Operation “Wunderland”: Admiral Scheer in the Kara Sea, August 1942

Abstract

Of all the high latitude theatres of naval operations in World War II. the Kara Sea theatre represents one of the most interesting, yet one of the least known. Hostilities in the Kara Sea were based on the belief held by German Naval Command that the Northern Sea Route was being utilized for the movement of Lend-Lease materials from the Pacific coasts of Canada and the USA to the Russian front (Armstrong 1953:823, 1955:141; Huan 1958:156; Mineyev 1964:39). German attempts to disrupt these alleged movements were limited almost entirely to naval operations; the Luftwaffe played little part, since even the south-western approaches to the Kara Sea were out of reach of aircraft based in northern Norway (Huan 1958:156). Most of the activity involved U-boat attacks on shipping and on coastal sites, but on one occasion a German surface vessel, the heavy cruiser Admiral Scheer was involved.