Hunt the Bismarck

by Angus Konstam

  However, by the evening of the 21st the rain and low cloud had swept in and the skies were completely overcast, with a cloud base of just 100ft. As a result, the mission was cancelled, which meant that nothing could be done until the following morning.11 Even then, meteorologists predicted that the bad weather over Bergen was set to continue for up to 24 hours. So, there was nothing for it but to wait until dawn and then send off PRU aircraft and Coastal Command search planes in the hope of finding the Germans still anchored near Bergen, or else locating them somewhere in the Norwegian Sea. It was a tense night for the British, particularly for Admiral Tovey, who had to make his naval dispositions without any real idea of where the two German warships were, or which way they were heading.

  A lazy afternoon

  Back in the Grimstadfjord, the on-duty flak crews of the Bismarck had heard the sound of Suckling’s aircraft and the anti-aircraft watch had been sounded.12 However, the aircraft hadn’t been spotted; the two Bf 109 fighters flying over the battleship remained unaware of the intruder, so the battleship’s flak guns remained silent. It was only afterwards that the sound of the Spitfire’s engine was heard over Kalvanes Bay and the alarm was raised. This, though, was the only thing to disturb what turned out to be a lazy, sun-kissed afternoon. Many of the crew took the opportunity to sun themselves on the upper deck, while a few tried their hand at fishing.13 The battleship lay quite close to the north-eastern shore of the small inlet and her crew could spy Norwegian civilians standing outside their houses, staring at the largest vessel ever seen in their little bay.

  It was an idyllic scene and the sailors were amused when they saw a little rowing boat put out from the shore, with a German soldier at the oars. As he reached the battleship he called up, saying he had run out of tobacco and begging the sailors for some cigarettes. Within minutes, several buckets had been lowered down, filled with enough cigarettes and tobacco to keep the soldier smoking for a year. Then the men went back to their sunbathing. The scene, however, was not without its detractors. A machinist heard another engineering technician say idly: ‘Frightful, when you think in a week everyone sunning here on board today could be dead.’14 Fortunately for the two engineers, they survived the week’s events. Most of their shipmates were not so lucky.

  Clearly, word of the Bismarck’s arrival had spread throughout the area. A little after noon, Maj. Otto Schneider, an army doctor based in Bergen, received a telephone call, telling him that the Bismarck was anchored less than 4.5 miles away, in the Grimstadfjord.15 His brother served on board, and so he and two companions negotiated the use of a fast motorboat, which took them out into the Korsfjord, then down into the inlet to the south. Later, he described what he saw there: ‘After a short fast ride we turned into a bay and saw a bewitching sight. Before us, the Bismarck lay like a silver-grey dream from A Thousand and One Nights. In spite of her mighty superstructure, gun barrels and armour, her silhouette was a thing of beauty, almost as though it were worked in filigree.’

  Once alongside, he met his brother Adalbert and was invited aboard. Otto had been exhilarated by his speedboat ride, saying it did 32 knots. He was amazed when his brother told him Bismarck was just as fast, if not a little faster. Korvettenkapitän Adalbert Schneider was Bismarck’s chief gunnery officer, in charge of her main armament. He was evidently proud of his ship, and her abilities.16 ‘We’re stronger than anything faster, and faster than anything stronger,’ he boasted. He added, ‘Nothing can really happen to us.’ In the wardroom, where Otto was invited for lunch, he found a similar mood of optimism. One officer claimed that up to now their voyage had been ‘a pleasure cruise’. However, the officers seemed a little more apprehensive when discussing what might happen next, when they tried to break out into the Atlantic.

  Afterwards, Adalbert took Otto to his cabin, where he showed his brother a recent picture of his three daughters, and together they wrote joint postcards to friends and family, which Otto promised to mail home from Bergen. Kapitän Lindemann had graciously allowed Otto to remain on board while they sailed that evening, and agreed to put him ashore in the pilot boat when the Bismarck reached the open sea. This allowed the two brothers to spend some time together. Otto was also able to watch the battleship’s crew prepare to sail. As a gunnery officer, Adalbert had no immediate duties and so the brothers were able to watch the departure, while talking about family, the war and their plans for the future.

  Adalbert continued to reassure Otto that the Bismarck was as safe as she was powerful, but his brother was not wholly convinced. As Bismarck reached the northern mouth of the Korsfjord, Otto went to the bridge to thank Lindemann for his kindness.17 They shook hands, but the doctor thought that Lindemann looked pale, and with hindsight he felt he seemed pensive. Still, the pilot boat came alongside; then Otto stepped aboard and waved farewell to his brother before the battleship was swallowed up in the darkness. It was the last time Otto Schneider saw his brother alive.

  Slipping away

  When Lütjens learned of the mysterious aircraft he must have realised that his task force had been detected. He would have worked out that a reconnaissance plane would return to base, and any photographs it had taken might well reveal the location of his ships. That in turn meant that by the evening, the British were likely to launch a bombing raid on his two anchorages. It took three hours to refuel the Prinz Eugen from the Wollin. By that time, the fleet commander had decided that he couldn’t linger in his pleasant anchorage. So, the refuelling of the Bismarck was cancelled, and the Wollin remained in Kalvanes Bay. Lütjens had other options: the tanker Weissenburg was already at sea, lingering beyond the Arctic Circle, near Jan Mayen island; and other tankers were deployed off the southern tip of Greenland, or further south in the North Atlantic.18 As a result, he felt he could accept the risk of not topping up Bismarck’s fuel tanks in Norway while he had the chance.

  This decision made, he spent the afternoon poring over charts or consulting with his intelligence staff. The indications from Group North were that the British Home Fleet were still at anchor in Scapa Flow. Recent photographs had been flown to Bergen, then shipped down to him. The same fuel constraints meant that his rival Admiral Tovey would only make his move when he had firm information about Bismarck’s whereabouts. Thus, his greatest threat at the moment came from an air attack in Norwegian waters, or from British submarines patrolling off the coast. However, this could all change when the British reconnaissance plane reported its findings. So, the sooner his task force put to sea, the better.

  At 19.00 that evening he gave orders for his ships to prepare to sail.19 Thirty minutes later, at 19.30, the Bismarck raised her anchor and headed out of the Grimstadfjord into the main channel to the west. She steamed northwards and met the three waiting destroyers off the channel leading to Bergen. As the Bismarck passed Kalvanes Bay the Prinz Eugen came out and joined her. Then, in line astern, the task force threaded its way out of the channel leading towards the open sea. The line was led by Sperrbrecher 13, followed by Bismarck, then Prinz Eugen and Sperrbrecher 31. Astern of them came the three destroyers. Given the high risk of a British air strike, all of the crews were at anti-aircraft stations, and the lookouts scanned the sky ahead of them for signs of enemy bombers.

  After passing Kalvanes Bay the line of ships entered the Hjeltefjorden, a 30-mile-long channel that led off to the north-north-west.20 The task force sailed up the fjord at 17 knots, with the long, thin chain of islands on their port side shielding them from the open sea. If the British planes came, they would appear over this line of islands. However, the transit of the fjord continued without incident. At 20.00, the escorting Luftwaffe fighters had to break off, but by then they were far enough away from their old anchorage that the risk of air attacks had diminished. The Bergen pilot boat guided them through the channel past Herdla, where a German-manned battery on their starboard side guarded the approaches to Bergen. There, the fjord widened slightly into the Fedjeosen. It was a peaceful evening, despite the worsening weather, a
nd the fog had lifted sufficiently to allow the officers grouped on the quarterdeck to see the wooded islands as they slipped by.

  During this transit, Korvettenkapitän Rechberg, in charge of the flagship B-Dienst unit, brought an intercept to the bridge. It told Lütjens that the British Coastal Command aircraft were actively searching for him.21 While this was worrying, it justified his decision to leave the anchorage. He was still one step ahead. As the line of ships passed the skerries fringing the island of Fedje, the Bismarck heaved-to for a moment, to drop Dr Schneider off in the pilot boat. The pilot was then detached and the warships headed out into the Norwegian Sea.

  It was now dark, and as the destroyers took up position ahead and to the sides of the larger ships, they headed out towards the north-west at 20 knots, steering a zigzag course.22 As the land fell away astern of them they noticed the wind had strengthened to a Force 4, and the sky was overcast. This was ideal since it made detection by enemy aircraft virtually impossible. It was then that Lütjens signalled Group North, asking for a fresh update on the Home Fleet in Scapa Flow – information that would help him decide which route he would take into the North Atlantic. Shortly before midnight, the staff navigator declared they were past the bulge in the coast to the north, and so the warships turned north. They were now heading deeper into the Norwegian Sea, towards the Arctic Circle.

  It was then that lookouts saw a glow in the darkness astern of them.23 It seemed to be coming from the Norwegian coast, somewhere close to Bergen. This was followed by a signal from Group North, which reported that five British aircraft had been sighted 6.2 miles north of Bergen, flying south. They had dropped bombs and flares over Kalvanes Bay, where the Prinz Eugen had been just a few hours before. While this wasn’t the major bombing raid Lütjens had expected, it was clearly a prelude to it. The British were merely throwing in what was available that evening. Had they remained in the Korsfjord, the task force could have expected a much larger air attack there the following morning. The fleet admiral must have quietly congratulated himself on his sense of timing.

  He was now safely back at sea and heading northwards towards the latitudes of the Faeroes and then Iceland. It was time to prepare for the breakout into the North Atlantic. One final message from Group North had told him that as of that afternoon, the major warships of the Home Fleet were still in Scapa Flow. That suggested that he had a reasonable chance of slipping through the British blockade without running into any enemy battleships. That must have been a reassuring thought. Little did Lütjens know, however, that at roughly the same time his force had turned north after leaving the Norwegian coast, V. Adm. Holland’s flagship Hood, accompanied by Prince of Wales and six destroyers, had sailed from Scapa Flow and were at that moment speeding towards Iceland, with orders to intercept Bismarck and bring her to battle.

  Chapter 7

  Move and Countermove

  The green phone

  Early on 21 May, while Admiral Lütjens was approaching Bergen, Admiral Tovey was in his spacious cabin on board the King George V, swinging at her mooring off Flotta, in Scapa Flow. At 08.00, in the adjacent office, the green telephone rang.1 It was answered by Commander (Cdr) Ronald Paffard, a supply officer and Admiral Tovey’s secretary. He immediately called in the admiral’s chief-of-staff, Commodore (Cdre) Patrick Brind. Known as ‘Daddy’ for his paternal nature, Brind was an experienced officer who first saw action at Jutland. He immediately understood the importance of the call. It was the Admiralty’s intelligence section, passing on the information from Captain Denham’s signal, sent from Stockholm the previous night. Two large German warships had passed through the Kattegat the previous afternoon, heading towards the north-west. Brind didn’t need to glance at the chart to guess the importance of the news. As he knocked on the door of the admiral’s cabin he already had a shrewd idea of what those two warships were, and where they were heading.

  Once he’d heard Brind’s report, Tovey was also pretty sure that the two warships were the Bismarck and Prinz Eugen. Recent intelligence reports had told him that both ships had just completed their training period in Gotenhafen and that preparations were being made for them to leave the Baltic port. An increase in German air activity – patrols over the North Sea and Norwegian Sea, and high-altitude reconnaissance flights over Orkney – all suggested something was about to happen. Then there was the news from the French Resistance that new battleship moorings were being prepared in Brest. It all pointed to one thing: the Bismarck was coming out. Cdre Brind agreed. The report from Denham might be wrong, or the German ships might just be on a training exercise, but Tovey really didn’t think so. This was what he’d been waiting for.

  First, however, he had to be sure. The Admiralty had already requested that the RAF conduct an aerial reconnaissance of the Norwegian fjords. That meant the PRU unit based in Wick. Before Tovey examined his options, he therefore gave Brind a series of orders – things that could be done right away. First, he put the fleet on short notice to sail.2 Signal flags fluttered up the foremast of the flagship, and across the anchorage captains ordered their engineers to flash up boilers, and cancelled leave. Next, Tovey ordered Brind to call in Captain Wilfed Patterson, the ship’s commanding officer, who confirmed the flagship was fully armed, stored and ready for sea. That left his other major units – the battlecruiser Hood, flagship of Tovey’s second-in-command V. Adm. Lancelot Holland; the new battleship Prince of Wales; and the equally new aircraft carrier Victorious. Tovey wasn’t too concerned about Hood – he knew Captain Kerr ran a well-ordered ship. He was more worried about the two newcomers.

  For this reason, the admiral called his own staff officers into his day cabin, as well as V. Adm. Holland and Captain Kerr from the Hood, and Captain Leach from the Prince of Wales. Victorious had sailed from Scapa that morning to conduct exercises to the west of Orkney, so she would have to wait. On that calm and sunny day, as the routine of the anchorage continued, Tovey stayed in his day cabin, conferred with Holland and worked out his plan. Meanwhile, two PRU Spitfires were flying towards Norway and one would soon pass over the Korsfjord. Meanwhile, the routine of the anchored fleet went on as usual. Visits still continued to other ships, or to the naval bases and facilities at Lyness and Flotta. Ship’s boats and drifters still plied around the anchorage, carrying mail to or from the ships, along with patients on their way to the shore hospital or naval dentist, sports teams to football or rugby games, and officers with fishing rods or golf clubs. Only the two admirals and their staffs spent the day waiting, planning and organising.

  Then, in mid-afternoon, a call came through from the RAF airfield at Wick, 26 miles to the south, on the Scottish mainland. It broke the news that two warships had been spotted near Bergen – a Bismarck class battleship and a Hipper class cruiser. This was the news Tovey had been waiting for. He already knew that Coastal Command had been sending out search planes, but this was the first sighting of the missing warships. That gave him something to work with. Undoubtedly – as the PRU report said – these were the same large warships spotted in the Kattegat the previous day. So, Tovey knew where the enemy were. He now had to work out what the Germans intended to do, and how to stop them.

  While a small RAF bomber force had been gathered to attack these warships, Tovey had little faith in them achieving very much. The weather was proving fickle, and a front of overcast skies and poor weather was moving in from the south-west. This meant that by the time a larger force had been gathered, the low cloud had rendered flying impossible. It also prevented any further PRU flights taking off. By late afternoon, the same conditions had settled over Orkney. However, this didn’t stop Captain Leach of the Prince of Wales going ashore for a spot of fishing at the start of the Dog Watches (16.00), accompanied by two brothers, both officers on the battleship. A ship’s boat landed them at Scapa Pier, where they waited for a taxi to whisk them off to the nearby Loch of Kirbister. Fortunately for the fish, they’d barely reached the loch when another car arrived and a breathless midshipman to
ld the captain that the battleship had just received the signal ‘raise steam without dispatch’. So, they raced back to the pier, where the ship’s launch took them back on board.

  The engineering officer had everything under control, so Captain Leach changed back into his uniform and waited for the inevitable summons to the flagship. Sure enough, the flag signal came at 19.40 and the captain’s gig set off for the King George V, as did the admiral’s barge from the Hood. Precedent demanded that V. Adm. Holland board first, so Leach and his crew waited in the lee of their sister ship before coming alongside the accommodation ladder. At 20.00, after being welcomed by Captain Patterson, the two officers walked aft to the admiral’s cabin, where Tovey, Holland, Kerr and Brind were already waiting. Without further preamble, Tovey broke the news and announced his decision:3 Holland would take the Hood and Prince of Wales to sea that evening, accompanied by six destroyers. Their job was to intercept the Bismarck and bring her to battle.

  During the afternoon, Admiral Tovey had considered the task facing him and then made his decision. The first issue was figuring out what the Germans were doing there. They could just be escorting a convoy to Bergen, which explained all the merchant ships in the area. They might be heading further north, to establish a base near Trondheim or even Narvik, beyond the easy range of British bombers. They might even be part of a German force assembling to launch an invasion of Iceland. All of these were moves that could have far-reaching consequences for the Home Fleet. The most dangerous possibility, though, was that the two warships were planning to break out into the North Atlantic. This, then, was the contingency that Tovey had to plan for. At all costs he had to prevent the Germans from entering the vastness of the Atlantic, where they would be much harder to find, and where every Allied convoy would be a potential target.