Bismarck (1940)

The Bismarck was the first of two Bismarck-class battleships of the German Navy, the Kriegsmarine, during World War II. Named in honor of Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, promoter of German unification in 1871, the ship was laid down at the Blohm & Voss of Hamburg in July 1936 and launched two and a half years later, in February 1939. She was completed in August 1940, when she entered service in the German navy. Along with her sister ship Tirpitz, she was the largest battleship ever built by Germany and one of the largest launched by any European navy.

The Bismarck was only in service for eight months and participated in a single offensive operation, codenamed Rheinübung, in May 1941 commanded by Captain Ernst Lindemann. In it she had the mission to break into the Atlantic Ocean along with the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen and attack Allied shipping between the United States and Great Britain. However, both ships were located by the Allies off the coast of Scandinavia and the British sent several warships to intercept them. The encounter of the enemy ships occurred in the Battle of the Denmark Strait, in which the Bismarck sank the battlecruiser HMS Hood, pride of the British Royal Navy, and caused significant damage to the new battleship. HMS Prince of Wales, forcing her withdrawal. Instead, Bismarck was hit by three British shells and suffered a significant loss of fuel from a damaged tank.

The destruction of the Hood triggered a relentless search for the German battleship by the British Royal Navy, which deployed dozens of ships. Two days later, while sailing towards the coast of occupied France, Bismarck was attacked by Fairey Swordfish torpedo planes from the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal. A torpedo destroyed one of the German battleship's rudders, making it impossible to maneuver. The following morning, the immobilized Bismarck was attacked and neutralized by intense fire from several British ships, after which she was scuttled by her crew and sank with great loss of life. The exact cause of her sinking has been a matter of debate among experts. The wreck of the battleship was discovered in June 1989 by oceanographer Robert Ballard.

Construction and features

The Bismarck was commissioned to replace the aging pre-dreadnought battleship Hannover. The Blohm & Voss of Hamburg was awarded the contract and her keel was laid down there on July 1, 1936. The hull was launched on February 14, 1939 with great fanfare and baptized by Dorothee von Löwenfeld, granddaughter of Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, after whom the battleship received its name. Adolf Hitler gave a speech at the ceremony. After the launch, fitting out work continued, during which her original bow stem was replaced by a more rounded "Atlantic bow", similar to that of the < class battleships. i>Scharnhorst. The Bismarck entered service in the German fleet on August 24, 1940 to begin its sea trials, which took place in the waters of the Baltic Sea. Captain Ernst Lindemann took command of the ship at the time of its entry into service.

The Bismarck displaced 41,700 tons and could reach 50,300 tons when fully loaded, which together with its length Of 251 m, its beam of 36 m and its maximum draft of 9.9 m made it the largest battleship launched by Germany and one of the heaviest built by any European navy. It was powered by three geared steam turbines. Blohm & Voss engines that delivered a total of 150,170 hp (111,980 kW) and achieved a maximum speed of 30 knots (55.6 km/h) in speed tests. Bismarck was also equipped with three sets of FuMO 23 radar mounted on the bow and stern rangefinders and on the ship's crow's nest.

Its standard crew was 103 officers and 1,962 sailors, divided into twelve divisions of between 180 and 220 men each. The first six divisions were assigned to the ship's armament. The first to the fourth dealt with the main and secondary batteries, the fifth and sixth with the anti-aircraft guns. The seventh division included specialists, such as cooks and carpenters, and the eighth grouped those in charge of handling ammunition. Radio operators, signalmen and quartermasters made up the 9th, while the remaining three divisions were the engine room staff. When the Bismarck set sail for its Atlantic foray, fleet personnel, extra crew, and war correspondents increased the crew number to more than 2,200. The crew created a battleship newspaper. baptized Die Schiffsglocke (The ship's bell), of which Gerhard Junack, head of the engineering department, published a single issue on April 23, 1941.

Its main armament was made up of eight 380 mm SK C/34 cannons that fired 800 kg howitzers and were located in four twin turrets: two towards the bow – Anton and Bruno – and two towards the stern – Cäsar and Dora.. Its secondary weapons battery included twelve 150-mm L/55 guns, sixteen 105-mm L/65 guns, and another sixteen 37-mm L/83 guns, while for its anti-aircraft defense it was equipped with twelve 20-mm guns. Its belt The main armor was 320 mm thick and was flanked by a pair of armored decks, the upper and main decks, which were 50 mm and 100-120 mm thick, respectively. The main gun turrets were protected by 360 mm plates on their fronts and 220 mm on their sides.

Service History

On September 15, 1940, three weeks after entering service, the Bismarck left the port of Hamburg to begin sea trials in Kiel Bay. The auxiliary ship < i>Sperrbrecher 13 escorted the battleship to Cape Arkona on the 28th of the same month, and then to Gotenhafen for its tests in the Gulf of Danzig. The ship's power plant was thoroughly tested, as well as its maximum speed, its stability and maneuverability, after which a design flaw was detected. When trying to steer the ship solely by altering the revolutions of the propellers, the crew realized that the battleship was maintaining its course with great difficulty. Even with the side propellers turning at full power in opposite directions the ship's turning was very slow. The guns of Bismarck's main batteries were tested for the first time in late November, and it was shown that The ship was a very stable firing platform. The tests lasted until December, and on the 9th of that month the Bismarck arrived in Hamburg to receive minor touch-ups and complete the conditioning process.

The ship was scheduled to return to Kiel on January 24, 1941, but a merchant ship had sunk in the Kiel Canal and prevented passage through it. Inclement weather delayed the removal of the wreck, so the Bismarck was not able to cross to Kiel until March. This enormous delay in the battleship's departure infuriated its captain Lindemann, who said that "[The Bismarck] had been in Hamburg for five weeks...the precious time at sea lost as a consequence cannot be recovered, and a significant delay in the final war deployment is inevitable." While waiting to depart for Kiel, the The ship was visited by Captain Anders Forshell, the Swedish naval attaché in Berlin. He returned to Sweden with a detailed description of the battleship which was later leaked to the Royal Navy by pro-British elements of the Swedish Navy. This gave the English navy a first complete image of the ship, although they lacked important specific information such as its maximum speed, radius of action and displacement.

On March 6, the Bismarck received the order to sail to Kiel. Along the way she was escorted by several Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighters and a couple of armed merchant ships, plus an icebreaker. At 08:45 on the 8th the Bismarck briefly ran aground on the south shore of the Kiel Canal, although she was able to be freed within an hour. The battleship arrived in Kiel the next day, where her crew provided ammunition, fuel and other supplies and applied camouflage paint against aerial observers. British bombers attacked the port on the 12th without success.On the 17th the old battleship Schlesien, used as an icebreaker, escorted Bismarck through the ice to Gotenhafen, where she continued her combat training.

The German Naval High Command, commanded by Admiral Erich Raeder, intended to continue the tactic of employing heavy ships as surface privateers against Allied merchant shipping in the Atlantic Ocean. The two Scharnhorst-class battleships were based at the time in the port of Brest, in occupied France, and had just completed Operation Berlin, a major raid in the Atlantic. The Bismarck's sister ship, the Tirpitz, was close to completion. Both were to depart from the Baltic Sea to join two Scharnhorst-class cruisers in the Atlantic in an operation initially planned for 25 April 1941, when a period of new moon would provide more favorable conditions.

Work on the Tirpitz was completed later than planned, it was not commissioned until February 25 and would not be ready for combat before the end of the year. To further complicate the situation the Gneisenau was torpedoed while she was in port at Brest and damaged by aerial bombardment while she remained in dry dock. The Scharnhorst required an overhaul of its boilers after Operation Berlin and during the operation the workers discovered that its boilers were in worse condition than expected, so it would not be available for the planned departure either. British bomber attacks on supply depots at Kiel delayed repairs to the heavy cruisers Admiral Scheer and Admiral Hipper, which would not be ready for action until July. or August. Admiral Günther Lütjens, the officer chosen to lead the operation, wanted to delay it until at least the Scharnhorst or the Tirpitz were ready. However, the Naval High Command decided to proceed with the operation, code-named Operation Rheinübung, with a force composed only of the Bismarck and the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen.

Operation Rheinübung

Proa y popa del Bismarck.

On May 5, Adolf Hitler, Wilhelm Keitel and a large entourage went to see Bismarck and Tirpitz in Gotenhafen. They made an extensive visit to the ships, after which Hitler met with Lütjens to discuss the next mission. On May 16, Lütjens reported that both the Bismarck and the Prinz Eugen were fully prepared for Operation Rheinübung, and were therefore ordered to proceed with it starting on the afternoon of the 19th. As part of the operational plans a group of eighteen supply ships would be arranged to support the two Warships. Four U-Boats would be placed along the convoy route between Halifax and the United Kingdom to perform reconnaissance duties for the raiding ships.

By the beginning of the operation the crew of the Bismarck had increased to 2,221 men, including officers and sailors, including sixty-five members of the admiral's staff and eighty navigators, who could be used to man transports captured during the mission. At 02:00 on May 19, the Bismarck left Gotenhafen and headed for the Danish Straits. She was joined off Cape Arkona at 11:25 by the Prinz Eugen, which had left at 21:18 the previous night. The two ships were escorted by three destroyers — Hans Lody, Friedrich Eckoldt and Z23—and a flotilla of minesweepers. The Luftwaffe provided air cover during the voyage out of German waters. Around noon on May 20, Lindemann informed the crew of the ship's mission over the loudspeakers. At approximately the same time a group of ten or twelve Swedish aircraft on a reconnaissance flight sighted the German force and reported its composition and course, although the Germans did not see them.

An hour later the German fleet was found by the Swedish cruiser HSwMS Gotland, which followed it in the Kattegat Strait for two hours. The Gotland transmitted the news to naval command, noting: "Two large ships, three destroyers, five escort ships and ten or twelve aircraft passed Marstrand, heading 205°/20'." The German High Command was not concerned about the risk of security that the Gotland assumed, although both Lütjens and Lindemann believed that operational secrecy had been lost. The report eventually reached Captain Henry Denham, the British naval attaché in Sweden, who relayed the information to his Admiralty. Cryptographers at Bletchley Park confirmed that an Atlantic raid was imminent, as they had deciphered reports that the Bismarck and the Prinz Eugen had embarked extra crew and requested additional navigation charts from his headquarters. A pair of Supermarine Spitfire fighters were sent to locate the German flotilla off the coast of Norway.

German aerial reconnaissance reported that an aircraft carrier, three battleships and four cruisers remained anchored in the British anchorage of Scapa Flow, which confirmed to Lütjens that until then the British were unaware of their operation. On the night of May 20, the Bismarck and the rest of the flotilla reached the Norwegian coast; The minesweepers separated and the two raiders and their destroyer escort continued north. The next morning Prinz Eugen's radio interception officers picked up a signal ordering British reconnaissance aircraft to search for two battleships and three destroyers north of the Norwegian coast. At 07:00 on the 21st, the Germans sighted four unidentified aircraft, although they quickly left. Shortly after 12:00 the flotilla arrived in Bergen and dropped anchor in Grimstadfjord. There the crews overpainted the Baltic camouflage stripes with the "exterior gray" color used by German warships operating in the Atlantic, leaving only the head waves.

While in Norway, a pair of Bf 109 fighters circled over the battleship in order to protect it from a possible British air attack. Despite this, British flight officer Michael Suckling managed to fly directly over the German flotilla with his reconnaissance Spitfire and take several photographs from a height of 8,000 m. Once the information was received, English admiral John Tovey ordered the cruiser HMS Hood, the recently commissioned battleship HMS Prince of Wales and six destroyers reinforced the pair of cruisers already patrolling the waters of the Denmark Strait. The rest of the British Home Fleet was anchored in Scapa Flow on high alert.

Eighteen bomber planes were sent to attack the Germans, but the weather over the fjord had worsened and they were unable to locate the German ships.

The Bismarck did not refuel during its stay in Norway because its operational orders did not require it. She had left the port with a cargo some 200 tons below her maximum capacity, and she had spent another 1,000 tons on her voyage from Gotenhafen. The Prinz Eugen, for its part, refueled 764 tons of fuel. At 7:30 p.m. on May 21, the two ships and their three escort destroyers left Bergen, and by midnight the force was already It was in the open sea and heading towards the Arctic Ocean. At this time Admiral Erich Raeder finally informed Hitler of the operation, who reluctantly gave his consent to continue the raid. The three escort destroyers separated at 04:14 on 22 May, while the force steamed off Trondheim. Around 12:00 Lütjens ordered his two ships to turn towards the Denmark Strait to try to penetrate the open waters of the Atlantic Ocean.

At around 04:00 on 23 May, Lütjens ordered the Bismarck and Prinz Eugen to increase speed to 27 knots (50 km/h) to avoid The Bismarck was sailing about 700 m ahead of the Prinz Eugen<. /i>; fog reduced visibility to about 3,000 to 4,000 meters. The Germans encountered ice around 10:00, forcing them to reduce speed to 24 knots. Two hours later, both ships had reached a point north of Iceland, and had to navigate in a zigzag pattern to avoid ice floes. At 19:22 the hydrophone and radar operators of the German ships detected the English cruiser HMS Suffolk at a distance of approximately 12,500 m. The radio-interception equipment of the Prinz Eugen deciphered the Suffolk signals and they knew that he had reported their location.

Admiral Lütjens gave permission to Prinz Eugen to attack it, but the German captain of the heavy cruiser could not define the objective. The enemy cruiser quickly withdrew to a safe distance and followed the ships Germans. At 20:30 the heavy cruiser HMS Norfolk joined the Suffolk, but it got too close to the German ships and Lütjens ordered his ships to attack the English cruiser. The Bismarck fired five salvoes, three of which forked the Norfolk and hit her decks. The cruiser set up a smoke screen and took refuge in a fog bank, thus ending the brief encounter. The shock of the powerful 380mm guns disabled the FuMo 23 radars of the Bismarck, so Lütjens had to ask the Prinz Eugen to move in. will overtake to use its radars to recognize.

Around 22:00 Lütjens ordered the Bismarck to make a 180° turn in an effort to surprise the two pursuing British cruisers. Although the Bismarck was not visible amid the falling rain, the Suffolk's radar detected the maneuver and was able to evade the battleship. The cruisers remained in position. its position all night, continuously transmitting the position and conduct of the German ships. Lütjens correctly assumed that the enemy ships were equipped with radars.

The bad weather stopped on the morning of May 24 and gave way to clear skies. At 05:07 that morning the hydrophone operators of the Prinz Eugen detected a pair of unidentified vessels approaching the German formation at a speed of 20 knots (37 km/h).

Battle of the Denmark Strait

At 05:45 the observers of the German ships sighted smoke on the horizon, smoke from the chimneys of the Hood and the Prince of Wales, under the command of the Vice Admiral Lancelot Holland. Lütjens ordered the crew of his ships to their battle stations.

At 05:52 the range had been reduced to 26,000 m and the Hood opened fire early with her forward guns, followed by the Prince of Wales a minute later, This early action represented a serious tactical error. The Hood targeted the Prinz Eugen thinking it was the Bismarck, while the Prince of Wales did the same with the Bismarck. The British were unaware that the German ships had exchanged positions while crossing the Denmark Strait, and although observers on HMS Prince of Wales correctly identified them, they did not inform Admiral Holland. Adalbert Schneider, First Officer Bismarck's artilleryman, twice asked Lütjens for permission to return fire, but he hesitated and fell into silence. Lindemann intervened, muttering "I won't let my ship be shot under my ass." » Lindemann demanded permission from Lütjens, who relented and ordered at 05:55 to attack the British ships.

The English ships advanced towards the Germans, forcing them to use only their forward batteries, while the Bismarck and the Prinz Eugen fired full broadsides from all their positions. cannons. Several minutes after opening fire Holland ordered a 20° turn to port, which would allow his ships to make use of all their turrets. The two German ships concentrated their salvoes on the Hood, and one minute after starting their cannon fire, the Prinz Eugen hit her with a 203 mm high-explosive projectile; Its explosion started a large fire on the boat deck which was quickly extinguished. After firing three four-gun salutes, Schneider had calculated the Hood's exact range and immediately ordered a rapid eight-gun salute. 380 mm from the Bismarck. He also ordered the 150mm batteries to open fire on the Prince of Wales. Holland then ordered a second 20° turn to port to put his ships on a course parallel to the German ships. Lütjens ordered Prince Eugen to change target and attack Prince of Wales. /i> in order to keep both of his opponents under fire. A few minutes later, the Prinz Eugen made a couple of hits on the British battleship and reported the start of a small fire.

Lütjens then ordered his cruiser to drop behind the Bismarck so that he could continue monitoring the position of the cruisers Norfolk and Suffolk, which were still 19-22 km to the east.

At 06:00 the Hood was completing her second turn to port when the Bismarck fired her fifth salvo. Two of her shells fell short, hitting the water near the cruiser, but at least one of the 380 mm armor-piercing shells made impact and penetrated her thin deck armor. The projectile reached the Santa Bárbara tangentially and detonated 112 tons of cordite. A flash of flame arose in front of the aft mast and then a massive explosion blew out the rear part of the cruiser, between the main mast and the rear funnel; The forward section of the ship moved forward briefly before the flood of water raised the bow at a steep angle. The stern rose similarly as water poured into its blast-torn compartments. Schneider exclaimed over the loudspeakers, "She's sinking!" After an exchange of gunfire lasting just eight minutes, the Hood /i> had disappeared in less than three minutes along with a crew of 1,419 men.

The Bismarck then went on to fire on the Prince of Wales, and one of the shells from its first salvo crossed the bridge of the British ship without exploding but killing all the crew. who were in the command center except for the ship's commander, John Leach, and another man. The Prince of Wales managed to hit the German battleship with its sixth salvo, but the two German ships They rained shells on the English battleship and caused serious damage to it. The guns of the recently commissioned Prince of Wales did not function properly, and she still had civilian technicians on board. Despite her problematic main battery, the battleship managed to hit the Bismarck with three projectiles: the first hit the forecastle above the waterline, but low enough for the waves to penetrate its hull; the second, below the armor belt and exploded upon impact with the anti-torpedo bulkhead, inflicting minor damage; and the third crossed between the hangars, disintegrating one of the battleship's boats, making it splinter, and the seaplane platform without detonating.

At 06:13 Leach ordered a retreat, when only two of his ten 360mm guns were still firing and his ship had received extensive damage. The Prince of Wales made a 160° turn and set up a smoke screen to cover her retreat. The Germans stopped firing as the distance increased.

Although Lindemann advocated pursuing the English ship and destroying it, Lütjens obeyed the operation's orders to avoid combat with enemy forces not protecting a convoy and firmly rejected the idea, ordering the Bismarck instead. and the Prinz Eugen set course for the open waters of the North Atlantic. During the course of the combat the Bismarck had fired 93 armor-piercing projectiles and had suffered three hits. The forecastle projectile had caused the entry of between 1,000 and 2,000 tons of water that contaminated the fuel stored in the bow. Lütjens refused to allow a speed reduction so that damage control teams could repair the shell hole, which became even larger and let in more water. The second impact caused some flooding and its shrapnel damaged the line of flotation in the turbogenerator room, although the Bismarck had sufficient generator reserves and this was not problematic. The flooding caused by these two impacts caused a list of 9° to port and 3° to the bow.

The chase

After the battle Lütjens reported that a "battle cruiser, probably the Hood, sunk. Another battleship, King George V or Renown, was damaged. Two heavy cruisers maintain contact." At 08:01 he transmitted a damage report and his intentions to the German Naval High Command, which were to separate the Prinz Eugen so that it could continue its raid against the merchant ships and make landfall with the Bismarck in the French port of Saint-Nazaire for repairs. Shortly before 10:00 Lütjens ordered the Prinz Eugen to move aft of the Bismarck i> to find out the severity of the bow impact fuel leaks. After confirming "large fuel flows on both sides of [the Bismarck's] wake", the Prinz Eugen returned to the forward position. About an hour later a British Short S.25 Sunderland seaplane He reported the fuel spill to the Suffolk and Norfolk, which had joined the damaged Prince of Wales. Rear Admiral Frederic Wake-Walker, commander of the two cruisers, ordered Prince of Wales to remain behind his ships.

The British Royal Navy called on all its units in the area to join the pursuit of the Bismarck and the Prinz Eugen. Admiral Tovey's Home Fleet was sailing to intercept the German ships, but on the morning of 24 May it was still 650 km away. The British Admiralty sent the light cruisers HMS Manchester, Birmingham and Arethusa to patrol the Denmark Strait in case Lütjens decided to return. the footsteps of him. The battleship HMS Rodney was ordered to join Tovey. The aging battleships HMS Revenge and HMS Ramillies were also ordered to join the chase. In total, six battleships and battlecruisers, two aircraft carriers, thirteen cruisers and twenty-one destroyers were called to the chase. At around 17:00 the The crew aboard the Prince of Wales had repaired nine of her ten main guns, so Wake-Walker placed her at the front of his formation to attack the Bismarck if she failed. presented the opportunity.

With the weather getting worse, Lütjens attempted to separate the Prinz Eugen at 16:40. The storm was not thick enough to cover their retreat from the eyes of Wake-Walker's cruisers, which continued to maintain radar contact, so Prinz Eugen was temporarily recalled. Her departure definitively it could be carried out at 6:14 p.m. The Bismarck turned to face the Wake-Walker formation, forcing the Suffolk to move away at high speed. The Prince of Wales fired twelve salvos at the German battleship, which responded with nine broadsides, none of which hit a target. The action distracted the attention of the British and allowed Prinz Eugen to disappear. After the Bismarck returned to its previous point, the three Wake-Walker ships took up positions on the port side of the battleship.

Although the Bismarck had been damaged in combat with the Hood and the Prince of Wales and was forced to reduce her speed, she was still capable of cruising at 27-28 knots (50-52 km/h), the same top speed as John Tovey's King George V. Unless she was stopped, the British would not be able to prevent her from reaching Saint-Nazaire. Shortly before 16:00 on 25 May, Tovey separated the aircraft carrier HMS Victorious and four light cruisers to make a route that could position them to launch their torpedo planes. At 22:00 the < i>Victorious launched its attack, comprising six Fairey Fulmar fighters and nine Fairey Swordfish torpedo boats. The inexperienced aviators almost attacked the Norfolk, a mistake that alerted the anti-aircraft gunners of the Bismarck. The German battleship even used its main and secondary batteries to fire as much as possible and create giant splashes in the path of the torpedo boats, but none of the attacking aircraft were shot down. The Bismarck avoided eight of the nine torpedoes launched at it, but the ninth hit towards the center of the ship, in the armored belt, and caused minor material damage. The shock of the crash threw one man against a wall, killing him, while five others were injured.

The torpedo explosion caused some minor damage to the electrical installation, but it was the high speed and erratic maneuvers to evade the torpedoes that inflicted the most damage. Sudden changes in speed and course loosened the precarious sealing of the bow hole, increasing flooding and boiler number two on the port side had to be abandoned. The loss now of two boilers on the port shaft, together with declining fuel levels and increased bow flooding, forced speed to be reduced to 16 knots (30 km/h). Divers were sent under the bow to repair the sealing of the gap, after which speed could be increased to 20 knots (37 km/h). The battleship's commanders determined that this was the most economical speed for the journey to occupied France.

Shortly after the Swordfish left the scene, the Bismarck and the Prince of Wales engaged in a brief artillery duel, but both missed their shots. The Damage control teams from the Bismarck resumed their work after the brief shelling. Seawater that had flooded the port number two boiler threatened to enter the number four turbogenerator of the water supply system, which would have allowed salt water to reach the turbine engines. The salt water would have destroyed the turbine blades and greatly reduced the ship's speed. However, on the morning of the 25th the danger had passed. The ship slowed to 12 knots to allow divers to pump fuel from the forward compartments to the rear tanks, which successfully connected two hoses that allowed the transfer of several hundred tons of fuel.

With the chase entering the open waters of the North Atlantic, Wake-Walker's ships were forced to sail in a zigzag pattern to avoid any German submarines that might be in the area. This required them to sail ten minutes to port and another ten to starboard in order to maintain the same course. Towards the last minutes of the port turn, the Bismarck disappeared from the Suffolk's radar. At 03:00 a.m. on May 25, Lütjens ordered the ship's speed to increase. maximum, which at that time was 28 knots (52 km/h), after which he ordered the battleship to turn in a circle, first to the west and then to the north. This maneuver was carried out at a time when the German ship was outside British radars, so she managed to turn and position herself behind them. The captain of the Suffolk assumed that the Bismarck had been lost heading west, so he took that course in order to locate it. After half an hour he informed Wake-Walker of the situation, who ordered the three ships to disperse as soon as the first light of day appeared in order to make a visual search for the enemy ship.

The British Royal Navy embarked on a frantic search for the Bismarck. The aircraft carrier Victorious and her escort cruisers were sent west, Wake-Walker's ships continued south and west, and Admiral Tovey sailed into the middle of the Atlantic. The situation became more complicated since many of the English ships were running out of fuel. Force H, centered on the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal and coming from Gibraltar, was still a day's sail from the search area. Unaware that Wake-Walker had lost them, Lütjens sent long radio messages to Naval Group West., based in Paris. These signals were intercepted by the British, who determined their course, but this was erroneously plotted and kept Tovey's ships on a wrong course for seven hours. By the time the error was noticed, the Bismarck had left the area.

British decoders were able to decipher some German signals, including an order directing Lütjens to the port of Brest. The French Resistance assisted the British by confirming the movement of Luftwaffe units towards Brest to provide air cover. Tovey could then have moved his forces towards France to converge on the areas that the Bismarck would have to pass through to reach that port. A Consolidated PBY Catalina seaplane coastal command squadron based in Ireland The North was called to the search to cover the areas through which the Bismarck could be directed towards the coast. At 10:10 on May 26, a Catalina piloted by US Navy Ensign Leonard B. Smith located the Bismarck about 1,280 km northwest of Brest. Her current speed was high enough to reach under the protection of the U-boats and the Luftwaffe in less than a day, and there were no British forces strong enough nearby to stop him.

The only possibility that the British Royal Navy had was the Ark Royal with Force H, under the command of Admiral James Somerville. The Victorious, the Prince of Wales, the Suffolk and the Repulse were forced to interrupt the search due to their low fuel reserves, so the only remaining heavy ships, In addition to Force H, they were the King George V and the Rodney, but they were too far away to intercept the Bismarck. The Swordfish of the < i>Ark Royal were already searching in the area where the Catalina had sighted the German battleship, and several torpedo boats also located it about 110 km from the Ark Royal. Somerville ordered an attack by the Swordfish as soon as they returned, and they were armed with torpedoes. He detached HMS Sheffield to follow Bismarck, although the torpedo boat airmen were not informed of this. As a result, the Swordfish, which were armed with torpedoes fitted with new magnetic detonators, accidentally attacked the Bismarck. i>Sheffield. The magnetic detonators did not work and the Sheffield escaped unscathed.

On their return to the aircraft carrier the Swordfish were rearmed with contact-detonating torpedoes. Fifteen aircraft carried out the second attack, which was launched at 19:10. At 20:47 the torpedo boats began their attack, descending through the clouds. As they approached the Bismarck, she fired her main battery at the Sheffield, hitting her with her second salvo and killing three men and wounding several more. The British ship quickly retreated, setting up a smoke screen. That was when the Swordfish launched their attack; The Bismarck began to turn violently while all of her anti-aircraft batteries tried to shoot down the torpedo boats. She managed to avoid almost all of the torpedoes they dropped, but two hit her. One hit towards the center of the ship on the port side, just below the main armor belt. The force of its explosion was contained by the underwater protection system, but some structural damage and minor flooding occurred.

The second torpedo hit the port aft side, near the port rudder axis. Its explosion caused serious damage to the port rudder assembly, as the coupling was destroyed and the rudder could not be disengaged; This one turned 12° to port. The explosion also caused extensive damage to the ship. The damage control team repeatedly attempted to regain control of the rudder, and eventually managed to fix the starboard rudder, but the port rudder remained stuck. It was suggested that this rudder be torn off with explosives, but Lütjens did not allow it, stating that "We cannot endanger the ship with measures of this type." He considered that there was a serious danger of damaging the propellers, which would have left the battleship completely defenseless. At 21:15, Lütjens reported that the Bismarck was not maneuverable.

Sinking

With the port rudder jammed, the Bismarck sailed in wide circles, unable to escape Tovey's ships. Although fuel shortages had reduced the number of British ships, the battleships King George V and Rodney were still available, along with the heavy cruisers Dorsetshire. and Norfolk. Lütjens reported to headquarters at 21:40 on the 26th: «Ship impossible to maneuver. We will fight until the last projectile. Long live the Führer. »In the gathering darkness, the Bismarck briefly fired on the Sheffield, which sped away from her at high speed and lost contact with the battleship for a short time. visibility. Captain Philip Vian's group of five destroyers would be in charge of maintaining contact during the night.

These ships encountered the Bismarck at 22:38, which briefly attacked with its main guns. After firing three salvos, she clipped the Polish destroyer ORP Piorun, which continued to approach until at about 12,000 m a shell landed close to her and forced her to move away. Throughout the night and morning Vian's destroyers constantly harassed the Bismarck, illuminating it with his flares and firing dozens of torpedoes at it, none of which hit it. Between 05:00 and 06:00 the crew of the Bismarck attempted to launch an Arado Ar 196 seaplane with the battleship's war diary, images of the confrontation with the Hood and other important documents. The third shell from Prince of Wales, which had hit the captain's motorboat, had also damaged the seaplane's launching catapult, rendering it inoperative. Unable to get the plane off the ground, the crew simply pushed it overboard.

After dawn on May 27, Tovey, aboard the King George V, led the attack on the paralyzed Bismarck. The Rodney followed the port quarter, Tovey intended to sail directly towards the Bismarck until she was about 15 km away. At that time, it would turn south to position itself on a course parallel to its target. At 08:43 from the King George V they sighted the Bismarck at approximately 23,000 m., and four minutes later the Rodney's bow turrets opened fire with their six 406 mm guns. Almost immediately afterwards, King George V did the same with its 360 mm batteries. The Bismarck returned fire starting at 08:50 with her forward guns, and with her second salvo she choked the Rodney.

As the distance decreased, the ship's secondary batteries began firing. The Norfolk and the Dorsetshire also closed the distance and opened fire with their 203 mm guns. At 09:02 a 406 mm howitzer from Rodney hit the superstructure of Bismarck, killing hundreds of crew and severely damaging the forward turrets Anton and Bruno. According to survivors, this brutal impact was probably what killed Lindemann, Lütjens and the rest of the staff on the bridge. The main forward battery was already out of action, despite which it managed to fire its last salvo. at 09:27. The main gun control station was quickly destroyed. Lieutenant Von Müllenheim, at the rear control station, took charge of fire control of the rear turrets, managing to fire three volleys before a howitzer destroyed the direction of fire, disabling the equipment. He gave the order to fire independently at the still active guns, but by 09:31 all four main batteries had been neutralized.

By 10:00 Tovey's two battleships had fired about 700 shells from their main batteries, most at very close range. The Bismarck had been reduced to rubble, burning from bow to stern. She was listing 20° to port and sinking by the bow. The Rodney approached to 2700 m, which for her guns was equivalent to shooting at point-blank range, and continued destroying the battered hull of the German battleship. Tovey was not to cease firing until the Germans lowered their flags or it was clear that they were abandoning ship. The Rodney launched two torpedoes at him from her port tubes—a howitzer from the Bismarck. i> had exploded twenty meters from her bow and had left her starboard tubes useless, in what had been the closest German shot that hit her—and claimed a hit, something that, according to Ludovic Kennedy, "If it were True, [it is] the only time in history in which one battleship torpedoes another.

Hans Oels, first officer of the German battleship, ordered the men below deck to abandon ship. He also instructed the engine room crew to open the ship's watertight compartments and prepare charges to scuttle her. Gerhard Junack, chief engineering officer, ordered his men to place explosive charges with fuses that would take nine minutes to burn, but the communication system broke down and he had to send a messenger to confirm the order to sink the ship. That messenger never returned, so Junack prepared the charges and ordered the crew to abandon ship. They heard the detonations of the explosives as they ascended through the different levels of the ship. Meanwhile, Oels ran throughout the battleship ordering the Men abandoned their posts, but after gaining access to the deck, a huge explosion killed him and hundreds of other men.

The four British ships fired more than 2,800 shells at the Bismarck and hit more than 400, but were unable to sink the German battleship. Around 10:20, with fuel levels very low, Tovey ordered Dorsetshire to close distance and fire torpedoes at the battleship. He launched a pair of torpedoes to the Bismarck's starboard side, one of which hit her, after which he turned to the port side to fire another torpedo that also hit her. By the time of this torpedo attack, the battleship was clearly listing and her deck was partially flooded. The last torpedo apparently hit the port side of her superstructure, which was already under water. Around 10:35 the Bismarck capsized towards the damaged port side and sank aft, disappearing from the surface at 10:40. Junack, who had abandoned the ship in time, did not observe underwater damage to the starboard side of the battleship. Von Müllenheim-Rechberg claimed the same, but assumed that the port side, already submerged, must have suffered significant damage. Some four hundred men were now in the waters; The Dorsetshire and the destroyer Maori approached and hauled in ropes to haul the castaways aboard. At 11:40 the captain of the Dorsetshire ordered the abandonment of rescue efforts after scouts sighted what they believed to be a German submarine. The Dorsetshire had rescued eighty-five men and the Maori another twenty-five by the time they left the place, one of whom died from his wounds within a day. following. A U-Boat later arrived and rescued three men, while another German boat saved two others. Of a crew of about 2,200 men, only 114 survived.

At the same time that the German ship was engaged in its last combat against the ships of the British Royal Navy, Admiral Otto Schniewind, Chief of the General Staff of the SKL, requested that the Spanish Navy send relief ships in anticipation of the final outcome of the war. battle. On May 27, 1941 at 11:40, when the battleship had already capsized, the heavy cruiser Canarias set sail from the Ferrol base, arriving at the sinking area on the night of May 29. There she encountered a German submarine and, in the early hours of the 30th, the German weather ship Sachsenwald. After touring the area, she only managed to rescue the bodies of two German sailors, who were returned to the sea with all honors.

Bismarck was mentioned three times in the Wehrmachtbericht, the daily bulletin issued by the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (Wehrmacht High Command)., during Operation Rheinübung. The first account recounted the Battle of the Denmark Strait, the second was a brief description of the destruction and sinking of the battleship, and the third an exaggerated claim that the Bismarck had sunk a British destroyer and shot down. five aircraft. In 1959 Cecil Scott Forester published the novel Last Nine Days of the Bismarck, a book that was adapted to film a year later. for the film Sink the Bismarck! —Sink the Bismarck!—. In the film, and for dramatic purposes, the German battleship was shown sinking a British destroyer and shooting down two aircraft, although none of this happened.

The wreck

Discovery by Robert Ballard

The wreck of the Bismarck was discovered on June 8, 1989 by Robert Ballard, the oceanographer responsible for the discovery of the Titanic. The Bismarck rests almost intact at a depth of approximately 4,791 m about 650 km west of Brest, France. She landed on the side of an extinct underwater volcano called Pourcupine that stands about a thousand meters above the surrounding abyssal plain, and her tangential impact caused a two-kilometer mudslide, dragging her own remains with her. detached on the surface. The battleship slid down the slope and stopped two-thirds below, settling into a normal position.

Ballard's inspection found no penetrations below the waterline in the ship's armor belt. Eight holes were found in the hull, one to starboard and the rest to port, all above the waterline. One of the holes is in the deck, to starboard of the bow. The angle and shape of it indicate that it was fired from the port side of the Bismarck and hit the starboard anchor chain, which has disappeared through that hole. Six holes open towards the center of the ship, three Projectile fragments pierced the upper armor belt and one made a hole in the main armor belt. Additionally, a huge hole, parallel to the seaplane catapult, is visible in the deck aft. It is not clear if it is the result of an internal explosion of the Santa Bárbara due to the penetration of a projectile. The submersibles did not find any signs of shell penetration into the battleship's armor, so it is likely that the shells only penetrated the deck. Large dents suggest that many of the 356 mm shells fired by King George Vthey bounced off the German armored belt.

Ballard said he had found no evidence of the internal implosions that occur in the hull of a ship when it sinks with air in its internal compartments. The surrounding water, which has much more pressure than the air contained in the hull, crushes the ship. However, Ballard points out that the hull is in very good condition and assures that "Bismarck did not implode." This suggests that the battleship's compartments were flooded when it sank, supporting the theory that it was scuttled by its crew. Ballard has kept the exact location of the wreck a secret to prevent other divers from removing items from the battleship, something he considers a form of grave robbing.

When the wreck was discovered, it was found that the entire stern had separated, since it was not close to the main remains and has not yet been found, so it can be assumed that its tear did not occur in the impact against the bottom of the sea. That missing section coincides with the part where the torpedo hit, which raises questions about a possible structural failure. The stern area had received several hits that added to the damage of the torpedo. This, together with the fact that the battleship sank at the stern and had no support to keep it in place, suggests that the stern was torn off on the surface. In 1942 the Prinz Eugen was also torpedoed in the stern and subsequently collapsed. This led to strengthening the stern structures on all major German ships.

Ballard estimated that the Bismarck could have floated for at least a day after the British ceasefire and could have been captured by the British Royal Navy, an idea supported by historian Ludovic Kennedy — who participated in the sinking of the Bismarck because he was serving on the HMS Tartar at the time. Kennedy stated "There was no doubt that she had sunk, but scuttling her ensured that it was sooner rather than later." Ballard found the hull in good condition: "We found a hull that appeared intact and relatively little damaged by the descent and impact." ". They concluded that the direct cause of her sinking was that she was scuttled: sabotage of the engine room valves by her crew, as claimed by the German survivors.

Later expeditions

In June 2001 Deep Ocean Expeditions, associated with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, conducted another investigation of the wreck. Investigators used Russian-made minisubmarines to examine the Bismarck. Woods Hole expert William N. Lange noted that "A large number of shell holes are seen in the superstructure and deck, but not in the flanks, and none below the waterline." The expedition did not found penetrations in the main armored belt, above or below the waterline. The examiners noted several cuts along the hull, but explained that they were due to the impact against the seabed.

A third, Anglo-American, expedition was financed in July 2001 by a British television channel. The team used information about the location of the wreck at the foot of an underwater volcano to find it. Using remotely operated vehicles (ROVs), they concluded that the battleship sank due to combat damage, having received countless hits from howitzers and torpedoes. The leader of the expedition, David Mearns, stated that there were significant tears in the hull: "My feeling is that those holes occurred in the slide, but they were initiated by the torpedoes." In the later published book, Hood and Bismarck, Mearns states that scuttling it "may have accelerated the inevitable, but only by a matter of minutes."

In 2002 the documentary A James Cameron Expedition: The Battleship Bismarck, filmed in May-June 2002 using smaller, more agile Mir bathyscaphes, reconstructed the events that led to the sinking of the Bismarck. The documentary showed images of the battleship's interior for the first time, broadcast by the National Geographic Channel. Their findings were that there was not enough damage below the waterline to confirm her being sunk by howitzers and torpedoes. In fact, upon final inspection it was confirmed that nothing had penetrated the second inner layer of the hull.

James Cameron proposed a theory to explain the origin of the scratches on the hull seen by the previous expedition: he suggested that the Bismarck suffered a "hydraulic burst" when it reached the bottom. Cameron said the belt held, but internal forces buckled it and broke in places. Using small vehicles to examine the interior, Cameron discovered that the torpedoes had not penetrated the anti-torpedo bulkheads, and had only destroyed the gaps between the outer hull plating and the interior sections; the purpose of these spaces was to act as additional warehouses and absorb underwater explosions. "The internal plates of the tank are not affected by any explosive force... So the armor held up." Cameron concluded that the torpedoes only caused "minor flooding."