Bismarck Versus Hood

I'm sure we've all heard the Johnny Horton song Sink the Bismarck. Well there's an interesting story behind that song as I'm sure you can imagine.

HMS Hood was the last battle cruiser built for the Royal Navy. Hood was one of four Admiral class battle cruisers ordered by Royal Navy in 1916. Due to serious limitation in her design,the Hood was the only one of the four ordered to be finished.

HMS Hood was first commissioned in 1920. Her overall length was 860 feet 7 inches with a beam of 104 feet 2 inches. The Hood displaced more than 46.000 tons fully loaded. The Hood's main armament consisted of eight fifteen inch guns in four two gun turrets. The ship was crewed by more than 1.400 sailors.

The Bismarck's keel was laid in 1936 and the ship was commissioned in 1940. The Bismarck was one of the only two Bismarck class ever built. The other Bismarck class battleship was the Tirpitz.

The Bismarck displaced more than 49.000 tons fully loaded and was 823 feet long. The beam was 118 feet. Like the Hood the Bismarck's main battery consisted of eight fifteen inch guns in four two gun turrets. The ship's crew was over 2.000 men. It was the largest warship Germany had ever built.

Of the two Bismarck class battleships the Germans were able to build neither was ever to serve the purpose for which they had been designed. They had been built with the sole intention of getting loose in the North Atlantic and wrecking havoc with allied shipping convoys and starving Britain out of the war by cutting her life line to North America.

The Bismarck conducted only one offensive operation in her short time afloat. On May 22 1941 Bismarck and her escort the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen broke out of the Denmark straits into the North Atlantic on a mission to destroy allied convoys bound for England.

The first English ship the Bismarck and Prinz Eugen encountered was the light cruiser HMS Suffork. In overall command of the German task group,Admiral Lutgens ordered the Prinz Eugen to open fire. But the Captain of Prinz Eugen unable to clearly make out the other ship in the mist, held his fire. Later that night the Suffork was joined by the light cruiser HMS Norfork. Once again Admiral Lutgens orders his ships to fire. This time the Bismarck fires five round at the Norfork. Three of the 1.700 pound shells straddled the warship and forced her to make smoke and retire. The two English cruisers were able though to stay on station all night and keep track of the course of the Germans Raiders.

At dawn on May 24 HMS Hood and the heavy cruiser HMS Prince of Wales having been ordered to intercept the two German warships joined the light cruisers in pursuit of the two German Commerce Raiders.These ship were under the command of Vice Admiral Lancelot Holland. At 5:45 lookouts on Prinz Eugen spotted the two British warships and alerted the command. The German ships went to battle stations. But the British got off the first shots. At 5:52 am at a range of 28.000 yards,HMS Hood opened fire,followed a minute later by the Prince of Wales. The German Admiral held his fire. The English had gotten off two 8 shot rounds when the Bismarck Captain took matters into his own hands. Saying " I will not have my ship shot out from under my a-ss without firing a shot" at 5:55 am the German captain ordered the Bismarck to commence firing.

The British ships were approaching the Germans head on,which allowed them to only use their forward firing guns,while the Germans were able to firing broadsides at the British ships approaching them using all their big guns.This is a classic naval tactic known as Crossing the T. The Prinz Eugen scored the first hit on the Hood with her eight inch guns, but caused little damage. The Prince of Wales scored a hit on the Bismarck,but it only cause minor damage. After firing three salvos the Bismarck had finally found the range. At least one of the fifteen inch armor piecing shell hit the Hood. The shell went through Hood's thin deck armor and detonated in an ammunition magazine containing more than 100 tons of high explosives. The massive explosion that resulted broke the ship's back. The ship was literally torn in two pieces. The Hood sank in less than 2 minutes. Of her crew of 1419 men, only 3 men survived the sinking of the HMS Hood. The crew of the Prince of Wales watched in horror as the HMS Hood, the Pride of the British Navy was blown in two right before their very eyes.

The Prince of Wales was forced to retire from the action due to her gun turrets jamming. The Prince of Wales had experimental four gun turrets that had yet to prove themselves in combat.

Once word reached England of the results of the battle the nation was in disbelief. How could this have had happened?The Hood was known as The Mighty Hood in England and the whole nation took pride in her. The fact that the entire ship's crew had all perished except for three men was hard to grasp. The nation went into mourning. The people also wanted revenge. England's national pride had been bruised and that German Battleship was the cause of that.

The Royal Navy went after the Bismarck with everything they had at their disposal. The call went out from the British Admiralty to all British ships at sea, " Sink the Bismarck" In total six British Battleship and Battle cruisers, two Aircraft Carries,and seventeen Destroyers took part in the chase of that mighty German Battleship.

The hit the Bismarck had taken from the Prince of Wales while causing only minor damage had still taken a toll and the Bismark was forced to reduce her speed but not by much. The German Admiral was heading for a safe harbor on the Northern Coast of occupied France. But he knew they would never make it unless they were able to lose their British pursuers. At this they were unsuccessful.

On May 25 aircraft from HMS Victorious found the Bismarck. Bismarck's anti aircraft gunners threw up a massive amount of defensive fire but were able to hit only one of the attackers. The other planes were able to launch a total of nine torpedoes at the Bismarck. Of the nine torpedoes,the Bismarck was able to avoid eight of them. The ninth torpedo struck amid-ship. That hit caused the Bismarck to further reduce her speed while divers were sent below to access the damage caused by the torpedo hit. The divers were able to make some repairs and the Bismarck was able to set a course for France.

Both the HMS Norfork and Suffork were forced to break off the chase at this point due to fuel concerns. The British lost contact with the Bismarck. The Bismarck had lost her tail and could now try to make it to a safe harbor in France. But she would have to pass through dangerous waters in order to make port. The Bismarck was still 790 mile from a safe haven when she was spotted once again by an aircraft. This time it was a U S Navy Catalina Flying boat that located her and radioed her position to the British. There were no British surface force nearby to intercept her course. The Bismarck was less than a day's sail from friendly air cover and the safety of the coast of Northern France. The nearest English naval forces in range of the Bismarck was the British aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal which was more than 70 miles from Bismarck's location.

The Ark Royal launched a flight of fifteen obsolete planes to hunt down the Bismarck and sink it. The aircraft were able to locate the Bismarck and launch a series of torpedo runs at the huge ship. Two of those torpedoes found their target. One of those torpedoes struck the ship's stern on the port side near the port rudder shaft causing the rudder to jam. The Bismarck was locked into a 12 degrees turn to port making her nothing more than a sitting duck. Due to the jammed rudder the Bismarck was now only able to sail in a large circle. The Bismarck was now just target practice for the English aviators and naval gunners.

British warship were able to close on the mighty battleship and take it apart with their big guns. At dawn on May 27 the battleship King George the V lead the attack. The battleship HMS Rodney also joined the King George in the attack. By 10:00 am the British ships had fired a total of more than 700 rounds of various sizes heavy artillery at the German Battleship. These shells destroyed the upper superstructure of the ship knocking out all of its defensive capabilities. The Bismarck was now taking on water and listing to port. At 10:20 the British were able to close to torpedo range and let off a series of torpedoes,two of which struck the Bismarck. This is the only time in naval history that one battleship torpedoed another. About 10:35 the Bismarck's list increased and the order was given to abandon ship. At 10:40 on May 27 1941 the Bismarck capsized and sank by the stern.

In retrospect the duel between the Bismarck and the Hood seems like a battle of closely matched ships,but in truth the Bismark was on the cutting edge of the technology of the day, HMS Hood was a acquainted relic from another age that did not ever have much of a chance in a gun battle with the Bismark. While both ship's main armament were eight fifteen inch guns in four two gun turrets,the Bismarck's guns and optics range finding equipment were years ahead of anything the British had at that time. The British public had been misled about the invincibility of HMS Hood. It had to have been a rude awakening. The German Navy was never able to have the effect they would have liked with their surface fleet. In was only with their stealthy U-boats that the Germans were able to have any effect on the allied convoys crossing the north Atlantic. The U-boats almost brought England to her knees. But that's another story for another time.

I hope you enjoy this.