The Sinking of the Bismarck (5 page)

In the meantime the
Norfolk
had sighted the USCG
Modoc
and in the poor visibility mistook her for the
Bismarck
. The British cruiser turned sharply away. As she did so, Rear-Admiral Wake-Walker signaled the
Prince of Wales
to open fire on the
Modoc
. Fortunately for the American vessel there was a momentary mechanical failure aboard the
Prince of Wales
. By the time it was fixed, the
Modoc
had slipped out of sight. By this narrow margin she escaped being blown out of the sea!

It was dark and raining hard before the planes, returning from the attack, approached their carrier. Aboard the
Victorious
there were anxious faces. Not one of the pilots had ever before landed at night on a carrier deck. To add to their difficulties the ship’s homing beacon, by which the planes were usually guided in at night, would not function.

In desperation Captain H. C. Bovell, commander of the carrier, switched on his bright searchlights. An order to shut them off came immediately from the vice-admiral in command of the escorting cruisers of the Home Fleet. The searchlights were endangering the whole fleet. Captain Bovell kept them on until a second order that brooked no disobedience came to him. But the pilots had seen the lights. All of the Swordfish, miraculously, put down safely on the dark, rain-swept deck.

***

Aboard the
Bismarck
, Admiral Luetjens had radioed brief messages in code to Berlin telling of the air attack.

23:38. [11:38
P.M.
] Air attack in approximate position 56 50N, 36 20W.

00:28. [12:28
A.M.
of May 25] Attack by carrier-borne aircraft. Torpedo hit starboard.

01:53. Torpedo hit of no importance.

Aboard the
King George V
, Admiral Tovey had been cheered by the reports that the Swordfish planes from the
Victorious
had found the
Bismarck
despite the miserable weather and the failing light. He felt even better when the signal came in
that one torpedo hit had been observed. This might well slow up the
Bismarck
and give him the chance for which he had been waiting so long: to close in and engage her.

Hopefully, but not without impatience, he waited for confirmation from the
Suffolk
and
Norfolk
that the
Bismarck
’s speed had been reduced. Trailing her as they were, they would soon know.

Past midnight, past 1:00
A.M.
and on to two o’clock, Admiral Tovey waited expectantly. No news came of any slowing up of the
Bismarck
. She seemed to be steaming on at the same speed as before.

Somewhat depressed, the Admiral decided to turn in for a nap. It had been a rough and discouraging day for him. At dawn he had lost in the
Hood
the most powerful battleship in the fleet. And one of the two newest of his battleships, the
Prince of Wales
, had been damaged, though it was still in the chase. His ships had not given a very good account of themselves. So far as he knew, they had not damaged the
Bismarck
seriously, if at all. Her guns seemed as fit as ever, her speed undiminished.

Even if he could intercept her the next day, which now seemed doubtful, his own fleet would be further weakened. At midnight he had had to send his destroyers back to Iceland to refuel. This left him without destroyer protection at the very moment he was entering U-boat-infested waters. His battle cruiser
Repulse
would have to leave him by nine the next morning. She would have just enough fuel to get back to port. And there was little chance that he could corner the enemy battleship by so early an hour.

Shortly after he turned in for a nap, the Admiral was awakened by further bad news. At six minutes past three o’clock on May 25, while the night was still black and the weather miserable with mist and rain, the
Suffolk
lost contact with the
Bismarck
.

The ships of both sides had begun zigzagging during the night because of the possibility of the presence of German submarines. (Admiral Luetjens could not be sure that one of his own submarines might not mistake his ship for a British vessel in the darkness.) On one of the outward zigzags away from the
Bismarck
, the
Suffolk
had lost contact
on her radar. She did not regain it on her inward zigzag.

Captain Ellis on the
Suffolk
, numb from the cold and lack of sleep, increased speed. He had been on the bridge almost continuously for four days and nights. A blast from one of his own guns had shattered the protective glass on the bridge, leaving it exposed to the icy winds. And now for an hour he plunged forward at full steam, seeking to regain contact with the enemy. At 4:00
A.M.
he ruefully signaled the Home Fleet: “Have lost contact with the
Bismarck
. Am making a search.”

When Admiral Tovey heard the news, he hastened to the chart room to ponder it with his staff. There was no denying that this was a blow. After thirty-one and a half hours of skillful and persistent shadowing, the British had let the enemy slip away.

The mighty
Bismarck
was lost!

Chapter Six

Where Is the
Bismarck
?

Loss of contact with the
Bismarck
caused the British government in London, as Prime Minister Winston Churchill later admitted, the “utmost anxiety.”

For Admiral Tovey, whose fleet had got within a hundred miles of the enemy and then lost her, there were a number of urgent questions to try to answer on that morning of May 25.

Had the
Bismarck
turned west toward Greenland to meet a German tanker for refueling? Had she turned south for a rendezvous with a tanker near the Azores, or southeast for repairs at Brest or St. Nazaire on the French coast? Or had she perhaps turned back for the Denmark Strait whence she could continue home to bases in Norway and Germany?

After considering all the possibilities, Sir John chose the first two: that the
Bismarck
was steering either west for Greenland or south for the Azores in order to refuel. He directed the cruisers
Suffolk
and
Norfolk
to cover the west and northwest courses. He ordered the carrier
Victorious
to send planes on an aerial search in that general direction. Her protecting cruisers were to accompany her. The battle cruiser
Repulse
was now so short of oil that she was instructed to leave the squadron and proceed to Newfoundland for refueling. On the way, she would be in a position to cover the western search area.

The battleship
Ramillies
was some 400 miles to the south and steaming almost due north. She was told to continue on course. She was old and slow and hardly able to stand up to the
Bismarck
should they meet alone. But she was all the British had at the moment to engage the German battleship if she had veered south toward the Azores.

Sir John himself turned southwest with what was left of his Home Fleet. Not much was left. His battle cruiser and carrier, as well as his cruisers and destroyers, were gone. His one remaining battleship, the
King George V
, was scarcely a
match for the more powerful
Bismarck
, so he ordered her sister ship, the
Prince of Wales
, to join him. Though crippled, the
Prince of Wales
had doggedly remained in the search with the
Suffolk
and
Norfolk
. She now left them to join Admiral Tovey’s flagship.

There were other heavy British ships which might play a vital role if the
Bismarck
were found again. The chief of these was the battleship
Rodney
. Although the
Rodney
, as we have seen, was badly in need of repairs, her commander was sure she could put up a good fight if necessary.

All night long the
Rodney
had been steaming at full speed to join Admiral Tovey. About 3:00
A.M.
on the 25th, when her destroyer escort began to fall behind in the rough seas, Captain Dalrymple-Hamilton pushed his battleship on alone, leaving his destroyers to catch up as best they could.

When he learned two hours later that the
Bismarck
had been lost, the
Rodney
was about 400 miles southeast of the German ship’s last known position. This, the Captain saw at once, was a pretty good place in which to be. He was sure that the
Bismarck
was now making for a French
or Spanish port for repairs. If so, the
Rodney
was almost directly in her way. The wisest course, therefore, was for Captain Dalrymple-Hamilton to stop and remain just about where he was. And that is what he did.

Vice-Admiral Somerville’s Force H—including the battle cruiser
Renown
, the aircraft carrier
Ark Royal
and the cruiser
Sheffield
—was still more than a thousand miles to the southeast. All it could do for the moment was to continue at full speed to the northwest. At first it seemed to Somerville that he had left Gibraltar too late to get in on any action. But then it began to occur to him that, if the
Bismarck
made for a Spanish or French port, he might still join the fight. He pressed on as fast as he could.

Unlike Somerville and Captain Dalrymple-Hamilton, the Commander in Chief of the Home Fleet did not believe that the lost
Bismarck
was heading southeast toward Spain or France. All morning long—from 6:30
A.M.
until nearly eleven o’clock—Admiral Tovey steered southwestward, searching in vain for the vanished enemy.

Then the British had a stroke of luck. Admiral Luetjens broke radio silence!

Early in the morning the Admiral had begun to send a series of coded radio messages to German naval headquarters reporting the
Bismarck
’s position and other information. The British were dumbfounded—but grateful. They could not decode the German admiral’s figures giving his latitude and longitude. But they could determine his position fairly accurately by means of radio direction-finding stations in Britain and Northern Ireland.

Why did the crafty and experienced German admiral take such a risk? Not one of his messages was urgent, or even necessary. (We discovered this after the war when the contents of the messages became available from the German naval archives.) Why did he send them and risk giving away his position when the whole British navy was vainly searching for a trace of him?

Here again a human error crept in. Admiral Luetjens didn’t know the British had lost him! He thought he was still being shadowed. Indeed, in the very first radio message sent at 7:27 on the
morning of May 25 he stated: “One battleship and two heavy cruisers maintaining contact.” He had no idea that the “one battleship” (
Prince of Wales
) and the “two heavy cruisers” (
Suffolk
and
Norfolk
) had completely lost him more than four hours before. So he continued to send off his radio messages. And the British direction-finding radio stations continued to get a fix on him.

Then Admiral Luetjens had a stroke of luck. This, too, was due to a weird but human error—this time an error of the British. Aboard Admiral Tovey’s flagship a mistake was made in simple arithmetic.

The British Admiralty in London had radioed the Admiral’s ship at 10:30
A.M.
, giving the bearings on the
Bismarck
as received at 8:52
A.M.
by their direction-finding sets. For some unexplainable reason the Admiralty failed to give the position of the
Bismarck
as it had been plotted from the radio bearings. This was a costly piece of negligence.

But in the navigation room on the
King George V
, it was easy to plot the enemy’s position from the bearings given. A navigation officer proceeded to do so. Perhaps he was in a hurry. It is said that
his charts were not sufficiently detailed. Whatever the reason, he made a false mathematical calculation. This put the position of the
Bismarck
considerably to the
north
of where she had been when last seen on the
Suffolk
’s radar at 3:00
A.M.

Admiral Tovey was forced to conclude that the
Bismarck
had turned north in the darkness and was heading home. He immediately reversed course to northeast and advised all other search ships to steer accordingly.

At full speed Sir John’s Home Fleet headed off in what turned out to be the wrong direction.

***

Two British warships declined to follow the orders of the Commander in Chief. Captain Dalrymple-Hamilton on the battleship
Rodney
concluded that if the
Bismarck
were really heading northeast he was too far south to catch her. But he was now sure in his seaman’s bones that the German battleship was making for France. In that case the
Rodney
would be in her way. The Captain, therefore, against superior orders, remained where he was.

Rear Admiral Wake-Walker aboard the cruiser
Norfolk
also felt in his bones that the
Bismarck
must have turned toward Brest or St. Nazaire on the French coast. On his own—and also contrary to Admiral Tovey’s orders—he set course in that general direction.

Force H, coming up from Gibraltar, was not under the direct command of Sir John. Vice-Admiral Somerville aboard the
Renown
received Admiral Tovey’s orders for the new search northeast but he also disregarded them. He decided to follow instructions of the Admiralty, received shortly before, and assume that the
Bismarck
was heading for France.