I Sank The Bismarck (36 page)

The
Ark Royal
was known as a lucky ship and
these three photos show why.
She narrowly avoided being hit
while in the Norwegian Sea,
and was a constant target in the
Mediterranean, with near misses
being frequent, and sometimes
very close.

Rear Admiral 'Slim' Somerville was in
charge of the
Ark
and Force H, and I later served
under him in the Indian Ocean. Force H operated
in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic.

The
Scharnhorst
was hunted by us for
weeks in the Atlantic, but she always evaded
us, and managed to sink many British
merchant ships.

The war in the Mediterranean started
with an attack on the French fleet at Oran, in an
attempt to stop their warships being taken over
by Germany.

The most outstanding operation of 1940
was the attack on the Italian fleet at Taranto by
Swordfish flying off HMS
Illustrious.
This
picture (
right
) shows the warships smoking and
leaking fuel after the attack.

HMS
Hood
was the pride of the British
fleet, and was famous throughout the world.
She took part in the attack at Oran, but it was
her destruction in the Denmark Strait that
affected me most.

When Hitler inspected
the
Bismarck
in April 1941, she
was thought to be the most
powerful warship afloat. Her
mission, with her sister ship
Prinz Eugen,
was to create
mayhem among the allied
convoys in the Atlantic.

This photo was taken
from
Prinz Eugen
at the start
of the operation.

Bismarck,
now alone, was photographed
from a Swordfish as she steamed for the
safety of the French port of St-Nazaire and the
protection of the German air force.

Bismarck
silhouetted by the blast from
her main guns on a night exercise.
Outnumbered and out of control,
this firepower would not prevent her
destruction.

Desperate German sailors
struggle to save themselves
from the ice-cold Atlantic
and the choking fuel oil from
Bismarck
's ruptured tanks.
This photo, taken from the
Dorsetshire,
shows some
of the few survivors. Many
were left to drown.

My next carrier was HMS
Formidable,
a newer class of
ship than the
Ark,
and just back
from a major refit in the US. I
sailed into the Indian Ocean on
her to take on the Japanese.
I was now flying a more modern
version of the Swordfish, the
Albacore (
right
), but it was still
a biplane.