Sinking of HMS Hood, The

DESCRIPTION: "When HMS _Hood_ went down in the deep, That was the news that made most mothers weep." "They had a duty which they had to do," but still the British are sad. Many ships combined to "send Bismarck to hell." May the sailors sleep "in heavenly peace"
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1987 (Tawney-GreyFunnelLines-RoyalNavy)
KEYWORDS: navy death derivative
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
May 24, 1941 - Battle of the Denmark Strait. The German battleship Bismarck and the cruiser Prinz Eugen sink the HMS Hood
FOUND IN: Britain(England(West)) Canada
REFERENCES (2 citations):
Tawney-GreyFunnelLines-RoyalNavy, pp. 89-90, "The Sinking of HMS 'Hood'" (1 text, tune referenced)
ADDITIONAL: Andrew Norman, _HMS Hood: Pride of the Royal Navy_, Stackpole, 2001, pp. xi-xii, "Song of HMS Hood" (1 text)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "The Commissioning of HMS Hood" (subject of the Hood)
cf. "Silent Night" (tune)
NOTES [6764 words]: Tawney-GreyFunnelLines-RoyalNavy's is not the only song about the Hood that is said to be to the tune of "Silent Night." Norman, pp. xi-xii, has "Song of HMS Hood," which has a few similar lines but is not, to my mind, the same song. And I cannot for the life of me figure out how to sing Norman's text to "Silent Night," although there are some "Silent Night"-related words at the end. I suspect Norman picked up his "Hood" song somewhere, and understood there to be a song about the Hood sung to "Silent Night," and assumed they were the same. Nonetheless I've lumped them here because neither is widely known and they are about the same event.
The story of the Hood began before World War I, when Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany decided he wanted a big, fancy navy. The British, who were committed to having the world's best and strongest fleet, could not allow that. The result was the world's first real arms race, with Britain and Germany striving both to build better ships and to build more of them.
It is arguable that the Germans won the quality race; the British managed two tremendous breakthroughs (the Dreadnought of 1905 and the Queen Elizabeth class of a decade later -- the former the first "all big gun" battleship; the latter the first fast battleships and the first vessels to mount eight 15" guns). The British also invented the battlecruiser (a ship with heavy guns but light armor that allowed them to be much faster than properly-armored battleships) -- but British battlecruisers proved to be highly combustible. Three were lost at the Battle of Jutland (May 31-June 1, 1916), all to magazine explosions with the loss of almost all hands; the Germans lost only one, and it took two dozen hits from heavy guns to do her in (Beekman, p. 107).
The loss of those British battlecruisers would affect the design of the Hood significantly.
To this day, there is disagreement over whether to call Hood a battlecruiser or a fast battleship (Preston, p. 96; Worth, pp. 91-92) -- a question with a good deal of history behind it. She was initially ordered as a battle cruiser before Jutland -- but when the British Navy suffered the loss of those three battle cruisers, they decided it was time for a rethink. "After Jutland the weight of [the Hood's] armour was increased, but she still remained a battle-cruiser in conception, even though her armouring was now nearly as heavy as that of a contemporary battleship" (Bradford, p. 22). She was up-armored, but not redesigned from scratch; "the lessons which [Jutland] should have taught had not been completely incorporated into her design" (Bradford, p. 28) -- e.g., although she had a lot of armor, some of it was inefficiently allocated (Preston, p. 97). There simply hadn't been time to get it right if she were to be finished quickly. The irony was that she was not in fact to be involved in the Great War.
"HMS Hood was the largest, heaviest, and fastest armored warship in the world, at 860 feet long, with a beam of 104 feet, a draught of 32½ feet, a displacement of 44,600 tons, and a maximum speed of 32 knots.... Building of Hood began on September 1, 1916, at John Brown and Company's shipyard on Clydebank. [This is actually the date construction was restarted; Norman, p. 134, Preston, p. 96, and others say she was laid down starting May 31, but construction was immediately halted to assess the effects of Jutland.] She was launched two years later, on August 22, 1918, by Lady Hood, widow of Rear Admiral Horace Lambert Hood, who lost his life at the Battle of Jutland in his ship HMS Invincible. Over the following nineteen months, Hood was fitted out and, on March 29, 1920, was finally commissioned. Her original cost was £6,025,000" (Norman, p. 3).
Smith, p. 64, writes, "The 'Mighty 'ood' was Queen of the seas for 20 years and symbolic of everything that was best in the Royal Navy of the 'between war' period. She was perhaps one of the best loved warships of any era and certainly among the most beautiful warships to have graced the world's oceans.... [I]n the final count the greatest of British battle cruisers was to follow the Invincible, the first, in the same split-second annihilation."
Her modified, neither-fish-nor-fowl design might have mattered less if battleship-building had continued after World War I, but it did not. Her three sisters were all canceled when the British realized that the Germans had stopped working on certain of their big ships (Hoyt, p. 4), and there was little need for heavy ships after the war, when the German fleet was taken away from them. Then the Washington Naval Conference of 1920 resulted in agreements that restricted the building of future ships. The United States and Japan were allocated no additional battleships at all. Britain was allowed to scrap many old ships and build two replacements, Nelson and Rodney, completed 1927, but their tonnage was reduced by the conference (Worth, pp. 92-93; Ballard, p. 85, repeats an old joke that called the two the "Cherry Tree" class because they had been "cut down by Washington"). They had more and bigger guns than Hood, but they were much slower. So Hood alone, the biggest fast ship the British had, was called upon to show the flag all over the world. Which meant that she never had time for a major update (Worth, p. 92). "Magnificent she surely was, but time does not stand still, and over the long period of peace design moved on and no government was willing to pay for her to be kept in line. Finally, with war clearly imminent the money was voted for extra protection and modern anti-aircraft armament, but it was then too late" (Smith, pp. 64-65).
"Her obvious deficiencies prompted criticism -- outspoken, repeated, and blunt -- within the Admiralty. The rest of the world, though, took no notice. Between the wars, Hood reigned over the seas, revered as the most powerful warship afloat, the symbol of British naval might. Of course, she wasn't the most powerful; she was merely the heaviest.... So, overweight and sloshingly wet, Hood steamed unchanged into World War II, vulnerable according to standards that had been inadequate twenty years earlier" (Worth, p. 92). "In 1938 [the Director of Naval Construction] warned that HMS Hood was in poor mechanical condition and that her thin deck armour made her 'unfit for front line service' [but concluded that funding would not be available to upgrade her].... In an uncannily accurate prophecy he warned 'We may have eternal cause for regret'" (Preston, p. 99). She was "wet" indeed; she rode so low in the water that the seas often rolled over her stern in storms or when she steamed at high speed (which interfered with her gunnery as well as her handling). Her refits added so much topweight that "the ship became like a half-tide rock" (Bradford, p. 104); the waves not only swept her quarterdeck but sometimes her upper decks! By 1940, her top speed had fallen to about 28 knots -- a loss of three or four knots from her speed at launch (or more, if Hoyt, p. 46, is right in saying that she was only able to make 25 knots in 1939!). Almost all un-modernized ships lost speed, but her slightly older contemporaries the Queen Elizabeths had lost only about a knot and a half; Hood had suffered more than most.
And, of course, she paid for it.
World War II placed even stronger demands on the British navy than had World War I. The Hood was busy in the winter of 1939-1940, when both Nelson and Rodney were undergoing work, leaving Hood as the heaviest unit in the Royal Navy, though she had little contact with the enemy in that time (Hoyt, pp. 46-47). In hindsight, that probably would have been a good time to put her in dock as well, because the German navy still had no heavy ships, and Italy hadn't joined the war, plus the French fleet was available to help the British. As it was, Hood missed the invasion of Norway for a minor refit, although some of her hands were sent to Norway as part of the desperate defense of the country (Hoyt, pp. 51-63). When she came back into service, her next job was the disarmament of the French navy at Oran, which resulted in the British firing on the French vessels in the port (Hoyt, pp. 79-80). It was her first real sea battle, but it wasn't much of a test of her capabilities, since the French weren't ready to fight.
On February 15, 1941, Ralph Kerr took command of the ship -- the last captain in her long history (Hoyt, p. 101). This during a period when she rarely saw the enemy -- many alarums and excursions, but not much fighting.
Meanwhile, her conqueror was preparing for her first voyage.
After World War I, the German navy seemed to be out of business. Germany was forbidden to have large ships, submarines, or naval aviation. But in 1935 Britain decided to set all that aside -- the Anglo-German naval accord granted the Germans the right to have 35% of the British surface ships, and, incredibly, 45% of the submarines (Worth, p. 40). The Germans had already tried to sneak around the restrictions on them with the so-called "pocket battleships" (for which see "The Sinking of the Graf Spee"; also "The Jervis Bay") and by making submarines for other countries to test; after the agreement, they started building genuine capital ships -- first the battle cruisers/light battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, then the bigger Bismarck and Tirpitz.
The Germans had bigger plans. Hitler had told Grand Admiral Raeder, the naval commander-in-chief, that there would be no war with Britain before 1946, so Raeder came up with a plan to build up to a world class fleet in that year (Becker, pp. 32-34). Only to have the war arrive ahead of schedule. None of the big ships were ready. And in 1940, there was the invasion of Norway. The Germans lost only one big ship, the heavy cruiser Blücher (Becker, pp. 110-113), but almost everything else was damaged enough to be put out of action for a time. When Bismarck was completed, she was the leading ship of a fleet that had no chance of defeating the British in a straight-up battle. There never had been, and probably never would be, such a time -- and Raeder knew it.
But he also had an answer: Commerce warfare. Sending out his big ships on raids into the Atlantic and elsewhere, to starve the British. This was, of course, also the purpose of the U-boat war, but the surface ships gave him another way. The Graf Spee had been doing this at the very start of the war, and the Admiral Scheer did it in 1940 (Zetterling/Tamelander, pp. 42fff.; for part of this voyage, see "The Jervis Bay"). The Scharnhorst and Gneisenau also engaged in "cruiser warfare." In spring 1941, it was the Bismarck's turn.
There was "extraordinary admiration" for the Bismarck (Preston, p. 148); it is widely stated that the Bismarck was the strongest ship in the world -- e.g. Hoyt, p. 37, calls her the "most powerful warship afloat" and von der Porten, p. 146, calls her "the greatest warship in the world." This is understandable, because von der Porten wants to glorify the Germans and Hoyt wants to justify the loss of the Hood -- but it's not true. The Bismarck had eight 15" guns -- equivalent to the armament of Hood, and to the five British Queen Elizabeths and the five Revenge class, although Bismarck's guns were newer and more destructive than the British 15" weapons. Nonetheless, the British had Nelson and Rodney with nine 16" guns; they certainly outgunned Bismarck; it's just that they were much slower The Japanese had Nagato and Mutsu, with eight 16" guns (Worth, p. 179). And the Americans had the Colorado, Maryland, and West Virginia, also with eight 16" guns (Worth, p. 292). Indeed, Germany's ally Italy was bringing out the Littorio class, with nine 15" guns and a top speed effectively the same as the Bismarck's, though their armor was lighter (Worth, p. 144).
Thus, at the time the Bismarck was completed, there were seven ships in the world with heavier artillery, and three more with guns of the same caliber and more of them, and fully ten with a weight of guns equal to Bismarck. But none of the ships with heavier guns could hit 30 knots, and only the Japanese could hit 25. Thus Bismarck, it could plausibly be argued, was the most effective ship in the world at the time of her commissioning -- until the American North Carolina class was finished a few months later, with nine 16" guns and a speed of 28 knots (Worth, p. 294), followed by the South Dakota and Iowa classes, which were better still; also, the Japanese by this time were finishing off the Yamato class, with nine 18" guns. Until the Iowas were finished, the Bismarck could perhaps have outrun what she could not outfight, but she was never the strongest battleship afloat.
Plus she was an inefficient design (her 45,000+ tonnes carried less armament than the Americans managed on 35,000 in North Carolina), with poor fuel efficiency (Worth, p. 48) and obsolescent armor placement (Worth, p. 47), requiring far too many tonnes and men for her attack capability (she had a crew of over 2000; Preston, p. 151; Hood, which had the same main armament and about the same speed, had a crew of less than 1500). Frankly, Bismarck and Tirpitz were too much like World War I ships (in fact, they were based on a World War I design, the Bayern; Preston, p. 148). But the British also had a fleet of World War I battleships. Against the Americans or Japanese, the Bismarck might have had a lot of trouble. But she was better than anything the British had in 1941.
Worth, p. 48, suggests that the Bismarck class "may be the most over-rated warships of all time," and I incline to agree. For ships designed in the 1930s, her anti-aircraft armament was poor, too. Bismarck's only real virtue was the excellent buoyancy that kept her afloat after dozens of heavy shell hits at point-blank range. (Worth, p. 47, makes an interesting observation: all battleships by this time were built on the "citadel" concept: extremely heavy armor and subdivision around part of the ship -- the citadel being so large and so strong that even if the rest of the ship was blown to smithereens, the citadel could stay afloat and keep fighting. Bismarck took an amazing amount of punishment before sinking; her citadel may indeed have been stronger than anything except perhaps Yamato's. But the Bismarck's citadel was built low in the hull, below the main deck! This means that everything useful about her -- her guns and gunnery controls, her communications, her ability to maneuver -- were *outside* the citadel. In her final battle, the British found it almost impossible to sink her -- but found it almost trivially easy to silence her guns and render her uninhabitable. The Germans had built an unsinkable bubble of air and camoflaged it as a battleship.)
But if Bismarck was over-rated, so was Hood, which had gone two decades without a major update and was now "wet," much slower than her design speed, overweight, and full of minor defects.
"Operation Rheinübung" was an ambitious plan by the Germans -- sending out a brand-new battleship, the first of its type, on a major raiding cruise on her shakedown voyage, accompanied only by a cruiser that was itself new and that came from a class infamous for its engine problems -- Whitley, p. 59, calls the engines of the Hipper/Prinz Eugen class "fragile and uneconomic"; Worth, p. 53, labels their engines "extremely troublesome" and says that it cut their range (which was supposed to be about 6500 miles) to about 5000 miles. That's only a third of the range of the pocket battleships, and much less than Bismarck.
The raid ended up being delayed slightly; Prinz Eugen hit a mine on April 24, forcing a few weeks' delay in the operation (Hoyt, p. 107). Admiral Günther Lütjens, in command of the force, hoped that the delay would mean he would be allowed another ship, either the Scharnhorst or the Bismarck's nearly-ready sister Tirpitz, but they weren't available and Admiral Raeder didn't want to wait (Hoyt, pp. 107-108). The ships would sail on May 18, 1941 (Hoyt, p. 108). They initially had several destroyers for company, but the smaller ships soon turned back; they didn't carry enough fuel to go on long raids (Hoyt, p. 118).
The two ships were ordered to avoid fighting if they could: the orders to Admiral Lütjens included the instructions, "the primary objective is the destruction of the enemy's carrying capacity. Enemy warships will be engaged only in furtherance of this objective, and provided such engagement can take place without excessive risk" (Becker, p. 219). But, of course, it was hard to avoid fighting when most of the Royal Navy was searching for them!
The hunting wasn't easy. Lütjens and his force were starting from Norway. They had been spotted by British aircraft there, and a British aircraft later spotted that she had left (Norman, p. 55), so the British knew she was on her way to the Atlantic. But they did not know where she was, and there were many paths toward the convoy routes (Bradford, p. 149, counts five, and that doesn't even count the English Channel; there is a good map on p.116 of Zetterling/Tamelander). The English channel was surely out, and so was the passage between the Shetlands and the Scottish coast; they were too close to British air patrol routes. There was a 160 mile wide passage between the Shetlands and the Faroes, and a 250 mile wide passage between the Faroes and Iceland; the latter was a strong possibility, and the former might be safe if the weather made plane flights difficult. Finally, there was the Denmark Strait between Iceland and Greenland. The Greenland ice blocked one side, and there were known British minefields as well (Hood, in fact, had escorted some of the minelayers involved; Hoyt, p. 98), so it was only a few dozen miles wife, but it had the advantage of being far from British bases and of being very stormy, making it hard to spot ships there. Lütjens had gone that way before, when he had taken the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau on a raid in January-March (see map on p. 65 of Zetterling/Tamelander).
Although the operation took place in May, these was much bad weather, hampering both sides' air operations. The Germans found it hard to learn when British ships left Scapa Flow, so they didn't know where the British ships might be. But it was far worse for the British, who had to find the Bismarck and couldn't fly many search missions. Since there was no telling which course Lütjens might take, the British had no choice but to try to cover all of them. Admiral John Tovey, commander of the home fleet, deployed the heavy ships at his command -- the Hood, the new battleship King George V (Tovey's flagship), the so-new-it-was-barely-functional battleship Prince of Wales, the old battlecruiser Repulse, and the new carrier Victorious -- for action in the North Atlantic, and sent cruisers to watch the main exit points from the north. The light cruisers Birmingham, Manchester, and Arethusa were sent to cover the Iceland/Faeroes waters; the heavy cruisers Norfolk and Suffolk, under Rear Admiral Frederick Wake-Walker, were assigned to the Denmark Strait (again see the map on p. 116 of Zetterling/Tamelander).
(Nitpicky footnote: it is often said that Suffolk and Norfolk were sister ships. They were not. The Suffolk was a member of the Kent class of 1924, the Norfolk, along with the Dorsetshire, of which more below, formed the Norfolk class of 1927; Whitley, pp. 83, 90. The Kents and the Norfolks had identical armaments of eight 8" guns, and almost the same dimensions, and all had three funnels, with the middle one larger than the others, which is why they and certain other ships are sometimes collectively referred to as the "County" class, but Norfolk was the lighter ship and, as a result, almost a knot faster than Suffolk -- the Suffolk was sometimes hard-pressed to keep up with the Bismarck. The "Counties" weren't a class; they were a type -- cruisers with eight 8" guns and speeds of 31-33 knots.)
Loosely speaking, Tovey set up two battle groups: Admiral Lancelot Holland, with the Hood and Prince of Wales, sailed first (Hoyt, pp. 116-117) and was located further west, to cover the Denmark Strait; Tovey, with the remaining large ships and several cruisers, stayed close to Scapa Flow, to cover the routes around the Faroes. Either could reinforce the other, given time, but it was clear who was primarily responsible for each passage. Holland's group had more gun power (although it lacked a carrier), but it was not very experienced. Captain Kerr, as we saw, was new to the Hood; Captain Leach of the Prince of Wales was of course new in his job -- and Admiral Holland was also new to his post; he had replaced Admiral Whitworth less than two weeks before, on May 11, and his previous experience had been with cruisers, not battleships (Norman, p. 80). Many of the Hood's crew were also new (Hoyt, p. 109). If he had had his way, Tovey would probably have preferred that his ships, not Holland's, found the Bismarck first.
It was not to be. On Friday, May 23, at 7:22 p.m., watchman Newell of the Suffolk sighted the German ships. For the first time, the British knew where to go.
Holland's initial plan appears to have been good; he was going to catch the Germans in such a way that the light would make it easy to see them, but they would find it hard to see him (Norman, p. 83). Unfortunately, helped by snow that interfered with radar (Bradford, p. 172), the Germans very briefly shook off their pursuing cruisers (for less than three hours, from 12:15 a.m. to 2:47 a.m.; Norman, pp. 84-85), and Holland, to make sure they did not escape, changed course before the Suffolk found them again, and Holland (who very likely expected the Germans to realize that they were not being tracked and therefore to change course; Bradford, p. 173) found himself out of position. His force could still intercept -- but no longer was he in his ideal position. He had hoped to spot the Germans around 1:45 a.m. Instead, the British heavy ships got close enough to spot them at 5:37 (Norman, p. 85).
Making things even harder for Holland's ships, they had to race forward as fast as they could to get to the range Holland wanted, meaning that only their forward turrets could fire until the British ships reached their preferred position to straighten up and fire full broadsides. (We don't know why Holland made his mad charge, but he was probably worried about the Hood's thin deck armor, wanting to get close enough that the Bismarck could not hit him with a plunging shell that could penetrate the armor; he was less worried about shells hitting the side of the ship, where the Hood was well-protected; von der Porten, p. 154)
In addition to having his T crossed, Holland made another mistake: He ordered his ships to fire on the "lead" German ship, which was the Prinz Eugen, not the Bismarck. (The two had similar silhouettes, although obviously the Bismarck was much larger.) The crew of Prince of Wales knew better, and Captain Leach ordered them to fire on Bismarck despite Holland's order, but Hood opened fire on the wrong ship before correcting its aim. Thus Hood missed its chance to hurt her enemy quickly (Becker, pp. 221-222; Norman, p. 92).
Holland, who had insisted on radio silence to make sure the Germans didn't know he was coming, also neglected to tell Wake-Walker's cruisers to join in the fight (no, they probably couldn't hurt Bismarck, but they could at least keep Prinz Eugen occupied. Given that the first hit on Hood was probably from Prinz Eugen -- Becker, p. 222 -- it might have mattered.) The first Wake-Walker knew of Holland's presence was when Holland sent a signal that he had spotted the enemy (Norman, p. 76). Holland didn't involve his destroyers in the action, either (Norman, p. 81; Hoyt, p. 129, says that they could not keep up in the heavy seas and Holland decided to go on without them); it was just Hood and Prince of Wales against Bismark and Prinz Eugen. It is also possible that Holland's decision to keep his two ships close together made it easier for the Germans to shift fire from Hood to Prince of Wales, allowing Bismarck to do more damage (von der Porten, p. 155).
The exact timing is hard to know, but Hood suffered a hit very early on, while still steaming straight toward Bismarck, and she caught fire as a result (Norman, p. 92).
About six minutes into the battle, Holland ordered his ships to turn, so that they could open with their full broadsides (Zetterling/Tamelander, p. 171). Norman, p. 94, describes what came next: "Within seven minutes, Hood had fired twelve four-shell salvos, Prince of Wales nine five-shell salvos, and Bismarck had just fired her fifth four-shell salvo. Now, as Hood turned, the guns of her X turret roared out, but for some reason, those of Y turret remained silent. Then [crewman Ted] Briggs saw a blinding flash sweep around the outside of the compass platform, and its occupants were once again thrown off their feet. The ship jarred, then slowly listed to starboard. Through the voice-pipe, the helmsman reported, 'Steering's gone, sir," to which Captain Kerr calmly replied, 'Very good. Change over to emergency steering.' Hood righted herself, but then began to list alarmingly to port.
"As she continued to list, those on the compass platform realized that she was not going to come back.... [Briggs] looked back to see the vice admiral slumped in his chair with a look of total dejection."
As well he might. Within seconds, the explosion had destroyed Hood (Becker, p. 222). Of the 1419 officers and men aboard, only three -were rescued: Midshipman William Dundas, signalman Ted Briggs, both of whom were on the compass platform with Holland and his staff, and Able Seaman Robert E. Tilburn, who was stationed by one of the antiaircraft guns (Norman, pp. 95-97. All were quite young -- between 18 and 20 years old -- which might explain how they survived the sinking and the time in the cold water until they could assemble the wreckage they were clinging to. Dundas, as senior, set them to singing songs such as "Roll Out the Barrel" while they hoped for rescue. They were eventually found by the destroyer Electra (Norman, p. 99).
(In an ironic footnote, the Electra was one of the ships sent to rescue survivors of the Prince of Wales and the Repulse when the Japanese sank them on December 10, 1941. But she herself was lost at the Battle of the Java Sea two and a half months later.)
Von der Porten, p. 155, suggests that "Admiral Holland had fought a very poor battle, and it was Captain Leach's insubordination that saved it from being completely futile." This is slightly unfair, since Admiral Holland's plan were disrupted by the cruisers' inability to track Bismark, but certainly the Hood had accomplished very little except to get sunk, and Holland's plan turned out to make things easier for the Germans.
Most books about the Bismarck and the Hood devote at least as much time to what happened to Bismarck after she sank Hood as to what came before, but this song is about Hood, so I will try to be a little more brief. The loss of Hood did not immediately end the Battle of the Denmark Strait; Prince of Wales was still in action, though she had to do a rapid dance to dodge the wreck of Hood (Norman, p. 101, who suggests that the turn affected her guns' accuracy). She of course could not stay to look for survivors; she had to fight.
She fought pretty hard, considering that she was really not ready for combat; she hit Bismarck twice, plus a shell that passed through a boat without igniting and did no real damage (Zetterling/Tamelander, p. 185). In return she was hit perhaps nine times (Becker, p. 223), but none of them vital, although they did kill most of the bridge crew and slowed her a little. What took Prince of Wales out of the fight was her own mechanical troubles; one by one, her guns went out of service, until she was no longer an effective ship. Captain Leach ordered her to break off the fight at least until she could get her guns un-jammed (Norman, p. 102). And Bismarck let her do so; no one knows why, but the guess is that Lütjens felt it was his task to continue commerce-raiding (Becker, p. 224). Admiral Wake-Walker ordered Prince of Wales to stay with him, to help him track the Germans and give him some protection, but she would not initiate another battle.
It looked like a lopsided win for the Germans, but they hadn't had it entirely their own way. One of the British hits had penetrated one of Bismarck's fuel tanks. Between contamination of the fuel and the fact that other fuel couldn't be pumped, her range was dramatically decreased -- and she had not been fully fueled before she left Norway. And she was leaking oil, which could be spotted, and the water she had taken on reduced her speed. She might have sunk Britain's most famous ship, and her guns were entirely intact, but her seakeeping had been significantly reduced. Admiral Lütjens decided it was time to head back to base (Bradford, p. 188 -- although he chose to head for France, which had repair facilities, not Norway, which didn't). And the British still had Norfolk, Suffolk, and Prince of Wales trailing her; if the British could get another battleship into play, they might yet sink her. Or maybe an aircraft carrier could hurt her.
One tried; the Victorious, which was as new as Prince of Wales and had a very inexperienced set of airmen, launched a flight of Swordfish torpedo planes. One apparently managed a hit on the Bismarck, but it hit her squarely in the armor plate and didn't even slow her down, though it did result in the first fatality she had suffered (Bradford, p. 190).
Admiral Lütjens then managed to throw off his pursuers; by a tricky little maneuver, he first cut loose the Prinz Eugen to cruise on her own, and later freed the Bismarck of her tails. If she could make it to France without being spotted, she could still be repaired and do much more damage. And although the British managed a radio fix on his location, the Admiralty misinterpreted the data, and the British ships all went the wrong ways. This left the path to Brest wide open even as it caused the British to waste a lot of fuel they desperately needed (the constant story of the hunt for the Bismarck was of British ships running short of fuel; both Prince of Wales and Repulse had to give up the hunt at this time for this reason; Zetterling/Tamelander, p. 214. It is ironic that the Germans, with such a small fleet, still managed to have refueling ships in the Atlantic, but the British had none).
When a Catalina flying boat finally spotted Bismarck (Bradford, p. 192; Zetterling/Tamelander, pp. 229-232; Taylor, pp. 100-101), she was far away from any ship that could safely fight her (von der Porten, p. 160).
Except one. The Admiralty had called out every available ship, including pulling the battleships Ramillies and Revenge away from their convoys. Not that they mattered; the "R" class were the dregs of the British battleship force, built during World War I, with eight 15" guns but only 21.5 knots of speed (Worth, pp. 90-91); had they somehow found the Bismarck, she would simply have sailed around them. The Rodney, slightly newer, slightly faster, much better armed, although in need of a refit, was also summoned (Zetterling/Tamelander, pp. 182-183). (For some reason, no one seems to have considered trying submarines, of which Britain had dozens and which accomplished very little during the war years.) Closer, and much faster, was Force H, normally based in Gibraltar and responsible for Africa and the western Mediterranean, which was ordered into the Atlantic to try to catch Bismarck. And although the only big-gun ship in the force was the tired old battlecruiser Renown, which was clearly not strong enough to fight the Bismarck (Bradford, p. 193; according to Zetterling/Tamelander, p. 235, the commander of Force H, Admiral Somerville, was ordered not to let the Renown engage), Force H had an aircraft carrier, the Ark Royal, with an air group both larger and better-trained than Victorious. Once again the British had a carrier that might slow Bismarck down down.
What her pilots almost did was sink the British light cruiser Sheffield, which Admiral Somerville had been ahead of Force H to shadow the Bismarck; no one had told the pilots that there was a British ship along their path (Taylor, p. p. 104; Zetterling/Tamelander, p. 235; apparently the message was sent to Ark Royal at low priority), so they all went after their own cruiser. Fortunately for all involved, the Swordfishs' torpedoes had been armed with magnetic firing pistols, which malfunctioned in the heavy seas (von der Porten, p. 162; Taylor, p. 106). So Sheffield survived undamaged, and the British realized they needed to use standard contact pistols, and the Swordfish flew another horribly difficult mission -- and, this time, were rewarded with a hit on Bismarck's rudder. (There may have been a second hit, on her armor belt -- Bradford, p. 196 -- but if there was, her armor again saved her; it was the hit on her rudder that mattered.) She was almost in reach of German air cover, but not quite, and now she was stuck. Her rudder was jammed, sending her around in slow, somewhat irregular circles, and she could not steer on her propellers. A flotilla of destroyers led by Captain Philip Vian harassed her all night; all their torpedoes missed -- the erratic movements of the rudders were good for something after all! -- but they kept everyone awake on board (von der Porten, p. 163) and made it hard to do any repairs because of the violent maneuvering (Zetterling/Tamelander, p. 254). VIan's ships also fired starshells to help other ships identify and find the Bismarck (Zetterling/Tamelander, p. 255). Most of Vian's destroyers suffered at least some damage at the battleship's hands, but all survived. And all Bismarck could do was steam in circles and wait for the end.
That end was supplied by King George V and the old Rodney (The Norfolk too had come up, though she probably didn't do much damage. The heavy cruiser Dorsetshire, which like Rodney had broken away from a convoy she was escorting, also arrived during the battle.) They came up on the Bismarck and pounded her into pulp -- the guns which had done so well against Hood seemed to have lost their ability to hit anything, probably because the ballistic computer was getting bad data from the broken steering mechanisms (Zetterling/Tamelander, p. 268). The worst damage to Rodney, e.g., came from the firing of her own guns! The Bismarck was soon an absolute wreck, although somehow she refused to sink. Admiral Lütjens was killed. It was also reported that Captain Lindemann was dead, but this was apparently retracted (Zetterling/Tamelander, p. 273, and Taylor, pp. 120-121 and Zetterling/Tamelander p. 282 describe him dramatically going down with the ship); her second-in-command, Commander Oels, finally ordered her scuttled and abandoned (Zetterling/Tamelander, p. 274). Even so, it took torpedoes from the cruiser Dorsetshire (the last British ship to have any) to finish her off (Bradford, pp. 197-198; Taylor, p. 120; Zetterling/Tamelander, p. 280). The British rescued about 110 men, but about 95% of her crew died, either on the ship or, often, in the water. The British had tried for a rescue, but had to cut it short when they thought they saw a submarine (Zetterling/Tamelander, pp. 284-285).
Most of the British ships then had to crawl home at low speed -- Tovey and King George V, e.g., didn't even have fuel to stick around and watch Bismarck sink (von der Porten, p. 165). She went down at 10:40 a.m. on May 27 (Norman, p. 110).
The Prinz Eugen fueled at a tanker, but was unable to go raiding because of engine problems (Taylor, p. 123), Despite this, she survived and made it to Brest on June 1 (Becker, p. 228) -- indeed, she survived the war, despite a lot of damage along the way, to be expended in a nuclear weapons test (von der Porten, p. 158) -- but doesn't seem to have accomplished much at this time or thereafter. And the British, after this, started rounding up the tankers and supply ships that had made all these German raids possible (von der Porten, p. 165; Zetterling/Tamelander, p. 294, says that this was possible because they cracked the German naval code). Without those ships, the German navy couldn't go raiding even if Hitler had allowed it, which he didn't.
That left only the question of what, exactly, had happened to Hood. Something had blown up, but what? A Board of Enquiry was soon formed, but it wasn't particularly inquisitive -- of the three survivors, it called only Midshipman Dundas. It nonetheless concluded that the cause was a magazine explosion (Norman, p. 113). The Director of Naval Construction counter-proposed that some of her torpedoes had cooked up (Norman, pp. 113-114). This conflict caused a second Board to be formed, which took much more testimony (Norman, p. 114) but could only conclude again that a magazine had exploded; they did not know which one, although they suggested it was that of her 4" secondary weapons (Norman, p. 115). Nor could they determine where the fatal shell had hit (Norman, p. 127). Norman lists many other possibilities on the following pages, but none of them is so convincing as to remove all doubts. His own proposal, on pp. 141-146, is that a shell went down one of Hood's funnels and set her fuel supply alight. Bradford, p. 208, thinks a German shell exploded her aft 15" magazine -- though the calculation he presents for the ability to hit the magazine appears to ignore the effects of air resistance.
To be fair, reliable information about what happened was thin and contradictory. According to Zetterling/Tamelander, p. 171, "Despite the fact that many thousand men fought in the battle, only a few of them actually saw the explosion and all of them experienced it differently." A curiosity is that all the observers agree that there was very little if any sound -- certainly no sound of an explosion (Zetterling/Tamelander, p. 172).
The wreck of the Hood was found in July 2001 (Preston, p. 101. The wreck of the Bismarck had been found twelve years earlier by Robert D. Ballard, who made it the subject of his book The Discovery of the Bismarck, which has many useful drawings and maps but which struck me as a little too casual to be cited in this article). The wreck showed pretty clearly that Hood did suffer a magazine explosion -- she was in three pieces -- but it still doesn't make it clear what caused it; very little exploration was done because it was a war grave site. Ted Briggs, who was still alive in 2001, was allowed to drop a plaque on the wreck site commemorating the dead at a memorial held on July 26, 2001 (Norman, p. 150).
There aren't many surviving folk songs about the Royal Navy's fights in World War II, but it's not surprising that there is one about the Hood. "To the British, the loss of the Hood was more than the loss of a warship, it was the loss of a symbol for the nation. She had been bigger, faster, and better armed than most warships. Suddenly she no longer existed.... Just as most Englishmen remembered what they were doing the day Britain declared war on Germany so many remembered what they were doing when they were told that the Hood had blown up" (Zetterling/Tamelander, p. 181).
The song as printed by Tawney doesn't contain many details, but what there are are accurate. The Hood was sunk in May. Six ships are listed as being part of the kill: King George the Fifth, Prince of Wales, Norfolk, Suffolk, Dorsetshire, Rodney. King George the Fifth, Rodney, Norfolk, and Dorsetshire were indeed the ships present at the kill, and she would never have been sunk had not Suffolk tracked her, and probably not without the damage done by Prince of Wales. Note, however, that the song omits the absolutely vital damage done by the aircraft from Ark Royal, and the Sheffield's role in guiding them. This hints that the song was written very early, before the full story had been discovered or publicized. - RBW
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