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- The discovery of the wreck of the battlecruiser Scharnhorst
has thrown the German authorities into a flurry of indecision: should the
ship, once the pride of Hitler's navy, be dragged up from the deep as part
of a broader campaign to recognise the country's fallen warriors? Or should
the watery grave of more than 1,000 sailors be left undisturbed, history
left untouched?
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- "If we play this wrongly, the Scharnhorst could
be our Kursk," a Defence Ministry official said, referring to the
politically damaging discussion in Russia about whether to retrieve the
bodies from the recently wrecked submarine.
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- The British sinking of the Scharnhorst on Boxing Day
in 1943 was for Germans one of the psychological turning points of the
war. It added to the galloping sense of defeat stoked up by German losses
on the Eastern front.
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- The battlecruiser was a symbol of Germany's global reach.
On its last day as a seagoing vessel it was steaming at about 30 knots
back to the safety of the Alten Fjord in German-occupied Norway. It had
tried unsuccessfully to attack an Allied convoy in the Barents Sea, an
attack ordered by Admiral Karl Doenitz. He needed a convincing success
against the Arctic convoys which were, by the end of 1943, becoming more
efficient in supplying the Soviet Union.
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- British destroyers, cruisers and the battleship Duke
of York were waiting to trap her. The Germans were taken by surprise. The
Scharnhorst's commander, Rear Admiral Erich Bey, turned his ship around
but headed straight into fire from three British destroyers. The battle
lasted two hours until, holed by 11 torpedoes and engulfed in flames, the
ship went down. Only 36 ratings survived out of a total crew of 1,968.
Among those who went down with the ship was the captain.
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- Norwegian divers used special sonars to discover the
wreck at a depth of 300 metres, 100 miles north of Norway's North Cape.
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