Battleship Bismarck (14 page)

The heavy cruiser
Prinz Eugen
steaming at high speed on her trials before joining the
Bismarck
for exercises in the Baltic. Only a practiced eye could tell the silhouettes of the two ships apart. (Photograph courtesy of Robert O. Dulin, Jr.)

Over Easter, which fell on 13 April that year, the
Bismarck
went in to Gotenhafen for four days. There, we were to take on more ammunition and have some work done on our engines.

When we were at sea, the routine was still battle practice, more battle practice, and battle problems. In a battle problem, a particular tactical situation was assumed: we were, for example, covering an attack by the
Prinz Eugen
on a British convoy that was escorted by a battleship. We went into action with the battleship, in the course of which we received two hits. The damage done to the
Bismarck
would be presented as realistically as possible: electrical breakdowns by removing fuses, fires by using some bombs, gaseous fumes by using tear gas, and so forth. In the case of damage that could not be portrayed, “damage notices” would be posted in the relevant parts of the ship; for example, “To the commander of the port II 15-centimeter
turret: Turret destroyed by a direct hit. Your gun crew has been wiped out.” That turret commander and his men would then cease to take part. In partially destroyed compartments, there was feverish activity: fire hoses were hooked up, openings were sealed tight, alternate piping routes established, and all damage was brought under control. Obermaschinist
*
Oskar Barho, of the main electrical control station, enjoyed the breakdowns and kept calm in the face of them. He gave precise instructions and repeatedly told his men: “If I become a casualty, you must keep everything going exactly the same way, regardless of your grade! If you think one of my orders is incorrect, report it!”

The officers told their men again and again: “If only two or three are still alive at your station, carry on. That’s right, carry on! Execute the required emergency procedures at once!” This could be somewhat difficult for a young seaman or stoker who received a damage notice and had to decide how to deal with it himself. He would then have to give orders, which previously had been done by officers—how often they had practiced that! Superiors intervened only when lack of experience led the men into making serious mistakes. Not a bad way to accustom a young man of thinking and acting on his own.

Or another battle problem, which Maschinengast
†
Josef Statz would never be able to get out of his mind. He was ordered on board in April 1941 and assigned for duty to Stabsobermaschinist
‡
Gerhard Sagner, whose specialty was indicated by his title of Pumpenmeister—Pump Master. Sagner had welcomed Statz, a draftsman trained in skyscraper and bridge construction, with the words, “You’re just the man for me!” and carefully acquainted him with his duties. Statz was happy with his transfer to the
Bismarck
, and with the personal style of his immediate supervisors—his division officer, Oberleutnant (Ingenieurwesen) Karl-Ludwig Richter, the second damage control officer, and Pumpenmeister Sagner. He also hit it lucky with his mess; its members were all old hands. Of the five machinist seamen, four had already been sunk once, in the cruiser
Karlsruhe.
§
Among them he had become especially close to Erich Seifert, generally known as “Fietje.” And Fietje enjoyed telling him
repeatedly and forcefully of his experiences in the
Karlsruhe:
“If anything like that ever happens with the
Bismarck
, keep all your things on, especially your leather clothing, and your money in your pocket!” At the time, he had neglected to do either.

But now to the battle problem, the most important Statz would experience during his training period in the
Bismarck.
As the “damage control center runner” he had to carry a message to turret Bruno, to which command of the ship had been transferred upon the hypothetical destruction of the forward conning tower. Statz encountered the captain there and tried to make the report to him—but Lindemann did not react at all. “Don’t you see?” someone shouted at him. “The captain’s dead!” Statz replied, “But the captain’s standing right here!” And at the same time he looked at Lindemann, who, despite every outward sign of indifference, showed a sly smile. “Well, Slim, are you from Cologne?” he heard, in the same voice as before, from Oberleutnant zur See Friedrich Cardinal, a Rhinelander like Statz. Then Cardinal said, “Give me the message and come to the bridge!” And the two of them had stood on it, no one else, for all the others in the area had supposedly become casualties. Cardinal explained: “All the men who are pretending to be casualties put their caps on sideways, so they can be recognized most quickly. You must take notice of that!” They could not know, Statz and Cardinal, that a month later this sort of battle problem, complete down to the details, would overtake them in reality.

After a battle problem, there would be a muster on the quarterdeck. Under the leadership of the captain, the damage done and the countermeasures taken were discussed in detail. Lindemann understood how to ask the right questions. Not only was he thoroughly conversant with the duties of naval officers and with his own specialty, naval ordnance, but he had a good understanding of technical matters. When the engines were the subject of discussion, he was quick to expose excuses for mistakes and attempts to gloss them over. Being a competent judge of these things, he would close the muster by distributing praise and censure. But his tone was always objective. The point of it all was that every man should learn and should have his confidence in himself and his ship built up. “When we made a mistake,” said Maschinengefreiter Budich, “we did not hear angry words from our superiors.”

From time to time, the ship went in to Gotenhafen Roads to catch her breath. When the sky was clear and a gentle wind blew over the ship, we experienced some truly enchanting nights there. Once, when the full moon drew a broad silver track across the mirror-calm water, Matrose
*
Paul Hillen was on watch on the upper deck. Seeing the captain coming towards him, he prepared to make his report, but Lindemann waved it aside and said: “Isn’t that a wonderful sight? Many people would give a great deal of money to see it, and we have it for free.” Later, Hillen, who had only recently come aboard, said, “It was the first time I heard, not an order, but a personal remark from a high-ranking officer.” Yes, Lindemann had a winning way, which inspired affection. Many of the ship’s survivors have testified eloquently to that. One of them put it this way: “We admired, indeed we loved, our commanding officer, Kapitän zur See Lindemann. He was like a father to us. He always had an open ear for the cares and needs of his crew.”

Lindemann reviews machinist petty officers. The geared wheel on the sleeve of the man at the end of the front row indicates his career specialty. The device on his collar shows that he is a petty officer, first class. (Photograph from Bundesarchiv, Koblenz.)

One day, after being at sea a long time, we dropped anchor and the
signal was piped: “Work details to the forecastle!” That could mean only that the mailboat was coming out from Gotenhafen. And there it was, already quite close. Suddenly it was too close, and we heard a crash. Commented the chief bosun, “Shit, no mail!” Sadly he watched over the stern post as the boat, already taking on water dangerously, and its longed-for cargo returned, stern first, to Gotenhafen.

Lindemann’s entry in the War Diary for the month of April was: “In sum, all our time was taken up in training. Heavy emphasis was placed on how the crew would perform in the upcoming operation. The men seem to have come to recognize for the first time the magnitude of our mission, which they still don’t know, but easily guess.” He was right. Rumors were rife that we were about to depart on a mission. Watchwords surfaced, were whispered from man to man, then disappeared to make room for new ones.

The
Tirpitz
appeared in the Gulf of Danzig for her own working-up exercises and that provoked speculation that we were about to form a task force with her.

*
A Sperrbrecher was a converted merchant ship, whose function was to sweep mines that the Kriegsmarine’s regular minesweepers might possibly have missed. One such vessel was generally assigned to protect large German warships in waters where there was a high risk of mines. The ship being protected followed in the Sperrbrecher’s wake.

*
Emergency rashes

*
Lieutenant Commander (Engineering)

†
Used in the German Navy for “gangway!”

*
Ensign

*
The recipient of a fief from the Polish crown, who was invested with police and juridical powers.

*
When Hitler spoke in January 1941, the extermination of the Jews had already begun, although the formal decision to liquidate the Jewish population of Europe was not made until the Grosse Wannsee conference on 20 January 1942 resolved the Jews in German-occupied Europe be exterminated (the “final solution of the Jewish problem”].

*
Naval War Staff

*
Warrant Officer (Machinist]

†
Machinist

‡
Chief Warrant Officer (Machinist)

§
The
Karlsruhe
was torpedoed by a British submarine in the Skaggerak on 10 April 1940.

*
Seaman Recruit

4    Plans for Commerce-Raiding

At the beginning of the war, for which the navy was not prepared, the inferiority of the German fleet in relation to the British was incredible. The ratio was around one to ten. All we had ready for immediate deployment in the Atlantic were two pocket battleships, the
Deutschland
(soon renamed Iützow) and the
Admiral Graf Spec
, and twenty-six U-boats, and that small number of ships could not be expected to have a decisive effect on the war. The commander in chief of the Kriegsmarine, Grossadmiral Erich Raeder, who was taken completely by surprise by the outbreak of war with Great Britain, commented, “Our surface forces are still so inferior to the British in numbers and strength that, should they become fully committed, the only thing they could show is that they know how to die gallantly.” At least initially, the only naval bases Germany had at her disposal were in the southeast corner of the North Sea, as had been the case in the First World War; whereas, thanks to their geographical position and worldwide bases, the British could control every important sea lane and impede the passage of German warships to and from the Atlantic. However, when Germany occupied Norway and France in 1940, the Seekriegsleitung had advance bases to the north and west, which made it easier to deploy our surface forces and U-boats on the oceans.

“The Kriegsmarine is to carry out commerce warfare, and it will be aimed primarily against England.” Overnight, this statement, contained in Directive No. 1 for the Conduct of the War of 31 August 1939, became the basis of the Seekriegsleitung’s strategic objectives.
The weakness of her fleet obliged Germany to confine herself to conducting economic warfare and to design an appropriate strategy. The Seekriegsleitung was convinced that, by cutting Britain off from her Atlantic supply lines, Germany could win the war, providing
all
resources were concentrated on this objective. To Raeder, “all resources” meant all naval resources which, in turn, meant that our long-range, heavy surface units—battleships and pocket battleships—were to conduct commerce warfare on the high seas. This strategy was intended not only to disrupt Britain’s trade but to tie down her forces and keep them from concentrating: when German commerce-raiders appeared in a certain ocean, Britain would have to move naval forces there, thus denuding some other area. In this way, it was hoped, other German operations such as a ship’s breakout into the Atlantic or its return to port would be facilitated.