The Deadliest 180° Turn of World War II

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[00:00:00]Two destroyers sailed into Tobruk and were soon  trapped after a landing raid went badly wrong.

[00:00:06]On September 14, 1942, off the Libyan coast,  HMS Sikh and HMS Zulu sailed into one of the most fortified ports in North Africa to land  troops and force the port open. By dawn, Sikh was dead in the water, fires spreading through her  hull, still under the guns that had stopped her.

[00:00:27]Commander R.T. White brought Zulu back in anyway, close enough to heave tow lines  across to the burning destroyer.

[00:00:34]He had one ship left that could  still move. It had to be enough.

[00:00:43]In the early hours of September 14,  1942, HMS Sikh and HMS Zulu were running in toward Tobruk as part of Operation  Agreement, a British raid meant to tear open the port in one hard, coordinated strike. Tobruk was a fortified port city on the Libyan coast and was still supplying the Axis armies  in North Africa. Fuel, ammunition, vehicles, and other supplies came through its harbor and were  then moved inland to keep the desert war going.

[00:01:12]The British were counting on pressure from  multiple directions at the same time. Troops would land from the sea while other forces pushed  in from land. If it all stayed on schedule, the defenders would be overwhelmed and forced to  react to too much at once. If the timing slipped, the ships offshore would be left sitting  off a hostile coast as daylight closed in.

[00:01:34]The whole plan depended on darkness almost as  much as speed. The ships needed to get close, put the troops ashore, and get  things moving before daylight left them exposed to the guns around Tobruk. Sikh and Zulu were well-suited for that job as they were built to hit hard and move fast.  Both of them were Tribal-class destroyers, 377 feet long, powered by 44,000 shaft  horsepower, and capable of 36 knots.

[00:02:01]Each carried eight 4.7-inch guns,  torpedoes, and anti-aircraft weapons, more than enough for Tobruk. But this plan left almost no room for error.

[00:02:11]Even before they reached the coast, there was  reason to doubt it. Warships, landing craft, commandos, infantry, the desert column, and even  the sea conditions all had to come together in the right place at the right moment. If one part  slipped, the rest could begin to fail with it.

[00:02:29]Before the main force reached the beach,  rough seas threw off the teams assigned to place the landing beacons. Those markers  were supposed to give the ships a clear reference point in the dark. Without  them, the approaching forces were blind.

[00:02:43]The British committed around 650 to 700 men  in the main raid, supported by a cruiser, destroyers, MTBs, launches, landing craft, and  a submarine, against a heavily defended port.

[00:02:57]So when the ships finally moved in, Sikh and Zulu  landed troops on the wrong beach, too far west of the target. That mistake cost the operation time  at the worst possible moment. The destroyers were already committed close to shore, and before the  attack could be corrected, daylight was breaking.

[00:03:19]Around 78 guns covered Tobruk and its  approaches, 48 Italian and 30 German.

[00:03:25]Among them were Italian 152-millimeter  coastal guns and German 88-millimeter guns, all positioned to fire across the water Sikh and  Zulu were now forced to operate at reduced speed.

[00:03:36]With the landing still underway, both  destroyers had to stay close to the coast, slow down, and hold a steadier course than  any captain would want under shore fire.

[00:03:46]At that distance, speed offered them  little protection. They could turn away and abandon the landing, or they  could hold in and remain under the guns.

[00:03:56]And unlike a fight at sea, the batteries at Tobruk  did not need to chase them. They were firing from fixed positions, with known landmarks and clear  lines over the water. Once the destroyers were that close, the shore had the easier problem. The shore batteries were only one layer of the defense. Axis naval forces in the  area also included torpedo boats, R-boats, and armed motor barges, while  the air threat included Macchi C.200s and Ju 87s and Ju 88s only a short flight away. Tobruk became a trap already sprung around them.

[00:04:35]Sikh was the farthest in, closest to shore,  and still pressing on with the landing.

[00:04:40]That left her the easiest ship to target  and the toughest one to pull back once the guns opened up with intentions to disable her. Heavy coastal fire crashed into Sikh. Italian 145-millimeter and 120-millimeter guns joined  the bombardment, with German guns firing into the engagement as well. Under that weight  of fire, the destroyer began to come apart before she could break clear. Each hit reduced her freedom to move and made withdrawal harder. A 152-millimeter shell could tear through a destroyer upon impact. When it hit  Sikh, it ripped open the steel plating and smashed or ignited everything in its path. Fires broke out and quickly spread through compartments and along the cables as smoke  filled the ship, making it hard to see and even harder to keep everyone coordinated. Damage  control parties went in anyway, but they were up against heat, wreckage, and the knowledge  that another hit could land at any moment.

[00:05:37]The machinery spaces were especially vulnerable.  Sikh depended on steam pressure, turbines, and gearing to maintain speed and control. Once shells  started entering those systems, power dropped, and it became harder to keep her moving. As her  speed fell off, so did her best shot at survival.

[00:05:56]As her speed fell away, Sikh  became easier and easier to range.

[00:06:01]From the shore batteries’ point of view, she  was turning into a near-static target, and each correction made the next rounds more accurate. Combat performance weakened with every hit. The gun crews kept firing, but damage and smoke were  making it harder to aim, reload, and coordinate the ship’s response. The anti-aircraft guns could  still fire back as aircraft joined the attack, but they were now doing it while Sikh was already  under accurate artillery fire from the shore.

[00:06:29]Reports also suggest that Sikh may have taken a  bomb hit, possibly from an Italian Macchi C.200.

[00:06:36]A bomb striking a destroyer already damaged  by shellfire would only have added blast, fragmentation, and flooding to a ship already  struggling to contain fire and stay under control.

[00:06:47]In the end, the damage outstripped the ship’s  ability to contain it. Sikh burned in the water, with almost no real ability left  to maneuver or withdraw. By then, she was no longer fighting for the mission.  Her crew was fighting to keep her afloat.

[00:07:02]Close by, Zulu saw Sikh burning under the  guns and grasped the situation immediately.

[00:07:11]At this point, Zulu still had a chance  to survive. She had already been hit, but she could still make about 30  knots, enough to turn away from Tobruk, open the range, and carry her own crew clear. Nearly 190 officers and ratings were aboard her, and every man on that ship was now tied to  whatever Commander R. T. White chose to do next. He could preserve one destroyer and  save the crew he still had under command.

[00:07:37]Still, ahead lay a burning destroyer with  men still aboard, and no safe way out.

[00:07:42]White was not going to watch Sikh go down  without doing anything. So, he turned back.

[00:07:48]Using a smokescreen to cover the approach,  he brought the destroyer back toward Sikh.

[00:07:53]He edged Zulu in close. Under fire,  sailors heaved tow lines across to Sikh, secured them to the damaged hull, and tried  to haul her out from under the shore guns.

[00:08:04]The moment the tow took hold, the fight  changed. What had been one crippled destroyer under the guns became two ships  moving slowly through the same line of fire.

[00:08:14]The fire did not let up. Zulu was hit  several times trying to pull Sikh clear, and Sikh’s condition kept worsening as the attempt  went on. Soon enough, it was plain to see that Sikh was too badly damaged to save. Some of her crew were taken off, but the attacks had already done their work.  Sikh had to be abandoned under the guns.

[00:08:35]Around 4:00pm, a bomb punched through Zulu’s  hull and detonated in the engine room, flooding it along with No. 3 Boiler Room and  the gear spaces. She stopped dead in the water and settled deeper. Now, Zulu needed towing. HMS Croome, a Type II Hunt-class destroyer in the force, came alongside and began taking  off as many men as she could, leaving only a towing party aboard. Then HMS Hursley,  another destroyer from the covering force, took hold and tried to drag Zulu westward,  away from the coast and back toward safety.

[00:09:09]Her engine room was flooded, her power was out,  and aircraft were still coming in. By the evening, it was clear that Zulu was sinking fast. Despite  the towing and everything done to keep her alive, soon after, she rolled over and sank. This loss did not change the wider North African war on its own, but it did help destroy  Operation Agreement’s naval force at the worst possible moment. Two of the key destroyers  assigned to land and cover the raid were gone.

[00:09:38]The cruiser Coventry was lost as well  in a similar attack, and beyond them, the operation also cost multiple MTBs, motor  launches, and landing craft, with hundreds lost and hundreds more taken prisoner. The ships still afloat were no longer driving an attack on Tobruk. They were  towing wrecks, taking off survivors, and trying to pull clear under continued air attack. For his part, White survived, as later accounts have him testifying about the air attack  that sank Sikh. Despite all the sacrifices, Tobruk remained in Axis hands, and the  raid ended as a costly collapse at sea.