May 20th, 1941. A restaurant in Stockholm.
A British officer, the naval attaché to neutral Sweden, is having dinner alone
when the waiter interrupts him with a telephone call from the embassy.
His eyes widen. He slams down the receiver and rushes out.
Waiting for him at the embassy is a Norwegian colonel,
the man Swedish intelligence leaks to when they want information
to land in British hands.
He has a sighting report from a Swedish cruiser.
They relay it to London via encrypted telegram, and it says:
"At 1500, two large warships,
escorted by three destroyers, five ships and ten or twelve planes,
passed to the northeast."
The ships are German, and the hunt is on.
EXTRA History
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The hunt for the Bismarck is one of the most dramatic events of World War II.
It's a story of great ships clashing in frozen waters,
a tale of risk-taking, heroism and shocking loss,
and the blind luck that sometimes changes history.
So when Wargaming contacted us again
saying that they wanted to sponsor a series of episodes on the Bismarck,
we jumped on that right away.
But what makes the Bismarck story interesting
isn't just the ships and the battles, it's the hunt.
For the Royal Navy, the biggest problem wasn't sinking the Bismarck,
it was finding it. This is a detective story writ large,
an international manhunt that stretched from the icy seas of the Denmark Strait
to the chattering computers of Bletchley Park.
It will begin with an interrupted dinner,
and end with the destruction of the largest battleship on Earth.
Allow me to set the scene.
21st of May. Early Morning. A British Naval Base at Scapa Flow.
Vice Admiral John Tovey, commander of the Home Fleet,
is aboard his flagship thinking that this might finally be it.
For days, German reconnaissance planes have passed above him,
recording the position of his ships.
Scapa Flow is a hard station, a barren rock in freezing seas,
but it's also strategically crucial real estate.
From their base in Scapa, Tovey's fleet guards the watery expanse
that stretches between Greenland and Nazi-occupied Norway,
and securing that line was the only thing keeping Britain alive.
This is a crucial juncture in the War.
The previous year, France had collapsed,
German forces had occupied Norway and Denmark,
and the Italians had entered the war on the side of its fascist ally, Germany.
The Axis Powers were now masters of Europe,
and Britain stood alone, besieged in its own islands.
As Luftwaffe raids pounded its cities,
American supply convoys were the only thing keeping Britain in the fight.
This was a tonnage war, measured in cargo delivered rather than ships sunk,
convoys raced through U-boat infested waters
to get Fortress Britain enough food, bullets and oil to defend democracy.
Tovey's nightmare was of a single ship: The Bismarck.
British intelligence had been building a file on her for some time,
even attending her launch in 1939
and monitoring her sea travels via air and signals intercepts.
They still didn't know everything, they didn't know how fast she was,
her crew complement, or what new technologies she had,
but they did know that she was enormous and advanced,
outfitted with both heavy armor and 15-inch guns that could sink
near anything the Royal Navy could throw at it.
But the British also knew that Bismarck was more than a ship:
she was a political statement.
Hitler had jump-started Germany's economy with public spending,
including a focus on military rearmament.
The Bismarck was a visible symbol of Germany's economic miracle,
a nation with a 100% employment rate,
provided you didn't count the Jews and the women forced out of the workplace.
And at over forty thousand tons,
Bismarck was also a flagrant violation of post World War I treaties
that limited the size of Germany's naval vessels.
This ship celebrated the Nazis' success, and proclaimed their warlike intentions.
This was a new Germany:
an economically strong Germany that had military ambition
and rejected any attempt to restrain it.
But so far, this great ship was still bottled up in the Baltic,
operating out of ports in northern Germany and occupied Poland.
But if the Bismarck could stage a break out,
slip between Denmark and Norway and cut north into the Atlantic,
it could plunge down into the Atlantic convoys,
a knife straight into Britain's supply artery.
Previous German raids had proved costly,
and those ships had only been a quarter the size of Bismarck.
Tovey's phone rings, a direct line from the Admiralty in London.
The call passes on the Swedish Navy's sighting,
but now, it's corroborated with more information.
A Polish source reported that the Bismarck left port three days ago,
and a Norwegian resistance cell spotted a group of German ships
passing between Norway and Denmark.
Royal Air Force reconnaissance planes, they say,
are currently scouring the fjords.
Tovey issues an order to his fleet: refuel and standby to sail.
13:15 hours. In Norway.
An RAF pilot cruising the fjords
spots and photographs a large ship with a heavy cruiser nearby.
Back in Scotland, an analyst confirms the silhouette
while the photos are still damp from the darkroom:
it's the Bismarck, probably with the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen.
The photos confirm Tovey's greatest fear.
Worse: the weather is deteriorating, with fog forecast overnight.
Bismarck had probably been hiding in the fjords,
waiting for just such weather to cover its dash to the Atlantic.
Tovey summons his subordinate, Vice Admiral Lancelot Holland,
and details his plan.
Holland will take his squadron to southern Iceland and hold there,
staying in a position to intercept the Bismarck
regardless of whether she sails down the east or the west coast of the island.
Tovey will stay in Scapa, in case the Bismarck tries to use the foul weather
to sneak past the north side of Britain.
The cruisers currently patrolling the Denmark Strait would stay on course
with orders to spot and shadow the Bismarck,
then radio its course so Holland can intercept.
Holland's squadron slips out at midnight.
22nd of May at 02:00 hours, in Norway.
An RAF bombing raid hits the Bismarck's last known position,
releasing their payloads blind due to the low clouds.
Heavy fog, no sighting.
Further reconnaissance flights are futile for the next several hours.
20:00 hours. In the Scapa Flow.
Admiral Tovey, who has been living next to the phone for the last 24 hours,
receives a report from the Admiralty:
a daring reconnaissance plane has flown low enough to break through the clouds.
The Bismarck is gone.
Any further reconnaissance fights are grounded due to poor weather.
He orders the command to sail for Iceland immediately,
hoping to fill any gaps in their screen.
In the 30 hours since the last sighting of the Bismarck,
the German raiders could've sailed 600 miles
toward the Atlantic access points around Iceland.
As Tovey leaves port, he radios Holland to say that Bismarck is heading his way,
and that the fleet must maintain radio silence.
The Bismarck has slipped through the first net, it must not slip through another.
23rd of May, 19:22 hours. The Denmark Strait.
Two sister cruisers have been searching the icy, mine-filled waters
of the Denmark Strait for 50 hours, ever since the Bismarck was last spotted,
when a lookout sees two ships emerge from a snowstorm.
He thinks they're British at first, but a second glance sends him scrambling.
It's a German battleship, and only seven miles away,
well within the killing range of its 15-inch guns.
Action stations sound. The officers below abandon their pre-dinner sherry.
Running feet pound the deck.
The cruiser turns hard over and makes for the fog,
its 8-inch guns useless against the steel behemoth.
For three agonizing minutes, the crew waits for incoming shells
as their little ship slowly takes cover in the mist.
The Bismarck's shells never arrive.
Reorienting herself, the cruiser stalks its quarry through the fog and rain,
deploying its most effective weapon: a sensor array.
These cruisers may not have heavy guns, but they're outfitted with
advanced systems that allow them to track enemy ships solely by radar,
a feat never achieved before.
The cruiser radios its sighting report to her sister ship fifteen miles south,
who relays it to the rest of the fleet and rushes to join the pursuit.
An hour passes
20:30 hours. The Denmark Strait.
Overeager and heading at speed,
the second cruiser plunges through a fog bank
to find itself nearly head-on with the Bismarck,
six miles away and closing at 30 knots.
Her captain orders the helm hard to starboard and deploys a smoke screen,
breaking for the mist. This time, the Bismarck is quick on the draw.
A salvo of 15-inch shells lands behind the vessel's stern,
rattling it with metal splinters.
Another shell lands 50 yards short and skips like a stone over the bridge.
But the cruiser escapes, shrouded in mist.
The twin cruisers, a little wiser and a bit more careful,
fall in behind the Bismarck and the Prinz Eugen,
staying out of sight but within the ten-mile range of their radar arrays,
quietly broadcasting Bismarck's position to the fleet.
21:00 hours. The Interception Fleet at Denmark Strait.
Admiral Holland's battlecruiser force plunges towards the Bismarck.
There are rough seas and snow flurries in the strait,
with waves so high that their destroyer escorts
are getting submerged and have to pull back.
Destroyers will do little good anyway, Holland knows.
This will be a two-on-two battle of capital ships.
At his disposal he has the newest ship in the British fleet:
The Prince of Wales and his flagship,
the pride of the Royal Navy, the HMS Hood.
The Hood has been called the most beautiful ship afloat.
Between the wars, she had circumnavigated the globe
as a symbol of British invincibility.
She's the star of fleet reviews and propaganda reels.
Many of her crew got their first taste of navy life
by seeing her at holiday parades or through childhood tours of her deck.
She is the beloved, the unsinkable, The Mighty Hood.
And she is steaming toward destruction.
Join us next time for a clash of flagships,
a wounded giant, and a three-word order that will echo throughout naval history.