History
Design of the ship started in the early 1930s, following on from Germany's development of the Deutschland class cruisers and the Gneisenau class "battlecruisers". Construction of the second French Dunkerque class battleship made redesign necessary, and Bismarck's displacement was increased to 41,700 tons. Officially, however, her tonnage was 35,000 tons to suggest parity with ships built within the limits of the Anglo-German Naval Agreement (1935) that allowed Germany to build up to five 35,000-ton battleships, the maximum displacement agreed by the major powers in the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922. Fully laden, Bismarck and her sister-ship Tirpitz would each displace more than 50,000 tons. The prototype of the proposed battleships envisaged under Plan Z, Bismarck's keel was laid down at the Blohm + Voss shipyard in Hamburg on 1 July 1936. She was launched on 14 February 1939 and commissioned on 24 August 1940 with Kapitän zur See Ernst Lindemann in command.
This formidable ship was intended primarily as a commerce raider, having a broad beam for stability in the rough seas of the North Atlantic and fuel stores as large as those of battleships intended for operations in the Pacific Ocean. Still, with eight 15 inch main guns in four turrets, substantial welded-armour protection and designed for a top speed of not less than 29 knots (she actually achieved 30.1 knots in trials in the calmer waters of the Baltic, an impressive speed when set against any comparable British battleship), Bismarck was capable of engaging any enemy battleship on reasonably equal terms. Her range of weaponry could easily decimate any convoy she encountered. The plan was for Bismarck to break through into the spacious waters of the North Atlantic, where she could refuel from German tankers and remain undetected by British and American aircraft, submarines and ships, while attacking the convoys.
Battle of the Denmark Strait
At approximately 05.30 on Saturday 24 May, as the German squadron was about to leave the Denmark Strait, Prinz Eugen's hydrophones detected the presence of two additional ships some distance to port. By 05.45 both were in sight, although the German fleet had not yet identified the enemy force. It turned out to be a British battle-group comprising the new battleship Prince of Wales, and the battlecruiser Hood, under the command of Rear Admiral Lancelot Holland. Prince of Wales had only recently been completed and was still being worked up (indeed, she sailed to meet Bismarck with about 100 civilian workers still on board completing her fitting-out). Hood had been built as a battlecruiser and modified to give her protection more like a battleship, but still had relatively weak deck armour. That other British ships had detected them was not unexpected by the Germans but that they would turn out to be capital ships was a nasty surprise.
At 05.49 Holland ordered fire to be concentrated on the leading German ship, Prinz Eugen, believing it to be Bismarck. Fortunately for the British, the captain of Prince of Wales was soon to realise the error and changed his target. Holland amended his order on the correct ship to be engaged but this did not reach Hood's gunnery control before the first salvo. Hood fired first at 05.52, in daylight, followed very soon afterwards by Prince of Wales. The range to the German ships was c. 12.5 miles.
More than two minutes went by without a reply from the Germans, before Captain Lindemann ordered fire to be returned on the lead British ship. This was the Hood, which the Germans had identified only when the British squadron made a turn towards them at 05.55. This manoeuvre was undertaken, it appears, in an attempt to place themselves in the "zone of immunity". Closer in, the Hood would be less vulnerable to plunging fire and the advantage of superior German gunnery control would be lessened. The disadvantage was that, during the dash, eight of the eighteen British heavy guns could not be brought to bear.
Both Bismarck and Prinz Eugen opened fire on the Hood, at a range of 11 miles. The early gunfire from the German ships was very accurate and within two minutes the Hood had been hit by an 8″ shell from Prinz Eugen. It struck the British ship near the mainmast and caused a large fire which the Hood's crew tried to bring under control. However, Bismarck had also been hit by the Prince of Wales, causing a fuel leak from the forward tanks; therefore Lütjens ordered his cruiser to switch its guns towards the Prince of Wales, which his own secondary guns were now targeting.
At 06.00 Hood, which was about to turn to port to bring her full weight of armament to bear on Bismarck, was hit amidships by at least one shell from Bismarck at a distance of under 9 miles. Very shortly afterwards observers on both sides saw a huge jet of flame race skywards, followed by a rumbling explosion that split the huge ship in two. Splinters rained down on Prince of Wales, 400 yards away. The Hood's stern rose and sank shortly before the bow, all within three minutes. Admiral Holland and 1,415 crewmen went down with the ship. Only three men (Ted Briggs, Bob Tilburn and Bill Dundas) survived this disaster. They were rescued about two hours later by the destroyer Electra. The British Admiralty later concluded that the most likely explanation for the loss of the Hood was a penetration of her magazines by a single 15″ shell from Bismarck, causing the subsequent catastrophic explosion. Recent research by submersible craft suggests that the initial explosion could have been in the aft 4″ magazine, followed by the aft 15″ magazine and that it may also have spread to the forward 15″ magazines via the starboard side ammunition passage.
Prince of Wales had to turn towards the German fleet to avoid hitting the wreckage left by the flagship and was hit a number of times by gunfire from both German ships. Still, her own gunfire had caused damage to the Bismarck. The British battleship turned away, laying smoke, her aft turret firing briefly under local control. She had received 7 hits (3 of them from Prinz Eugen) and mechanical failures had left her with all but one of her main guns out of action. Bismarck and Prinz Eugen were forced into emergency manoeuvres when they believed they had detected the sounds of torpedoes and then by the appearance of a Sunderland flying-boat. Although Captain Lindemann wanted to chase Prince of Wales and "finish her off", Admiral Lütjens ignored his suggestions since delay risked the possibility of encountering more warships and prejudiced his main task of convoy destruction. Incredibly, in a battle lasting less than 20 minutes Bismarck, with her impressive consort punching above her weight, had destroyed one capital ship and forced another to turn away, something almost unknown in the Royal Navy and which was to cause the Admiralty to hold a special board of inquiry.
Faulty intelligence had led the Germans to believe that Prince of Wales was not yet ready for action, therefore reports from Bismarck referred to her as King George V, the first of that class, which had been active for some months.
Despite the jubilation onboard the Bismarck, the battleship was not safe. The British knew her position; her forward radar was out of action (a consequence of the skirmish with the British cruisers the previous day) and she had received three hits, one of which caused water to leak into and contaminate fuel oil in storage. From then on, she had to reduce speed to a maximum of 20 knots to conserve fuel. Lütjens eventually decided that he would have to head for the French coast (the dry-dock in St Nazaire) for repairs. The British continued to shadow her, the Prince of Wales having rendezvoused with Norfolk and Suffolk. At one stage Bismarck rounded briefly on her pursuers, in order to give Prinz Eugen the opportunity to detach and escape with the message: "Good hunting".
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