The Sinking of the Bismarck (3 page)

Too late! This time the lookouts on the
Bismarck
had their eyes open. The German battleship opened fire on the British cruiser with her 15-inch guns.
Three salvos straddled the smaller ship and another narrowly missed her. Splinters rained down on the
Norfolk
’s deck but she escaped unharmed into the mist.

Admiral Luetjens aboard the
Bismarck
now knew he had been found. But as the arctic half-night fell and the weather worsened he believed that he might be able to shake off his shadowers. It began to snow hard and visibility declined to one mile. Toward midnight the
Suffolk
’s radar lost contact with the enemy ships. An hour went by, and another, and still no contact. The
Bismarck
was again lost. The spirits of the men on the British ships sank. Then at 2:50
A.M.
on May 24, which was to be a fateful day, the
Suffolk
regained touch with the
Bismarck
on her radar screen. At 3:20
A.M.
, as the visibility improved, Captain Ellis resighted the German ship twelve miles ahead on his port bow.

***

All through the stormy, snowy night Captain Ellis had kept the ships of the British Fleet informed by radio of the ups and downs of his shadowing.
He gave the position, course and speed of the
Bismarck
whenever he could spot her.

Shortly after eight o’clock on the evening of May 23, Vice-Admiral Holland, aboard the
Hood
, had picked up the first signal that the
Bismarck
had been found. He calculated that his battle squadron was some 300 miles due south of the Germans and he changed course to meet them head on. At midnight he ordered the crews of the
Hood
and the
Prince of Wales
to their action stations. But when word came a few minutes later that the
Suffolk
had lost contact with the enemy the Admiral relaxed his orders. Crews were told they could snatch some sleep at their action stations.

The news that the
Bismarck
had been relocated reached the
Hood
’s squadron at 3:00
A.M.
Vice-Admiral Holland realized that he was now near the enemy, and he gave orders to close in at full speed—twenty-eight knots. By 4:00
A.M.
he estimated he was within twenty miles. Visibility was increasing with the coming of daylight. By 4:30
A.M.
it was up to twelve miles and improving. Any moment now the German
Bismarck
might heave in sight. At 5:10
A.M.
Admiral Holland signaled instant readiness for action. Twenty-five minutes later—at 5:35
A.M.
—his lookouts saw on the distant horizon off the starboard beam the silhouettes of two German warships.

The Sinking of the Hood

Chart showing the chief positions of the
Bismarck
and her British pursuers on May 23–24.

The moment the British navy had been waiting for so impatiently had come. It was a moment that Admiral Luetjens on the
Bismarck
had hoped to avoid. His orders were to sink British merchant shipping and evade battle with the British navy if he could. That was no longer possible. Two British capital ships were converging on him at top speed. One was certainly the
Hood
, which he knew to be the most powerful warship in the British navy. The other, he decided, must be the new battleship
King George V
, though actually it was the sister ship,
Prince of Wales
.

Despite the fact he was outgunned by the British ships, Admiral Luetjens did not flinch. At 5:52
A.M.
he radioed Berlin: “Am engaging two heavy units.”

At that very moment the 15-inch guns of the
Hood
went off at a range of 25,000 yards. The 14-inch guns of the
Prince of Wales
opened fire a few seconds later. Immediately the
Bismarck
replied with a broadside from her 15-inch guns. The
German cruiser
Prinz Eugen
joined in with her own 8-inch cannon.

A great naval battle was engaged in the icy, northern sea.

Chapter Three

First Battle: The
Bismarck
Sinks the
Hood

The battle was all over in exactly seventeen minutes.

At the outset Vice-Admiral Holland ordered the
Hood
to fire at the wrong ship. He mistook the German cruiser
Prinz Eugen
for the battleship
Bismarck
and directed the opening 15-inch gun salvos of his flagship against the smaller enemy vessel.

The captain of the
Prince of Wales
realized the mistake at once and disregarded the Admiral’s signal to follow suit. Instead he aimed his 14-inch guns immediately at the
Bismarck
. But his turrets were new and untried and his first shots landed wide of the target.

Vice-Admiral Holland had put his two battleships
at a disadvantage from the moment the engagement began. Two minutes after sighting the German squadron he had turned his ships directly toward the enemy to shorten the range. The result was that the four rear guns on each of the British ships could not fire. Only the fore turrets, pointing toward the Germans, could be used.

Admiral Luetjens, on the other hand, steered a course so that all of his eight heavy guns could bear on the enemy. Had the British ships turned their full broadsides on him, they would have had the advantage of eighteen big guns against his eight. (There were ten guns on the
Prince of Wales
and eight on the
Hood
.) As it was, only the six forward cannon of the
Prince of Wales
and the four of the
Hood
could be employed. This reduced the British advantage to only ten heavy guns against the Germans’ eight, and after the first shot one of the
Prince of Wales
’ forward guns was unable to fire further. Thus Vice-Admiral Holland’s superiority was reduced to a mere nine to eight.

Since the German gunnery proved to be much more accurate than the British, this was not much of an advantage. In fact, not only the
Bismarck
but also the smaller
Prinz Eugen
, with guns of only 8-inch caliber, soon found the range. Concentrating her fire on the
Hood
, the
Prinz Eugen
scored a hit in less than a minute with an 8-inch shell. It caused a large fire to break out near the
Hood
’s mainmast. Observers on the British cruisers
Suffolk
and
Norfolk
saw the flames spread forward and leap high above the upper deck. Then the fire seemed to subside.

The pair of shadowing British cruisers which had found the
Bismarck
were holding back to let the British battleships finish her. They took no part in the battle. Why they were not directed to join in remains a mystery. With the
Bismarck
and
Prinz Eugen
fully occupied by the British heavy ships, why did not Vice-Admiral Holland instruct the
Suffolk
and
Norfolk
to move in from the opposite quarter and engage the Germans with their 8-inch guns? The
Prinz Eugen
’s 8-inch guns had drawn first blood against the mighty
Hood
. Also the British cruisers might have launched torpedoes against the foe. But throughout the brief battle the
Suffolk
and
Norfolk
remained aloof.

***

Disaster now struck swiftly at the British. Both sides had opened fire at 5:52
A.M.
Three minutes later Vice-Admiral Holland finally gave the order to his two ships to turn 20 degrees to port away from the Germans. This would enable them to employ their aft guns and fire broadsides at the enemy from all their big cannon.

The move came too late. As the British ships veered around, a salvo from the
Bismarck
hit the
Hood
midships. Observers on both sides saw a scene they had never before looked upon at sea. Between the two funnels of the
Hood
there was suddenly a volcanic flame that erupted skyward for a thousand feet. Then in a second or two it burned out, and a dense cloud of smoke settled over the sea. For a moment the wind seemed to part it and through the smoke could be seen the severed bow and stern of the great ship jutting high in the sea, like two mammoth sharks. Then they sank below the waves.

The
Hood
had blown up.

Every high officer in the British navy had known that the mighty battle cruiser had an
Achilles heel. There was a chink in its armor between the funnels. Years before the Admiralty had decided to correct this, but for one reason or another the job had been postponed. Then the war had come, and there was no time.

Thus it was that at precisely four minutes to six o’clock on the morning of May 24, 1941, just four minutes after the battle had begun, a 15-inch shell from the
Bismarck
hit the
Hood
in its weakest spot. It pierced through half a dozen decks to the magazine, where it exploded among 300 tons of high-explosive shells.

Out of a crew of 1,419 only three men were picked up alive. Vice-Admiral Holland, Captain Ralph Kerr and all the rest went down with the ship.

Chapter Four

“Avenge the
Hood
!”

The sinking of the
Hood
plunged the British Isles into deep gloom. The seafaring nation, whose navy had ruled the waves for so long, had suffered a bitter defeat at sea.

There were cries from high and low that the
Hood
be avenged. At once! But the prospects were not high. For after the
Hood
blew up, the battle had continued to go badly for the British.

On disposing so quickly of the
Hood
, the
Bismarck
and the
Prinz Eugen
had turned their undivided attention to the smaller surviving British battleship, the
Prince of Wales
. For five minutes the
Prince of Wales
had been firing away at the
Bismarck
undisturbed. Because she was so new that civilian mechanics were still working on her
gun turrets, her firing had not been very accurate. And there had been several breakdowns. One gun was completely out. Others could be fired only with difficulty.

With the
Hood
gone, the
Prince of Wales
now received a murderous hail of fire from the two German warships. One 15-inch shell smashed her bridge, killing or wounding everyone on it except the captain and a signal man. The ship’s side was pierced by several hits both below and above the water line. Several compartments were flooded. All the time the
Prince of Wales
continued to fire defiantly with what guns she could.

But it was an unequal struggle. For some reason the cruisers
Suffolk
and
Norfolk
were not joining in, as was the German cruiser. Captain Leach therefore decided to withdraw—at least momentarily. He knew that strong reinforcements were not far away. So at 6:03
A.M.
, just eleven minutes after the battle had begun, the
Prince of Wales
turned sharply around and retired behind her own thick smoke screen. The
Bismarck
fired a parting salvo at her six minutes later. The astonishing German victory had been won in exactly seventeen minutes.

The German admiral now made his first mistake. He failed to follow the crippled
Prince of Wales
and dispatch her as he had the
Hood
. Instead he resumed course southwest toward the mid-Atlantic.

After such a resounding triumph, why did Admiral Luetjens not pursue the damaged British battleship, sink her and then turn back to Germany? There he and his crews would have been hailed as victors, and Nazi propaganda could have made the most of it. The blow to British prestige would have been all the stronger. In Berlin Adolf Hitler, the Nazi German dictator, posed the question to Grand Admiral Erich Raeder, commander in chief of the German navy.

Admiral Luetjens had a good reason for continuing on, as was later learned from the secret German naval records. Though the British did not yet know it, the
Bismarck
had been hit by the
Prince of Wales
. Because of that, the Admiral made a decision which was to be fateful for both sides. At one minute past eight o’clock on the eventful morning of May 24, he informed Berlin in a coded radio message:

1. Electric engine room No. 4 broken down.

2. Port boiler room No. 2 is making water, but can be held. Water in the forecastle.

3. Maximum speed 28 knots.

4. Two enemy radar sets recognized.

5. Intentions: to put into St. Nazaire. No losses of personnel.

Fleet Commander

It seems a reasonable decision, considering all the circumstances. The
Bismarck
was crippled, though not badly. If Admiral Luetjens turned back through the Denmark Strait, he might run head on into the rest of the British Home Fleet. If the weather cleared, he would be subject nearly all the way to attack from British bombers based in Iceland and the northern British islands. Probably the German Fleet Commander calculated too that the British had no heavy ships between him and refuge at St. Nazaire on the French coast. On the way in he might knock off a British convoy or two. (As a matter of fact, the British convoy WS8B with 20,000 troops was almost directly in his path.)

Furthermore, at St. Nazaire, Admiral Luetjens would find his old battle cruisers
Scharnhorst
and
Gneisenau
. As soon as repairs were completed on
them and on the
Bismarck
, he could then sally out to sea again with an even more formidable fleet.