Battleship Bismarck (46 page)

Very soon after the firing started, most of the shells were landing forward in the ship, where fires raged and huge pieces of iron and steel flew through the air. The
Bismarck
was jolted particularly hard when, shortly after 0900, her fore turrets, forward fire-control station, and tower mast were hit. A little later, somewhat aft, a heavy shell went right through the superstructure deck in way of the aircraft catapult. The protected space it landed in was used for storing ready ammunition for the 10.5-centimeter guns, which blew up, killing the crews of the heavy antiaircraft guns who were taking shelter there. Around 0940 the backwall of turret Bruno, whose guns had jammed in a position pointing athwartships, was blown off and the turret was on fire. Shortly before the British ships stopped firing, bright flames burned briefly around turret Anton.

As a member of the ammunition-handling group assigned to the after antiaircraft control station for the heavy flak, Musikmaat
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Josef Mahlberg was stationed in a powder chamber in Compartment IX. When the fight had been going on for some time, the door to the chamber opened and in stepped Bootsmaat Rolf Franke of the after antiaircraft computer room. He had a strange expression on his face. Mahlberg knew him well; the two of them always went most of the way to their stations together. Franke cried out, “The word’s just come through, abandon ship, the ship’s going to be scuttled!” Dropping everything, Mahlberg and his men scrambled to go through the auxiliary shell hoists to the superstructure. When that proved impossible, they turned back and went through the bulkhead door to the
decks, where, in contrast to their well-lighted chamber, they were in darkness and soon lost sight of one another. Only flashlights made pools of light here and there.

Mahlberg’s first stop was the battery deck in Compartment X, where hundreds of men were jostling one another in an effort to get to the upper deck. Suddenly he heard the familiar voice of the First Officer, sharp and incisive: “What’s all this? Go forward and help put out the fire. We aren’t lost, not by a long shot. Is there no officer here who can take command?” But none came forward. Whatever happened, Mahlberg somehow reached the starboard upper deck in the neighborhood of the aircraft crane. Only then did he fully grasp our plight. All that was left of the once-proud ship was ruin. He tried to get to the forecastle, but water flowing over the deck near the middle 15-centimeter turret blocked his way. He turned back towards the quarterdeck and when he passed turret Dora, he saw some of its badly burned crew sitting or lying on the upper deck. Because the quarterdeck was already partly under water, Mahlberg climbed up to the roof of the turret. “Just look at what’s happened to my turret!” Oberstückmeister
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Friedrich Alfred Schubert, one of the burned men, called to him. “Get away, it’s going to blow up at any minute!” Mahlberg turned and went back to the main deck.

In the starboard turbine room Maschinenmaat
†
Wilhelm Generotzky was aware that our own guns were firing very irregularly and that we were being hit again and again, but not a single shell penetrated his area or anywhere else below the armored deck. He felt very proud of German naval architecture and German workmanship. He and his men had no idea what the upper decks looked like, but they could not fail to think that the end was at hand. The
Bismarck
seemed to have been transformed into a practice target for the enemy. The second mate of his watch, his face chalk-white, called to him in passing, “It’s over, it’s all over!” He knew the young mate well, knew he was happily married.

From the ventilator shafts that led to the diesel engines there came a sound like peas dancing on a drum. It was shell splinters falling on the main deck. A highly excited stoker came in and yelled, “Herr Maschinenmaat, transformer room No. 1 is on fire. You must go below!” Generotzky put on his respirator, grabbed a fire extinguisher,
and tumbled down the companionway. Below, he carefully opened the door to the transformer room—nothing, neither fire nor smoke greeted him. He went on to the door to the diesel room, but all was clear here, too. Still, while he was climbing down, he thought he smelled smoke. Where was it coming from? He checked all the spaces near the companionway and, as he opened the door to a 10.5-centimeter shell and powder chamber, acrid yellow fumes assailed him and he saw a reddish glare. Quick as a flash he closed the door and rushed back up on deck to where the flood-control valves were mounted on a bulkhead. Oh, God, how long it took, half a turn one way, half the other way—and beneath him the burning ammunition! At last, open. Quickly, open the seacocks, start the pumps. Open the flood-control valve more. Hold it, that won’t work. Too much water pressure on the valve. Shut off the pumps, open the valve, let the pumps run again. Water was beginning to cover the burning ammunition! His hands were shaking, his knees trembling, and sweat was pouring down his face. Just as he was making his report to his leader, his division officer came from the engine-control station and gave orders to flood the rooms in flood group No. 4. But at the same moment, a petty officer from Damage-Control Team No. 4 reported that the rooms in flood groups Nos. 4 and 5 were already flooded. There had been fires in several ammunition chambers. Generotzky and his men did not know that all the 10.5-centimeter guns had been demolished or had their turrets shot away. They were also not aware that some of the 15-centimeter turrets had been hit and their armor penetrated on the port side by fragments or direct hits.

When “abandon ship” was ordered, Generotzky climbed to Compartment X of the battery deck, where some sixty men were already waiting to use the companionway to the upper deck. Hits landing above were clearly audible. In the passageway stood the First Officer and the commander of Division 11, Kapitänleutnant (Ingenieurwesen) Albert Hasselmeyer. Fregattenkapitän Oels said: “Don’t go up there. It would be certain death. Better go to the forecastle and help put out the fires!” But that didn’t make any sense. Fuzes had been set and the scuttling charges would go off at any moment.

Generotzky was standing about five meters from the companionway, with a wall of waiting comrades ahead of him. Suddenly there was a flash of light, a rumbling roar, and he was thrown into the air, landing hard on his back. A shell had hit the companionway. Men stumbled over him, one helped him up, and they both ran aft to Compartment VIII, where the companionway to the upper deck was a
mass of men. Maschinenmaat Heinrich König unloaded the ammunition hoist from the trunk in the adjacent 10.5-centimeter shell and powder chamber, the one that Generotzky had flooded a few minutes earlier, so that it could be used to escape. Forty men, one behind the other, began to climb up the narrow shaft, only fifty centimeters wide. The lights had gone out and some of them held their flashlights in their mouths. Everyone waited his turn patiently. There was no pushing, no jostling. Each man was lifted by the ones behind so that he could grab the first rung of the ladder. Muffled explosions below encouraged them to make the greatest possible haste. Finally Generotzky’s turn came. He was pushed up into the duct and, rung by rung, he pulled himself up. When he got a hold on the upper deck, his hands were in a pool of blood. He stood up inside the demolished superstructure and found himself surrounded by dead bodies, three and four deep, lying where they had fallen. But he was out, out of the frightening coffin the
Bismarck
had become. At least, there was light up there and the whitecaps on the water showed that there was life. The enemy was still firing, adding to the chaos, as corpses piled on top of one another. He made for the hangar, where, although it had a huge hole in one side, he hoped to find shelter, but when he got there he shrank back. Too many had already tried to find shelter there, in vain. He jumped down to the upper deck and ran aft, but so much water was already washing over it that he clambered back up. At last, the firing ceased.

On his way up from below deck, Maschinengefreiter Bruno Zickelbein of Damage-Control Team No. 6 saw the First Officer in Compartment XIII on the battery deck. “Comrades,” Oels was shouting, “we can no longer fire our guns and anyway we have no more ammunition. Our hour has come. We must abandon ship. She will be scuttled. All hands to the upper deck.” Oels then led Zickelbein and seven other men aft to Compartment IX and told them to carry four wounded men, who were waiting there, to the main deck. Carrying their burdens, the men went to the only companionway they could get up, the one near the catapult, amidships. When Zickelbein and his partner were halfway up with their load a shell struck and hurled them back to the battery deck. Another hit killed the wounded and a number of other men. Now, the companionway was wrecked and, through a huge hole in the battery deck, Zickelbein could see all the way down to the main deck. “Everyone here is dead,” Maschinenmaat Erich Vogel told him, “we are the only ones alive.” They gave up trying to get to the upper deck and went to Compartment X. Then
came the order, “Maschinenmaat Silberling and his party report to the engine-control station immediately.” Hans Silberling gave Zickelbein his hand and said: “We won’t see each other again, this is the end! Say hello at home for me.” They clasped hands for a moment and tears ran down their cheeks. Zickelbein was barely nineteen years old and the twenty-five-year-old Silberling had been a kind of fatherly friend to him. But there was nothing for it, and Silberling carried out his last order.

There were more hits and the lights went out. Holding handkerchiefs over their mouths and noses to protect themselves from the dense smoke, Zickelbein and his companions tried to get to the upper deck by way of the companionway near the enlisted men’s mess. While they were waiting for wounded men to be carried up, they heard Marinestabsarzt
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Arvid Thiele say, “Leave them, they’ll sleep better here.” Everyone knew what he meant. Hardly had the doctor spoken when a shell smashed the mess companionway, killing those closest to it. Fearing that none of the companionways forward was usable, the surviving men tried to climb the shattered one. So much water was pouring in from above that by the time Zickelbein reached it he was standing in water higher than his waist. Eventually he, too, escaped.

In power plant No. 2 in Compartment VIII of the lower platform deck Maschinenobergefreiter
†
Hans Springborn gave the generators and the diesel engines a final inspection shortly before the scuttling charges went off. He wanted to ensure that there would be light right up to the end, and there was.

Topside, the
Bismarck
looked like a heap of scrap metal, all on fire. Men were running back and forth, trying to find a way of saving themselves. However, the ship’s boats, life preservers, and floats had all been long since destroyed. Amid all the devastation on the main deck, Springborn saw wounded men lying on stretchers. They were supposed to have been carried to the dressing station below but, because the continuing fall of shells made that impossible, the doctors were scurrying around giving them sedatives.

Maschinengefreiter Hermann Budich, the talker in action station “E” in Compartment IX of the lower platform deck, who around
midnight had taken Maschinengefreiter Gerhard Böhnel’s telephone report that the starboard rudder had at last been uncoupled, was wounded and brought to the action dressing station aft. Since he was not seriously hurt, he was laid on the deck outside. He had just heard one of the doctors say, “Only serious cases inside,” when there was a frightful crash. A direct hit on the dressing station. Inside it nothing stirred.

It must have been between 0910 and 0915 that the mission Oels and Jahreis had been performing came to an end. The destruction on board and the growing mass of water in the ship made it senseless to record hits and try to limit their effects. The opposite had to be done: to destroy what could no longer be saved. Since 0915 at the latest the
Bismarck
had been mortally wounded, losses and lack of munitions had signaled the end. Now the two officers had to supervise the scuttling of the ship and devise ways for the men to get through the chaos of the main and battery decks to safety.

“Scuttling procedure, everyone overboard!” Oels ordered, and the transmission of this order to all stations was the last action of the personnel in the damage control center. That done, they formed a line to go through a bulkhead, and then into the communications shaft, which led vertically upwards and opened into the forward conning tower above the ship’s bridge. “Come along!” Sagner summoned Maschinengast Statz, but the latter answered, “No, I’m staying here.” Why he said that he doesn’t know himself, probably out of fear, for the crackling of the hits outside was undiminished. Jahreis looked at Statz in surprise, shot his hand to his cap by way of farewell, and entered the connecting shaft. Oels went through the port bulkhead towards the stern, shouting as he went out, “We have nine or ten minutes’ time!”

Followed by some of the men from his command center, Oels passed through Compartments XIII and X of the battery deck—where, as we know, he met Zickelbein, Mahlberg, and Generotzky—to Compartment VIII of this deck. There he found a surging mass of some three hundred men pushing and shoving towards the ladders. Acrid, yellowish green smoke swirled across the deck, and the men who didn’t have gasmasks were wracked by choking coughs. The hatch at the top of one ladder was jammed halfway open. “Get out, get out,” called Oels in an emotional, cracking voice, “everyone off the ship. She’s being scuttled. You can’t get through forward. Everything is burning forward.” The words were barely out of his mouth
when a green flash whizzed by, burst into a fireball, and exploded with a deafening crash. Men reeled, were hurled through the air, and fell hard on the deck; more than one hundred were killed, Oels among them. He was standing between the canteen and the companionway when the shell struck. The groans and whimpers of the wounded arose from every direction.

In the damage control center Statz remained standing at the table. His glance fell on the damage control board, which mercilessly revealed the bad situation of his ship. Red, the color for “taking water,” covered almost the entire port side; green, for “flooded,” showed for the port shell and powder chambers and nearly the entire starboard side—the outboard list-control tanks there had been filled for a long time. White, indicating “pumped,” was lit up only for the engine rooms below the armored deck. First Statz emptied his pockets, there was an order about that, laid aside his machinist’s action tool belt and his machinist’s action hammer, which the men had christened “Junack’s action hammer” after its designer. Junack was truly the father of damage control measures in the
Bismarck
, which, as Statz was reminding himself at this moment, made Junack’s sudden transfer shortly before sailing to the post of turbine engineer in exchange for Jahreis all the more inexplicable. Then Statz put on his life jacket, unfastened, of course; but what to do next?