In the early hours of 9 June 1944, three nights after D-Day, the Royal Navy's 10th Destroyer Flotilla, with British, Canadian and Polish ships, intercepted a German force of three destroyers and a torpedo boat heading from Brest toward the English Channel. In a confused night action off the Breton coast north of the Île de Batz, the destroyer ZH1 was torpedoed and scuttled, and Z32, chased by the Canadian destroyers Haida and Huron, ran aground. The two survivors fled back to Brest, and the German attempt to strike at the invasion fleet from the west failed.
A raid toward the beachhead
After the Allied landings in Normandy, the German navy tried to attack the invasion shipping with light surface forces. On 8 June the 8th Destroyer Flotilla sailed from Brest: the large destroyers Z32 and Z24, ZH1, the former Dutch destroyer Gerard Callenburgh, and the torpedo boat T24. Valour Canada describes the force as three destroyers and a large torpedo boat.1
The Allies were reading the German signals. According to the D-Day Overlord site, the decrypted traffic sent Captain Basil Jones and his 10th Destroyer Flotilla to intercept. Jones flew his flag in HMS Tartar. The Polish Naval Museum lists Tartar, Ashanti, Eskimo and Javelin of the Royal Navy, the Canadian Haida and Huron, and the Polish Piorun and Błyskawica, eight destroyers in two divisions: one under Jones with Ashanti, Haida and Huron, the other led by Błyskawica. Valour Canada calls Haida's group the more experienced one and Błyskawica's the greener.2
Night action off the Île de Batz
Radar picked up the Germans around one in the morning, about thirty miles northeast of the Île de Batz. The Polish Naval Museum records that at about 1:30 the German destroyers turned and fired torpedoes, which the Allies, listening to German radio traffic, managed to avoid, and a gun battle followed in the dark. Tartar hit Z32 twice and Ashanti hit and stopped ZH1. Tartar was hit several times herself and briefly lost speed, the only real damage on the Allied side.3
A torpedo from Ashanti blew off ZH1's bow, and her crew scuttled her at about 2:35 or 2:40. Z24, damaged by Haida and Huron, laid a smoke screen and escaped southwest with T24, back to Brest. Błyskawica's division hit Z32 as she tried to break north but then turned away after a torpedo warning and lost contact. Coming back, Haida and Huron met Z32 at about 2:50 and, after some confusion over who she was, opened fire. According to the Polish Naval Museum, at about 5 a.m. the badly damaged Z32, out of ammunition, ran aground and was abandoned; RAF aircraft destroyed the wreck the next day. The Royal Canadian Navy's history of Haida lists Z32, off the Île de Batz on 9 June, among the ships she helped destroy.4
The end of the German destroyer threat
The D-Day Overlord site gives ZH1's losses as her captain, Klaus Barckow, and thirty-eight others killed, with twenty-eight men reaching shore and about 140 taken prisoner. The Polish Naval Museum calls the battle the last combat action by larger German warships in the waters of western Europe.5
Two of the Allied ships survive. Błyskawica is a museum ship in Gdynia and Haida one in Hamilton, Ontario, and Valour Canada notes that the two were officially twinned in 2006. The invasion they were protecting is described in our 6 June page on D-Day and in D-Day, 1944: the longest day on the Normandy beaches.6
