Company Sicily
Enterprise Sicily (also Enterprise Zitronella ) was the code name of an operation by the German Navy under Admiral Oskar Kummetz against allied facilities on the island of Spitsbergen .
Course of the attack
On September 6, 1943, a German combat group consisting of the battleships Tirpitz and Scharnhorst and nine destroyers ran out of the Altafjord at the North Cape in Norway . Six of the destroyers had a battalion with about 600 men from Grenadier Regiment 349 on board. The purpose of the company was to destroy the radio and weather station , the power station and the coal production facilities on Spitsbergen.
Two days later, on September 8, around 3:30 a.m., the association separated. The Scharnhorst and the six destroyers of the 5th and 6th Destroyer Flotilla ran to Grønfjord and Adventfjord , where the troops they had carried were disembarked from around 7:00 a.m. The Tirpitz and the 4th Destroyer Flotilla began bombarding Barentsburg and the surrounding area at this point , which eventually forced the Norwegian defenders to retreat into the hinterland while the Scharnhorst and their destroyer group fired Longyearbyen . The German demolition squads destroyed the important facilities, set the coal dumps on fire and went back on board after just under three hours. The German association returned to the Altafjord, where it arrived on September 9th.
On the German ships, however, the Norwegian resistance caused damage and several deaths. The Z 29 received four hits with a caliber of 10 cm, two of which were in the outer skin, and three were killed. Z 31 received 8 or 10 hits and had one fatality. Z 33 was hit 36 times and also had three dead. On the march back, Z 29 and Z 33 drove to the lee of the two battleships because of the holes in the hull and the resulting reduced seaworthiness .
consequences
On October 19, the American heavy cruiser Tuscaloosa and three British and one American destroyer set down Norwegian troops on Svalbard to restore the base. The Allied weather station was back in operation in the winter of 1943.
Ships involved
- Battleship Tirpitz
- Battleship Scharnhorst
- 4. Destroyer flotilla with Z 33 (guide boat), Z 29 and Z 31
- 5. Destroyer flotilla with Z 15 Erich Steinbrinck (guide boat), Z 27 and Z 30
- 6. Destroyer flotilla with Z 20 Karl Galster (guide boat), Z 6 Theodor Riedel and Z 10 Hans Lody