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Authors: Alistair MacLean
Tags: Fiction
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in Admiral Raederâs handâand now the time had come to play that trump.
The Bismarck was out. There could no longer be any question about it. First reported by reconnaissance as moving up the Kattegat on 20 May, she had been photographed in the company of a âHipperâ class cruiser, by a Spitfire pilot, in Grimstad fjord, just south of Bergen, on the early afternoon of the 21st; at 6.00 p.m. the following day, a Maryland bomber from the Hatston naval air base in the Orkneys, skimming low over the water in appalling flying conditions, flew over Grimstad andBergen and reported that the Bismarck was no longer there.
The Bismarck was out, and there could be no mistake where she was going. There were no Russian convoys to attackâRussia was not yet in the war. She could be racing only for the Atlantic, with the âHipperâ cruiserâlater identified as the Prinz Eugen âas her scout, there to savage and destroy our Atlantic convoys, our sole remaining lifelines to the outer world. The âHipperâ itself, only a 10,000 ton cruiser, had once fallen upon a convoy and sent seven ships to the bottom in less than an hour. What the Bismarck could do just did not bear contemplation.
The Bismarck had to be stopped, and stopped before she had broken loose into the Atlantic, and it was for this single, precise purpose of stopping her that Admiral Sir John Tovey, Commander-in-Chief of the Home Fleet, had so long and so doggedly held his capital ships based on Scapa. Now was the time for the Home Fleet to justify its existence.
Admiral Tovey, a master tactician who was to handle his ships impeccably during the ensuing four days, was under no illusions as to the grave difficulties confronting him, the tragic consequences were he to guess wrongly. The Bismarck could break south-west into the Atlantic anywhere between Scotland and Greenlandâa bleak, gale-ridden stretch of fully a thousand miles, withthe all-essential visibility more frequently than not at the mercy of driving rain, blanketing snow and great rolling fog banks.
He had to station two squadrons, with two battleships in each squadronâhe had no faith in the ability of any one ship of the line to cope with the Bismarckâ at strategically vital positions some hundreds of miles apart, the Hood and the Prince of Wales south of Iceland, and his own flagship, the King George V, the Repulse and the carrier Victorious west of the Faroes, where, he hoped, they would be most favourably situated to move in any direction to intercept the Bismarck.
But they couldnât move until they knew where the Bismarck was, and Admiral Tovey had had his watchdogs at sea for a long time now, waiting for this day to come. Between Iceland and the Faroes patrolled the cruisers Birmingham and Manchester, while up in the Denmark Strait the Suffolk and the Norfolk were coming to the end of a long long wait.
7.20 p.m., 23 May, 1941 and the Suffolk was steaming southwest down the narrow channel between the ice and the fog. If the Bismarck came by the Strait, Captain Ellis guessed, she would almost certainly come through that channel: the ice barred her way to the west, and, over on the east, no captain was going to take the risk of pushing his battleship through a dense fog at something like thirty knots, especially a fog that concealed a knownminefield forty miles in length. If she were to come at all, that was the way she would come.
And that was the way she did come. At 7.22 p.m. the excited cry of a sharp-eyed lookout had Captain Ellis and all the watchers on the bridge peering intently through their binoculars out over the starboard quarter, the reported bearing, and one brief glance was enough for Ellis to know that their long exhausting wait was indeed over. Even for men who had never seen it, it was almost impossible to mistake the vast bulk of the Bismarck anywhere. (Or so one would have thoughtâit was to prove tragically otherwise less
The Bismarck was out. There could no longer be any question about it. First reported by reconnaissance as moving up the Kattegat on 20 May, she had been photographed in the company of a âHipperâ class cruiser, by a Spitfire pilot, in Grimstad fjord, just south of Bergen, on the early afternoon of the 21st; at 6.00 p.m. the following day, a Maryland bomber from the Hatston naval air base in the Orkneys, skimming low over the water in appalling flying conditions, flew over Grimstad andBergen and reported that the Bismarck was no longer there.
The Bismarck was out, and there could be no mistake where she was going. There were no Russian convoys to attackâRussia was not yet in the war. She could be racing only for the Atlantic, with the âHipperâ cruiserâlater identified as the Prinz Eugen âas her scout, there to savage and destroy our Atlantic convoys, our sole remaining lifelines to the outer world. The âHipperâ itself, only a 10,000 ton cruiser, had once fallen upon a convoy and sent seven ships to the bottom in less than an hour. What the Bismarck could do just did not bear contemplation.
The Bismarck had to be stopped, and stopped before she had broken loose into the Atlantic, and it was for this single, precise purpose of stopping her that Admiral Sir John Tovey, Commander-in-Chief of the Home Fleet, had so long and so doggedly held his capital ships based on Scapa. Now was the time for the Home Fleet to justify its existence.
Admiral Tovey, a master tactician who was to handle his ships impeccably during the ensuing four days, was under no illusions as to the grave difficulties confronting him, the tragic consequences were he to guess wrongly. The Bismarck could break south-west into the Atlantic anywhere between Scotland and Greenlandâa bleak, gale-ridden stretch of fully a thousand miles, withthe all-essential visibility more frequently than not at the mercy of driving rain, blanketing snow and great rolling fog banks.
He had to station two squadrons, with two battleships in each squadronâhe had no faith in the ability of any one ship of the line to cope with the Bismarckâ at strategically vital positions some hundreds of miles apart, the Hood and the Prince of Wales south of Iceland, and his own flagship, the King George V, the Repulse and the carrier Victorious west of the Faroes, where, he hoped, they would be most favourably situated to move in any direction to intercept the Bismarck.
But they couldnât move until they knew where the Bismarck was, and Admiral Tovey had had his watchdogs at sea for a long time now, waiting for this day to come. Between Iceland and the Faroes patrolled the cruisers Birmingham and Manchester, while up in the Denmark Strait the Suffolk and the Norfolk were coming to the end of a long long wait.
7.20 p.m., 23 May, 1941 and the Suffolk was steaming southwest down the narrow channel between the ice and the fog. If the Bismarck came by the Strait, Captain Ellis guessed, she would almost certainly come through that channel: the ice barred her way to the west, and, over on the east, no captain was going to take the risk of pushing his battleship through a dense fog at something like thirty knots, especially a fog that concealed a knownminefield forty miles in length. If she were to come at all, that was the way she would come.
And that was the way she did come. At 7.22 p.m. the excited cry of a sharp-eyed lookout had Captain Ellis and all the watchers on the bridge peering intently through their binoculars out over the starboard quarter, the reported bearing, and one brief glance was enough for Ellis to know that their long exhausting wait was indeed over. Even for men who had never seen it, it was almost impossible to mistake the vast bulk of the Bismarck anywhere. (Or so one would have thoughtâit was to prove tragically otherwise less
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