Battle of Sept-Îles

The Battle of Sept-Îles was a naval action fought on the night of 22/23 October 1943 during World War II as part of the Atlantic campaign. The battle took place off the Sept-Îles near the French coast in the English Channel between a light cruiser and six destroyers of the British Royal Navy hoping to intercept, a German blockade runner, which was accompanied by German torpedo-boat destroyers flotillas of the German Kriegsmarine. In fact, it is likely that the British vessels were caught in an ambush, and the action ended with the sinking of and the scuttling of after suffering damage; over 500 British sailors lost their lives. The battle was the last surface fleet action of the war where the Royal Navy was defeated, and the last German surface fleet action victory. By mid-1943, the Battle of The Atlantic had swung the Allies' way, and the Royal Navy went on the offensive. In August 1943, Plymouth Command was ordered to develop an operation to regularly harry German shipping, with a secondary aim of drawing German naval resources into a fight in order to destroy as many of the warships as possible before invading France. C-in-C Plymouth Vice-Admiral Ralph Leatham came up with Operation Tunnel, in basic terms, an offensive sweep along the coast of western France - the first being on the night of 5/6 September. Three more followed, with no incident recorded. Then of the night of 3/4 October, Hunt-class escort destroyers HMS Limbourne, Tanatside and Wensleydale, plus fleet destroyers HMS Grenville and Ulster exchanged fire with German 'Elbing'-type torpedo-boat destroyers T-22, T-23, T-25, T-27, with Grenville and Ulster suffering light structural damage. Four more Tunnels were ran between 13 and 18 October. The RN's tactics were always the same, and thus very predictable. On 22 October, British authorities gained intelligence about the movement of the German blockade runner, Münsterland, which had departed Brest and was carrying an important cargo of latex and strategic metals.