Killing the Bismarck: Destroying the Pride of Hitler's Fleet
320
Killing the Bismarck: Destroying the Pride of Hitler's Fleet
320eBook
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Overview
In May 1941, the German battleship Bismarck, accompanied by heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen, broke out into the Atlantic to attack Allied shipping. The Royal Navy’s pursuit and subsequent destruction of Bismarck was an epic of naval warfare.
In this new account of those dramatic events at the height of the Second World War, Iain Ballantyne draws extensively on the graphic eyewitness testimony of veterans, to construct a thrilling story, mainly from the point of view of the British battleships, cruisers, and destroyers involved. He describes the tense atmosphere as cruisers play a lethal cat and mouse game, shadowing Bismarck in the icy Denmark Strait. We witness the shocking destruction of the British battle cruiser Hood, in which all but three of her ship’s complement were killed—an event that filled pursuing Royal Navy warships, including the battered battleship Prince of Wales, with a thirst for revenge. While Swordfish torpedo-bombers try desperately to cripple the Bismarck, we sail in destroyers on their own daring torpedo attacks, battling mountainous seas.
Finally, the author takes us into the final showdown, as battleships Rodney and King George V, supported by cruisers Norfolk and Dorsetshire, destroy the pride of Hitler’s fleet. This vivid, superbly researched account portrays this epic saga through the eyes of so-called “ordinary sailors” caught up in extraordinary events—conveying the horror and majesty of war at sea in all its cold brutality and awesome power.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781848849600 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Pen & Sword Books Limited |
| Publication date: | 02/20/2019 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 320 |
| Sales rank: | 420,223 |
| File size: | 4 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Made with Blood and Iron
Battleship Bismarck was launched on St Valentine's Day 1939 at the Blohm & Voss shipyard in Hamburg, and while her beautiful lines may have seduced many present among the cheering crowds, the leader of the Third Reich indicated he would not fall head over heels in love with her. The day after the launch, Captain Thomas Troubridge RN, British Naval Attaché in Berlin, a member of the Naval Intelligence Division and therefore a real-life forebear of the fictional James Bond, wrote his report for the Foreign Office, copied to the Director of Naval Intelligence (DNI) and Commander-in-Chief Home Fleet. Troubridge was the great-grandson of the legendary admiral and member of Nelson's 'Band of Brothers', Admiral Sir Thomas Troubridge. Appointed Naval Attaché to the British Embassy in Berlin in the summer of 1936, Troubridge was an imposing figure. A fluent German speaker, he understood the Teutonic mindset completely. This, combined with his habit of frank speaking and incisive wit, made the Germans both respect and fear him. When at home in the UK, he made his feelings about the German dictator crystal clear, telling some British naval cadets during a pre-war lecture: 'Fear God, honour the King and for God's sake don't be bluffed by Hitler.' In his report on Bismarck's christening and launch, Troubridge revealed the ceremony was presided over by 'the Führer, 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 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 nineteenth century, Otto von Bismarck. Troubridge told his masters that Hitler eulogized the 'founder of the 2nd Reich'. Aside from saluting the powerful boost to German prestige represented by the new warship, Hitler used his speech to send a forceful message to the Kriegsmarine's chiefs, indicating 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 seventy 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 the crowds assembled in the shadow of battleship Bismarck's great hull. The Führer 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.
No respecter of treaties, Hitler was quite happy to use the Anglo-German Naval Agreement of June 1935 as a means to slap the admirals down. He told those at the launch ceremony: 'Limitations to the number of big ships, which in the circumstances are acceptable and are allowed for in the Anglo-German naval agreement, necessitate a compromise, when naming the vessels, between the understandable desire of the Navy to maintain their own traditions and the claims which the people and the National Socialist State impose upon the Fighting Services.'
Hitler did not necessarily want war with the British and he knew that building a fleet to rival the Royal Navy would provoke them, just as the Kaiser had foolishly done before the First World War. The result two decades earlier was Germany strangled by the Royal Navy's blockade and forced to sue for peace, even though its armies held the enemy at bay. The Kriegsmarine was also the least Nazified of the German forces, so Hitler was also possibly telling the admirals: 'I'm the boss.' In his report to London, Captain Troubridge observed that it was interesting to note Hitler used the word 'tragbar' (supportable) in reference to the Anglo-German Naval Agreement, when the world was accustomed to hearing the Führer refer to 'treaties or conditions which Germany desires to alter' as 'untragbar' (insupportable). Troubridge took comfort from the apparent enthusiasm of Hitler for building up land forces rather than a navy to threaten British trade and overseas colonies. The British Naval Attaché reflected that, 'the Führer is, in his policy, a disciple of Bismarck, throughout whose age the navy "was left in a half developed state". It is to be hoped that in the Hitler age it will be left in a 35% state, which, incidentally, it has by no means yet attained.'
During Bismarck's commissioning ceremony on 24 August 1940, the new battleship's Commanding Officer, Captain Ernest Lindemann, quoted a 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.' Despite understanding little about naval warfare, and wary lest navy suck resources away from his land and air forces, Hitler still recognized hard power when he saw it, for when he visited the ship in early May 1941, he told Bismarck's ratings they were 'the pride of the Navy'. Had Captain Troubridge been there, he might have told the Foreign Office of the German dictator's interesting emphasis on 'the Navy' rather than 'the pride of Germany', or 'the Reich'. Perhaps Hitler sensed the Kriegsmarine held itself slightly apart from his designs and was not to be trusted entirely? Sea power and the mechanics of naval warfare were 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, appearing to be struck dumb by the sheer complexity of it all, which no doubt reinforced his aversion to naval matters. Lieutenant Burkard von Müllenheim-Rechberg, fourth gunnery officer and adjutant to Captain Lindemann, gained a clear impression of the Führer'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.' Admiral Günther Lütjens gave a presentation about his experiences during a recent Atlantic sortie. He had just returned from France after disembarking from the battlecruiser Gneisenau following her successful 'operation Berlin' commerce-raiding voyage in partnership with sister ship Scharnhorst, at the same time as the fast and heavily armed cruisers Hipper and Scheer were also at large. The four German warships accounted for nearly fifty enemy merchant vessels, around 270,000 tons of shipping sent to the bottom of the ocean or captured. Lütjens said he thought a similar deployment involving Bismarck could be even more successful, especially working with Scharnhorst and Gneisenau and supported by the new heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen. Possibly even Tirpitz could break out with her sister ship? Certainly, he told Hitler, no single British battleship could hope to take on Bismarck and win. This did nothing to settle the German Chancellor's mind, for he privately believed war against commerce might be better pursued via (much more expendable) U-boats, rather than surface raiders. He reminded Lütjens of the lethal potential of British aircraft carriers and their torpedo-bombers, which, as everybody present would have been well aware, 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. One German historian, trying to read Hitler's mind during that May 1941 visit to Bismarck and Tirpitz, has asked: 'Was he thinking how much more effectively such towering masses of war materials might have been utilized or how much better the 4,700 men comprising the two crews would be better contributing to the war effort if serving in the other branches of the armed forces?' However, having constructed Bismarck and Tirpitz, the Kriegsmarine was not about to let them stay confined to the Baltic. Like their counterparts in the Royal Navy, indeed in all the other leading fleets, German admirals still put their faith in battleships as the principal arbiters of sea power. However, not only did potential enemies tremble at the sight of a battleship's menacing silhouette steaming over the horizon, so also 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, but he preferred not to talk about it. After eating a one-course vegetarian meal in silence, he 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 the ship came to an end after another speech by Lütjens in which the admiral reiterated the success that might be achieved by Bismarck. Lütjens stated emphatically the objective would be to defeat the British wherever they could be found. Von Müllenheim-Rechberg observed that from the Führer there was, again, no response. During his visit Hitler heard no specific reference to the battleship's forthcoming sortie into the Atlantic. The German naval high command had decided to keep the Führer in the dark about it until after Bismarck and Prinz Eugen, sailed. They feared not being allowed to proceed.
CHAPTER 2Germany's Masterly Deception
Prior to the First World War, the naval construction race between Germany and Britain saw two nations leap-frogging each other as their naval architects sought to create bigger and better battleships. Faced with British industrial might, the Germans, who on the whole produced better ships, found they could not win the numbers game. More than two decades on, Plan Z could not hope to fully match the British, who had a head start due to their large, if mostly elderly, extant battle fleet. Barred by the Anglo-German Naval Agreement from creating a fleet more than thirty-five per cent of the Royal Navy's size, the Germans decided to go for quality rather than quantity. They achieved their aim without protest, because the British refused to believe the biggest of the new warships – Bismarck and Tirpitz – were intended to contest the open seas upon which the empire's trade flowed. In that way the Germans pulled off a masterly deception, even if they received a lot of help from their future enemy in doing so.
Using the Washington Treaty and the later London naval conference as its guide to fair play, the Anglo-German Naval Agreement limited Britain's next generation of battleships to 35,000 tons and it was expected the Germans would do the same. The head of the Kriegsmarine, Admiral Erich Raeder told his naval architects to create a battleship that would in reality displace 45,000 tons (standard), but in July 1936 the official figure handed over to the British was 35,000 tons, with a beam of 118ft and a draft of 26ft. The principal weapon would allegedly be the 14.8-inch gun. In reality, the Germans armed Bismarck and Tirpitz with eight 15-inch guns as primary armament, with twelve 5.9-inch guns as secondary, plus sixteen 4.1-inch, sixteen 37mm and thirty-six 20mm anti-aircraft guns. The UK's Director of Naval Construction assessed that such a broad beam and shallow draught indicated the main theatre of operations for Germany's 'Battleship F' (the future Bismarck) would be the Baltic, in other words against the Russians, something with which some senior naval officers agreed. By early 1937 there were those in the Naval Intelligence Division who argued the Germans were probably lying about the new battleship's dimensions – that she had more displacement, deeper draught, bigger guns and was generally much larger, probably indicating an ability for deep ocean raiding and the endurance to match. Such views were politically inconvenient in an era of appeasing Hitler.
It was easier to invest blind faith in the Germans keeping their side of the bargain. The British have a habit of playing things straight when others might be cheating because it's the done thing, the honourable course. Scrutinizing the reality of Bismarck's design might have led to the conclusion that Britain should also cheat, but that would not do. Better not to look too closely.
It was also easier on the public finances. Hitler, who left the technical details of warship construction to his admirals, saw the Anglo-German Naval Agreement as worthwhile only because, in promising not to rival the Royal Navy's supremacy, Germany could build up a navy that would at least be big enough to counter French maritime power and also, of course, to support territorial ambitions in Eastern Europe.
In this way the British agreed to allow Germany five capital ships, a pair of aircraft carriers, twenty-one cruisers and sixty-four destroyers, plus a sizeable number of U-boats. By being so generous they of course permitted the Germans to build the very warships that would prove to be the Royal Navy's biggest worry in May 1941. Bismarck was laid down in July 1936, her sister ship, Tirpitz, that October. Bismarck was, in reality, almost 814ft long and 118ft wide, with a deep load draught of more than 34ft. Even her standard displacement of nearly 41,700 tons – not including fuel oil, feed water for boilers and ammunition – was, of course, a flagrant breach of the Anglo-German Naval Agreement. Bismarck's fully loaded displacement was 50,900 tons, though the British did not know that until after the war.
In late December 1936, in a report intended to be seen by the Foreign Office – also copied to DNI as well as C-in-C of the Home Fleet – Captain Troubridge expressed a suspicion there was some kind of bid to outwit the British. He wrote: 'The Anglo-German naval agreement was one of the masterstrokes of policy, which have characterized Germany's dealings with her ex-enemies since the war. When the time is ripe, as history shows, it will unquestionably go the same way as other agreements; but the time is not yet.' However, the final sentence of this passage was not conveyed back to the Foreign Office, possibly because the Ambassador, Sir Eric Phipps, thought Troubridge should restrict his comments to naval matters, rather than speculating on political intent. Nevertheless, the DNI saw it, as did C.-in-C. Home Fleet. The Royal Navy was of course subject to the direction of the democratically elected government of the day, and neither the government, nor the British people was minded to pick a fight with Germany over its naval intentions. After the Second World War, Troubridge was asked by the wartime DNI himself, Rear-Admiral John Godfrey, why he did not flag up more prominently his concerns over where the Kriegsmarine's expansion plans might be headed. Troubridge responded that while he had initially remained open-minded, though still wary, he hoped the Germans genuinely intended sticking to the restrictions. That they did not became obvious after Bismarck's launch. Troubridge told Godfrey that a British diplomat based in Hamburg assessed Bismarck was 'drawing a good deal more than she should'. The truth is that while the Royal Navy would have been quite open to the idea that the Germans were breaking the rules, the political leadership did not want to rock the boat. When Britain guaranteed Poland's security on 31 March 1939, Hitler responded within weeks by applying 'untragbar' to the naval agreement and tearing it up, leaving the British with new battleships that abided by limitation treaties but were, on an individual basis, inferior to Bismarck.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Killing the Bismarck"
by .
Copyright © 2010 Iain Ballantyne.
Excerpted by permission of Pen and Sword Books Ltd.
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Table of Contents
Foreword Admiral Sir Jonathan Band GCB 8
Acknowledgements 10
Author's Introduction 14
Prologue: The Hoodoo Ship 18
1 Made with Blood and Iron 21
2 Germany's Masterly Deception 25
3 Storm-Tossed Sentinels 34
4 Raise Steam with All Despatch 43
5 Heavyweight with a Glass Jaw 51
6 The Navy's Here 55
7 Rushing to their Destiny 61
8 Death of a Battlecruiser 72
9 The Entrails of Hell 83
10 After-Shock 89
11 The Hunters and the Hunted 98
12 Swordfish Strike 104
13 A Day of Fearful Gloom 114
14 Steering to Intercept Enemy 122
15 Remorseless Determination 130
16 Sorry for the Kipper 137
17 Into the Jaws of Death 144
18 Vian's Dilemma 152
19 A Desperate and Deadly Race 162
20 The Brutal Business of War 178
21 In at the Kill 188
22 A Necessary Killing 193
23 Ghosts at the Feast 203
24 Bitter Harvest 215
Notes 228
Appendices
1 Busting the Myths? 255
2 The Byers Letters 269
3 The Mystery Of Hood's Torpedoes 271
4 The One That Got Away 273
5 New Material Supplement 275
Maps 293
Sources 298
Bibliography 303
Index 306
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