I Sank The Bismarck (26 page)

I realized then that I was on my own. There was no sign of
the other two, who must have come out of the cloud well
ahead of me. I did not have a lot of time to take in the scene
because the guns started firing at me almost immediately I
popped into sight, and there was a red glow in the clouds
ahead of me, about 100 yards away, as the anti-aircraft shells
exploded. As I left the cloud, the gunfire was repeated, two
bursts at a time but always ahead of me, throwing up walls of
water. As I descended, there were two explosions to my right
and below, which shook the aircraft severely and knocked us
violently 90 degrees off our course. I struggled to turn us back
towards the target, looking anxiously for any signs that we
had been hit or that the engine had been damaged. The two
boys in the back seemed OK and we continued flying, the
Pegasus roaring away, the Swordfish still responding to
the controls – but it was getting decidedly unhealthy.

The Germans in their big battleship were trying to kill me,
and it was not pleasant. I continued to drop height, with
Bismarck
looming bigger, some of her guns flashing from
amidships with vivid orange flames now aimed at us. The big
explosions that had blown us about did not follow us down
to this height, but the smaller cannon and machine-gun fire,
with their red tracer bullets, were now coming towards us in
a torrent. I thought about what I had noticed when I had been
firing from the machine-gun platforms on the
Ark
at the
Italian torpedo bombers: the lower the target, the harder it
was to hold in your sights, particularly if it was below the
horizon. I went down as close to wave-top height as I dared.
The sea was rough and I did not want to be caught by a wave,
so I levelled out at around 50 feet, probably just a tad lower.
I was not sure how effective this was going to be because the
tracer seemed to be very focused.

In our briefing in the
Ark
we had discussed coordinating
our attack, the first three flights coming in on the port beam
from various bearings, with the second wave doing the same
on the starboard side. This would help to confuse the antiaircraft
fire and would also make it difficult for
Bismarck
to
manoeuvre into the torpedo tracks. But it seemed that we had
got badly separated in the high cloud; it was utter confusion.
I felt that every gun on the ship was aiming at me. It was
heading towards us, the lazily spinning tracer from scores of
guns coming at us like hail. I do not know how I managed to
keep flying into it: every instinct was screaming at me to duck,
turn away, do anything – an impulse that it was hard to fight off.
But I held on and we got closer and closer. I went down, as low
as I dared, though even that took an act of will to overcome my
fear of hitting the rough sea. At training school I had been
taught to assess the speed of the ship and lay off my aim by using
a simple marked rod mounted horizontally along the top of the
cockpit. But the nearer I got the larger the target became, so I
decided to aim for the bow.

Then I heard Dusty Miller shouting in my ear, 'Not yet, not
yet!' and I thought, 'Has he gone mad? What is he doing?' I
turned and realized that he was leaning out of the cockpit,
looking down at the sea, trying to prevent me from dropping
the torpedo on to the crest of a wave, where it would bounce
off or dive deep, either way knocked off any course that I
might have fired it on.

We were getting closer and closer, the ship was getting
bigger and bigger, and I thought, 'Bloody hell, what are you
waiting for?'

Then he said, 'Let her go, Jock,' and I pressed the button on
the throttle. Dusty yelled, 'I think we have got a runner.'

When a Swordfish is suddenly relieved of the weight of a
torpedo, it naturally rises in the air, but above us was a stream
of bullets and shells. I did what I could to hold the plane
down, avoiding the temptation to bank into a sharp turn,
which would give the gunners in
Bismarck
a bigger silhouette
to aim at.

I held the aircraft down and went in to a full left-rudder
turn at full throttle, thinking, 'Let's get out of here.' The gunfire
pursued us, but I kept low for 3,000 yards, praying that
nothing would hit us, desperately wanting to get into the
clouds but knowing that it would be fatal to climb too early.
Finally I thought it would be OK to try to find some height.
As we rose above 300 feet two bigger shells again exploded,
this time to our rear, but that was all.

I shouted to Dusty to give me a course back to the
Ark,
but
I think it was beyond him. 'Find one of those radar Swordfish
and follow him,' he said. I spotted one from 810 Squadron,
flown by Godfrey-Faussett, and got into line astern with him.
Visibility was getting very poor now and the
Ark
was sending
out a radio beacon signal. When we came round to make our
final approach the deck was still heaving up and down –
sometimes it looked like a steel wall in front of you, then all
you could see were the quarterdeck and the propellers churning
away. Commander Stringer was still secured by a line tied
to a stanchion, ready to wave me away at the last moment,
but I made it back, and there was nothing more welcoming
than the thump of the wheels on the deck and the clatter of
the hook catching on the arrestor wire. Miraculously, we had
all returned, but one of the Swordfish from 820 Squadron,
flown by
Sub-Lieutenant Swanton, had 175 splinter holes in
it from a close shellburst. The pilot and the TAG also
had wounds, fortunately not very serious, from the shell
splinters. A few other aircraft had some minor damage from
shellbursts.

When we had landed and the rigger clambered up to the
cockpit, making notes of any maintenance or repairs that
needed doing, we eased ourselves out of the cockpit. I was
stiff and sore, as though I had been flying for a day, and I was
completely exhausted, almost light-headed from fatigue and
adrenalin. We assembled in the bridge for debriefing and it
was obvious that the attack had become broken up and disorganized
by the weather. It was difficult to piece together the
various accounts from the pilots and the observers into anything
that made sense. Very few of us were willing to make
any claims. I for one knew that I had not lingered over
Bismarck
for the one and a half minutes it would have taken
for my torpedo to hit her and to allow Dusty to follow its
track, and I suspect that most of the other pilots behaved in
the same way. I had no idea if my torpedo had found its target
or not. The only thing I could remember through the stress of
the attack was that
Bismarck
had seemed to me to be turning
away from my attack, rather than towards it. We told our
debriefing officers what we could and left it to the air staff.

We went below, where the cooks had made us a special hot
meal, but we couldn't eat it – the strain and tension had
robbed us of any appetite. Fear inevitably leaves its mark. We
all sat around and wondered how it was that we had survived,
even those who had received hits. A cigarette and several pink
gins were what we craved, then the oblivion of sleep. We were
told that visibility was too poor for another attack that night,
but that there would be another mission the next morning, led
again by Coode, me and Dixon-Childe. If this was calculated
to ensure we got a good night's sleep, it failed. Someone
remarked that the Light Brigade had only been asked to do it
once.

By the time we had finished our debriefing, two signals had
been sent to Rear Admiral Somerville in
Renown
and forwarded
to Admiral Tovey, struggling to reach
Bismarck
in
King George V.
The first signal said that one torpedo had definitely
hit
Bismarck
amidships, and then the second one, sent
twenty minutes later after more planes had landed, stated that
another hit had been obtained aft. It was very hard to be
certain of anything, and the narrative report that was put
together was written in the order in which the attack had been
planned, not in the sequence in which it had probably
actually taken place. Many flights had been split up in the
very thick cloud over
Bismarck
and had attacked in ones and
twos over a period of thirty minutes.

What was eventually pieced together was that my flight, led
by Lt Commander Coode, probably went in first, joined by
another aircraft that had become separated from no. 3 sub-flight.
I think we went into the final run-in towards the target
with all of us separated, but all attacking the port side, and as
we made a getaway a hit was observed from the cockpit of the
Swordfish of the third sub-flight, flown by Lieutenant Stanley
Keane, who had found himself behind us and had decided to
follow us in. According to him the hit was on the port side,
about two thirds of the way down from the bows. It could
have been mine, but there was no way to tell.

The second sub-flight had also got disorientated in the
cloud and had climbed to 9,000 feet, where they started to get
ice forming. Two aircraft got a bearing on
Bismarck
with their
radar and went into the attack from the starboard side. They
came under concentrated fire from all the guns on that side of
the ship, but managed to get away. The third Swordfish of
that flight remained in the cloud for some time, then actually
returned to
Sheffield
for another bearing. He then came back
towards
Bismarck
and made an attack on the port bow, and
his crew saw a strike amidships. This must have been the last
attack that night because of the time it would have taken him
to fly to
Sheffield
and return. The fourth sub-flight and the
other aircraft of the third sub-flight met up as they flew out of
the cloud, and they saw
Bismarck
firing heavily at the second
sub-flight. All four aircraft made an attack from the port side.
They came under very heavy, intense shellfire and it was in
this attack that Sub-Lieutenant Swanton's aircraft was riddled
with shell splinters and he was wounded in the arm. The gunfire
followed them for almost 7 miles before they escaped.

The fifth sub-flight, another made up of just two aircraft,
lost each other and also started to suffer from icing. They
descended and found that they had come out of the cloud
upwind of
Bismarck.
One of the pilots decided to fly forward
to make his approach from the bow, and while he did so he
saw a torpedo strike amidships on the starboard side. He
reached a position on
Bismarck
's starboard bow, then flew
out for about 5 miles, made a very low-level approach and
dropped at about 1,000 yards. The second pilot of the fifth
flight tried to make an approach on the starboard quarter, but
came under such intense fire that he jettisoned his torpedo.
The final flight of the attack, the sixth one, also got lost in the
cloud. They too returned to
Sheffield
for a fresh bearing, but
on their return opted to remain out of the cloud and flew low
to
Bismarck,
attacking on the starboard beam. They were
spotted at long range and came under heavy fire. One pilot
dropped his torpedo at 2,000 yards, while the other
abandoned his attack and returned to the
Ark,
jettisoning his
torpedo before landing on.

This, then, was the official narrative – as I say, not really
written up in the sequence that the attacks occurred. There
had been sighting of two, possibly three, hits, but very little
firm confirmation of the exact number. The
Ark
was prepared
only to claim two. And it was this that was communicated to
Rear Admiral Somerville and the Admiralty. Yet hits were not
enough.
Bismarck
's armour was extremely thick. The
Swordfish from 825 Squadron on
Victorious
had seen a hit
amidships on
Bismarck,
but she had brushed it off. It wasn't
enough to hit her: we needed to cause some serious damage
and it seemed that in that aim we had failed.

There were still two long-range Swordfish circling over
Bismarck
when our attack left and they were asked by the
Ark
to stay on station as long as possible to direct a small group
of four destroyers on to
Bismarck.
Then indications started to
come in that
Bismarck
was in trouble.
Sheffield
reported that
the German battleship had slowed down, then that she had
changed course and was heading back towards Admiral
Tovey's
King George V,
still in hot pursuit 80 miles away. It
was hard to ascertain whether this was deliberate, because
during this turn
Bismarck
had fired a salvo of her 15in guns
at
Sheffield
from a range of 9 miles, and although
Sheffield
did not suffer a direct hit, three ratings were killed by shell
splinters, with eight others wounded.
Sheffield
broke off the
contact and raced away under cover of a smokescreen. Then,
an hour and a half later, the two Swordfish that had been
trailing
Bismarck
at last, in total darkness, landed on the
Ark
and made their final report.
Bismarck,
they said, after being
torpedoed, had made two complete circles and reduced speed.
Somerville passed this information on to Admiral Tovey at
half past midnight on 27 May.

The attack had worked. For reasons that we still did not
know,
Bismarck
had been prevented from running at speed to
St-Nazaire. Instead she appeared to be slowing and her course
was uncertain. Unless she regained speed and course quickly,
Tovey with the two big battleships
Rodney
and
King George
V
would still have a chance to catch her. Final confirmation
of the crisis that had overwhelmed
Bismarck
was given in a
signal by one of the four destroyers,
HMS
Zulu,
that had
arrived on the scene a little earlier. She signalled that
Bismarck
's course was fluctuating wildly through 60 degrees
to 340. We had got her. It was not a moment too soon. We
were just 500 miles from the German air force's French bases
and the submarine pens of L'Orient.