Hunt the Bismarck

by Angus Konstam

  On the last dip down to sea level the experienced Rotherham noticed the wind had changed, and altered course slightly to compensate. Then, after 70 minutes, they reached their estimated landfall and he asked Goddard to drop down to the sea again, for another look. The plan was to reach the Norwegian coast off Marstein, a rocky island marking the entrance to the Korsfjord. As they dropped down below 100ft the clouds parted for a moment, and they saw the rock with its lighthouse dead ahead of them.

  Miraculously, the clouds there were at 150ft, and Goddard flew just below them, as the men scanned the Korsfjord below them. They looked into Grimstadfjord and Kalvanes Bay, but found them empty, apart from a few merchant ships. They pressed on to Bergen itself, flying over the roofs of the town, and drawing flak from the German defenders. They were hit, but no real damage was done. On the way out Goddard even flew up the Hjeltefjorden – the likely exit the German ships might have taken. Nothing. It was clear by now that the birds had flown.

  After leaving the Norwegian coast, they headed due west, as Rotherham and Armstrong tried to radio a sighting report on the Coastal Command network. There was no reply. Then they tried calling the control tower at Sparrowhawk, using the frequency used for target-towing exercises. They got through, but for good measure Rotherham had them fly straight to Sumburgh in Shetland, the nearest friendly airfield. As soon as they touched down at 19.45 he ran to the tower to call in a report, only to find a message from Cdre Brind on board the King George V. His transmission had got through, but Brind wanted a full report to pass on to Tovey. This done, the plane was refuelled and they headed back to Orkney. By then, though, Tovey had the information he needed. While the report was a negative one – the German ships had gone – at least the admiral now had something to work with. He could make his move.

  Earlier that afternoon, he had been dealing with the scattered units of his fleet.20 Norfolk was in the Denmark Strait, while Suffolk was refuelling in Hvalfjord in Iceland. He therefore ordered the Suffolk to join the Norfolk immediately, giving Wake-Walker two heavy cruisers with which to patrol the entrance to the Denmark Strait. Similarly, he ordered Arethusa, which was also refuelling in Iceland, to head east at full speed and join the patrol line of cruisers blocking the Iceland–Faeroes gap. Finally, he sent a signal to the battlecruiser Repulse, which was in the Clyde, where a convoy was forming up. She was ordered to refuel, then head north at full speed to rendezvous with the Home Fleet either in Scapa Flow or at sea, somewhere to the west of Orkney. As it happened, Captain William Tennant of the Repulse received his new orders at 22.00 that evening, as he was steaming past the island of Islay. He would rendezvous with Tovey at 07.00 the following morning (24 May), to the north-west of the Outer Hebrides.

  Those deployments out of the way, Tovey was free to deal with his main force. That evening, King George V and Victorious were already at short notice to sail, and just before 21.00 the long-awaited order was flashed out by signal lamp.21 The two ships would put to sea at 22.15, accompanied by the light cruisers Aurora, Galatea, Hermione and Kenya, plus six destroyers – Active, Inglefield, Intrepid, Lance, Punjabi and Windsor. Tovey still had no idea where the German ships were, but he had to presume the worst – they were about to attempt to break out into the Atlantic. His plan was therefore to place this powerful force – the bulk of the Home Fleet – to the south of Iceland. That way they could intercept any breakout attempt, whether the Germans headed through the Denmark Strait or the Iceland–Faeroes gap.

  That night, Tovey’s force duly slipped past the opened boom and headed out into the Pentland Firth. After picking up Repulse at 07.00 the next morning, they would then alter course slightly towards the east-north-east, and head out into the vastness of the Atlantic. By then, though – even before the Home Fleet steamed out of Scapa Flow – contact had been made with the enemy. Admiral Tovey knew where the enemy were, and R. Adm. Wake-Walker’s two cruisers were busy playing cat and mouse with a German battleship and her powerful consort.

  Chapter 8

  The Denmark Strait

  First contact

  Being a lookout on an open-topped bridge was often an unpleasant duty. It was particularly so that evening on board Norfolk, as the British heavy cruiser loitered off the north-west corner of Iceland. It was freezing cold, intermittent icy rain showers soaked everyone on the bridge, and the lookouts were forced to keep as sharp an eye out for ice floes as they did for the Germans.1 Huddled in his duffle coat, wearing his senior officer’s cap pulled down tight, was R. Adm. Frederic Wake-Walker. The somewhat dour 58-year-old commander of the 1st Cruiser Squadron was sipping a cup of cocoa and peering into the fog swirling off the Icelandic coast. He had been in the navy since he was 15, had seen service in the last war, and was an expert in torpedo warfare.

  In April 1940, as the rear admiral running Dover Command, he coordinated the evacuation from Dunkirk. When his flagship, the destroyer Keith, was sunk under him, he continued supervising the evacuation from a motor torpedo boat. Wake-Walker was therefore a determined man, and he knew his job. What’s more, on the evening of 23 May 1941 he was a man with a very clear mission: his task was to spot any German ships trying to slip through the Denmark Strait. He was then to shadow them and send reports back to Admiral Tovey. He wasn’t there to fight the Bismarck – only to help other, more powerful, warships to bring her to battle.

  When the Bismarck first began her sortie, Wake-Walker’s flagship Norfolk was heading north to the Denmark Strait to relieve her near sister-ship Suffolk, commanded by Captain Robert Ellis.2 When the flagship arrived there Ellis and his men had been on patrol there for 11 days in cold, miserable weather. Suffolk was low on fuel. So, on 18 May – the day Bismarck left Gotenhafen – Suffolk was ordered to break off and head for Hvalfjord in Iceland in order to refill her oil tanks. She made the passage at night, and the following evening she returned to her station, by which time Norfolk had arrived to keep her company. Wake-Walker’s flagship had refuelled in Hvalfjord before she took up station, so now both cruisers were fully ‘topped up’ and ready for business.

  On 22 May, while Bismarck and Prinz Eugen were in Bergen, Wake-Walker took the Norfolk in to Isafjorđur, where a new British radar station was being set up on the bleak rocky headland on its northern side, from which it could sweep the approaches to the Denmark Strait. It wasn’t operational yet – work had only just started – but Wake-Walker inspected it, and being a keen amateur botanist, he also seized the opportunity to look out for local wild flowers. The following morning, Suffolk also edged into the fjord and Wake-Walker asked Ellis to join him and Captain Alfred Phillips of the Norfolk so that they could discuss the patrol.3 He shared the latest intelligence reports – the fact that Bismarck had left the Korsfjord – and added that he expected that she and her consort, a heavy cruiser, would make for the Denmark Strait. Ellis returned to his ship, and minutes later the flagship ordered her to put to sea.

  The plan was for Suffolk to move to within 15 miles of the Greenland pack ice and patrol the entrance of the Denmark Strait, cruising on a north-easterly course, then reversing course every three hours. In daylight, this meant that Suffolk’s lookouts would be able to spot any enemy ship entering the western side of the Strait. These lookouts had a vital role to play – any delay in sighting Bismarck could lead to the cruiser being ripped apart by the battleship’s guns. To help them, Suffolk also carried a Type 273 search radar, which in theory could detect large surface ships at a range of up to 18 miles.4 In practice, 13 miles was more realistic. Norfolk carried a similar set, but while the one on Suffolk could be turned to make it more effective, and covered everywhere apart from astern of the ship, Norfolk’s set was fixed and had a more limited 150-degree arc, ahead of the cruiser.

  So, while Suffolk cruised off the pack ice, Norfolk took up position about 15 miles south of her, further out into the Strait. That afternoon, as the cruisers began their patrol, a thick freezing fog clung to the Icelandic coast, extending 30 miles out into the Strait. Still,
the minefields would seal off the eastern side of the Strait. Everywhere else visibility was good – as much as 20 miles; Ellis and his men could even see the glaciers of Greenland in the distance. The sea was relatively calm, although meteorological reports suggested the fog over Iceland would spread and thicken a little during the evening. So, if Bismarck and her consort made a run through the Denmark Strait that evening, Wake-Walker was confident his men would spot them.

  The lookouts and radar operators on the two cruisers weren’t the only ones looking for the Germans. Almost 500 miles to the south-east, seamen on board the light cruisers Arethusa, Birmingham and Manchester were also at full alert.5 So too were the men on board the smaller vessels of the Northern Patrol, cruising the same waters, or those between the Faeroes and Orkney. The airmen of Coastal Command, too, were doing the same, now that the low skies had lifted slightly, and patrol aircraft were active between Iceland and Orkney. To the west of Scapa Flow, Tovey and his Home Fleet were at sea, eagerly waiting for the first sighting report. Similarly, V. Adm. Holland’s force was well on the way to the Denmark Strait, ready to seal it off. So far, however, there was no sign of the enemy.

  The afternoon wore on. On board Suffolk, Captain Ellis was thankful that during the ship’s refit in Greenock the previous year the cruiser’s bridge had been ‘Articised’, i.e. enclosed and provided with heating. While bridge lookouts still looked through its windows with binoculars, others wrapped in duffle coats and woolly hats remained outside, stamping their feet to keep warm and peering into the distance. While Ellis was delighted with his new radar, he was aware that it didn’t cover astern of him, and funnel smoke also helped obscure the view behind the bridge. So, on the south-western leg of his patrol he knew he was largely blind – a situation that required him to station extra lookouts in the stern superstructure. So, on that leg he veered over towards the middle of the Strait, close to the edge of the bank of fog. That way, if he were taken by surprise, he could hide his ship in the murk. His job was to spot the enemy, not to fight them.

  18.00 marked the changing of a watch – the end of the First Dog and the start of the Last Dog Watch. Unlike the other five watches in the naval day, these lasted two hours rather than four – the idea being to make the total number of watches an odd number, so helping to vary the crew’s watchkeeping routine. In fact, Ellis had been changing his lookouts every hour that afternoon – it paid to keep them sharp and keyed up. That Last Dog Watch, his scheme paid off. At 19.00, an hour after the start of the watch, Able Seaman Alf ‘Ginger’ Newall took up his position as the after starboard lookout, stationed just outside the bridge. By 19.20 he had been at his post for 20 minutes, and in that time he’d noticed that the fog had become patchy and seemed to be spreading closer to the ship.6 Over towards Greenland the distant horizon had become obscured, too, and visibility was dropping as dusk crept in. Then he tensed, raised his binoculars and peered through them again.

  His job was to sweep the starboard side of the Suffolk, from her beam to dead astern. He must have made that same sweep dozens of times that evening, and seen nothing. The cruiser was heading towards the south-west, on the return leg of her patrol. That meant her radar wasn’t going to pick up anything behind her. So, it was up to Ginger and his shipmates to detect anything coming up astern of them. He was getting bored of looking at empty sea and sky, and at 19.22, after another sweep of the empty horizon, he lowered his binoculars to his lap and rubbed his eyes. When he opened them again he spotted something – a ship emerging on the haze-filled horizon. Then, as he peered through his binoculars, he saw another one emerge behind it. He immediately called out to the officer of the watch: ‘Bearing Green One Four Oh – two ships!’ On the bridge, everyone turned to look along that bearing – over the starboard quarter of the cruiser. Now there was no doubt. Ginger had spotted the Bismarck.

  A Game of cat and mouse

  On board the Bismarck that evening, the tension increased as the two German ships approached the northern end of the Denmark Strait. Officially, the Strait began at a line running between Straumnes, the north-western tip of Iceland’s Westfjord peninsula, and Cape Nansen in Greenland, roughly 200 miles away to the north-west. Until 18.00 that evening, Bismarck, followed by Prinz Eugen, had been running due west, towards the coast of Greenland and its girdle of pack ice. Earlier, a fresh meteorological report from Group North suggested that the poor visibility might continue, with rain, low cloud and patchy fog. However, the visibility improved during the day, although patches of snow tended to hinder the job of the lookouts.7 It was also freezing, and as the ships steamed on towards that invisible line in the sea, fragments of ice in the water tinkled against their metal hulls.

  They were making 25 knots now, and ahead of them the crews saw the line of blue-white pack ice fringing the Greenland coast. Then, beyond it, due west, the ice-covered glaciers of Greenland itself appeared, clear against the late afternoon sky. As Müllenheim-Rechberg put it: ‘I had to resist the temptation to let myself be bewitched by this icy landscape longer than was compatible with the watchfulness required of us all, as we steamed at high speed through the narrowest part of the strait.’8 The Bismarck’s FuMo23 radar – one each on top of the forward and after superstructure – swept the surrounding waters as they went. In theory, it could detect an enemy ship at 13.5 miles. In practice, though, for ships smaller than battleships, a range of 6 miles was more realistic. The ship’s SB hydrophones also provided another form of warning, as the operators listened for the sound of ships’ propellers.

  At 18.11 the alarm bells sounded – enemy ships spotted to starboard.9 A moment later, however, everyone relaxed. The lookouts had spotted icebergs rising out of the pack ice, and the cold air and tense atmosphere had led to the imagination of one lookout playing tricks. Still, it was now clear that they were approaching the outer edge of the pack ice. So, at 18.21, Lütjens ordered his ships to turn to port and follow a course towards the south-south-west. By then, he reckoned he was safely past the line of the British minefields and as close to the western side of the channel as he could sensibly go. A half-mile astern, Prinz Eugen followed the flagship, and together they entered the Denmark Strait. Just before 19.00 they found ice floes had broken off from the pack ice and the ships had to zigzag slightly to keep clear of them – something that helped keep everyone on their toes.

  Müllenheim-Rechberg noted that off to port there was a thick wall of fog, while immediately to their right were broken pieces of pack ice. It was freezing cold and the visibility ahead of them was crystal clear, but that haze on the southern horizon meant that the lookouts could only see a few miles ahead of them. Patches of fog appeared, too, between the fog bank and the pack ice. Then, at 19.22, the alarm was sounded.10 The crews of both ships were already at Action Stations, standing alternate watches, which meant that most people were already at their posts. The alarm had been sounded by the hydrophone operator, who had picked up the sound of twin propellers off their port bow. Müllenheim-Rechberg was at the battleship’s after gunnery director, but even with its powerful rangefinding equipment he couldn’t see anything. Then the radar picked up the contact too. Something was definitely out there.

  The radar contact revealed a ship, possibly an enemy cruiser, heading south-south-west – directly away from them – at high speed. The lookouts thought they saw a glimpse of her, but the fog made it difficult to make her out. Then, a brief rent in the wall of fog revealed her shadowy outline, fine off their port bow. It was a three-masted warship – undoubtedly a British heavy cruiser. The battleship’s guns were already trained in that direction, but before they could fire, the target disappeared again. Quite sensibly, the cruiser hadn’t wanted to become a target and had darted back into the fog.

  On board the Suffolk – the three-masted warship – it seemed as if time stood still for a few moments. Everyone looked at the German ships in amazement, their outlines appearing black against the white sea, mist and ice. Captain Ellis raced out on to the starboard br
idge wing and stood next to ‘Ginger’ Newall, looking aft through his binoculars. The two ships were about 7 miles away – he could clearly see the ‘V’ of the leading ship’s bow wave.11 Ellis turned to look ahead. His cruiser was just on the edge of the wall of fog, heading towards the south-west. He yelled into the bridge, calling for an immediate hard turn to port. As the ship slowly began to swing round, he kept watching the two German ships, expecting to see the flash of their heavy guns. No enemy salvo came and seconds later the fog shrouded them, and the enemy were lost from view. The Suffolk’s captain was in no doubt about what they were. For the first time since the PRU flight over the Korsfjord 36 hours before, Bismarck and Prinz Eugen had been spotted.

  The immediate crisis over, Ellis walked back into his bridge and ordered his ship to run on a parallel course, sheltered inside the fog bank, but he reduced speed slightly. His plan was to work his way behind the German ships and then use his radar to shadow them.12 Meanwhile, his first priority was to report his sighting.

  Elsewhere, the ship was a hive of activity, having already been called to Action Stations. Half of the crew were already at their posts; the rest tumbled out of mess decks and bunks or, worse, abandoned their evening meal. In the wardroom, pre-dinner drinks had just been served, but these were abandoned as the officers began a headlong rush for the door. A midshipman, running on to the quarterdeck, spotted the two dark ships through the mist. At first he thought they were Hood and Prince of Wales, until his shipmates told him the bad news. His ship was now playing the role of a mouse, being chased by two very ferocious cats.