The Sinking of the Bismarck (14 page)

The Dorsetshire Sinks the Bismarck

The situation at 10:30 A.M., May 27.

The cruiser
Dorsetshire
, which had arrived just in time to see some action, had three torpedoes left. Her skipper, Captain Martin, had not waited for the Admiral’s last order. When he saw the two big battleships turn for home he acted on his own. He closed in to within 3,500 yards. Two of his torpedoes were sent skimming toward the
Bismarck
’s starboard side. One of them hit just under the remains of her bridge, toppling over
what was left of it. The time was 10:20
A.M.

Then he circled to the port side and at 10:36 fired his last torpedo at 2,500 yards. It tore a big hole at the water line. Slowly the
Bismarck
, her flag still flying, heeled over to the port side and turned upside-down. Then she sank beneath the waves. The clock on the
Dorsetshire
bridge read 10:40
A.M.

At that moment Captain Martin took in the Admiral’s signal to try to sink the
Bismarck
with his remaining torpedoes. He replied that he had just done so and that the
Bismarck
had gone down.

The great British fleet quickly dispersed. The
Ark Royal
’s Swordfish, still in the air, jettisoned their torpedoes. It was too dangerous to land with them on the carrier’s deck. When they returned they found the
Ark Royal
under attack by German bombers which had finally reached the scene. Vice-Admiral Somerville, as soon as the Swordfish had safely landed, ordered Force H to head full steam south toward its base at Gibraltar.

Despite the arrival of German bombers and the reported presence of U-boats near by, the
British navy still had an errand of mercy to perform. The murderous bombardment of the
Bismarck
had not killed all the members of her crew. Miraculously, several hundred men had survived the blazing inferno, though many of these were wounded. They could now be seen from the British ships, clinging to debris in the water or swimming about in great patches of oil.

The cruiser
Dorsetshire
and the destroyer
Maori
moved quickly in to rescue them. It was impossible in the high seas to lower boats to pick them up. But life lines were thrown out and jumping ladders strung over the sides of the two ships. Most of the German sailors were too badly wounded or too exhausted to hoist themselves up the lines or ladders. The British crews went to work to haul them up. One officer on the
Dorsetshire
, a Lieutenant Carver, jumped overboard to save some of those who were drowning or choking to death from having swallowed oil.

On the decks of the two rescue ships first aid was given to the German survivors as soon as they were hauled up. Oxygen was administered, stomachs pumped out, oil washed off. Injections
of morphine were given to relieve pain.

And then occurred the last irony of the great sea drama. A lookout on the
Dorsetshire
cried out: “Periscope on the starboard bow!” A general alarm sounded: “All hands to action stations!” Reluctantly and with heavy heart, Captain Martin had to give the order to abandon the rescue operation and make away, zigzagging, to avoid the torpedoes of the German submarine.

And final irony of all: the German U-boat whose periscope appeared—it was the
U-74
—had no torpedoes left! But the British could not know this. The
Dorsetshire
, with eighty-three survivors aboard, and the
Maori
, with thirty, steamed off to get away from the torpedoless U-boat. Several hundred German sailors, whom the two ships could have saved had not the German submarine appeared, were left to drown in the cold stormy sea. The
U-74
took some time to surface. She was able to pick up only three men alive. A German steamer, the
Sachsenwald
, rescued two more. Of the 2,400 men on the
Bismarck
, only 118 survived.

Thus the chase ended. It had taken the British navy a week to bring it to a successful conclusion.
It had taken eight battleships and battle cruisers, two aircraft carriers, four heavy cruisers, seven light cruisers, twenty-one destroyers and six submarines to help find the
Bismarck
and sink her. In the process each side had lost her mightiest warship.

It remained now only for the British to give the world the climactic news.

At eleven o’clock on the morning of May 27, 1941, Prime Minister Winston Churchill rose in the House of Commons in London to make a report. The ancient seat of the British Parliament on the Thames had been bombed out. The Commons was meeting in nearby Church House.

This morning [Churchill said], shortly after daylight, the
Bismarck
, virtually at a standstill, far from help, was attacked by the British pursuing battleships.

I do not know what were the results of the bombardment. It appears, however, that the
Bismarck
was not sunk by gunfire. She will now be dispatched by torpedo….

He had barely sat down when a note was passed to him. He rose again.

I ask the indulgence of the House. I have just received news that the
Bismarck
is sunk.

The House, Churchill commented later, “seemed content.” The
Hood
had been avenged. The next day he cabled President Franklin D. Roosevelt in Washington, D. C: “I will send you later the inside story of the fighting with the
Bismarck
. She was a terrific ship….”

At noon on May 27 German Naval Group West picked up from London a radio bulletin from Reuters, the British news-gathering agency. It announced the end of the
Bismarck
.

At 1:22
P.M.
, according to the German secret naval records, Group West sent out a coded radio message addressed to Admiral Luetjens:

REUTERS REPORTS BISMARCK SUNK. REPORT SITUATION IMMEDIATELY!

There was, of course, no response.

Never again in the four more years that World War II was to last did a German battleship venture out into the wide Atlantic.

A Note on Sources

All who write of the sinking of the
Bismarck
are indebted to Captain Russell Grenfell of the Royal Navy for his brilliant book,
The Bismarck Episode
. After the war he questioned all the British naval officers who took part in the chase, from Admirals of the Fleet, as they later became, Lord Tovey and Sir James Somerville on down. And he received much material from the Admiralty and other British official sources.

The official British account of the great drama at sea is given in Volume I of
The War at Sea
by Captain S. W. Roskill. This is part of the United Kingdom Military History Series.

I found much fascinating German material in the secret German Naval Archives, which were captured by the Allies at the end of World War II. A mimeographed volume entitled
Fuehrer Conferences on Naval Affairs, 1941
, gives the text of the messages exchanged between Admiral Luetjens on the
Bismarck
and German Naval
Headquarters. It also contains the official confidential German naval report on the episode drawn up a few weeks afterward by Admiral Kurt Assmann. Finally there is in it the story told by one of the surviving seamen who was picked up by a German submarine.

The best German book I have seen on the subject is Fritz Otto Busch’s
Das Geheimnis der Bismarck
(
The Secret of the Bismarck
). Busch was an officer on the cruiser
Prinz Eugen
. Admiral Friederich Ruge has also given a good account in his book,
Der Seekrieg,
1939–45 (
The War at Sea,
1939–45).

Sir Winston Churchill gave a memorable picture of the drama as it looked to him from London in
The Grand Alliance
, the third volume of his memoirs of the Second World War.

W.L.S.