But Hitler was dubious of the battleship’s worth and feared her loss

The mighty Bismarck was launched on Valentine’s Day 1939 at the Blohm & Voss shipyard in Hamburg and her beautiful lines seduced many present among the cheering crowds. However, the leader of the Third Reich provided signs he would not fall head over heels in love with her.

The day after the big event, Captain Thomas Troubridge RN, British Naval Attache in Berlin wrote a report on Bismarck’s christening and launch for the Foreign Office, copied to the Director of Naval Intelligence (DNI) and Commander-in-Chief Home Fleet.

Troubridge noted that the ceremony was presided over by ‘the Fuhrer, who was assisted by practically every leading personality of the State and fighting services and a vast concourse of people.’

As was the German tradition, the name of the new warship was kept a secret until the moment of christening, just before she went down the slipway, when a wooden name board was unveiled on the bows.

The new vessel was named after the man who forged a unified German super-state in the late 19th Century, Otto von Bismarck. Troubridge observed in his report that, aside from saluting the powerful boost to German prestige represented by the new warship, Hitler used his speech to send a message of restraint to the Kriegsmarine’s chiefs.

The Fuhrer indicated they could not expect to claim more than their fair share of rearmament resources. Furthermore, Hitler seemed to be telling his admirals that Germany, a Continental state founded via the use of its large army under the guidance of Bismarck, would not some 70 years later devote more resources to its Fleet than necessary.

“The new construction of a Navy sufficient to our requirements follows hand in hand with the rebuilding of the Army and the creation of a new Air Force,” Hitler told those assembled in the shadow of battleship Bismarck’s great hull.

The Fuhrer stressed that Bismarck, as a tool of the state and its people, would serve the greater good. Perhaps Hitler sought to resist the German Navy’s drive to accelerate its Plan Z regeneration scheme, which he had reluctantly approved in January 1939.

Hitler was quite happy to use the restrictions agreed under the Anglo-German Naval Agreement of June 1935 as a means to contain the ambitions of his admirals. He did not necessarily want war with the British and he knew that building a fleet to rival the Royal Navy would provoke them.

THE Bismarck’s commissioning ceremony was held on 24 August 1940. The new battleship’s Commanding Officer, Captain Ernest Lindemann, quoted the following passage from a speech made to the Reichstag by Otto von Bismarck: “Policy is not made with speeches, shooting festivals, or songs, it is made only with blood and iron.”

Hitler was in attendance for the commissioning and sea power along with the mechanics of naval warfare seemed altogether too mysterious for the former infantry corporal and veteran of trench warfare in the First World War.

He toured the ship and received a detailed briefing on how Bismarck’s gunnery systems worked, but remained uncharacteristically silent. Hitler appeared struck dumb by the sheer complexity of it all, which no doubt reinforced his aversion to naval matters.

Lieutenant Burkard von Mullenheim-Rechberg, fourth gunnery officer and adjutant to Captain Lindemann, gained a clear impression of the Fuhrer’s disconnection from matters of naval warfare.

While conceding Hitler ‘was very much interested in military technology’ the young gunnery specialist recorded that Germany’s political boss ‘could not find a single word to say about this masterpiece of naval construction and weapon technology. He was not moved to comment.’

The Fleet Commander, Admiral Gunther Lutjens, gave a presentation about his experiences during a recent Atlantic sortie. He had just returned from France having disembarked at Brest from the battlecruiser Gneisenau following her successful commerce-raiding voyage in partnership with sister ship Scharnhorst. They had sortied into in the Atlantic at the same time as the fast and heavily armed cruisers Hipper and Scheer. The four German warships accounted for 45 enemy merchant vessels, with around 270,000 tons of shipping sent to the bottom of the ocean or captured.

Lutjens said he thought a similar deployment involving Bismarck could be even more successful, especially working with Scharnhorst, Gneisenau and supported by the new heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen.

Possibly even Tirpitz could break out with her sister Bismarck? Certainly, Lutjens told Hitler, no single British battleship could hope to take on Bismarck and win. This did nothing to settle the Fuhrer’s mind, for he privately believed war against commerce might be better pursued via (much more expendable and cheaper to build) U-boats.

Hitler reminded Lutjens of the lethality of British aircraft carriers and their torpedo-bombers. They had several months earlier put the Italian battle fleet out of action, with a daring raid on Taranto. The admiral conceded they were a threat.

However, having constructed Bismarck and Tirpitz – the latter vessel was also visited by Hitler that same day – the Kriegsmarine was not about to let them stay confined to the Baltic.

Like their counterparts in the Royal Navy – indeed in all the world’s leading fleets – Germany’s admirals still put their faith in battleships. However, not only did potential enemies tremble at the sight of a battleship’s menacing silhouette steaming over the horizon, so did governments faced with finding the money to maintain them or build a new generation.

Also, every time a battleship set sail it was a gamble with national morale – to lose such a powerful symbol of nationhood would be a serious blow indeed, never mind the potentially huge loss of life. This was probably very much on Hitler’s mind during his visit to Bismarck.

After eating a one-course vegetarian meal in silence, Hitler launched into a monologue about the need to invade Romania to protect ‘German minorities’. He also declared America would not enter the war, something Captain Lindemann disagreed with, much to the dismay of staff officers present.

Hitler’s four-hour visit to Bismarck came to an end after another speech by Lutjens in which the admiral reiterated the success that might be achieved by the new capital ship. Lutjens stated that the objective would be to defeat the British wherever they could be found. Von Mullenheim-Rechberg saw that from the Fuhrer there was, again, no response.

During his visit Hitler heard no specific reference to the battleship’s likely sortie into the Atlantic. The German naval high command had decided to keep the Fuhrer in the dark about it until after Bismarck and her heavy cruiser consort, Prinz Eugen, sailed. They feared not being allowed to proceed if he found out about Operation Rheinubung.

• This is an edited and compressed version of text in the award-winning book ‘Killing the Bismarck’ (Pen & Sword Books). More details here.

The year is 1941, and the Second World War has already taken many lives, when the German battleship Bismarck breaks out into the North Atlantic.

The monster vessel’s mission is to deliver a devastating blow to a besieged Britain that relies on convoys of merchant ships to carry on fighting.

The new documentary, from ScreenStory and soon to be broadcast on Channel 4, features never before seen first-hand testimony from veterans who were there during the final battle between Bismarck and the Royal Navy.

The full brutal reality of this famous episode – as witnessed from the sharp end of the action – is revealed for the first time on screen, the product of remarkable interviews with the veterans by Agora Books author Iain Ballantyne. Some of the veterans are seen here in this trailer.

The ‘Bismarck: 24 Hours to Doom’ documentary also features stunning CGI, perfectly illustrating the veterans’ own account of one of history’s most famous and important naval battles.

More on the forthcoming documentary here.

Further details of the book ‘Bismarck: 24 Hours to Doom’ 

The new documentary ‘Bismarck: 24 Hours to Doom’, which is based on my book of the same name and soon to be broadcast on Channel 4, plunges viewers into a desperate chase, in which the British fleet is trying to avert disaster by catching and sinking the flagship of Hitler’s navy.

The twists and turns of those May 1941 days during the Second World War are reconstructed with high drama.

This is achieved by using fresh eye-witness testimony of war veterans – going up against the Bismarck in warships during a close quarters fight or flying against the enemy in Swordfish torpedo-bombers – along with stunning CGI imagery, dramatic reconstructions, archive footage and analysis from naval historians.

It was the latest episode in an already cruel struggle at sea between the naval forces of the totalitarian state of Nazi Germany and the democratic nations.

Spread across six gruelling years of conflict at sea from September 1939, the Battle of the Atlantic was a bitter affair from the very beginning. For within days of Britain and Germany being at war, a U-boat sank a liner attempting to carry more than 1,000 civilians to safety across the Atlantic.

U-30 put a torpedo into the Athenia, causing a fatal explosion and she went down 200 miles to the northwest of Ireland with 117 passengers and crew losing her lives due to the attack.

The sinking of Athenia on 3 September 1939 was the starting gun in the Battle of the Atlantic, the fulcrum around which triumph or defeat during the war in the West turned.

For without Allied dominance of the Atlantic and ability to convoy war supplies – such as aviation fuel, iron ore and weaponry – and safely transport troops across it, then there would have been no victory in the Battle of Britain and no D-Day invasion of Normandy.

While the focus of much that is written about the Battle of the Atlantic is quite rightly about the contest between the U-boats and the Allied escorts protecting convoys, in the first two years of the war the threat from German surface raiders was serious. Their forays into the North Atlantic took a major toll on merchant shipping.

This was especially the case in early 1941, with Germany’s surface raiders sending 270,000 tons of shipping (45 ships) to the bottom of the sea, while U-boats claimed a further 243,000 tons (41 ships) that March.

It was their depredations, alongside the successes of Condor anti-shipping bombers of the Luftwaffe, that persuaded British Prime Minister Winston Churchill to issue his famous ‘Battle of the Atlantic Directive.’ It ordered an intensive offensive against maritime marauders wherever they could be found.

Meanwhile, the prospect of the world’s newest and most powerful battleship – the Bismarck, which was fast and heavily armed with eight 15-inch guns – entering the struggle in the spring of 1941, via a sortie into the Atlantic, deeply troubled Churchill.

The prospect of a Bismarck breakout also vexed the globe-spanning fighting force tasked with holding the enemy bay on the oceans: the Royal Navy.

Already pushed hard in the Atlantic, the RN was also locked in a fight for control of the Mediterranean with the Italians and Germans, while readying itself for likely conflict with Japan. Shipyards in the UK were at full stretch to try and build new battleships to take on the Bismarck and other enemy capital ships, while also reinforcing fleets elsewhere.

There were just two King George V Class battleships in service – HMS King George V herself, along with the brand-new HMS Prince of Wales, the latter with teething problems in her main guns that did not augur well if forced to tackle Bismarck.

Those other British capital ships in service included elderly Nelson Class vessels – HMS Nelson and HMS Rodney, the latter badly in need of a refit – along with battle-cruisers like HMS Hood (a global fighting steel legend almost as big as Bismarck, though 20 years older).

The rest of the UK’s capital ships were reconstructed First World War battlewagons, such as Warspite (in early 1941 leading the RN’s Mediterranean Fleet), or unreconstructed Revenge Class battleships.

And yet, the Royal Navy was large, with many more cruisers and destroyers, including modern vessels such as Tribal Class destroyers and Town Class cruisers. The Kriegsmarine also had nothing like the RN’s aircraft carriers yet in service. The RN’s men were also the finest fighting sailors the world had ever seen while its centuries-long record of victory at sea gifted it a major psychological advantage over any enemy.

It was hoped that that, when Bismarck made her breakout from her the Baltic into the Atlantic, the net could be thrown wide enough to catch her. However, if it failed – and finding even a 50,000 tons battleship in the vast Atlantic was a tall order – and Bismarck slipped through, then chaos and destruction could be inflicted on the shipping lanes.

Britain could suffer a terrible blow that would show the world that the once mighty Royal Navy had lost its crown as ruler of the seven seas and that the beleaguered British were a lost cause.

More on the forthcoming documentary here.

Further details of the book ‘Bismarck: 24 Hours to Doom’ 

Illustrations: CGI imagery from the forthcoming TV documentary ‘Bismarck: 24 Hours to Doom’. Copyright © ScreenStory, 2021.

(Revised February 14, 2023)

Never before seen first-hand testimony of a famous sea fight
by veterans who saw combat against a legendary WW2 battleship

From my early days of cinema-going, when I was a lad and collected lobby cards – promotional postcards from films such as the ‘Battle of Britain’ and ‘A Bridge Too Far’ scattered around the lobbies of movie houses – I have dreamed of playing a key role in delivering a true story of WW2 to the screen.

It gives me great pleasure to share with you a ‘lobby card’ from the documentary ‘Bismarck: 24 Hours to Doom’, which was broadcast on the UK’s Channel 4 in October 2021.

‘Bismarck: 24 Hours to Doom’ is a cinematic telling of the epic finale in the pursuit and destruction of the German battleship Bismarck in May 1941 and is based on my book of the same name.

In March 2023 the book’s expanded edition – originally published to mark the 80th anniversary of the Bismarck Action, one of the pivotal moments in naval history – is released in a new paperback and ebook edition.

The ‘lobby card’ seen here provides a visual taster of scenes in the Channel 4 programme, produced by showrunner David Gilbert – who was awesome in his commitment to the project as were the superb team at Screen Story.

Between 2011 and 2014 myself & Stuart Antrobus filmed Royal Navy veterans who had helped pursue and sink the German battleship Bismarck on 26/27 May 1941. Stuart is seen here during filming with a Bismarck veteran, while there are also stills of two of those remarkable men as they appear in the documentary.

The Bismarck Action veterans we filmed provided searing and moving testimony on naval combat at close quarters and what it felt like to be caught up in such momentous events.

So, it is fantastic news that David Gilbert, has in early 2023 been nominated for the Maritime Foundation Donald Gosling Award for Best Television or Film Production, which I feel reflects well on the power of the documentary, especially the veterans’ testimony.

David and his team did a great job of creating a primetime national television programme, using a mix of CGI and archive footage combined with the veterans explaining the brutal reality of destroying the flagship of the Kriegsmarine.

Their never before broadcast eye witness testimony – as some of the few people to actually see how the famous battle between Bismarck and the Royal Navy unfolded at close quarters – is both powerful and deeply moving.

In the documentary the veterans’ accounts are enhanced by insights from naval historians – including myself – to fill in essential background detail.

The documentary can be viewed here.

It’s been more than a decade in the making, but I now have a broadcast date and time from leading production company ScreenStory, who made the forthcoming major documentary for Channel 4.

‘Bismarck: 24 Hours to Doom’ is a cinematic telling of the finale in the pursuit and destruction of the German battleship Bismarck in WW2 based on my book of the same name from Agora Books.

It does not spare viewers the harsh reality of war and the story is brought vividly to life for television via use of dramatized scenes and stunning CGI imagery.

Most importantly, it features Royal Navy war veterans who saw the battle up close, and whom I interviewed on camera over several years, with cameraman Stuart Antrobus playing a key part in the project. I will post a blog in the near future on how we went about filming the veterans and also provide some more details on the men too.

Saturday 30th October 2021, 6.55pm Channel 4

In May 1941 the veterans were very young sailors, marines and aviators caught up in the brutal machinery of war. It is their feelings and searingly honest reflections – never before seen on screen – that matter most and are at the heart of the drama.

The book, which was originally published in 2016, was this year re-released in an expanded version, for the 80th anniversary of the famous sea battle. It is mainly based on transcripts of the on-camera interviews

In the new TV documentary naval historians – including myself – provide context and essential background to support the testimony of the war veterans.

Add reminder to your calendar

More details on the book ‘Bismarck: 24 Hours to Doom here.

Illustrations: Artwork based on CGI imagery and dramatised scenes from the forthcoming TV documentary ‘Bismarck: 24 Hours to Doom’. Copyright © ScreenStory, 2021.

The battleships HMS King George V and HMS Rodney soon arrived on the morning of 27 May 1941 and the final fight began, their big guns roaring, with Bismarck’s return fire inaccurate and causing no serious damage to any British vessel.

After a long dash north through heavy seas, bows plunging into gigantic waves and shaking them off before the ship hurtled on, the cruiser HMS Dorsetshire finally also entered the battle. Teenage rating George Bell waited on the Dorsetshire’s bridge to carry messages from Captain Benjamin Martin around the ship. Like every man in the British warship, George knew the task at hand was absolutely necessary. “We closed to open fire,” he recalled, “for the last thing we wanted was to allow Bismarck under any circumstances to cause havoc among our convoys.”

Amid the bombardment by the big 16-inch and 14-inch guns of Rodney and King George V, rapid-fire salvoes of 8-inch shells from Dorsetshire and also cruiser HMS Norfolk hurtled towards the German battleship, ripping her upper works to shreds. Some of the heavy shells, meanwhile, punched holes right through Bismarck, while others tore off parts of the superstructure or inflicted mortal damage.

From one of Rodney’s 6-inch gun turrets Royal Marine Len Nicholl looked on in fascinated horror: “I actually saw the back of the [Bismarck’s] B turret explode when one of the shells hit her. It just flipped up in the air, spinning like a penny.”

He added: “I was on the port side of the ship. We’d go up the port side firing at her, turn around and then the starboard side would have a go at firing. We would be in a bit of a lull on the port side. I saw Bismarck burning from stem to stern and she was a beautiful ship, beautiful schooner bows on her.”

As the fight neared its end, Swordfish from HMS Ark Royal appeared overhead and, after being fired on in error by HMS King George V, were told to keep their distance and to not attack Bismarck with torpedoes.

The young aviators, including Terry Goddard, had launched from Ark Royal with their spirits high but what they saw below took the edge off any triumphalism they may have felt on take-off.

“We were at about 2,000ft,” recalled Terry. “Bismarck was surrounded by battleships, cruisers and destroyers. She was being mercilessly pounded. Her A turret was gone. The after turrets were still firing. She was steaming at about seven knots, if that. The bridge was gone…there was just a big black hole billowing black smoke. She was a mess and the gunfire was just ceaseless…”

The final blows from the British were delivered by torpedoes after all, launched by HMS Dorsetshire, which went in close after the Rodney and King George V ceased fire. Bismarck survivors would later claim that they had scuttled the ship and this is what finally put their ship out of her misery, rather than the cruiser’s torpedoes.

Either way, Capt Martin ordered a signal sent from Dorsetshire as ‘Most Immediate’, which told the world of the German battleship’s end and her bravery as she went down: ‘Torpedoed Bismarck both sides before she sank. She had ceased firing but her colours were still flying.’

The aftermath of Bismarck’s sinking saw desperate calls for salvation from hundreds of survivors fighting to stay afloat amid oil and debris in a strength-sapping cold sea. Capt Martin gave the order for Dorsetshire to stop by the biggest group and start rescuing them, despite fears of U-boat attack and the likelihood of a Luftwaffe assault.

George Bell later pondered the lack of personal enmity for the foe: “When we went to pick up survivors, we did so because they were seamen doing their job of work, just like us. We had done our job, which was to sink the Bismarck and so now we offered them mercy.”

However, it all came to a halt 20 minutes after it started, when there was a submarine scare, Capt Martin giving the order for slow ahead to remove Dorsetshire from peril. The cruiser slid through floating knots of Germans who cried out in despair, faces etched with agony as their only means of survival pulled away.

Horrified British sailors staring over the side knew they were leaving fellow mariners to a slow, excruciating death. George Bell brought orders from Capt Martin for them to throw lifebelts and anything else that would float overboard to give the Germans a chance to stay afloat.

Cossack’s Ken Robinson later recalled that by the time the fighting was over that day, all he and his shipmates wanted to do was get some sleep. “What we needed above all was to get our heads down,” he recalled. “Cossack was always in the thick of it and it was only the latest episode in an exhausting war.”

• The veterans quoted in this blog feature prominently in ‘Bismarck: 24 Hours to Doom’

Come the evening of 26 May 1941, Sub Lieutenant Terry Goddard felt the burden of history on his young shoulders when it came to the vital matter of bringing the fugitive German battleship to a halt.

“I think we were well aware that Bismarck had to be stopped and we had to stop her,” Terry would recall. “I am not sure that we felt that we were going to sink her but I think when we took off we all had the feeling we certainly were going to damage her…”

Fortunately, that night the Swordfish torpedo-bombers launched by HMS Ark Royal successfully located and then attacked Bismarck. Terry Goddard’s aircraft, Swordfish 5K, of which he was Observer (navigator) and whose pilot was Lieutenant Stan Keane – with Petty Officer D. C. Milliner as the Telegraphic Air Gunner (TAG) – was the last to go in.

“The flak is bursting over our head,” Terry would recall, “the small arms fire is pretty well all around us – and hitting us, every once in a while – but we get in to drop the torpedo…do a quick turn away. Looking back shortly after the turn I see a large black and white explosion on the Bismarck. It is high and wide. Obviously, it is a torpedo hit. There is no other aircraft anywhere near us and there is no doubt it was the torpedo we had just dropped.”

It isn’t the key hit – that has already been delivered via another Swordfish, in Terry’s view by Ken Pattisson’s Swordfish 2A. With Bismarck’s steering so badly damaged she stands no chance of reaching safety in Brest on the French Atlantic coast.

The British naval aviators could feel well satisfied. There was now a solid chance for the Royal Navy to avenge the loss of 1,415 shipmates killed just over two days earlier when Bismarck’s gunnery blew apart battlecruiser Hood.

For many of the men in warships scattered across the Atlantic – all heading towards a showdown with the Nazi high sea raider – it was a deeply personal mission. Many of them had known sailors and marines serving in Hood. A good few of them had at one time even served in Hood themselves. Now, crippled following a torpedo hit courtesy of the Ark Royal strike, the Bismarck was a mortally wounded beast that needed to be finished off.

On the night of 26 May battleships of the Home Fleet – HMS King George V and HMS Rodney – were still steaming hard for the scene and, along with the RN’s heavy cruisers, would make their attack in the morning, secure in the knowledge that their quarry could not get away before then.

In the meantime, Captain Philip Vian’s 4th Destroyer Flotilla would harass and seek to further damage the German giant, with HMS Cossack leading the way for the destroyers’ attacks on the night of May 26. Junior gunnery rating Ken Robinson recalled: “We went in head to sea and fired a spread of torpedoes. At the time, we thought one of them had hit.”

Having tried her luck, Cossack did not hang around, Ken remembering that his ship “turned and with the sea up our stern, sped away at what seemed to be the fastest we ever went, the sea throwing us all over the place.” German heavy shells plunged in around her, their approach seen on the destroyer’s radar but the Cossack got away without being obliterated.

As the sun peeped over the eastern horizon on 27 May 1941, to reveal a storm-tossed seascape, from his upper deck position aboard HMS Cossack, Ken scanned his surroundings. Aboard his ship and other destroyers in the 4th Flotilla, tired, red-rimmed eyes studied the horizon, trying to sight the enemy, who must be nearby but was not yet visible. Bismarck was likely lurking in a squall and preparing to blow them out of water.

Then the German battleship was spotted 8,000 yards dead ahead of HMS Zulu, and that morning HMS Maori would make a solo torpedo run that proved unsuccessful while the Polish destroyer ORP Piorun also made a lunge but did not get in a good enough position to launch torpedoes.

From Cossack, Capt Vian reported in a signal to Home Fleet boss Admiral John Tovey, at 7.01am, that Bismarck had had just opened fire, but failed to score any hits – this must have been at Maori and Piorun during their cheeky forays. Cossack and the other 4th Flotilla ships loitered at what they hoped was a healthier distance.

In the aftermath of the early morning burst of energy, an eerie calm settled over the scene. The weather cleared to present what an officer in Zulu described as ‘a bright blue sky and a clear horizon had taken the place of the grey mists and driving clouds.’ In the German battleship, there was no pleasure taken in the same vista, for it meant the approaching enemy would have a good view to a kill.

• The veterans quoted in this blog feature prominently in ‘Bismarck: 24 Hours to Doom’

Main image: A Swordfish, with torpedo  – Jonathan Eastland.

‘Intend to leave convoy now, steer 65, speed 25, to intercept and shadow the enemy.
I have 59% fuel on hand.’ Captain Benjamin Martin, CO HMS Dorsetshire, to the Admiralty

‘It must be tough on God. In war there aren’t any atheists – both sides are asking God for help. Most of us say prayers for him to help us. I know I did.’  Terry Goddard, Swordfish torpedo-bomber Observer

The early morning of 26 May 1941 saw Bismarck still on the loose after destroying HMS Hood and potentially slipping away to find safe refuge in an Atlantic port in Nazi occupied France. Only placing British warships within range of hitting her within the next 24 hours could avenge the Hood.

Although divine intervention from a greater power might help, in fact trying to stop Bismarck was, from the moment she emerged out of the Baltic and into the Atlantic, down to a wide array of people in the UK, Europe and at sea.

They included: undercover intelligence gatherers, code-breakers, wireless intercept operatives, eagle-eyed RAF and Fleet Air Arm aviators, along with the veteran captains of the RN’s battleships, cruisers and destroyers plus Home Fleet commander Admiral John Tovey.

The Admiralty issued instructions and vital information via its world-wide signals net, but with minimal response from those at sea – maintaining radio silence was golden in the deadly catch me if you can game being played out.

The British sea captains were trusted with bringing their instinct and fine judgement to bear in anticipating where to put the ships, how hard to chase and when to attack. They might send one or two signals to assist the Admiralty’s overall effort, but that was about it.

It was also down to the Germans and whether or not they would make fatal errors, such as Bismarck sending too many tell-tale wireless signals, so enabling the British to pinpoint the general location of the ship and where she was heading.

With Bismarck found again on the morning of 26 May – having eluded her Royal Navy pursuers for 31 hours – the vice began to tighten on the German battleship.

At sea in late May 1941 were several RN Commanding Officers who knew in their bones how to react when the pressure was on and their nation required ‘action this day’.

One of the vessels that departed from escorting a convoy was the heavy cruiser HMS Dorsetshire, commanded by Captain Benjamin Martin. During her high-speed dash north the Dorsetshire battled very heavy seas, straining every rivet to be at the finale of the Bismarck Action.

The dash of the 4th Destroyer Flotilla, led by the famous Captain Philip Vian – in the already legendary destroyer HMS Cossack – illustrated the fact that there was a wide array of supremely aggressive talent in the Royal Navy of the Second World War.

Vian and Cossack had won renown for exploits early in the war when they ventured into a Norwegian fjord to rescue British mariners held prisoner aboard the German naval auxiliary Altmark. Cossack also participated in the vicious fight against Kriegsmarine destroyers at the Second Battle of Narvik, which saw the Kriegsmarine’s major escort force eviscerated.

With Vian in command of her and the flotilla, Cossack’s next do or die moment arrived on 26 May 1941 when she and the other ships raced towards where they believed they could find, trail and even attack the mighty Bismarck.

In the end it would all be a matter of kill or be killed for the young men at sea in the ships, and naval aircraft, not least the Swordfish torpedo-bombers from HMS Ark Royal.

To enable British warships to bring Bismarck to action, it was essential Swordfish kept an eye on her after an RAF Catalina flying boat made the initial sighting at 10.30am on 26 May. Ark’s aircraft maintained constant contact, soon supplemented by cruisers in the shadowing role.

Meanwhile preparations were made aboard Ark Royal for a torpedo attack that would, with luck, cripple the enemy vessel, stopping Bismarck’s bid to reach a port in France.

On the afternoon of 26 May, Ark Royal launched her first Swordfish strike, which did not go as planned. The aircraft mistakenly attacked the cruiser HMS Sheffield, which was shadowing Bismarck by then.

It was later speculated that they mistook the British cruiser for the Prinz Eugen as they had no idea any RN ship was in that position and did not know the German cruiser had separated from Bismarck. Fortunately no harm was done.

Aside from dropping torpedoes – most of them detonating on hitting the waves due to magnetic warheads, others ‘combed’ – one Swordfish did spray cruiser with machine gun fire. This was all considered deeply unimpressive by Sheffield’s crew.

That evening a new strike was launched from Ark Royal despite horrendous weather, the sort of conditions only a tough customer like the Swordfish could have coped with. This time the torpedo-bombers found the right target and made their attack runs in the face of enemy fire. Upon their success depended the whole venture of destroying the enemy battleship that a few days earlier delivered the heavy blow of sinking the battlecruiser HMS Hood in the battle of the Denmark Strait.

Sub Lieutenant Terry Goddard was the Observer of Swordfish 5K, with Lieutenant Stan Keane as the pilot and Petty Officer D. C. Milliner the Telegraphic Air Gunner. Goddard’s analysis of the mission’s importance was as follows: ‘We had to fly and weather be darned.’

• How the Swordfish attack turned out is told by those who were in the thick of the action in ‘Bismarck: 24 Hours to Doom’ – now published in an 80th anniversary expanded edition, details of which can be found here. The story of the dramatic finale to the Bismarck Action on 26 – 27 May 1941 is told in cinematic-style across a variety of vessels and also from the perspective of Bismarck.

Main image: A Swordfish from HMS Ark Royal shadows Bismarck on 26 May 1941. (Andy A. Court)

‘Morale at the time was already low and on a point of honour we knew we were going to have to sink Bismarck.’
Lieutenant Peter Wells-Cole, aboard HMS Rodney

‘We aren’t going to let Adolf get away with sinking Hood.’
Swordfish aviator Alan Swanton, 820 Squadron in HMS Ark Royal

It is a cold, gloomy morning for Britain and the Royal Navy. On 25 May 1941 the loss of HMS Hood casts a dark shadow across a nation that has seen its navy rule the waves since 1805.

It managed to see off the naval challenge of Germany in one world war only to find it rise again in a second. However, to think the globe-girdling giant that is the Royal Navy will let one heavy punch knock it to the canvas would be an error. The Admiralty is, via its signals net, co-ordinating a hunt for the Kriegsmarine battleship Bismarck and cruiser Prinz Eugen

For a number of the men in the Royal Navy’s ships, gaining retribution for the 1,415 sailors and Royal Marines killed by Bismarck on 24 May 1941 is a personal matter. For not only was Hood beloved of the entire Navy but many of their friends were lost. The Luftwaffe fire-bombing of Plymouth and other cities back home does not improve the mood as the Royal Navy’s men are worried about their families too.

To the southeast of Greenland the German high seas raiders are still being watched closely by the cruisers HMS Suffolk and HMS Norfolk with back up from the damaged battleship HMS Prince of Wales.

The previous day Prince of Wales had her bridge taken out, with only the CO, Captain John Leach, the Navigator and Chief Yeoman left standing, plus she also sustained other damage while grappling with defective guns.

The sailors and Royal Marines of Prince of Wales had looked on in horror as the famous battlecruiser was blown apart, with bits of the Hood raining down on their own ship’s upper decks.

Prince of Wales herself suffered thirteen dead, yet this brand-new warship – even now still ironing out defects and nursing wounds – is standing by to fight and to engage the German raiders again.

Crucially, one of the three hits Prince of Wales landed on the Bismarck punctured a fuel oil tank and forced a changes of plan for the enemy flagship, which will no longer seek to attack UK-bound convoys. She is down by the bows and must head to a port for repairs.

Beyond the shadowing group trailing the Bismarck and Prinz Eugen, numerous British warships are about to abandon convoy escort work and other tasks to join the pursuit of the enemy.

Among them is the old battleship HMS Rodney whose captain reads the charts and monitor the Admiralty’s signals, while maintaining radio silence. Captain Frederick Dalrymple-Hamilton holds a discussion with some of his junior officers while weighing up where best to place his vessel, which has more – and bigger – guns than Bismarck…

And steaming hard, having left Gibraltar, is Force H, spearheaded by the battlecruiser HMS Renown and the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal, the latter with Swordfish torpedo-bombers embarked.

However, the closest ship with the best hope of crippling Bismarck – so the rest of the fleet can gather overwhelming force to sink her – has been the carrier HMS Victorious. On the night of 24 May she left the company of the Home Fleet flagship HMS King George V in order to race ahead with escorting cruisers and position herself to launch her own Swordfish (of 825 Naval Air Squadron).

They made an attack in the early hours of 25 May, which, while heroic only landed one hit which failed to cause serious damage to Bismarck, though killed one of her sailors. It does worsen the oil leak, making it even more urgent that the German battleship reaches a friendly port for repairs.

• More on this epic story and how my ‘Bismarck trilogy’ tells it from three distinct angles here.

Main image: Having suffered a punctured fuel oil tank Bismarck is seen here down by the bows.
Photo: US Naval History and Heritage Command (US NHHC).

Clash of the Titans that Lasted Eight Minutes

The opening engagement of the famous Bismarck Action was a brutally short fight that saw great loss of life in a very short space of time

Eighty years ago, on 21 May 1941, the battlecruiser HMS Hood sailed out of Scapa Flow, the Royal Navy’s war anchorage in the Orkneys, for the last time. She was heading north for Icelandic waters in company with the recently commissioned battleship HMS Prince of Wales and a flotilla of destroyers.

Only three of Hood’s 1,418 sailors and marines would ever see home again.

Two days earlier the pride of Hitler’s fleet – the battleship Bismarck – accompanied by the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen, had set sail from their Baltic base, at Gotenhafen in occupied Poland.

After a pause at Bergen, Norway, the German warships made their run around the north of Iceland and into the Denmark Strait where they were spotted and shadowed by the British heavy cruisers HMS Suffolk and HMS Norfolk.

Bismarck’s foray into the Atlantic to attack convoys had been awaited with dread in the Admiralty for some time. On paper Bismarck was more powerful than any battleship the British possessed due to the combination of 15-inch guns, armour and speed.

When it came to sending out a task group to try and stop Bismarck’s breakout through the Denmark Strait, teaming the elderly veteran Hood – a product of pre-WW1 thinking about fast, battleship-sized cruisers with big guns – with the new Prince of Wales (still ironing out gunnery teething problems) was a real gamble, but a necessary one.

In deciding what to do, Home Fleet commander, Admiral John Tovey was mindful of an earlier occasion when he had committed his entire force to blocking one particular route Kriegsmarine surface raiders might take – only for them to slip past.

This time he held back his flagship, King George V, and the carrier HMS Victorious, plus cruisers, until he knew which way the enemy was going. Suffolk and Norfolk provided that surety by tenaciously hanging on to Bismarck and Prinz Eugen’s coat tails.

IN the turrets of Prince of Wales as she raced north, civilian technicians worked feverishly to correct defects in her 14-inch guns, which were not yet properly worked up. The hydraulic system was leaking so badly gun crews were wearing oilskins. It was not a good omen, but the young men in Prince of Wales were inspired by the sight of the biggest and most beautiful ship in the Navy – the Mighty Hood – steaming hard and fast ahead of them.

When the clash came on the morning of 24 May, there was barely eight minutes of action before the inside of Prince of Wales’ gunnery control position was brightly illuminated, as if by a sunset or sunrise. Hood had blown up, her bows rising vertically in the air, the twin 15-inch guns of A turret firing one last, defiant, salvo.

Sailors and marines in Suffolk, observing the horrifying turn of events from a distance, found it was almost beyond the capacity of their minds to process what had occurred. A capital ship gone in an instant…

News of the event pulsated around the globe, via navy-wide signals on the Admiralty net, but neither the name or nationality of the ship destroyed in the Battle of the Denmark Strait was at first revealed.

In the battleship HMS Rodney, several hundred miles to the north-west of Ireland, escorting the troop ship Britannic to Canada, her Gunnery Officer, Lieutenant Commander William Crawford, initially hoped the unidentified destroyed ship in the fleet-wide signal was Bismarck.

In King George V – by then 360 miles south-east of the Denmark Strait having deployed from Scapa – Admiral Tovey, received news of Hood’s loss from a bellowing fleet wireless officer. Tovey told him to calm down, adding: ‘There’s no need to shout.’

Because the news was so incredible, different cipher officers in King George V were tasked with producing their own transcripts of the signal – just in case there had been an error. Perhaps it actually said Hood had been damaged?

However, the only conclusion was: ‘Hood has blown up.’

Meanwhile, Force H, under the command of Admiral Somerville in the battlecruiser Renown, battered its way north-west through heavy seas after leaving Gibraltar. In the Force H carrier HMS Ark Royal, Swordfish pilot Alan Swanton felt that throughout the ship there was ‘a strange mixture of incredulity, anger and loss.’

As the Admiralty directed ships from all over the Atlantic to join the pursuit of Bismarck, the aviators in Ark Royal recognised with grim satisfaction that vengeance would surely be achieved. Swanton observed: ‘We soon came to realise that the Admiralty weren’t going to let Adolf get away with sinking Hood.’

Shortly before midnight on May 24, Swordfish from HMS Victorious – which, along with cruisers, had separated from King George V to make speed and get closer to the target – attacked Bismarck, scoring one hit but causing no damage.

A German sailor was killed when equipment fell on him. Contact with Bismarck was lost in the early hours of May 25 after she parted company with the Prinz Eugen. The Home Fleet then searched in the wrong direction. They went north and Bismarck went south-east, heading for an Atlantic port in occupied France.

With her CO, Captain Frederick Dalrymple-Hamilton, suspecting Bismarck might head towards a French Atlantic coast port, Rodney departed her escort assignment and tried to place herself across the path of the enemy.

In HMS Cossack, Captain Philip Vian decided to leave his convoy and, with the rest of the escorts in his 4th Destroyer Flotilla, headed straight for where he also felt Bismarck might end up if she was coming south.

Numerous warships of the British fleet were scouring the Atlantic on a mission to achieve retribution for Hood’s loss. Whether or not the RN’s scattered units would succeed was very much hanging in the balance.

This is an abbreviated version of a feature published in the June edition of the naval news magazine WARSHIPS IFR  The story of how the Royal Navy pursued the Bismarck is told by Iain Ballantyne across three books, from different perspectives, as explained elsewhere on this web site.

‘Bismarck: 24 Hours to Doom’, a cinematic telling of the end game in the pursuit of Bismarck and its final battle, is presented in a new, expanded edition of ‘Bismarck: 24 Hours to Doom’. It has been published by Agora Books to mark the 80th anniversary of the Bismarck Action.

Main image: HMS Hood is depicted at speed in this watercolour by Edward Tufnell, RN (Retired), which is in the US Navy Art Collection, Washington, D.C. Donation of Melvin Conant, 1969. Image: US Naval History and Heritage Command/ NH 86392-KN.