Hunt the Bismarck

by Angus Konstam

Best of all, though, were the reinforcements approaching him from the south. On the evening of 23 May, the Admiralty ordered Force H to sea, to protect a convoy, WS8B.6 It had left the Forth of Clyde two days before and was heading to Gibraltar. Force H had been set up to fill the vacuum in the Western Mediterranean left by the collapse of France. Under V. Adm. James Somerville it had shelled the French fleet at Mers-el-Kébir and the Italian port of Genoa, it had fought the Italians at sea off Sardinia, and it had helped run convoys through to Malta. Occasionally, though, it ventured west into the Atlantic, and this was one of these occasions. Sailors were bundled out of the fleshpots of Gibraltar, and by 02.00 the next morning, while Bismarck was heading south through the Denmark Strait, Force H put to sea.

  Somerville flew his flag in the battlecruiser Renown, and while the rest of Force H varied depending on what was available, that night it consisted of the light cruiser Sheffield and the aircraft carrier Ark Royal. 7 Unlike Victorious, the Ark Royal had been in service since late 1938, and she carried over 50 aircraft – a mixture of Swordfish and Fulmars. Better still, for the most part their crews were experienced and battle-hardened. So, while Renown might be too vulnerable to take on Bismarck and survive, the presence of Ark Royal meant that Force H had some real teeth. When it left Gibraltar, the force also included six destroyers, but these were detached the following day and returned to Gibraltar. The plan was for the rest of Force H to rendezvous with the convoy off the south of Ireland, so Somerville led his ships north.

  Somerville was off the Gulf of Cadiz when news of Hood’s demise reached him. He felt the blow keenly as the battlecruiser had served as his flagship during the Mers-el-Kébir operation. Soon, however, he would have the chance to avenge her loss. Force H spent the rest of 24 May steaming north up the Iberian coast, and by 06.00 on the 25th they had reached the latitude of Cape Ortegal, the north-west corner of Spain. They had been battered by a gale and were making heavy weather of it. Still, that meant that two hours later when the Admiralty ordered Force H to join in the hunt, it was actually heading north on a course that would bisect Bismarck’s track if her commander decided to make for the French coast. While Force H remained under the control of the first sea lord, Somerville was asked to assist Tovey in the hunt for the Bismarck.

  Somerville soon realised that if the Bismarck headed west or north, Force H would play no part in her pursuit. If, however, Bismarck headed towards the French coast, then only Force H would be in a position to intercept her. In addition, as Force H drove north towards St Nazaire and Brest, there was a danger that the battlecruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau might put to sea, join Bismarck and then crush Somerviille’s smaller force before it could escape. Little wonder, then, that 25 May was a tense day for everyone in Force H as it battled its way northwards.

  The same, of course, could be said for Rodney and her escort of three destroyers. Since Bismarck had first been sighted off Bergen, Captain Dalrymple-Hamilton had assembled a ‘committee’ of his senior officers, to discuss the latest reports concerning the battleship. This meant that he and his crew were ready to play their part. The only drawback was that Rodney could barely make 23 knots, and so she had little chance of catching Bismarck.

  The remaining pieces on Tovey’s chessboard that morning were cruisers and destroyers.8 Heading up from the south was the light cruiser Edinburgh and the heavy cruiser Dorsetshire, which was accompanying the northbound Convoy SL74. Both were available if he needed them. Also, westbound Convoy WS8B was well to the east of Tovey, halfway between him and the south-western coast of Ireland. Of the convoy’s escort, while the aged light cruiser Cairo was of little use, she was accompanied by five destroyers: Cossack, Maori, Piorun, Sikh and Zulu. These were commanded by the veteran destroyer commander Philip Vian, who the year before had won fame when as the commander of Cossack he had boarded and captured the German supply ship Altmark and freed the British merchant seamen held prisoner aboard her. Tovey hoped he might show the same degree of élan if it came to carrying out a torpedo attack against Bismarck.

  The trouble was, Tovey was well aware that until he located the Bismarck he could do little to bring her to battle. Instead, he could just continue the search. Unwittingly, however, most of his ships were not only looking in the wrong place, but they were also heading in the wrong direction – a fact that meant that when Bismarck was eventually found, much of the Home Fleet would be too far away to intercept her. He had other issues, too.9 He had already had to detach Renown that morning, which was now steaming to Halifax to refuel, and soon he would lose Prince of Wales too, which would head north to Hvalfjord, also to refuel. He seriously doubted King George V had the firepower to subdue Bismarck on her own. Of his two other capital ships to the east and south, Rodney was too slow and Repulse too lightly protected to do much good. So, that meant pinning his hopes on using either Ark Royal or Victorious to slow the Bismarck down to enable his ships to catch up with her. After the failure of the last air strike, that must have seemed like little more than wishful thinking.

  Lütjens makes a mistake

  By 09.00 that morning, 25 May, Bismarck was far to the east of Tovey, Wake-Walker and Curteis, and well out of radar range of the British ships. As Lt von Müllenheim-Rechberg put it: ‘If the Suffolk’s radar, with its range of 24,000m, could not regain contact with Bismarck at 0330, what chance did it have of doing so at 0700, by which time the Bismarck had been steaming for hours in a south-easterly direction?’10 Strangely, though, Admiral Lütjens seemed less convinced he had shaken off Wake-Walker and his cruisers – which explained his rather bizarre next move. Normally, in the situation in which Bismarck found herself, signals were kept brief. That way, if the enemy had direction-finding equipment, there wouldn’t be enough time for them to work out which direction the signal was coming from. If, however, two or more listeners did manage to identify a direction, then they could work out the enemy’s location, based on the place where the bearing lines crossed. Lütjens was all too aware of this.

  Nevertheless, at 09.00 that morning, he ordered a long and detailed radio signal to be sent to Group West in Paris.11 It began by complaining that the enemy had radar sets with a range of at least 19 miles – a third more than was actually the case. So, he explained his plan: ‘Refuelling in general no longer possible, unless high speed enables me to disengage.’ He went on to give more details of the battle in the Denmark Strait, and the damage received by Bismarck. The crux, however, was the suggestion that despite successfully breaking away and losing contact with the enemy, he still thought he was being shadowed. This explained his comment about still having to disengage. Possibly, Bismarck’s passive radar detectors were still receiving traces of radar pulses from the Home Fleet, even though they were well beyond radar range. The key point is that this long and unnecessary message gave away Bismarck’s position.

  Strangely, on board the Prinz Eugen the cruiser’s B-Dienst unit, having listened in on the Home Fleet’s radio traffic, had reached the correct conclusion that Bismarck had successfully evaded her pursuers.12 The steady stream of contact reports had stopped. The same assessment had also been reached by Group North in Paris, which made Lütjens’ fresh signal all the more perplexing. Perhaps the B-Dienst team on board Bismarck had accidentally given the admiral misleading information. In fact, Lütjens almost got away with it. His signal was picked up by two receivers in the UK, but they were close together, so the bearings they gave were fairly similar – too much so for an accurate location fix. Better-placed receivers in Iceland or Newfoundland didn’t pick up the signal due to range and atmospheric interference. Nor were they picked up by the Home Fleet, as of the two destroyers designed to monitor just such signals, one was in Hvalfjord and the other was experiencing an equipment malfunction. The result was that while it was clear Bismarck was west of Tovey, her exact whereabouts was still in some doubt. In fact, when he was given the same bearing information, Tovey placed her over a hundred miles further south than did the Admiralty.

&nb
sp; However, it was now clear that Bismarck was heading towards the French coast. A quick glance at the chart showed Tovey that neither King George V nor Rodney could intercept her – she was just too far to the west. Now, his only chance to catch her lay with Force H, and a successful air strike from Ark Royal. That morning, it was clear that the British Admiralty had run out of all other options.

  According to Müllenheim-Rechberg, Lütjens’ next action was to give an equally inexplicable address to the battleship’s crew. He began by praising the crew for sinking the Hood,13 then he added a darker note:

  Henceforth, the enemy will try to concentrate his forces, and bring them into action against us. I therefore released the Prinz Eugen at noon yesterday, so that she could conduct commerce warfare on her own. We, on the other hand, because of the hits we have received, have been ordered to proceed to a French port. On our way there, the enemy will gather and give us battle. The German people are with you, and we will fight until our barrels glow red hot and our last shell has left our barrels. For us seamen, the question is now victory or death!

  Müllenheim-Rechberg remembered: ‘I can still see the leading petty officer who operated one of my directors returning dejectedly from the loudspeaker, and still hear him remarking that it was really all over.’14 Before Lütjens’ spoke, most of the crew were well aware that they’d sunk the Hood – the news had been broadcast on German radio, which the battleship had picked up. They also realised they were now heading towards France, and had evaded their pursuers. Almost to a man they imagined they were safely out of danger and heading to a friendly port. Now, thanks to their admiral, their morale was shattered by his talk of an imminent fight to the finish. Dejection spread throughout the ship, and, as Müllenheim-Rechberg put it: ‘The high morale that permeated the ship in the preceding days was irretrievably lost.’ Many of Bismarck’s crew were young sailors, and if their veteran admiral was talking of impending death then their situation must be very bleak indeed.

  As the day wore on, fresh signals came in. Some passed on German naval intelligence reports that Force H was at sea, that the battleship they’d damaged was the Prince of Wales rather than the King George V, and that Tovey’s flagship had now been joined by the battleship Rodney. Others were congratulatory. 25 May was Admiral Lütjens’ birthday, and the German Führer sent him a personal message of congratulations.15 Another was from Raeder, repeating these birthday wishes, and congratulating him on his recent victory. Meanwhile, Bismarck maintained her steady course, while Tovey’s ships were falling ever further behind her. Had the battleship’s crew realised the strategic situation, they would have been a lot less pessimistic. Apart from Force H, nobody else could catch them.

  That afternoon, the officers of Bismarck had an idea. They would build a dummy after funnel, made out of wood, canvas and metal sheet. The idea was that if they were spotted by land-based search planes then they might pass themselves off as a British or an American warship. It wasn’t really a particularly convincing form of disguise, but it gave the crew something to do and served as a much-needed morale-boosting project. Also, it might deter an inexperienced RAF Coastal Command observer. When it was finished, someone came up with the problem that no smoke was coming out of the dummy funnel. This, according to Müllenheim-Rechberg, resulted in an announcement over the ship’s tannoy: ‘Off-duty watch report to the First Officer’s cabin to draw cigars, to smoke in our second funnel!’16 In the end, though, the dummy funnel was left lying on the deck, waiting for Kapitän Lindemann’s order to erect it.

  Meanwhile, the oil tanks were running low. It was calculated that Bismarck had enough fuel to make it to Brest or St Nazaire, but only if she reduced speed to a more economical 20 knots. In fact, during the afternoon she slowed down even more, to just 12 knots. This allowed divers to enter the flooded forward compartments and open the oil tank valves there. This enabled a small amount of oil to be pumped aft, giving the ship another few hundred tons of fuel – enough to let Bismarck increase speed a little if she had to. However, once the repairs had been completed, Lütjens ordered that Bismarck continue at 20 knots. While this would give the British a better chance of catching her up, it meant she wasn’t depleting her fuel stocks quite so rapidly. And so Bismarck continued on her course, heading west-south-west. This wasn’t a direct course to the French ports – it was a little south of that – but it meant she stayed further from British air bases and thereby reduced the chances of being spotted.

  Chasing the fox

  Away to the south-east, V. Adm. Somerville’s Force H was steaming north-north-west, and would reach a position some 350 miles west of Brest by the following morning, 26 May. If Bismarck was indeed steaming towards the French ports, then this put Somerville’s three ships in the best possible place to intercept her. Admiral Tovey in King George V was far to the west, and was now on her own, as Repulse and Prince of Wales had both broken off to refuel.17 So too had Suffolk, although Norfolk with R. Adm. Wake-Walker on board was able to continue the pursuit for a little longer. Further to the north, while Victorious had enough fuel to stay at sea, R. Adm. Curteis’ cruisers were now running dangerously low on fuel. However, Victorious was too valuable a ship to stay at sea on her own without an escort screen. So, after one last evening air search towards the south-east produced no contact, Curteis headed back to Scapa Flow, accompanied by the carrier. That meant that Tovey was running short of ships.

  There was still Rodney, of course. In fact, that afternoon Captain Hamilton-Dalrymple disregarded Tovey’s signal ordering him to steam towards the north-west.18 He knew Rodney was too slow to catch Bismarck if she chased after Tovey. However, if the German battleship was steaming towards France, then he was actually well placed to intercept her. However, if she actually did make contact, then if Bismarck turned away, the British battleship, with a top speed of 23 knots, would be unable to catch her. Even if she did, in a straightforward gun duel Rodney might have nine 16in. guns to Bismarck’s eight 15in. ones, but she lacked her German rival’s modern fire control systems and first-class rangefinders. Thus, Hamilton-Dalrymple was not particularly confident he could stop Bismarck, or even slow her down.

  Now the long and nerve-wracking day was drawing to a close. Despite the radio signal sent that morning, Bismarck’s exact location was unclear. While both the Admiralty and Tovey were now convinced she was heading towards France, for much of the day Tovey had been trying to cover two eventualities: Bismarck heading south-east to France, or northwards to the Iceland–Faeroes gap. So, for part of the afternoon King George V had sailed towards the north-east, then the east. What clinched it, though, was the decoding of a signal sent from a senior Luftwaffe commander – who was in Greece supervising air attacks on Crete – to Group West, asking for an update on Bismarck, probably because his nephew was serving on board.19 The reply, forwarded through Luftwaffe channels, revealed that Bismarck was heading towards Brest. This left both Tovey and the Admiralty in no doubt about Bismarck’s destination.

  Still, it was only in the early evening that Tovey’s flagship turned towards the south-west, on a course that was roughly parallel to that of Bismarck, but a little to the north of the German ship’s track. However, Bismarck was roughly 150 miles ahead of King George V. As darkness fell, Rodney also turned on to a similar course. By then, Tovey had another problem. The closer he and his ships got to St Nazaire, the more exposed they would be to attacks from U-boats; signal intercepts had revealed that the Germans were sending these to sea in an attempt to support Bismarck, and the Luftwaffe were also marshalling bombers to attack British ships, and fighters to provide air cover for the lone battleship. In fact, that evening, at 19.30, Group West signalled Lütjens, saying that Luftwaffe bombers would be providing cover for him as far as 14° West, some 360 miles west of Brest.20 With their range of 1,900 miles, Focke-Wulf Condor reconnaissance planes would be ranging even further west.

  However, these weren’t the only search aircraft in the skies. In order to help Tovey as much as
they could, the Coastal Command had stepped up their reconnaissance flights over the Western Approaches, their planes ranging as far south as the Bay of Biscay. Their Short Sunderland and Consolidated PBY Catalina flying boats had a range of 1,780 and 2,520 miles respectively, and so could stay in the air for hours on end. They kept patrolling until darkness fell on the evening of 25 May, but still Bismarck hadn’t been spotted. While this was reassuring for Lütjens, it did little for Tovey’s peace of mind that night. His only consolation was that at least now he knew which direction he should be looking in. King George V and Rodney, Force H, the cruisers Norfolk and Dorsetshire, and Cdr Vian’s five destroyers were now in pursuit of the fox. This, though, was all irrelevant if Bismarck couldn’t be found.

  At 04.30 on 26 May, an announcement was made on board the Bismarck. 21 Over the ship’s tannoy the crew were told: ‘We have now passed three-quarters of Ireland, on our way to St Nazaire. Around noon we will be in the U-boats’ operational area, and within range of German aircraft. We can count on the appearance of Condor planes after 1200.’ This was a great boost to morale, and helped counter the admiral’s fatalistic announcement of the day before. Now, for the first time, the young German sailors began thinking of what France might be like – a country most of them had never visited – and dreaming of the delights offered by a foreign port. Other signals from Group West had assured Lütjens that preparations were underway to escort Bismarck in – destroyers and U-boats were putting to sea, and the port’s defences were being strengthened. All he had to do now was to get within air range of the French coast.

  That morning, though, the Luftwaffe wasn’t the only air force sending out search planes. The lumbering maritime reconnaissance planes of Coastal Command were preparing for another sweep of the Western Approaches, and in bases from Northern Ireland to Hampshire air crews were boarding their aircraft. One of these was a Catalina flying boat of 209 Squadron, RAF, piloted by Fg Off. Dennis Briggs.22 This craft was unusual in that it had a US Navy co-pilot on board. When Catalinas were sent to Britain as part of the Lend-Lease programme, Ensign Leonard ‘Tuck’ Smith had volunteered to accompany them to help train the British pilots to fly them. Before dawn, the Catalina raced down Lough Erne, then climbed aloft, banking over the green-brown hills of County Fermanagh in Northern Ireland before heading out towards the Atlantic coast. She was one of two Catalinas flying from the Lough that morning, but they soon split up as each had its own designated search area to cover.