I Sank The Bismarck (21 page)

The German attack was made late in the day, as it was
growing dark, and the vigour and aggression of the Fulmar
pilots may have been a nasty surprise. Several of the Stuka
formations were broken up, and the German pilots may have
become unhappy about continuing their attack, which was
clearly going to be opposed, in the dwindling light.

Whatever the reason, the actions by the pilots, air gunners
and observers of 807 and 808 Squadrons had saved both
us and an extremely vital convoy.
Captain Loben Maund,
who had taken over from Captain 'Hooky' Holland, sent
round a message to us all, saying, 'The immunity of the
convoy and Fleet from damage due to air attack on this day is
largely attributable to the work of this small force of fighters,
made possible only by the exceptional efforts of the personnel
of the flight deck and hangars.' We had been sorry to see
Captain Holland go, but he had been in command since
Norway and needed the rest. Maund, however, had shown he
could handle the
Ark
in a tight corner!

The only tragedy of the day had been the loss of Lt
Commander Tillard, the commanding officer of 808
Squadron, and his observer, Lieutenant Somerville, Admiral
Somerville's nephew. They had never returned to the
Ark,
and
their plane was never found.

Two days later, the group of destroyers that had escorted
the transport ships through the Skerki Channel to Malta were
returning west when they were attacked by four bombers
flying low and using broken cloud as cover. None of the ships
had radar, or any air defence. Four sticks of bombs were
dropped and the destroyer
Faulkner
was severely damaged by
a cluster of four or five near misses very close to the stern. Her
speed was cut in half, but she managed to limp back to meet
Force H and eventually reach Gibraltar. It was a salutary
reminder that the threat from the air never went away.

There was an enormous party in the wardroom when we
got back to Gibraltar. The Fulmar pilots were naturally completely
stressed, and in a bit of shock, after that day of action
and they had needed more than one night's rest to overcome
it. Despite the euphoria over seeing off the Luftwaffe, we felt
that we had lived through an incredible battle. We must have
thrown tons of metal into the sky; my ears were still ringing
from the crash and blast of the anti-aircraft guns; and I have
no idea of the number of enemy aircraft that were focused on
destroying us. We drank as if there were no tomorrow.

I was now part of a ship that was probably the best and most
well-trained carrier in the navy. I am sure that a host of others
will protest, but the ethos on board
Ark Royal
was one of
practice and more practice. I have already said that my CO,
Lt Commander Coode, was the sort of chap to inspire
enormous confidence in us younger members of his squadron,
and the leadership of Force H was similarly driven. Admiral
Somerville was a
stickler for training and practice, so, whenever
the opportunity arose, at the end of a trip we would carry
out exercises in torpedo attacks and dive-bombing, and
would work on speeding up our flying on and off the flight
deck. These exercises were not only for the benefit of us on
board the
Ark,
but were also designed for the benefit of
anti-aircraft gunners, to improve height-finding and aircraft-recognition
in the escort vessels. We reckoned we had got our
crews – and that meant everyone involved in ranging and
striking down the aircraft, as well as the aircrew – worked up
to a very high level of efficiency. Admiral Somerville was
known to be very quick to ask questions if there was a delay
in landing on or taking off, and we aimed for an average time
between landings of thirty seconds. The slowest pilot landing
on had to stand drinks in the wardroom to the rest of his
squadron.

Despite this attention to detail, there was a real
camaraderie. The admiral's flagship,
Renown,
had damaged
part of her hull while going into a heavy sea. A forward
section of the anti-torpedo bulge had been torn free. Some of
our Swordfish had flown low over the ship to take a look at
the damage before they landed on and Somerville had sent a
signal saying, 'Why the interest? Is there something sticking
out of Father's pants?' The reply had been sent back, 'You
flatter yourself. It is only hanging out!' There were few
squadrons in the navy, let alone in any foreign navy, where
that sort of stuff would be signalled back and forth.

This
esprit de corps
sprang from self-confidence, a feeling
that I have experienced in a rugby team when everybody
knows that they are playing at the top of their game. Our
efforts on the last operation added to that feeling. I was very
pleased to be on the
Ark
and felt that I had achieved more
than I had a right to. What else was there to do?

We made another trip to fly Hurricanes off to Malta, and
returned, carrying out our usual programme of training
exercises as we got closer to Gibraltar. We had been in
Gibraltar for a day when, at around 0100 on 23 May, the
Ark
started to stir, tannoys sounded, hatches closed up with a
bang, and the sound of feet running up the companionways
and walkways signalled that we were going to put to sea. That
meant that the morning flying schedule was probably changed
and I might be woken early.

An hour later, when I was oblivious to the world, tugs
pulled us from the side of the wall and we passed slowly along
the detached mole to leave by the northern entrance. Then we
headed south and into the Straits. If we were heading west, it
was possible to see the lights of Tangier pass on the port side,
and then in another hour we would be going at high speed,
our bows biting into the big swells of the Atlantic Ocean. By
0500 Swordfish aircraft with folded wings would be brought
up from the hangar decks on the lifts to start the first antisubmarine
patrols of the day. I would be awake, and with
other pilots and observers would be getting my briefing about
the expected weather, the planned course of the ship over the
next two or three hours and any latest intelligence about
submarine sightings, the presence of
convoys and any
surface vessels in the vicinity, be they ours, the enemy's or
neutrals.

I would expect that our job in the Atlantic was either to
find and escort a convoy, on its way from Sierra Leone to
Liverpool or vice versa, or to meet a small group of fast ships
to escort them back into the Mediterranean, or I might be on
the lookout for the two raiders still moored in Brest,
Scharnhorst
and
Gneisenau.
The
Ark
's very first orders on 23
May were to provide an escort for a Sierra Leone convoy, but
after a few more hours the word went round that a new threat
was possibly entering the Atlantic – a new German battleship,
Bismarck.
I wouldn't say that we had much idea about this
warship, but we quickly picked up what we could from the
squadron office and the commander air staff. This was a true
battleship, significantly bigger than
Scharnhorst
or
Gneisenau
; in fact, she was the biggest warship afloat, longer
than
Ark Royal
and weighing 50,000 tons compared to the
Ark
's 21,000. She seemed to be bristling with guns, with a
main armament of eight 15in guns and a secondary battery of
twelve 6in guns. She was well defended against attack from
the air, with sixteen high-angle 4in guns to shoot down aircraft,
numerous batteries of 20mm cannon and machine guns,
so it was reported, and with very thick armour plating protecting
her hull. She would be a tough nut to crack! However,
as she was still some way away and was being hunted by the
Home Fleet, we did not think she was something we would
have to worry about.

The more immediate problem was the presence of
Scharnhorst
and
Gneisenau
in Brest: if they chose to make a
foray into the Atlantic at short notice, then we would have to
try to stop them. With the fleet concentrating their efforts on
Bismarck,
now would be the perfect time for the two battlecruisers
to join the fight.

The
impact that these German raiders in the Atlantic had
was not just the damage to shipping or the loss of life that
they could inflict, although that was extremely serious. No, it
was the fact that, with up to six convoys in the Atlantic at any
one time, it was very difficult for the navy to assign a battleship
with the necessary anti-submarine escort to each one. To
do so would drain resources from elsewhere, particularly
from the Mediterranean, where the Germans were really
stepping up their offensive in North Africa and had also
begun the invasion of Crete. The threat from the U-boats was
severe enough; Britain just could not afford to have powerful
surface raiders loose in the Atlantic as well.

These considerations were of only passing interest to us,
however. My task was to get into the cockpit, take off on a
patrol and keep alert for two hours, then find the carrier to
land on, where I would warm up and grab some food before
embarking on another patrol before the day finished. On the
23rd, however, it got progressively harder. As the day wore
on, the sea started to get rougher and the landings became
more difficult. Fortunately, all twelve Swordfish that had
flown patrols that day completed them without incident.

However, events had been developing rapidly 2,000 miles
north of the
Ark.
Bismarck
and a companion ship, the battlecruiser
Prinz Eugen,
had left harbour in Germany on 19 May.
They had sailed through the Kattegut, that belt of water
between Denmark and Sweden, on the 20th and had then
moored in a fjord south of Bergen so that
Prinz Eugen
could
take on more fuel. The start of their mission into the Atlantic
had already come to the notice of the Admiralty. Reports of
their sailing through Danish waters had been passed on to the
British naval attaché in Sweden, and by the time the two warships
had moored in Norway a photo-reconnaissance Spitfire
was able to fly over them at high altitude and take photographs.
That night, unaware that they had been photographed,
Bismarck
and
Prinz Eugen,
her fuelling completed, continued
on their journey. Later, on the 22nd, a Fleet Air Arm
Maryland took off from Hatston in very bad weather on a
reconnaissance of the Bergen area, and was able to alert the
Admiralty that the two warships were no longer at anchor.

There were several routes that German warships could use
to enter the Atlantic. There was the
Denmark Strait, between
Iceland and Greenland, which in May was reduced to a width
of about 60 miles because of extensive pack ice; there was a
passage between Iceland and the Faroe Islands about 240
miles wide; there was the gap between the
Faroes and
Shetland, which was about 140 miles wide; and there was the
Fair Isle Channel between Shetland and the Orkneys. The
most northerly was the most remote from any aerial reconnaissance
flights, and this seemed to Admiral Tovey, who
was in charge of the Home Fleet moored in Scapa Flow, the
most likely. It was the same route that
Scharnhorst
and
Gneisenau
had taken for their own highly successful raid on
merchant shipping at the start of the year, when they had been
the subject of a long and unsuccessful hunt by the
Ark.
Nevertheless, the Admiralty took precautions to cover the
other routes as well.

HMS
Suffolk
and
Norfolk,
two heavy County class cruisers
armed with 8in guns, under the command of Rear Admiral
Wake-Walker, were dispatched to monitor the Denmark
Strait, while the sea between Iceland and the Faroes was
patrolled by HMS
Arethusa,
Birmingham
and
Manchester,
light cruisers mounting 6in guns as their main armament.
These warships wouldn't have a hope against
Bismarck,
but
their job was not to take her on; it was merely to report the
presence of the German warship and continue to follow her
until a larger force of battleships could arrive on the scene.

Two of the Home Fleet's big ships had been sent to Iceland
from Scapa Flow in readiness to engage
Bismarck
: they were
the battlecruiser
Hood
and
Prince of Wales,
a modern battleship
recently handed over to the navy by Cammell Laird and
still in the process of working up. They were to be joined by
other ships from the Home Fleet after it was revealed that
Bismarck
had left Bergen. Late in the evening of 22 May, the
battleship
King George V
and
Victorious,
the navy's newest
aircraft carrier, put to sea from Scapa Flow. They were joined
by the battlecruiser
Repulse,
accompanied by four cruisers
and a group of destroyers. Also, HMS
Rodney,
a 16in-gun
battleship, was diverted to join up with the ships of the Home
Fleet.

Before sailing,
Admiral John Tovey, commander of the
Home Fleet, had paid a visit to
Victorious
and met the commanding
officer of the Swordfish squadron, Lt Commander
Esmonde.
Victorious
had been scheduled to steam to
Gibraltar, then onwards to replace
Formidable
in the fleet at
Alexandria. The voyage south would have given the carrier
the opportunity to carry out exercises and train up the new
crew. They would not now have time for that, and Tovey
wanted to hear at first hand Esmonde's assessment of his
squadron's abilities. Esmonde assured him that, although
young and mostly inexperienced, his pilots knew what to do
and would be utterly committed. Tovey left with as much
reassurance as it was possible to get under the circumstances.

The stage was now set for a successful
interception of
Bismarck,
the finest and most formidable product of German
shipbuilding. Admiral Tovey had made his dispositions, his
ships greatly outnumbered the German ones and there was,
on the face of it, no reason why we on the
Ark,
several
thousand miles away to the south, would need to become
involved in this battle. His assessment of the likeliest route
into the Atlantic was correct.
Bismarck
and her escort,
Prinz
Eugen,
under the overall command of Admiral Günther
Lutjens, were set on a course that would take them very close
to the pack ice bordering the coast of Greenland. There were
usually banks of sea mist swirling across the Strait that
offered concealment, and Lutjens had received a weather forecast
for the area that promised low clouds, snow and rain
squalls, which would also cloak his presence. He believed too
that his radar and sonar would help him avoid contact with
our ships.

Bismarck
edged along the pack ice, zigzagging to avoid ice
floes, when a radar operator sounded the alarm. He had a
contact on the port bow, which was confirmed almost immediately
by a sonar trace on the same bearing. They had
come into contact with
Suffolk.
Suffolk
had also seen
Bismarck
and signalled at 1922 on 22 May, 'One battleship,
one cruiser in sight at 20 degrees, range seven miles, course
240 degrees.'

An hour later,
Bismarck
spotted
Norfolk
and opened fire.
Norfolk
immediately withdrew into the mist, five 15in shells
from
Bismarck
's main battery crashing around her. Luckily
none of them hit the ship, and
Norfolk
quickly put some
distance between herself and the German battleship. She took
up a position abeam of
Suffolk
and both ships started their
work of tailing the battleship, sending regular reports back to
the Admiralty, and to Admiral Tovey in
King George V.
Bismarck
's radar had been damaged by the salvo from her
forward guns, which had been fired at
Norfolk,
and so
Prinz
Eugen
had moved ahead of the battleship to probe for
icebergs and other British warships. They drove ahead at high
speed, through the murky twilight of the Arctic night, into
squalls and fog banks, sometimes laying down a smokescreen
to evade their pursuers. But the radar sets in
Suffolk
and
Norfolk
were working perfectly. These two cruisers stuck to
the quarry's coat-tails, keeping on the very edge of
Bismarck
's
horizon, and it dawned on the German officers that, contrary
to their intelligence reports, some of our warships did have
radar on board.