Battleship Bismarck (27 page)

Eventually, we had to shut down power station No. 4, in Compartment XIV. We still had sufficient energy for all our action stations, but our 100 percent reserve capacity was cut in half. The damage-repair parties stuffed the shattered bulkheads in the port No. 2 boiler room and the auxiliary boiler room with hammocks to keep the water in check. Oberleutnant Karl-Ludwig Richter was again on the scene, the never-out-of-sorts officer who always had a good word for everyone, together with his Oberzimmermeister,
*
the best pair of damage-control men in the ship! Yet in spite of all they could do to seal the bulkhead, the water level rose throughout the day until Richter was standing in it up to his chest and the boiler had to be shut down.

As a result of the flooding, the
Bismarck
was down 3 degrees by the bow and had a 9-degree list to port. The tips of the blades of her starboard propeller were already turning above water. The leader of Damage-Control Team No. 1, Stabsobermaschinist Wilhelm Schmidt, was ordered to flood the flooding and trimming tanks in Compartments I and III, and this improved the situation somewhat.

The lasting effect of the hits in Compartments XIV an XXI was that, mainly because of water pressure on the forward bulkheads, our top speed was restricted to 28 knots. We were now leaving a broad streak of oil in our wake, which was undoubtedly going to help the enemy’s reconnaissance and pursuit. The oil was leaking from the
service tanks in Compartment XIV and possibly also from the storage tanks in Compartments XX and XXI.

After the “all clear” was sounded around 0830 the off-duty officers assembled in the wardroom to congratulate our first gunnery officer on the sinking of the
Hood.
Schneider was his friendly and unassuming self as we gathered around to empty a glass of champagne in his honor. His brilliant success made us forget for a few minutes any worries we had about the
Suffolk
and
Norfolk
hanging onto us and the hits we had suffered. None of us grasped the gravity of the damage we had sustained and certainly no one suspected that this would be our last big gathering in the wardroom during Exercise Rhine. Quite obviously, the
Bismarck
was holding her breakout course into the Atlantic and those of us assembled had no reason to think that our operation would not continue according to plan. If anyone doubted the correctness of the Fleet Commander’s decision to go on, he did not say so.

At 0632, the battle being over, Lütjens reported to Group North: “Battle cruiser, probably
Hood
, sunk. Another battleship,
King George V
or
Renown
, turned away damaged. Two heavy cruisers maintain contact.” Atmospheric conditions in the waters off Greenland were so poor that this message was not received in Wilhelmshaven until 1326. When the minutes passed and it was not acknowledged, Lütjens had it repeated continually. At 0705 he enlarged upon it in a brief report, which also failed to reach Group North, “Have sunk a battleship at approximately 63° 10’ North, 32°00’ West.” At 0801, Lütjens advised the Seekriegsleitung of the damage he had received, adding: “Denmark Strait 50 nautical miles wide, floating mines, enemy two radars” and “Intention: to proceed to St. Nazaire,
Prinz Eugen
[to conduct] cruiser warfare.”

*
Captain S. W. Roskill writes in
The War at Sea
, Vol. I, p. 398: “Admiral Holland must also have considered whether it would be to his advantage to fight the enemy at long or short ranges. He had no information regarding the ranges at which the
Bismarck
would be most vulnerable to the gunfire of his own ships, but he did know that the
Prince of Wales
should be safe from vital hits by heavy shells from maximum gun range down to about 13,000 yards, and that the
Hood
should become progressively more immune from such hits as the range approached 12,000 yards and the enemy shell trajectories flattened. At long ranges the
Hood
, which lacked heavy horizontal armour, would be very vulnerable to plunging fire by heavy shells. There were, therefore, strong arguments in favour of pressing in to fight the
Bismarck
at comparatively short ranges.”

*
In 1953, as the chargé d’affaires ad interim of the Federal Republic of Germany, I was invited to a state dinner at which the foreign minister of Iceland, Bjarni Benediktsson, told me that he was in Reykjavik and clearly heard the sound of the battle.

*
The lateral fall of shot was corrected by adjusting the bearing.

*
A U.P. Projector was a mortar-type weapon that fired a 76-millimeter rocket into the air. Once the rocket reached a certain height, it released a parachute with a mine attached. The device was intended for defense against attacking aircraft. When the planes flew into a barrage of these devices, the parachutes would drag the mines against the wings or fuselage and the mines would explode. The rocket propellant was cordite, which had a low flash point. After this incident all U.P. Projectors were removed from British warships.

*
Full-load displacement in 1941

*
In
The Bismarck Episode
, p. 85, Russell Grenfell reports another disagreement on the bridge: “It became known afterwards that there had been a hot and prolonged argument between the German Admiral Lütjens in the
Bismarck
and the Captain of the ship, Lindemann, the latter arguing strongly for a return to Germany, the Admiral insisting on a continuance westward.” I regard this account as greatly exaggerated. Nothing has ever suggested to me that Lindemann did any more than urge that the action with the
Prince of Wales
be continued.

*
We had six twenty-six-man damage-control parties—one each for Compartments I–IV, V–VII, VIII-X, XI–XIII, XIV–XVII, and XVIII–XXII. Each party was led by a warrant officer (machinist), who was assisted by a petty officer. The petty officer of each team assigned most of his men to important points in the area under his supervision but always kept from four to six men with him to take care of emergencies. In the event of a hit or any severe shock, each man checked the various tanks and spaces assigned to him and reported by telephone to the petty officer. The latter gave all the reports of his team to the warrant officer, who relayed a consolidated report to the command center in Compartment XIV on the upper platform deck, where the First Officer received it. Thus, the ship’s command was informed of damage in the shortest time possible.

*
Warrant Officer (Carpenter)

15    Lütjens’s Alternatives

The dispatch of his third radio signal, at 0801 on 24 May, shows that within an hour or so after the action off Iceland, Lütjens had decided to make for St. Nazaire. That was too soon for him to have had a complete picture of the damage the
Bismarck
had suffered or, most important, of what shipboard repairs we would be able to make. The time of his signal shows further that even as we in the wardroom were rejoicing in the assumption that the operation would continue as planned, he had already informed the Seekriegsleitung that such was not his intention. Not until noon, when we changed course from southwest to south, did the news go around, to the officers’ considerable surprise.

Before that, I had been wondering, as I’m sure the other officers had too, what Lütjens’s decision would be when he knew the full extent of our damage and could tell how, if at all, the enemy’s situation had changed. I, of course, had no idea what redeployment of his forces Tovey might consider necessary, but Lütjens had probably already received information on this subject from the B-Dienst in the
Bismarck
and
Prinz Eugen
and in Germany. Therefore, I was sure he would have weighed all the factors he would have to take into consideration in deciding whether to continue the operation immediately, to disappear into the Atlantic and make emergency repairs, to make for a tanker and resupply, to make for a port in western France, to return to Norway, or even to return home.

The only thing clear to me at the moment was that our operation had not gone at all according to our hopes: our breakthrough was
anything but undetected, in fact we had been in a battle. It was true that we had scored a tactical victory over two warships, but we had lost the element of surprise, which was so important to the success of our commerce raiding on the high seas. On top of that, even though the battle was over, we still had our unwelcome companions astern. Would we be able to shake them off—now that our speed had been reduced?

I then took to wondering whether we had any chance of commerce raiding after our breakthrough under the eyes of the enemy. What ships would the enemy bring against us and how long would it take to get them there? What was the fleet staff thinking? What did Lindemann think, and what suggestions had he made to Lütjens? Question after question came to mind, but there was no one from whom to expect answers. They would have to be deduced from the execution of Lütjens’s new decisions.

The answer came around midday, in the form of our change of course to the south. So, Lütjens had decided to make for western France. But what had so suddenly moved him to try to reach port when he had just decided against the highly promising pursuit of the wounded
Prince of Wales
in order to conduct commerce warfare—the commerce warfare he now had obviously decided not to pursue?

Although, when he ordered our course change, Lütjens could hardly have been absolutely certain what repairs could be made on board, he must have known how alarming the damage was: two holes in our hull, 2,000 tons of water in our forecastle, our speed reduced by 2 knots, the threat that two of our boilers would have to be shut down, 1,000 tons of fuel oil inaccessible in our forward storage tanks, the steady leakage of fuel, and the loss of some of our electric power. It would not have taken him long to realize that little could be done about these things aboard ship and, therefore, decide to look for a port. But that was not all. It was no secret in the ship that Lütjens was much impressed by the excellent performance of the radar carried by the two British cruisers. That the
Suffolk
and
Norfolk
had been able to stay in contact at long range through the rain, fog, and snow of the Denmark Strait made him think that the British definitely had a technological superiority in this area. This is why he mentioned “enemy two radars” in his radio signal to the Seekriegsleitung at 0801. Furthermore, he was probably disheartened by the fact that the few salvos fired at the
Norfolk
the night before had put the
Bismarck’s
forward radar out of action. Shipboard repair of the radar was obviously impossible.

Around 1000, in the course of a semaphore exchange with the
Prinz Eugen
, it came to light that several radio signals sent by Group North in the previous two days had not been received by the
Bismarck.
The
Prinz Eugen
then passed the messages on to us by visual means.
*
They contained information about the enemy in the Atlantic, mostly the position and course of escort groups, but also what U-boat attacks were doing to them. Lütjens had not suffered any operational disadvantage by not having this information, but the fact that the
Prinz Eugen
had received the signals and his flagship had not must have given him still another cause for concern. His own radio signal of 0632 about the sinking of the
Hood
, in spite of being repeated several times, had apparently not been received by Group North. The two incidents may have shaken his faith in the
Bismarck’s
radio operators and equipment, upon whose flawless functioning during a month-long operation in the Atlantic he had to rely heavily.

Why did Lütjens choose to make for St. Nazaire, 2,000 nautical miles away? He could have gone back to Norway, via the south coast of Iceland. Bergen was only 1,100 nautical miles away and Trondheim was 1,300. Or, he could have returned to Norway by way of the Denmark Strait, on which course Trondheim was 1,400 nautical miles distant.

Viewed in terms of the weather, the Denmark Strait, with its generally poor visibility, should have been the most inviting. But hadn’t Lütjens just discovered that in spite of poor visibility the British
maintained contact? Might not going back through the strait be a repetition of the pursuit, this time in the opposite direction? The
Suffolk
and
Norfolk
were still very near us. What forces would they call up this time? The British Home Fleet had been alerted. Where were Tovey’s other big ships, anyway? All Lütjens knew was that they were somewhere between us and Scapa Flow. And mustn’t he have remembered how he had been misled by Group North only two days ago—”Assumption that breakout has not yet been detected by the enemy reconfirmed,” they had told him, and then sent him an erroneous report on the ships still at Scapa Flow. The appearance of the
Hood
and
Prince of Wales
had told him a different story. On the evening of 23 May, Group North had informed him that the weather had made aerial reconnaissance of Scapa Flow impossible that day. The picture, as he saw it, could not have been exactly rosy: any information he had about the enemy was suspect; our top speed had been reduced; it was light both day and night in northern waters at this season; the British would probably be making aerial reconnaissances over the Norwegian Sea; we were leaving a telltale trail of oil in our wake; the effectiveness of British radar and radio direction finders had been demonstrated; a second attempt to get out into the Atlantic, after completing repairs, would be even riskier than the first. It would be much better not to return to Norway.