Battleship Bismarck (37 page)

Hours later, we managed to get a hand rudder coupled to the rudder yoke, and the crew of the starboard third 15-centimeter turret were ordered to man it. But they weren’t able to get to it. Inside the room, they were confronted with swirling and tossing seawater and oil. They returned to their stations and reported to the bridge. The crews of the starboard second and third 15-centimeter turrets were then directed to go to the quarterdeck and place a collision mat over the hole in the ship’s hull. But high seas frustrated their efforts and they, too, had to return to their stations without accomplishing anything.

Above, in the after fire-control station, all we could do was sympathize with the hard work of the men struggling to repair our damage. From time to time we asked what they were trying to do and what success they were having. Most of the answers we got were brief and not very informative. For example, we were told that some water had been pumped out of the ship. There was never any intimation as to whether they were having success or were on the verge of it. I had to suppress an urge to go and see for myself. Anyone who was not involved in making repairs obviously had to remain at his station because, although that air attack was over, there might be another, and enemy ships might appear. We were still at general quarters. We could not let down our guard even for a minute.

The circle we involuntarily made after our rudder was damaged had turned us around from our southeasterly course towards St. Nazaire, and we were moving to the northwest, into the wind and towards the
enemy. The
Bismarck’s
hull shook noticeably as Lindemann tried various speeds and combinations of propellers in an attempt to bring us back on course. His orders from the bridge came in rapid succession: “Port engines half ahead, center and starboard engines stop”—“Port and center engines half ahead, starboard engines back slow”—“Port engines full ahead, starboard engines stop.”

Below, the men did their best to regulate the turbines precisely and, instead of two of them standing on the control platforms, as was normally the case, there were three: one at the forward throttle, one at the backing throttle, and one ready to jump in and do whatever was needed. The minimum time prescribed for waiting between “Stop” and “Full power” was ignored. Boiler pressure was now the only thing the men turning the hand cranks had to go by and, inevitably, the safe maximum was sometimes overshot. Because we were in the cleared-for-action state of readiness, no doors or ventilators were open and the temperature in the engine room climbed to 50 degrees centigrade—this, with the men in leather clothing.

Lindemann desperately tried other combinations of speeds and propellers. Nothing did any good. When he did succeed in deflecting the ship from her course to the northwest, her jammed rudders brought her back into the wind. Increasing winds and rising seas made our useless rudders an even more critical factor. Nevertheless, we had to regard it as fortunate that, despite their proximity to the explosion, our propellers had not been damaged and we could still do a little maneuvering.

About an hour after the torpedo hit, we in the after station got word of the suggestion that we either send down divers to cut off our rudders or set charges to sever them. Getting rid of our rudders would have the same effect as having them jammed in the midships position, which would greatly facilitate steering with our propellers. The chief engineer and his staff assembled on the quarterdeck to investigate this possibility. It has been said that Lindemann took some part in these deliberations, but I cannot be certain that he did. In any case, both ideas were rejected.

Although there certainly would have been no lack of volunteers, approaching the rudders from outside the ship was not even considered. The seas were too high and the suction under the stern was too strong for free-swimming divers or for men to work their way down safety lines rigged under the stern. Before men were asked to risk their lives there had to be a reasonable chance of success. There was not. Blowing the rudders off from inside was rejected because it
would be next to impossible to measure the explosive charge so exactly that it would have neither less nor more than the intended effect. In the latter case, it might damage the nearby propellers as well as other parts of the ship.

One working party volunteered to take off the hangar door and weld it to the starboard side of the stern at a 15-degree angle, which would correspond to a rudder position of 12 degrees. The thought was that this would counteract the effect of the rudders jammed in the port position and make it easier to steer with the propellers. But this plan, too, was rejected because of the bad weather.

High above the scene of the damage, in the after station, we could do no more than witness from afar the attempts at repair, one after the other of which appeared to fail. We could only worry and try to give one another hope and confidence. Serious as the jammed rudder was, I knew it was not the worst thing. But what was the use of adding to the worries of the men around me by telling them what really doomed us? It was that the
Bismarck
, reverting inexorably to a generally northwesterly course, was traveling back over a stretch of our passage towards St. Nazaire, on which our progress had seemed so promising. And more than that. The course we were on was leading us towards the overwhelming British forces that had been pursuing us. We were relieving Tovey of the job of pursuit. Naturally, there was no point in using the full power of which our engines were still capable. High speed would have only led the more quickly to the unwelcome encounter with the enemy. Therefore we maintained only enough speed to keep us from being blown about, between 5 and 7 knots.

The wind! Throughout the operation, its direction had been of varying degrees of importance. From the time we left the cliffs of Norway to the bitter end, no matter what course we were on, it blew from astern. On 22 May it did us the favor of providing us with a shield from hostile observation by driving rain clouds with us. But this evening, 26 May, the northwester, which developed into a real storm overnight, sealed our fate.

Our spirits were given a new lift when we heard that someone had succeeded in uncoupling the starboard rudder—Maschinengefreiter Gerhard Böhnel in the stern reported it through Maschinengefreiter Hermann Budich, the talker in action station “E,” to Obermaschinist Oskar Barho. Reports that this was not so dampened all our hopes. It was true that several times men managed to force their way into the port rudder room also, but they could not reach the coupling. Seawater
gulped in and out through the hole in the hull. When, after indescribable exertions, a diver did succeed in reaching the coupling, he found it so badly jammed he couldn’t budge it. Several divers collapsed when they were pulled out of the rooms.

A machinist petty officer first class who had made a dive in the port rudder room appeared in the command center to deliver his report. After the man’s report, Oels realized that there was a serious weakness in the ship’s supply of diving equipment. The hoses of the so-called small diving suit had repeatedly become entangled with one another and created additional difficulties for the only partly trained divers, already shaken by the water’s violent heaving up and down. Their air hoses were repeatedly pinched off and their faces turned blue from the effects of nitrogen poisoning. The so-called naval respirators could be used only in waist-high water and by no means in completely flooded compartments. Only underwater escape apparatus,
*
Oels concluded, would have given the men the necessary freedom of movement and a better view to all sides—but there was none on board.

A moonless, gloomy night had long since fallen over us. Incapable of maneuvering, we crept towards the superior forces coming to destroy us—a virtual journey to Golgotha. As the hours passed, our dying hope that somehow we would still find a way to escape was supplanted by the growing certainty that there was no escape. Sometime after midnight, the word spread that work on the rudder had ceased, and certainty became absolute.

*
My account of the number and sequence of torpedo hits differs from that given by the Fleet Commander in his subsequent radio reports. It is, however, my firm recollection that there were two explosions forward of my station before the one aft. The sequence and content of Lütjens’s reports are, of course, important as evidence of what happened, but they are not incontrovertible proof.

*
The fact that the
Bismarck
did not on either 24 or 26 May shoot down a single one of the relatively large number of close, low-flying enemy planes has puzzled both experts and laymen. Ostensibly, such a complete failure simply “should not have happened,” and I cannot offer any plausible explanation of this apparently poor performance. In this context, however, it may be helpful to refer to a passage from Alistair MacLean’s
H.M.S. Ulysses
, quoted here by permission. It describes the crucial phase of German air attack on the British cruiser
Ulysses
in the Norwegian Sea:

Two bombers left now, pressing home their attack with suicidal courage, weaving violently from side to side to avoid destruction. Two seconds passed, three, four—and still they came on, through the falling snow and intensely heavy fire, miraculous in their immunity. Theoretically, there is no target so easy to hit as a plane approaching directly head on: in practice, it never worked out that way. In the Arctic, the Mediterranean, the Pacific, the relative immunity of the torpedo bombers, the high percentage of successful attacks carried out in the face of almost saturation fire, never failed to confound the experts. Tension, overanxiety, fear—these were part of the trouble, at least: there are no half measures about a torpedo bomber—you get him or he gets you. And there is nothing more nerve-racking—always, of course, with the outstanding exception of the screaming, near vertical power dive of the gull-winged Stuka dive bomber—than to see a torpedo bomber looming hugely, terrifyingly over the open sights of your gun and know that you have just five inexorable seconds to live. And with the
Ulysses
, of course, the continous rolling of the cruiser in the heavy cross sea made accuracy impossible.

The difficulty in aiming the guns on the
Ulysses
, caused by the ship’s heavy rolling, corresponded to that experienced on the
Bismarck
due to the constantly changing target bearings and tilts produced by the maneuvering of the ship.

*
This was a small diving apparatus for escaping from sunken U-boats, for example. The air supply was carried to the diver from a flask of oxygen through a breathing mask by means of a mouthpiece. The operational endurance of the apparatus was approximately thirty minutes. The breathing mask, which was shaped like a ring and worn around the neck, also served as a life buoy. (For technical details, see: “Gebrauchsanweisung T2.1-2 Dräger-Tauchretter,” November 1943, 10th edition, Drägerwerk Lübeck.)

28    Destroyers Ordered to Tovey’s Support

When on the afternoon of 25 May Tovey realized that the
Bismarck
was making for a port in western France, he became concerned about his shortage of destroyers. As his battleships neared the coast, they would face an increasingly grave threat from German U-boats, and it disturbed him that his destroyer escort had had to turn back for lack of fuel and the
King George V
had been unprotected since morning. He knew that the
Rodney
, which had been placed under his command but had yet to join him, had three destroyers with her but he had no idea about the status of their fuel.

That evening, therefore, Tovey asked the Admiralty to provide the
King George V
and
Rodney
with a new destroyer escort. By the time it received this request, the Admiralty had already recognized the problem and decided how to handle it. The solution, which had not been easy to find because destroyers were in short supply in general, was to recall the 4th Destroyer Flotilla—the
Cossack, Maori, Zulu, Sikh
, and
Piorun
*
—from convoy duty. On the evening of 25 May, this flotilla, under the command of Captain Philip Vian, was some 300 nautical miles ahead of the
King George V
, which meant it would be able to join Tovey’s battleships early the next afternoon. At 0200 on 26 May Vian in the
Cossack
received orders to close with the
King George V
, taking with him the
Sikh
and
Zulu.
He was to send the
Maori
and
Pionin
to join the
Rodney.
Under way, Vian read the Catalina’s report of the rediscovery of the
Bismarck
, which fixed her position to the southeast of his, and saw that the question before him was should he obey the letter of the Admiral’s ‘s order or simply make for the enemy? Thinking his destroyers might help to intercept the
Bismarck
on her way to France, he decided to do the latter. He turned onto a pursuing course at maximum speed but a storm astern and heavy seas prevented him from maintaining it. Around 2200 on the twenty-sixth he sighted the
Sheffield
, which had been taken under fire by the
Bismarck
only shortly before and was now steaming north, and from her he learned the
Bismarck’s
exact bearing. By 2230 both the
Piorun
and the
Zulu
had found the
Bismarck.
His destroyers could begin operating against the German battleship.