Afterwards, Admiral Lütjens was criticised for not finishing off the damaged Prince of Wales. Given her faulty guns, she would have been hard-pressed to inflict much more damage on the German battleship. However, Lütjens himself had drawn up the rules of engagement for the operation, and they clearly laid out what his priorities were: he was to avoid all unnecessary fighting, particularly with British capital ships. Instead, Bismarck and Prinz Eugen were there to disrupt British merchant shipping. So, his mission was clear. Yes, he might have doubled the glory by sinking Britain’s newest battleship, as well as the Hood. However, he would be placing his two ships at risk, and more British battleships might be lurking just over the horizon. That wasn’t why he was in the Denmark Strait. So, the two German ships continued on their way.
By then, Lütjens had been handed his damage report.4 Prinz Eugen had come through the battle without a scratch, but Bismarck had received three hits, all from 14in. shells fired from the British battleship, which they still thought was the King George V. One had struck the boat deck, damaging a picket boat and temporarily jamming the aircraft catapult. Another struck the waterline amidships, just below the armoured belt. The shell had penetrated the hull and caused flooding in No. 2 boiler room, temporarily putting two boilers out of action. Five engineers had been wounded by scalding steam when a high-pressure pipe had been severed. The men were now being treated, the sea water pumped out, and the engineers were hoping they could repair the boilers. At that point of her hull the Bismarck had a void space, designed to absorb most of a shell’s explosive force. It had done its job, and so the ship was spared more extensive damage.
The third hit was more of a problem.5 The 14in. shell had struck the port bow near the waterline, immediately below the focsle. It had penetrated the lightly protected ship’s side, passed through the hull and then the starboard side of the hull, all without exploding. On the way it had punctured two oil tanks and damaged their suction valves, which were used to move oil from the tanks to the engine room. This oil was now seeping out, and sea water was contaminating the oil that remained. As a result, Bismarck had lost upwards of a thousand tons of her fuel oil. When Operation Rheinübung had been organised, Lütjens had stationed two tankers off the southern tip of Greenland. However, with Norfolk and Suffolk shadowing him, he couldn’t rendezvous with them without placing the tankers at risk.
Thanks to the flooding, the battleship’s bows were also riding rather low in the water and she had a slight list to port. As a result, the starboard propeller was riding high and breaking the surface. So, Kapitän Lindemann ordered the ship to be counter-flooded to restore his ship’s trim. In theory this would all be sorted out once the holes were plugged and the sea water pumped out. Meanwhile, with two of her boilers out of commission, Bismarck was limited to a top speed of 28 knots. Over the next hour or so Lütjens would find out how the repair teams were faring. The reports from them weren’t encouraging. No. 2 boiler had been completely flooded and, next to it, electrical generator No. 4 had been damaged. This reduced the ship’s electrical output slightly. All of this was, however, largely immaterial compared to the loss of the fuel.
It was all a matter of capacity and consumption. When Bismarck sailed from Gotenhafen she had 8,100 tons of fuel oil in her tanks. A little over 1,200 tons of this was consumed during the voyage to Bergen, and she hadn’t refuelled there when she had the chance. Another 1,600 tons of fuel had been burned up during the voyage from Norway to the Denmark Strait, and she had used up another 440 tons that morning. By 07.00, when Lütjens requested an updated fuel report, Bismarck had used approximately 3,240 tons of her fuel oil, leaving her with roughly 4,860 tons in her tanks. Of these, about 1,000 tons was now either contaminated or had leaked out through the shell holes in her hull. That left around 3,860 tons of fuel available to her. As such, the lucky hit from Prince of Wales had deprived Bismarck of some 20 per cent of her remaining fuel.
Lütjens was well aware that Bismarck used up 1,000 tons or so of fuel every day while she was at sea, as long as she kept at something close to her top speed. The hit had therefore not only deprived him of fuel, but it had also reduced the battleship’s radius of operations by a little over 1,000 miles. That meant that unless she managed to rendezvous with one of her tankers, she needed to put in to a friendly port within the next four days. With Wake-Walker shadowing him and the Home Fleet probably just over the horizon, refuelling at sea wasn’t really a viable option. So, Lütjens could either attempt to break contact with them, with no guarantee of success, or he could put in to a friendly port. These meant either returning to the Norwegian coast or even the Baltic, or pressing on into the Atlantic and heading towards Brest or another of the French ports. The first option was unappealing, as the Home Fleet was well placed to intercept him. So, that left the French coast.
Shortly after the battle ended, a signal had been sent to Group North in Wilhelmshaven.6 It said simply: ‘Battlecruiser, probably Hood sunk. Another battleship, King George V or Renown, turned away damaged. Two heavy cruisers maintain contact.’ Interestingly, this suggested their second adversary hadn’t been properly identified. However, both Lütjens and Lindemann were fairly certain she was the King George V. Due to atmospheric problems, the signal wasn’t received or acknowledged for seven hours, despite being sent repeatedly. Thirty minutes later he expanded on it, giving the position of the engagement, although he now referred to the vessel he’d sunk as a ‘battleship’.
Shortly after 07.00, Lütjens sent another signal. This time it was directed to Group West, based in Paris. The dividing line between the sea area controlled by Group North and Group West ran westwards from the northern line of the Outer Hebrides. So, as he intended to cross this line later that day, he had to keep Generaladmiral Alfred Saalwächter in Paris informed of his intentions. This signal read: ‘Hood destroyed within five minutes in gunnery duel at 06.00 this morning. King George V turned away after hits. My speed reduced. Stem down due to hit in foreship.’ This time there was no mention of the Renown. Then he waited for more news from Bismarck’s damage control parties, and discussed the situation with both chief-of-staff Harald Netzband and with Kapitän Lindemann. By 08.00, the admiral had reached a decision.
At 08.01, Lütjens sent the following signal directly to Grossadmiral Raeder in Berlin.7 It declared: ‘Intention: To proceed to St Nazaire. Prinz Eugen cruiser warfare.’ In essence, this meant that he intended to detach the heavy cruiser if the opportunity presented itself, so it could continue to prey on British shipping in the Atlantic. Then, after shaking off her pursuers, Bismarck would head to St Nazaire on her own. Raeder would have quickly worked out that Bismarck could make the journey to the French coast in about 60 hours, which meant that if all went well, she would arrive there by the evening of 26 May. More likely, given the need to evade the Home Fleet, she would reach St Nazaire the following morning. While Raeder would have preferred Bismarck to return to German waters, the important thing now was her safe return to a friendly port.
At 08.30, a celebration was being held in Bismarck’s wardroom, where everyone was congratulating Schneider, the first gunnery officer. Kapitän Lindemann was there too, but he didn’t take the opportunity to brief his officers on this change of plan. Instead, according to Müllenheim-Rechberg, all his fellow officers thought that Operation Rheinübung was still going ahead as planned. It was only at noon, when the two ships changed course and headed due south, that he realised something was up. Later, he wrote: ‘The only thing clear to me at the moment was that our operation had not gone at all according to our hopes: Our breakthrough was anything but undetected. In fact, we had been in a battle.’8 He added, though, that while he would have preferred that the operation would continue, he wasn’t privy to the information available to his fleet commander.
Lütjens was well aware that he was being shadowed, and that Tovey would be steaming to intercept him. So, his first priority was to steam away from Tovey by continuing on to the Atlantic. Next, he needed to
shake off his pursuers. Only then could he safely detach the Prinz Eugen and head for the French coast. Still, both Lütjens and Lindemann were fairly confident they could find a way to evade the British cruisers during the night. They spent the afternoon considering that problem, while Bismarck’s crew continued to try to repair their ship. Captain Brinkmann of the Prinz Eugen was also informed of the plan via a series of visual signals.
Meanwhile, at Lütjen’s request in another signal, Admiral Dönitz, commanding the U-boat fleet, had ordered the seven U-boats in the vicinity to form a patrol line to the south-east of Cape Farewell in Greenland.9 There they would lay an ambush for the Home Fleet. The problem, however, was that neither Lütjens nor Dönitz knew exactly where Tovey was. By contrast, thanks to Wake-Walker’s signals, Tovey knew exactly where the Bismarck was, as well as her course and speed.
The shadowers
Throughout the forenoon Wake-Walker kept shadowing the Germans, sending a regular stream of contact reports to both Tovey and the Admiralty. The Prince of Wales had now joined the two cruisers, as her gunners and the civilian technicians struggled to overcome the many problems with the battleship’s main guns. This force kept 15 miles astern of the Germans, who were now sailing in line ahead, with Bismarck in front and Prinz Eugen a mile behind her.10 At one point the Germans slowed down, so Bismarck’s crew could slip shot mats over the side, to cover the waterline shell holes. This allowed divers to pump out the water from the flooded compartments, so that the damage control teams could make temporary repairs. The British detected this change of speed, and kept their distance. The Germans were still on a course of 220°, heading towards the south-west, and keeping close to the western edge of the Greenland pack ice. However, that morning the fog returned, and they could only follow the German ships using their radar.
Meanwhile, on board the King George V, Tovey was around 330 miles to the south-east of the Bismarck, steaming at high speed, accompanied by Repulse, Victorious, four cruisers and nine destroyers. The initial shock caused by the news that Hood had been lost was gradually being replaced by a new feeling. Now, the sailors of the Home Fleet were out for revenge.
The same was true in the Admiralty. The job of the First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Dudley Pound, was to control the operations of the fleet. It was a task his predecessors had done so superbly against Napoleon’s admirals, and again during the last war, against the Kaiser’s man, Admiral Scheer. Now Pound was flexing the might of Britain’s naval power to bring the weight of seapower to bear. First, the three light cruisers east of Iceland were moved to the Denmark Strait, in case the German ships doubled back and headed home the way they had come.11 Next, the powerful battleship Rodney, which was in the mid-Atlantic escorting the troopship Britannic, was ordered along with three destroyers to head north to join Tovey, leaving the troopship with a much-reduced escort. Similarly, two old battleships, Revenge and Ramillies, were peeled off from convoy escort duties and ordered west to lend their limited support to the Home Fleet. Like a giant chess game, the pieces were moving across the board.
Meanwhile, Wake-Walker’s cruisers were still shadowing Bismarck. So important was this that the Admiralty even signalled him, ordering him to continue until his cruisers ran out of fuel. All the while his contact reports kept on being sent in. At 12.40, he reported that the Germans had changed course, and were now heading almost due south at 24 knots. This was inevitable, in order to clear the pack ice around Greenland’s Cape Farewell, but unknown to the Admiralty, it also placed the German ships further from their waiting tankers. It also meant that they were on a course that gave Tovey a chance of intercepting them. When the report came in, Tovey and Cdre Brind went into the admiral’s Plotting Room, where Cdr Wilfred Cameron, Tovey’s staff operations officer, had just marked the new course on his chart.
At 08.00, when the force was 120 miles south of Reykjavik, Tovey had altered course to the west-south-west. At 11.00, he turned south-west, when it seemed Bismarck was less likely to double back through the Denmark Strait. Bismarck was about 330 miles away to the west. Glancing at the chart, Tovey realised that on their present course, and by sailing at their maximum speed, the Home Fleet might possibly make contact with the Bismarck that evening.12 Tovey began considering splitting off the Victorious, with a suitable escort, so she wouldn’t get in the way during a surface action. It also raised the possibility of launching an air strike against Bismarck when the two forces came within range. With luck, that might slow down Bismarck enough to allow King George V and Repulse to overhaul the German battleship.
Meanwhile, back in the Admiralty, the first sea lord decided to intervene. He ordered a signal to be sent to Wake-Walker asking him what his intentions were regarding the Prince of Wales re-engaging the enemy. Clearly, Pound was desperate to stop Bismarck, and was considering risking the loss of his old battleship in the area, and a faulty and damaged one at that.13 Wake-Walker replied that he considered Prince of Wales should not re-engage until she had been reinforced by other battleships. It was the prudent course of action, and one that Tovey heartily agreed with. So, the first sea lord gave up the attempt to intervene and instead sent Wake-Walker a signal, congratulating him on his good work in shadowing the enemy. However, in order to cover himself against any charge of lacking zeal, Wake-Walker decided he would move Prince of Wales up ahead of his cruisers during the early evening, just in case Bismarck tried to escape during the night.
Operation Hood
Meanwhile, on board the Bismarck the B-Dienst radio intercepts confirmed that the shadowers were sending regular contact reports to the Admiralty, and that other British warships were at sea. They were not within the area controlled by Group West in Paris, and Saalwächter’s staff kept Lütjens informed of all new pieces of intelligence that he might find useful. Late that morning, the weather to the east of Greenland deteriorated, and a mixture of intermittent rain and fog meant that visibility became patchy – conditions that would only help the Germans when it came to breaking contact. That afternoon, Lütjens worked on his plan, which he code named Operation Hood. 14 A series of visual signals explained the scheme to Captain Brinkmann. Once contact was broken, the Prinz Eugen would refuel from the waiting German tankers to the north-west and then continue the mission on her own. He also explained his intentions for driving off his shadowers and sending the cruiser off on her own. He then dropped astern of her again.
Just before 14.00, Bismarck and Prinz Eugen were 240 miles east of Cape Farewell, the southernmost tip of Greenland. At that point, Lütjens sent a fresh signal to both Paris and Berlin explaining that he intended to evade his pursuers after dark. In fact, his chance came sooner than he thought. At around 15.00 he noticed that the visibility had dropped even further, and his two ships were sailing through a rain squall. So, at 15.40 he signalled the Prinz Eugen, ordering Operation Hood to be implemented right away.15 He was seizing his moment. Bismarck increased speed to 28 knots, turned in a circle and then headed off to the west. The hope was that by forcing the British to turn away they would lose radar contact with the Bismarck. The British, however, saw the move and reacted accordingly. As Müllenheim-Rechberg put it: ‘We were out of sight for a few minutes, then ran out of the squall, right back into the sight of one of our pursuers.’
To the British, the action seemed like that of a hunted wild animal turning to savage her weaker pursuers. Nevertheless, Wake-Walker had immediately ordered his ships to drop back, then follow the battleship as she turned. When the squall passed, Lütjens saw Suffolk was now heading west too, shadowing her at a range of 8 miles. In response, the German fleet commander gave up the attempt, and by 16.00 he was back on his old course, in company with the Prinz Eugen.
That afternoon they were also intermittently shadowed by a Catalina flying boat, which merely added to the Germans’ growing sense of frustration. Lütjens, however, was convinced his plan would work, given the right circumstances. That afternoon he had merely been unlucky with the squall ending so quickly. Next time,
he would have more luck.
By 18.00, the fog had returned, and visibility had dropped to less than 4 miles. So, 14 minutes later Lütjens repeated his earlier signal to Prinz Eugen: ‘Execute Hood.’16 Bismarck increased speed again, and turned through 180 degrees to starboard. This took the pursuing British cruisers completely by surprise. Meanwhile, the Prinz Eugen also increased speed and sped away towards the south, hidden by the fog. Looking northwards, her crew saw Bismarck open fire on the enemy, as great orange flashes lit up her turrets. Then the battleship was lost from view in the swirling fog. As the cruiser’s gunnery officer put it: ‘There goes our big brother. We’re going to miss him very, very much.’ Nobody at the time realised it then, but it was the last time any of them would see the Bismarck. On board the battleship, Müllenheim-Rechberg watched her go: ‘We in the Bismarck also had heavy hearts as we parted with the faithful Prinz. Only reluctantly did we leave her to her own destiny.’17
The manoeuvre came as a shock to the British. Suffolk had to routinely power down her radar every few hours, and it was at one of these moments that Bismarck made her move. The cruisers were 13 miles astern of Bismarck at the time of the manoeuvre. Now the range was dropping rapidly. Captain Ellis was 10 miles away when the fog and rain squalls parted and he could see Bismarck. As Lt Cdr Charles Collet put it: ‘Suddenly she appeared out of the mist, a huge terrifying monster, and much too close for our liking.’18 Suffolk turned away and made smoke, and the shells missed, landing well astern. Suffolk fired back, but her aim was wide. Several more German salvos followed, creeping closer to Suffolk before she lost herself in the fog.
Wake-Walker ordered Norfolk and Prince of Wales to do what they could to distract the German gunners. Both ships were about 15 miles to the north of Bismarck at the time. Prince of Wales opened fire with her forward guns, even though her gunnery direction teams didn’t have a clear view of the enemy. Having driven off the enemy cruisers, Bismarck then turned back on to her southerly course and replied with her four after guns. This gunnery duel, carried out at extreme range and in patchy visibility, was little more than a show of force by both sides. Bismarck fired four salvos, and Prince of Wales 12, before both sides ceased fire at 18.56, as the Bismarck drew out of range.19
Hunt the Bismarck Page 18
