company leaving just three survivors to be plucked from the icy North Atlantic.

The origins of the Bismarck can be traced to the rise to power of the Nazis. During the Great War, the Imperial German Navy had challenged the Royal Navy for supremacy at sea although following their tactical defeat at Jutland had rarely ventured from their home ports except when proceeding to Scapa Flow for their ignominious surrender in 1918, an event which haunted the officers of this service, including one Erich Raeder, at that time holding the rank of Fregattenkapitan or Commander. By the time the Nazis came to power in 1933, Raeder was an Admiral and the man chosen by Hitler to head the Kriegsmarine as the reconstituted German Navy was to be known. Hitler vowed to build a new High Seas Fleet and although Raeder did not support the Nazis or agree with their ideals, the promise of heading this new fleet was too hard for him to resist. 

 Erich Raeder (Bundesarchiv photo)

At the heart of the ideal was ‘Plan Z’, a scheme for a balanced fleet of battleships, pocket battleships, aircraft carriers, cruisers, destroyers and of course submarines designed to challenge the Royal Navy, still at that time by far the largest in the World. The Bismarck and her sister ship Tirpitz were amongst some of the first vessels in this new fleet. To build a new fleet virtually from scratch takes time but there seemed no cause for hurry, for Hitler had assured Raeder that conflict with England would not come before 1945, by which time this new fleet would be virtually complete. Like most of Hitler’s promises, this one was to go seriously awry and when war came in 1939, the fledgling Kriegsmarine, could in Raeder’s own words, do little to the British “except to demonstrate to them how to die gallantly.”

It was against this background in August 1940 that Bismarck was commissioned at her builders, the famous Blohm & Voss yard in Hamburg. Despite their numerical disadvantage, it was planned that Bismarck should form a powerful squadron with her sister and the battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau and to make a foray into the Atlantic creating havoc amongst the British convoy routes. This mission was planned for April 1941 but this formidable squadron was never to see action. Gneisenau was torpedoed in Brest harbour and subsequently bombed whilst under repair, Scharnhorst needed boiler repairs and Tirpitz was late in being completed by her builders. A scaled down version of this sortie was therefore planned, with the giant battleship teaming up with the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen to mount the raid. Hitler, anxious to avoid the loss of his precious ships was wary of the whole idea but reluctantly went along with the plan and the two ships duly sailed from their Norwegian hideout on 21st May under the command of Admiral Gunther Lutjens.

The British had been aware of the vessels hiding away in the fjords and had organised photographic reconnaissance aircraft to capture them on film. Once they had been found to sail, the hunt was on and Admiral Sir John Tovey, commander of the British Home Fleet, ordered the battlecruiser HMS Hood and the newly commissioned battleship HMS Prince of Wales to sail from Scapa Flow and intercept the German vessels in the Denmark Strait. Although powerfully armed, Hood was effectively obsolete, having been designed during the Great War and although scheduled for a major rebuild to bring her up to modern standards, the war had come too soon to allow this and she had had to continue in her un-modernised condition. To compound the problem, Prince of Wales was fresh from the builder’s yard and indeed, still had workers from Cammell Laird’s shipyard aboard ironing out snags in her main armament amongst other things.

HMS Hood in 1924 (State Library of Victoria)

At 05:52 on the 24th May 1941, HMS Hood opened fire, closely followed by her consort. Bismarck returned fire; her shooting was remarkably accurate and with only her fifth salvo, struck Hood a mortal blow with her 15 inch main armament. Her thin deck armour penetrated, Hood simply exploded – her magazines detonating and breaking the graceful battlecruiser in two. She sank in seconds and just three survivors were later pulled from the water by the escorting British destroyers. Of the remaining 1,415 men of her ships’s company, not a trace, not a single body was to be found. The pride of the Royal Navy had gone. Bismarck and Prinz Eugen then shifted their fire to the Prince of Wales, which in turn was also heavily hit but not before the British battleship had hit the German vessel hard, piercing one of her fuel tanks, causing her to leave a tell-tale stream of fuel oil in her wake and more importantly limiting her range and scope for further operations.

The secrecy of the mission blown and the German battleship seriously damaged, Lutjens decided to abandon the sortie and make for the French Atlantic port of Brest. Prinz Eugen was detached and slipped away undetected by the shadowing British cruisers, whilst Bismarck forged her way to safety. The British used their huge numerical superiority to bring in ships from all over the Atlantic and even from the Mediterranean. The aircraft carriers Victorious and Ark Royal launched strikes with their venerable Swordfish torpedo bombers and it was a strike from the latter carrier, which was to strike Bismarck what proved to be a mortal blow.

A fortunate torpedo strike hit Bismarck right astern and disabled her steering gear, causing her to steam an erratic and ultimately circular course. She could only await her doom, as almost within touching distance of Brest and air cover but in appalling weather, she was tracked down by the Royal Navy. Tovey’s flagship HMS King George V  had rendezvoused with another battleship, HMS Rodney and prior to this, Bismarck had been harried by British destroyers, attempting to further slow her with torpedoes. Shortly after daybreak on the 27th May, the British battleships opened fire and between them began to pulverise the once proud super-battleship and by 10:00 had reduced her to a blazing wreck, with hundreds of men dead and dying. Tovey called on any of his ships with torpedoes remaining to use them on Bismarck to finish her and shortly after 10:40, having been hit repeatedly by torpedoes fired by the cruiser Dorsetshire, the former pride of the Kriegsmarine slid beneath the waves, leaving hundreds of men in the water.

To paraphrase Lord Nelson, humanity after victory has always been the predominant feature of the British Fleet and following the demise of the Bismarck, the victors set about rescuing the vanquished survivors but in a final tragedy, one of the lookouts aboard Dorsetshire, spotted what he thought was the periscope of a U-Boat. Fearing the worst, the British abandoned the rescue attempt and scattered, having rescued just one hundred and ten men, one of whom later died. There was no U-Boat, although one was soon to arrive and managed to pick up a further three men with a German trawler rescuing another two. Out of a total of two thousand two hundred men aboard Bismarck, there were just one hundred and fourteen survivors.

This article is dedicated to those men of Hood and Bismarck, the pride of their respective fleets, who did not return to their home ports.

Published Sources:

The Battle of The Atlantic - John Costello & Terry Hughes, Collins 1977

Pursuit: The Chase and Sinking of the Bismarck - Ludovic Kennedy, Cassell 2001

The War at Sea - Julian Thompson, Sidgwick & Jackson 1996