Bismarck vs HMS Hood The Final Chapter

Final Chapter - The Destruction

  Day 9, May 27, 1941

  Admiral Tovey had decided on a daylight attack and at 8 am the British caught their first sight of the Bismarck. Ludovic Kennedy, HMS Tartar, "I think it was the most marvelous ship I have ever seen. Massive but also beautiful and we realized
she had to be destroyed, beautiful as she may have been". The battle plan would consist of King George 5th, HMS Rodney with her two destroyers Tartar and Ricondo attacking from the west while the Norfolk  would attack from the north. The cruiser    Dorchester would attack from the south. At 8:47 am the Rodney let loose with a full salvo from her sixteen inch guns. Next the King George fired her fourteen inch guns. At this point the Bismarck returned fire on the Rodney; they would not go down without a fight. The shots fell short. Now the Dorchester and Norfolk joined in with their eight-inch guns. The Rodney would be the first to draw blood when two of her sixteen inch shells slammed into the Bismarcks forward turrets, knocking them both out of commission. The heavy weight bout continued until a Norfolk shell hit the fire control tower, killing Alderbert Schinder, the man who had sunk the Hood. There were so many hits on the front section, that the Bismarck had lost fifty percent of her gunnery strength within fifteen minutes.  Officer Rechberg tried to assume control of the rear guns but his
viewfinder had been knocked out. The Bismarck was now rudderless and blind. The ship had come to a complete stop and was on fire from bow to stern. The flaming hulk was becoming a funeral pyre for the men aboard and the carnage was gruesome. Karl Schuldt was still below deck, "I said we have to get out of here, out of this witches cauldron, this death hole. As I came up to the top, I saw things I thought were not possible. The gun turrets were ripped open, everything was on fire and there was explosions. There were about 100 dead, some without legs arms or heads. Our lieutenant was there, he had lost both legs and ask me for a cigarette. It was so hard you can't imagine. I gave him a cigarette and promised him that if I survived, I would deliver a message to his family".

    Johannes Zimmerman recalls the scene below deck,"We had taken three hits and people ran up and said the air is getting too thick down here, to get out of here. There was so much smoke, we thought they were shooting poison gas,so we grabbed our gas masks. Then came a hit that killed two officers, they were ripped to pieces. We were forced to squeeze through a top hatch and we came out on the starboard side. The first thing I saw was a pile of butchered meat and I say butchered meat on purpose because you couldn't distinguish between a mans arm, leg, or remaining pieces.
From time to time there was half a head, it was horrendous!". After ninety minutes of battle over 2800 shells had been fired at the Bismarck of which over 400 found their mark. Admiral Tovey then ordered a ceasefire and sent a message to the Dorchester to use its torpedoes,if it had any. They fired three but before they reached the Bismarck, it turned completely over and sank shortly afterward. There had always been an argument over who actually sank the Bismarck on that fateful day. Josef Statz claims, "Yes it would have sunk (from British shelling) but it would have taken much
longer. When the order was given to abandon ship, flooding valves were opened and special scuttling charges ignited. So yes, both sides can side they sunk the Bismarck". After the sinking, 800 men remained in the water and the British
moved in for a rescue operation. Soon after a report came in that there were U-boats in the area and the order was given to sail immediately, tragically leaving several hundred sailors in the icy Atlantic waters. Out of a crew of 2200 only
115 survived.

                  The End