Battleship Bismarck (28 page)

A reconstruction of the overall situation made later by the Oberkommando der Kriegsmarine showed that the best thing the Fleet Commander could have done was go back through the Denmark Strait. Yet that was hindsight and was based on knowledge of where the British naval forces were deployed, which Lütjens, naturally, did not have.

Although St. Nazaire was 600 nautical miles farther away than Trondheim, we would be on a southerly course, where there would be more hours of darkness, and we would not be in narrow waters. On the high seas we would have a better chance of shaking off our pursuers, and we might be able to get some support from our U-boats or to fuel from one of our tankers positioned in the Atlantic. Other things in favor of St. Nazaire were that it had a dry dock large enough for the
Bismarck
and it would be a good point of departure for operations against enemy commerce in the Atlantic.

That Lütjens regarded his visit to St. Nazaire as an interruption of Exercise Rhine and not its end, I can only surmise, but his actions up to this point make it almost certain that he did: he had not hesitated to go on with the operation after the day in Grimstadfjord, even
though the enemy was known to be alerted; he had maintained course after the first encounter with the British cruisers in the Denmark Strait, instead of reversing it, as he did in a similar operation with the
Gneisenau
and
Scharnhorst
three months earlier; he had broken off the pursuit of the
Prince of Wales
in favor of carrying out his principal mission of commerce warfare. The rumor that the operation would be “continued” after the repairs there went around the ship in the course of the day.

These speculations about St. Nazaire lead back to Lütjens’s rejection of Lindemann’s suggestion that we reduce speed and heel the ship so that the holes in our hull could be patched. I have not been able to find out why Lütjens did this, nor do I know precisely when he and the captain had this exchange. It must, however, have been after Lütjens decided to make for St. Nazaire, because, once he had done so, there would have been no point in doing anything that would delay our getting into port. It might, of course, have been possible for us to do an at-sea repair job on the two shell holes and thus restore our ability to steam at top speed. But would that have made sense when the loss of the two boilers in our forward boiler room, which seemed imminent and actually occurred barely twenty-four hours later, could easily have canceled out the advantage? Would it have been worth the risk of reducing speed, perhaps for a considerable length of time, while we were still within range of our shadowers, who were in a position to get help from powerful ships? The wisdom of doing so would have been questionable for many reasons and, if Lütjens viewed the pros and cons as I have presented them, I can sympathize with him.

*
In 1984 the chief wireless officer of the
Prinz Eugen
, Hans-Henning von Schultz, gave me the following information concerning this exchange of signals between the
Bismarck
and the
Prinz Eugen:
“After the action the commander of the
Bismarck
informed the commander of the
Prinz Eugen
of his situation with the following semaphore signal: ‘I have received two serious hits, one in Compartment XHI–XIV, causing the loss of power station No. 4, the port boiler room taking on water, which can be controlled; second hit in Compartment XX–XXI in the foreship, entry from port, exit to starboard, above the armored deck. British hit through a boat without importance. Otherwise I’m fine. Five slightly wounded.’

“Following a question from the commander of the
Prinz Eugen
as to how the commander of the
Bismarck
estimated the enemy situation in the Atlantic it became evident that the
Bismarck
had not received
three
radio signals from Group North. They were transmitted to the
Bismarck
by visual means. Why these messages were not received by the
Bismarck
will never be explained. One can only guess between technical defects in the receiving set and human error. (In the
Prinz Eugen
the frequency of Ship-Group North/West and vice-versa was permanently manned in two radio rooms [B and A]—that is, double manned—for the duration of Exercise Rhine in order to ensure that
all
entering messages were picked up. These radio messages were numbered and recorded in the action radio room or the action signals center.)”

16    Parting with the Prinz Eugen

Shortly before 1000, Lütjens ordered the
Prinz Eugen
, which had been steaming ahead of the
Bismarck
, to drop back and examine the battleship’s trail of oil. As the ships passed one another during this change of station, Lindemann asked Brinkmann, his classmate at the Naval School, to signal the results of his observations. The slick was still visible, Brinkmann reported, and was spreading over the surface of the water so rapidly that it was impossible to estimate, even approximately, its extent. The giveaway streak seemed to want to stay with us, and give us away it did, because before long a Sunderland flying boat began cruising back and forth over our wake, beyond the range of our antiaircraft guns. It notified the
Suffolk
that we were trailing oil and kept her informed of the situation. When the
Prinz Eugen
had completed her inspection of the oil slick, she took the lead again and resumed her radar search of the area ahead.

Throughout the morning of the twenty-fourth the
Suffolk
and
Norfolk
hung on and around noon the
Prince of Wales
, directed by a Catalina flying boat, came into view again at extreme range. The cruisers detected every change of course and speed we made and immediately passed on the information by radio. We had come to accept the three ships as our standing escort. Morale on board did not suffer, however. On the contrary, the crew was optimistic, or seemed to be, that somehow we would shake them off.

Group North, still knowing nothing of any action off Iceland,
*
signaled Lütjens at about 0830 that it assumed he intended to drive off his shadowers so that the
Prinz Eugen
could refuel, and above all that he would try to lure the enemy to our U-boats. It also noted that, at 1200, operational control of Exercise Rhine would pass to Group West—a transfer that took place on schedule. Other signals received in the course of the morning relayed to the Fleet Commander information B-Dienst had collected about the success the British were having in keeping up with us. This merely reconfirmed to him that his task force was under constant surveillance by the
Suffolk, Norfolk
, and
Prince of Wales.

After the battle off Iceland, the
Bismarck
pulls into line astern of the
Prinz Eugen.
Her guns, now silent, are again trained fore and aft. (Photograph courtesy of Paul Schmalenbach.)

Somewhere about 1100 the weather suddenly worsened and the sea rose. Rain squalls began to alternate with haze, and broad banks of fog loomed ahead, but now and again the sun broke through. Visibility varied between eighteen and two nautical miles. Difficult as it was for the British shadowers, operating at a distance of around 30,000 meters, they never lost contact.

Shortly before 1400 Lütjens reported to the Seekriegsleitung and to GroupWest:
“King George V
and a cruiser keep contact. Intention: if no action, to attempt to lose them after dark.” Obviously, he was still mistaking the
Prince of Wales
for her sister ship, the fleet flagship
King George V.
And the reason why he mentioned only one cruiser was that the
Norfolk’s
course took her through fog banks and she was lost to sight for considerable periods of time, which was the case when the message was sent.

The
Bismarck
passing the
Prinz Eugen
during a change of station. She is down by the bow and pitching heavily as a result of a hit forward. When the
Prinz Eugen
had taken station astern, she tried to determine how much oil was leaking into the
Bismarck’s
wake. This photograph, shot on the morning of 24 May, is the last one of the
Bismarck
taken from the German side. (Photograph courtesy of Paul Schmalenbach.)

In a semaphore message sent to the
Prinz Eugen
some twenty minutes later, Lütjens amplified what he had told Group North at 0801: “Intend to break contact as follows:
Bismarck
will take a westerly course during a rain squall.
Prinz Eugen
will hold course and speed until forced to change or for three hours after separating from the
Bismarck.
Then released to fuel from the
Belchen
or
Lothringen
, thereafter to conduct cruiser warfare. Execute on code word
Hood.
”

Lütjens explained his other intentions in a radio signal to the Commander in Chief, U-Boats, who already knew from our shadowers’ radio messages where the task force was. The latter was instructed to position whatever boats he had in the west in a line south of the southern tip of Greenland. Lütjens planned to lead his British shadowers over the waiting U-boats on the morning of 25 May. The positioning of the U-boats, relatively far to the west of us, indicates that, in order to escape enemy aerial reconnaissance as long as possible, Lütjens intended to steam well out into the Atlantic before turning in a great southwesterly curve towards St. Nazaire. He still thought he had enough fuel for such a detour. At 1508 he gave the Seekriegsleitung
and Group West more details about the action off Iceland:
“Hood
destroyed at 0600 this morning in a gunnery action of less than five minutes.
King George V
withdrew after being hit.
Bismarck’s
speed reduced. Down by the bows a result of a hit in the forecastle.”

About this time an aircraft came into view astern. At first, it was taken for a Dornier flying boat and, later, some of the men said that it even gave the German recognition signal in answer to our calls. I have not been able to learn the source of this rather questionable assertion. When the plane closed to around 4,000 meters, however, our antiaircraft officer, Kapitänleutnant Karl Gellert—my good friend from officer candidate and gunnery schools, with whom I had spent happy times—clearly recognized it as American. It was a PB Y Catalina flying boat. He immediately sounded the aircraft alarm and almost simultaneously our antiaircraft batteries opened up. The Catalina withdrew. Several times thereafter it tried to maintain contact at close range, but was driven off by our fire. Around 1630 it disappeared for good—as we know today, because of engine trouble.