From The Crucial Years, 1931-1941 by Hanson W. Baldwin: The short cruise of the Bismarck and her consort, the 8-inch-gun cruiser Prinz Eugen, was the most dramatic sea chase of modern naval history. Bismarck, building when the war started, ready for sea in the spring of 1941, was in her time the stoutest ship afloat. A 41,700 ton (standard) mastodon of sea power, she was one of the last of the great armored leviathans. Her main battery was eight 15-inch guns—more powerful than any comparable British model—and she had a swift pair of heels (30 knots); but her great strength was her design: a honeycomb of cellular compartmentation to minimize and localize damage, strong and elastic torpedo inner skin, skillful placement of very heavy armor to protect vitals, and careful shielding of magazines and conning and engine spaces. She was more powerful than the ships that could catch her, faster than the ships that had roughly equivalent firepower. She was to need it all—and more—before her brief hour of glory had passed.

May 19, 1941: Bismarck and Prinz Eugen depart Gotenhafen (now Gdynia), Poland to begin their cruise west. Adolf Hitler personally sends them off with the words: "You are the pride of the Navy." (Baldwin)

From Roosevelt and Churchill: 1939-1941 by Joseph P. Lash: Roosevelt considered the commitment of the Bismarck to the Battle of the Atlantic as another warning to him. "I was in the White House during the whole career of the Bismarck," Robert Sherwood wrote an English friend, "and it was inexpressibly thrilling to hear the repeated bulletins that came from the Admiralty to Roosevelt. The belief is that Hitler sent the Bismarck primarily to scare the US with a tremendous display of Nazi might right on our doorstep..." If a strong line were taken, Ribbentrop had lectured Mussolini in Mid-May, "and if it were explained that American convoy protection meant war, the Americans would probably hesitate, for the American rearmament was the greatest bluff in history." But in their innermost councils, the Germans were less sure of Roosevelt's reactions, and Raeder, after his interview, was reminded that Hitler's orders against attacks on American shipping still held. "The Fuehrer wants to avoid everything that could lead to incidents with the United States.

May 20, 1941: Bismarck and the Prinz Eugen pass through the Great Belt with the destroyers Z-16, Z-10, and Z-23, and is later spotted by the Swedish cruiser Gotland. (McMurtrie, Brown)



May 21, 1941: Bismarck, Prinz Eugen and the three destroyers are spotted by a British Coastal Command Spitfire. (Kennedy)


May 22, 1941: The three destroyers leave the Bismarck Naval Squadron. (McMurtrie)


May 23, 1941: Bismarck and Prinz Eugen spot HMS Suffolk and HMS Norfolk and fire five main battery salvoes. No hits are scored but the forward radar set is disabled due to the blast shock from the forward turrets. Shortly afterwards the Prinz Eugen passes the Bismarck and takes the lead. (Kennedy)


May 24, 1941: The German battleship Bismarck, supported by the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen (above, top), sinks the British battle cruiser Hood after firing only three salvoes. There are only 3 survivors out of a crew of 1,421. The Prince of Wales (above, bottom) is also damaged and forced to break off the action. (Kennedy, Brown, McMurtrie)

From The Last European War by John Lukacs: There was high drama in the Atlantic. Two German battleships, one of them Hitler's newest and largest, the Bismarck, sank the Hood, the largest battleship of the British, off Greenland, in a matter of minutes. An entire fleet of ships drove out for the Bismarck. Hunted down after four days, she was finally sunk. It was a thrilling naval episode—for onlookers. A fantastically successful German bull's-eye shot; the British inability to hit back in time; their maddeningly slow comeback; Churchill insisting and insisting that the German be tracked down, hell or high water; the undisclosed American participation in the search; 'Various Parties Converging on the Sea'; the assembly of overwhelming force; surrounded and pounded from every side, the burning and rudderless German still floats and floats; she sinks in the end. Few people knew that the course of the episode was to be a microcosm of the course of the entire Second World War.

May 24, 1941: From a German propaganda broadcast:



May 25, 1941: Admiral Guenther Lutjens, Commander of the Bismarck's Naval Squadron: "We did not intend to fight enemy warships...but we took up the fight. The crew have behaved magnificently—we shall win or die." (McMurtrie, Kennedy)


May 26, 1941: British flying boat spots the Bismarck at 10:36 AM. Swordfish Torpedo-bombers from the Ark Royal score hits on the Bismarck, disabling her steering gear and rendering her un-maneuverable. This will enable the British destroyers to attack after dark. (McMurtrie)

May 26, 1941: Admiral Lutjens of the Bismarck sends out a radio message: "Ship un-maneuverable. We fight to the last shell. Long live the Fuehrer." (Baldwin, Brown)

From The Cruise of the Bismarck by Francis McMurtrie: There is a sort of crackling roar to port—the Rodney has opened up with her 16-inch guns, and an instant later, the King George V (above) lets fly with her 14-inch... Rodney...just sat there like a great slab of rock...and suddenly belched a full salvo. I actually saw these projectiles flying through the air for some seconds after they left the guns, like little diminishing footballs curving up and into the sky... There was only one great splash... The others had bored their way through the Krupp armor-belt like cheese; and pray God I may never know what they did as they exploded inside the hull... Bismarck...turned away, then back, writhing, it seemed, under the most merciless hail of high-explosive armor-piercing shells that any ship has, I suppose, ever faced.

May 27, 1941: The crippled Bismarck is relentlessly bombarded by dozens of British warships, including the battleships Rodney (above) and King George V. Once her guns are silenced, she is sunk by torpedoes from the cruiser Dorsetshire. Only 110 survive out of a crew of 2,300. (Kennedy)

From The Chase and Sinking of the Battleship Bismarck by Ludovic Kennedy: And as he left, he (Admiral Sir John C. Tovey, above) made a general signal to ships in company: 'Any ship with torpedoes to close Bismarck and torpedo her.' Only one ship, Dorsetshire, still had torpedoes, and when Tovey's signal reached her, Captain Martin had already anticipated it. Closing to a mile and a half on Bismarck's starboard beam, she fired two torpedoes, both of which hit. She then went round the other side, at just over a mile fired another, which also hit. Far off now in King George V, half-way to the horizon, Tovey saw, through his glasses, the great ship slowly heel over to port until her funnel was level with the water, go on turning until she was completely upside down. The stern dipped below the surface of the water, then the main keel: the great flared bows were the last to go.

May 27, 1941: Admiral Lutjens sends out a final radio message: "Send U-boat to save war diary." Note: No U-boat will be able to do so. (Baldwin, Brown)


From the personal account written by telegraphist Eric Farmer onboard HMS Cossack:



May 27, 1941: "I should like to pay the highest tribute for the most gallant fight (sinking of the Bismarck) put up against impossible odds." -Admiral Tovey.


May 28, 1941: From the diary of Italian Foreign Minister Count Ciano: "The Bismarck has been sunk. This is important especially on account of the repercussions it will have in the United States, where it will prove that the seas are dominated by the Anglo-Saxons." (Lash)


May 28, 1941: From a German propaganda broadcast:


May 28, 1941: From The Manchester Guardian:


May 29, 1941: From a German propaganda broadcast:

From Bodyguard of Lies by Anthony Cave Brown: The disaster was...too much for Grand Admiral Raeder, the C-in-C of the Kriegsmarine. The destruction of Bismarck, and later of the Etappe's supply ships, was too striking to dismiss the possibility that the Kriegsmarine's ciphers had been broken, or that there was a traitor somewhere in the Kriegsmarine's command organization. But in all cases, a Board of Inquiry dismissed the belief that Enigma had been compromised. 'It is not necessary,' the German board concluded in its report, 'to put the blame on a breach of security as regards the code and cipher tables.' Instead, the board preferred to place the blame upon the ubiquity of MI-16 and upon the probability of a traitor at Kriegsmarine headquarters. The report noted that the navy's telephone lines between Berlin and Paris ran through boosters that were not always manned by Germans. Therefore, the tapping of those lines by British agents was very probable. It was the same story throughout the war; the Nazis feared their own traitors more than enemy cryptographers. 'They had,' noted one British naval intelligence officer, 'more confidence in their own efficiency than in the loyalty commanded by their political system.' For that arrogance, the Third Reich would pay the ultimate price.

Sink The Bismarck by Johnny Horton

 





























































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