 That night he received word to expect an attack the following day by British capital ships escorted by a large number of destroyers and supported by carrier aircraft . Erich Giese reported that she was only capable of 28 knots ( 52 km / h ; 32 mph ) , although her torpedoes had been replenished from the damaged destroyers . The battleship HMS Warspite and nine destroyers duly appeared on 13 April , although earlier than Commander Bey had expected , and caught the Germans out of position . The five operable destroyers , not including Giese , charged out of Narvik harbor and engaged the British ships . The ship did not have enough steam raised to participate and remained in the harbor . She attempted to leave the harbor after the British had driven off the other German ships , but her port engine seized up and left her almost dead in the water at the mouth of the harbor . While attempting to repair her engine , Giese was approached by the destroyers HMS Punjabi and HMS Bedouin which fired five torpedoes at her . All of them missed and Giese 's torpedoes were equally unsuccessful . She did hit Punjabi with six or seven 12 @.@ 7 cm shells which holed the ship several times just above the waterline , wrecked her fire @-@ control system , severed her main steam line and started several fires . Casualties aboard Punjabi were seven killed and 14 wounded . In the meantime , Giese had managed to repair her engine after ten minutes of work and limped forward at her maximum speed of 12 knots ( 22 km / h ; 14 mph ) to engage the remaining British destroyers . Bedouin closed to point @-@ blank range and had her forward gun turret knocked out by Giese , but the latter was hit at least 20 times and reduced to a blazing wreck that finally sank shortly before midnight . Eighty @-@ three of her crew were killed outright during the battle , but the destroyer HMS Foxhound did rescue 11 men , although two subsequently died of their wounds . Surviving crew members later testified , that they had been fired upon while drifting in the water . The ship 's remaining crewmen managed to get ashore one way or another . 
