Battleship Bismarck (21 page)

At this hour there was still a visitor on board, whom Lindemann graciously permitted to leave on the pilot boat after the ship put to sea. Around noon that day the telephone rang in the office of Oberfeldarzt
*
Dr. Otto Schneider, who was then stationed in Bergen, and a familiar voice said, “Would you like to visit your brother Adalbert on the
Bismarck!
We don’t know what she’s doing, but she’s lying in a nearby fjord at this very minute.” He did not have to think twice about the answer and soon he and two companions were under way in a speedboat. “After a short, fast ride,” he later wrote, “we turned into a bay and saw a bewitching sight. Before us, the
Bismarck
lay like a silver-gray dream from
The Thousand and One Nights.
In spite of her mighty superstructure, gun barrels, and armor, her silhouette was a thing of beauty, almost as though it were worked in filigree.” Then he saw his brother waving for him to come on board. After a joyous, hearty greeting Otto mentioned, not without pride, that the speed of the boat that brought him out was 32 knots, only to hear in reply, “We can do that with the
Bismarck
, too, and a little more, besides! We’re faster than anything stronger and stronger than anything faster, so really nothing can happen to us, and our assignment is just like life insurance.” For Otto Schneider this was an interesting indication of the technological capability and superiority of the
Bismarck.
He found the morale of both officers and men to be outstanding in every respect. “Until now, up to the time we got to Norway,” several officers told him, “our operation was nothing but a pleasure cruise.” In the wardroom, over which in retrospect Otto Schneider sensed “an almost eerie, spooky atmosphere,” they discussed the operational and tactical aspects of the ship’s forthcoming mission, although they knew hardly anything about it. In any case, his brother Adalbert absolutely radiated optimism. In his brother’s stateroom, Otto admired a photograph of Adalbert’s three small daughters. Later, he was invited to have dinner with Adalbert. The brothers also wrote some joint postcards, which Otto offered to take back to Bergen. By the time those cards reached their addressees, the fate of the
Bismarck
had long since been sealed, and the messages were like greetings from the other side of the grave. That night, as they cruised past the rocky cliffs, Adalbert and Otto talked about this and that operation, such as the airborne assault on Crete, but not a word, of course, was said about Hitler’s imminent attack on the Soviet Union, because they had no idea it was about to take place. Otto asked how Adalbert, confident as he was, evaluated the danger of the ship being attacked from the air. Adalbert answered with a smile that her defences and
armor protection made her almost invulnerable to air attack. When they were training in the Baltic, he said, the Luftwaffe had not been able to score a single hit! For the approaching breakout, Adalbert only wanted there to be as much rain and fog as possible. He apparently knew nothing whatever about the state of British radar.

Then it was time for Otto to say good-bye to his brother and also to the captain who had made this visit possible. When he reported to the latter, Lindemann stood alone, leaning against the forward conning tower. They shook hands and Schneider looked into a pale, calm face with deep-set eyes. “Looking back,” Otto Schneider said later, “I believe that at this moment Lindemann was well aware of the great dangers that the
Bismarck
faced and I think he considered my prospects of ever seeing my brother again very slight. It seemed that he and the Oberkommando der Kriegsmarine differed in their estimates of the situation.”

Had the message relayed by Reichard from B-Dienst headquarters contributed to Lindemann’s mood? Had it caused him to regard the evening of 21 May as the last possible chance to make what he regarded as the necessary changes in the task force’s breakout tactics? And did he realize, with a heavy heart, that such a change, the power to make it lying, as it did, within the jurisdiction of the fleet commander, was scarcely to be expected in view of Lütjens’s personality?

Meanwhile, the weather had worsened and the sky became completely overcast. A sharp wind from the southwest chased heavy rain clouds before it and raised whitecaps in the waters of the fjords. Foggy haze hung between the mountains. At about 2300 we turned away from the rocky shoreline, the destroyers in the lead, followed by the
Bismarck
and the
Prinz Eugen
, and resumed our war watches. When we began to head north, shortly before midnight, the wind was blowing out of the south-southwest at Force 4. Looking back, we saw alternating white, yellow, and red lights flickering in the clouds over the mainland. Group North informed us later in the day that five British planes had flown between the cliffs ten kilometers north of Bergen and dropped flares and bombs over Kalvanes Bay. Their attack was the result of Flying Officer Suckling’s midday reconnaissance, of which we were still unaware. The beams of the searchlights ashore and the flashes of the antiaircraft batteries had heightened the light effects in the sky. I did not learn until very much later that, because of the weather, the British could make out hardly anything and dropped their bombs simply on suspicion.

According to plan, around 0500 on 22 May, Lütjens released the
destroyers that had shielded our formation from British submarines. We were in the latitude of Trondheim, and I can still see the three ships disappearing towards the coast in the morning mist. For the first time I felt that we really had left home and Exercise Rhine had begun. From now on, the
Bismarck
and the
Prinz Eugen
were alone.

As I write this story, I have to remind myself repeatedly that the young officers on board that morning had no knowledge whatever of the defensive measures that the British were then taking against Exercise Rhine. However, having been told by Reichard the previous evening about the alerting of the British air force, I assumed that the enemy’s naval forces would also be looking for us. And the mere thought of that inspired a prickly anxiety over what being in these narrow waters, the outposts of British sea power, under those conditions might entail. On the other hand, it was not long since the intercepted British radio order had gone out, so the probability of our being rediscovered soon was slight.

At 0930 or so, Lütjens was informed by Group North that, according to B-Dienst, neither the sailing of his task force nor the British orders to search for “the battleships” had produced any perceptible consequence, other than intensified British aerial reconnaissance in the northeastern sector. Group North believed that the enemy was concentrating its search of Norway and the Norwegian Sea too far to the south to find our task force. Thus, it appeared that this leg of our journey had not been detected by the enemy.

Steaming at 24 knots in hazy weather under an overcast sky, the task force reached a position approximately 200 nautical miles from the Norwegian coast, in the latitude Iceland-Norway, at about noon. Weather conditions, which seemed settled, were just what Lütjens hoped to encounter when he attempted to break out into the Atlantic through the northern passage. Accordingly, he advised the
Prinz Eugen
that he intended to proceed through the Denmark Strait, adding that, in the event the weather cleared up, which would reduce the task force’s prospects for a breakthrough, he would first rendezvous with the
Weissenburg.

At 1237, the
Bismarck
sounded her submarine and aircraft alarms—a periscope-sighting had been reported. The task force turned to port and steered a zigzag course for half an hour, but nothing transpired and at 1307 it resumed its former course. The weather was still favorable; in fact, it seemed inclined to become our best ally. By 1800 it was raining and a southwesterly wind was blowing at Force 3. Visibility fell to between 300 and 400 meters, and patches of
fog appeared. A damp cold gripped us, and the
Bismarck
glistened all the way to her foretop under a silvery sheen of moisture. It was a wonderful sight. In order to maintain contact and station, both ships turned on their signal lights or small searchlights every now and again, and, when the fog was particularly thick, the
Bismarck
shone her big searchlights astern to help the
Prinz
keep station. We were now in the northern latitudes, where the nights are almost as light as the days, so we could stay in a tight formation and maintain 24 knots even in poor visibility. Our passage was truly ghostly, as we slid at high speed through an unknown, endless, eerie world and left not a trace. The setting might have been created for the “perfect” breakout.

Low, dark rain clouds driven by a steady wind from astern ran with us like sheltering curtains. They were moving faster than we were, and it was only because there were so many of them that, as one overtook us, it was quickly replaced by the next, giving us virtually unbroken protection from hostile eyes. Despite the dampness, when I was not on watch I went for a stroll on the quarterdeck. The fleet staff’s meteorologist, Dr. Heinz Externbrink, happened to be doing the same thing, and I fell in with him. I could not resist asking him if he agreed that we should increase speed, so that we could keep up with the clouds and take advantage of their cover for as long as possible. He replied: “You’ve no idea how many times I’ve suggested that to Lütjens. I’ve warned him repeatedly that if we don’t do so we’ll have to count on unpleasantly good visibility in the Denmark Strait. But he won’t budge. He simply rejects the idea without giving any reasons.” Externbrink was worried sick, and the next day proved that his fears were not groundless.

After 2300 on this 22 May, Lütjens received three very important radio messages from Group North. The first, practically a repetition of the one he’d received that morning, read, “Assumption that breakout has not yet been detected by the enemy reconfirmed.” The second based on aerial reconnaissance of Scapa Flow, stated: “Partly visual reconnaissance Scapa 22.5. Four battleships, one possibly an aircraft carrier, apparently six light cruisers, several destroyers. Thus no change from 21 May and passage through the Norwegian Narrows not noticed.”
*
Didn’t “no change” once more confirm that the
Bismarck
and the
Prinz Eugen
had left Norway without being detected? What renewed confidence Lütjens must have gained from that! Wasn’t his intention to break through in the north without delay absolutely correct? And at 2322 he ordered a course change to the west: a course toward the Denmark Strait.

Shortly thereafter, the third signal arrived. In it, Group North reported that no operational commitment of enemy naval forces had yet been noted and that in the past days our U-boats had scored great successes south of Greenland. The landings in Crete, which we had begun on 20 May, were going according to plan and, in view of the sinking of several British cruisers off Crete, an
early
appearance of our fleet on the Atlantic sea lanes promised to inflict serious new damage on the British position at sea.
†
Naturally, this message
strengthened Admiral Lütjens resolve—indeed, it made him feel indirectly ordered—to carry on with Exercise Rhine without the slightest delay.

The truth of the matter was that our departure from Norway had been noticed by the enemy, and the German report on the ships at Scapa Flow was wrong. We were soon to discover all that the hard way.

*
This was German Summer Time (one hour ahead of standard Central European Time), which I have used throughout. It was the same as double British Summer Time used in the British ships and in all British accounts of the operation. I chose to adopt it in order to synchronize with British literature on this subject, even though the clocks in the
Bismarck
were set on Central European Time at noon of 23 May and remained so to the end.

*
That Axelsen’s observations and the consequent radio signal were incomplete, owing to the omission of the cruiser
Prinz Eugen
, is proven by the observations and photographs made by Edvard K. Barth. The German occupation forces took a fix on the signal and made every possible effort to uncover the sender but without success.

Axelson’s friend Odd Starheim had left Dundee on the orders of his superior, Colonel J. S. Wilson, in a collapsible boat in January 1941 and landed on the south coast of Norway, near Egersund. He made this daring trip despite a high fever and concealed himself in the coastal hills until it passed. His previous experience as a radioman in merchant ships, coupled with a special training course in England, qualified him for service as a radio operator in the Norwegian resistance movement. When he returned to London by way of Stockholm on 21 June 1941 his station had transmitted a total of ninety-five signals, including that concerning our task force. A high-ranking naval officer at the Admiralty who heard of Starheim asked, “Who is this lad? I’d serve with him anywhere.”

*
The Prinz
Eugen
belonged to the
Admiral Hipper
class.

†
Histories of the
Bismarck
allude to a “contradiction” between our stopover in Norway and the intention Lütjens expressed in Gotenhafen on 18 May to continue across the Norwegian Sea without stopping to join up with the
Weissenburg (see
Jochen Brennecke,
Schlachtschiff Bismarck
, 4th edition, pp. 66, 278; Ludovic Kennedy, Pursuit, p. 40). I do not see that there was any contradiction. According to the
Bismarck’s
War Diary, at the commanders’ conference Lütjens said that he intended to continue if the weather was “favorable.” Perhaps he defined what he meant by “favorable.” I was not present at the conference, but I take it that he meant he would continue without a halt only if the visibility were poor enough to give him a chance of making the critical passage between the Shetlands and Norway without being observed by enemy aerial reconnaissance. If I am correct, our entry into the fjords in the beautiful sunshine of 21 May was precisely in accordance with his original intention. Indeed, he could not have done anything else.