At first glance, it seems ridiculous that the British Navy devoted a great deal of its resources to hunt down one ship, but the Bismarck was no ordinary ship. Part of the reason behind the Admiralty’s fear of the Bismarck was that no one knew exactly what she was capable of since she had been built in secret. The German Navy had listed her as 35,000 tons to comply with the Anglo-German Naval Agreement of 1935, but the Bismarck was actually 50,000 tons, 12,000 more than its largest British rival, the Prince of Wales. It could not have been made any larger, since it strained Germany’s docks, locks and canals as it was. Equipped with the same guns as the Hood, with much greater range, and 25% more armor, its 15 inch guns were 19 yards long. Actually, the ship was not that well designed because Germany had not built new ships for twenty years. Steam-turbine engines were chosen instead of more efficient diesel engines, and the armor was not intended to defend against bombing by planes.

Despite a lack of specifics, the Admiralty was well aware of the threat to the Atlantic convoys posed by the Bismarck and its sister ship, the Tirpitz, since Admiral Gunther Lutjens had led the battleships Gneisenau and Scharnhorst rampaging across the Atlantic from January 22 to March 23, 1941, which had forced the convoy system to be halted until each convoy had a battleship escort. A report by a Swedish naval attaché who had inspected the Bismarck soon ended up in British hands, although the details gave British naval planners no joy.

Originally, the Bismarck was to be part of a fleet of battleships and heavy cruisers, but that plan fell apart on April 6 when a British bombing raid damaged the Gneisenau. The Scharnhorst’s engine problems would not be repaired until the end of June, and both the heavy cruisers Admiral Scheer and Admiral Hipper would be in dry dock even longer, while Germany’s sole aircraft carrier was far from finished. Finally, the Tirpitz had mechanical breakdowns that would keep it out of action until the summer. Jealous of the German army’s endless succession of victories, the head of the German navy, Admiral Raeder became impatient, and sent out the Bismarck with only the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen as an escort, even though it had barely finished its repairs, and was a poor substitute for the Tirpitz or even the Scharnhorst. However, given Donitz’s constant pushing for more U-boats, Raeder knew that victories were needed or funding would dry up. Fleet chief Lutjens argued against sending out the German navy “teaspoon by teaspoon” but had no choice. Two fleet chiefs had lost their commands for opposing Naval Command, and he did not want to be the third.

The Bismarck was originally supposed to go through the Iceland passage, where Britain had fewer observers. However, Lutjens decided to use the Denmark Strait, even though it was accessible to British spies in Sweden, because he had used it successfully with the Scharnhorst and the Gneisenau. Any hope of relying on stealth was destroyed before the Bismarck made it into the Atlantic, due to a combination of intelligence, the deciphering of coded messages and sightings by planes and members of the Norwegian underground. Hitler was not pleased to learn that the Bismarck had been sent out, since he feared it would create an unwanted incident with America. This was not as unlikely as one would think since by late 1941, Roosevelt had unofficially ordered the US Navy and the Coast Guard to help British ships locate U-boats.

Admiral Tovey was in charge of the Home Fleet, based at Scapa Flow in the Orkeney Islands, ten miles north of Scotland, which was responsible for keeping the German fleet bottled up, guarding convoys, and defending England. Among his fleet, the carrier Victorious had a green crew, and it was not certain that the battleship Prince of Wales’ guns would fire, since she had just finished her sea trials. Also, the battlecruiser Hood’s deck armor was too thin but there had never been time for refits.

On May 22, Lutjens decided to anchor in a Norwegian fjord near Bergen, in order to fill up the Prinz Eugen’s tanks, even though this was risky because the ships would be visible during daylight. It was almost as if Lutjens was daring the British to come out and fight, since Bergen was almost directly opposite Scapa Flow. If so, he got his wishwhen a British plane found the ships at 1:15 PM. That evening Tovey sent the battle cruiser Hood, and the battleship Prince of Wales, with six destroyers, under Admiral Holland to watch the Iceland-Faroes passage. The Hood was the pride of the British Navy, and symbol of British power, especially since her 1923-24 world tour, and the largest warship in the world, 32 feet longer than the Bismarck but much older. A heavy mist ensured that Tovey only learned late the next morning that the warships had left, which meant that they were using the Denmark Strait. Tovey immediately set out with the battleship King George V, the carrier Victorious, four cruisers and six destroyers, while ordering the battle cruiser Repulse to join him later. Admiral Holland was told to guard the northern part while he took the southern part.

The current First Sea Lord, Admiral of the Fleet Sir Alfred Dudley Pound, was a worn-out old man, prone to meddling and interrupting the chain of command, who had inherited the position because all of the more qualified candidates had either died or were too old. However, he paled in comparison with Churchill, who had barely been prevented from instructing Commodore Henry Harwood on how to win the Battle of the River Plate. As a former First Lord of the Admiralty, Churchill believed with some justification that he was a naval expert, with much less justification that the Royal Navy was soft and with absolutely no justification that he had a better insight than the commander on the scene. Churchill had had Admiral Sommerville brought in front of a board of inquiry for insufficient aggressiveness during an encounter with an Italian fleet. Although he was exonerated, every British commander knew that Churchill would second guess him, and break him if he was not aggressive enough. However, Tovey had built his career on being aggressive and he was not one to back down for anyone, not even Churchill.

The cruisers Norfolk and Suffolk had been watching the Denmark Straits since mid-April 1941 to prevent German warships from reaching the Atlantic, so when they found the Bismarck, they followed it using radar, which had only recently been introduced, to stay out of range while hiding in the fog. Holland’s group was near Iceland, and thanks to the Suffolk, he knew where the Bismarck was, but the Bismarck's captain did not know were he was. With careful preparation, the Bismarck would steer right into his broadside, and while the safer course would be to ensure that the Bismarck did not slip by into the Atlantic, he did not want to be accused of lacking fighting spirit. In fact, he was aggressive bordering on reckless, refusing to either coordinate an attack with the cruisers or to use his destroyers to launch torpedo attacks. Instead of following the successful tactics used against the Graf Spee and attacking from two directions, he charged the Prinz Eugen and the Bismarck with his battleships, the Prince of Wales and the Hood. The decision to let the Hood, with its thinner armor, lead the attack would prove fatal.

Lutjens also wanted to avoid being accused of lacking fighting spirit, so he did not even try to dodge past the British ships and disappear into the Atlantic. Knowing that the range was too great for accuracy, Lutjens let the British fire four salvos unopposed in order to get closer, and then made a quick turn so that he could broadside them. The Bismarck’s fifth broadside sunk the Hood, when a shell went straight to the magazine. 95 officers (including Holland) and 1,416 sailors died, there were only three survivors.

Although he scored a few hits on the Bismarck, Captain Leach of the Prince of Wales, had had several guns knocked out of action and his remaining guns were not working well, despite the continuing efforts of the Vickers-Armstrong workmen, who had been brought along. When his bridge was destroyed, leaving only him and the chief yeoman of signals alive, he chose to abandon the fight. Churchill was furious and Pound only gave up his threat to court-martial Leach when Tovey said that he would resign. Lindemann wanted to hunt down the Prince of Wales but the Bismarck had taken damage and was low on fuel, so Lutjens decided to call off the raid and head for a French port, where he could obtain repairs.

Force H, consisting of the battlecruiser Renown, the carrier Ark Royal, and the light cruiser Sheffield, under the command of Admiral Sommerville, was based at Gibraltar. It had been ordered by the Admiralty to meet a vulnerable troop convoy going to Crete while the Hood and Bismarck were approaching each other. The destruction of the Hood made the Admiralty fear for Tovey’s force, so they called up every heavy ship, including the Rodney, which was heading to America for repairs, the Ramillies, which was on convoy duty and the Revenge, which was in Halifax.

The Bismarck tried repeatedly to shake the cruisers and Prince of Wales but they matched every move. When the Prinz Eugen escaped during the evening of May 24, Lutjens knew that he was alone with every British ship searching for him. Unknown to him, American ships were aiding the search, and a US Coast Guard ship helped fix the Bismarck’s location so that Swordfish (biplane) torpedo planes from the Victorious could attack around 11:30 PM, May 24 but only one torpedo hit. Having survived the Swordfish attack, Lutjens knew that they would be under German air cover by the next morning.

Tovey’s fleet was expected to encounter the Bismarck at 8AM but was quickly running out of fuel and he worried about how his heavy ships would stand up to the Bismarck given the destruction of the Hood. The situation worsened when the battlecruiser Repulse left Tovey on the morning to refuel at Newfoundland, the carrier Victorious did the same later that day. As if he did not have enough worries, Tovey also had to deal with Pound’s (meaning Churchill) micro-management from the comfort of the Admiralty’s Operations Control Center.

Unknown to Lutjens, the Bismarck finally managed to shake the cruisers at 3:30AM and the warship's disappearance forced Roosevelt to order the US Navy to join the search. Tovey concentrated his efforts in the West, hoping to stop the Bismarck from escaping into the vast Atlantic. At the same time, Force H was told to ignore orders to escort the troop convoy and join the hunt for the Bismarck. However, Lutjens’ addiction to sending lengthy radio messages, including one that was 30 minutes long, allowed HF/DF receivers in England to get a rough estimate of the Bismarck’s position. Once he received this information, Tovey immediately changed course, but many of his ships had already turned back to refuel, including the Prince of Wales and both cruisers.

By the end of the day, Tovey only had the King George V left. Task Force H was still far away and the ship Tovey needed the most, the battleship Rodney, was somewhere unknown. The Rodney and King George V could handle the Bismarck together, but alone, each was in danger. Churchill frequently popped into the Operation Center and he had a hunch that the Bismarck had turned back to the North Sea. Fortunately, the captain of the Rodney actually disobeyed orders to go Northeast, thinking (rightly) that the Bismarck was heading to France. Increased radio traffic in the French ports finally convinced Pound that the French coast was the Bismarck’s destination. Unfortunately, the Admiralty did not tell Tovey or even respond to his question when he broke radio silence in late afternoon of May 25, but he figured it out on his own and changed course for France.

Captain Edwards, the director of operations at the Admiralty Operation center, had not left his post since the morning of May 24 and was searching for destroyers to join the hunt. All of Task Force H’s destroyers had left to refuel as had Tovey’s, thus leaving the heavy ships unprotected against U-boats. In the end, he was forced to take five destroyers away from a troop convoy to guard the battleships.

An RAF Catalina spotted the Bismarck at 10 AM, and shortly after, Lutjens learned that heavy weather would keep his air cover away. From that point on, British aircraft tracked the Bismarck. Unfortunately, Tovey’s group (the King George V and the Rodney) were seven hours behind and running out of fuel. The Ark Royal and the Renown might catch the Bismarck but were too weak to stop it. When Swordfish planes from the Ark Royal found the Bismarck they only scored a couple of minor hits, but one torpedo holed the Bismarck and jammed the twin rudders so that the ship began to move in a continuous counterclockwise turn. Divers were unable to reach the damaged rudder, the crew could not blow up the rudder and an attempt to use a hangar door as a new rudder failed. No German ship could tow them because the seas were too rough and the Bismarck was too heavy. However, Lutjens refused to repeat the dishonor of WWI by scuttling or surrendering. He sent a cable saying “Ship unable to maneuver. We will fight to the last shell. Long live the Fuhrer.” Hitler responded with “All of Germany is with you,” but privately vowed to never again let another major ship into the Atlantic.

Unexpectedly, without orders from the Admiralty, the Rodney found Tovey’s Home Fleet at 3:20 PM, May 26, but Tovey was almost out of fuel when he learned that the Bismarck was damaged and turning in circles, so it would not be able to use the darkness to disappear and reach France. He chose to wait until the morning, while using the night to organize the destroyers, cruisers, the Ark Royal, the King George V and the Rodney for an attack on the Bismarck.

Tovey decided to have the Rodney and KGV tackle the Bismarck first, but, unlike the Hood and the Prince of Wales, they would maneuver separately because everyone remembered the fate of the Hood. Beginning at 8:47AM, first the Rodney, and then the KGV, started firing on the Bismarck. Unfortunately, the King George V’s guns quickly developed technical problems. After a few salvoes, the heavy cruisers Norfolk and Dorcetshire joined the fight. The Bismarck fought back but its gunnery was limited by its inability to maneuver, so it was simply wallowing in the ocean, waiting to be destroyed. The Ark Royal’s planes arrived when the battle was already in progress, so they did not have a clear attack run. The Rodney got a direct hit at 9:02 that probably killed Lutjens and Lindemann, as well as hundreds of men. The Bismarck fired its last shell at 9:31 AM but the British ships kept pouring fire into the Bismarck for another hour, literally hundreds and hundreds of rounds. A few junior officers realized the hopelessness of the situation and ordered the evacuation of the survivors. The British ships stopped firing at 10:20 AM. The German crew had abandoned the Bismarck when Tovey told the Dorcetshire to sink the hulk with torpedoes. Although hundreds escaped the Bismarck, the Dorcetshire only rescued less than 100, claiming there was danger of a U-boat attack. However, there was no evidence of U-boats and it seems hard to believe that they would attack a ship that was rescuing German sailors. A less charitable explanation is that the captain of the Dorcetshire would not take a risk to save the crew of the ship that had sunk the Hood. German U-boats rescued five survivors later that evening.

The Bismarck had been hunted by five battleships, three battlecruisers, two carriers, four heavy and seven light cruisers, and twenty-one destroyers. The Prinz Eugen managed to avoid British and American warships, or convoys for that matter, and reached Brest on June 1. However, the Royal Navy used decrypted Enigma reports to find 14 of the Bismarck’s support ships.

Related Movies:

Sink the Bismarck (1960)
Directed by Lewis Gilbert, starring Kenneth More and Dana Winter
Britain did not win the Blitz, it survived the Blitz, but British troops had been defeated in the Balkans and North Africa, while German U-boats, bombers and Germany’s small surface fleet were cutting up the merchant fleets that Britain depended on. Therefore, the sinking of the Bismarck not only kept the lifeline from North America open, but was the first clear cut victory for Britain in a long time. (please click here to read the review)

Further Reading:

The Destruction of the Bismarck-David J. Bercuson and Holger H. Herwig, Stoddart, Toronto, 2001.

The book contains a wealth of technical detail and brief yet insightful biographical sketches of every major personality. It presents an incredibly detailed chronicle of the hunt for the Bismarck, as well as an overview of the strategic situation, including a lengthy look at America’s growing involvement in the Battle of the Atlantic before Pearl Harbor that brought the officially neutral US to the brink of war with Germany. Furthermore, the various political situations, especially inter-service rivalries, receive an in-depth analysis.

The German Navy in World War II-Edward P. Von der Porten, New York, Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1969.

A good single-volume examination of the German Navy in WWII with a wealth of photos and maps. It provides a good analysis of why the German surface navy was neglected by Nazi Germany, but also shows that there was more to the navy than U-boats, even though the surface warships were just always too few to be effective. The book benefits from the author’s access to many of the surviving senior officers of the German navy, and includes an appendix that compares the tonnage sunk by U-boats and surface raiders with the number of U-boats produced.

Pursuit: The Sinking of the Bismarck-Ludovic Kennedy, Cassel, London, 2004.

The author was a junior officer on one of the destroyers that took part in the final destruction of the Bismarck. The inter-service rivalry in Germany which drove Raeder to send out the Bismarck with too little support, is ignored. However, it brings to life the sailors involved in the chase, such as the men of the KGV who hoped that even if the Bismarck escaped, they would be shifted from Scapa Flow to Plymouth where there were cinemas and girls. Kennedy is a good story-teller, unfortunately he is unwilling to criticize Churchill’s intrusive meddling, which is understandable for someone of his generation.

Hunting The Bismarck-C.S. Forester, Mayflower, London, 1970.

It invents conversations between Lutjens and Lindemann, rather melodramatic conversations, about influencing the fate of the nations. It’s not his best book by far, it’s simply a straightforward story of the events without laying blame on any of the participants. The British side of the story is mainly told from the perspective of the Admiralty’s War Room. The book’s main strength is that it shows how much emphasis the British Admiralty put on destroying the Bismarck, throwing practically every heavy ship in the Atlantic into the hunt. No mention is made of Churchill or the First Lord of the Admiralty constantly interfering in the chase and it ignores the fact that both Tovey and the Rodney's commander had to figure out on their own where the Bismarck was.

Share this page with others: