The first tip concerning Bismarck’s movements was provided by Britain’s naval attaché in Stockholm after a cruiser of neutral Sweden spotted ‘two large warships’ with escorts and air cover steaming through an area cleared of German shipping. Subsequently RAF Spitfires equipped for high-speed photo-reconnaissance scoured likely anchorages and found two German warships in Grimstad Fjord. Photographs revealed the Bismarck with an unidentified cruiser. It was alarming news and there were urgent requests for more information. Bad weather grounded RAF aircraft but a particularly daring Fleet Air Arm crew, flying a Martin Maryland that had been used for target-towing and had no navigational instruments or cameras, found an opening in the cloud above Grimstad Fjord at twilight without seeing the big ships. Just to make sure, they flew over Bergen and into a storm of German Flak. Their radio message said: ‘Battleship and cruiser have left.’
Anxiously the men in the Admiralty looked at their maps: six homeward and six outward convoys were on the move, including a troop convoy to the Middle East with 20,000 men. Now earlier Luftwaffe Enigma signals, showing Fw 200C Condors on long-range reconnaissance surveying the extent of the pack-ice in the Denmark Strait, began to make sense. RN warships – most of them with radar – were immediately dispatched to patrol the waters round Iceland and in particular the Denmark Strait where, even in May, pack-ice and RN minefields made navigation so restricted that if Bismarck went that way it was almost sure to be sighted.
The German battleship Bismarck
At 1922 hours on 23 May, a lookout on HMS Suffolk spotted Bismarck and Prinz Eugen emerging from a snow-squall at a distance of 11 miles, before the Suffolk’s radar made contact. As soon as Suffolk’s operator had Bismarck on the screen of his Type 284 gun-laying radar she slipped back into the gathering darkness.
The two German ships had obviously seen Suffolk on their radar, so they were prepared when a second RN cruiser, HMS Norfolk, came close enough for its lookout to sight them (again before making radar contact).2 Bismarck opened fire on her. Unhit, Norfolk promptly fell back. The Bismarck’s radio room intercepted Norfolk’s sighting report and was able to decode the message without difficulty or delay. They kept listening.
For ten hours the two RN cruisers shadowed their prey until powerful naval forces could be brought up from Scapa Flow in the Orkneys. HMS Hood and HMS Prince of Wales, with destroyer escorts, were ordered to sea from Iceland.
It was a strange twist of fortune that chose HMS Hood for this task force, for she was exactly comparable to Bismarck in main armament (eight 15-inch guns), secondary armament, speed, thickness of belt and turret armour. In the 1930s Hood had been the pride of the Royal Navy, the fastest, most powerful and arguably most beautiful ship afloat. She had spent so much time showing the flag that there never seemed to be an opportunity for the total overhaul and refurbishing that was so badly needed. Nineteen years older than Bismarck, the Hood’s 15-inch guns remained unchanged in design since those of 1914, while the big guns of the Bismarck provided excellent examples of the way in which gun technology had improved.
Hood was old, but with her was the brand-new Prince of Wales, which still had civilian contractors aboard, working on the gun-turret machinery of its ten 14-inch guns. This was a calibre new to the RN. Two of its three turrets had been fitted only four weeks earlier, and one gun was still not in use. The Prince of Wales had five of the best radar sets then available, but the warships were ordered to maintain radio and radar silence so that they would not be detected.
It was not easy to keep radar contact with an enemy warship which had excellent radar, eight 15-inch guns and a top speed of over 30 knots: as soon as you were close enough to see your prey on the radar screen, it had not only been watching you for a long time but was all ready to blow you to pieces. In addition the Germans were deciphering and reading all the radio traffic of their pursuers. It was hardly surprising that the two RN cruisers lost contact with both Bismarck and Prinz Eugen.
As day was breaking at 0530 hours on Saturday 24 May 1941 Bismarck was sighted at 17 miles distance, again by a lookout, not by radar. On German radar the RN ships were clearly visible, and Admiral Lütjens must have been pleased to notice that their angle of approach made it possible for the British to use only forward armament, while the Germans could fire broadsides from all their big guns. This dangerous British tactic can only be explained by the commander of the British force wanting to close quickly on the Germans because British deck armour was thin and vulnerable to plunging fire. Close range would ensure that German fire would hit only side armour.
Although Hood’s Type 284 radar was no use for ranges beyond 22,000 yards Hood opened fire at 26,500 yards. It aimed at the less dangerous Prinz Eugen, which had been mistaken for Bismarck. Then all the other big ships started firing. The Prince of Wales’s first salvo fell 1,000 yards beyond Bismarck.
The Bismarck’s first salvo was fired at the Hood, which was in the lead. Its improved Seetakt 90-cm radar provided the correct range but the shells fell ahead of Hood and she steamed into the spray they made. The second salvo from Prinz Eugen scored a direct hit on Hood. A shell burst on the upper deck, igniting anti-aircraft ammunition stored there in ready-use lockers. The midship section of Hood was soon enveloped in flames and giving off dense smoke. Bismarck’s third salvo was the high-trajectory fire to which British battleships were so vulnerable. Still today experts disagree on whether an armour-piercing shell penetrated the Hood’s thin deck armour to explode in an aft magazine or whether this 42,100-ton battleship was blown in two as a result of fires spreading to a magazine from the earlier hit. The explosion was horrendous. After separated bows and stern had risen high from the water, Hood disappeared leaving only a smoky haze over the disturbed water. An officer on a destroyer which went to pick up Hood’s survivors wrote:
But where were the boats, the rafts, the floats? … And the men, where were the men? … far over to starboard we saw three men – two of them swimming, one on a raft. But on the chilling waters around them was no other sign of life.3
Of the crew of 1,419 men, only one midshipman and two ratings survived. The midshipman’s survival was especially miraculous. He was in a spotting top, 140 feet above the water. He told his rescuers that ‘he didn’t know what the hell was happening, save that the compartment was filled mysteriously with water’.
Korvettenkapitän Jaspers, Prinz Eugen’s gunnery officer, who was watching the Hood said: ‘The aft magazine blew up, shooting into the air a molten mass the colour of red lead, which then fell back lazily into the sea – it was one of the rear gun turrets … And in the midst of this raging inferno, a yellow tongue of flame shot out just once more: the forward turrets of Hood had fired one last salvo.’
Now the Prince of Wales became the target for both German ships. The compass platform was hit by a 15-inch shell. It didn’t explode but fragments of the binnacle killed or wounded everyone there but the captain and the yeoman of signals. The difficulty of making shells that would penetrate thick steel and then explode was demonstrated now as six more German shells struck home, all of them detonating only partially or not at all. Undeterred, Prince of Wales continued on course until it had closed to 14,600 yards. Six salvoes were loosed at Bismarck before one of the shells found its mark, flooding the forecastle, rupturing one of the fuel tanks and disconnecting tanks forward of it, so that