Short History of World War II - James L. Stokesbury [69]
The Admiralty now concentrated every effort on closing a ring around the Germans; their net eventually included five battleships, two aircraft carriers, nine cruisers, and eighteen destroyers. For some of these, such as the old battleship Ramilles, detached from duty as a convoy escort, meeting the Germans would have been little short of suicide, but there was no way they would allow Bismarck to get away.
Yet the sea was wide, and Admiral Gunther Lutjens, flying his flag in Bismarck, might well survive his foray. To the south of him there remained huge gaps. German U-boats were concentrating below Greenland to provide a cordon for him, and if he turned east and managed to shake off pursuit, he might get under the air umbrella from the French coast. At dark on the 24th, he detached Prinz Eugen, and she eventually got home safely. The British cruisers were still successfully shadowing Bismarck, though, and at midnight she was attacked by Swordfish torpedo planes; they scored one hit, but it was right on her main armor belt and did no damage. Soon after that, Lutjens turned southeast, and the British lost contact.
For the next thirty-six hours the Germans had the sea to themselves. The British net was gradually tightening, but they were not totally sure the quarry was inside it. They assumed Lutjens was making for the French coast, but they could not be certain. Then at mid-morning of the 26th, a Catalina flying boat sighted Bismarck, only 690 miles from Brest. By now the ships in the British ring were getting low on fuel, but if they moved properly, they would still catch her.
Soon after the Catalina sighting, aircraft from the carrier Ark Royal, operating hitherto in the Mediterranean, picked up the German, and the cruiser Sheffield got her on radar and took up the role of shadower. Ark Royal sent off fourteen Swordfish to make a torpedo strike; in the heavy weather and poor visibility they attacked Sheffield instead; fortunately, all the torpedoes missed, but the language on Sheffield’s bridge qualified this as one of the hottest actions of the war.
A second strike fared better. There was another hit on the armor belt, and more important, a hit aft that jammed Bismarck’s rudder. During the night the British moved in for the kill. A destroyer attack achieved little, but at daylight two battleships, Rodney and King George V, closed in from the north. In two hours the great Bismarck was a silent, flaming hulk. The British finished her off with torpedoes and rescued 110 survivors of her crew of more than 2,000.
From that high point—or low point, depending on where one stood—the German surface campaign gradually deteriorated. They were forced increasingly into a defensive posture. The British torpedoed Luetzow as she steamed into northern waters, and bombing raids damaged Gneisenau, Scharnhorst, and Prinz Eugen in their French shelters. They hunted down supply ships and converted merchantmen acting as raiders, and slowly the surface threat receded.
The Germans still kept a few tricks up their sleeve. One place from which they could operate surface vessels was Norway, where their ships could make short-range dashes out against the North Russian convoys. As 1942 came in, that presented a problem. Opportunity lay in the north, but most of the major ships remaining were in French Biscay ports. In February, the Germans carried off a daring coup, when Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, and Prinz Eugen made a dash up through the Channel to German ports under heavy air escort. Both the Royal Navy and the R. A. F. were caught napping; they mustered everything they had available and launched torpedo aircraft, bombers, motor torpedo boats, and a destroyer attack. Gneisenau hit a mine, and Scharnhorst hit two, but the ships made it home, to the considerable embarrassment of the