Blood, Tears and Folly: An Objective Look at World War II

And whelmed in deeper gulfs than he.

William Cowper, ‘The Castaway’

The battleship Bismarck had been launched by the granddaughter of Germany’s great nineteenth-century German chancellor in February 1939. Commissioned in August 1940, it was the most modern and powerful battleship afloat, with eight 15-inch guns in four turrets controlled by the world’s best gun-laying radar.

Admiral Raeder’s original plan called for Bismarck and the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen to sail from the Baltic, while the battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau would sally into the Atlantic from Brest in France. In mid-ocean this powerful force would rendezvous to form a fighting fleet powerful enough to sink convoys, and defeat any escort force they might encounter.

This operational plan was code-named Rheinübung, Rhine Exercise, and Raeder saw it as a way of providing a big victory of the sort that ‘battleship admirals’ still cherished, while continuing the battle of the sea lanes that was obviously the key to victory. He knew that Hitler would invade Russia soon, and Rheinübung had to be staged before the army’s needs on the Eastern Front took precedence over everything the navy wanted.

Rheinübung was put under the command of Admiral Günther Lütjens, a bony-faced man with close-cropped hair and a permanent frown. The operation was thwarted when it was found impossible to have the Scharnhorst’s high-pressure turbine engines ready in time. Such engines were a notable and chronic failing in German marine engineering. Then, when Gneisenau was hit by a desperately brave attack by a Coastal Command torpedo aircraft in Brest Roads, Raeder decided stubbornly to go ahead using only Bismarck and Prinz Eugen. This plan too was delayed when Prinz Eugen was damaged by a British magnetic mine in the Baltic, thus losing the advantage of a month’s dark winter nights which would have made it much easier to slip past the Royal Navy.

In May 1941, Hitler was persuaded to make the trip to Gotenhafen (the now renamed Polish port of Gdynia) to inspect his new battleship and address the crew. That evening he dined with his senior officers aboard the Tirpitz. Hitler had doubts about the proposed expedition, but Admiral Lütjens reminded him of ‘Operation Berlin’. In the first three months of the year Lütjens had taken Scharnhorst and Gneisenau into the Atlantic, causing the British great anxiety as well as sinking 115,600 tons of shipping. He told Hitler that Bismarck was unsinkable. ‘Mein Führer, there is virtually nothing that can go wrong with a ship like this. The only danger that I can see is torpedo-aircraft coming at us from aircraft-carriers.’ This prophetic caution was due to Bismarck’s conservative design: its underwater protection had not kept pace with what was now considered essential for British and American ships.

For anyone who believes that the British reading of Enigma traffic provided a constant insight into German intentions, it has to be said that Bletchley Park provided nothing to suggest the Bismarck was about to put to sea. And none of the transmissions from Bismarck at sea were decrypted until after she was sunk. At that time naval Enigmas were taking anything from three to seven days to crack.

The first tip concerning Bismarck’s movements was provided by Britain’s naval attaché in Stockholm after a cruiser of neutral Sweden spotted ‘two large warships’ with escorts and air cover steaming through an area cleared of German shipping. Subsequently RAF Spitfires equipped for high-speed photo-reconnaissance scoured likely anchorages and found two German warships in Grimstad Fjord. Photographs revealed the Bismarck with an unidentified cruiser. It was alarming news and there were urgent requests for more information. Bad weather grounded RAF aircraft but a particularly daring Fleet Air Arm crew, flying a Martin Maryland that had been used for target-towing and had no navigational instruments or cameras, found an opening in the cloud above Grimstad Fjord at twilight without seeing the big ships. Just to make sure, they flew over Bergen and into a storm of German Flak. Their radio message said: ‘Battleship and cruiser have left.’

Anxiously the men in the Admiralty looked at their maps: six homeward and six outward convoys were on the move, including a troop convoy to the Middle East with 20,000 men. Now earlier Luftwaffe Enigma signals, showing Fw 200C Condors on long-range reconnaissance surveying the extent of the pack-ice in the Denmark Strait, began to make sense. RN warships – most of them with radar – were immediately dispatched to patrol the waters round Iceland and in particular the Denmark Strait where, even in May, pack-ice and RN minefields made navigation so restricted that if Bismarck went that way it was almost sure to be sighted.

FIGURE 10 (#ulink_769407ae-100f-5cf5-b621-7f7520c91625)

The German battleship Bismarck (#ulink_769407ae-100f-5cf5-b621-7f7520c91625)

At 1922 hours on 23 May, a lookout on HMS Suffolk spotted Bismarck and Prinz Eugen emerging from a snow-squall at a distance of 11 miles, before the Suffolk’s radar made contact. As soon as Suffolk’s operator had Bismarck on the screen of his Type 284 gun-laying radar she slipped back into the gathering darkness.

The two German ships had obviously seen Suffolk on their radar, so they were prepared when a second RN cruiser, HMS Norfolk, came close enough for its lookout to sight them (again before making radar contact).

Bismarck opened fire on her. Unhit, Norfolk promptly fell back. The Bismarck’s radio room intercepted Norfolk’s sighting report and was able to decode the message without difficulty or delay. They kept listening.

For ten hours the two RN cruisers shadowed their prey until powerful naval forces could be brought up from Scapa Flow in the Orkneys. HMS Hood and HMS Prince of Wales, with destroyer escorts, were ordered to sea from Iceland.

It was a strange twist of fortune that chose HMS Hood for this task force, for she was exactly comparable to Bismarck in main armament (eight 15-inch guns), secondary armament, speed, thickness of belt and turret armour. In the 1930s Hood had been the pride of the Royal Navy, the fastest, most powerful and arguably most beautiful ship afloat. She had spent so much time showing the flag that there never seemed to be an opportunity for the total overhaul and refurbishing that was so badly needed. Nineteen years older than Bismarck, the Hood’s 15-inch guns remained unchanged in design since those of 1914, while the big guns of the Bismarck provided excellent examples of the way in which gun technology had improved.

Hood was old, but with her was the brand-new Prince of Wales, which still had civilian contractors aboard, working on the gun-turret machinery of its ten 14-inch guns. This was a calibre new to the RN. Two of its three turrets had been fitted only four weeks earlier, and one gun was still not in use. The Prince of Wales had five of the best radar sets then available, but the warships were ordered to maintain radio and radar silence so that they would not be detected.

It was not easy to keep radar contact with an enemy warship which had excellent radar, eight 15-inch guns and a top speed of over 30 knots: as soon as you were close enough to see your prey on the radar screen, it had not only been watching you for a long time but was all ready to blow you to pieces. In addition the Germans were deciphering and reading all the radio traffic of their pursuers. It was hardly surprising that the two RN cruisers lost contact with both Bismarck and Prinz Eugen.

As day was breaking at 0530 hours on Saturday 24 May 1941 Bismarck was sighted at 17 miles distance, again by a lookout, not by radar. On German radar the RN ships were clearly visible, and Admiral Lütjens must have been pleased to notice that their angle of approach made it possible for the British to use only forward armament, while the Germans could fire broadsides from all their big guns. This dangerous British tactic can only be explained by the commander of the British force wanting to close quickly on the Germans because British deck armour was thin and vulnerable to plunging fire. Close range would ensure that German fire would hit only side armour.

Although Hood’s Type 284 radar was no use for ranges beyond 22,000 yards Hood opened fire at 26,500 yards. It aimed at the less dangerous Prinz Eugen, which had been mistaken for Bismarck. Then all the other big ships started firing. The Prince of Wales’s first salvo fell 1,000 yards beyond Bismarck.

The Bismarck’s first salvo was fired at the Hood, which was in the lead. Its improved Seetakt 90-cm radar provided the correct range but the shells fell ahead of Hood and she steamed into the spray they made. The second salvo from Prinz Eugen scored a direct hit on Hood. A shell burst on the upper deck, igniting anti-aircraft ammunition stored there in ready-use lockers. The midship section of Hood was soon enveloped in flames and giving off dense smoke. Bismarck’s third salvo was the high-trajectory fire to which British battleships were so vulnerable. Still today experts disagree on whether an armour-piercing shell penetrated the Hood’s thin deck armour to explode in an aft magazine or whether this 42,100-ton battleship was blown in two as a result of fires spreading to a magazine from the earlier hit. The explosion was horrendous. After separated bows and stern had risen high from the water, Hood disappeared leaving only a smoky haze over the disturbed water. An officer on a destroyer which went to pick up Hood’s survivors wrote:

But where were the boats, the rafts, the floats? … And the men, where were the men? … far over to starboard we saw three men – two of them swimming, one on a raft. But on the chilling waters around them was no other sign of life.

Of the crew of 1,419 men, only one midshipman and two ratings survived. The midshipman’s survival was especially miraculous. He was in a spotting top, 140 feet above the water. He told his rescuers that ‘he didn’t know what the hell was happening, save that the compartment was filled mysteriously with water’.

Korvettenkapitän Jaspers, Prinz Eugen’s gunnery officer, who was watching the Hood said: ‘The aft magazine blew up, shooting into the air a molten mass the colour of red lead, which then fell back lazily into the sea – it was one of the rear gun turrets … And in the midst of this raging inferno, a yellow tongue of flame shot out just once more: the forward turrets of Hood had fired one last salvo.’

Now the Prince of Wales became the target for both German ships. The compass platform was hit by a 15-inch shell. It didn’t explode but fragments of the binnacle killed or wounded everyone there but the captain and the yeoman of signals. The difficulty of making shells that would penetrate thick steel and then explode was demonstrated now as six more German shells struck home, all of them detonating only partially or not at all. Undeterred, Prince of Wales continued on course until it had closed to 14,600 yards. Six salvoes were loosed at Bismarck before one of the shells found its mark, flooding the forecastle, rupturing one of the fuel tanks and disconnecting tanks forward of it, so that 1,000 tons of fuel were cut off. Two other shells had hit Bismarck: one damaged a dynamo, the other was a dud that glanced off the deck causing only slight damage.

Either ship might have gone on and destroyed its opponent but both had had enough. Prince of Wales was badly damaged as well as having trouble with the gun turrets. She turned away under a smoke screen.

In London, as in Berlin, the news that the action had been broken off was not welcomed. Churchill saw the prospect of a rampaging Bismarck as a direct challenge to Britain’s traditional role, and feared that it would be ‘trumpeted round the world to our great detriment and discomfort’. The disengagement was a ‘bitter disappointment and grief to me’. Hitler felt the same way and said that Bismarck should have immediately dealt with the Prince of Wales too, and not run away.

Out in the cold grey ocean, Prince of Wales and Norfolk were joined by the carrier Victorious. So grave was the emergency that the carrier had been detached from escorting Troop Convoy WS 8B to the Middle East. These warships trailed the two Germans using the Suffolk’s radar to keep in contact, but again the operators found it difficult to keep radar contact at extreme range. That night the pursuers decided to use the carrier’s aircraft in an attempt to slow the Bismarck.

With the equipment available at that time, carrier take-offs and landings at night were sometimes permitted in perfect weather. Now the carrier was pitching and rolling in a rising gale and rainstorms from low scudding clouds made visibility zero. The air crews were fresh from training school; some had never made a carrier take-off or landing before. (The desperate shortage of navy pilots had sent these aircrews to Victorious to be instructed while the carrier was on convoy duty.) It was 2200 hours (Double Summer Time), and light was changing and deceptive. Dutifully Victorious flew off a striking force of Swordfish torpedo-carrying biplanes and Fulmar fighters.

One of the Swordfish was equipped with an ASV Mk II radar and its operator ‘saw’ a ship through cloud. But when the plane descended it was identified as a US coast guard cutter on Atlantic weather patrol. Now that the planes were below the cloud, they spotted Bismarck about six miles away, but the element of surprise was lost. It was through heavy gunfire – Bismarck had 84 anti-aircraft guns – that they made the slow, low, straight and steady approach that is required for torpedo dropping.

Despite the way in which the aircraft came in from different angles, Bismarck was able to swerve violently and avoid seven torpedoes. The eighth one hit the starboard side, near the bridge. This hit shifted one of the heavy side-belt armour plates but its backing of thick teak wood absorbed much of the armour’s displacement. The Bismarck reported to Naval Group Command West that the torpedo had done no more than ‘scratched the paintwork’. It had achieved more than that, but its immediate effect upon Bismarck’s performance was negligible.

To find a carrier at night over the ocean is a daunting task, and the Victorious’s homing beacon was not working. Upon hearing the planes returning the carrier’s captain ordered searchlights on to help them, but they were swiftly doused on the repeated order of the vice-admiral. Despite the admiral’s exaggerated caution, and with the help of the flight leader’s ASV radar, the ‘Stringbags’ found their home ship again and landed in the dark. Not all the Fulmar aircraft were so lucky. It was midnight. The crews had had an eventful Saturday night out and a memorable introduction to carrier flying.

Bismarck was not slowed. When the Swordfish aircraft attacked, it had already parted company with Prinz Eugen. Now it turned south-west on a direct route for the Bay of Biscay and the French ports. The Suffolk, unready for such a move, lost both German ships on the radar, and when daylight came, more flights from the Victorious failed to discover any sign of the enemy. Low on fuel, the force – Prince of Wales, Victorious and Suffolk – turned west, still failed to find Bismarck, and soon headed for various ports to refuel.

There was no rejoicing aboard Bismarck. It was Sunday 25 May 1941 and the 52nd birthday of Admiral Lütjens. He addressed the ship’s company, delivering a melancholy message of doing and dying. Gerhard Junack, one of the Bismarck’s engineer officers said: ‘The admiral wished with these words to rid the crew of their over-exuberance and bring them into a more realistic frame of mind; but in fact he overdid it, and there was a feeling of depression among the crew which spread through all ranks from the highest to the lowest … The crew began to brood and neglected their duties.’

Examples of this neglect now played a vital part in the battle. Because Bismarck’s electronics specialists were still picking up radar impulses from Suffolk they didn’t guess that Suffolk’s radar could not ‘see’ Bismarck’s pulses. Bismarck’s decrypt specialists were neglectful too. They were intercepting Suffolk’s regular radio transmissions, and failed to notice that the shadower was no longer sending position reports. And so it was that Admiral Lütjens didn’t know that he had given the slip to his pursuers. He betrayed his position by sending a very long signal to the German Naval Command Group West (Paris). They replied telling him that the British cruisers had lost contact with him six and a half hours before.

Lütjens’ long message gave the Royal Navy a chance to fix Bismarck’s position on the map, but owing to confusion and misunderstandings at the Admiralty – compounded by the fact that the flagship navigator used the wrong charts – the big ship was not found. In the ensuing muddle, signals from other ships were intercepted and plotted and declared to be Bismarck. The German navy’s radio traffic looked identical as regards letter-grouping, spacing, serial numbers and so on. At 1320 on 25 May, when the search was at its most frantic, a signal from a U-boat was intercepted. The Admiralty intelligence officers decided that this was from the Bismarck pretending to be a U-boat, and using the U-boat radio signals and transmitting frequency.

The bungling began to be sorted out when these transmissions were compared with oscilloscope photos of the radio wave of Bismarck’s transmitter (taken when it passed Denmark on the outward leg). By that time Bismarck’s approximate position had been estimated by someone in signals intelligence who noticed the flurry of German naval signals was no longer coming from Wilhelmshaven; it was coming from Paris. This suggested that Bismarck could probably be found somewhere along the line from its last known position to one of the French ports.

Still it was only guesswork; the Bismarck might have escaped but for a curious misfortune. The only Enigma signals that the British could read regularly and quickly were those of the Luftwaffe.

In Athens in connection with the Crete invasion, the Luftwaffe’s chief of staff, Hans Jeschonnek, worried about his youngest son who was in the crew of the Bismarck. Anxiously he called his staff in Berlin to ask what was happening to the ship. His staff in the Berlin Air Ministry found out and transmitted a radio signal (using Luftwaffe Enigma), telling him that his son’s ship was heading for the west coast of France. It was a parent’s anxiety that provided London with the information that settled the fate of the Bismarck.

An RAF flying boat crew of 209 Squadron, Lough Erne, Northern Ireland, and the flyers on the aircraft-carrier Ark Royal were briefed on the supposition that Bismarck was somewhere on a line drawn from there to Brest. It seems that no one at the Admiralty was aware that the only French port with a dry dock large enough to hold the Bismarck was St Nazaire.

It was 31 hours later, on 26 May, that a Catalina flying boat using ASV Mk II radar found Bismarck. About 45 minutes later a Swordfish from the aircraft-carrier Ark Royal flew to the spot and confirmed the sighting. HMS Sheffield, equipped with an old Type 79 radar designed for air-warning, used it to make contact with the Bismarck, and trailed along waiting for Ark Royal and the battleship Renown.

With the end of the flight deck pitching 60 feet, and a wind over the deck recorder wavering between 45 and 55 knots, the deck crews readied the aircraft aboard Ark Royal. No one there had ever tried to fly-off planes in this sort of weather but there was no alternative. One Swordfish pilot gives us this account:

Ranging the Swordfish that morning called for the strength of Hercules and the patience of Job. Time and time again, as the flight deck tilted at fantastic angles, a plane would slide bodily towards the catwalks, dragging with it forty to fifty ratings who were struggling to man-handle it aft. But somehow by 8.30 am ten planes were ranged and ready to fly off on a broad fronted search to locate Bismarck. At 8.35 am the carrier reduced speed and swung into the wind. [Deck officer] Traill choosing his moment carefully, dropped his flag, and aboard both Ark Royal and Renown ship’s companies held their breath as the leading plane gathered way. Would she make it?

As the flight deck tilted down, the take-off degenerated into a frantic, slithering glissade. It looked for one terrible moment as though the aircraft were plunging straight into the maw of an approaching wave. But Traill had timed his signal well. At the last second the deck swung up and the plane was flung off through the spume of a sixty-foot wave as it cascaded over the carrier’s bow. And the almost unbelievable thing was this. The miracle was repeated not once, but nine times, until the whole of the searching force was airborne.

The weather was foul, but the Swordfish made good radar contact from above cloud using ASV Mk II radar and launched a low-level attack that failed completely. The torpedoes were set to activate their magnetic pistols but most of them exploded as they hit the water; others dived and disappeared. This was just as well, for the ship they attacked was HMS Sheffield! ‘Sorry about the kippers,’ the attackers signalled the angry men aboard Sheffield as they flew back to their carrier. Three of the aircraft crashed on to the pitching deck.

The pilots of the 15-plane second strike were prudently ordered to locate HMS Sheffield first and then go to attack the Bismarck. And this strike force did not try the magnetic pistols again; its torpedoes were set to ‘contact’ and they would run at ten feet. It was old technology but more reliable. Three planes attacked just as Bismarck went into an evasive turn. One torpedo ‘ripped a large hole in the stern structure beneath the steering room gear’. This probably weakened a weld aft of the transverse armoured bulkhead at Frame 10.

The immediate effect was damage to the starboard propellers and steering gear and a jammed rudder.

It was dark, late and overcast as the planes returned. All the Swordfish got back safely, although most of them had been damaged by gunfire and many were wrecked on landing. One plane had been hit 175 times. The aircrews claimed no strikes with the torpedoes. The failure of the airstrike was received with mixed feelings. Admiral Tovey in command had never had much faith in the torpedo planes, and the captain of nearby HMS Rodney personally took the microphone to tell his crew, over the ship’s loudspeakers, that the planes had failed.

But the strike had not failed. The first indication of this was a surprising signal from Sheffield that said that Bismarck was doing a U-turn and reversing course. Admiral Tovey refused to believe the report and added a sarcastic remark about the Sheffield’s seamanship. But the men aboard Sheffield were right and Bismarck was in a desperate situation. With steering jammed, it could only go round in gigantic circles. An attempt to cut the rudder away with underwater equipment proved impossible in the heavy swell. A suggestion that explosives should be used was rejected because it would inevitably damage the finely balanced propellers.