Battleship Bismarck (76 page)

D    The Rudder Damage: Were All Possibilities of Repair Exhausted?

The existing literature on the
Bismarck
poses a question that I have been asked repeatedly: whether or not everything possible was done to repair the damage to her rudder. I want to deal with this matter, anyway, but the many questions make me feel obliged to do so.

Kapitänleutnant (Ingenieurwesen) Gerhard Junack, who not only participated in some of the attempts at repair but whose station was closer to what was going on than was mine, has said: “I cannot help wondering whether everything was really done that night, every possibility exhausted, to save the battleship
Bismarck
in spite of everything. Would it have helped if, contrary to naval custom, the officer of the watch had conned the ship from the engine-control station or the chief engineer had stood beside the captain on the bridge and been in direct contact with the turbine operators? Full-power orders relayed through the engine telegraph certainly weren’t going to work. What if a charge had been set in the stern, regardless of what it might have done to the propellers? So long as the rudders were jammed, it wasn’t much use having the propellers in working order, anyway. Suppose a U-boat had been taken in tow as a course stabilizer or a stern anchor had been suspended from a float and dragged behind? With three propellers capable of 28 knots still serviceable, was there really nothing she could do but head towards the enemy at low speed? Who’s to say what would have been possible with an unbroken fighting spirit?” These points will be examined in sequence.

Junack did not say what good it might have done to have the officer
of the watch conn the ship from the engine-control station, and I cannot imagine. I believe that the officer of the watch must be on the bridge. If he were below, it would be impossible for him to carry out his most important task, conning the ship by the view that is available only topside. What could he have done better in the engine-control station than on the bridge?

Similarly, Junack did not say what the advantage would have been in having the chief engineer stand beside the captain on the bridge in direct contact with the turbine operators. Orders could undoubtedly have been transmitted to the engines just as quickly by telephone as by engine telegraph but, without being told more, I cannot see how this would have helped.

As for setting a charge in the stern without regard for the propellers, we have seen that after the rudder rooms flooded, attempts to enter them and do repairs were defeated by the force of the water. For the same reason, no one could work in the after steering rooms, either. If none of the spaces in the steering plant could be entered, how could a charge be attached to the rudder shafts? Such a relatively simple task as disengaging a coupling took a diver hours of exhausting work. Has Junack given any valid reason for thinking that, despite everything, it would have been possible for anyone to force his way into a rudder room and place a charge there? As a concerned investigator, he would have surely tracked down any such possibility and provided a persuasive argument to show it could have been done. But he didn’t do that. The proof is lacking, even the probability.

Let us assume, for the sake of discussion, that it would have been possible to force a way into the after steering room and there set a charge, “regardless of what it might have done to the propellers.” It seems to me that to recommend taking the risk of losing the propellers and perhaps of more flooding simply in order to get rid of jammed rudders would have been a counsel of despair. Without her propellers, the
Bismarck
would have been dead in the water and at the mercy of every vagary in the enemy-infested ocean area around her. Reduce to impotence a propulsion plant still capable of 28 knots? Would that have been a responsible course of action?

On the other hand, since the propellers were forward of and below the rudder shafts, a correctly measured charge might not have damaged them at all or at least to a lesser extent. The explosive charge is instantly changed into a gas jet that tends to rise towards the surface. However, since water is incompressible, the shock wave associated with that explosion could still damage the propellers.

I do not know how precisely demolition charges could be measured on board but, assuming that a charge commensurate with the need could have been prepared, did the
Bismarck’s
command neglect to do something that might have improved her situation? Only if there were solid prospects of achieving the desired result. And what were the prospects? During our shake-down cruises in the Baltic we found that it was very difficult to steer the
Bismarck
with her propellers alone. Obviously, it would have been even more difficult to do so in the raging Atlantic on 26 May and it would have been virtually impossible to hold the giant ship on a course for St. Nazaire with a following sea. Therefore, even if it was technically possible to blow the rudders away, the objective in doing so would not have been achieved.

Take a U-boat in tow to stabilize our course? First of all, a U-boat would have to have been available. We now know that none was available. And had there been, how could the
Bismarck
have taken and kept it in tow? If even the
Bismarck
was laboring heavily in the stormy seas, how much more tumultuous would it have been for a U-boat. The U-boat’s men were to handle the heavy hawsers on a very small deck, while the boat itself was being maneuvered? And, so that all this could be done at night, should Lindemann have illuminated the area of the deck where it was going on, and perhaps have turned on a searchlight as well, thereby helping the enemy to pinpoint our position and giving him precise firing data, particularly for his torpedoes?

Moreover, it would have been necessary to post a detail on the
Bismarck’s
quarterdeck to maintain continuous surveillance of the tow connection. Had the enemy suddenly appeared, which he was expected to do momentarily, the presence of these men might very well have delayed the immediate employment of our main after turrets. Anyway, we would not have been able to fire astern without endangering the U-boat there. In other words, we might have been forced partly or completely to forgo the use of our after turrets. Such a limitation could have been put on our fighting power only with the most serious reservations and could scarcely have been maintained. Even had the tow been managed, the
Bismarck
, more than 50,000 tons of her, running before a northwester that became a storm, could hardly have been held on course by a U-boat of, let us say, 500 tons. If the sea had been calm and there had been no enemy ships around, perhaps, but, given the circumstances, I consider the idea unrealistic. In any case, there was no U-boat at our disposal.

Drag a stern anchor suspended from a float? The disproportion between the two masses would have been even greater than in the case of a U-boat. A stern anchor would not have had any effect at all on the
Bismarck.

The answer to Junack’s concluding question, “Who’s to say what would have been possible with an unbroken fighting spirit?” lies in the above rebuttals to his proposals.

Not one of the options he indicates could have been carried out, either singly or in combination. Either they shatter on hard facts, such as the suction under the stern, the inaccessibility of the steering rooms, and the lack of a U-boat, or they are contradicted by logic, such as his ideas of stationing the officer of the watch in the engine-control station or the chief engineer on the bridge, towing the stern anchor, or blowing off the rudders without regard to other damage. I do not see that the ship’s command or anyone else omitted anything that could have been done. And Junack has not proved, much less documented, his tacit reproaches. The fighting spirit in the
Bismarck
was not broken. The question should not be asked, even rhetorically.

Brennecke raises still other suggestions made by third parties as to how the
Bismarck’s
rudder damage might have been dealt with.
*
Among them is the idea that a hawser or heavy anchor chain put over the side might have stabilized the course of the ship before the following sea. According to this proposal, danger of the hawser or chain being drawn into the propellers might have been averted by suspending it from a spar projecting from one side of the ship aft. According to another proposal, the starboard side of the hull could have been “roughened up,” so that it would have greater resistance to the flow of water. This might have been one way of offsetting at least to some degree the effect of having the rudders jammed in the port position.

The reservations already raised in regard to the U-boat and the stern anchor also apply to these retrospective theories. On one hand, the difference between the respective masses would have been much too great in regard to the anchor chain, hawser, or any material that might have been put over the side to increase the drag on the starboard side. And on the other, security, which required that the ship be darkened and her guns be ready to fire at any moment, would have argued against the illumination of the work place and the posting of working parties on the upper deck, as would have been necessary in these cases also.

The idea put forward in Brennecke’s book that the
Bismarck
, by radio messages through the Seekriegsleitung, should have asked hydrodynamic experts at home what was the best way to counter the rudder damage has all the earmarks of being armchair strategy.

Retired Kapitän zur See Alfred Schulze-Hinrichs appears to me to have the most plausible ex post facto theories on what the
Bismarck
might have done.
*
This recognized expert in the field of seamanship wonders whether the
Bismarck
should not have tried, by contrarotating her three propellers, to reach St. Nazaire by backing.

This is not the place for a detailed examination of Schulze-Hinrichs’s very interesting technical arguments. In retrospect, I think the explanation for not trying a maneuver such as he suggests must lie in the circumstances that existed that night, the presence of the enemy and the weather, as well as in our general experience of the
Bismarck’s
steering characteristics.

Given the pressure being put upon us by the enemy, it is readily understandable that the ship’s command did not try such a maneuver, which would have required continuous, concentrated attention—and that for hours, over hundreds of nautical miles, on a pitch-black night with no horizon and not a single star by which to navigate. Finally, as we have seen, her earliest trials in the Baltic showed that the ship was extremely difficult to steer with her propellers alone. In backing she had a strong tendency, as do most ships, to turn her stern into the wind. In the Atlantic on 26 May this would have, in effect, put us on the same unwanted course to the northwest to which we were condemned in going ahead. Experience gained in her trials may have caused the ship’s command to reject from the start the idea of attempting to reach St. Nazaire by backing through the Atlantic swells.
†
It is, however, possible that had such a maneuver been practiced more frequently and practiced in bad weather, it might have been tried.

In view of the
Bismarck’s
actual situation that night, Schulze-Hinrichs’s otherwise interesting line of thought is too theoretical.

The question whether the
Bismarck
did everything possible to remedy the rudder damage must, therefore, even taking into account the theories subsequently advanced by third parties, be answered affirmatively. Everything that could be responsibly undertaken, everything sensible, was tried. Brennecke is of the same opinion up to this point, but when he questions the presence of a will to win, he departs from my thinking.
*
What does “will to win” mean here?

As retired Admiral Erich Förste correctly states, Lütjens’s aim could only have been to reach port and to continue the operation after undergoing repairs and refueling.
†
If, on the way to St. Nazaire, he had been forced to fight a doubly unwelcome action, he would have done so with the necessary vigor. That the fighting spirit was not broken was conclusively proved by the course of the battle on 27 May. If evidence as to the spirit of the crew after the rudder hit is needed, we have only to quote Maschinengefreiter Hermann Budich: “The ship’s inability to maneuver did not even have a particularly negative effect on our morale. It is true that, because at the time we left Gotenhafen we were ordered by Korvettenkapitän Freytag to perform the duties of the main electric control station in our circuit room II without the benefit of extra help, we were totally exhausted. But we were full of hope and had great faith in our captain, whose personality was such that we were very devoted to him.”

The reason why, in her inability to maneuver, the lonely ship was helpless in the Atlantic is not to be sought in conditions on board. The only thing that could have really helped during those hours was an attack on the enemy’s forces by other German units, an attack that would have prevented or interrupted the operations of the heavy British ships against the
Bismarck.