The Battle of the North Cape was a Second World War naval battle which occurred on 26 December 1943, as part of the Arctic Campaign. The German battlecruiser Scharnhorst, on an operation to attack Arctic Convoys of war matériel from the Western Allies to the USSR, was brought to battle and sunk by superior Royal Navy forces—the battleship HMS Duke of York plus several cruisers and destroyers—off Norway's North Cape.