I Sank The Bismarck Read online

  Then I heard Dusty Miller shouting in my ear, 'Not yet, not yet!' and I thought, 'Has he gone mad? What is he doing?' I turned and realized that he was leaning out of the cockpit, looking down at the sea, trying to prevent me from dropping the torpedo on to the crest of a wave, where it would bounce off or dive deep, either way knocked off any course that I might have fired it on.

  We were getting closer and closer, the ship was getting bigger and bigger, and I thought, 'Bloody hell, what are you waiting for?'

  Then he said, 'Let her go, Jock,' and I pressed the button on the throttle. Dusty yelled, 'I think we have got a runner.'

  When a Swordfish is suddenly relieved of the weight of a torpedo, it naturally rises in the air, but above us was a stream of bullets and shells. I did what I could to hold the plane down, avoiding the temptation to bank into a sharp turn, which would give the gunners in Bismarck a bigger silhouette to aim at.

  I held the aircraft down and went in to a full left-rudder turn at full throttle, thinking, 'Let's get out of here.' The gunfire pursued us, but I kept low for 3,000 yards, praying that nothing would hit us, desperately wanting to get into the clouds but knowing that it would be fatal to climb too early. Finally I thought it would be OK to try to find some height. As we rose above 300 feet two bigger shells again exploded, this time to our rear, but that was all.

  I shouted to Dusty to give me a course back to the Ark, but I think it was beyond him. 'Find one of those radar Swordfish and follow him,' he said. I spotted one from 810 Squadron, flown by Godfrey-Faussett, and got into line astern with him. Visibility was getting very poor now and the Ark was sending out a radio beacon signal. When we came round to make our final approach the deck was still heaving up and down – sometimes it looked like a steel wall in front of you, then all you could see were the quarterdeck and the propellers churning away. Commander Stringer was still secured by a line tied to a stanchion, ready to wave me away at the last moment, but I made it back, and there was nothing more welcoming than the thump of the wheels on the deck and the clatter of the hook catching on the arrestor wire. Miraculously, we had all returned, but one of the Swordfish from 820 Squadron, flown by Sub-Lieutenant Swanton, had 175 splinter holes in it from a close shellburst. The pilot and the TAG also had wounds, fortunately not very serious, from the shell splinters. A few other aircraft had some minor damage from shellbursts.

  When we had landed and the rigger clambered up to the cockpit, making notes of any maintenance or repairs that needed doing, we eased ourselves out of the cockpit. I was stiff and sore, as though I had been flying for a day, and I was completely exhausted, almost light-headed from fatigue and adrenalin. We assembled in the bridge for debriefing and it was obvious that the attack had become broken up and disorganized by the weather. It was difficult to piece together the various accounts from the pilots and the observers into anything that made sense. Very few of us were willing to make any claims. I for one knew that I had not lingered over Bismarck for the one and a half minutes it would have taken for my torpedo to hit her and to allow Dusty to follow its track, and I suspect that most of the other pilots behaved in the same way. I had no idea if my torpedo had found its target or not. The only thing I could remember through the stress of the attack was that Bismarck had seemed to me to be turning away from my attack, rather than towards it. We told our debriefing officers what we could and left it to the air staff.

  We went below, where the cooks had made us a special hot meal, but we couldn't eat it – the strain and tension had robbed us of any appetite. Fear inevitably leaves its mark. We all sat around and wondered how it was that we had survived, even those who had received hits. A cigarette and several pink gins were what we craved, then the oblivion of sleep. We were told that visibility was too poor for another attack that night, but that there would be another mission the next morning, led again by Coode, me and Dixon-Childe. If this was calculated to ensure we got a good night's sleep, it failed. Someone remarked that the Light Brigade had only been asked to do it once.

  By the time we had finished our debriefing, two signals had been sent to Rear Admiral Somerville in Renown and forwarded to Admiral Tovey, struggling to reach Bismarck in King George V. The first signal said that one torpedo had definitely hit Bismarck amidships, and then the second one, sent twenty minutes later after more planes had landed, stated that another hit had been obtained aft. It was very hard to be certain of anything, and the narrative report that was put together was written in the order in which the attack had been planned, not in the sequence in which it had probably actually taken place. Many flights had been split up in the very thick cloud over Bismarck and had attacked in ones and twos over a period of thirty minutes.

  What was eventually pieced together was that my flight, led by Lt Commander Coode, probably went in first, joined by another aircraft that had become separated from no. 3 sub-flight. I think we went into the final run-in towards the target with all of us separated, but all attacking the port side, and as we made a getaway a hit was observed from the cockpit of the Swordfish of the third sub-flight, flown by Lieutenant Stanley Keane, who had found himself behind us and had decided to follow us in. According to him the hit was on the port side, about two thirds of the way down from the bows. It could have been mine, but there was no way to tell.

  The second sub-flight had also got disorientated in the cloud and had climbed to 9,000 feet, where they started to get ice forming. Two aircraft got a bearing on Bismarck with their radar and went into the attack from the starboard side. They came under concentrated fire from all the guns on that side of the ship, but managed to get away. The third Swordfish of that flight remained in the cloud for some time, then actually returned to Sheffield for another bearing. He then came back towards Bismarck and made an attack on the port bow, and his crew saw a strike amidships. This must have been the last attack that night because of the time it would have taken him to fly to Sheffield and return. The fourth sub-flight and the other aircraft of the third sub-flight met up as they flew out of the cloud, and they saw Bismarck firing heavily at the second sub-flight. All four aircraft made an attack from the port side. They came under very heavy, intense shellfire and it was in this attack that Sub-Lieutenant Swanton's aircraft was riddled with shell splinters and he was wounded in the arm. The gunfire followed them for almost 7 miles before they escaped.

  The fifth sub-flight, another made up of just two aircraft, lost each other and also started to suffer from icing. They descended and found that they had come out of the cloud upwind of Bismarck. One of the pilots decided to fly forward to make his approach from the bow, and while he did so he saw a torpedo strike amidships on the starboard side. He reached a position on Bismarck's starboard bow, then flew out for about 5 miles, made a very low-level approach and dropped at about 1,000 yards. The second pilot of the fifth flight tried to make an approach on the starboard quarter, but came under such intense fire that he jettisoned his torpedo. The final flight of the attack, the sixth one, also got lost in the cloud. They too returned to Sheffield for a fresh bearing, but on their return opted to remain out of the cloud and flew low to Bismarck, attacking on the starboard beam. They were spotted at long range and came under heavy fire. One pilot dropped his torpedo at 2,000 yards, while the other abandoned his attack and returned to the Ark, jettisoning his torpedo before landing on.

  This, then, was the official narrative – as I say, not really written up in the sequence that the attacks occurred. There had been sighting of two, possibly three, hits, but very little firm confirmation of the exact number. The Ark was prepared only to claim two. And it was this that was communicated to Rear Admiral Somerville and the Admiralty. Yet hits were not enough. Bismarck's armour was extremely thick. The Swordfish from 825 Squadron on Victorious had seen a hit amidships on Bismarck, but she had brushed it off. It wasn't enough to hit her: we needed to cause some serious damage and it seemed that in that aim we had failed.

  There were still two long-range Swordfish circling
over Bismarck when our attack left and they were asked by the Ark to stay on station as long as possible to direct a small group of four destroyers on to Bismarck. Then indications started to come in that Bismarck was in trouble. Sheffield reported that the German battleship had slowed down, then that she had changed course and was heading back towards Admiral Tovey's King George V, still in hot pursuit 80 miles away. It was hard to ascertain whether this was deliberate, because during this turn Bismarck had fired a salvo of her 15in guns at Sheffield from a range of 9 miles, and although Sheffield did not suffer a direct hit, three ratings were killed by shell splinters, with eight others wounded. Sheffield broke off the contact and raced away under cover of a smokescreen. Then, an hour and a half later, the two Swordfish that had been trailing Bismarck at last, in total darkness, landed on the Ark and made their final report. Bismarck, they said, after being torpedoed, had made two complete circles and reduced speed. Somerville passed this information on to Admiral Tovey at half past midnight on 27 May.

  The attack had worked. For reasons that we still did not know, Bismarck had been prevented from running at speed to St-Nazaire. Instead she appeared to be slowing and her course was uncertain. Unless she regained speed and course quickly, Tovey with the two big battleships Rodney and King George V would still have a chance to catch her. Final confirmation of the crisis that had overwhelmed Bismarck was given in a signal by one of the four destroyers, HMS Zulu, that had arrived on the scene a little earlier. She signalled that Bismarck's course was fluctuating wildly through 60 degrees to 340. We had got her. It was not a moment too soon. We were just 500 miles from the German air force's French bases and the submarine pens of L'Orient.

  I cannot imagine what it must have been like on Bismarck that night, and I thank God that I never had a similar experience. A torpedo had hit the ship in the after section on the port side. Some floor plates in the engine room buckled upwards and water started pouring in through the port shaft tunnel. Damage-control parties rushed to the port side to discover that the hole in the side was so big that all the steering rooms had been flooded and the crews had abandoned them. The water in them was rhythmically splashing up and down with the movement of the ship. Seawater was leaking through to the main deck and watertight seals on cable tubes had been damaged, causing water to flood into the upper and lower passageways on the port side of the hull just aft of the rear main gun turret. But these leaks were of minor importance compared to the damage that had been caused to the steering control rooms. The rudders had been jammed at 12 degrees to port, so the ship could not be steered. The room that contained the electric rudder motors and gearing was open to the sea, under the waterline, and when an emergency access hatch was opened, water shot out of it as the stern rose and sank in the rough seas. It was clearly impossible to send men into the room to decouple the motors or carry out any sort of repairs.

  Ratings from one of the port gun turrets were ordered to try to seal the hole with a collision mat, but the sea was too rough. The captain tried to overcome the influence of the jammed rudders by varying the speed and direction of the propellers, but Bismarck was too long and unwieldy for this to be effective: the strong wind always turned the ship's head back. As the impossibility of repairing the damage dawned on her crew, they also started to absorb the fact that they could no longer hope to avoid another battle with the Royal Navy, this time with the odds very much against them.

  They were heading inexorably back over the course that they had just covered, straight towards Admiral Tovey and his flagship, King George V, with her eight 14in guns, and Rodney, a battleship that, when she was launched in the 1920s, was considered, along with her sister ship Nelson, to be the most powerful on the high seas. Rodney was armed with nine 16in guns, all mounted on the huge foredeck that stretched out from her armoured bridge. In addition, other warships were steaming to join Tovey's forces. There was little point in Bismarck rushing to her fate, so now her speed was reduced to 6 or 7 knots. After midnight, work on repairing the rudder was abandoned and the ship sailed towards the superior forces that were intent on destroying her.

  During the night the four destroyers that had been directed to Bismarck by Sheffield – the three Tribal class, Cossack, Zulu and Sikh, and the Polish Piorun – attempted to attack Bismarck with torpedoes. They were frustrated by the heavy seas and the still accurate fire of Bismarck's guns. Yet time after time they steamed closer, only to be forced to retreat. At around 0200 they launched star shells to illuminate the target, to indicate the position of the enemy to Admiral Tovey. These and the continual attacks, however, kept Bismarck's crew awake throughout the night, increasing their fatigue and no doubt their despair. They were on board one of the most powerful and modern battleships in the world, yet despite all the technology, the highly advanced gun control, the massive armour plating and the powerful turbines, all had come to nothing. They had set out just a few days ago, the pride of the German navy, with Hitler's blessing. Now, because of a slow, single-engined biplane launched from an aircraft carrier, they were almost impotent.

  At 0600 on 27 May, as dawn broke, the destroyers realized that they were dangerously close to Bismarck and retreated into the cover of a rain squall. The men in Bismarck now waited for our battleships to arrive, but it was not until 0843 that the alarm claxons went off. King George V and Rodney had arrived, and at 0847 Rodney fired a salvo of her massive guns, to be followed a minute later by King George V. Within a few minutes, Rodney had scored a hit on the forward part of Bismarck. Captain Lindemann could neither choose his course nor evade the fire from the British ships, while Tovey could manoeuvre both his battleships and the cruiser Dorsetshire, which had joined him, and close the range until even shells from Rodney's secondary armament were exploding on the superstructure of the helpless German warship. The casualties and deaths started to mount. Soon Norfolk, whose captain had trailed Bismarck from the Greenland Strait only to lose her again the next day, arrived on the scene and started to add her 8in guns to the fusillade that was ripping into the stricken ship.

  At 0931 Bismarck's main guns fired their last shells. She started to list to port and fires had broken out along her length, but still the salvoes from Rodney and the other ships continued.

  I had a disturbed night on the Ark, still vividly alert after the fears of the day and anticipating another run into Bismarck's concentrated anti-aircraft fire. I did not get much sleep and was not particularly hungry at breakfast. The weather was obviously still bad and I did not know what was worse – attempting another hazardous take-off and landing or the prospect of another flight into a storm of tracer. We had been extremely lucky the day before, but surely we could not make another attack and expect to escape without any casualties.

  I was scheduled for take-off at 0700 but was up much earlier. Two reconnaissance Swordfish had taken off at 0430, apparently with a great deal of difficulty. The wind had increased again, the night was as black as the inside of a flying boot and spray was washing over the length of the flying deck. The wind was almost a constant 50 knots and when the Swordfish took off into it they rose into the air as if they were on a lift. They were brought forward abreast of the island. If they had taken off from their normal position at the end of the flight deck they would have been airborne so quickly that there was the chance that in the dark they would collide with the bridge or the funnel as the carrier pitched and rolled.

  Admiral Tovey's battleships, the destroyers and the cruiser were now known to be in the vicinity, but visibility was so poor that identification was difficult. I hoped that it would be sufficiently improved by the time we arrived over the target. We were told at our briefing about the attacks on Bismarck during the night, but that our big warships had not yet made contact with her. Clearly thanks to the damage that we had inflicted yesterday, the battleship would be in no condition to carry out any fast evasive manoeuvres when we attacked, but this might allow her gunnery directors more time to range their fire. That was a very worrying prospect. Lt Comm
ander Coode's plan was that we would attack in groups of three, from whatever direction seemed the most propitious. There were only twelve Swordfish available this morning to mount the attack and they were brought up on deck, but the wind was so strong it was impossible to open the wings and start up the engines. The captain decided that the attack would have to be delayed, so the aircraft were taken down again in the lifts, their wings still folded.

  Now it was a question of waiting, and I dozed in a chair until daylight had fully arrived. But the wind and the seas did not abate, so we were told that the Swordfish would be ranged and their engines started while the Ark was stern on to the wind, then she would turn her flight deck into the wind for take-off. The Swordfish were lined up and I sat in the cockpit, the engine thundering away in front of me, while I waited for the ship to make its manoeuvre. The Swordfish were temporarily lashed to the deck and more men were brought up from the other squadrons to hold the aircraft. After a particularly steep wave, the captain ordered the helm down. I watched as the flight deck turned to starboard across the fetch of the waves and felt three or four heavy rolls. I saw one Swordfish skitter sideways like a spooked horse, but fortunately it didn't collide with anything, or anyone. I have never seen or heard of a similar manoeuvre carried out by a carrier, before or since. Looking back, the prospects of a disaster were quite high, but the captain pulled it off, and I think it took some marvellous seamanship.