Operation Wonderland () was an operation from 16 to 30 August 1942 by the Kriegsmarine in the Barents Sea and the Kara Sea off the Arctic coast of the Soviet Union. The operation was an attack on Soviet shipping using the Northern Sea Route which ran along the Soviet Arctic coast from the Bering Strait, westwards along Siberia to the Kara Sea. The operation was the first part of a campaign to dominate the seas of the western Arctic. Reports from Japanese naval intelligence alerted the Germans to the sailing of a convoy, EON-18.
The German cruiser supported by five U-boats and reconnaissance aircraft sailed on 16 August for the Kara Sea where it encountered pack ice. The cruiser carried an Arado Ar 196 reconnaissance floatplane which found several groups of ships. Admiral Scheer sank the icebreaker A. Sibiryakov and bombarded the Soviet base at Dikson before returning to its base at Kirkenes in northern Norway. The meagre result obtained by Admiral Scheer was exceeded by the U-boats in the operation.
Background
German plans In 1942, the (SKL) of , the high command of the German Navy () looked for fairly safe operational possibilities for its heavy units. On 5 May, Admiral Rolf Carls, the commander of (Naval Group North), ordered Admiral Hubert Schmundt, the commander of the German naval forces in northern Norway, to study the feasibility of sending the heavy cruisers , or , based in the north of Norway, on a sortie against convoys using the Northern Sea Route. In July, Naval Group North had suggested a plan to send Admiral Scheer into the Kara Sea, to attack Soviet merchant ships on the Northern Sea Route. Because Adolf Hitler had refused permission for Admiral Scheer to sortie into the Atlantic, Raeder agreed to this "makeshift operation". was the first part of a plan to gain control over the western Arctic Sea, to be followed by Operation Zar.
The Germans had polar ice information and aerial photographs of parts of the Kara Sea and its littoral from the airship Graf Zeppelin, which had made a Polar Flight in July 1931. The crew of gleaned information on ice conditions and took photographs of Franz Josef Land (), Northern Land (the archipelago) and parts of the coasts of the Taymyr Peninsula ( and Novaya Zemlya (New Land). Accurate maps had been drawn by the use of Photogrammetry on the aerial photographs. Information on ice conditions and navigational problems was also available from the report by Robert Eyssen, commander of the auxiliary cruiser and raider , which navigated the northern route, escorted by a Soviet icebreaker, in 1940.
On 5 May 1942, the (MND, Naval Intelligence) received information from a prisoner of war that the settlement of Amderma, on the Kara Sea, south of Novaya Zemlya, had been expanded into a big port and that it had a railway link to Vorkuta, thence to the hinterland of the Soviet Union. On 29 June, spies in Canada reported that 18,000 bushels of wheat had been loaded on ships in Vancouver, bound for Siberia. On 1 July, Carls submitted a plan to send Admiral Scheer and Lützow into the Kara Sea against ships using the Northern Sea Route, to bombard Amderma and to attack any fishing craft which were found. SKL accepted the plan but on 8 August, limited it to Admiral Scheer, because of a fuel shortage. The sortie was set for the middle of August, when ice conditions would be at their least obstructive, during a lull in Allied Arctic convoys, after the victory over Convoy PQ 17 (27 June – 10 July 1942).
Admiral Scheer was a of welded construction, with diesel engines capable of , a range of and a maximum speed of . The ship carried six guns in two triple turrets, eight guns, six 88mm AA in 3 turrets, eight guns, ten 20 mm machine-guns and eight torpedo tubes. The ship had a belt of armour -thick along the water line and of armour on the turrets. Two Arado Ar 196 floatplanes were carried for reconnaissance but one was left behind during the Kara Sea sortie; Admiral Scheer had a crew of 1,150 men.
Wilhelm Meendsen-Bohlken, the captain of Admiral Scheer, was given a considerable measure of discretion in the operation. Meendsen-Bohlken was to attack Soviet convoys coming from the east via the northern route in the Kara Sea. A bombardment of Amderma was desirable but left to the captain to decide. Trawlers were to carry out an ice reconnaissance but this was later changed to two U-boats. The destroyer escorts would not accompany Admiral Scheer into the Kara Sea because of their limited endurance and thin hulls. It was vital to surprise the Soviet authorities and Admiral Scheer was to remain beyond sight of land and to keep radio silence. To help find Soviet convoys, staff from the B-Dienst ( Observation Service), the wireless interception service, commanded by Diesterweg were embarked on the ship.
Intelligence reports
During July, Japanese Naval Intelligence reported that on 16 July, twenty merchantmen were said to have arrived at Petropavlovsk and on 26 July the Japanese reported the sailing of a large convoy, including Soviet destroyer escorts, northwards from the port. (In 2020, E. P. Guriev wrote that Convoy EON-18 consisted of six merchant ships with the destroyers Baku, Razumny and Razyashchy with the icebreakers A. Mikoyan and L. Kaganovich.) By 1 August, the convoy was reported to have reached the Bering Strait. SKL estimated that the convoy would enter the Kara Sea via the Vilkitsky Strait, south of the Severnaya Zemlya archipelago, on 15 or 16 August. German spies notified SKL that an eastbound convoy was due to depart from Arkhangelsk on 15 August.
Prelude
Kara Sea settlements
In 1942, there were 18 settlements on the shores of the Kara Sea, comprising weather stations, ice survey stations and wireless stations. The stations were civilian but were important for the Northern Sea Route yet had few defences. Merchant ships and icebreakers carried guns and anti-aircraft armament but the polar stations were undefended. Precautions at the polar stations were limited to emergency radio stations hidden away from the base where they were not visible from the sea, equipped with supplies, fuel, sleeping bags, tents and other essentials in case of attack. Amderma was not part of the Northern Sea Route but a defunct mine with a small settlement and no railway or port.
The Kara Sea terminus of the Northern Sea Route had a local centre on Dikson Island. There was a wireless station, a geophysical observatory, an airstrip and the regional headquarters of the Chief Administration of the Northern Sea Route. Dikson harbour was on the mainland opposite and there was a large coal depot in the middle of the anchorage on Konus Island. Because of its role as the western terminal of the Northern Sea Route, modest defensive works had been installed before the war. Two artillery batteries, one of 152 mm and one of 130 mm guns and an anti-aircraft battery had been placed there to cover the harbour and the outer approaches.
Preliminary operations
On 26 July the submarine ( Peter-Ottmar Grau) bombarded a Russian polar station at Karmakuly on Novaya Zemlya and sank the Soviet merchant ship Krestyanin () near the Matochkin Strait off Yuzhny Island, the southern island of Novaya Zemlya on 1 August. For concealment, Admiral Scheer would have to enter the Kara Sea by a northabout route past Cape Zhelaniya and on 11 August, U-601 departed from Kirkenes for the waters north of Novaya Zemlya, to check the ice limit. ( Heinrich Timm), was to enter the Kara Sea from the south, via the Yugorsky Strait, which separates Vaygach Island from the Yugorsky Peninsula on the mainland. On 14 August, Carls ordered the operation to begin; a low-pressure area was on its way and it was intended that Admiral Scheer should exploit the poor visibility common in low-pressure areas to cross the Barents Sea without detection. The lull in Allied convoys released more submarines for . ( Heinrich Brodda) was dispatched to watch the western entrance of the Kara Strait and ( Max-Martin Teichert) to the west end of the Matochkin Strait. From 11 to 17 August, ( Reinhart Reche) and a BV 138 flying-boat, fitted with extra fuel tanks, reconnoitred the Svalbard Archipelago and ( Siegfried Strelow) delivered the weather station party (Bud) to the islands, to provide weather information for ships operating against the Northern Sea Route. On 15 August, U-601 reported that the ice limit was north of Cape Zhelaniya.
16–19 August
Admiral Scheer left Narvik on 16 August 1942, escorted by the destroyers , and . The ships sailed southwards to mislead the British and then the destroyers made for Tromsø. The weather conditions were excellent for concealment, with storms and poor visibility but Admiral Scheer was nearly spotted by a Soviet merchant ship on 18 August. A rendezvous with U-601 had been planned for just after midnight on 18/19 August at . Grau said that the route eastwards into the Kara Sea was ice free and that no aircraft or ships had been seen. Grau sailed south to patrol off the mouths of the river Ob and the Yenisey, the largest river to empty into the Arctic Ocean. Admiral Scheer passed Cape Zhelaniya at the north end of Novaya Zemlya, the boundary of the Barents Sea and the Kara Sea.
Admiral Scheer sailed eastwards for the Vilkitsky Strait through pack ice and two sorties were flown by the Arado to find the clearest route. The ice increased and at about north of Uyedineniya Island, Meendsen-Bohlken turned the ship around, apprehensive of damage to the propellers. After heading west to get clear of the ice, the cruiser turned to the south-east along the edge of the pack ice. On the morning of 20 August, Admiral Scheer rendezvoused with U-251; Timm went on board the cruiser to report and said that no ships had been seen but noted that funnel smoke from Admiral Scheer was visible for in the clear, calm, Arctic air. U-251 turned south and Admiral Scheer continued towards the south-east for the Laptev Sea, to ambush coastal traffic. In these unfamiliar coastal waters, Meendsen-Bohlken found his charts to be unreliable; skerries (rocky islets) were found in what were supposed to be open waters and shoals (underwater ridges and banks) appeared where deep water was marked.
20–24 August
On 20 August the Arado crew spotted three groups of Soviet ships, including the icebreakers and near Kravkov Island in the Mona Islands, roughly north of the west coast of the Taymyr Peninsula. On 23 August more ships were seen in the Vilkitsky Strait, between the Taimyr Peninsula and Bolshevik Island in the Severnaya Zemlya archipelago. From 20 to 25 August, the Kara Sea was searched north and east towards the Vilkitsky Strait and as far west as Uyedineniya Island, to find the convoys discovered by the Arado or uncovered by the party.
The search was thwarted by thick fog and Admiral Scheer lost track of the convoys, then had to sink the Arado after a landing accident. While searching to the north of Russky Island in the Nordenskiöld Archipelago, Admiral Scheer was enveloped by fog so thick that Meendsen-Bohlken was forced to anchor amidst drifting ice, which began to pack, potentially trapping the ship. Visibility improved and Meendsen-Bohlken managed to navigate out of the ice. Fog and ice floes prevented the ship from approaching and on arrival at the Mona Islands, the Russian ships had gone.
25 August
On 25 July, two masts were spotted at and Meendsen-Bohlken approached the ship to seize its codes and cyphers to eavesdrop on Russian wireless messages on ice conditions around the Vilkitsky Strait. The ship was the icebreaker 1,384 GRT ( Anatoli Kacharava), armed with two and two guns. When spotted, Sibiryakov was bound for the Arctic Cape, at the north end of Severnaya Zemlya, to visit the weather station. More personnel had been embarked for the station, bringing the ship's complement to 104 men.