Final Voyage (9 page)

British success ultimately came down to luck rather than superior firepower. The torpedo that finally snared the
Bismarck
hit her rudder but did not explode. Instead it damaged the rudder to the extent where it could no longer be disengaged. Jamming the
Bismarck
's steering gear, the torpedo rendered the ship unmanoeuvrable. She could still maintain her high speed and outrun her approaching enemies, let alone outgun them, but she was now trapped in a permanent circular course, turning perpetually 12
degrees to port. By the time Captain Lindemann may have been ready to consider using explosives to destroy the rudder, it was too late. The Royal Navy was closing in, and the
Bismarck
no longer had the
Prinz Eugen
to offer any protection.

On an entirely predictable and unchangeable course, the
Bismarck
proved quite an easy target for the battleships HMS
King George V
and HMS
Rodney
, as well as the heavy cruisers HMS
Norfolk
and HMS
Dorsetshire
. The
Bismarck
fired back, making HMS
Sheffield
retreat from the fight, but the other vessels hounded her through the night and into the next morning. Illuminated by star shells to make it even easier to see her in the dark, the
Bismarck
received hundreds of direct hits from many of over 700 shells the British warships fired at her. By morning she could no longer fire back, all of her turrets destroyed, so the British moved in to finish her off at close range.

He saw a man on deck waving semaphore flags to surrender, and a Morse code message flash to convey the same.

Aboard the
Bismarck
, Admiral Gunther Lutjens, who was in overall command of the mission, sent a message through to naval command that the ship would be destroyed before he would surrender. However, as the British turned the
Bismarck
into a wreck, burning from end to end, listing 20 degrees to port and settling by the stern, a British sailor on the
Rodney
claimed he saw the black flag raised – the naval sign to cease hostilities and begin talking. He also claimed he saw a man on deck waving semaphore flags to surrender, and a Morse code message flash to convey the same. Another sailor on the
Dorsetshire
corroborated the report of the Morse message. It is entirely possible that
crewmen on board the
Bismarck
wished to surrender, even if their commanders didn't. The British ships did not call off the attack. Not only had Churchill ordered the ship be sunk, but the very conventions of war at sea required the national flag to be lowered to indicate surrender. Nobody on the
Bismarck
did this. Nor were men seen abandoning ship, another indicator that could induce captains to assume capitulation.

Torpedoes fired from the
Dorsetshire
– first into the starboard side, then into the port – probably landed the fatal blows. Soon afterwards the Nazi superweapon capsized, sinking rapidly by the stern and disappearing beneath the waves completely within 15 minutes. The
Dorsetshire
and a destroyer came to the aid of hundreds of survivors in the water, but when lookouts reported what they believed to be a U-boat, the rescue was abandoned and the British ships left the scene. Just over 100 had been saved, and another five would be picked up by German vessels in the next couple of hours, but about 2,200 went down with the
Bismarck
. For the British, their winning this greatest prize from the Kriegsmarine helped bolster national confidence. However, as survivors from the
Bismarck
later revealed, it might not have been the British who sank her.

The
Bismarck
sank to a depth of 17,500ft (almost 4,800m) – over three miles (4.8km) down. Her wreck ploughed down the side of an underwater mountain for the last mile, coming to a rest before reaching the very bottom. Here she was found in 1989 by Robert Ballard, the undersea
archaeologist who had discovered the
Titanic
's wreck four years previously. Her hull remained surprisingly intact for a ship supposedly sunk by torpedoes, lacking even the damage Ballard had discovered on the
Titanic
's hull. Others who visited the wreck also began to believe the half-century old claims that the
Bismarck
hadn't been sunk by the British, but that she had been scuttled by her crew.

The
Bismarck
's first officer ordered the crew in the engine room to open all the watertight doors throughout the ship and prepare scuttling charges.

According to some of the survivors, the
Bismarck
's first officer came to them below decks in the middle of the ship's final battle and ordered them to prepare to abandon ship. He then ordered the crew in the engine room to open all the watertight doors throughout the ship and prepare scuttling charges. Some of the survivors even claimed to have been involved in setting the charges themselves, intending to damage weaker parts of the keel and allow the vessel to flood. These were apparently detonated half an hour before the
Bismarck
finally sank, before the
Dorsetshire
's last torpedoes struck. Whether this caused the sinking or simply made the inevitable happen sooner is debatable, but the Admiralty took the claims seriously enough in 1941 to acknowledge in its report of the sinking that scuttling charges may have helped. Of course, that wouldn't have had the same propaganda effect as the decisive victory which was reported.

Robert Ballard found holes in the
Bismarck
's hull, but they were mostly above the waterline, and he posited that the rest of them weren't severe enough to have sunk the ship, even if she was taking on water through all of them.
Meanwhile, dents in her armour showed that many shells and torpedoes had exploded against her hull rather than penetrated it. Most importantly, there was no sign of any implosions inside the ship. The
Titanic
sank as soon as the two separated pieces of the ship filled with sufficient water to drag her down. However, she was not completely flooded, and as she sank deeper and deeper, air pockets inside the hull were crushed by the rising water pressure. These implosions shattered the
Titanic
's hull in several places. That the
Bismarck
's hull was not shattered in such a way suggests there were no air pockets – that she was completely flooded before she went down.

Some of the survivors claimed it was an unspoken requirement that Kriegsmarine commanders should sink their ships rather than let them fall into enemy hands.

From studying the damage she received from the British ships, Ballard theorised the
Bismarck
could have stayed afloat for another day. In this time the Royal Navy could have easily captured the vessel. Some of the survivors claimed it was an unspoken requirement that Kriegsmarine commanders should sink their ships rather than let them fall into enemy hands. For the
Bismarck
, they would have had every reason to. With an identical design – and identical weaknesses – the
Bismarck
would have provided the Royal Navy with unprecedented intelligence regarding her sister ship, the
Tirpitz
. The Germans were going to lose the
Bismarck
anyway. At least this way they would lose her in a way that would protect the
Tirpitz
.

The
Tirpitz
was herself destroyed by RAF Lancaster bombers in 1944, by which time Germany was losing the war on land and in the air as well as at sea. After the
sinking of the
Bismarck
the Nazis refocused their tactics once again, this time toward a greater use of U-boats, both for offensive as well as defensive purposes. But the era of the mighty warship was not over just yet.

Popularly known as
Lucky Scharnhorst
in Nazi Germany, the 772ft (235m) battlecruiser earned the same infamy in service that the
Bismarck
only received in retrospect. Also laid down in 1936, the
Scharnhorst
was just as fast – if not faster – than the
Bismarck
, even if she wasn't quite as imposing. Displacing up to 38,100 tons, her main armament consisted of nine 11-inch guns and six torpedo tubes. She also had thicker armour around the belt (14 inches, or 350mm), which helped her survive numerous direct hits from torpedoes and bombs, as well as encounters with mines, and helped generate her reputation as being unsinkable.

During the early years of the Second World War the
Scharnhorst
and her sister ship, the
Gneisenau
, operated together, raiding British merchant ships in the Atlantic and in 1940 providing distant cover for land operations during the German invasion of Denmark and Norway – basically keeping the Royal Navy busy at sea where the British ships couldn't interfere with the landing of Wehrmacht troops. It was in the aftermath of Germany's victory in Norway that the
Scharnhorst
scored her greatest success and secured her reputation as being a fearsome opponent.

The
Scharnhorst
landed one of the longest range direct hits in the history of war at sea when one of her shells hit the
Glorious
from 15 miles (24km) away.

The British aircraft carrier HMS
Glorious
had come to Norway in April 1940 to provide air support for British, French and Polish troops coming to defend Norway. In June 1940 she returned to provide air support for their evacuation. The
Scharnhorst
and
Gneisenau
stalked her through the Norwegian Sea, then despite her being accompanied by two destroyers, HMS
Ardent
and HMS
Acasta
, began their attack. In the space of two hours, the
Scharnhorst
and
Gneisenau
managed to sink all three. The
Scharnhorst
landed one of the longest range direct hits in the history of war at sea when one of her shells hit the
Glorious
from 15 miles (24km) away. The several dozen crewmen who escaped the
Glorious
, and the lone survivors from both the
Ardent
and
Acasta
, lived to report being attacked by a warship that could have a 46ft (14m) hole torn in her hull by a torpedo, but which still managed to sink all of her opponents.

Whilst the
Gneisenau
was taken out of service in 1942, the
Scharnhorst
continued to menace British shipping until the end of 1943. By December, an invasion of Britain was looking even less possible than it had after the Battle of Britain. Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union, which had been unstoppable to begin with, was long over, Hitler's war on the eastern front now consisting only of retreat after retreat. Whilst earlier in the war the
Scharnhorst
's mission had been to disrupt supply lines between America and Britain, when she returned to Norway in 1943 she was on an urgent mission to target convoys from Britain to Russia. British code-breakers at Bletchley Park had broken the Germans' Enigma code so they knew where the
Scharnhorst
was going before she got there, and the Royal Navy decided to set a trap.

By now knowing how formidable the
Scharnhorst
was, the British dispatched a small fleet to the Arctic waters off Norway's North Cape, which included several ships from the Norwegian navy. The
Scharnhorst
could still outgun all but one of the ships sent to sink her, however, and it would take their combined efforts to destroy her. On Christmas Day, the
Scharnhorst
received orders to proceed with the attack on the convoy, but that far north – with less than two hours of full daylight during winter – and in a raging storm, the Germans couldn't find any of the ships. This was, of course, because the British had changed the convoy's route whilst their own warships slowly surrounded the
Scharnhorst
and the destroyers in her company. When the destroyers separated from the battlecruiser to search a wider area, the British began to move in. Listening in on the
Scharnhorst
's radio messages the Royal Navy even knew enough about her movements, and those of her escorts, to block any escape routes.

Early the next day, the Battle of the North Cape began. HMS
Belfast
and HMS
Norfolk
opened fire from almost seven miles (11km) away, probably catching the
Scharnhorst
's commanders by surprise. Her forward radar was knocked out, a fateful blow that would hamper the
Scharnhorst
's ability to detect her opponents' positions. But she started to fight back almost immediately, her captain confident in her ability to outrun any enemies if they needed to withdraw. The
Scharnhorst
shelled her attackers, disabling the
Norfolk
's radar too. When the
Norfolk
and HMS
Sheffield
– both of which had also been involved in the hunt for the
Bismarck
– retreated, HMS
Duke of York
moved in. The battleship was the only vessel
involved who more than matched the
Scharnhorst
. Along with the
Belfast
, HMS
Jamaica
, HMS
Savage
, HMS
Saumarez
and others, the
Duke of York
pounded the
Scharnhorst
with shells and torpedoes.

It took the better part of 11 hours for all these warships to defeat the lone German battlecruiser. The
Scharnhorst
fought valiantly, taking out the
Duke of York
's radar and inflicting serious but repairable damage to several other ships. But ultimately she was severely outnumbered, and hits first to a boiler room and later to her propeller shaft slowed the
Scharnhorst
from her maximum speed in excess of 30 knots to about 12, essentially crippling her. The Royal Navy fleet moved in for the kill.