Fortress England

by Robert Jackson

  “For God’s sake, Stan, will you stop ringing me up?” Armstrong said irritably. “I’ll let you know if and when things start to happen.” There was an apologetic grunt at the other end of the line, followed by a click.

  It was six o’clock in the morning of Monday, 26 May, and barely an hour since Armstrong had returned with the second of the search Halifaxes after a seven-hour flight. The aircraft’s take-off had been delayed for some hours because of trouble with the starboard outer engine, and when it had eventually got away the sortie had been fruitless, as had the first aircraft’s. The pilot and crew had taken themselves off to bed, leaving Armstrong to ponder moodily on the day’s events over a mug of coffee.

  Armstrong was at Portreath, having decided to stay there while the Halifaxes flew their search missions. Perranporth was only about ten miles away, so he could be back at base within minutes, if need be. The airfield, which had opened in April, was occupied by the Spitfires of 152 Squadron and by a squadron of Blenheims, which had arrived to take part in anti-shipping operations. Armstrong didn’t envy them; he had experienced work of that kind some months earlier, and the flak on German coastal convoys had grown a lot stiffer since then.

  Although he had direct links with both the Admiralty and HQ Coastal Command via the Operations Room at Portreath, Armstrong felt himself out on a limb. That, he told himself, was because nothing at all seemed to be happening; a whole day had passed, and there was still no sign of the elusive battleship, even though the net around her was being pulled tighter. Admiral Tovey’s warships were now heading south-east, while Admiral Somerville’s Force H from Gibraltar was coming up fast with the intention of blocking Bismarck’s entry into the Bay of Biscay, where she would be relatively safe from attack.

  The Halifaxes would be going out again later that day, sometime in the afternoon, and once again Armstrong fully intended to go with them. He decided to get some sleep, the sensible thing to do. But first of all, he took the precaution of ringing the switchboard.

  “If a Flight Lieutenant Kalinski from Perranporth tries to get in touch with me,” he said, “tell him to go to blazes. But say it humorously.”

  Just as Armstrong was wearily stripping off his clothes, and looking forward to at least six hours’ sleep, a Catalina flying boat of No. 209 Squadron, code letter ‘Z’, having taken off from Lough Erne in Northern Ireland some two and a half hours earlier, was nearly halfway towards its search area. Its pilot was Flying Officer Dennis Briggs; his co-pilot was Ensign Leonard ‘Tuck’ Smith of the United States Navy, one of the Americans unofficially attached to RAF Coastal Command.

  The Catalina droned south-westwards for three hours, its crew uncomfortably aware that the Operations Room staff at Castle Archdale had laid bets on whether or not they would find the elusive battleship on this sortie. The crew breakfasted on bacon and eggs, cooked in the flying boat’s galley; lunch was a long way off, and by the time the aircraft reached the search area, another three hours into the flight, some of the men were feeling hungry again. It was 0945.

  Briggs turned on to the selected heading, switched on the autopilot, and changed seats with the American, stretching his limbs gratefully. The morning was hazy and the Catalina flew on at 500 feet, keeping under the cloud base. Below, the sea was very rough, the foaming wave tops reaching up as though to pluck the aircraft from the sky.

  “What’s that?” Ensign Smith’s sharp comment focused Briggs’s attention on a spot about eight miles away. The shape was blurred, but it was undoubtedly that of a warship, and as they drew closer they saw that it was a very large warship.

  “Close in, Tuck,” Briggs ordered. “Let’s take a closer look.” He moved to the wireless table and began to draft a message for transmission by the radio operator.

  Smith turned to starboard and went up into the cloud, intending to re-emerge astern of the ship. He misjudged the manoeuvre slightly, and a few minutes later, with the Catalina now at 2,000 feet, he sighted the warship through a break in the cloud. She was on the beam, and she was less than 500 yards away.

  There was no longer any need to worry about the warship’s identity, for an instant later her upper works lit up as she hurled a furious barrage of AA fire at the aircraft. The Catalina rocked and lurched as anti-aircraft shells burst all around it. Shrapnel tore jagged holes in its wings and fuselage.

  As the radio operator tapped out the Bismarck’s position, Smith jettisoned the aircraft’s four depth charges to gain height, opened the throttles fully and headed as fast as he could for the cloud cover, hauling the Catalina away from the murderous flak. Below, the battleship heeled over as she began a turn to starboard, those on the bridge having seen the depth charges plummeting down and believing that they were under attack.

  Briggs got his radio signal off as fast as possible, thinking that he was about to be shot down. It was 1030.

  In spite of the battering his aircraft had taken, he continued to shadow the battleship. From time to time, shells blasted the air around the Catalina as the German gunners caught brief glimpses of the aircraft through rifts in the cloud.

  *

  RAF Portreath: 1115 Hours

  Someone was shaking Armstrong awake. He opened his eyes groggily, saw an airman bending over him with a mug of steaming tea.

  “Sir, you’re wanted in Ops, right away. Thought you might like this, sir.”

  “Thanks.” Armstrong sat up and took a sip of the scalding, dark brown liquid, which was the RAF’s effective antidote to sleep. He washed quickly, pulled on his uniform and headed for the Operations Room, where he found the Station Intelligence Officer awaiting him. The IO was all smiles as he handed Armstrong a signal form. The message on it was brief, but of unsurpassed significance:

  One battleship bearing 240° five miles, course 150°, my position 49° 33’ North, 21° 47’ West. Time of origin, 1030/26.

  “My God, they’ve found her!” Armstrong breathed. He looked at the wall map, where the Bismarck’s position had already been plotted. The position report placed her 550 miles south-west of Ireland, 1,200 miles south-east of Greenland, and just over 750 miles from Cape Finisterre, on the north-west tip of Spain. Assuming she held her present course, another few hours would bring her to within 500 miles of the Cornish Peninsula, just within the combat radius of Kalinski’s Beaufighters and within range of the Beaufort torpedo-bombers at St Eval.

  He called Perranporth on a secure line and contacted Kalinski, telling the Pole to bring his crews to standby. A whoop of jubilation at the other end of the line was all the answer he needed.

  Armstrong’s next call was to the Admiralty, where he spoke to Glendenning and asked the air commodore for further instructions.

  “Let the Halifax crews rest,” Glendenning told him. “With any luck, they won’t be needed for the time being. Ark Royal’s Swordfish are in contact with the Bismarck

  It was true. All night long, Vice Admiral Sir James Somerville’s Force H had been forging ahead to intercept the German battleship, ploughing through waves that reached fifty feet in height. The wind speed over the Ark Royal’s deck was fifty miles per hour. Despite this, soon after first light, the Ark Royal’s captain, Loben Maund, had succeeded in flying off a dozen Swordfish to take part in the search, two of them covering the approaches to Brest.

  At 1050, twenty minutes after Flying Officer Briggs despatched his vital signal — which was followed soon afterwards by another, saying that he had lost contact — the battleship was sighted by Sub Lieutenant Hartley, in Swordfish 2H, although he mistook her for the Prinz Eugen and reported sighting a cruiser. A few minutes later, however, Swordfish 2F arrived, and its pilot, Lieutenant Callander, correctly identified the Bismarck.

  Somerville at once sent off two more Swordfish to relieve the first pair and to make certain. The other eight aircraft had already been recalled to the carrier to be armed with torpedoes, and Somerville needed to know what kind of ship he was dealing with, for a torpedo attack on a cruiser required a shallower d
epth setting.

  Briggs, meanwhile, had regained contact with the battleship, and at 1330 he was relieved by another 209 Squadron Catalina; its captain was Flying Officer Goolden and he was accompanied by another American, Lieutenant Jimmy Johnson. The crew kept in touch with the battleship all afternoon, except for three occasions when they temporarily lost her, and came under frequent fire.

  According to the latest plot the Bismarck was now only ninety miles away from Force H, so Admiral Somerville sent the cruiser Sheffield to shadow the battleship with her Type 79Y radar and, when the opportunity arose, to direct a strike by the carrier’s Swordfish torpedo-bombers. Fourteen of the latter were flown off at 1450 in conditions of high winds, driving rain and rough seas, and some time later their radar revealed a target which their crews assumed was the Bismarck. In fact it was the Sheffield, whose presence in the area had not been signalled to Ark Royal before the strike aircraft took off. As soon as it was received, Captain Maund at once sent an urgent message off to the Swordfish in plain language: ‘Look out for Sheffield.’ It was too late.

  The Swordfish came down through low cloud and attacked from different directions; several of them released their torpedoes before the mistake was recognised, but fortunately — thanks to a combination of effective evasive manoeuvring by the cruiser and faulty magnetic pistols fitted to the torpedoes — no damage was caused.

  This first — and somewhat penitent — strike force returned to the carrier, which at 1910 launched a second wave of fifteen Swordfish. Their torpedoes had been refitted with contact pistols with a depth setting of twenty-two feet; these would not explode unless they hit the battleship’s hull.

  The aircraft, led by Lieutenant Commander Tim Coode, were directed to the target by the Sheffield, but in the prevailing weather conditions, coupled with fading light and heavy defensive fire, they had little chance of making a coordinated attack. Nevertheless, two torpedoes found their mark; one struck the Bismarck’s armoured belt and did little damage, but the other struck her extreme stern, damaging her propellers and jamming her rudders fifteen degrees to port. At 2140 Admiral Lutjens signalled Berlin: ‘Ship no longer manoeuvrable. We fight to the last shell. Long live the Führer.’

  In the Admiralty Operations Room, on board King George V and Renown, the latter Admiral Somerville’s flagship, there was puzzlement as a succession of signals came in from Sheffield and from the Swordfish that were shadowing the Bismarck.

  ‘Enemy’s course 340°,’ signalled the cruiser. But that meant the battleship was steering north-north-west, directly towards Tovey’s force, which was inexplicable. Then a Swordfish reported Bismarck’s course as due north, then north-north-west again, then back to north.

  At first, the pursuers, and those keeping watch on land, thought that the battleship was taking evasive action to avoid torpedoes. Then the full realisation dawned: she was out of control.

  Shortly afterwards, five destroyers, led by Captain Philip Vian in the Cossack, arrived on the scene, having been detached from convoy duty. They made contact with the Bismarck and shadowed her throughout the night, transmitting regular position reports and closing in to make a series of determined torpedo attacks, but these were disrupted by heavy and accurate radar-controlled gunfire. Whether any torpedoes hit their target or not is still a mystery; the destroyer crews maintained that they saw two explosions on the Bismarck, but the survivors of the battleship later stated that no hits were made. Whatever the truth, the Bismarck was seen to reduce speed, so driving a further nail into her own coffin.

  During the night, the battleships King George V and Rodney came within striking distance of their crippled enemy, but Admiral Tovey, aware of the accuracy of her radar-directed gunnery, decided to wait until daylight before engaging her; she had no means of escaping him now.

  But before dawn, an urgent signal reached the Admiralty. A signals officer passed it to Air Commodore Glendenning who, after a welcome rest, was now back on duty.

  “It’s the latest from Ascension, sir,” the officer said. Ascension was the code name for the nightly Hudson sortie over the Channel. The signal read:

  Heavy activity at Bordeaux-Merignac. Bombers being armed and fuelled. Prediction is an early sortie against British warships engaged in hunt for Bismarck. Suggest implement air cover from first light.

  Glendenning showed the signal to Merriman, then reached for the telephone.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The Beaufighters took off one by one, the blue flames from their exhaust stubs glowing against a leaden sky. There were eight of them, six painted black, the other two — reinforcements flown in from a maintenance unit the day before — in grey-green camouflage.

  Armstrong, who had hurried back to Perranporth in the pre-dawn darkness, watched them go. So did a small knot of radar observers, left behind on this mission to save weight, and consequently precious fuel. Armstrong wished with all his heart that he were going with them, but this was Kalinski’s ‘show’, and he had already picked his pilots.

  The Beaufighters climbed away, their shapes becoming hazy and then vanishing altogether as they entered a layer of stratus cloud. The thunder of their powerful Hercules engines dwindled, and was quickly masked by the crackling roar of Rolls-Royce Merlins as a pair of 66 Squadron’s Spitfires started up in their dispersals. A couple of minutes later the sleek fighters taxied out and took off, heading out over the Channel on their dawn patrol.

  Kershaw came over and stood beside Armstrong, offering the latter a cigarette. Armstrong declined. Under the strain of the previous hours, he had abandoned his pipe and had practically chain-smoked a packet of twenty Players, with the result that his tongue tasted foul and furred.

  “Here’s hoping everything goes to plan,” Kershaw said quietly, watching the receding Spitfires. Armstrong grunted his agreement, turning things over in his mind. The interception plan was as good as Kalinski had been able to make it, but a lot depended on luck. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that the German bombers from Bordeaux were setting out to attack the Royal Navy’s warships, but Kalinski was banking on the likelihood that the Germans would be predictable and make their assault an hour or so after first light, with the sun behind them. Experience had taught him that this was their usual tactic.

  With all possible parameters taken into account, such as the cruising speed of the Junkers 88s, estimated take-off time and so on, Kalinski had worked out an interception course which, he calculated, should bring his fighters into contact with the enemy in the area of forty-eight degrees north, fifteen degrees west, some two hundred miles due south of Ireland and about eighty miles from where the Bismarck was moving helplessly in circles.

  *

  On the crippled battleship, the news that bombers and U-boats were on the way to their rescue had come as cheering news to the crew, although some didn’t believe it. Two U-boats were in fact heading for the Bismarck’s last reported position, but one had expended all its torpedoes and the other was damaged. In the torpedo-less U-556, Kapitanleutnant Herbert Wohlfarth had good reason to curse fate. Having used his last torpedoes against a relatively insignificant merchantman, he had suffered the frustration of seeing the Ark Royal and Renown pass by in the night, both within firing range…

  Aboard the Bismarck, on the other hand, two young men had cause, for a fleeting time, to bless their good fortune, although they kept their feelings secret from the rest of the crew. They were the pilot and observer of the battleship’s Arado reconnaissance aircraft. Just before dawn, they were summoned by Admiral Lutjens, who handed them the ship’s log and a film of the engagement with the Hood, sealed in a watertight bag. The Arado was to be catapult-launched immediately and fly to France; the contents of the bag were to be delivered to Admiral Raeder, so that he would have an accurate record of the battleship’s first — and very probably its last — ocean voyage.

  The two airmen settled themselves down in the cockpit. As well as the precious bag, they now carried even more precious documents: s
craps of paper, last messages to loved ones from members of the crew who had heard of their mission at the last minute. Strangely, none seemed jealous of the fact that in just a few hours’ time, the two men would be drinking coffee and eating fresh bread rolls in the warmth of a French canteen.

  The engine was started and warmed up, and the pilot signalled to the catapult launch officer, who pulled the lever that would send the Arado hurtling from the ship.

  Nothing happened. He tried again, with the same result, and a hurried inspection revealed that the compressed air pipe that drove the catapult’s mechanism had been severely damaged by a British shell splinter. It could not be repaired.

  Dejectedly, their faces downcast and with the shadow of death upon them, the airmen climbed down onto the deck. Now they, too, would be going down into the mouth of hell.

  *

  One hundred and fifty miles to the south-west, Kalinski’s formation of Beaufighters flew steadily on at 10,000 feet. The cloud layer below was broken, revealing patches of grey-green sea. From this altitude it looked deceptively calm, broken only by wrinkles; yet each wrinkle was a massive wave, and there would be precious little chance of survival for any aircrew unfortunate enough to go down into that watery wilderness.

  Away to starboard the rising sun was a great red ball, climbing through layers of haze. It was already almost unbearably bright, and Kalinski stared into its glow between the fingers of his left hand, searching the sky on either side. He knew that he was in the right place, on the point of crossing the track of the enemy bombers — what he had no means of knowing was whether they had already gone past, or whether they were still between him and the French coast.

  He decided to take a gamble. Waggling his wings to draw the attention of the other pilots, for he had no intention of breaking radio silence, he swung the formation round to the south-east, heading towards the French coast. Five minutes later, he knew that his gamble had paid off.