by Andrey Bulkin
[REGNUM] 85 years ago, in the early morning of May 24, 1941, one of the most dramatic naval battles of World War II took place in the icy waters between Iceland and Greenland.
One of the symbols of British naval power, the battlecruiser HMS Hood, engaged in an artillery duel with the newest German battleship, the Bismarck. The engagement, which lasted less than 10 minutes, ended with a massive explosion and the instantaneous destruction of the Hood.
However, this success by the Kriegsmarine—the German Navy—launched the hunt for the Bismarck, which ultimately led to its destruction. As a result, a resounding tactical victory turned into a serious defeat for the Third Reich.
The cruiser HMS Hood, commissioned in 1920, remained one of the symbols of the British Empire's greatness for 20 years. Officially classified as a battlecruiser, it was in fact closer to a higher class of ship—a fast battleship.
But it also had an Achilles' heel: despite a series of upgrades, Hood by the early 1940s retained two design features from the 1920s: large open spaces and inadequate deck protection.
The eight 381mm main battery guns were a formidable force. However, outdated fire control systems and limited radar range reduced the effectiveness of the main battery's fire at long ranges.
The battleship Bismarck was much newer, launched in 1939, and embodied the achievements of German shipbuilding. While comparable in size to the Hood and carrying eight 380mm guns as its main armament, it had several significant advantages. High-quality heavy armor, modern optics, and precise fire control systems made it one of the most powerful ships of its time.
By the spring of 1941, Britain's situation was desperate: it found itself virtually alone in the face of Germany and its European allies. Vital supply lines carrying military equipment and food were under constant threat.
The commander-in-chief of the Kriegsmarine, Grand Admiral Erich Raeder, planned to launch a new attack on convoys in the North Atlantic.
Operation Rhine Exercise was conceived as a raid by the Bismarck and the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen. They were to be joined by the battlecruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau—the namesakes of the ships that harassed the British during World War I.
But the Bismarck needed boiler repairs, and the Prinz Eugen had been seriously damaged by a British torpedo in April 1941. Despite the objections of the division's commander, the experienced Admiral Günther Lütjens, who suggested waiting for the commissioning of the Tirpitz, the second Bismarck-class battleship, Raeder insisted on an immediate departure.
The operation went awry from the very beginning. Due to a burst hose during refueling, the Bismarck departed Gotenhafen (Gdynia in occupied Poland) 200 tons short of fuel. Then, in Bergen, Norway, Lütjens' ship, for unknown reasons, failed to replenish its supplies, even though the Prinz Eugen had fully fueled.
The stop in Norway was a necessary measure: on May 20, the force was spotted by the Swedish cruiser Gotland. The Germans feared that neutrals would immediately report this to London. The British did indeed receive the information—but through another means.
Aerial reconnaissance and reports from the Norwegian Resistance gave the Admiralty information about the composition of the Bismarck group.
Admiral John Tovey, commander of the Home Fleet, ordered the heavy cruisers Norfolk and Suffolk to begin patrolling the Denmark Strait—where London had predicted the Germans would be heading. Suffolk was equipped with a state-of-the-art all-round radar, making her indispensable for detecting the enemy in poor visibility.
New information came in on May 22, when a Maryland bomber made a daring flight from Hatston Air Force Base to Bergen and recorded the German squadron leaving its parking lot.
Fleet Commander Tovey sent a force under Vice-Admiral Lancelot Holland, who was on the Hood, to the Denmark Strait area.
Holland planned to employ a classic tactic: intercept the enemy by approaching from the west, so that the German ships would stand out clearly against the dawn sky. At the same time, he hoped that his heavy cruisers would engage the Prinz Eugen, allowing the Hood and the newest battleship, Prince of Wales, with ten 356mm guns, to concentrate their fire on the Bismarck. This plan was never communicated to the captains of the Norfolk and Suffolk, as radio silence was required.
BATTLE OF THE DENMARK STRAIT
On the evening of May 23, the Suffolk sighted a German squadron. Admiral Holland began maneuvering to close in, but the British force found itself in a disadvantageous position.
Instead of intercepting them, the British were forced to close with the Germans at acute angles, allowing them to fire only from their forward turrets. Holland knew that if Hood remained at long range, German shells would easily penetrate her thin decks.
Therefore, the commander took a risk, ordering them to rush at full speed towards the Bismarck in order to get closer, get out of the range of high-angle fire, and only then strike with all guns with direct fire.
When the range closed to 25,000 yards (almost 23 km), Hood began firing. And here the first critical mistake occurred. The British mistook the lead ship, Prinz Eugen, for Bismarck. However, Captain John Leach of Prince of Wales correctly identified the primary target and ordered his gunners to ignore the flagship's orders and fire on the other ship.
While the Hood continued to fire unsuccessfully at the German Prinz Eugen, the British Prince of Wales had already scored its first hit on the Bismarck's bow. The shell penetrated completely, causing a massive fuel leak, which would prove fatal to the entire German mission.
German Admiral Lütjens hesitated to give the order to open fire. Only when British shells began landing dangerously close did Prinz Eugen's commander, Ernst Lindemann, exclaim angrily, "I won't let my ship be blown to pieces right under my backside!" and the German guns began to speak.
Almost immediately, the Hood was hit by a shell from the Prinz Eugen. The shell struck the boat deck at the base of the mainmast, igniting a massive fire among the ammunition. Vice-Admiral Holland, unwilling to endanger the sailors responsible for the fire, ordered the fire to be left burning until all the ammunition had burned. The bridge crew took cover from the flying shrapnel.
The second hit from the Bismarck destroyed the fire control post, which practically deprived the Hood of centralized fire adjustment.
Realizing the desperate nature of the situation, Holland ordered a turn to bring the aft turrets into action. It was while he was executing this maneuver that the Bismarck's fifth salvo struck the Hood.
Captain John Leach of the Prince of Wales, observing the flagship, recalled: "Something struck the Hood forward of the mainmast... Between one and two seconds later, the Hood exploded. A very strong tongue of flame shot upward in the shape of a thin funnel, and almost instantly the whole ship from stem to stern was enveloped in smoke."
The explosion of the forward magazines was followed by an instantaneous detonation of the stern magazines, breaking the Hood in half.
Of the 1,418 crew members, only three were saved. They managed to climb onto small life rafts and were picked up three and a half hours later by the destroyer Electra.
Having lost her flagship, the Prince of Wales found herself under concentrated fire from the German ships. The battleship sustained seven hits, including a 380mm shell that struck the command bridge. The shell, passing through without exploding, killed almost all the personnel inside.
Given the numerous failures of the main caliber guns and the damage, Captain Leach made the only correct decision - to leave the battle under cover of a smoke screen.
MISTAKES AND LUCK
Admiral Lütjens was satisfied with the outcome of the battle. But he rejected the proposal of the Prinz Eugen's commander, Lindemann, to pursue the damaged Prince of Wales: three hits had already put the operation on the brink of failure. Flooding in the forward compartments, a list, and a fuel leak made it impossible to continue the free hunt.
Therefore, Lütjens decided to split up. On the evening of May 24, Bismarck appeared in the sights of the British cruisers, drawing their attention. This allowed the undamaged Prinz Eugen to escape unnoticed, but Bismarck became the target of a naval hunt.
The German battleship was unsuccessfully attacked by British torpedo planes, but as the ship evaded the torpedoes, the protective patches from the holes sustained in the previous battle came off. Water began leaking more rapidly into the holds.
On May 25, the Bismarck managed to escape its pursuers, but only briefly: the following day, it was spotted by the crew of a British flying boat. Air attacks continued, but the pilots mistakenly attacked their own ship. Only a miracle and faulty torpedo fuses saved it from the effects of friendly fire.
The second British attack was successful. Under cover of a hurricane of anti-aircraft fire and at extremely low altitude, the biplanes broke through to their target. Torpedoes struck the Bismarck's stern, jamming the battleship's rudders. All attempts by the German crew to correct the situation—from using divers to blowing up the rudder with explosive charges—failed.
The Bismarck, completely out of control and unable to maneuver, began to circle, turning toward the approaching British battleships. On the morning of May 27, a salvo from their guns raked the upper deck and destroyed the bridge. Admiral Lütjens and Captain Lindemann of the Bismarck perished there.
By half past nine in the morning, all of the German battleship's main battery turrets were disabled. It was no longer a battle, but a finishing-off operation. But even the blazing hulk of the battleship did not sink. The Bismarck's first officer gave the order to scuttle the ship. Demolition charges were planted in the engine room. Only then, after three torpedoes, did the Bismarck capsize and sink.
Of the 2,220 crew members, British ships rescued 110. Rescue efforts were interrupted by a false submarine periscope signal, leaving hundreds of people stranded in the icy water.
The tragic end of this hunt is documented in the report of the weather ship Sachsenwald, which was sent to search for survivors. Arriving at the designated area on the morning of May 28, the sailors followed a trail of oil and soon encountered a horrific scene: "Numerous bodies in life jackets, debris, and empty life jackets." Closer to midnight, lookouts spotted the three red signal stars of a rubber raft. A cry of "Are you Germans?" elicited a faint but jubilant "Hurrah" from the raft.
These were the last surviving members of the Bismarck's crew. According to the latest estimates, only 115 of the approximately 2,220 crew members survived.
Berlin was shocked by the loss of its newest battleship, and the Reich leadership banned major surface fleet operations in the Atlantic, relying instead on submarine warfare. The wrecks of both ships, discovered by deep-sea expeditions at the turn of the century, remain on the seabed to this day.
The Battle of the Denmark Strait and the subsequent hunt for the Bismarck demonstrated to the world that the era of battleships and gun-carrying cruisers was inexorably passing. The outcome of the operation was decided not so much by the main guns as by timely radar reconnaissance, radio intercepts, and—at the decisive moment—by carrier-based air strikes, which disabled the Bismarck and doomed her.