I Sank The Bismarck Read online

  I was not selected for flying on this mission, which was being led by Lt Commander Stewart-Moore, the CO of 820 Squadron. The attack, for some reason, was being made up from 820 and 810 Squadrons – I don't know why, but it meant that, as a member of 818, I was not included in the plans. It was pointless to protest, as the operation clearly had a momentum of its own and had been put into preparation while I was still on patrol.

  Meanwhile, Bismarck was still heading east, 30 miles south of Ark Royal and the rest of Force H. Admiral Somerville on Renown ordered Sheffield to steam towards Bismarck and make contact, then to continue shadowing her. The signal was sent to Sheffield via Morse code using an Aldis signal lamp. The Admiralty was also informed of the order, in a coded radio signal that was simultaneously copied to Ark Royal.

  The prevailing wind was from the west, and every time aircraft were landed on or took off, the Ark had to change course and steam westwards. Each time this occurred, Bismarck, steaming east at around 22 knots, would increase the distance between them, and the Ark had to race to catch up. It was a long time since the Ark had had a major refit and she had steamed over 100,000 miles in the interim. At full speed the centre propeller shaft vibrated badly and hatch screws regularly had to be retightened as they shook loose. But we believed that the Ark would never let us down.

  By 1400 the Swordfish that were going to make the strike against Bismarck were ready, but the weather was no better. The wind was still high, there was a lot of rain and visibility was low. Thick cloud started at 800 feet and the frequent rain squalls reduced the poor visibility to almost zero. But there were occasional clear patches, and at 1415 the aircraft were brought up on the lifts and the torpedoes were run aft along the flight deck to them to be hoisted up into the cradles underneath the fuselage. The engines were started and at 1445 the flight deck officer reported all ready. The flagship made an executive signal and the first of the Swordfish, with the CO of 820 Squadron in command, started its run down the deck. By 1500 they were all in the air, formed up in their sub-flights and turning south to meet the enemy. I was merely watching from the sidelines, standing near the bridge, with nothing to do but wait.

  13

  The Attack

  I saw fifteen Swordfish aircraft take off from the deck of Ark Royal, still not certain whether they were heading for Bismarck or Prinz Eugen, but within a few minutes one of them, flown by Nigel Gardner, had to return to make an emergency landing, its torpedo still fastened under the fuselage. The plane was heavy, with a full load of fuel as well as the torpedo, but its Pegasus engine was failing and there was no time to wait to jettison the weapon safely. It landed without any damage to the undercarriage and was quickly taken down in the lift for work to be done on the engine. There were still fourteen planes flying towards the target, however. It had been part of the original plan of attack to fly off a section of Fulmar fighters to create a diversion and confuse the anti-aircraft-gun controllers in Bismarck, but the weather conditions had been so foul that this had been abandoned. The weather was still very bad over the target, and the rain squalls that continually engulfed the Swordfish cut visibility to almost zero.

  A Swordfish in the lead section was equipped with air-to-surface radar, capable of informing the observer of the presence of a ship and its bearing from the aircraft. Twenty miles from the expected position of Bismarck, the airborne radar indicated a substantial target. The flight leader signalled to the rest of the Swordfish that they were going to descend through the cloud and make an attack. Down they went, exiting the cloud layer to find the warship practically dead ahead. They flew lower and sought out their prearranged bearings from which to drop their torpedoes. There was no antiaircraft fire, and the guns of the warship continued to remain silent as the first and then the second section dropped their torpedoes. The ship was travelling fast, the hot exhaust gases and hints of smoke whipping away from her twin funnels as she steamed in an easterly direction. As the torpedoes entered the water, the ship rapidly went to full speed ahead, seeming almost to leap forward in the water, and at the same time she turned her bows in an attempt to comb the tracks of the torpedoes heading towards her. There were two explosions at a distance as two of the unreliable Duplex warheads exploded harmlessly in the water.

  Several torpedo tracks seemed to travel underneath the ship, but there was no explosion. Three more explosions came in her wake and then, as the last section came into the attack, the observer in the lead aircraft saw that a signal light was flashing from the bridge. It was repeating the pennant number for HMS Sheffield. Captain Larcom, the cruiser's captain, successfully conned Sheffield through the tracks of the remaining torpedoes without suffering any injury and resumed his course to make contact with Bismarck, as he had been ordered to do by Rear Admiral Somerville two hours earlier. The final section of Swordfish pulled away and, as they flew over Sheffield, a ship that had been a constant companion of Ark Royal since the Norwegian campaign and should have been easily recognized, the TAG in the last Swordfish signalled, 'Sorry for the kipper.' I don't know what went on in the minds of the Swordfish crews as they flew back. They must have had a sense of utter failure, tempered by relief that they had not sunk Sheffield. The emotions of the crew on board Sheffield also do not bear thinking about. The language was probably strong enough to melt the deck head.

  The fourteen Swordfish returned to Ark Royal. The three torpedoes that remained slung under the fuselages of the last section of aircraft had to be jettisoned before it was safe for them to land on the pitching flight deck. One of them failed to release – I remember how, when the Swordfish carrying it landed on, this particular torpedo finally came free from the fuselage and careered up and down the deck with sparks flying off it. In a moment the flight deck was deserted. I looked up from where I was standing in the deck level on the starboard side at the stern to watch the torpedo rolling from side to side. The commander air literally screamed over the tannoy: 'Torpedo party report on deck and catch that bloody torpedo!' It was one time when we all thanked God that the Duplex pistols in the warheads were so unreliable.

  There were naturally some rather hard questions asked of the flight leader and the other pilots as they squeezed into the briefing room. Their attack had almost proved an utter disaster, at a time when the Ark and her Swordfish were in such a crucial position in the action against Bismarck. Feelings were running very high, and one observer reported to the operations officer, 'It was a perfect attack: right height, right range, right cloud cover, right speed and the wrong fucking ship!'

  In their defence, the flight had not been told about Sheffield's presence. Somerville's signal to her and to the Admiralty sending her forward to trail Bismarck, which had been merely copied to the Ark, had not been deciphered in time. None the less, it was extremely worrying that eleven of the pilots had mistaken a very familiar 9,000-ton cruiser with two funnels for a 50,000-ton battleship with one. Force H's report to Admiral Tovey about the success of the attack made no mention at all of the near destruction of a British cruiser, stating merely that Bismarck had received no hits.

  Time was now running out and we had to get a second strike in if we were to have any chance of stopping Bismarck or salvaging our reputations. There was a serious concern that we didn't make a mess of this again. By now we were under no illusions about how important this was to the navy, and to Churchill, and we felt under enormous pressure to pull it off. But we knew that if we did find the right target it would not be like attacking Sheffield again. Bismarck was a powerful and well-defended battleship. The previous attack by 825 Squadron from Victorious had shown that she could just shrug off direct hits, and the anti-aircraft fire would be very hot indeed.

  I knew that we would be making another strike that day – I had been expecting it even if the first one had managed to attack Bismarck. We were short of available aircraft, so many of those that had just returned would have to be used again. This time the attack was to be led by Tim Coode, my CO in 818, and I was to fly; in fact,
I was second aircraft in his section. Amidst all the tumult, I felt quietly proud. While the Swordfish were being refuelled and re-armed, we met and had a final briefing about the mission. I was told that the Ark would be moving closer to Bismarck. We would need to find Sheffield first and she would give us a bearing on to the target. By the time we were in the air above her, it was expected that she would be in visual touch with Bismarck. In fact, she saw her on her radar at about 1745. There would also be some of our destroyers between the Ark and Sheffield, and we had to be aware of them. Sheffield would be making her call sign on the radio to help us in direction-finding, but we would also have some of the Swordfish fitted with radar with us.

  The CO told us that he wanted to change the fuses on our torpedo warheads from the magnetic Duplex ones to contact pistols. Eleven torpedoes had been fired at Sheffield and not a single one had scored a hit. In particular, some of them had exploded when they hit the water, and Coode was responding to the general feeling that these magnetic pistols were too unreliable. In fact, I learned that both he and Stewart-Moore went to see the captain of the Ark and insisted that they be allowed to fit the old-fashioned contact pistols instead of the magnetic ones. Obviously the captain had agreed, because the contact pistols were fitted. This meant that we had to get direct hits against the hull in order for them to be effective, and we had to set the running depth of the torpedoes for a ship the size of Bismarck, which ought to have been 22 feet. There was some disagreement about this because of the weather, which had started to deteriorate again. If the battleship was pitching as severely as the Ark was, then a torpedo set to run as deep as her keel might pass underneath. In the end a decision was taken to set the running depth at a shallow 10 feet.

  The Swordfish were brought up to the flight deck and I went out via the side ladder on the starboard side. The weather was atrocious. On the flight deck, out of any shelter from the side gallery, or by the bridge, the wind hit you like a hammer, threatening to knock you down. The flight deck was still heaving and visibility was very bad. The deck crews were really struggling with the aircraft, spray was coming over the side and waves were breaking over the front of the flight deck. The CO had decided that the first three aircraft would be from 818 Squadron: he would lead and I and another pilot, Sub-Lieutenant Eric Dixon-Childe, would be his wingmen. Dixon-Childe and I had gone through training school together; he was a quiet lad, more of an introvert while I was the gregarious type. By picking us, Lt Commander Coode had picked two hostilities-only recruits, each with less than 250 hours' flying time. Why he did this I cannot say, but it was his call. I was second to take off, so climbed up into the cockpit, with Dusty Miller and Hayman settling in behind me. They had been briefed as well, and it was a simple procedure. We were to stay close and watch for hand signals after contact with Sheffield.

  The rigger was not quite as boisterous as he normally was. A lot of stokers and other deck hands had been gathered round the planes to make sure the aircraft didn't slide about, particularly as the Ark headed into the wind. As she turned broadside on to the waves, there was a real danger that she would heel and Swordfish could slide sideways. Standing close to the propeller and turning that heavy starting handle was going to be a tough job on a day like this. The flight deck officer, Commander Pat Stringer, had a rope round his waist and was lashed to the flight deck so that he wouldn't get blown overboard. He was 6 foot 4 inches tall and in a very exposed position, but a lot of the deck crew had the same trouble with the wind and the pitching deck but had to be able to move about.

  Stringer was a lifesaver that day. He would signal to start the take-off when he sensed that the ship was at the bottom of a big wave, so that even if I thought that I was taking off downhill, the bows would swing up at the last moment and I would be flying above the big Atlantic swell rather than into it. I felt that I was thrown into the air, rather than lifting off, and I was struggling to control the aircraft while the wheels were still on the deck, watching for a sideways gust that might push me into the bridge, praying that we would clear the tops of the mountainous waves.

  It was hard work in the air as well: the winds were gusting and there was very low cloud, as low as 600 feet, with some strong updrafts. We were thrown about, and I fought the plane through the turbulence. It was cold, the wind was fierce, but we had no need to worry about the drift because we did not have far to fly. I was fighting the wind all the time, circling was like riding a roller coaster, hitting a sudden headwind, then blown sideways, then thrown forward by a tailwind.

  Eventually we formed up over Renown and headed off south into a heavy cloud of rain, looking for Sheffield. Bismarck was just 38 miles distant, on a bearing of 125 degrees. All my training – at Abbotsinch, in the practices we had carried out from the Ark as we approached Gibraltar, and in the interminable hours that I had been ploughing the air above the oceans – was now focused on an attack on the biggest, most heavily armed warship at sea.

  I was in the thick of it now, well aware of how important a mission this was. For the last two days every single person in the Ark had known what was up – and that it was down to us to somehow stop Bismarck. I would not say that responsibility weighed heavily on me. I was concentrating on staying close to my CO, keeping an eye on my instruments and suppressing the butterflies in my stomach.

  We found Sheffield and this time we recognized her. I followed Coode round her and she signalled by lamp that Bismarck was 12 miles further on. Dusty Miller relayed the heading to me. We were at low altitude, about 500 feet, and Commander Coode signalled us to start our climb, passing through thick cloud. It was difficult to keep in touch with each other. At 6,000 feet we broke cloud, there was a big drop in temperature and in about six minutes ice was forming on the leading edges of the wings and the main struts, causing us to lose power and stability. This was worrying, because we could not allow too much ice to build up. I wondered how long we could go before needing to descend to some warmer air. Even though I was in clear sky with blanket cloud beneath, after ten minutes shells burst all around us with black clouds of smoke. We knew then that Bismarck was nearby and we assumed she had found us on her radar.

  Commander Coode signalled to form a line astern, then he dived down through the cloud. We tried to go down together, but the cloud density was such that it was impossible to maintain formation. Watching the altimeter, I knew that I should be clear at 600 feet. We were gaining speed and I was worried that my plane, with a ton of torpedo slung underneath, would not stand the strain when levelling out. The altimeter unwound – 600, 400, how low was this cloud? – then, suddenly breaking out of it at 300 feet, I realized we were diving at the sea, but I managed to pull out perfectly, the struts and frames taking the pressure. There on my starboard beam was Bismarck. I had overshot to the west so she was about 2 miles away, and I turned right towards her. Even at this distance the brute seemed enormous to me – this was a huge ship, much bigger than the Ark.

  I realized then that I was on my own. There was no sign of the other two, who must have come out of the cloud well ahead of me. I did not have a lot of time to take in the scene because the guns started firing at me almost immediately I popped into sight, and there was a red glow in the clouds ahead of me, about 100 yards away, as the anti-aircraft shells exploded. As I left the cloud, the gunfire was repeated, two bursts at a time but always ahead of me, throwing up walls of water. As I descended, there were two explosions to my right and below, which shook the aircraft severely and knocked us violently 90 degrees off our course. I struggled to turn us back towards the target, looking anxiously for any signs that we had been hit or that the engine had been damaged. The two boys in the back seemed OK and we continued flying, the Pegasus roaring away, the Swordfish still responding to the controls – but it was getting decidedly unhealthy.

  The Germans in their big battleship were trying to kill me, and it was not pleasant. I continued to drop height, with Bismarck looming bigger, some of her guns flashing from amidships with vivid oran
ge flames now aimed at us. The big explosions that had blown us about did not follow us down to this height, but the smaller cannon and machine-gun fire, with their red tracer bullets, were now coming towards us in a torrent. I thought about what I had noticed when I had been firing from the machine-gun platforms on the Ark at the Italian torpedo bombers: the lower the target, the harder it was to hold in your sights, particularly if it was below the horizon. I went down as close to wave-top height as I dared. The sea was rough and I did not want to be caught by a wave, so I levelled out at around 50 feet, probably just a tad lower. I was not sure how effective this was going to be because the tracer seemed to be very focused.

  In our briefing in the Ark we had discussed coordinating our attack, the first three flights coming in on the port beam from various bearings, with the second wave doing the same on the starboard side. This would help to confuse the antiaircraft fire and would also make it difficult for Bismarck to manoeuvre into the torpedo tracks. But it seemed that we had got badly separated in the high cloud; it was utter confusion. I felt that every gun on the ship was aiming at me. It was heading towards us, the lazily spinning tracer from scores of guns coming at us like hail. I do not know how I managed to keep flying into it: every instinct was screaming at me to duck, turn away, do anything – an impulse that it was hard to fight off. But I held on and we got closer and closer. I went down, as low as I dared, though even that took an act of will to overcome my fear of hitting the rough sea. At training school I had been taught to assess the speed of the ship and lay off my aim by using a simple marked rod mounted horizontally along the top of the cockpit. But the nearer I got the larger the target became, so I decided to aim for the bow.