8/2/2019 Hunt for Bismark

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Hunt For BismarckIs Dramatic

Hitler's Pride Knocks Out Hood ButI s Hotly Pursued andTakes

Much PunishmentFrom The 8 tator's LoAden News Bureau,ilyACCumminpCopyright, 190, by $outhaen Company.London,(By Mail)-The hunting by

air and sea of the great German warshipBismarck and her destruction in the At.lantlc in May, 1941, is told for the firsttime in an official account of the amazingfeats of the Coastal Command of theRoyal Air Force, just issued Thrills ofvictory, perils of ocean and sky and theextraordinary luck that led to the dis-covery that the battleship had gone com-merce-raiding form part of the story

I t begins with Admiral Lutjens givingthe hunter's toast on board the Bismarckon Monday, May 19, about noon-"Goodhunting and good bag. " He had beenmaking a speech to the ship's companyand every one heard it by loudspeakersplaced throughout the vessel.That evening Hitler's proud battleship

weighed anchor and put to sea from KielBay, intending to sink Allied shipping Inthe Atlantic, Admiral Lutjens was an ex -perienced sea-raider . He had flown theflag previously in the Gnetsenau, which,together with the Scharnhorst, had sunktwenty-two British and Allied ships, in-cluding the Jervis Bay The Gneisenauand Scharnhorst were now in Brest andhad already suffered damage from theattacks made on them by aircraft ofBomber and Coastal Commands I f Ger-many was to obtain a decision in theBattle of the Atlantic, other units of hernavy must be sent to sea. TheBismarckand the Prinz Eugen were chosen .s s s t s sFor the Bismarck I t was her first and

last voyage . She formed the main unitof a squadron made up of the eight-inchcruiser the Prinz Eugen, two destroyersand two mine-bumpers After passingthrough the Great Belt the squadronmovedupthe conquered coast of Norway,and on the morning of May 21 entereda fjord near Bergen, where I t anchored .There had been little sleep on boardduring that night, for an air-raid alarmhad kept the crews at action stations untilhalf-past eight in the morning. There wasanother alarm in the early afternoonwhich lasted a quarter of an hour. Ai t t l ebefore dusk the squadron put to seaagain .That day an aircraft of Coastal Com-

mand, In the course of a reconnaissanceof the Norwegian coast, had flown as farnorth as Bergen . Reconnoitring the ap-proaches to that port, the pilot discoveredtwo warships, one of large size, at anchorin a small fjord.On his return he made a cautious re-

port of what he had seen to one of theStation Intelligence Officers While theywere talking the wet prints of the photo -graphs which the pilot had taken werebrought in . The Intelligence Officer ex -amined them and saw that what the pilotsurmised was indeed the truth . He spokeimmediately with Headquarters, CoastalCommand

"Bring me those prints at once," order-ed the Commander-in-Chief . ,A slight difficulty arose The only air-

craft available to take them to Headquar-ters was that of the pilot who had justfinished the patrol. Moreover, i t was nowevening. Nevertheless, he took off andnew South until, with night fallen, hefound himself short of petrol on the out-skirts of Nottingham, his home town.Here he landed and roused a friend ofhis, the owner of a garage and of a motor-car. They continued the journey together,driving through the night and the black-out at an average speed of fifty-two mil aan hour. The prints were delivered at'Coastal Command Headquarters in theearly hours of the morning . Admiraltyand photographic experts confirmed theopinion of the Intelligence Officer inScotland The Bismarck and the PrinzEugen were out

P t " s " tVery early that same morning they

were attacked by six Whitleya and sixLockheed-Hudsons of Coastal CommandThe attack was unsuccessful, for theweather was very thick and only two ofthe aircraft succeeded in reaching thefjord, where they dropped their load ofarmour-piercing bombs with no observedeffect . Throughout that dayitwasMay,22-the weather could justifiably be ,de-scribed as atrocious Nevertheless, recon-naissance of the Norwegian coast wasmaintained from first l igh t u nt il dark,with every available aircraft of CoastalCommand on the east coast of Scotlandand the coast of Yorkshire being pressedInto service. They flew at times through. t 4 l u l l ' gale, at times through dense hazeand cloud extending downwards to bea-level . Hour after hour they plunged intothe mist shrouding Bergen harbour andthe nearby fjords. I t was in vain Noships were seen One of the pilots ex-pressed the opinion that the enemy wasno longer there because "I collided withnothing though I flew over the harbourat sea-level . "The truth of this conjecture was proved

about 6.3 0 that evening when the cloudsabove Bergen lifted for a moment-longenough for a shore-based naval aircraft,a Maryland, to report that a clear viewhad been obtained and that no warshiphad been seen This aircraft was man-ned by very expertended officers of theFleet Air Arm, who carried out the flightsuccessfully in spite of bad weather andobtained information of the highest im-portance Through that long day the Bis-marck and the Prinz Eugen had, in fact,been steaming steadily northwards,having parted company with their de -stroyers In the small hours At 10amonMay 23 the enemy altered course to passthrough the Denmark Strait between Ice-land and Greenland . By this time theywere fully aware that they had been

.seen,

but they judged that to follow this routewould offer the best chance to elude theBritish Fleet now steaming to interceptthemThe weather on May 23 was s t i l l very

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bed-too bad to patrol the Norwe-gian coast. Sunderland flyingboats and Hudsons were able tocover the passages between Ice-land and the Faroes and betweenthe Faroes and the Shetlands TheSunderlands maintained their pa-trol in relays from a quarter pastsix in the morning to a quarterpast nine in the evening, the Budsons from 4 a.m. to 5 . 1 5 p.m. TheSunderlands covered more thantwo thousand miles in a single sor-tie ; but the weather was againstthem . They encounted strong headwinds, fog, rain-squalls and heavycloud in which severe icing condi-tions developed. In addition to theSunderlands, two Catalina flyingboats covered the Iceland Chan-nel, beginning t he ir p at ro l at Ip.m . They had to abandon theirtask when unbroken cloud, downto three hundred feet, and accom-panied by unceasing rain, reducedvisibility to less than a thousandyards.That evening HM.S . Suffolksighted the German warships inthe Denmark Strait and soon aftera Sunderland and a Hudson fromIceland s et o ff in the long twilightof those far northern latitudes tosearch for the enemy. The Hudsoncould not -find them and returned .The Sunderland held on In themeantime the Bismarck and thePrinz Eugen had also been seenby HM. S . Norfolk Matters stoodthus at the endofMay23. Thetwocruisers shadowed the enemythroughout the night .Next morning another Hudsontook of f and at 5.5 4 a.m. sightedthe Bismarck and the Prinz Eugenengaged in combat with the Hoodand the Prince of Wales Lowclouds made i t impossible to iden-tify th e opposing forces with cer-tainty, but 1 t could be perceivedthat one of the ships had sufferedtwo direct hits, of which the secand was followed by an explosion .s s sMeanwhile the Sunderland fromIceland had arrived In the neigh-bourhood of the Suffolk and, onsighting this ship, saw at the sametime the flash of gunfire wellahead . "As we cleared," says thecaptain in h is re po rt , "two col-umns, each of two ships in lineahead, were seen to be steering

on parallel courses at an estimat-ed range of twelve miles betweenthe columns Heavy gunfire wasbeing exchanged and the leadingship of the port column was onfire in two places, one fire being atthe base of the bridge superstruc-ture and the other farther af t . Inspite of these large conflagrationsshe appeared to be firing at leastone turret forward and one af t . "At first the captain of the Sunder-land could not identify the burningship . He turned towards the star-board column and noticed that thesecond of the two ships composingi t was making a considerableamount of smoke, and that oil es-caping from her was leaving abroad track upon the surface ofthe sea. He appeared nearer, andas he did so the ship on fire in thecolumn to port blew up.A few seconds later the Sunder-land came under heavy A A fireat the moment when i t s captainwas identifying the ships in thestarboard column as the Bismarckand the Prim Eugen. He was forc-ed to take immediate cloud coverand when, five minutes later, heemerged into an open , patch,- theship whichhad blown up, andwhichhe now realized was British,though he did not learn until al i t t l e later that she was the Hood,had almost completely disappear-ed "Only part of the bows wasshowing. " This sank almost atonce, and when the Sunderlandflew over the spot all that couldbe seen was an empty raft, paint-ed red, surrounded by wreckageIn the midst of a large patchof o i l .Watching the remainder of theaction, the captain of the Sunder-land saw the Prince of Wales turnaway under cover of a "lightsmoke screen" and open the rangeto about fifteen miles. The Sun-derland closed the Bismarck tomake quite certain of her identityand then, returning to the neigh-bourhood of the Suffolk, exchang-ed v isua l sig na ls with her andlearntthat the ship which hadbeensunk was the Hood . I t was thenabout a quarter past seven on themorning of May24

sThroughout that day the shadow-ing of th e German ships by theRoyal Navy continued ACatalinaof Coastal Command saw them at1232 p-m . and, remaining in coo-tact fo r two hours, at intervals sig-nalled their course and speed to thepursuers. Coming under antiair-craft f i r e , the flying-boat develop-ed engine trouble which forced i tto return to base . This was thelast contact with the enemy madeby Coastal Command that dayThe Norfolk and Suffolk, with thePrince of Wales, held on TheKing George V, in which the Com-mander-in-Chief of the HomeFleet was ovine his flaw and tha

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149WARNUBOPEAN1939G$RMANYNAVYBISMARK

aircraft carrier Victorious, werenow rapidly approaching .On board the Bismarck there wasmuch rejoicing . That eveningthere was a large Issue of sausage,chocolates and cigarettes. and Hit-ler conferred the Iron Cross on thefirst gunnery officer . Captain Lin-demann, commander of the Bis-marck, thought i t was time to re-turn to the safety of the Norwe-gian fjords, but his Admiral over-ruled him and night fell-withoutfurther incident . Then, after mid-night, torpedo-carrying Swordfishfrom the Victorious delivered anattack and scored a hi t on thestarboard side . Bismarck survivorssubsequently spoke with admira-tion of the British pilots' courage .One Swordfish, they said, afterbeing hit, s t i l l tried to get intoposition so as to release i t s tor-pedo before I t hi t the sea. Theanti-aircraft fire of the enemywastremendous, some of the Bis-marck's guns becoming red-hotEarly in the morning, in bad visi-bility, th e two cruisers lost contactwith the battleship, whose speedwas now down to twenty knotsThroughout the day and nightthree Cataltnas searched the oceanand saw nothing On May 26 newpatrols of Hudsons and Sunder-lands took up the search withi!fmh units of the hvgal Navy, r -some of which had come from Gib-raltar . Before midday, AdmiralLutiens told his crew that an ac-tion would have to be fought, asbe had been usable to 4bala aftthe pursuit . In the course of themorning a Catalina flying-boatfrom Northern Ireland spied theBismarck after a lapse of 31%hours. s s s"'George' (the automatic pilot)was flying the aircraft," said thepilot of the Catalina, "when wesaw a warship . I t was a dull black tshape, hard to detect through the Imist above a rough sea. We went'up to fifteen hundred feet intobroken cloud. Then we found our-

s el ve s r ig h t over the ship, and ina moment we were surrounded byblack puffs. Stuff began to rattleagainst the hull . Some of 1t wentthrough In between the smudgesof the bursting shells I saw the bigship which appeared to be one bigwinking flame, turning hard tostarboard and heeling over . "The Catalina lost touch with theBismarck fo r the time being, butthe Ark Royal found her again, :and another Coastal CommandCatalina - took up the work ofshadowing her. Three hours laterpowerful forces of the Royal Navyclosed in on her, and fifteen

Swordfish torpedo-carrying air-craft from the Ark Royal launch-ed an attack. I t lasted h alf anhour, and when i t was over thebattleship was so damaged shecould only run round in circles.Her position was desperate. De-spite a l l their efforts, her divers,who were promised Iron Crosses i fthey succeeded, could only free onerudder The other remained im-movable. That night destroyers, ofwhich one was the Cossack, wentin and delivered six torpedo at-tacks, scoring three more hits .By dawn on May 27 the mainBritish naval force arrived and in

less than an hour the Bismarckwas a blazing wreck, She did notsurrender, and the coup de gracewas given by torpedoes from theDorsetshire. She sank with hercolours s t i l l _ f l in .

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