1941, Tuesday 27 May;
There she was, 25,000 yds away, under the heavy grey sky, and a rising sea, a north-westerly gale blowing, limping along, a snail’s trail of leaking oil trailing. The big ships took range and four minutes later
Rodney opened fire, quickly followed by
King George V. Returning fire straddled
Rodney, but the British ships pressed on undaunted, salvo after salvo, while the distance slowly closed. Less than fifteen minutes, a major hit, a 16-inch shell on the forward superstructure, its shrapnel killing the senior officers on the bridge, and damaging the main fire control director. Further shells from the salvo damaged the forward main battery. The aft fire control station took control, but three salvos later was also knocked out. From then on returning fire was erratic, and the big ships closed in, to complete the execution.
With no return fire now, the superstructure ablaze from stem to stern,
Rodney closed to 3,000 yards, every shot a hit, while
King George V held back, hoping for a plunging hit through the decks. But still the grey mammoth floated, despite being down at the stern, and a 20-degree list to port. Admiral Tovey had seen enough, and order his battleships away, back to port signalling the heavy cruiser
Dorsetshire to come close and administer the
coup de grace. She did this with torpedoes, and the pride of the Kriegsmarine the
Bismarck, slide under stern first, leaving about 800 survivors in the water out of her crew of 2,200. British escort ships moved in to pick them up, but a false Uboat alarm caused them to withdraw having saved just over a hundred.
Operation Rheinubung was the German
Kriegsmarine’s plan to breakout into the North Atlantic, the new battleship
Bismarck and the heavy cruiser
Prince Eugen, on a convoy hunting mission, hoping to better, the havoc caused by
Scharnhorst and
Gneisenau in February/March. Unfortunately, they were unable to evade the Royal Navy patrols in the icy waters between Greenland, Iceland and Scotland, and on the evening of 23 May, they were picked up by the radar equipped heavy cruiser
Suffolk, in the Denmark Straits. Quickly moved in to intercept was the newly commissioned battleship
Prince of Wales, so new she hadn’t finished her crew shakedown, still had some mechanical problems and even carried some ship worker’s continuing work on board! And with her was the pride of the British Fleet, HMS
Hood, Britain’s Queen on the chess board.
Despite knowing the Germans position, due to a loss of radar contact for a short while, the British ships engaged at a slight disadvantage, instead of the clever planned one of the Germans being silhouetted against a setting sun. Nevertheless, with the two heavy cruisers
Suffolk and
Norfolk in tow, Vice Admiral Holland moved to engage, confident in his 2-1 superiority. Although
Hood opened the battle at a range of 26,500 yds, Holland closed the gap, aware of the dangers of plunging fire to the thin deck armour of the battlecruiser
Hood. Despite having to steer into the wind, and angle in on
Bismarck, leaving his rear turrets unable to bear, it was the British who scored the first hits,
Prince of Wales scoring a minor hit, a second underwater hit, flooding a generator and adjoining boiler room, causing a loss of 2 knots, and a third which went through
Bismarck’s bow without exploding, but caused flooding and the gradual loss of 1,000 tons of fuel oil, trailing a slick behind her.
Bismarck scored a minor hit on
Hood, and then Holland had his ships turn, so as to allow the aft turrets to bear.
A fluke, bad luck, fate, call it what you will, a shell from Bismarck came in low, below the 12-inch armoured belt, and hit the side of Hood deep in the trough of a wave, if it had hit the water first, it was likely it wouldn’t have been so bad, but this was akin to striking her Achilles Heel. The shell penetrated deep into
Hood, before exploding in the 4-inch aft magazine, a bolt of flame shot up through the ventilation shaft, emerging near the main mast like a blow torch, and then the explosion below met the 15-inch magazine. A split second later, this magazine went up, the eruption, not only blowing both 15-inch gun turrets off, but tearing the ship in two, the aft end going almost straight down, the bow, rising up, high into the air, before quickly sliding back down, leaving just three men out of a crew of 1418.
Alone now, the
Prince of Wales, commanded the attention of both
Bismarck and
Prince Eugen, both of whom scored hits on her, and with several of her own guns malfunctioning, turned away, making smoke, on the orders of her commander, Captain Leach, to save her from
Hood’s fate. Elation on the German ships, turned to disappointment as, despite their captain’s urging, Admiral Lutjens chose not to pursue the opportunity to go after the
PoW, neither retire back to Norway to make good his damaged bow fuel tanks, the loss of fuel would now drastically restrict his range of operations. Thinking more of the greater strategic picture, he continued out into the North Atlantic, with the idea of making for Brest, where, after repairs, he could link up with
Scharnhorst and
Gneisenau, and make further raids on merchant shipping from an easier jumping off point.
The British followed, and Lutjens turned
Bismarck back onto the British ships shadowing her, exchanging a few salvos with
PoW, who had been able to rectify her mechanical problems and had nine of her ten guns working again. In the confusion of the short action, he ordered
Prince Eugen to break away unnoticed, and to continue the raid, while the British remained fixed onto the
Bismarck. Then he turned towards France, at high speed, the British struggling to keep up, having to zigzag due to fears of being dragged across a Uboat line. Desperately, the British launched a Swordfish torpedo attack, flying off the carrier HMS
Victorious, but the only hit was on the armoured belt and did little damage. Following this, Lutjens ordered
Bismarck into a sprint, and trying to keep up while zigzagging, the British lost him off their radar, the wily fox then circled round back behind them.
Bismarck now had a straight run home, and would escape the British unless they found him, causing a frantic search. But now the pendulum began to swing the other way. Several intelligence reports gave clues that the Germans were preparing to welcome
Bismarck in France, so the British continued to gamble on that heading. And then yesterday, Monday 26, a Catalina flying out of Northern Ireland found her, too far away for the British ships to intercept her, and a day’s sailing away from safety. However, Force H, sailing up from Gibraltar, included the carrier HMS
Ark Royal, who launched another Swordfish torpedo attack. Two torpedoes struck, another amidships hit, causing some minor flooding, but a second hit on the stern, port side, jammed the port rudder at a 12-degree turn, and the big ship found herself helplessly sailing a wide circle.
HMS
Sheffield, and the destroyers of Force H, closed and made contact with the limping ship, a few rounds from the German keeping them at distance, but all night they harried and probed, as
Bismarck continued her despairing circling, allowing the big ships of the British Home fleet to close. With daybreak,
Rodney and
King George V arrived, and the execution began. With the ship a total shambles above the waterline, a 20-degree list to port, and slowly settling by the stern, the surviving German officer ordered the scuttling charges blown and abandon ship. The German queen was off the chess board, it was revenge on the loss of the British queen three days earlier.