The “HMS Glowworm” (H92) was a British destroyer. Built in the 1930s, the ship was to secure the laying of mines in Norwegian waters with a task force on April 5, 1940. At that time Norway was still a neutral state – but it was foreseeable that the British and Germans would meet there.
But nobody suspected that the little “Glowworm” would fight the first battle. The destroyer had lost contact with His Majesty’s other ships and also with the mighty battleship “Renown”. Instead of her own combat group, the British destroyer encountered the German fleet that was to occupy Trondheim and Narvik. At first, the “Glowworm” only saw two German destroyers and opened fire. But behind the German destroyers the ultra-modern “Hipper” ran up. The Glowworm had no chance against the firepower of the 20.3 cm guns of the “Hipper” and certainly not here, since the “Hipper” was accompanied by its own destroyers.
At first the Hipper couldn’t pinpoint the Glowworm – but after a few minutes the 20.3 cm batteries began to zero in on the smaller ship. The fourth salvo was on target. The British captain Lieutenant Commander Gerard Broadmead Roope tried to hide in his own smokescreen. The maneuver was unsuccessful as the Hipper’s guns were guided by radar. When the Glowworm emerged from the fog, she was already within range of the Hipper’s secondary armament. The hits dismembered the British destroyer. The front gun was destroyed. Radio room, bridge, engine room received hits – finally the mast collapsed. A short circuit caused the horn to wail continuously, an eerie sound meant to accompany the death of the ship and its crew. The captain did not want to surrender, but went on an attack course to the “Hipper” in order to launch a torpedo fan at the cruiser. The German captain saw this coming and placed his ship at an acute angle to the “Glowworm”. So he offered the torpedoes only a narrow target. The torpedoes came up empty, but the broadside of the “Hipper” could no longer hit the “Glowworm”.
In smoke and fog, the superior ship followed the destroyer to sink her. When the “Glowworm” emerged from the fog again, the wounded destroyer went on a ramming course – its last chance to damage the ten times larger ship. The “Hipper” was hit just aft of anchor, then the wreck scraped along the cruiser’s wall, tearing it open in several places. The forward torpedo launcher of the “Hipper” went overboard.
The last gun of the “Glowworm” fired again at 400 meters at the cruiser, then the unequal fight was over. Captain Roope said goodbye to an officer and said they probably wouldn’t be playing cricket for a while. Then he climbed into the ship to open the flood valves and the “Glowworm” sank into the depths. The boiler exploded first, followed shortly afterwards by the depth charges on board. Her detonation killed part of the crew, who were struggling to survive on the frigid water. The German captain stopped the “Hipper” and placed her in the sea in such a way that the survivors drifted towards her. From above, the German sailors threw ropes and life jackets at the British and tried to pull them on board. Captain Roope swam in the freezing water below, helping his men below the side to catch the ropes and don life jackets.
When he finally tried to save himself, the cold and exhausted man could no longer hold the rope that was supposed to pull him on board. Roope fell back into the waves and drowned. He was the first Briton of World War II to be awarded the Victoria Cross. The German captain, with the help of the Red Cross, had briefed the British Admiralty on the courage of Roope and his crew in the face of vastly superior German forces. It was the only time in British history that the award of the Victoria Cross was recommended by the enemy.
