North Cape:
Chapter Four: Eastern Approaches
By Mike Bennighof, Ph.D.
January 2025

Second World War at Sea: North Cape is based on a campaign that’s well-known to wargamers and naval history types: the dangerous voyages of Allied convoys to aid the Soviet Union during World War II, known as the Murmansk Run. We have Convoy PQ.17, the Battle of the North Cape, the Battle of the Barents Sea.

And then there’s the fourth chapter, exploring a series of events little-known in naval history. I’ve designed Second World War at Sea games about all of the famous naval battles of the era (Midway, Coral Sea, the hunt for Bismarck), but it’s the unfamous ones that bring me back to this job. What my minor field advisor in grad school, Kristin Mann, called my “quirky interests.”

To the north-west of Murmansk lies the Barents Sea, which Allied convoys had to cross to reach the Soviet port. German ships, planes and submarines based in northern Norway could easily reach them there. But to the east, the frigid Kara Sea leads to the North-East Passage along the northern coast of Siberia, and on through the Bering Strait into the Pacific, allowing access to West Coast American and Canadian ports.

In 1931, the airship Graf Zeppelin flew over the area, taking thousands of high-resolution photos. German naval intelligence used these to craft detailed maps of the area, though of course they had little information regarding water depth or ice formation. The Soviets only started running commercial traffic along the North-East Passage in 1932, in convoys escorted by large icebreakers.

But in 1940, with Germany at war with Britain and the Soviet Union a nominal ally, the Germans prevailed on the Soviets to allow the commerce-raiding auxiliary cruiser Komet to make the passage eastwards into the Pacific. Komet returned to Germany in November 1941, having performed poorly in her stated mission but with a great deal of data on the North-East Passage. From this, German naval intelligence drew the conclusion that the route saw far more use than was actually the case. Unpredictable ice and weather, and poorly-charted passages, made the journey slow and difficult. Komet had received the best the Soviets could offer, and this gave the Germans an unrealistic view of what the North-East Passage could offer.

In the summer of 1942, Adolf Hitler had, for the moment, forbidden sorties by the heavy surface ships into the Atlantic. But the Kara Sea wasn’t part of the Atlantic Ocean and therefore, Admiral Rolf Carls argued, ships could be sent there. When the Japanese reported a convoy headed east, and a prisoner spun tails of massive Soviet development along the Kara coast, the Germans hatched Operation Wonderland.

The armored cruiser Admiral Scheer ventured into the Kara Sea in late July 1942, supported by submarines and a small detachment of specially-modified flying boats. In the old version of the scenario (in Arctic Convoy) the original developer added a “secret base” on the island of Novaya Zemlya complete with all manner of facilities and defenses; it was actually a submarine with a few gas drums lashed to her deck and a hose. In North Cape we brought the scenario back to the mundane reality. Scheer sank an icebreaker and tried to bombard the small port of Dikson before being driven off by a makeshift coast-defense battery. She failed to find the secret major port described by the prisoner, for the simple reason that it did not exist.

The Germans were not completely wrong; the convoy spotted by the Japanese (led by the destroyer leader Baku with three more destroyers) took much longer than the Germans assumed to transit the passage, losing one destroyer to grounding along the way. We of course have a scenario for Scheer to fight the Soviet destroyers and try to get at their convoy.

Most naval staffs would consider this mission a failure; the Germans felt otherwise and planned a reprise for the following summer, deploying two armored cruisers this time. That never happened, depriving the Germans of a chance to waste more resources on a useless mission.

The Soviet icebreaker Aleksandr Sibiriekov, aflame and sinking after her hopeless battle with Admiral Scheer.

In the aftermath of Convoy PQ.17, many of the hapless merchant ships had ended up on the wintry shores of Novaya Zemlya, the long and narrow pair of islands separating the Barents and Kara Seas. They had then made their way along its shore and on to Arkhangel’sk, or at least tried to do so. Five of them had been destroyed instead. For some reason, this desperate measure on the part of the Allied merchant skippers gave the Germans the idea that Novaya Zemlya formed part of the Allied convoy route, despite it being completely away from any logical route even given the desire to avoid German attack.

To stop this non-existent traffic, the Germans first sent destroyers to mine the coast of Novaya Zemlya (rather than more useful targets, like the Gourlo Strait leading into the White Sea and on to Arkhangel’sk). The minelayer Ulm (with a capacity of 482 mines) had been sunk by British destroyers, and the German boats pressed into service in her place could only drop 60 mines apiece. That as not enough for a useful field, so the Germans tried again. This time they used the heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper, which, in an odd design quirk, had the capability of laying 96 mines (the only German heavy cruiser so fitted). The next mission was also successful, in the sense that the Soviets never detected it. If they had, they likely would not have cared. The entire concept made no sense; the Germans risked a major asset (the cruiser Hipper) to lay a minefield (a job usually performed by converted banana boats like Ulm) in a place where no one would ever find it.

Had the Soviets detected the Germans off Novaya Zemlya, they would have the opportunity to attack a German cruiser outside the range of friendly air cover. So, we have scenarios based on that, where the minelaying groups encounter the Soviet destroyer flotilla (four boats) that operated in the Arctic during the summer of 1942.

This strange interlude is the sort of thing I love including in our games. It actually happened, and it made no sense. The Kara Sea and Novaya Zemlya operations were in that sense very German.

Admiral Hipper in Norwegian waters, shortly before her mission to nowhere.

Mechanically speaking, Second World War at Sea is quite straightforward, with most game functions built around rolling a 6 on the die. It’s easy to play, as wargames go (that’s an important caveat); both halves of the game (operational and tactical) work intuitively. It’s the most popular naval game series in the known universe for a reason.

But what truly sets it apart is its ability to tell a story. North Cape is yet another example of this; all six chapters show this same rich depth and immersive play experience.

You will be glad you played this game.

You can order North Cape right here.

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Mike Bennighof is president of Avalanche Press and holds a doctorate in history from Emory University. A Fulbright Scholar and NASA Journalist in Space finalist, he has published a great many books, games and articles on historical subjects; people are saying that some of them are actually good. He lives in Birmingham, Alabama with his wife and three children. He misses his lizard-hunting Iron Dog, Leopold.

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