Battleship Bismarck (25 page)

The clock showed 0553. The range, I figured, was less than 20,000 meters. There were flashes like lightning out there! Still approaching nearly bow-on, the enemy had opened fire.
Donnerwetter!
Those flashes couldn’t be coming from a cruiser’s medium-caliber guns. Certain that we would immediately return the fire, I braced myself for “Permission to fire” and the thunder of our guns that would follow. Nothing happened. We in the after station looked at one another in bewilderment. Why weren’t we doing something? The question hung in the air. Schneider’s voice came over the telephone. “Request permission to fire.” Silence. Schneider again: “Enemy has opened fire,” “Enemy’s salvos well grouped,” and, anew, “Request permission to fire.” Still no response. Lütjens was hesitating. The tension-laden seconds stretched into minutes. The British ships were turning slightly to port, the lead ship showing an extremely long forecastle and two heavy twin turrets. On the telephone I heard Albrecht shout, “The
Hood
—it’s the
Hood!
” It was an unforgettable moment. There she was, the famous warship, once the largest in the world, that had been the “terror” of so many of our war games. Two minutes had gone by since the British opened fire. Lindemann could restrain himself no longer and he was heard to mutter to himself, “I will not let my ship be shot out from under my ass.” Then, at last, he came on the intercom and gave the word, “Permission to fire!”

The
Bismarck
, running at high speed, has just fired a salvo at Admiral Holland’s force. The large bow wave and the thin stream of smoke forced high out of her stack attest to her speed. Note that she is on the starboard quarter of the
Prinz Eugen.
(Photograph courtesy of Paul Schmalenbach.)

Both the German ships concentrated their fire on the
Hood
, while she, deceived, as our enemies often were by the similarity of design of all our ship types, was firing at the
Prinz Eugen
, in the belief that she was the
Bismarck.
The captain of the other British ship, which turned out to be the battleship
Prince of Wales
, realizing what had happened, began firing at the
Bismarck
, despite Admiral Holland’s order to concentrate fire on the leading German ship. About four minutes after the firing began and after six salvos had been aimed at the
Hood
, Lütjens ordered the
Prinz Eugen
to take the
Prince of Wales
, which he referred to as the
King George V
, under fire. Having been ordered to keep our old fellow travelers, the
Norfolk
and
Suffolk
, under continuous observation in case they launched torpedoes at us, I could no longer watch what was going on off our port beam. I had to depend on what I could hear over the fire-control telephone.

Turrets Caesar and Dora fire on the
Prince of Wales.
The
Bismarck
has pulled to port of the
Prinz Eugen
and her guns now point at a bearing of about 310 degrees. Note the position of the foretop range-finder cupola. (Photograph courtesy of Paul Schmalenbach.)

Lindemann’s permission for us to open fire was immediately followed by our first heavy salvo. The
Bismarck
was in action, and the rumble of her gunfire could be heard as far away as Reykjavik, the capital of Iceland.
*
I heard Schneider order the first salvo and heard his observation on the fall of the shot, “short.” He corrected the range and deflection, then ordered a 400-meter bracket.
*
The long salvo he described as “over,” the base salvo as “straddling,” and immediately ordered, “Full salvos good rapid.” He had thus laid his battery squarely on target at the very outset of the engagement.

I had to concentrate on watching the
Suffolk
and
Norfolk
, but I must say I found it very difficult to deny myself glimpses of the morning’s main event. The cruisers, still twelve to fifteen nautical miles astern, followed on our course, a little to one-side of our wake. There was no evidence that they were preparing to launch a torpedo attack. The
Suffolk
fired a few salvos, but they fell hopelessly short. Wake-Walker in the
Norfolk
appeared to have left the battlefield completely in the hands of the senior officer, Holland, in the
Hood.
I continued to hear Schneider’s calm voice making gunnery corrections and observations. “The enemy is burning,” he said once, and then, “Full salvos good rapid.” The forward gunnery computer room was telling him at regular intervals, “Attention, fall.”

Ever since the action began, I had been wondering whether I would be able to distinguish the sound of the enemy’s shells hitting us from
the sound of our own firing—with all the noise that was going on, that might not always be easy. Then I heard Schneider again: “Wow, was that a misfire? That really ate into him.” Over the telephone I heard an ever louder and more excited babble of voices—it seemed as though something sensational was about to happen, if it hadn’t already. Convinced that the
Suffolk
and
Norfolk
would leave us in peace for at least a few minutes, I entrusted the temporary surveillance of the horizon astern through the starboard director to one of my petty officers and went to the port director. While I was still turning it toward the
Hood
, I heard a shout, “She’s blowing up!” “She”—that could only be the
Hood!
The sight I then saw is something I shall never forget. At first the
Hood
was nowhere to be seen; in her place was a colossal pillar of black smoke reaching into the sky. Gradually, at the foot of the pillar, I made out the bow of the battle cruiser projecting upwards at an angle, a sure sign that she had broken in two. Then I saw something I could hardly believe: a flash of orange coming from her forward guns! Although her fighting days had ended, the
Hood
was firing a last salvo. I felt great respect for those men over there.

At 0557 one of our observers had spotted a quick-spreading fire forward of the
Hood’s
after mast: the second salvo from the
Prinz Eugen
had set fire to rocket propellant for the U. P. Projectors.
*
Four minutes later, a heavy salvo from the
Bismarck
hit the
Hood
and sent a mountain of flame and a yellowish-white fireball bursting up between her masts and soaring into the sky. White stars, probably molten pieces of metal, shot out from the black smoke that followed the flame, and huge fragments, one of which looked like a main turret, whirled through the air like toys. Wreckage of every description littered the water around the
Hood
, one especially conspicuous piece remaining afire for a long time and giving off clouds of dense, black smoke.

Another observer, on duty in the charthouse as an assistant to Korvettenkapitän Wolf Neuendorff, the navigator, described what he saw:

The
Hood
blows up. A giant column of black smoke marks the spot where the battle cruiser had been. The smoke at left is from the guns of the
Prince of Wales.
(Photograph courtesy of Paul Schmalenbach.)

“Straddling,” boomed out of the loudspeaker. I was standing with Kapitän Neuendorff in front of the chart on which we were continuously recording our course. We put our instruments down and hurried to the eye-slits in the forward conning tower, looked through, and asked ourselves, what does he mean, straddling? At first we could see nothing but what we saw moments later could not have been conjured up by even the wildest imagination. Suddenly, the
Hood
split in two, and thousands of tons of steel were hurled into the air. More than a thousand men died. Although the range was still about 18,000 meters, the fireball that developed where the
Hood
still was seemed near enough to touch. It was so close that I shut my eyes but curiosity made me open them again a second or two later. It was like being in a hurricane. Every nerve in my body felt the pressure of the explosions. If I have one wish, it is that my children may be spared such an experience.

In my director I now saw the after part of the
Hood
drift away and quickly sink. Her forward section sank slowly, and soon there was nothing to be seen where the pride of the Royal Navy, the 48,000-ton
*
“mighty
Hood,
” had so suddenly suffered the fate Admiral Holland had in mind for the two German ships. From the time the firing began, only six minutes passed before a shell from the
Bismarck
penetrated the
Hood’s
armor protection at a point never definitely established and detonated more than 100 tons of cordite in the ammunition
room of one of her after main turrets. How reminiscent of what happened to the battle cruisers
Queen Mary, Indefatigable
, and
Invincible
at the Battle of Jutland in 1916! The
Hood
met her end in the midst of battle. She left only three survivors in the ice-cold waters, and they were picked up by a British destroyer and landed at Reykjavik.

At their battle stations, our men were kept informed of the course of the action by the ship’s watch. They heard, “Enemy in sight”—“Opponent has opened fire”—they waited to hear the response of our own guns. A few minutes later it came, and each salvo made the ship shudder. Salvo after salvo was leaving the
Bismarck’s
guns and her engines were running smoothly, when the men below heard,
“Hood
is burning,” and, a little later,
“Hood
is exploding.” They just stared at one another in disbelief. Then the shock passed and the jubilation knew no bounds. Overwhelmed with joy and pride in the victory, they slapped one another on the back and shook hands.

In the damage-control center adjacent to the command center, the First Officer’s action station, Josef Statz saw a more exuberant Oels than he would have believed possible. Oels thrust the top half of his body through the pass-through between the two centers and, thrilled to the core, shouted, “A triple
Sieg Heil
to our
Bismarck!
” The superiors had a hard time getting the men back to work and convincing them that the battle wasn’t over and that every man must continue to do his duty.

When the
Hood
had gone, our heavy guns were ordered to “Shift to left target.” That meant combining our fire with that of the
Prinz Eugen
which, along with our own medium guns, had been firing at this target for some minutes. The
Prince of Wales
, which, in obedience to Admiral Holland’s last command, was turning 20 degrees to port when the
Hood
blew up, had to change direction to avoid the wreckage of her vanished leader. She was then at approximately the same range and on the same course as the
Hood
had been. Consequently, Schneider could continue the action without adjusting the firing data. Because our courses were converging, the range soon closed to 14,000 meters and the
Prince of Wales
was being fired upon by both German ships. By this time I was back watching for a torpedo attack from the
Norfolk
and
Suffolk
, listening over the telephone to Schneider’s firing directions. The action did not last much longer. Clearly, it was telling on the
Prince of Wales
and she turned away to the southeast, laying down a smoke-screen to cover her withdrawal. When the range increased to 22,000 meters, Lütjens gave the command to cease firing on the
Prince of Wales.
She, too, must have been hard hit, how hard we had no way of knowing at the time. Nevertheless, I will tell here what we learned later.