A documentary by wendy LLOYD Narrator Geoffrey Banks Forty years ago, on 26 December 1943, in the icy seas of the convoy route between Britain and the Russian ports of Murmansk and Archangel, the German battle cruiser Scharnhorst was steaming north in search of the enemy. Suddenly, at about
9.30 am, in the darkness of the Arctic winter, she was attacked by a British Naval force. The ensuing battle ended that evening at 7.45 pm. Of the 1,900 officers and men of the Scharnhorst only 36 survived. In this programme some of the British seamen who took part in the action tell the story of what proved to be the last epic sea battle in the history of naval warfare.
Producer ALAN HAYDOCK