The Greatest Naval War Ever Fought

by Vincent O'Hara

Overview

The greatest naval conflict in history occurred during World War II from 1939 to 1945. Most people are familiar with the famous Battle of the Atlantic and epic naval engagements in the Pacific like Midway and Leyte Gulf, all of which receive ample coverage in this panoramic work. However, author Vince O’Hara offers a truly global perspective of World War II at sea that captures every aspect of a vast naval conflict that involved dozens of nations, more than 15,000 ships, and 43.7 million tons of shipping. Approximately 570,000 lives were lost at sea in those six years.  
  
Here, the naval action begins in the Baltic Sea before dawn on September 1, 1939, when a German battleship opened fire on Polish troops barricaded in a fortress in the port city of Danzig, Poland. Over the ensuing nine months, the conflict spread into Great Britain’s home waters of the North Sea, the English Channel, and the eastern Atlantic. One of the most remarkable naval achievements of the war occurred in 1940 during the German invasion of Norway. The Kriegsmarine’s successful attack in the face of immensely superior Allied naval forces was the war’s first large-scale amphibious operation. As naval activities in Europe expanded into the Mediterranean, the war in the Pacific exploded with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. That assault led to a series of critical naval battles between Japan and the United States, including Wake Island, Coral Sea, Midway, and Guadalcanal. 
  
O’Hara not only deftly examines all the major naval contests in the European and Pacific theaters, but also offers detailed analysis of secondary navies such as France, Italy, and the Soviet Union. He explores little-known, smaller engagements such as the campaigns between Thailand and France or Perú and Ecuador. O’Hara connects this broad range of naval action by focusing on recurring themes of technological innovation, command and control, logistics, and intelligence. He demonstrates that there was more than one path to winning sea power and that the most important naval platforms to emerge from the war were the oiler, the Landing Ship Tank (LST), and the Liberty ship—not the aircraft carrier, the submarine, or the battleship. O’Hara makes clear to readers that the impact of the naval battles won by the Allies still reverberates today. 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781682479643
Publisher:	Naval Institute Press
Publication date:	10/14/2025
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	440

About the Author

Vincent P. O’Hara is a naval historian and the author, coauthor, or editor of seventeen books including Struggle for the Middle Sea and Fighting in the Dark. He was the Naval Institute Author of the Year in 2016 for Torch. His work has also appeared in many magazines and journals and has been translated into Spanish, Japanese, and Italian. He holds a history degree from the University of California, Berkeley and lives in Chula Vista, California.
Vincent P. O’Hara is a naval historian and the author, coauthor, or editor of seventeen books including Struggle for the Middle Sea and Fighting in the Dark. He was the Naval Institute Author of the Year in 2016 for Torch. His work has also appeared in many magazines and journals and has been translated into Spanish, Japanese, and Italian. He holds a history degree from the University of California, Berkeley and lives in Chula Vista, California.

Read an Excerpt

Greatest Naval War Ever Fought 

Excerpt from Chapter 5
 
The German plan relied upon surprise, speed, and bluff to offset the weakness of its landing force. It helped that the Norwegian army was not mobilized and that Bergen and Trondheim were garrisoned, but the coastal batteries defending the important cities were formidable, at least on paper. They were partially manned on the day of the invasion and the guns inflicted considerable damage.

German movements generated several actions. The destroyer HMS Glowworm encountered a destroyer from the Trondheim group and while chasing her ran into Admiral Hipper. Glowworm rammed the cruiser but was herself sunk. Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, supporting the Narvik group clashed with the old battlecruiser Repulse off Vestfjord. In stormy seas Repulse was aggressive, the Twins skittish, and although both sides landed hits, the weather inflicted most of the damage done that morning. More consequential actions occurred in Narvik’s Ofotfjord where Germans destroyers sank both of Norway’s coastal battleships with great loss of life. At Trondheim and Bergen shore batteries engaged German warships and in Oslofjord they damaged the new heavy cruiser Blücher, and a land torpedo battery finished her off. Nonetheless, every German landing secured its objectives, in most cases with ease.

The British reaction was confused, but not completely ineffective. London had in place a plan devised jointly by the three services. This assumed that Germany would react to the mine barrages by violating Norwegian territory. Upon this event four cruisers, each loaded with an infantry battalion, would sail for Stavanger, Bergen, and Trondheim. Had the Admiralty immediately implemented this plan, it would have complicated the German invasion and even denied them an objective or two. However, when Admiral Pound learned the German fleet was at sea, he, he ordered the troops disembarked so the cruisers could reinforce the Home Fleet and get back to “their real job” of fighting other warships. So much for joint operations, so much for sea power. When others of broader strategic vision considered the matter, they had the cruisers recalled and the troops reloaded, but the opportunity was gone. The Home Fleet responded according to its concepts and interpretations of the information available. Strategically, “there was ample and remarkably accurate intelligence available, but it was ignored not so much for its source but because it did not conform to existing expectations . . .”[1] For example, the fleet commander Admiral Charles Forbes assumed that the Glowworm contact and Renown’s engagement report, signified a German breakout into the North Atlantic. Then, upon learning that the Germans had seized Bergen, he sent five cruisers and seven large destroyers to counterattack. En route eighty-eight Ju-88s and HE-111s jumped the squadron. They sank Gurkha and damaged two cruisers, compelling the rest to retreat. The fleet then dashed north in response to a report from Trondheim. On the 11rh the only available aircraft carrier, the venerable Furious launched a strike targeting Hipper, which had already departed. The Germans, on the other hand, had “received important decrypts from B-Dienst about the movements of the Allied forces at sea.”[2] Gneisenau, Scharnhorst, and Hipper used such intelligence to avoid the enemy and air reconnaissance only spotted them south of Stavanger on 12 April on their way home.

The Battle of Narvik occurred on 10 April in this context of movement and uncertainty. The northernmost Allied force under Vice Admiral William Whitworth, flying his flag on Renown and commanding the minelaying force, ordered one of his destroyer flotillas, under Captain Bernard Warburton-Lee to investigate Vestfjord and then rejoin him off the coast. An hour later Forbes intervened and ordered Warburton-Lee to scout Narvik forty miles up the fjord. Two hours later the Admiralty itself ordered the 2nd Flotilla to sink or capture an enemy ship reported at Narvik. Authorized by everyone except King George, Warburton-Lee set off for Narvik on his way to a posthumous Victoria Cross.[3]

The five British destroyers ghosted up Ofotfjord in a snowstorm. They surprised five German destroyers in Narvik harbor, two in the process of refueling. The British ships took turns firing into the crowded anchorage and sank two enemy destroyers with torpedoes and damaged another pair with gunfire. They sank nine of the merchant ships present, including one British vessel, and damaged others. However, Warburton-Lee did not realize he was attacking only half the German flotilla. Three more destroyers appeared from a nearby side fjord and chased the British away from the harbor. Then, further up the fjord, two more emerged from a finger fjord to cut off the British retreat. In the ensuing action the British lost two ships and had a third heavily damaged while three Germans vessels suffered light to moderate damage.
The escape of the German destroyers at Narvik had depended upon a pair of oilers and three supply ships. One of the oilers, Jan Wellum, arrived but her refueling arrangements were inadequate and she required an entire day to top off three destroyers. The 266-ton patrol boat RNoN Nordkapp intercepted the other tanker. Of the forty-six oilers, transports, and supply ships assigned to the landings, seventeen (37 percent) were sunk in the course of operations, eight by submarines, (including one Polish boat), one by mines, one by aircraft, three by British surface vessels and four by Norwegian warships.[4] 

On the 13th three days after the first Battle of Narvik the British sent battleship Warspite up the fjord along with nine destroyers. Furious contributed her complement of Swordfish. The Germans fought back as best they could. One of the eight survivors of the first Narvik battle was fully fueled and operational. Three more were operational with reduced speed and/or weapons, and four were stationary, but armed to a greater or lesser degree. The operational ships met the enemy in the fjord and expended their ammunition while retreating toward Narvik. This was to the accompaniment of Warspite’s thunderous barrages echoing off the mountains that rose over the narrow waters. All eight German destroyers perished. The British suffered severe damage to one destroyer and heavy damage to two more. It was a costly operation but even at that, the British were lucky. Although results seem to justify the use of Warspite, the risk was awful. Both of the German submarines present had an opportunity to torpedo her. If it had been necessary to attack immediately, then the risk would have made more sense. Luck, or a risk well-taken, has an influential role in warfare, or so it seems, but the trick to gambling is to play the odds. In this case, the Royal Navy got lucky. The probability of the German ships successfully landing troops and then escaping intact was also low. The Germans played with fire in every one of their landings. At Narvik they were badly burned.
 
Once the Admiralty better appreciated the situation, the British used sea power more deliberately, counterattacking Trondheim with landings north of the city at Namsos on 14 April south of Trondheim at Åndalsnes on 17 April. An operation against Harstad in the far north began on 14 April. Subsequently, French Foreign Legion and Norwegian battalions made successful opposed landings using specialized landing craft and in some cases with naval gunfire support. However, the Royal Navy found it costly sustaining a beachhead in the face of enemy air superiority and all naval movements in and out of the small harbors of central Norway quickly became nocturnal affairs.

As the campaign progressed, the Luftwaffe rapidly exerted air power and brushed aside several half-baked British efforts––such as basing bi-wing fighters on a frozen lake––to dispute that power. Air attacks against Allied warships were not as deadly as sometimes portrayed. The British Admiralty, in any case, remained confident in the power of armored ships at sea to resist and survive air attack. Losses to aircraft up through the evacuation included a sloop and four destroyers (one French and the Polish Grom, doing her duty by keeping the Polish exile government in the ring) and a light cruiser. German air attacks damaged a dozen destroyers and several cruisers, some repeatedly. On 17 April Suffolk shelled Stavanger airfield and as she withdrew suffered repeated attacks that produced one bomb hit and several damaging near misses, that knocked her out of action for ten months. Although the British took the lead, the French contribution to the Norwegian campaign was significant on both land and sea.


[1] Graham T. Clews, Churchill’s Phony War: A Study in Folly and Frustration (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2019), 177.

[2] Howarth and Law, Battle of the Atlantic, 409. Example from Röhwer, Chronology, 19.

[3] O’Hara, German Fleet, 32. Page, Naval Operations in Norway, 20-21.

[4] Haarr, 413-15.
 

Table of Contents

Contents
 
Acknowledgments
List of Tables
List of Maps and Charts
List of Illustrations
 
Introduction—The Memory Mansion
Chapter 1. World War I and the Postwar Period
 
Book 1. The Continuation War: September 1939–June 1940
Chapter 2. The Baltic, 1939
Chapter 3. The Naval War in the West, September 1939–June 1940
Chapter 4. The Invasion of Norway
 
Book 2. Europe Engulfed: July 1940–December 1941
Chapter 5. War in the Mediterranean, June–December 1940
Chapter 6. International Campaigns, 1940–41
Chapter 7. The North Sea and British Home Waters, July 1940–December 1941
Chapter 8. Mediterranean, 1941
Chapter 9. The Naval War in the East, June 1941–December 1941: German Point of View
 
Book 3. The War goes Global: January 1942–September 1943
Chapter 10. The Pacific and the Japanese Offensive
Chapter 11. British Home Waters and the Battle of the Atlantic, December 1941–September 1943
Chapter 12. Pacific to Mid-1942
Chapter 13. Arctic Convoys and the USSR, 1942–43
Chapter 14. Mediterranean, 1942 to the Italian Armistice
Chapter 15. The Pacific, 1942–43
 
Book 4. Superior Power Applied: October 1943–August 1945
Chapter 16. Soviet Waters, 1943–45
Chapter 17. The Mediterranean, October 1943–May 1945
Chapter 18. The Central Pacific, 1944
Chapter 19. Neptune and Submarines, 1943–45
Chapter 20. Pacific to End of War
Conclusion
 
Appendix and Data Tables
Notes
Bibliography