Atlantic · 24 May 1941 – 27 May 1941
Hunt for the Bismarck
Following the loss of HMS Hood in the Denmark Strait, Royal Navy forces hunted down and destroyed the German battleship Bismarck in the North Atlantic before it could reach safety in occupied France.
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In May 1941, the German Kriegsmarine launched Operation Rheinübung to sever Allied North Atlantic supply routes. The newly commissioned battleship Bismarck, commanded by Captain Ernst Lindemann and flying the flag of Fleet Commander Admiral Günther Lütjens, sortied from the Baltic alongside the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen. British naval reconnaissance and resistance reports tracked the warships into Norwegian waters, prompting Admiral Sir John Tovey to mobilize the Home Fleet from Scapa Flow and deploy heavy cruiser patrols across the northern exits to the Atlantic.
On the evening of 23 May, the heavy cruisers HMS Norfolk and HMS Suffolk detected the German force in the Denmark Strait and shadowed it by radar. At dawn on 24 May, Vice-Admiral Lancelot Holland's squadron—consisting of the battlecruiser HMS Hood and the brand-new battleship HMS Prince of Wales—intercepted the German ships. In the ensuing gunnery duel, a 38-centimeter shell from Bismarck detonated Hood's aft magazines, destroying the battlecruiser with the loss of over 1,400 officers and men. Prince of Wales received multiple hits and broke off the engagement, but her return fire struck Bismarck's forward fuel bunkers and flooded boiler spaces, cutting the German battleship's speed and forcing Lütjens to abort the Atlantic sortie and steer for Saint-Nazaire.
Determined to destroy Bismarck, the Admiralty deployed every available capital asset across the Atlantic and directed Vice-Admiral James Somerville's Force H north from Gibraltar. Later on 24 May, Lütjens turned Bismarck briefly toward his pursuers, allowing Prinz Eugen to slip away undetected into the central Atlantic. An initial strike of Fairey Swordfish torpedo bombers launched from the aircraft carrier HMS Victorious scored a hit on Bismarck's armor belt around midnight, causing minor damage. Early on 25 May, Bismarck broke radar contact with the shadowing British cruisers by executing a sweeping turn, running undetected toward France for more than thirty hours.
The search turned decisively on 26 May. At 10:30, an RAF Coastal Command Catalina spotted Bismarck roughly 700 miles west of Brest. HMS Ark Royal of Force H launched an initial torpedo strike with fifteen Swordfish, which mistakenly targeted HMS Sheffield without causing damage. A second strike against Bismarck in severe weather at dusk proved fatal: one 18-inch torpedo detonated against Bismarck's stern, jamming her dual rudders at a 12-degree turn to port. The warship became uncontrollable and began steaming erratically north-northwest, directly into the path of Admiral Tovey's advancing battleships.
On the morning of 27 May, the British battleships HMS King George V and HMS Rodney, accompanied by heavy cruisers Norfolk and Dorsetshire, closed to point-blank range. British salvos methodically neutralized Bismarck's fire control directors and main battery turrets. Battered into a burning wreck and incapable of return fire, Bismarck was scuttled by her crew and torpedoed by Dorsetshire at 10:36, sinking with over 2,100 German officers and crewmen.