Dan Snow's History Hit - Hunting the Bismarck

Episode Date: May 25, 2021

In May 1941, the Royal Navy pursued Nazi Germany's largest battleship, the Bismarck, in the greatest chase story in the history of naval warfare. Bismarck represented the single most important threat to the Royal Navy and the vital Atlantic convoys they sought to protect; her armoured protection had earned her the reputation of being unsinkable. Join Dan for this archive episode as the historian Angus Konstam takes him through a blow by blow account of Operation Rheinübung and the sinking of Bismarck.Also, watch the brand new History Hit documentary Sink the Bismark

This is History's Heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas, and the courage to stand alone. Including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War. You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, Sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts. Hi everyone, welcome to the pod. Eight years ago this week, the Royal Navy was engaged in a massive struggle,

one of the largest naval operations of the war to that point, against the German super battleship Bismarck that was unleashed on the North Atlantic, attempting to sever Britain's lifelines from the rest of the world. On the 24th of May, HMS Hood was destroyed. Regarded as the most powerful ship in the Royal Navy, Hood was blown up within six minutes of joining battle with Bismarck as one of the German shells penetrated her magazine and the mighty battleship was almost vaporized leading to the loss of over 1400 lives with just three survivors who were plucked out of the icy North Atlantic a few hours later. This provoked consternation in Britain. Winston Churchill described the next few days as the worst few days of the war thus far.

To mark his anniversary, we've got a couple of podcasts this week. We've got Angus Constam on the pod today. It's a repeat of a podcast I made a few years ago. He wrote a wonderful book on Bismarck. So we're going to hear from him talking about the campaign, the battles. And we are also going to hear later in the week from some of the veterans. Interviews recorded before their deaths in which they talk about what it was like to fight both on the German and British sides. Very excitingly we've also got our two-part series on historyhit.tv to mark the 80th anniversary. It's particularly special for me if you'll forgive a little bit of emotion here. I joined the BBC when I was in my early 20s, hugely lucky to be asked to make a

programme on the 60th anniversary of the Battle of El Alamein. I continued to make those big anniversary shows for over a decade and I fell in love with the process. I thought they were important, they were enormously fulfilling and exciting for me and I felt that they were national events of commemoration that I was very lucky to take part in. Those days came to an end, as things do, but with your help, with your support, I've been able to take part in. Those days came to an end, as things do. But with your help, with your support, I've been able to keep that going. That is literally why I started History Hit TV. And enough of you supported me and believed in what we were doing and became subscribers that we're able to produce top quality history programs now and broadcast them all over the world. So whilst this

is an important national international anniversary of those terrible events in the North Atlantic it's also a personal milestone for me because without your support without you guys becoming subscribers tens of thousands of you wouldn't have the money to make these shows. We wouldn't be lucky enough to make not just this program on Bismarck, but obviously Eleanor Janneger's current chart-topping series about the medieval world, or our very own Tristan Hughes' wonderful show about the myth,

the legend, the reality of that lost legion in Roman Britain. So a huge thank you from me. I hope as you watch the Bismarck shows on historyhit.tv, you'll see that we are trying to get ever more ambitious, ever more worthy, really, of your subscription and your trust. Thanks also for putting up with my lisp, my dental lisp. I hope it's getting slightly better. Some of you

have been kind enough to suggest I'm lisping because I've overindulged in Merlot before the recordings. And to that, my only reaction is, I wish, I wish it was that. Again, a huge thank you to everyone for supporting HistoryHit.tv. If you're not a subscriber, please head over and subscribe and watch all the wonderful history shows we've got on there. The Hunt for the Bismarck is out now on this 80th anniversary. In the meantime, everyone, here is Angus Constam. Enjoy. Angus, thank you very much for coming on the podcast. A pleasure.

Tell me, I mean, the Bismarck is one of the most famous and recognisable names of the Second World War. Why do you think that is? The Bismarck appeals because when it was launched, it was the biggest, most powerful battleship in the world. The days of battleships may have been over, but nobody really knew that in 1939 when she was launched, and not even in 1941 when she sailed on her maiden voyage. And the thing was, I suppose,

it was better than anything the British had at the time. And it had this reputation for being invincible. So the combination of that really caught the public imagination. But then the whole story of her one operational voyage into the Atlantic is one that really ticks just about every box when it comes to drama, excitement, tragedy, and heroism. So it's an amazing story. I can't wait to talk about it. Let's briefly check in with the construction of this ship and the intention behind it. For 400 years, shipbuilders have been placing cannons, guns on ships,

turning them into floating gun platforms. in cannons, guns on ships, turning them into floating gun platforms. So is the Bismarck the sort of ultimate embodiment of this philosophy of waging war at sea? It really all started with the launch of dreadnought at the start of the 20th century. And by the time of the First World War, you had this idea of the modern battleship, these dreadnought warships, where the emphasis was on the big gun. So the idea was rather than a Napoleonic sailing ship, where it was all about the number of guns and firing broadsides, these had their main armament of 12-inch, 13-inch, up to 15-inch guns mounted in big gun turrets.

So the idea is they could fire at a reasonable range, much larger than before, using quite sophisticated methods of fire control to make sure that all the shells landed on their target. And that target could be at the range of visibility. So we're speaking about where in the sailing ship days, where you had a range of a few hundred yards. Now we're speaking about something up to 15 miles. So these ships can fire heavy projectiles 15 miles. And what was the Bismarck's armament? The Bismarck was, she displaced about 49,000 tons. And the whole problem of any ship design was getting that trinity of armour, armament and machinery just right. It's a trade-off,

but she was incredibly powerfully protected by a belt of armor between 10 and 12 inches thick, running most of the way down her ship's side. She wasn't protected at the very bow, at the very front, and at the stern, at the back, but she was powerfully protected around her turrets, around the fire control equipment, the bridge, and of course this belt protecting her engines and her magazines. So that armour was proof in theory against any guns that the British Navy could fire at her. And what was she designed to do? Was she supposed to be the basis of a new mighty battle fleet of these enormous battleships, or was she supposed to operate by herself? The Germans had a plan concocted by Admiral Raeder called Plan Z,

where they would try to build up a very powerful battle fleet that could, in theory, a very powerful battle fleet that could, in theory, take on the British and beat them. The trouble is, Hitler invaded Poland in 1939 when this plan was still getting underway. So they had a number of what the British called pocket battleships, which were really armoured cruisers. Ones like the Graf Spee, which famously was sunk in action off Montevideo in 1939. And then they had the Scharnhorst class, the Scharnhorst and Neusenau, two, again, quite powerful ships, but quite weakly armed with just 11-inch guns, much smaller than contemporary British ships. But they were still well protected and fast, much faster really than any British battleship. So the ultimate then by 1936 was the decision to make these even bigger

and better battleships, two of them, Bismarck and Tirpitz. Work begun on both of them, Bismarck in Hamburg and Tirpitz in Wilhelmshaven in the second half of 1936. So they had this powerful surface fleet. They didn't quite know how to use them. The idea was they still didn't have the numbers to take on the British ship for ship. But if they could break through the British blockade, they could get out to sea, get out into the Atlantic or the South Atlantic or even the Indian Ocean and attack British or Allied convoys. This was really at a time before the U-boat war had really reached its peak. So the idea was that these surface ships could cause mayhem and disruption to the British convoys. It didn't really take a lot of ships to be sunk to cause disruption, just the mere threat that a ship like Bismarck was at sea was enough to

have the Admiralty diverting convoys and disrupting the whole vital flow of material from Canada and from the United States to Britain. Was there criticism at the time that these were weapons of the past because of developments of submarine torpedoes, of armour-piercing bombs dropped by aircraft, or were they regarded as kings of the maritime battlefield? The battleship still had its place in maritime warfare. By the time Bismarck was commissioned in August 1940, she was certainly the most powerful battleship in service at the time. But while it could be argued that she was vulnerable to aircraft, the full potential of airstrikes hadn't really developed by then.

Sure, the attack on Pearl Harbor was going to be at the end of 1941. In November 1940, the British fleet air arm attacked the Italian fleet at Taranto. But until these really demonstrated the power of naval aircraft, the battleship was still reigning supreme. Now, so tell me, when the ship is taken into service in 1940, does it enter the fray immediately? How are the decisions around how Bismarck should be used? How are they made? The Germans had a tried and tested method of getting these ships operational. So when Bismarck was commissioned on the 24th of August, she put to sea, first of all for sea trials. She went through the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal, we'd now call it the Kiel Canal, and once she got to Kiel, she then put out into the Baltic

and began sea trials there to make sure the ship works right, to test the efficiency of her engines, to make sure the ship works right, to test the efficiency of her engines, and also to give the crew training in how the ship operated. Once that was done, she went back to have a few things fixed back in Hamburg, and then in early 1941, she put to sea again, back to the Baltic, this time really to train her crew. This is known, and the British Navy still do this, they call it working up, and it's to essentially make the crew work together as a team so they know professionally, they know exactly what they're going to do, and that they can react to any circumstance

or any threat that's thrown against their ship. So it's welding both the ship and her crew together into one big fighting unit. And when does the ship really complete that process and start to be used in a warlike way? In May 1941, this training process had really been completed. So the idea was plans were being developed to use Bismarck operationally. They had various plans in place. One was that she could team up with the Scharnhorst and the Neusenau and form a very powerful surface unit that breaks out into the Atlantic. Scharnhorst and Neusenau had done this very successfully in early 1941 in an operation called Operation Berlin, and they sank a significant number of Allied ships in the few

weeks they were at sea. So the idea was they might be able to do this, but damage to these ships meant that Bismarck had to sail in concert with the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen. So by the middle of May 1941, these plans had been put in place, and the idea was to put to sea and start this essentially this raid and this breakout into the north atlantic well in that case tell me how that goes bismarck slipped out of gotenhaven now gdynia or gdansk in what's now in poland um in on the 18th of may so that was the start of what the Germans called Operation Rheinebogen. Prince Eugen and Bismarck were escorted by destroyers through the Baltic and until on the morning of the 20th of May they were passing through the Kattegat, the gap between Denmark

on one side and Sweden on the other. Then they had the misfortune of being spotted by a Swedish warship and it immediately radioed to Stockholm with the news. That news was then passed on to the British naval attaché in Stockholm who then passed it on to the Admiralty. This sighting report was backed up by another report from the Norwegian Underground, who radioed in a sighting report as the ship passed through the gap between Denmark and Norway. And it wasn't until the lunchtime of the 21st of May that she was finally spotted at anchor near Bergen by a Spitfire flown by a Flying Officer Suckling, who was part of the Photographic Reconnaissance Unit flying from Wick in the north of Scotland. How much of a panic did Bismarck leaving the Baltic generate in the Admiralty in London? Bismarck breaking out into the North Sea was bad enough. The British had no real idea where she might go. They expected her to break out into the Atlantic, but she could just as easily base herself in Norway, where ships such as her sister ship Tirpitz were later hauled up behind a great belt of air defences and surface defences.

So she would be a difficult ship to attack in there. But was she planning a breakout in the Atlantic? Nobody knew. If so, which route would she take? So the man on the spot was Admiral Tovey up in Scapa Flow. And he was on his flagship King George V. He had a telephone line to the Admiralty and he was getting updates, but nobody was actually telling him where the ship was. Nobody had spotted her until on the 21st of May at 1.15 in the afternoon, she was finally seen by flying officer Suckling flying at an

altitude of about 26,000 feet over a fjord south of Bergen and spotted Bismarck and the Prince Eugen and a tanker. So the British, once this film was developed, even that was a bit of a story because they had to get the film and the pilot down to London from the north of Scotland. So that took time. But once these photographs were developed, they knew where Bismarck was. The RAF even tried to bomb her that evening. But by then, she'd left Bergen and headed back out to sea. So now the British knew roughly where she was, but no idea

where she was exactly or what she planned to do. What was the plan? The plan was Admiral Lutyens intended to break out into the North Atlantic. He had a number of options. One was to go through the gaps between Iceland and the Faroes, between Faroes and Shetland, or go around the other side of Iceland, between Iceland and Greenland, an area known as the Denmark Strait. Those were his three main options. There was a fourth, which took him far too close

to scapa flow between Shetland and Orkney. And the British really had to cover all these bases either by aircraft and there was problems there with fog over some of these sea areas but the main thing was they had a screen of cruisers and the idea was these cruisers would act as a tripwire Bismarck would come up they would spot her and radio Admiral Tovey in his flagship and he would try to coordinate the interception of Bismarck by heavy units of the British home fleet. He'd already decided to put some of these units to sea. His deputy Vice Admiral Holland who flew his flag in the battlecruiser Hood put to sea from Scapa flow uh accompanied by the brand new

battleship prince of wales they were sent to a position just south of iceland so that they could intercept bismarck if she went around either the gap between pharaohs and iceland or between iceland and greenland so although he didn't really have any firm evidence of which way Lutyens was going, Admiral Tovey was already trying to cover his bases. And he would end up, the Hood would end up meeting the Bismarck. Indeed. That whole problem with Bismarck was that

she had to break through the British cruiser blockade and she was spotted. She tried to sneak through but on the evening of the 23rd of May she entered the Denmark Strait where she was sighted through pack ice and thick fog by one of these British cruisers, the heavy cruiser Suffolk. She and her sister ship, or near sister ship Norfolk, shadowed Bismarck, and they played cat and mouse in the fog and through the snow squalls for most of that evening. But all the time, they were sending back radar reports and sighting reports to Admiral Tovey, so he knew what was happening. So he made sure that Vice Admiral Holland in Hood was in a position to intercept Bismarck at dawn when she emerged from the Denmark Strait.

Was the crew and the captain, the Admiral on Hood, were they confident of its ability to take on Bismarck? The Hood was an old ship. She had been the pride of the fleet since she first entered service around the end of the First World War. But she was essentially a battlecruiser with all of its faults. Battlecruisers, of course, are ships where the emphasis is on speed and guns rather than armor. So she was vulnerable. Her armor was not the equivalent of her German counterpart. However, the Prince of Wales, the brand new battleship, had problems too. Her 14-inch guns on these new, almost experimental, quadruple turrets were untested. They and her crew hadn't been in action before. In fact, she still had civilian contractors on board

trying to get these guns and their mounts and the ammunition supply to work properly. But that had problems in the battle to come. But the British, despite all that, were confident that they could take on the Bismarck and beat her. So you get the two sides approaching each other at dawn. The Germans had no real idea the British were there, but they expected trouble because they knew they were being shattered by these cruisers.

So on Saturday, the 24th of May, you can imagine the Germans peering through as dawn breaks, and they start to see smoke on the southern horizon. That's the smoke coming from Hood and Prince of Wales. Finally, they see them at 5.37 in the morning at a range of about 17 miles. So they know they're in for a fight. They still don't know if these are British cruisers or they're actually major capital ships. The clock ticks down, the two sides approach each other, and then at 5.52 the bridge opened fire. Hood was targeting Prince Eugen, thinking she was actually the battleship, and the Prince of Wales correctly identified Bismarck as the main ship, and they targeted her. And when these shells landed, Admiral Lutyens and the rest of the crew on Bismarck were instantly

aware, because the shell splashes were about 200 feet high, that these weren't cruisers that were firing at them. These were big capital ships. So at this point, the British are feeling fairly confident. How are the German crew feeling? Has their plan gone awry? Were they seeking to were they seeking a a a battle against british surf vessel were they hoping just to sort of to fall upon unarmed merchant con merchant convoys lightly armed admiral luchens really wanted to avoid battle with the british at least on equal terms his whole priority and his orders concentrated on the sinking of British merchant ships. He wanted to deal a blow to those vital transatlantic convoys. But having to fight his

way through, now he'd got into that situation, he was quite confident, supremely confident really, that his brand new battleship was going to be all right. So the two sides started firing each other. The Germans opened fire a few minutes after the British and the two sides started trading salvos. Bismarck was targeting Hood, but Hood was still accidentally pointing her guns at the German cruiser, the Prinz Eugen. So this exchange of fire continued.

Bismarck fired several salvos and they were getting increasingly close to the British ship until they scored their first hit shortly before six o'clock. The Hood's gunnery wasn't as good, but Prince of Wales, of course, was still firing and she scored the first of three hits on Bismarck. It didn't do much damage, at least it didn't seem to at the time. It hit her near the bow, and it went through one side of her largely unprotected bow section and out the other side.

All it seemed to do was cause flooding and made a fuel tank leak but the importance of that would be discovered later by now bismarck had achieved this perfect salvo a perfect straddle in that its shells were falling all around hood so the gunnery officer calls for three salvos in rapid succession the second of these the sixth one fired by Bismarck lands just as Hood is turning and as it does one of the shells plunges through the deck of Hood somewhere near her after turret behind the main mast there's a horrible pause for a few few seconds and there's a explosion the explosion sets off probably we don't know for sure but it set off the charges in um probably in one of the small secondary gun magazines right through the bulkhead of that was the main magazine for her 15 inch shells for one of her

after turrets for x turret that then ignited and there was one almighty explosion. Observers, Captain Leach in the Prince of Wales was about a mile away and astern of Hood when this happened. And all of a sudden, he just saw this glow and this huge column of smoke and flame shoot up from the back of Hood. And essentially what happened in those milliseconds was that Hood was torn in two. She exploded. It was ripped apart.

The back third of the ship was broken off. Strangely, in the bridge, they felt a shudder, and they had no real idea quite how stricken their own ship was until she suddenly started heeling over. And the helmsman said that there was no power in the steering so that he was turning the wheel. And of course, the rudders and propellers were sheared off. So one half of the ship was going ahead. The other half was quietly sinking. So Hood went down very quickly.

One of the survivors, one of the three survivors, a chap called Ted Briggs, was on the bridge. And he looked back and saw the captain and the admiral still in their bridge as the ship was going down. So it was all over very, very quickly. In Bismarck, they saw this happen. There was a cheer and they realised that they'd done that. But seconds later, they felt the shockwave. And this is from about 12 miles away. They still felt this shockwave of air pressure from the explosion.

And at that point, the cheering stopped and they just simply turned their guns on the Prince of Wales the remaining British battleship it was doing quite well at the time it was pounding away at Bismarck as as I said before it scored three hits none of them quite major ones but she was very much putting up a better fight than Hood was. The trouble is now, Bismarck turned her guns on her, and very quickly they began scoring hits. One of, I think, the third salvo fired by Hood at Prince of Wales struck her in the bridge.

They called it a compass platform in those days, an open bridge, and all the bridge crew, including the captain, were either injured or killed. There's a marvellous scene in the Sink the Bismarck film with Kenneth Moore where blood is dripping down onto the navigator's desk from down below, and that actually happened. The whole thing was immediately basically cut the head off, the command of the ship.

It took 30, 40 seconds for the captain to resume command of the ship. It took 30, 40 seconds for the captain to resume command of the ship, by which time he realized that his guns were starting to jam, his whole ship was starting to be pounded by the German battleship, and he was losing the fight. So at that moment, he called the senior naval officer in the area, which was now the rear admiral in one of the cruisers, and Rear Admiral Wake Walker said to Captain Leach, OK, you can break off. So that's what they did.

They decided to call it a day. Prince of Wales was now down to about four of her ten main guns were actually operational. The rest were malfunctioning, should be badly hit. So she turned around, made smoke and disappeared, leaving Bismarck the victor. You're listening to Dan Snow's History. I've got Angus Constamont talking about Bismarck. More after this. This is History's Heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas, and the courage to stand alone,

including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War. You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, Sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts. Why was the Bismarck more effective at its targeting and and bringing down fire onto its onto its enemy all warships at the time had very sophisticated um fire control equipment the whole point was to make the shells land on the target and then if they if they didn't they could be corrected very quickly and very efficiently until they landed they straddled the target and fell on top of it

bismarck had a state-of-the-art essentially um an analog computer doing the job and her firepower was uh very effective so too by the way, was Prince of Wales until her problem was technical malfunctions in her guns. But Bismarck was very effective and her guns and her optics, very powerful German optical range finders with very good quality equipment, managed to find the range of the target and make sure those shelves

were landing in place so she was just a very very well equipped very modern ship and designed for exactly the kind of surface action she just fought so disastrous defeat for the royal navy the biggest and best navy on the planet at that point, we'll discuss. Anyway, what happens next? How do they start hunting the Bismarck? Well, so Bismarck had now broken out into the Atlantic. She could have done one of several things. Lutyens could have replenished from his fuel from one of a number of tankers, but the problem was he was still being shadowed by these two British cruisers, but the problem was he was still being shadowed by these two British cruisers and that was essentially a pivotal thing that and the fact that the hit from or two of the hits from the Prince of Wales had actually damaged fuel tanks she'd been leaking fuel she'd lost not a not a

huge amount but enough to limit her ability to operate in the North Atlantic for as long as she wanted. So now Lutyens had to decide what to do. He pondered, he spoke to his Captain Lindemann in charge of the ship, in charge of Bismarck, and he decided the best plan was, rather than the return the way he'd already come, was to go back and try to head for one of the French ports, Saint-Nazaire or Brest. And once there, he could regroup, patch up his ship

and go to sea again in a far better way in that he was better placed than he would have been having to leave from Norway. So that was his plan. But first of all, he had to lose these two British ships. Meanwhile, the cruisers were sending back these signals to Admiral Tovey. Admiral Tovey in King George V was thundering down to intercept Bismarck. He wasn't going to make it. He was in the wrong place. Bismarck was too far ahead of him. His one asset, his one real asset that could. Bismarck was too far ahead of him. His one asset, his one real asset

that could intercept Bismarck was the Victorious. The aircraft carrier Victorious carried a number of swordfish torpedo bombers. These were biplanes. They were essentially obsolete, but they still carried a torpedo. They could still just about do the job. So as Admiral Lutyens was heading south, pursued by these British cruisers, the British closed in to within range of an airstrike. And about midnight on the 24th of May, 25th of May, the aircraft set off to attack Bismarck. This was no easy feat because in a torpedo attack, these aircraft carrying torpedo could couldn't do much more than 80 miles an hour and if you can imagine being in a biplane flying towards a battleship

at about 100 feet off the sea waiting for the right moment to to launch a torpedo which is essentially as close as you can get to the enemy then that's um that's not an easy task, is it? But the air attacks, one possible torpedo hit was claimed. In fact, no real significant damage was done. So that failed. Then, at about three in the morning, Bismarck had been zigzagging, so had the British ships. And when they zigged, Admiral Lutjens zagged. He basically broke away when the British weren't expecting it. They were at the limit of the radar coverage

and he just headed in the opposite direction at full speed. He broke contact with the British. They lost him on radar and that started what essentially was going to be over 24 hours of utter nightmare for Admiral Tovey. He was chasing in the King George V, but now as dawn was breaking on Sunday the 25th, he had no idea where the Bismarck was. Bismarck just before had detached Prince Eugen, but Bismarck was somewhere on her own in the Atlantic and she could just do anything she wanted. The British had no real way of stopping her. And they worried that she might sit across those supply lanes and interrupt the flow of war material and food into the UK. Admiral Tovey had to, first of all, he had to make sure that his convoys were safe.

So just what the Admiralty didn't want, he had to start diverting convoys. He also called up reinforcements, such as the old battleship Rodney was called up, which was protecting a convoy. He was gathering assets. up Force H from Gibraltar, which consisted of a Vice Admiral Somerville's flagship, which was a battle cruiser, but more importantly, it had the modern aircraft carrier Ark Royal. So all these ships were starting to concentrate in the patch of the Atlantic where the Bismarck now was, except they didn't know exactly where she was. In fact, for the next day, for the whole of that Sunday, they had no real clue. And until, bizarrely, they intercepted a radio message from Admiral Lutyens, which gave them a rough idea.

And Admiral Lutyens, in any kind of modern naval warfare, you don't radio somebody and give away your position if you don't need to and he certainly didn't need to but that's exactly what he did so now toby knew roughly where to look and what tool did he decide to strike bismarck with well bismarck was finally spotted on monday the 26th uh at 10 30 in the morning by a Catalina flying boat operating from Ireland. Tovey realised he was losing the race. The Germans were going to reach the French ports. His battleships, his remaining powerful battleships,

the King George V and now the Rodney, were steaming fast to try to keep pace with Bismarck, but they were much slower. Bismarck was very much ahead of the game. Nothing could intercept her apart from one thing and that was force H. So by the evening, Ark Royal, which was a little to the north of Bismarck's position, had reached a position where she could launch an airstrike. She did that. She messed it up the first time. She actually attacked one of her own cruisers, the Sheffield, which was shadowing Bismarck. Fortunately, no hits were inflicted on it.

So it rather shamefaced pilots returned, air crews returned to Ark Royal. But then they finally decided they had just enough time to launch one more airstrike. Fifteen swordfish took off, and this time they found Bismarck and attacked. The swordfish are attacking their target from every side, from port, from starboard, from off the bow, from off the stern. And they're trying to fool the German anti-aircraft defences,

which were very formidable. One of the advantages, I i suppose was the swordfish was so slow so lumbering that the germans had problems with their very automated fire control and anti-aircraft firing systems that they couldn't imagine aircraft could could lumber along at 80 miles an hour and not fall out of the sky so they were actually shooting ahead of where the british were so they managed to make several torpedo attacks and she was hit twice one of them the crucial one was in her rudder and it jammed at the time Bismarck was was turning to port and this damage didn't seem particularly

serious at the time but try as it might the crew couldn't fix this rudder, and she just kept turning in lazy circles. Captain Lindemann did what he could to try to correct that by using his engines, but all Bismarck could do was steer a very erratic course. And this was the crucial hit. The Achilles heel was hit by this torpedo, this 18-inch torpedo dropped from a swordfish flown from Ark Royal. Now, Admiral Tovey could catch up with Bismarck with his battleships and finally bring her to battle.

This is History's Heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas and the courage to stand alone, including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War. You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, Sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts. I've been lucky enough to meet Jock Moffat before he died,

who told me all about that last, that swordfish attack on Bismarck and how they were flying so close to the massive waves that the salt water was coming into the cockpit. It's a truly extraordinary story. But tell me, we don't know enough about the last battle of Bismarck. So when the British heavier ships caught up, how closely fought was that battle? The British ships finally appeared at a little after dawn on the 27th of May. During the night, British destroyers under Captain Vian had been attacking the Bismarck, really haranguing her, launching torpedo attacks without much success because it was rough seas, it was pretty poor conditions.

One of them, a Polish one called the Puron, was even flashing signals at Bismarck saying, we are Polish, and then launching the torpedo attacks. So the Germans knew exactly who was giving them a hard time. But that had the crucial effect of the German crews had been at their guns, been at action stations all night. They were pretty much exhausted. Their ship was turning in circles. It was difficult to control. very fancy, very automated fire control system, pretty much ineffective because you couldn't

really track enemy targets when your own ship is steering such an erratic course. So at 8.45 in the morning, Bismarck was sighted by Tovey's flagship, the King George V and the accompanying battleship Rodney. Now, King George V carried 10 14-inch guns. Rodney had nine 16-inch guns. She was an old ship. She was built in the 20s, entered service in 1927. She was really a ship designed for the First World War, fighting in the Second. But she still had this very powerful armament.

So they opened fire a few minutes later at a range of just under 12 miles bismarck fires back initially her shooting's quite good but this problem of steering makes it pretty ineffectual she lands the first salvo near rodney but that's the best it got for her um king george v has problems too she is suffering from the same technical problems as her sister ship, the Prince of Wales. At one stage in the battle that followed, out of her 10 guns, only two of them were working. So the British are plagued by technical problems. Rodney, with a slightly older,

slightly complicated but effective gunnery system, works quite well. And soon her shells, backed up by King George V's ones when they could, start slamming into Bismarck. The first hit happened at 8.59, and that was a crucial one because it knocked out Bismarck's main fire control director. That's the one that sent all the information to their analogue computer control centre that then gave the information back to the guns and told them where to aim.

So now Bismarck was essentially fighting blind and the battle then became very one-sided. The British ships zigged and zagged ever closer to the German battleship, firing at it. And once the range is down to about six miles, remember, these are ships designed to fire at ranges of almost three times that. But so these shells, almost every one is smacking into Bismarck. And she's slowly turning into a floating hell. Her upper decks are covered with flame and explosions. Guns have been knocked out one by one.

Her gun turrets were being knocked out. Crews are being stuck by hatches. They can't get out of gun turrets. Men are dying right, left and center. Things are going really badly wrong very rapidly. So by 9.30, all her guns had been silenced and she was just a blazing, floating wreck. But she was still afloat. All this pounding, all it had done was reduce

Bismarck's ability to fight. They hadn't managed to sink her. But Admiral Tovey was having problems too. His ships were now out of fuel. He either had to break off the action with his battleships and head back to Scapa Flow, or, as Churchill requested, just get them towed in. Now, obviously, Churchill was no admiral. The last thing you want in a U-boat infested waters is to have a battleship being towed by a cruiser or destroyer as a vulnerable target. So Tovey made the sensible decision to break off the action. And what he did was he sent in his two cruisers that were in the area, Dorsetshire and Norfolk, and Dorsetshire fired torpedoes, which struck Bismarck.

She then curved round her and fired again. Now, at the same time, the Germans had also decided the game was up. And the captain, the admiral, had both been killed fairly early on. There are reports of when the fire control equipment was knocked out, so was the bridge, and with it, probably Captain Lindemann and Admiral Lutyens were killed. So it was the executive officer of the ship, the first lieutenant, as it were,

took over and gave the orders to abandon ship and to scuttle the ship. So simultaneously these British torpedoes were heading towards Bismarck at the same time as Bismarck's own engineers were opening up the sea valves and the seacocks and setting explosive charges to blow the bottom out of the parts of the ship and let in the water so they were essentially scuttling their own ship and the order was put out to abandon ship and everyone really had to save themselves at the same time remember the decks were were on fire shells were coming in and it was just carnage bismarck finally sinks at 10 40 the argument of course is did the british cause it with their shells and torpedoes or did the germans cause it by scuttling the sensible money is it was a bit of

both how many men went down with the bismarck the bismarck at the time she went down was carrying carrying a crew of a little over 2,000. So of these, there were only 125 survivors. So very, very few survivors. One of the problems is, of course, they had to get out of the ship. They were covered in oil. Many men were wounded. They then had to bob around for some considerable time at sea until they were rescued.

The Dorsetshire put down nets and scrambling nets and were hoisting people on board, so did a British destroyer. But the trouble was the cruiser had to break off if they thought they saw a U-boat. So the priority then was to save their own ship, not the Germans. A few German survivors were picked up later, bobbing in the water by other vessels, including a U-boat. But essentially, of those 2,000-odd crew who'd sailed from Gottenhafen just a few days before, only a handful survived. After the Bismarck's loss on its first sortie, how did that affect the German use of its dwindling surface fleet for the rest of the war? What effect did Bismarck have on the rest of the war?

The sinking of Bismarck had a huge effect on German strategy. For a start, they ended that whole plan of breaking out into the Atlantic using surface ships. From now on they'd rely on U-boats to do that which was actually now they had the use of the French Atlantic ports was an easier proposition than it had been at the start of the war. So the emphasis was changing from surface ships to U-boats. By that time Tirpitz had service, and the other problem was in the invasion of Russia altered the whole strategic situation. So now the emphasis for the British was to send convoys to Russia, to the northern Russian ports. And the job of the home fleet then was to protect these convoys, and the job of the German surface fleet was to intercept them so that changed the whole thing from the Atlantic to essentially the Arctic. The whole remaining

two years essentially of German surface action until December 1943 when Charnhorst was lost of North Cape all revolved around the Arctic convoys. Well, that was very dramatic. Thank you very much. Tell everyone what your book is called. It's called, strangely enough, Hunt the Bismarck. Hunt the Bismarck. Thank you very much, Angus, for coming on the podcast.

Good luck with this. Well, thank you. I feel we have the history on our shoulders. All this tradition of ours, our school history, our songs, this part of the history of our country, all were gone and finished. I've got just a quick message at the end of this podcast. I'm currently sheltering in a small windswept building on a piece of rock in the Bristol Channel called Lundy. I'm here to make a podcast. I'm here enduring weather that, frankly, is apocalyptic because I want to get some great podcast material for you guys. In return, I've got a little tiny favour to ask. If you could go to wherever you get your podcasts,

if you could give it a five-star rating, if you could share it, if you could give it a review, I'd really appreciate that. Then from the comfort of your own homes, you'll be doing me a massive favour. Then more people will listen to the podcast, we can do more and more ambitious things and I can spend more of my time getting pummeled. Thank you. This is History's Heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas and the courage to stand alone, including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War. You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, Sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes.

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