The Lonely Sea (6 page)

But no one, not even the most loyal member of her crew, was staking his faith on the
Prince of Wales.
And, indeed, why should he, when only a few cable lengths away he could see the massive bows of the 45,000-ton
Hood
thrusting the puny waves contemptuously aside as she raced towards the enemy. When the
Hood
was with you, nothing could ever go wrong. Every man in the Royal Navy knew that.

And not only in the Navy. It is seventeen years now since the
Hood
died but none of the millions alive today who had grown up before the Second World War can forget, and will probably never forget, the almost unbelievable hold the
Hood
had taken on the imaginations and hearts of the British
public. She was the best known, best loved ship in all our long naval history, a household name to countless people for whom
Revenge
and
Victory
were only words. The biggest, most powerful ship of the line in the inter-war years, she stood for all that was permanent, a synonym for all that was invincible, held in awe, even in veneration. For millions of people she
was
the Royal Navy, a legend in her own lifetime…But a legend grows old.

And now, with the long night's high-speed steaming over, the dawn in the sky and the
Bismarck
looming up over the horizon, the legend was about to end forever.

Safely out of range, but with a grandstand view of the coming action, the men of the
Norfolk
and the
Suffolk
watched the
Hood
and the
Prince of Wales,
acting as one under the command of Vice-Admiral Holland, bear down on the
Bismarck
and the
Prinz Eugen. But
even at that distance it was obvious that the two British ships were too close together, that Captain Leach of the
Prince of Wales
was being compelled to do exactly as the
Hood
did instead of being allowed to fight his own ship independently and to the best advantage, and, more incredibly still, that the closing course, their line of approach to the enemy, was all that a line of approach should not be. They were steering for the enemy at an angle broad enough to present the Germans with a splendid target but, at the same time, just acute enough to prevent their rear
turrets from being brought into action, with the result that the
Bismarck
and
Prinz Eugen
were able to bring their full broadsides to bear against only half of the possible total of the British guns.

Even worse was to follow. The
Hood
was the first to open fire, at 5.52 a.m., and, for reasons that will never be clearly known, she made the fatal error of concentrating her fire on the
Prinz Eugen,
and did so throughout the battle. The mistake in identification was bad enough, but no worse than the standard of her gunnery: the
Prinz Eugen
emerged from the action unscathed.

The
Bismarck
and
Prinz Eugen,
consequently, were free to bring their entire armament to bear on the
Hood,
who, because of her approach angle, could only reply with her two fore turrets. True, the
Prince of Wales
had now opened up also, but the blunt and bitter truth is that it didn't matter very much anyway: her first salvo was more than half a mile wide of the target, the second not much better, and the third also missed. So did the fourth. And the fifth.

The Germans did not miss. The concentrated heaviness of their fire was matched only by its devastating accuracy. Both were on target—the
Hood
—almost at once, the
Prinz Eugen
's 8-inch shells starting a fire by the
Hood
's mainmast within the first minute. The
Bismarck,
too, was hitting now, the huge 15-inch projectiles, each one a screaming ton of armour-piercing steel and high
explosive, smashing into the reeling
Hood
and exploding deep in her heart. How often the
Hood
was hit, and where she was hit we will never know, nor does it matter.

All that matters, all that we do know, is what was seen by the survivors of that battle at exactly six o'clock that morning, as the fifth salvo from the
Bismarck
straddled the
Hood.
A stabbing column of flame, white and orange and blindingly incandescent, lanced a thousand feet vertically upwards into the grey morning sky as the tremendous detonation of her exploding magazines almost literally blew the
Hood
out of existence. When the last echoes of the great explosion had rolled away to lose themselves beyond the horizon and the smoke drifted slowly over the sea, the shattered remnants of the
Hood
had vanished as completely as if the great ship herself had never existed.

So, in the twenty-first year of her life, the
Hood
died. This, the first naval engagement of her long life, had lasted exactly eight minutes, and when she went down she took 1,500 officers and men with her. There were three survivors.

The destruction of the
Hood,
the invincible, impregnable
Hood,
came as a tremendous shock both to the Navy and the country at large. It was
incredible, it was impossible that this had happened—and the impossible had to be explained away, both verbally and in print, with all speed.

As details of the action were at that time lacking, no mention was made of the
Hood'
s suicidal angle of approach to the enemy, the fatal mistake in identification that led to her firing on the
Prinz Eugen
instead of the
Bismarck,
or of the fact that the standard of her gunnery was so poor that she failed to register even one hit throughout the entire engagement. Perhaps it was as well that these things were not known at the time.

The reasons that
were
advanced at the time—and the source of inspiration of these reasons is not far to seek—were that the
Hood,
of course, had been no battleship but only a lightly-protected battle cruiser, and, even so, that the 15-inch shell that had found her magazine had been one chance in a million. These explanations were utter nonsense.

True, the
Hood
was technically classed as a battle cruiser, but it was just that, a technicality and no more: the fact is that with her 12-inch iron and steel sheathing extending over 560 feet on either side and with her total weight of protective metal reaching a fantastic 14,000 tons, she was one of the most heavily armoured ships in the world. As for the one chance in a million shell, senior naval architects had been pointing out for twenty years that the
Hood
's magazines were wide open to
shells approaching from a certain angle, a danger that could easily have been obviated by extra armour plating. The
Hood'
s design was defective, badly defective, and the Admiralty was well aware of this.

No such thoughts as these, it is safe to assume, was in the mind of Captain Leach of the
Prince of Wales
as the smoke and the dust of the awesome explosion cleared away and the
Hood
was seen to be gone. The
Prince of Wales
was fighting for her life now, and her captain knew it. Both the
Bismarck
and the
Prinz Eugen
had swung their guns on him as soon as the
Hood
had blown up and already the deadly accuracy of their heavy and concentrated fire was beginning to have its effect. Captain Leach summed up the situation, made his assessments and didn't hesitate. He ordered the wheel to be put hard over, broke off the engagement and retired under a heavy smokescreen.

‘The ship that ran away'. That was what the
Prince of Wales
was called then, the coward battleship that turned and fled: it is an open secret that ship, officers and men, during the remainder of the
Prince of Wales'
s short life, were henceforward treated with aversion and cold contempt by the rest of the Navy and this opprobium ended only with the death of the ship and the gallant Captain Leach a bare seven months later under a savage Japanese aerial attack off the coast of Malaya. The opprobrium was more than unjust—it was
grotesquely and bitterly unfair. Once again, the Admiralty must shoulder much of the blame.

In fairness, it was completely unintentional on their part. The trouble arose from their official communiqué on the action, which was no better and no worse than the typical wartime communiqué, in that it tended to exaggerate the damage sustained by the enemy while minimizing our own.

Two statements in the communiqué caused the grievous misunderstanding: ‘The
Bismarck
was at one time seen to be on fire' and ‘The
Prince of Wales
sustained slight damage'. Why in all the world then, people asked, hadn't the ship which had received only slight damage closed with the one on fire and destroyed it. What possible excuse for running away?

Excuse enough. The fire on the
Bismarck,
while demonstrable testimony to the occasional liveliness of official imaginations, had, in actual fact, consisted of no more than soot shaken loose from her funnel. As for the
Prince of Wales
's ‘slight damage', she had been struck by no fewer than three 8-inch shells and four of the
Bismarck
's great 15-inch shells, one of which had completely wrecked the bridge, killing everyone there except Leach and his chief yeoman of signals. Furthermore, one of the
Prince of Wales'
s big guns was completely out of action, repeated breakdowns in the others led to their firing intermittently or not at all and the jamming of ‘Y' turret shell ring had put the four big
guns of that turret—half of Captain Leach's effective armament—out of commission. The
Prince of Wales,
far from being slightly damaged, was badly crippled: to close with her powerful enemy, to expose herself any longer to the murderous accuracy of these broadsides would have been no mere act of folly but quick and certain suicide.

The
Bismarck
made no attempt to pursue and engage her enemy. With the
Hood
destroyed and the
Prince of Wales
badly hurt and driven off in ignominious defeat, she had already achieved success beyond her wildest dreams. A magnificent victory, a tremendous boost to the prestige of the German Navy and, in Goebbels' hands, a newforged propaganda weapon of incalculable power—why risk throwing it all away by exposing herself to a lucky salvo that might destroy her turrets or bridge or fire control directors—or might even sink her? Besides, her primary purpose in breaking into the Atlantic was not to engage the Home Fleet—that was the last thing Admiral Lutjens wanted—but to annihilate our convoys.

The rejoicing aboard the
Bismarck
was intense, but no more so than the jubilation in the chancellory of Berlin, where news of this resounding triumph had been flashed as soon as the
Bismarck
had broken off the action.

Within an hour the news would be in the hands of every newspaper and radio station in the country.
By the afternoon every person in Germany—and by the evening every country in Europe—would know of the crushing defeat suffered by the Royal Navy. An overjoyed Hitler sent his own and the nation's congratulations and admiration to the officers and men of the
Bismarck,
and personally announced, amongst numerous other decorations, the immediate award of the Knight's Insignia of the Iron Cross to the
Bismarck
's first gunnery officer.

Only one man held aloof, only one man remained untouched by the exultation, the exhilaration of the victory—the man, one would have thought, who had the greatest cause of all to rejoice, Captain Lindemann, commanding officer of the
Bismarck.
Lindemann was unhappy and more than a little afraid—and no man had ever called Lindemann's courage into question. A gallant and very experienced sailor, reckoned about the best and the most skilful in the German Navy—and he had to be, to have command of the finest ship in the German Navy—he was filled with foreboding, a dark certainty of ultimate defeat.

Although his ship had suffered no damage either to her guns or engines and was still the complete fighting machine, a shell, crashing through the heavy armour, and exploding in her fuel tanks had perceptibly reduced her speed and he feared he might not have sufficient fuel left for sustained high-speed steaming and manoeuvring—and Lindemann realized only too clearly that he would
require all the speed and every pound of thrust the
Bismarck
's big turbines were capable of developing. He knew the British, he knew the tremendous regard and affection in which they had held the
Hood,
and he knew too that, far from being intimidated by the appalling manner of her death, they would have been goaded into a savage fury for revenge and would not rest until they had hunted them down and destroyed them.

These fears he tried to communicate to his senior officer, Admiral Lutjens, and suggested that they return immediately to Bergen, for repairs. Admiral Lutjens, for reasons which we will never know—possibly the elation of their great success had temporarily blurred his judgment and dreams of glory are notoriously treacherous counsellors—overruled his captain. They would go on as originally planned. So the
Bismarck
turned south-west and pushed on deep down into the Atlantic.

The Navy followed her. All afternoon and evening the
Norfolk, Suffolk
and
Prince of Wales
shadowed both German ships, sending out constant radio transmissions to Admiral Tovey, who swung his squadron on to a new interception course.

The
Bismarck
knew she was being followed, but seemed to be undisturbed by this. Only once, briefly, did she show her teeth. About 6.30 in the evening, she turned on her tracks in a fog bank and opened fired on the
Suffolk,
but broke off the engagement almost at once, when the
Prince of
Wales
joined in. (It was not realized at the time that this was merely a diversion to let the
Prinz Eugen
break away to a German oiler, where she refuelled and made her way safely to Brest.)