THE HUNTING OF THE BISMARCK
OPERATION RHEINUBUNG
HISTORY OF THE BATTLE:
THE LAST BATTLE
(Drawn from: "Great German battle ships of the Second World war" of M.J. Whitley, 1989)
In the meantime the Admiral Donitz, commander of the U-boats, ordered to all of its torpedo unities to go itselves in BE6192, announcing few minutes after their assignment was to protect the battleship.
The collaboration with the LuftWaffe revealed him, as usual, defective, but, gives the position of Lutjens, you/he/she could not be furnished him a permanent aerial coverage and could take off only however after the 04.30 of May 27, the airplanes could not arrive on the Bismarck before the 06.30.
Aside English, the admiral Tovey with there King George V was by now united to the Rodney in the hunting to the stricken battleship, together with the destroyer Tartar and Mashona.
There was here also some problem; the conditions of the Rodney that could not overcome the 20.21 knots and the shortage of fuel on board of the flagship made to think about Tovey to have to abandon the mission as long as in few minutes the airplanes of the Ark Royal didn't change completely the situation revealing the conditions in which it poured the Bismarck.
The nearest unities to the enemy were those of the fourth flotilla of destroyer of the Captain Vian (Cossack, Sikh, Maori, Zulu and the Polish ship Piorun), that maintained still the contact at 23.00 o'clock and that in the six following hours they launched with scarce coordination different attacks individuali.
The Bismarck, all anything else other than defenseless, it answered with the fire to every new attacker, also without striking anybody of it in direct way.
You give the conditions of the sea and the obscurity, it could not otherwise be for the Germans as for the English, that unloaded to empty the whole endowment of torpedos of the flottiglia.
The sky constantly remained illuminated by the rockets up to the end of the last attack (launched by the Maori at 06.10 o'clock), then the destroyer they were held on the wake of their prey. Their intervention had not given immediate results, but the German crew was surely exhausted after long times of nonstop clashes to the dark without the possibility to rest.
The Bismarck hardly advanced between a whipped creams and the other; you/he/she could not change rout and it didn't have a lot of sense keep on sailing in circle to all speed. The Home Fleet was arriving, it was only matter of time.
To the dawn of May 27 the sea was always big and the sky color dense lead of low clouds by the strong wind of northwest. The take-off of 12 anticipated Swordfishes dall' Ark Royal for the first hours of the day was cancelled for scarce visibility, leaving I meet him/it final to the war ships.
The Admiral Tovey drew near to the Bismarckda 0-N-or and at 08.20 o'clock you/he/she sighted the Norfolk, that had followed the enemy since 07.53. You made to communicate position, rout and volocità of the battleship (10 knots to 330"), then it advanced in open order followed by the Rodney.
At 08.42 o'clock the King George V clearly saw on the right, to few more than 12 miles from the bow, the Bismarck that advanced tilted of 3-5° on the left side. The measurement of the distances was made difficult to the fog but the King George V it calculated a first range on the radar Type 284 and it opened the fire at 08.47 o'clock, one minute after the Rodney.
The Bismarck responded at 08.49 o'clock shooting on the Rodney three excellent salutes, the last of which it missed the target of solos 20 m. s
Also the Rodney found in hurry the distance of draught and, according to the witnesses of the Norfolk, it struck once the enemy at least to the bystander and safe fourth grade, before returning to the range signalled by one of the principal telemeters.
It shot "long" up to the 18a salute that struck the superstructure and the castle of bow of the Bismarck, and it kept on striking up to the 09.02, putting out use the German towers of bow, with relative commands.
The King George V got his/her first success at 08.53 o'clock and continued well for 20 minutes, after that the counterblows put out use the radar. At 08.54 o'clock the Norfolk, to north of the Bismarck, it started to shoot with the guns from 20,3 cms and the Rodney it activated the secondary armament from 15 cms at 08.58. o'clock
Already at 09.00 o'clock the Bismarck responded in irregular way, with the tower Á. out fight and the B that it worked to intermittence and 8 minutes after the Norfolk it made to know that the guns of the Á. had lowered and those of the B raised again, sign that the enemy had lost both the towers.
In alone 15 minutes of clash the Bismarck had lost halves his/her war contingent and almost all the gunners' commands.
The battleship poured under disastrous conditions, but it is impossible to establish the exact amount of the damages because you/they had not survived among the men of bow there.
Tovey veered therefore to south, creating problems of navigation and visibility to the Rodney, that changed rout bringing himself/herself/itself to 40°.
At 09.10 o'clock the Bismarck transferred the commands to the plant of stern and attached the King George V with the back towers, but the plant was put out use after sun four hi and the precision of the draughts worsened rapidamente.
At 09.20 o'clock the battleship it started over shooting on the Rodney but one minute after the gun of right-hand of the tower D was destroyed by a preoperating explosion; that left shot other two salutes, then the officer of command you have to order to stop the fuoco.
At 09.31 o'clock, a direct hit on the. left gun started also keeping silent the tower C and the battleship, deprived of the principal armament, it became an exercise target.
The Rodney stopped shooting at 10.14 o'clock, the King George V at 10.21 o'clock after having respectively launched 375 salutes from 40,6 and 339 from 35,5, besides 6-700 broadsides of the secondary armament.
The Rodney had also employed all the 12 torpedos that it had in endowment, the Norfolk 527 hits from 20,3 cms and the Dorsetshire 254.
It is to imagine effortless the conditions of the Bismarck after having been only also stricken from a small percentage of such an arsenal of munizioni.
The bridges and the superstructure were tattered and I invaded by the flames. A cannonade of the King George V had crossed the corazzatura of the tower B making to jump the back part and the Rodney it sustained to have sent to sign at least 40 hits from 40,6 cms, but despite its conditions to Tovey it didn't seem that the battleship was sinking, therefore it ordered to the Dorsetshire to destroy it.
At 10.25 o'clock the cruiser planted two torpedos in the left broadside of the Bismarck without apparently getting a great effect, then it launched a bystander of it in the broadside of right-hand and four minutes after the battleship it capsized him on the right-hand and it started to sink of poppa.
The Bismarck had not inflicted big damages to the unities of Tovey, even if the Rodney heard again quite a lot of the counterblows for the complete broadsides had shot since 09.52 at 10.03 o'clock, while the flagship complained about the defects of planning of the new towers from 35,5 cms.
The Dorsetshire recovered 85 you are shipwrecked and the Maori 25, before the rescue was interrupted by an alarm antisommergibile.
Subsequently, the U74 picked up three men seized to a wreckage and on May 28 the unity of the meteorological service Sachsenwald it found due of it other
They resulted instead fruitless the searches of the Spanish cruiser Canarias; any other you/he/she had survived.
The epic of the Bismarck ended in this tragic, catastrophic and heroic way.