Bismarck vs HMS Hood - Part 8

Chapter 8

    The Prince of Wales was a crippled warship. Alone in the fight after the sinking of the Hood, she had taken four hits from the Bismarck and three from the Prince Eugen. Thirteen men were dead and nine wounded. Her guns were malfunctioning and her forward turret was jammed. She was no match for the combined might of two German warships. After twenty minutes Captain Leach retreats to the south-east and sends a two word message to the rest of the Royal Navy. It read "Hood Sunk" with the time of her sinking.

    This simple transmission would send shock waves across the Atlantic and right into the heart of the British people. A mighty icon of the British empire for over twenty years was destroyed in ten minutes. The people were outraged and stopping
the Bismarck meant more then a military victory; the Hood and her crew must be avenged! A massive effort within the Royal Navy began as they quickly communicated to all available aircraft carriers, battleships, destroyers, cruisers and land based
aircraft to find and destroy the Bismarck. The key players in the chase were the Norfolk, the Suffolk and the Prince of Wales as they continued to trail the Bismarck. Admiral Tovey with his battle group steamed from the east while the battleship
Rodney, with three destroyers, changed course from a planned refit in the United States. From the south came Admiral Summerville with his Force H that included the carrier Ark Royal and the battlecruisers Renown and Schfield. The hunter
would now become the hunted.

  Meanwhile the Bismarck and Prince Eugen continued to steam south. Though the Prince Eugen sustained no damage during the battle with the Hood, the Bismarck had serious damage from three hits. Two thousands tons of seawater had flooded her forward compartment and she was down three degrees at the bow (front) and listed nine degrees to port (left). The Bismarck had no choice but to head to port for repairs, their mission was over. To free the Prince Eugen a plan was executed on the code word "Hood" and the Bismarck veered southwest while the Prince Eugen continued south. The Prince Eugen slipped away while the Bismarck circled around, crossed her own wake and headed east towards the protected waters of occupied France.

    One hundred and twenty miles to the east the HMS Victorious was fighting stormy seas to close the gap to the Bismarck. Once within range, it would launch an air strike. On board were twenty-two Swordfish torpedo planes that were obsolete
before the war had started. Nick-named the "Stringbag" because of its fabric covering, its cruising speed was only 95 mph fully loaded. With any hint of a headwind the Swordfish would take forever to arrive at its target but it was all the British
had. They were willing to throw a little fly at a whale and hope for a miracle. For Leo Sayer on the HMS Victorious it was his first combat mission, "I think they had to take every chance and although we were a newly formed squadron with little
or no operational experience, they were prepared to throw us at the Bismarck".
    A squadron of nine planes flew off, climbed into the clouds and kept a watchful eye on their primitive radar system. When they picked up a blip and dropped below cloud cover expecting to see the Bismarck, it was an American Coast Guard
Cutter. They had given their position away and when they found the Bismarck, the flak was heavy. Les Sayer, "We were approaching at sea level, we were really down low. They were firing at us but fortunately we didn't get any hits on the way in".
When the pilot saw they were not properly lined up he decided to go around again. Les recalls, "I thought, hell, we've just been through all that and we have to go through it all again". The Swordfish swung out twenty miles and returned for a
second run. "We came in at 90 knots, right in on the sea and nobody saw us or fired on us. We dropped our fish four or five hundred yards away". The fish found its mark, "I saw a hit because there was a huge spurt of water coming from its hull and I thought to myself, thats our hit".

  Johannes Zimmerman was in the boiler room of the Bismarck when the torpedo struck, "The hit from the Victorious hit us on the starboard side and down in the boiler room bolts and screws started shooting out all around us. The boiler room
became a total loss. We certainly noticed someone had knocked on our rump". The blast had cause one death, Bismarcks first. As the Swordfish departed the Bismarck fired her fifteen inch guns hopeing the resulting geyser would knock one of
the little planes out of the sky but all returned safely. Josef Statz from the Bismarck, "An announcement was made that we shot down eight of the torpedo planes, which wasn't true. Just the fact that the planes were able to attack us made me think that maybe we weren't so unsinkable after all".