Battleship Bismarck (77 page)

But no such help came. The battleships
Scharnhorst
and
Gneisenau
, then docked at Brest, were not able to go to sea.
Gneisenau
had sustained bomb and torpedo damage, while the
Scharnhorst
was having tubes replaced in her boilers. The destroyers there could not put
to sea because of the northwester. The weather was so bad that, even had they reached the battle area, they would not have been able to accomplish much—on the night of 26-27 May we saw what a difficult time the British destroyers had in the high seas. Of the eight U-boats in the Bay of Biscay that at the last moment were ordered to support the
Bismarck
—the
U-73, U-556, U-98, U-97, U-48, U-552, U-108
, and
U-74
—the
U-74
and
U-556
had expended all their torpedoes in earlier operations. The
U-74
had been damaged by depth charges and had only limited maneuverability. The intact boats were too far away when they received the order to assemble around the
Bismarck
to reach the scene of action in time. It was too late to send a fully equipped U-boat from a base on the west coast of France. There were still the supply ship
Ermland
and the oceangoing tugs, but it would take them between twenty and forty hours to reach us from the coast. They would have arrived too late even to rescue survivors.

Our naval headquarters ashore certainly mobilized every imaginable help for the
Bismarck.
But it was too little and too late.

The only other help we might have had was from our bomber squadrons stationed in France. But, of course, they needed notification and preparation. Apparently there was neither.

Inevitably, the questions raised earlier about the timing for Exercise Rhine and the best possible composition of Lütjens’s task force come to mind. Even more important, however, is the question of how good were the arrangements for cooperation between the task force and the air and submarine arms, should that become necessary. But these are considerations that exceed the bounds of a survivor’s story. So this line of thought must be abandoned with the recognition that, after the torpedo hit on 26 May, the
Bismarck
was consigned to a fate that she did not have the resources to avert.

*
Jochen Brennecke,
Schlachtschiff Bismarck
, note 454.

*
Alfred Schulze-Hinrichs, “Schlachtschiff
Bismarck
und Seemannschaft,” pp. 6–7.

†
In addition to the preceding reservations, it is doubtful if it would have been technically possible to back the ship all the way to the coast of France. The reverse turbines could only have exerted their—already greatly diminished—horsepower for brief periods, as the cooling system would not have sufficed for prolonged operation. The openings for the cool water intake were designed for forward motion. Because of this, the backing would have had to be periodically interrupted, and each time the ship would have swung off course, which would have been very difficult to regain, so from this viewpoint as well such a maneuver would have been an act of despair.

*
Junack’s words regarding morale on board after the Fleet Commander’s address
[see
pp. 182–84 above] may have provoked Brennecke’s question. Junack’s actual words were: “The high fighting spirit that permeated the battleship on Saturday [24 May, the day of the battle off Iceland] was, however, irretrievably lost.”

†
jochen Brennecke, note 299.

E    Action between the Rodney and the Bismarck on the morning of Tuesday, 27 May 1941, as recorded by the battle observer in the Rodney

*
The expression
enemy turning
used in this and subsequent entries should not be understood to mean that the
Bismarck
was turning of her own volition. She was reacting to the combined influences of her jammed rudders, the seaway, and the wind. The salvos referred to in this entry are those directed by the author from the after station (see pp. 250-51 above).

†
Parallel to this, Lieutenant Commander J. M. Wellings, USN, who was in the
Rodney
, reported: “at 0902 a hit was observed on
Bismarck’s
forecastle.
Bismarck
continued to fire regularly until between 0902 and 0908 when her firing became irregular and intermittent.
Bismarck’s
‘A’ and ‘B’ turrets must have been damaged during this period as only one salvo was observed from the forward turrets after this period. This salvo was fired at 0927. From about 0919 to 0931 only ‘X’ turret of the
Bismarck
was in action, apparently in local control and very erratic. The last salvo was fired by
Bismarck
at 0931.”