“The clock showed 5.50. The British and German admirals saw each other at the same time. The distance was rapidly closing, and the gunners were frantically aiming their guns. Lutyens shouted:

Because of the shock, the ice clinging to the towers turned into crumbs, which were immediately carried away by the wind. The battlecruiser Hood, flying the admiral's flag, led the way, followed by the battleship Prince of Wales. Orange flashes flashed on the horizon, like distant lightning. Within seconds, British shells slammed into the morning sea, sending up brown fountains of water around the Bismarck. Using strong lenses, Lutyens tried to shorten the 12 miles that separated him from Holland.

The ship on the right has 2 funnels, a mast with bridges on it and 2 stern towers,” he said. “It could be the Hood.” Focus fire on him!

Captain 1st Rank Brinkmann was turning the Prinz Eugen around to bring the guns of the entire side into action when, with a terrifying roar, the Bismarck fired a second salvo. At 5.53 Lutyens radioed to Germany: “I am engaged in a battle with two heavy ships.”

Holland's squadron had 8 guns of 381 mm caliber and 10 guns of 356 mm caliber, that is, it had a clear superiority in firepower. However, Holland saw the Germans almost directly ahead, on the right bow, that is, he could not use the stern towers. This cut his firepower in half when the battle began. But the Bismarck and Prinz Eugen going south could fire with their entire side. In the first seconds of the battle, the Hood fired very inaccurately. The Prince of Wales immediately opened fire on the Bismarck, but spent almost 40 shells before achieving coverage. The Hood first fired at the Prinz Eugen, but its shooting was very inaccurate, and the German cruiser was only sprayed with splashes from nearby splashes.

At 0557, Admiral Holland ordered a turn so that Hood's rear turrets could enter the battle. But the second salvo of the Bismarck was already in the air. A few seconds later, heavy armor-piercing shells hit the fenders of the first shots of the Hood's anti-aircraft guns. A strong fire started, which quickly engulfed the entire middle part ship. Behind the stern of the flagship, the Prince of Wales tried to stay in the admiral’s wake. The clock showed 6.00, “Hood” had 3 more minutes to live.

Distance 22,000 meters or 12 nautical miles. Schneider ordered a third salvo. It struck the Hood like a giant iron fist, tore through her decks and penetrated deep into the hold, straight into the artillery magazines. A terrible volcanic explosion demolished one of the Hood's towers, sending it tumbling into the gray sky like a matchbox. A pillar of flame rose into the sky. Streams of water rushed through huge holes in the hull of the battle cruiser and instantly put out the fires. The Hood began to sink rapidly, clouds of smoke and steam engulfing the main deck. The stern of the ship was torn apart and turned into a pile of iron. The superstructure was engulfed in flames, and the Hood was now just a pitiful ruin. The Prince of Wales, coming in his wake, barely had time to turn to avoid colliding with the wreckage of the flagship. A minute later, the mighty Hood fell onto the port side and disappeared under the water. He took with him Admiral Holland, 94 officers and 1,324 sailors. Later, the destroyers managed to recover only 1 midshipman and 2 sailors from the oil slick. They were the only surviving witnesses to the most humiliating defeat of the British fleet.

When the Hood exploded, the crew of the Bismarck burst into wild screams."

May 24, 1941 became a dark day for Great Britain: the battle cruiser Hood, the most famous and strongest ship of the Royal Navy at that time, was sunk in a short-lived battle in the Denmark Strait. His rival, the German battleship Bismarck, broke into the operational space of the Atlantic, accompanied by the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen. The Bismarck's campaign, which ended with its death on May 27, its successful battle with the Hood became one of the central episodes of the Battle of the Atlantic, and its influence on the course of the war and the post-war development of the fleet turned out to be much greater than could be expected.

Dangerous situation

By the spring of 1941, a paradoxical situation had developed in the Atlantic theater of operations. The British Royal Navy, of course, had an overwhelming superiority over the Kriegsmarine of the Third Reich - including in ships linear class, which at that time were the basis of the main forces of the fleet. The British could formally oppose the two combat-ready German battleships - Scharnhorst and Gneisenau - and two more at the stage of commissioning, the more powerful Bismarck and Tirpitz, with a battle line of nine old battleships - four "mobilization" ships of the First World War II type "R" (the fifth ship of this type, "Royal Oak", was sunk by the submarine U-47 in the fall of 1939), five of their more advanced peers "Queen Elizabeth", three of which were radically modernized, two more modern - “Nelson” and “Rodney” built in the 1920s, two newest battleships of the “King George V” type and three high-speed battlecruisers - “Repulse”, “Rinaun” and “Hood”, also built at the end of the First World War.

Total - sixteen pennants in the battle line against four, while the British had three more battleships in construction, and the Germans had none (which, however, the British did not know about). However, this formal superiority instantly fades when analyzed in detail. Firstly, the geographical factor played a role. The original British war plan called for maintaining dominance in the Atlantic and Mediterranean and counterbalancing the Japanese deployment in Far East. However, a key element in these calculations was the position of France, whose strong navy would support the Royal Navy in European waters. The defeat of France in 1940 deprived London of an ally, and a series of operations under common name“Catapult”, which involved the capture and destruction of French ships in English and colonial ports in order to prevent them from passing under German control, turned the remnants of the French fleet into an enemy. Whether the actions of the British in the summer of 1940 were justified is debatable, but in any case, now they had to deal alone with both the Germans and the Italians who had joined them, without forgetting about the Far East.

Italy added to the naval forces of the Axis countries four battleships from the First World War that had undergone modernization, and four new ships of the Littorio class that were being completed. Potentially, this gave Berlin and Rome 12 battle-class ships, including 8 new and 4 old, against 19 (also taking into account the ships under construction) English ones, of which only 5 would have been new. Japan’s military preparations, which by 1941 had ten modernized battleships built in the 1910s-1920s and the construction of three battleships of a new type, finally reduced the former naval dominance of the British to nothing - an attempt to be strong everywhere threatened with defeat in any of the three key naval theaters of war for the empire.

The comparative characteristics of the ships in these conditions were of secondary importance, but they did not add optimism: economic problems allowed the empire to modernize only three battleships and one battle cruiser of the old construction, and also forced them to seriously reduce the characteristics of the new ships being built, which seriously reduced the chances in the event of probable military clashes of the main fleet forces.

However, the Royal Navy would be unworthy of its name if it did not seize chances even in these conditions: after the cold-blooded reprisal of the French ships in July 1940, the Italians began to suffer. On November 12, 1940, in an attack on the main base of the Italian Navy Taranto, 20 torpedo bombers and Swordfish bombers, rising from the deck of the British aircraft carrier Illustrious, achieved torpedo hits on three battleships - Conte di Cavour, Caio Duilio and the newest Littorio " Cavour was out of action for the rest of the war, Littorio and Duilio for several months each, making things much easier for British forces in the Mediterranean. Among other consequences of the attack, one can note a careful study of its results by the office of the Japanese naval attaché in Rome, but Tokyo representatives did not share their conclusions with anyone then.

In March 1941, the suffering of the Regia Marina - the Royal Italian Navy - continued: in the battle off Cape Matapan, the Italians lost three heavy cruisers sunk, and the newest battleship Vittorio Veneto was seriously damaged. This success of the British, which they themselves perceived as an offensive failure - the damaged enemy battleship managed to escape - firmly locked the Italian Navy in the bases, allowing the British to continue escorting convoys around the Mediterranean, despite heavy losses caused by attacks by aircraft and submarines. In general, despite all the “buts” and potential threats, this theater remained with the Royal Navy, and the material results were fairly reinforced by the self-confidence achieved in the battles - the Italians did not want to get involved in an open battle with British battleships - whether new or outdated.

This confidence also reigned in the Atlantic, even after the raid of the battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau in February 1941. Despite the relative success - a breakthrough through the British operational zone from the North Sea to the Bay of Biysk, arrival in Brest without losses and the destruction of 22 enemy merchant ships with a total tonnage of 115,600 tons - the same pattern was confirmed as in the Mediterranean. The Germans, fearing losses, avoided contact with British battleships, retreating first from convoy HX-106, which was escorting the outdated and not modernized battleship Ramillies, and then from SL-67, in whose escort the Germans discovered a slightly more advanced, but also outdated ship "Malaya". Under these conditions, the readiness for battle of the two newest German battleships - the Bismarck and the Tirpitz - was perceived by the British rather philosophically: the Huns' submarines in the Atlantic and their bombers in the Mediterranean posed a much more significant threat.

Operation Rhineland Exercise

The February breakthrough of the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau convinced the Germans of the need to continue raider operations of large surface ships in the Atlantic: the commissioning of new battleships promised a qualitative advantage more significant than that of the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, the 280-mm main caliber of which is all it was considered insufficient to successfully confront British battleships carrying main battery guns from 356 to 406 millimeters. "Bismarck" and "Tirpitz" carried 380-mm main caliber artillery, eight of the latest guns with increased rate of fire and accuracy in four turrets, surpassing in firepower both the new British "King George" with their ten 356-mm barrels, and older ships with eight 381-mm guns from the First World War, which were inferior to the Bismarck in terms of firing range, speed and protection, and the Nelsons, whose 406-mm guns were not very successful. Moreover, the battlecruisers Repulse and Renown were inferior to the new German ships, whose 30-knot speed, prohibitive for battleships of the First World War and high even for the Second World War, was bought at the cost of weakening armor protection and reducing the number of main caliber barrels from eight to six.

Battleship "Bismarck"
Built by Blohm&Voss shipyard, Hamburg.
Laid down: 07/01/1936
Launched: 02/14/1939
Transferred to the Navy: 08/24/1940
Reached combat readiness: 02.1941

Displacement: 41,700 t standard; 50,900 tons total.
Length/width/draft, meters: 251/36/10.2
Reservations: main belt 320 mm, upper belt 145 mm, belt at the ends 60/80 mm, main deck 80-110 mm, steering gear 110-150 mm, main gun turrets 180-360 mm, main gun barbettes 340 mm, SK turrets 35- 100 mm, conning tower 200-350 mm, torpedo bulkhead 45 mm.

Energy: boiler-turbine power plant, 12 steam boilers, three shafts, total power 110 MW.
Full speed: 30.6 knots.

Weapons:
main caliber - 8 × 380 mm SKC34 (4 × 2),
medium caliber - 12 × 150 mm (6 × 2)
anti-aircraft artillery - 16 × 105 mm (8 × 2),
16 × 37 mm (8 × 2),
20 × 20 mm (20 × 1).
Aviation group: four reconnaissance seaplanes, one steam catapult.

Crew on the day of going to sea: 2220 people.

Only the larger ship than both of these ships, the Hood, could compete with the new Germans on an equal footing - although it had not undergone modernization, it was in good condition. technical condition, which gave almost 30 knots of speed, had adequate (as it seemed) armor protection and eight 381-mm main caliber guns. The most famous and popular ship of the Royal Navy at that time, named after the famous officer dynasty, the last representative of which was Rear Admiral Horace Hood, who died in the Battle of Jutland, was the first in its series - and the only one: the construction of three more ships was canceled after the First global for financial reasons. Combined with the excellent training of the crew, who had solid combat experience, the characteristics of the Hood made it the most valuable ship in the fleet. These qualities also determined its place in the structure of the Royal Navy: the ship was part of the Home Fleet, which was responsible for maintaining dominance in the North Atlantic, that is, in the “home” theater of war, the most important from the point of view of the empire.

On May 18, 1941, two ships left the German naval base of Gotenhafen - the battleship Bismarck and the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen with 203 mm artillery. The second newest battleship, the Tirpitz, has not yet reached combat readiness, and Kriegsmarine commander Grand Admiral Erich Raeder refused the proposal of the commander of the surface fleet, Admiral Gunther Lütjens, to postpone the start date of the operation.

On May 21, the British Admiralty began to suspect that “something was going on”: the British attaché in Stockholm transmitted a radiogram that a detachment of two German heavy ships had been spotted in the Kattegat Strait the day before by the Swedish cruiser Gotland, and in the evening of the same day about Norwegian resistance fighters informed the same detachment on the radio: the Germans had anchored in the port of Bergen.

On May 22, the German detachment was photographed by a British aerial reconnaissance, and London accurately determined the enemy’s forces: the British knew that the Tirpitz was not ready to go to sea and that the Admiral Hipper was under repair.

On the same day, the commander of the Home Fleet, Admiral Sir John Tovey, sent a detachment consisting of the battle cruiser Hood, the newest battleship Prince of Wales and escort destroyers to the Denmark Strait between the islands of Greenland and Iceland, under the overall command of Rear Admiral Lancelot Holland, who was on aboard the Hood. In the strait itself, a screen of two heavy cruisers, the Suffolk and the Norfolk, unfolded, which were supposed to detect the Germans when they appeared. Another likely route for the German detachment - a wide passage between the Faroe Islands and Iceland - was provided by a screen of three light cruisers. On the night of May 23, John Tovey left the Scapa Flow base in the Orkney Islands aboard the battleship King George V at the head of a detachment that also included the aircraft carrier Victorious and escort ships. The British commander intended to take a position west of Scotland, which would allow him to intercept the German detachment along any route. There he waited for reinforcements to arrive in the form of the battle cruiser Repulse.

The battle

On the evening of May 23, British cruisers in the Denmark Strait noticed the Germans - and soon the leading Bismarck opened fire on the Norfolk. Not having the task of “stopping with their breasts” a clearly superior enemy, the British retreated, continuing to maintain radar and visual contact. The Germans also had radars, but due to shocks during firing, the Bismarck's bow radar failed, and Admiral Günther Lütjens placed the Prinz Eugen in command. The British did not notice this change of formation in the thickening cloudy darkness, believing that Bismarck was still leading the detachment. Admiral Holland, having received the radar contact data, led two of his linear units to intercept, obviously being confident of success: 18 barrels with a caliber of 356-381 millimeters against eight German ones gave a solid advantage, even despite the not very high reliability of the newest four-gun turrets of the recently commissioned "Prince of Wales".

Battlecruiser Hood
Built by John Brown & Company, Clydebank.
Laid down: 09/01/1916
Launched: 08/22/1918
Transferred to the Navy: 05/15/1920

Displacement: 41,125 t standard; 47,430 tons total.
Length/width/draft, meters: 267.5/31.7/9
Reservations: belt 305 mm, upper belt 127-178 mm, barbettes 305 mm, deck 25+38 mm, conning tower 76.2-280 mm, anti-torpedo bulkhead 38 mm.

Energy: boiler-turbine power plant, 24 steam boilers, four shafts, total power 106 MW.
Full speed according to the project is 31 knots, in 1941 - 29 knots.

Weapons:
main caliber - 8x381 mm Mk I (4x2)
anti-aircraft artillery - 14 x 102 mm Mk XVI (7x2)
3x8 40mm pom-pom mounts
5x4 12.7 mm Vickers machine guns
5x20 installations of anti-aircraft unguided rockets UP.
Torpedo armament - 2x2 533 mm torpedo tubes.
Aviation group: reconnaissance seaplane, one steam catapult.

Crew on the day of death: 1421 people.

At 05:35 on May 24, lookouts on the Prince of Wales discovered a German detachment at a distance of 17 nautical miles (28 kilometers), by which time the Germans had already established radar contact. The unnoticed restructuring of the German ships played a cruel joke on the British: the Bismarck and the Prinz Eugen had silhouettes that were confusingly similar, and the large distance did not allow one to notice the difference in the sizes of the battleship and the heavy cruiser.

The British began to approach at full speed and at 05:52 began shooting at the lead ship, believing that it was the Bismarck. The Germans also did not immediately understand the tactical situation, for some time mistaking the Hood for light cruiser, but soon identified both opponents. It is unknown how much this mistake of the Germans influenced subsequent events - it is possible that, having identified both opponents at once, Gunter Lütjens would have retreated, taking advantage of the advantage in speed, as the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau had previously retreated even when meeting with a single old battleship.

Radiogram with a message about the death of "Hood"

British naval forces intercepted early this morning off the coast off Greenland German naval forces including battleship Bismarck. The enemy were attacked and during the ensuing action HMS Hood (Captain R. Kerr, CBE, RN) wearing the flag of Vice-Admiral L.E. Holland, CBE, receive an unlucky hit in magazine and blew up. The Bismarck has damage and the pursuite of the enemy continues.

It is feared there will be few survivors from HMS Hood.

A British formation near the coast of Greenland early in the morning intercepted a German one, which included the battleship Bismarck. The enemy was attacked, and in the ensuing action His Majesty's ship Hood (Captain Kerr, Commander of the Order British Empire, Royal Navy), flying the flag of Vice-Admiral Holland, Commander of the Order of the British Empire, was unsuccessfully hit in the magazines and exploded. The Bismarck is damaged and the pursuit of the enemy continues.

I fear that few will escape from His Majesty's ship Hood.

At 06:00, a German salvo from a distance of 8 to 9.5 miles (it is not possible to establish more precisely due to the death of the main participants in the events) covered the Hood, on which a large fire broke out, and a few moments later the battle cruiser exploded. Of the 1,421 people on board, the escorting destroyers were able to save only three. The Prince of Wales, sailing half a mile from Hood, was hit by a hail of debris, and a few minutes later the German detachment transferred fire to the surviving battleship. The Germans managed to damage one of the ship's four-gun turrets, the second failed due to mechanical failure, and the British were left with one main-caliber two-gun turret against the Germans' eight "big guns." Nevertheless, during this short time, the Prince of Wales scored three hits on the Bismarck, one of the shells damaging the enemy’s bow group of fuel tanks. An oil trail followed the German.

The enemy's advantage, however, remained undeniable: having received seven hits, including three 380-mm shells from the Bismarck and four 203-mm shells from the Prinz Eugen, the commander of the Prince of Wales, Captain John Leach, laid a smoke screen and left from the battle. The battleship and two cruisers continued to maintain contact with the German detachment, transmitting a message about what was happening to Admiral John Tovey. The Germans, in turn, not knowing about the condition of the opponent, also considered it best to interrupt the battle and continued their journey to the south. The Bismarck, which had been hit by fuel tanks, slowly began to bury its nose in the water. A patch was placed under the hole, but this did not prevent significant volumes from flooding in the bow of the ship.

The consequences are greater than expected

The death of the Hood could not simply be left alone: ​​all available combat units nearby rushed into the North Atlantic. On the evening of the same May 24, the Bismarck again came into fire contact with the Prince of Wales and the accompanying cruisers, covering the departure of the Prinz Eugen for an independent raid. Having assessed the damage to the battleship, Admiral Lutyens decides not to risk the best German ship, and, having released the cruiser on a solo voyage, go with the Bismarck to Brest, where three months earlier he had safely brought the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. He failed to realize this plan - after three days of a dramatic chase and two attacks by torpedo bombers, the second of which, carried out by Swordfish from the aircraft carrier Ark Royal, deprived the Bismarck of steering control, the British caught up with the enemy. On May 27 at 10:39 the Bismarck was sunk. The British did not suffer any losses - the German battleship, almost devoid of speed, could not adequately maneuver and adjust artillery fire in the stormy sea; in addition, one of the first hits destroyed the main rangefinder post of the Bismarck. Nevertheless, the ship held out under fire from two British battleships for almost three hours and was finally sunk by torpedoes from cruisers that approached the minimum distance after the Bismarck’s guns stopped firing, having exhausted their ammunition. Along with the battleship, Admiral Lutyens, the commander of the ship Lindeman and another 2,104 people out of the 2,220 on board were killed.

The consequences of the battle, however, turned out to be much more significant than simply excluding two units of the main forces of the fleet from the enemy forces. First of all, the almost instantaneous sinking of the battlecruiser and the subsequent stubborn resistance of the Bismarck forced the British to reconsider their views on the combat capabilities of German ships and to constantly maintain in the Home Fleet a sufficient number of modern battleships and aircraft carriers to guarantee the neutralization of the Germans in the event of a new breakthrough into the Atlantic, so and failed.

This had a serious impact on the Royal Navy's capabilities in other theaters. Firstly, in the Mediterranean Sea, especially after German submarines sank the battleship Barham and the aircraft carrier Ark Royal in the fall of 1941, and Italian underwater saboteurs seriously damaged the battleships Valiant and Queen Elizabeth in the harbor of Alexandria. Secondly, in the Far East, where the Prince of Wales, a survivor of the battle with Bismarck, together with the battle cruiser Repulse, was sent to intercept Japanese convoys with troops without adequate escort and without air cover. "Repulse" and "Prince of Wales" died on December 10, 1941 in the South China Sea under attack by torpedo bombers and bombers of Imperial coastal aviation Japanese fleet as heroic as it was senseless, without causing any damage to the enemy, except for the four downed aircraft.

For the Soviet Union, this episode of the war at sea was important primarily due to the increased caution demonstrated by the British fleet when escorting polar convoys, the extreme expression of which was the defeat of convoy PQ-17 in July 1942, which was actually abandoned on orders from London in the face of a hypothetical threat from the Germans. large ships, which by that time had moved to Norway.

The distant echo of the battle between the Bismarck and the Hood, however, echoed over the Atlantic for another decade and a half after the war, when one of the main threats to the Western Allied Navy was considered the breakthrough into the ocean of Soviet heavy artillery ships - cruisers of Project 68, 68-bis and supposed battleships and battlecruisers, reports of the construction of which in the USSR have long excited the minds of Western naval analysts. To neutralize this hypothetical threat, the United States and Great Britain continued to maintain the remaining battleships after the war in service and in reserve - since aircraft carriers and aircraft of that period did not guarantee success in difficult situations. climatic conditions North Atlantic, and developed projects for new ships with powerful artillery weapons, united under the common name “Sverdlov-killers” - in honor of the lead cruiser of Project 68-bis “Sverdlov”.

The ghost of a heavy artillery ship suddenly appearing from behind a cloud-covered horizon amid gloomy waves and creeping fog finally dissipated only towards the end of the 1950s - by then it became clear that Soviet Union in naval warfare, he relied on the development of naval missile-carrying aviation and a nuclear submarine fleet, and large guns as weapons of naval warfare remained the property of history.

On May 24, the German battleship Bismarck sank the battlecruiser Hood, the pride of the English fleet. The Bismarck was built as a special type of battleship, designed to conduct raider operations against merchant ships.
Its fuel reserve has been increased, and its speed data - 30.1 knots - is one of the best in the world for ships of this type.

In addition, it was the first full-fledged German battleship after World War I. Its armament included eight cannons (380 mm caliber), so the Bismarck could easily compete with any battleship, which is exactly what he did.

At that time, the Bismarck was the largest battleship in the world, and even now it lost primacy only to the American Iowa and the Japanese Yamato.

For Germany, the launch of the Bismarck was such an event that both German Chancellor Adolf Hitler and the granddaughter of Bismarck himself, Dorothea von Levenfeld, were present.

As for the Hood (pictured), it became the last of the series of “dreadnought cruisers” of the British Navy. Its speed was practically not inferior to the speed of the German ship, and the thickness of the armor in the area of ​​the stakes was 76.2 mm.

On May 20, 1941, the Bismarck was spotted from the Swedish Gotland. The very next day there was a message about two ships (the cruiser Prinz Eugen was located next to the Bismarck)

Made it to the British Admiralty. The battleship Hood and the battleship Prince of Wales were sent to meet the Germans. Admiral John Tovey also sent several destroyers with them.

The cruisers Birmingham and Manchester received orders to patrol the strait between the Faroe Islands and Iceland. They were to be joined by two more cruisers and the admiral himself, along with the battleship King George and the aircraft carrier Victoria. The entire assembled flotilla had to wait for German ships in the waters in north-west Scotland.

Already on May 23, the Germans were within sight of the British, and early in the morning of May 24, the British ships entered the battle. Vice Admiral Holland ordered fire on the first German ship, mistaking it for the flagship - and was mistaken. Shortly before this, the Bismarck's radar failed - so the Prinz Eugen went first. In response, Bismarck and Eugen opened fire on Hood.

True, the captain of the Prince of Wales did not make Holland's mistake, so his torpedoes rushed directly to the Bismarck. Four minutes after the start of the battle, a shell fired from the Prince of Wales pierced the fuel tank of the Bismarck, but the Hood did not remain intact: the second and third shots of the Germans destroyed its stern. A fire started.

And although four minutes later the Prince of Wales twice turned the side of the German ship below the waterline, another salvo from the Bismarck hit the ammunition storage area. There was a huge explosion and the Hood was torn into two parts. Eyewitnesses claimed that the bow and stern of the ship literally flew into the air. The huge battleship sank in a matter of minutes, and out of 1,147 crew members, only three survived. True, the Bismarck itself outlived the British battleship by only a few days: the British did not forgive the German battleship for the death of one of their best ships.

75 years ago, on May 18, 1941, the largest battleship of the Third Reich, the Bismarck, set out on its first military campaign, which became its last. The details of this campaign were so incredible and exciting that many books and films were dedicated to them. Most Famous feature film the fate of the ship was the subject of the film “Sink the Bismarck!”, released in 1960. How much real story Is Bismarck different from the cinematic?

Birth

Germany began to think about the appearance of the future super-battleship back in 1932. Initially, its displacement was supposed to be 35,000 tons, and its armament was to be eight 330 mm guns. However, “during the journey the dog could grow up,” and on February 14, 1939, the Bismarck, over 240 m long, with a maximum displacement of almost 51,000 tons and four towers with a pair of the latest 380-mm cannons in each, was solemnly launched - in the presence of Hitler and the commander of the fleet, Grand Admiral Raeder.

The dimensions of almost every part of the Bismarck were amazing. Each shell for the ship's guns weighed 800 kg. 12 high-pressure boilers provided the huge battleship with a speed of 30 knots. The main belt of the ship consisted of welded plates of cemented armored steel KS with a thickness of 320 mm. The quality of this steel was one of the best in the world - only the British with the SA brand had better quality armor. The total weight of the armor was an impressive 18,700 tons - or 40% of the project's combat displacement.

"Bismarck" at the base in Kiel. The image allows you to estimate the size of the ship
www.steelnavy.com

Bismarck goes into battle

By May 1941, German battleships already had experience of successful raids in the Atlantic. During Operation Berlin from January 22 to March 22, 1941, the battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were able to sink 22 ships with a total displacement of more than 115,000 tons. Grand Admiral Raeder, naturally, was eager to repeat the success. According to the “Exercise on the Rhine” plan, “Bismarck” and support ships were supposed to leave the ports of Germany, and “Scharnhorst” and “Gneisenau” - from the French Brest. Then they jointly began hunting convoys throughout the North Atlantic. The captain of the Bismarck was Ernst Lindemann, and the entire ship group was commanded by Admiral Gunther Lütjens.

However, circumstances interfered with the original plans. First, the superheater tubes at Scharnhorst failed, requiring several months of repairs. Then the Gneisenau “caught” a torpedo from a flying Beaufort - and the Bismarck was left only with the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen paired. But then the Prinz Eugen, on an ordinary passage from Gotenhafen to Kiel, was blown up by a magnetic mine. We had to wait for it to be repaired - Raeder feared that the United States would soon enter the war (then there would immediately be much more enemy ships in the ocean) and did not want to cancel the operation for good.

As a result, the Bismarck went to sea on the night of May 19 (the Prinz Eugen did the same a little earlier). The opponents very quickly learned about the super-battleship's departure for the hunt - already on May 20, at about 3 p.m., the Swedish cruiser Gotland transmitted a radiogram about a meeting with the German squadron. The radiogram immediately reached the British. On May 21, the reconnaissance Spitfire was able to photograph both the Bismarck and the Prinz Eugen.

The British notified the heavy cruisers Norfolk and Suffolk, as well as the light cruisers Birmingham and Manchester, of their discovery. A squadron of the newest battleship Prince of Wales (even shipyard workers remained on board), the battle cruiser Hood and six destroyers came out to intercept the enemy. The battleship King George V remains in reserve for now, at the base in Scapa Flow.

Meanwhile, on the evening of May 21, Bismarck, taking advantage of the fog, moved to the Arctic. On May 22, having learned that the Germans were already somewhere at sea, the King George V and the aircraft carrier Victorious with 5 light cruisers also left the base. Then the battlecruiser Repulse from Clyde, the battlecruiser Renown and the aircraft carrier Ark Royal from Gibraltar joined the search for the Bismarck.

First blood

On the evening of May 23, first the heavy cruiser Suffolk, and then the Norfolk, detected a German squadron by radar. The next morning, a battle began in the Denmark Strait between Greenland and Iceland. The Hood and Prince of Wales were the first to discover the enemy and open fire. At 5:55 Bismarck responded. And suddenly, at 6:01, after the fifth salvo of the Bismarck...

The death of "Hood"

Hood, until recently the largest ship of the British fleet, its beauty and pride, and with it almost one and a half thousand (more precisely, 1,415) crew members almost instantly disappeared into the sea. Only three people were saved. To this day, fleet enthusiasts are fiercely arguing about what destroyed the Hood. Trajectories are lined up showing exactly how an armor-piercing shell, when turning a battleship, could pierce the armor belt, the bevel of the armored deck and the roof of the magazine of 102-mm shells. Maybe it went through the turbine compartment? Or did you fall into the water and simply “dive” under your belt? Such a shell, but unexploded, was found in the Prince of Wales. The result (also probable): the gunpowder in the cellar flared up, hot gases rushed through the ventilation shafts. Tens of tons of gunpowder from the main magazine caught fire, and in a few seconds the ship’s hull was broken.

Two minutes later, the Prince of Wales, having received several hits, covered itself with a smoke screen and left the battle. The Bismarck escaped with three hits: one broke the pipeline to the fuel tanks, the second disabled the catapult for the ship's seaplane, and the third damaged the steam line in the turbogenerator compartment. As a result, the ship's speed dropped to 28 knots, and fuel flowed overboard. After thinking, Admiral Lutyens decided to return the Bismarck to Brest for repairs, and release the Prinz Eugen for independent hunting.

The next evening at 22:00, the Bismarck was attacked by eight Swordfish torpedo bombers from the aircraft carrier Victorious, under the cover of six Fulmar fighters. Although the pilots took off from the deck for the first time in their lives, one of them was able to hit the battleship. But at night the British cruisers... lost the Bismarck on radar. Ironically, the battleship was receiving radar radiation, and Lutyens, thinking that the British knew its location anyway, sent a long radio message about the state of affairs on board. The British were able to find the Bismarck's direction, but they incorrectly put the data on the map. As a result, almost fifty ships spent many hours searching for the Bismarck in places other than where it actually sailed. And only on the morning of May 26, the patrol Catalina again discovered the elusive battleship.

But now the British ships did not have time to overtake the Bismarck. The last hope remained - in carrier-based aircraft. 14 Swordfish from the aircraft carrier Ark Royal fired 11 torpedoes... at their own cruiser Sheffield. Fortunately, the magnetic fuses of several torpedoes went off too early, and the ship managed to dodge the rest. And only the second attack hit the real enemy. Of the 13 torpedoes, two or three hit the target. But only one became fatal - it tightly jammed both rudders of the battleship.

At night, the Bismarck was attacked by British destroyers. Having fired 14 torpedoes at the uncontrollable ship, they... didn’t hit even once. And in the morning the British lost the battleship again, but were soon able to find it again.

Death of Bismarck

The British threw the battleships Rodney and King George V into the final battle with 406 mm and 356 mm guns. The first salvo at 8:47 was fired by Rodney. Less than an hour later, the British managed to disable all the main caliber turrets of the Bismarck. Soon the rest of his guns fell silent. The German battleship was a burning wreck. "Rodney", trying to deal with the enemy as quickly as possible before the fuel ran out, even fired at the helpless "Bismarck" with large-caliber 24.5-inch torpedoes, and missed. Although the guns of the King George V and Rodney did not always work as expected, together with the heavy cruisers Norfolk and Dorsetshire they fired almost three thousand (more precisely, 2876) shells with a caliber from 133 to 406 mm and achieved approximately 300–400 hits. Flying shells could be seen even with the naked eye.

The first explosions of British shells http://www.kbismarck.com/

The surviving Bismarck officers decided to scuttle the ship with explosive charges. After 10:20 the charges detonated, and the Bismarck began to slowly roll to port. Meanwhile, Dorsetshire launched a torpedo attack: two torpedoes hit the starboard side, then another was fired at the left side. At 10:39, the crippled battleship capsized and sank. German submarines and aircraft never came to his aid. The British managed to save only 115 people; more than 2,100 died in the water.

On screen and underwater

After the war, the time came for filmmakers. Released in 1960, the film “Sink the Bismarck!” has received many praises for its display accuracy historical events. This is not surprising - for example, Edward Murrow, a journalist known for radio reports from wartime London, played in the film... himself. Esmond Knight, who played the captain of the Prince of Wales, was on board the same ship in 1941 and was wounded in the same battle. The real chronicle of the Bismarck's launch into the water and recordings of battles were used. Views from the “inside” of the ships were filmed on the Vanguard, the only British battleship that survived to this time.

Edward Murrow

The codebreaking with the help of Bletchley Park analysts remained secret until 1975, so it is not mentioned in the film. But the movie accurately depicts the Catalina flying boat that found the Bismarck. They did not keep silent about the attack on their own ship. The complexity of the work of the British headquarters, which determines the actions of the ships, is perfectly depicted.

To enhance the drama on the screen, the British “suffered” even more serious losses than in reality: the Bismarck shoots down two Swordfish with anti-aircraft fire (in reality, several aircraft were damaged). It is curious that the scene where the discovery and rescue of a boat with three pilots is reported is completely accurate. Two Fulmar fighters from the Victorias, having spent fuel, landed in the sea, and three people were rescued.

Also, the battleship, having already received the fatal torpedo, repels the attack of the destroyers and sinks one of them, the Solent. There was no such destroyer in the British fleet, and not a single destroyer was lost. But otherwise, the events after the defeat of the helm would have looked like a pure “one-goal game.”

"Bismarck" on the silver screen

Admiral Lutyens in the movies is shown to be an ardent admirer of Hitler and a convinced, if not fanatical, Nazi. With all his enthusiasm, he joyfully sets up the team for a grandiose and victorious hunt for convoys. However, surviving crew members described the real Lutyens as a brooding and even gloomy person. In life, the admiral insisted on postponing the operation until the repair of the Scharnhorst was completed or even the Tirpitz was commissioned. Lutyens also did not want to engage in battle with the Hood and the Prince of Wales (intercepting convoys was much more important than dueling) - and in the movies it was he who ordered Lindeman to open fire.

And only many years after the war were submarines able to reach the remains of Hood and Bismarck. Judging by the position of the wreckage, the Hood actually began to turn just before the explosion. It was declared a war grave in 2002 and all further work ceased.

"Bismarck" at the bottom http://www.kbismarck.com/

In 2002, the famous film director and deep-sea diving enthusiast James Cameron organized an expedition to the Bismarck on the ship Akademik Mstislav Keldysh. With the help of the Mir-1 and Mir-2 bathyscaphes, it was possible to establish the nature of the damage to the hull. It follows that, probably, the doomed ship was eventually sunk by its own crew (as the surviving crew always claimed).

Sources and literature:

1. http://www.imdb.com/
2. http://www.kbismarck.com/
3. http://www.scharnhorst-class.dk/
4. Evans, Alun. Brassey's Guide to War Films. Dulles, Virginia: Potomac Books, 2000.
5. Burkhard von Müllenheim-Rechberg. Battleship Bismarck. - M., Eksmo, Yauza. 2006.
6. Dashyan A. Killers of Bismarck. Battleships Nelson and Rodney. M., Collection, Yauza, Eksmo, 2010.
7. Kofman V. The Death of the Lord of the Seas. Battlecruiser Hood. - M., Collection, Yauza, Eksmo, 2009.
8. Malov A. A., Patyanin S. V. Battleships “Bismarck” and “Tirpitz”. - M.: Eksmo, 2014

Battle in the Denmark Strait
The Battle of Denmark Strait, also known as the Battle of Iceland, was essentially a short engagement lasting just over a quarter of an hour. But this was a clash of titans - the largest battleships in the world at that time tested themselves and their strength, and it ended with the death of one of these giants.
Early in the morning of May 24, the weather cleared and visibility improved. The Germans followed a course of 220 degrees at a speed of 28 knots, and at 05.25 Prinz Eugen's sonars detected the noise of the propellers of two ships on the port side. At 05.37, the Germans visually spotted what they initially thought was a light cruiser at a distance of 19 miles (35 km) on the port side. At 05.43 they found another silhouette and sounded the combat alarm. On Bismarck they still haven’t decided what exactly they are observing, mistakenly believing that these are heavy cruisers. But the fact is that accurate identification of enemy ships was of great importance for the upcoming battle, since it was necessary to determine the type of shells to fire. The artillery commander of Prince Eugen, Captain-Lieutenant Pauls Jasper, decided by a strong-willed decision that they were observing the heavy cruisers of the British, and ordered the guns to be loaded with the appropriate shells. In fact, Hood and Prince of Wales were rapidly approaching the Germans, heading 280 degrees, with a speed of 28 knots. It is likely that Vice Admiral Holland, aware of the weakness of the battlecruiser Hood in long-range combat, wanted to get as close as possible in order to gain advantages or at least negate possible benefits for the enemy. So Lutyens had no choice whether to get involved or not. The fight was inevitable.
Two 381mm shells land next to Prinz Eugen

The British also made a mistake in recognizing the silhouettes, and deciding that Bismarck should have been the lead, Holland ordered Hood and the Prince of Wales to open fire on the lead. After which the British ships turned 20 degrees to the right, thereby taking a heading of 300 degrees. At 05.52 Holland finally figured out that it was not Bismarck who was leading and gave the appropriate commands, but for some reason Hood continued to track the lead, Prinz Eugen. The Prince of Wales correctly carried out the command and turned his sights on Bismarck, who was following in the wake of Prinz Eugen at a distance of about a mile. Suddenly, at 05.52.5, Hood opened fire, being at a distance of 12.5 miles. Following him, the Prince of Wales spat out the first salvos. Both ships fired salvos from the bow towers, the stern ones could not be put into action due to too acute angle rapprochement. Admiral Lutyens informed the command by radiogram “Entered battle with two heavy enemy ships” - and surrendered to the elements of battle.
The first shells from Prince of Wales split up - some flew over Bismarck, others fell into the sea astern. Immediately after the opening of fire, the Prince of Wales began to experience technical problems, and to begin with, the first gun of the first bow turret failed. The next volleys of the Welsh also did not hit the target, whizzing over the Aryan heads and exploding in a safe distance. Hood's first salvos fell short, however, dousing the cruiser with water from explosions - let me remind you that Hood opened fire on Prinz Eugen.

Dora Tower is on fire! Bismarck comes into play.
Bismarck opens fire on Hood

The shells of the British scoundrels began to fall closer and closer, but the German guns were still silent. Bismarck's artillery commander, Lieutenant Commander Adalbert Schneider, asked for the go-ahead to fire without waiting for commands from the ship's command post. Adalbert was at the fire control post on the foremast. Finally, at 05.55, when the British turned 20 degrees and thereby helped the Germans understand that they were dealing with Hood and the King George V-class battleship, Bismarck opened fire, immediately followed by Prinz Eugen. At this time the distance was about 11 miles (20,300 meters). Both German ships concentrated their fire on the enemy's lead ship, the battlecruiser Hood. Bismarck's first salvo was an undershoot. At this time, the commander of Prinz Eugen orders the commander of the mine-torpedo warhead, Lieutenant Reimann, to load the port side torpedo tubes with torpedoes with a diameter of 53.3 cm and open fire, without waiting for commands from the bridge, as soon as the ship reaches the torpedo fire zone, at the discretion of the lieutenant. The 5th salvo of the Welsh again overshot, but the sixth, it is possible, hit the battleship, although the Prince of Wales did not record a hit. The Germans' return fire cannot be called anything other than sniper fire. At 05.57 Prinz Eugen recorded the first hit, his shells hitting Hood in the area of ​​the mainmast. The shell explosions caused a large fire, the flames spread to the second chimney.
Bismarck also suffered the famous hit that pierced the fuel tank, and now a trail in the form of a wide fuel oil stain remained behind the battleship. Lutyens ordered Prinz Eugen to shift fire to the Prince of Wales, and Bismarck's artillerymen to open fire with second-caliber guns on the Prince of Wales.

Destruction of Hood
Bismarck fires on Hood

At 06.00, Hood and the Prince of Wales began to turn left by 20 degrees, thereby giving the main caliber aft turrets the opportunity to take over. And just at this time, Bismarck’s fifth salvo covered Hood with direct hits. The distance at that time was already less than 9 miles (16,668 km). At least one 15-inch shell from the salvo pierced Hood's armor belt, flew into the powder magazine and exploded there. The explosion that followed horrified eyewitnesses with its force. Hood, the Great Hood, which for 20 years was the largest battleship in the world, the pride of the Royal Navy, split in two and sank in just three minutes. At a point with coordinates 63 degrees 22 minutes north latitude, 32 degrees 17 minutes west longitude. The stern section sank first, stern up, followed by the bow, stem up. No one had time to leave the ship, everything was so fast. Of the 1,418 people on board, only three were saved... Admiral Holland and his staff, ship commander Ralph Kerr and other officers were killed. The three survivors were picked up from the water by the destroyer Electra and later landed them in Reykjavik.
06.01 Hood takes off, view from Prinz Eugen

After Hood's explosion, Bismarck turned to the right and transferred fire to the still living Prince of Wales. The British battleship was also forced to turn to avoid crashing into the sinking remains of Hood, and thus found itself between the sinking Hood and the Germans, representing an excellent target. The Germans did not miss their goal. At 06.02 a Bismarck shell exploded in the conning tower of the Prince of Wales, killing everyone there except the battleship's commander, John Catterall, and one other man. The distance was reduced to 14,000 meters, now even the shells of the largest anti-aircraft caliber of Prinz Eugen could reach the poor fellow of Wales, and of course, the anti-aircraft guns also opened fire. If the English battleship did not want to share Hood’s fate, he had to get away. And quickly. The British put up a smoke screen and rushed to retreat at maximum speed. They got it hard - four hits from Bismarck and three from Prinz Eugen. Finally, burning with revenge, the British fired three volleys from the “Y” tower, which was controlled independently at the time of shooting, but to no avail; all the volleys missed. At 06.09 the Germans fired their final salvo and the Battle of the Denmark Strait ended. Many sailors from the Prince of Wales, probably, after this campaign, lit candles in the church in memory of their savior, Admiral Lutyens. The fact is that the British were amazed by the fact that the German raiders did not finish off the Prince of Wales. Most likely, there is only one reason - Lutyens was in a hurry to get away from the main forces of the British rushing to the battlefield, and decided not to waste time on the chase. There is no doubt that Lutyens and the raider sailors, inspired by victory, wanted nothing more at that moment than to catch up with Wales and send Hoodoo to the company, but the circumstances - due to the choice made by Lutyens - were stronger.
Between 02/06 and 09/06, Bismarck transfers fire to the battleship Prince of Wales after the sinking of Hood. The most famous photograph of Bismarck, recognized as one of the best photographs of the Second World War. Taken from Prinz Eugen. The battleship's stern turrets are firing. This is not twilight, the photo turned out to be darkened by the bright flashes of the salvo.

Prince Eugen did not suffer any damage from the British fire, except for the deck that became wet from nearby explosions and several fragments that clanked helplessly on the deck. But Bismarck got it hard. The English sailors were not the kind to die with impunity. Three heavy shells hit the left side of the battleship, most likely all three from the Prince of Wales. The first struck the battleship in the middle of the hull below the waterline, pierced the plating below the armor belt and exploded inside the hull, causing the flooding of power station No. 4 on the port side. Water began to flow into the neighboring boiler room No. 2, but emergency batches stopped the flow. The second shell pierced the hull above the armor belt and came out from the starboard side without exploding, but making a hole with a diameter of 1.5 meters. As a result, about 2,000 tons of water poured into the tank premises, the fuel tank was damaged, and the battleship lost 1,000 tons of fuel. Plus a trail of spreading fuel... The third shell pierced the boat without any other consequences.
Scheme of the battle in the Denmark Strait

The overall result of all these hits was that Bismarck's speed dropped to 28 knots. There was a trim of 3 degrees on the bow and a roll of 9 degrees on the port side, which is why the right propeller was exposed from time to time. We had to take water into the ballast tanks to eliminate the list.
Technically speaking, nothing serious happened to Bismarck. It did not lose its combat capability, its speed remained sufficient, and only 5 people from the crew received minor injuries - in other words, scratches. The most serious consequence was the loss of a considerable part of the fuel.