The time was now 06.00 hours. On board the Hood, Holland ordered: ‘Turn twenty degrees to port together.’ The distance was down to about 16,000 metres.²⁷⁷ The Hood had to assume a course more parallel to the German ships, in order to prevent the rear turrets from being obstructed from firing by superstructures. On board the Prince of Wales, the Yeoman of Signals observed how the flagship hoisted two blue flags in the yardarm, indicating that Holland had ordered a 20 degree turn to port. Captain Leach and his staff welcomed it. One of the guns in the forward turret was malfunctioning, but with the turn, the aft turret would be able to fire, thus adding four guns to Leach’s broadsides.²⁷⁸

When the Hood began to sheer, the shells from the Bismarck’s fifth salvo were probably already in the air. It is possible that one of them would have hit the battlecruiser anyway, but as she turned, a shell penetrated the Hood’s side armour.²⁷⁹

‘I did not hear any explosion,’ Briggs recalled, but he was thrown to the deck by the impact. A fantastic flame of fire with the intensity of a welding torch, shot up on both sides of the bridge, right before his eyes.

Exactly where the fatal shell hit the Hood may never be known, but the ensuing detonation seems to have set alight the cordite in the magazine for the aft 10.2cm guns. As the cordite began to burn, it almost immediately created such high pressure that nearby bulkheads collapsed and opened the way to the adjoining compartments. The flame moved ahead to the engine rooms, where it turned up through the ventilation system and caused a huge flame to shoot up in the air. The same flame also moved astern and reached the magazine under the Xturret, which contained almost 50 tons of cordite. When this detonated, a 15-metre hole was blown in the side armour and coxswain French, who stood near one of the AA guns on board the Prince of Wales, saw how Hood’s X-turret was blown off.²⁸⁰ In a fraction of a second, the flame had also reached the Y-turret and a section 70 metres long, from the two aft turrets to the forward machine room, had been destroyed to such an extent that the ship was broken apart.²⁸¹

Despite the fact that many thousand men fought in the battle, only a few of them actually saw the explosion and all of them experienced it differently. It was described as being ‘like an enormous blowtorch’ by Captain Leach. Other observers regarded it as a ‘red white glow, shaped like a funnel,’ ‘like a bunch of red rhubarb’ or ‘as a long pale red tongue of fire.’ From the Norfolk, about 24,000 metres northwest of the dying Hood, it was described as ‘a sea of fire shaped like a fan or an inverted cone.’ On board the Suffolk, almost 30,000 metres from the explosion, it had not been possible to see much except the muzzle flashes from the duelling ships. Suddenly Commander Porter observed ‘a very thin column of fire, reaching between 200 and 300 metres up in the air.’²⁸² All observers were unanimous in one respect, that they did not hear any remarkable sound. Most of them considered the explosion to be completely silent; a few believed they heard a low hissing sound.

From the air, Captain Vaughn had approached the right column. He noted that the rearmost ship produced an unusual amount of smoke and oil traced behind it. He moved closer to it as the first ship in the left column suddenly disappeared behind an eruption of smoke and fire.²⁸³

Despite the explosion that ate its way along the hull of the ship and immediately killed every man in its way, a few seconds elapsed before the officers on the admiral’s bridge realized that the battle was over. ‘The compass is out of order,’ the officer of the watch said calmly.

‘Steering’s gone, sir,’ reported the helmsman through the voice pipe.

‘Change over to emergency steering,’ the captain ordered.

At this very moment, the ship began to list to port, at first by 10 degrees, then 20, 30, and everybody on the bridge realized she would never again regain trim. The Hood was capsizing.

‘There was never any panic,’ Briggs recalled. ‘And nobody ordered us to abandon the ship. It simply was not needed.’

He made his way towards the door leading to the open bridge on the starboard side and saw that Commander John Warrand, the navigation officer, blocked his way. Warrand took a step aside, smiled kindly towards Briggs and let him pass by. It was a smile that etched itself on Briggs memory.

On the shelter deck, Corporal Tilburn felt how the ship shuddered powerfully and saw a tremendous flame between the bridge and the Bturret.²⁸⁴ He saw one of his comrades fall down on his back, dead. As Tilburn let his eyes sweep over the deck, he saw another seaman, whose stomach had been ripped open by a splinter and incredulously watched his intestines fall out onto the deck. The sight was so disgusting that Tilburn staggered towards the gunwale to vomit. Once there, he realized that the sea was not where previous experience would suggest it ought to be. The dark waves were rapidly coming nearer. He managed to throw off his steel helmet before the waves washed the deck.²⁸⁵ Then he was below the surface of the water. He tried to swim upwards, but discovered that a cord from an antenna had caught one of his feet and dragged him down. With a presence of mind that would later surprise him, he grasped his knife and cut off the cord but in the time taken to do so he had been dragged down quite deep into the water.

For a moment, Briggs hesitated in the door to the bridge. He took a glance into the bridge and saw Holland sitting huddled up on his seat, resigned about the fate engulfing them all. The defeated admiral was the last person seen by Briggs, before ice cold water surrounded him and pulled him down into the bubbling depths of the ocean. At the same time Bill Dundas had struggled to overcome the list and reached a window on the port side. He managed to break the glass and was half way out when the water rushed in and covered him.

On board the Prince of Wales orders were quickly issued to avoid colliding with the sinking flagship. A turn to port had previously been initiated, but the helm had to be shifted sharply to starboard.

To the Germans watching the Hood’s destruction, the sight was as fantastic as it was terrifying. In the charthouse, Lieutenant Commander Neuendorff had heard Schneider shouting ‘Straddling!’ and dashed to the eye-slits on the port side. Somebody yelled that the Hood was ablaze and moments later there was a blinding explosion. Neuendorf’s assistant stood next to him:

At first we could see nothing but what we saw moments later could not have been conjured up by even the wildest imagination. Suddenly, the Hood split in two, and thousands of tons of steel were hurled into the air. More than a thousand men died. Although the range was still about 18,000 metres, the fireball that developed where the Hood still was seemed near enough to touch. It was so close that I shut my eyes but curiosity made me open them again a second or two later. It was like being in a hurricane. Every nerve in my body felt the pressure of the explosion. If I have one wish, it is that my children may be spared such an experience.²⁸⁶

The cry ‘The Hood is ablaze!’ was followed by ‘She is blowing up!’ and the men on board the Bismarck looked at each other with incredulity in their faces. Moments later they realized that they had won the brief duel with the enemy warship, thus dramatically increasing their chances of surviving the battle. They began to shout and cheer and slap each other’s backs. In the damage-control centre the shouting was heard through the intercom and Commander Oels was beset by an exuberant joy artificer Statz had never seen before. Just like the astonished Statz, Lieutenant Jahreis and the others gazed at Oels, ‘the loneliest man on board,’ as he ecstatically urged them to ‘three ‘Sieg Heil’ for the Bismarck.’²⁸⁷

Far below, in one of the Bismarck’s boiler rooms, Leading Seaman Johannes Zimmermann found it difficult to accept what was going on. When the loudspeakers at first announced that the Bismarck was about to enter battle with the Hood, he briefly believed that the message concerned an exercise or a war game. Hardly had he brought himself to accept that the battle was raging, when the loud cries about the destruction of the Hood penetrated into the lower parts of the German battleship. ‘It was like a shock,’ he said. ‘At first we were all smiling, but gradually we realized what it meant. I got a strange feeling in the stomach – tomorrow it could be us.’²⁸⁸

In his director, Müllenheim-Rechberg heard in his headset the voices multiply, until it was impossible to make out the words. Something remarkable had happened. He left the task of watching the Norfolk and Suffolk to a subordinate and moved to the port sight.

While I was still turning [the director] towards the Hood, I heard a shout, ‘She’s blowing up!’ ‘She’ – that could only be the Hood! The sight I then saw is something I shall never forget. At first the Hood was nowhere to be seen; in her place was a colossal pillar of black smoke reaching into the sky. Gradually, at the foot of the pillar, I made out the bow of the battle cruiser projecting upwards at an angle, a sure sign that she had broken in two. Then I saw something I could hardly believe: a flash of orange coming from her forward gun! Although her fighting days had ended, the Hood was firing a last salvo. I felt great respect for those men over there.²⁸⁹

This final salvo from the Hood was probably not a conscious act. It seems more likely that some kind of shortcut in the electrical firing system may have fired the guns one last time. Another plausible explanation is that Müllenheim-Rechberg did not see gun flashes at all, but a flash caused by an explosion in the fore magazines of the Hood. The explosion had made its way horizontally towards the bow. Confined by the armour deck it moved forward compartment by compartment as the bulkheads gave way, being delayed a fraction of a second each time. This delay in turn caused a slight pause between the explosions in the aft and fore magazines. It was sufficient for the German lieutenant to move to the port sight to observe the event. From the Prince of Wales, Coxswain French had seen flames shooting up from the water along most of the Hood’s hull and he believed he saw how the ship was broken just ahead of the A-turret.

Coxswain Westlake on the Prince of Wales also got the impression that the battlecruiser’s hull was broken in the fore part.²⁹⁰ When the Hood rolled over and sank, Lieutenant Commander A. H. Terry, who was situated very high up on the Prince of Wales, briefly saw the damage wrought to the battlecruiser’s hull and keel. He could see into the interior of the ship and the exposed frames where plating had disappeared.²⁹¹

With the tormented noise of broken metal, bubbles of air rushing to the surface of the sea and the beating of his heart echoing in his ears, Briggs struggled desperately for his life in the dark water. He tried to swim, but the suction created by the sinking Hood dragged him down.

Panic had gone. This was it, I realized. But I wasn’t going to give in easily. I knew that the deckhead of the compass platform was above me and that I must try to swim away from it. I managed to avoid being knocked out by the steel stanchions, but I was not making any progress. The suction was dragging me down. The pressure on my ears was increasing each second, and panic returned in its worse intensity. I was going to die. I struggled madly to try to heave myself up to the surface. I got nowhere. Although it seemed an eternity, I was under water for barely a minute. My lungs were bursting. I knew that I just had to breathe. I opened my lips and gulped in a mouthful of water. My tongue was forced to the back of my throat. I was not going to reach the surface. I was going to die. I was going to die. As I weakened, my resolve left me. What was the use of struggling? Panic subsided. I had heard it was nice to drown. I stopped trying to swim upwards. The water was a peaceful cradle. I was being rocked off to sleep. There was nothing I could do about it -goodnight, mum. Now I lay me down…I was ready to meet God. My blissful acceptance of death ended in a sudden surge beneath me, which shot me to the surface like a decanted cork in a champagne bottle. I wasn’t going to die. I wasn’t going to die. I trod water as I panted in great gulps of air. I was alive. I was alive.²⁹²

Corporal Tilburn and Midshipman Dundas also shot to the surface, saved by a mysterious force that was later presumed to have originated from an exploding boiler. As they struggled on the surface, they saw the forecastle of the battlecruiser disappear as if it had been a toy in a pond. The other two parts of the ship, the mid and aft sections, had already begun their decent to the bottom of the ocean. The rumbling and hissing sounds from the sinking ship died out; the blazes disappeared as if by a stroke of magic. Soon only a dark cloud, already beginning to dissolve, and a large patch of dark oil, mixed up with wreckage, remained where the Hood had once been.

But the battle had not ended. When the sixth salvo from the Prince of Wales straddled the German battleship, Captain Leach noted that the Bismarck was hit. There might still exist a chance to turn the battle in British favour. Then the Bismarck’s first salvo aimed at the Prince of Wales found its mark. One of the shells crashed into the bridge, but fortunately for Leach, it was a dud which continued straight through the bridge and out on the other side of the battleship, before tumbling into the water. Still, even a non-exploding 38cm shell wrought havoc. A moment earlier, Leach had had a properly working staff around him. A fraction of a second later he was in a slaughterhouse of smoke, screams, blood and cut off body parts. As the dazed Captain struggled to get back on his feet, he saw that only the Yeoman of Signals was standing. Everybody else was on the floor, all but one of them were dead.

It was just the beginning. Shell after shell hit the British battleship. Radar systems and sights were knocked out, boats and cabins were destroyed. A Walrus-plane, just about to be launched to direct fire, was riddled by splinters and the aircrew hastily abandoned it. The Prince of Wales returned fire, but several of her guns malfunctioned. Despite the efforts of the civilian technicians, problems with the guns occurred more rapidly than they were repaired. Finally Leach gave orders for retreat. If the uneven duel had continued, the outcome was clearly not going to be favourable. It was better to save the ship.

The range between the combatants rapidly opened up, until only wreckage, oil and three men remained in the area. Two of these men were Tilburn and Dundas. The third was Ted Briggs. His boyish dream to serve with the Hood had become a nightmare that would haunt him for the rest of his life.