Blood, Tears and Folly: An Objective Look at World War II. Len Deighton

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СКАЧАТЬ in February 1939. Commissioned in August 1940, it was the most modern and powerful battleship afloat, with eight 15-inch guns in four turrets controlled by the world’s best gun-laying radar.

      Admiral Raeder’s original plan called for Bismarck and the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen to sail from the Baltic, while the battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau would sally into the Atlantic from Brest in France. In mid-ocean this powerful force would rendezvous to form a fighting fleet powerful enough to sink convoys, and defeat any escort force they might encounter.¹ This operational plan was code-named Rheinübung, Rhine Exercise, and Raeder saw it as a way of providing a big victory of the sort that ‘battleship admirals’ still cherished, while continuing the battle of the sea lanes that was obviously the key to victory. He knew that Hitler would invade Russia soon, and Rheinübung had to be staged before the army’s needs on the Eastern Front took precedence over everything the navy wanted.

      Rheinübung was put under the command of Admiral Günther Lütjens, a bony-faced man with close-cropped hair and a permanent frown. The operation was thwarted when it was found impossible to have the Scharnhorst’s high-pressure turbine engines ready in time. Such engines were a notable and chronic failing in German marine engineering. Then, when Gneisenau was hit by a desperately brave attack by a Coastal Command torpedo aircraft in Brest Roads, Raeder decided stubbornly to go ahead using only Bismarck and Prinz Eugen. This plan too was delayed when Prinz Eugen was damaged by a British magnetic mine in the Baltic, thus losing the advantage of a month’s dark winter nights which would have made it much easier to slip past the Royal Navy.

      In May 1941, Hitler was persuaded to make the trip to Gotenhafen (the now renamed Polish port of Gdynia) to inspect his new battleship and address the crew. That evening he dined with his senior officers aboard the Tirpitz. Hitler had doubts about the proposed expedition, but Admiral Lütjens reminded him of ‘Operation Berlin’. In the first three months of the year Lütjens had taken Scharnhorst and Gneisenau into the Atlantic, causing the British great anxiety as well as sinking 115,600 tons of shipping. He told Hitler that Bismarck was unsinkable. ‘Mein Führer, there is virtually nothing that can go wrong with a ship like this. The only danger that I can see is torpedo-aircraft coming at us from aircraft-carriers.’ This prophetic caution was due to Bismarck’s conservative design: its underwater protection had not kept pace with what was now considered essential for British and American ships.

      For anyone who believes that the British reading of Enigma traffic provided a constant insight into German intentions, it has to be said that Bletchley Park provided nothing to suggest the Bismarck was about to put to sea. And none of the transmissions from Bismarck at sea were decrypted until after she was sunk. At that time naval Enigmas were taking anything from three to seven days to crack.

      The first tip concerning Bismarck’s movements was provided by Britain’s naval attaché in Stockholm after a cruiser of neutral Sweden spotted ‘two large warships’ with escorts and air cover steaming through an area cleared of German shipping. Subsequently RAF Spitfires equipped for high-speed photo-reconnaissance scoured likely anchorages and found two German warships in Grimstad Fjord. Photographs revealed the Bismarck with an unidentified cruiser. It was alarming news and there were urgent requests for more information. Bad weather grounded RAF aircraft but a particularly daring Fleet Air Arm crew, flying a Martin Maryland that had been used for target-towing and had no navigational instruments or cameras, found an opening in the cloud above Grimstad Fjord at twilight without seeing the big ships. Just to make sure, they flew over Bergen and into a storm of German Flak. Their radio message said: ‘Battleship and cruiser have left.’

      Anxiously the men in the Admiralty looked at their maps: six homeward and six outward convoys were on the move, including a troop convoy to the Middle East with 20,000 men. Now earlier Luftwaffe Enigma signals, showing Fw 200C Condors on long-range reconnaissance surveying the extent of the pack-ice in the Denmark Strait, began to make sense. RN warships – most of them with radar – were immediately dispatched to patrol the waters round Iceland and in particular the Denmark Strait where, even in May, pack-ice and RN minefields made navigation so restricted that if Bismarck went that way it was almost sure to be sighted.

       FIGURE 10

       The German battleship Bismarck

      At 1922 hours on 23 May, a lookout on HMS Suffolk spotted Bismarck and Prinz Eugen emerging from a snow-squall at a distance of 11 miles, before the Suffolk’s radar made contact. As soon as Suffolk’s operator had Bismarck on the screen of his Type 284 gun-laying radar she slipped back into the gathering darkness.

      The two German ships had obviously seen Suffolk on their radar, so they were prepared when a second RN cruiser, HMS Norfolk, came close enough for its lookout to sight them (again before making radar contact).² Bismarck opened fire on her. Unhit, Norfolk promptly fell back. The Bismarck’s radio room intercepted Norfolk’s sighting report and was able to decode the message without difficulty or delay. They kept listening.

      For ten hours the two RN cruisers shadowed their prey until powerful naval forces could be brought up from Scapa Flow in the Orkneys. HMS Hood and HMS Prince of Wales, with destroyer escorts, were ordered to sea from Iceland.

      It was a strange twist of fortune that chose HMS Hood for this task force, for she was exactly comparable to Bismarck in main armament (eight 15-inch guns), secondary armament, speed, thickness of belt and turret armour. In the 1930s Hood had been the pride of the Royal Navy, the fastest, most powerful and arguably most beautiful ship afloat. She had spent so much time showing the flag that there never seemed to be an opportunity for the total overhaul and refurbishing that was so badly needed. Nineteen years older than Bismarck, the Hood’s 15-inch guns remained unchanged in design since those of 1914, while the big guns of the Bismarck provided excellent examples of the way in which gun technology had improved.

      Hood was old, but with her was the brand-new Prince of Wales, which still had civilian contractors aboard, working on the gun-turret machinery of its ten 14-inch guns. This was a calibre new to the RN. Two of its three turrets had been fitted only four weeks earlier, and one gun was still not in use. The Prince of Wales had five of the best radar sets then available, but the warships were ordered to maintain radio and radar silence so that they would not be detected.

      It was not easy to keep radar contact with an enemy warship which had excellent radar, eight 15-inch guns and a top speed of over 30 knots: as soon as you were close enough to see your prey on the radar screen, it had not only been watching you for a long time but was all ready to blow you to pieces. In addition the Germans were deciphering and reading all the radio traffic of their pursuers. It was hardly surprising that the two RN cruisers lost contact with both Bismarck and Prinz Eugen.

      As day was breaking at 0530 hours on Saturday 24 May 1941 Bismarck was sighted at 17 miles distance, again by a lookout, not by radar. On German radar the RN ships were clearly visible, and Admiral Lütjens must have been pleased to notice that their angle of approach made it possible for the British to use only forward armament, while the Germans could fire broadsides from all their big guns. This dangerous British tactic can only be explained by the commander of the British force wanting to close quickly on the Germans because British deck armour was thin and vulnerable to plunging fire. Close range would ensure that German fire would hit only side armour.

      Although Hood’s Type 284 СКАЧАТЬ