Battleship Bismarck (30 page)

The enemy’s tactics were such that torpedoes were coming at us from several directions at the same time and, in trying to avoid one, we were liable to run into another. Back and forth we zigzagged. All at once the sharp, ringing report of an explosion punctuated the roar of our guns and the
Bismarck
gave a slight shudder. At the moment, I was only aware that whatever had caused it must have taken place forward of my duty station. Although I silently cursed what I supposed was a torpedo hit, my immediate reaction was that it had not done much harm. Undoubtedly launched at close range, it could not possibly have reached its set depth—it would have been dangerous to us if it had—but had probably struck in the area where our armor belt was strongest: at the waterline amidships. That armor, I was sure, would not be bothered by a little aerial torpedo. Nonetheless, I took a careful look at the speed and rudder-position indicators. They showed that the engines and rudder were intact—thank God!

What had happened? A torpedo, perhaps the last one launched, and a surface runner at that, had struck the armor belt amidships on the starboard side and exploded, creating a tall waterspout. It was delivered by a pilot who left his wingman and came in, unnoticed by us, in the glare of the setting sun. The concussion of the hit hurled Oberbootsmann Kurt Kirchberg, who was handling ammunition in the immediate vicinity of the explosion, against something hard. He was killed instantly: the first man to die on board the
Bismarck.
We sewed up his corpse in sailcloth and laid it in a boat. His death made a deep impression on all his shipmates in that he was the only fatality, but it was especially distressing to those who had come to know him as a strict but capable and understanding superior.

Below, the explosion made it seem as though the ship had been thrust sideways with much greater force than had been the case when the shells hit that morning or than was created by the recoil of our own guns. In the command and damage-control center the lights went out for a minute or two; everyone thought, “It’s all over now.” Then the ship returned to her normal trim, the damage-control parties inspected their areas and their telephoned reports buzzed into the damage-control center. The men there were still a little pale but otherwise calm. “Look here,” Pumpenmeister Sagner called to them encouragingly, “only the dear God can sink our ship!” Only the young talker in the command center had lost a little of his nerve. He put on his lifejacket and wanted to inflate it, fidgeting around—all this under the eye of the First Officer. The latter gave him a terrific dressing down, but the seaman had the wind up so badly that he could not take in any of it. Comrades brought him to a nearby compartment used as a holding station where he could calm down. In the record time of three minutes the ship’s command knew the situation in every sector. Hardly any material damage had been done, although Artillerieobermechaniker
*
Heinrich Juhl and five other men had broken bones. In action station “E” in Compartment IX on the lower platform deck, the shock threw Maschinengefreiter Budich cross-ways across the compartment to the main instrument panel. Stupified silence reigned. Obermaschinist Bar ho broke it by asking, “But Budich, where are you going in such a hurry?” The release of laughter and entering reports quickly dissolved the momentary tension.

Shortly before the attack began, Matrosengefreiter
†
Georg Herzog,
of the port third 3.7-centimeter mount, spotted three planes to port and sang out, “Three aircraft approaching at 240 degrees.” “I had the feeling,” he said later, “that the British were putting their all into this attack and were coming in with exceptional daring to deliver their torpedoes. It seemed to me that they came within 15 meters of the ship before they turned away.”

Matrosengefreiter Herbert Manthey, of the starboard fifth 2-centimeter mount, noticed that, at first, the incoming planes tried to make a concentrated attack on our port side, then they separated to attack from different directions. When he asked Oberleutnant zur See Sigfrid Dölker, his section commander, about this he was told that three squadrons of torpedo planes had participated in the attack. Our constant zigzagging to avoid torpedoes had greatly complicated his efforts to bring his guns to bear. And towards the end of the attack he heard the explosion to starboard.

Morale in the ship after the attack, whose end was easily told by the cessation of antiaircraft fire, was outstanding. The crew felt even better when they heard that five enemy aircraft had been shot down. In fact, none had been.

Although we weathered it quite well, it cannot be said that we came out of the Swordfish attack unscathed. When we increased speed to 27 knots, water pressure increased correspondingly and that, together with our violent zigzags, caused the matting in the forecastle to rip, and water began rushing in again. The result was that we were still more deeply down by the bow. Furthermore, vibration from our gunfire and the shock response of the starboard torpedo hit enlarged the gash in the bulkhead between port boiler room No. 2 and the adjacent electric power station, which had flooded after the shell hit that morning, to such an extent that the boiler room also flooded and had to be given up. We reduced speed and steamed at 16 knots long enough for the matting in the forecastle to be made watertight again. Meanwhile, we resumed course towards St. Nazaire.

Sometime after midnight Lütjens reported home, “Attack by torpedo planes. Torpedo hit on starboard,” and around 0200, “Torpedo hit not important.”

Soon after the air attack, we became engaged in a brief sea fight, again with the
Prince of Wales
, which had reappeared on the horizon. She fired two salvos from around 15,000 meters. Schneider answered two or three times with our big guns, but fading light made observation difficult for both sides. The British battleship steamed out of sight and the intermezzo was over.

*
It was light as day at midnight because, as pointed out earlier, we were on German Summer Time (one hour ahead of standard Central European Time). At 35° west longitude, about where we were during the air attack, German Summer Time was more than four hours ahead of the true local time. This means that when German Summer Time showed midnight, it was not a true 2000. At our position, approximately 57° north latitude, the sun does not go down until after 2000.

*
Seaman

*
Warrant Officer (Ordnance Engineer)

†
Seaman Apprentice

19    The Admiralty Steps Up the Pursuit

The air attack on the
Bismarck
was the last of the measures that Tovey had planned before leaving Scapa Flow on the evening of 22 May. Despite the impressive performance of the
Suffolk
and
Norfolk
in maintaining contact, the German task force had not been destroyed nor had its speed been so drastically reduced that it would be possible, without doing anything else, to bring other big ships up against it. Nor were there any such ships near enough to be brought up right away. For Tovey and the Admiralty, the failure as such was bad enough, but the loss of the
Hood
made it doubly hard to bear. The
Hood
was not just any battle cruiser. To the Royal Navy, and indeed to the nation, she was the incarnation of British sea power. Wake-Walker had succeeded Holland as senior naval officer on the scene, and his laconic report,
“Hood
has blown up,” hit London like a bolt of lightning. If it had been necessary to sink the
Bismarck
before, the loss of the
Hood
made it even more so.

On the evening of 23 May, Tovey with the Home Fleet, consisting of the
King George V
, the
Victorious
, the
Repulse
, several cruisers, and some destroyers, was about 550 nautical miles southeast of the German task force. He had chosen a course to the northwest so that he would be in a position to intercept the German ships whether, after the expected action with Holland’s force, they went back through the Denmark Strait or, although heavily damaged, continued to make for the Atlantic. Now, everything was different, and Tovey had very little hope of being able to engage the German task force as long as it continued to the southwest at high speed.

What would the German Fleet Commander do in the changed circumstances? As Tovey saw it, Lütjens was likely to do one of three things: rendevous with a tanker off the west coast of Greenland or near the Azores; if the
Bismarck
had been damaged in the action with Holland’s ships—there were no reports that she had—seek out a port in western France for repairs; return home. Not only was Germany the best place for repairs to be made but, more important, the return of the heroes would give the German propaganda machine material that it could use to excellent effect—the alternative that Winston Churchill later declared would have been the best for the Germans. The three courses of action being equally probable, Tovey decided to compromise and take a course towards the southern tip of Greenland. In doing this, he hoped to guard against what was in his eyes the most dangerous eventuality: the German ships getting out into the Atlantic, where they would be able to interdict supply routes vital to Great Britain. And where the
Bismarck
could inflict damage that he of all people would rather not think about.

In London, the Admiralty reacted to the morning’s catastrophic report by making a number of important and far-reaching decisions. There were at this time ten convoys in the North Atlantic, escorted by battleships, cruisers, and destroyers. To rob them of their protection when a German task force was at large would expose them to deadly danger, but it was a risk that had to be taken. All that mattered was to deploy against the
Bismarck
every warship then in the Atlantic or anywhere nearby—and deployed they were, every one of them!
*

Vice Admiral Sir James Somerville’s Force H, consisting of the battle cruiser
Renown
, the aircraft carrier
Ark Royal
, the cruiser
Sheffield
, and six destroyers, was at Gibraltar, waiting to escort a troop convoy. It was released from this mission and instructed to proceed north for operations against the German task force. The cruiser
London
, which was escorting a convoy from Gibraltar to Great Britain, received orders to change course to intercept the
Bismarck
and
Prinz Eugen.
The cruiser
Edinburgh
, which only shortly before had captured a German blockade-runner near the Azores, was also and without regard to her fuel supply deployed against the German formation. Hundreds of nautical miles to the northwest, the battleship
Ramillies
was instructed to leave the convoy she was escorting and take a course to intercept the German task force. Thousands of miles to the
west, in Halifax, the battleship
Revenge
was directed to take over the escort of the convoy the
Ramillies
had left. West of Ireland, the battleship
Rodney
, which was en route to the United States for repairs, was escorting the troop transport
Britannic
across the Atlantic. She, too, received orders to begin operations against the
Bismarck
and
Prinz Eugen.
Three destroyers were assigned to screen her on this new mission. Among them was the
Tartar
, on whose bridge the previous evening Sub-Lieutenant Ludovic Kennedy, the officer of the watch, had received from the hands of a signalman the
Norfolk’s
first report of having sighted the German task force in the Denmark Strait. Ludovic Kennedy, whose book
Pursuit
tells the story of the search for the
Bismarck
, is the son of Captain E. C. Kennedy, who had met a seaman’s death as commander of the
Rawalpindi
in action against the
Gneisenau
and
Scharnhorst
in November 1939, when I was fourth gunnery officer of the
Scharnhorst
, the same billet I now held in the
Bismarck.

Within six hours of the loss of the
Hood
, the British had deployed against us four battleships, two battle cruisers, two aircraft carriers, three heavy cruisers, ten light cruisers, and twenty-one destroyers. And so there began a chase which, in terms of the area involved (more than a million square nautical miles) and the number and strength of the ships engaged, is perhaps unique in naval history.

*
See Appendix C.

20    Contact Shaken Off