Title: Pursuit: The Sinking of the Bismark
Author: Ludovic Kennedy
Length: 252 Pages
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Fontana Press
Published date: 1975
When I was a lad, my 1975 Victor annual had pictures of famous battleships. The book’s inner binding had pictures of famous ironclads. The German battleship, Tirpitz, stood out like a diamond, a water-borne castle, bristling with armour and technological sophistication. It reinforced in my mind the brilliance of the Nazi war machine compared to others such as the ancient hulks of the Battle of Jutland. Tirpitz was a Bismarck class ship, one of the two of the largest and powerful battleships in the world, the other was, of course: the Bismarck.
Launched in 1939 in Hamburg, the Bismarck was an emblem of a confident nation. After initial tests it was sent with the cruiser, Prinz Eugen, to harry allied shipping in the Atlantic. During its voyage through the Baltic it was spotted by a pro-British spy network from Sweden which quickly alerted Bletchley Park of its position. The RAF and Royal Navy attempted to track the course of the two warships. They eventually met in the Denmark Straits, west of Iceland.
During this engagement the power of the ship was felt to Britain’s cost. With its pinpoint accurate range finding, it quickly located the HMS Hood, which it utterly destroyed from about 10 miles, a huge explosion went skywards and the ship broke into two. The contrasting jubilation and dread were immediately felt by each side. The Bismarck had suffered damage, though, and being low on fuel it headed to Brest in France for repairs. It split with the Prinz Eugen not long after.
On a continuously zig-zagging course, Bismarck evaded a seemingly desperate hunt by the Royal Navy. Yet with only obsolete Swordfish biplanes, launched by the Ark Royal, a torpedo knocked out its rudder, leaving the Bismarck listless in the open sea. Ludovic Kennedy, the author, who was a veteran of the battle, gives an impression of the great ship, like a gigantic wounded tiger as it waited in the darkness for its inevitable fate, it was now surrounded by the King George V, Rodney, Norfolk, Piorun (Poland), Prince of Wales and Dorsetshire. During the next few hours they pounded the ship until it was aflame, despite each having to ditch out of the way of the Bismarck’s range finding and deadly salvoes. It was eventually sunk by torpedoes hit on each of its flanks, launched from the Dorsetshire.
The retelling of this story reminds me of the Titanic; the unsinkable pride of a nation. Yet you can only feel pity for the thousands on both sides who perished during the conflict.
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