The brief battle between Lütjens and Wake-Walker did not result in any casualties or damage, but it altered the scenario. One of the changes was the successful detachment of the Prinz Eugen, of which the British lost track. With only one ship to manoeuvre, Lütjens’ chances of shaking off his pursuers improved. The most fundamental change, however, pertained to Wake-Walker’s dispositions. He had received reports telling him that German submarines infested the area he was sailing into. Consequently, he ordered his ships to assume a zigzagging course, to minimize the risk of torpedo hits. Furthermore, Wake-Walker neglected to send the Suffolk back to her previous position on the right flank. Rather he kept the Suffolk close to his flagship, in case the Bismarck attacked again. Thus, the sector on the Bismarck’s starboard aft was left empty.
At 20.30 hours on 24 May, Wake-Walker received a signal from the Admiralty telling him to expect an air attack launched from the Victorious any time after 22.00 hours. This signal coincided with a period when contact with the Bismarck was lost, and at the time when the air attack could be expected, contact had still not been regained. Tension mounted aboard the British ships as minute after minute passed without seeing the German ships, but fortunately the air attack had been delayed. At 23.30 hours, the Bismarck was again observed and the Norfolk could report that the German battleship sailed approximately 11 nautical miles ahead of her.323
Meanwhile, the Victorious prepared for an attack that bordered on the desperate. She was going to launch her Swordfish aircraft, a type often described as relics of bygone days, as their biplane construction suggested, an impression reinforced by the fuselage consisting of canvas, wires and struts. The perception is, however, precipitate, because the Swordfish aircraft in fact had many advantages. They were employed as a combination of torpedo, reconnaissance and fire-direction aircraft. The Swordfish could negotiate very difficult weather conditions and their aero-dynamic qualities were indispensable to the forthcoming attack.
The attack force consisted of nine Swordfish and was led by the division commander, Lieutenant Commander Eugene Esmonde. He had joined the Royal Air Force as a fighter pilot in 1928, but after five years of service, he began to fly mail and passenger aeroplanes to Australia. At the outbreak of World War II, he was offered the command of the 825th Swordfish Division. Esmonde was known as a daring and determined commander and he was well suited for a mission like the one he was just to embark on.
The attack force was divided into three groups. Esmonde commanded one, while the other two were led by Lieutenant Percy Gick, a former instructor at the Navy Torpedo School, and Lieutenant ‘Speed’ Pollard, who according to the traditions of the Navy received his nickname because he was known as a notorious idler. These three men were the only pilots who had any experience of missions like the one to be conducted. The other participants were hardly experienced or trained enough for the task. Many of them had conducted their first landing on a carrier a mere five days before and except for the three group commanders, none had even practised a torpedo attack in division formation before.
Nevertheless, the airmen tried to appear cocky when orders were received. They would start from a carrier deck swept by heavy squalls, fly 160 kilometres and attack enemy warships in the declining light. Then, if they survived the enemy anti-aircraft fire, they would fly back to the Victorious and take their aircraft down on the deck in darkness. But beneath the plucky façade, they knew this might very well be a mission they would not return alive from.
The nine Swordfish were moved onto the flight deck. The Swordfish were capable of generating much lift at low speeds, and the strong wind almost made them take off and veer off on their own. The maintenance crews had to keep them down while the air crews entered their machines. The engines coughed and fired up. The dark smoke from the exhausts was immediately dispersed and swept away by the strong wind. Soon Esmonde indicated that he was ready to start. The torpedo plane raced ahead over the flight deck and quickly climbed up in the air. The other machines followed. All made a successful start. Esmonde could assemble his force and set a southwesterly course. Soon the planes disappeared into a rainsquall. The clock showed that only an hour remained of 24 May, while the noise from the vanishing Swordfish was drowned as three Fulmars started from the Victorious. They would follow Esmonde’s force and report what they saw.
Further west, the American coast guard ship Modoc worked her way through the large waves, searching for survivors from the convoy HX126. She had not found any sailors, only deserted lifeboats and rafts. It was a monotonous voyage and the crew was bored to death, but soon their hope for a change was to be fulfilled. The news that the Hood had blown up had already reached the American ship. Intercepted radio messages as well as a brief exchange with the British corvette Arabis had provided the information. The crew of the Modoc also realized that the Bismarck and Prinz Eugen were not far away. Despite this knowledge, the mighty silhouette of the Bismarck caused a great stir on the Modoc, as it suddenly became visible through the showers of rain pouring down from the thick clouds. Sailors who were not tied to a specific task hurried up on the deck. As they looked at Germany’s largest warship, they spotted a number of tiny dots above the horizon. With a mixture of dismay and rapture they saw how Esmonde’s slow biplanes broke through the clouds and approached the American ship with an unpleasant purposefulness.
Despite the poor visibility, Esmonde had managed to navigate with such precision that the enemy ships appeared as blips on the radar equipped aircraft, almost exactly when expected. For a brief moment, the Bismarck could even be seen in a gap between the clouds. However, the contact was lost soon afterwards. Esmonde had to bring his Swordfish formation below the clouds, to seek assistance from the British cruisers shadowing the German battleship. He found Wake-Walker’s flagship, which signalled that the Bismarck was 12 nautical miles ahead, on the starboard bow. The Swordfish steered in the direction indicated, while they climbed into the covering clouds. Soon an echo appeared on the radar screens and Esmonde gave attack orders. The squadron descended through the clouds and manoeuvred into attack positions, but there was something wrong. The British aeroplanes headed towards a ship that appeared too small. Furthermore, it seemed remarkably peaceful. Indeed, it was so small and quiet that it could hardly be the Bismarck or Prinz Eugen. In the last moment Esmonde realized that a mistake was about to be made and gave new orders to the other planes.
Unlike the Germans, who had been aware of the Modoc’s presence before the ship was sighted, the British pilots had no knowledge about her. The British pilots broke off the attack on the innocent American ship in time, but their mistake nevertheless had negative consequences. When the British aircraft dived towards the Modoc, they were seen from the Bismarck, whose anti-aircraft gunners were alerted.
As Friday gave way to Saturday, Esmonde’s group began the approach towards the Bismarck. It was still not dark, but twilight was quickly coming nearer from the east. Müllenheim-Rechberg was in the aft fire control tower on the Bismarck:
Several pairs of aircraft were seen approaching on the port bow. They were beneath a layer of clouds and we could see them clearly, getting into formation to attack us. […] Aircraft alarm! In seconds every anti-aircraft gun on the Bismarck was ready for action. One after the other, the planes came towards us, nine Swordfish, torpedoes under their fuselages.324
Esmonde’s original intension had been to pass the battleship’s bow and turn to enable an attack from starboard with his group, but the Bismarck opened effective fire and a rudder was hit. The machine was still manoeuvrable, but Esmonde realized it might be prudent to launch the attack while his aircraft could still fly.325
As the three aeroplanes reduced the distance, the Bismarck fired with almost every gun barrel she had. Tracer belched out from her lighter anti-aircraft guns and converged towards the biplanes. Heavy 38cm shells splashed into the sea, raising huge pillars of water, enough to shatter any aircraft that flew into them. Salvo after salvo left the heavy guns, but every time the water receded, the three Swordsfish remained, now closer to the battleship.
It appeared unfathomable that none of the three aircraft was shot down, but several factors made the task complicated for the gunners and rendered the aircraft difficult targets. One of them was the fact that the high explosive shells were set to detonate after a certain time of flight. Shells were prepared in such a way that the time set would diminish as the aircraft flew closer and closer during the attack. The procedure meant that shells with gradually shorter time before detonation were fired as range from the battleship to the aircraft diminished. The Germans did not realize how slow the Swordfish planes flew and most shells burst at too short range. Thus, the slow speed of the Swordfish was in fact an advantage in this situation. Another factor aiding the British was the rough sea, making it difficult for the AA crews, and when the Bismarck began to zigzag to avoid the awaited torpedoes, the aiming of the guns was further complicated.
At the open bridge aboard the Bismarck, Lindemann supervised the engagement. He gave orders directly to Corporal Hans Hansen, the helmsman. Lindemann did not need his binoculars to see how the torpedoes were jettisoned from Esmonde’s group. He ordered Hansen to steer hard to starboard and all the torpedoes from the first group passed aport of the battleship’s bow.
Immediately behind Esmonde’s group, the second group followed. ‘We approached just above sea level,’ recalled Sub-lieutenant Les Sayer, who was an observer in Lieutenant Gick’s plane. ‘They fired at us, but fortunately we were not hit as we closed in.’
When Hansen turned to starboard, the ship twisted in such a way that Gick’s group suddenly found itself approaching the battleship on her starboard quarter. Gick’s comrades pressed the attack home, but Gick himself decided that the angle of attack was too unfavourable and turned away to make another attempt. ‘At that moment I thought: To hell!’ Sayer remembered. ‘We’ve been through it once, now we had to do it all over again.’
While Gick turned away, the other two aeroplanes in his group continued and jettisoned their torpedoes. Hansen saw them, but at this stage all the noise from the firing weapons had deafened him to such an extent that he no longer heard what Lindemann said. He steered the ship on his own initiative.326
The German attention was now shifted to the third group, which had been reduced to two aircraft, as one had got lost in the clouds. They made a wide tack in front of the German battleship. One plane turned and attacked from port bow. The other passed ahead of the Bismarck, before turning as sharply as the Swordfish was capable of and approached from starboard.
Hansen managed to avoid this attack too, but the Germans did not see that Gick had made a semicircle after the failed initial attack and now came in again. He flew at an extremely low altitude. The landing gear almost hit the waves and the setting sun was behind him. This time he felt certain of hitting his target. ‘We approached at a speed of 170 kilometres per hour, just above the sea,’ Sayer remembered. ‘No one saw us and no fire was directed at us.’327
After releasing the torpedo, the Swordfish turned away. As Gick and Sayer strived to get out of range of the German guns, they were rewarded with the sight of a high column of water on the starboard side of the battleship. ‘I saw what we regarded as a hit,’ Sayer recalled, ‘as a huge cascade of water rose from the hull. That was we, I thought. That was our hit.’328
The shock wave that went through the battleship when the torpedo exploded threw Petty Officer Kurt Kirchberg onto a bulkhead with such force that he was killed. Five other seamen had to be taken to the hospital with broken bones. ‘The torpedo hit us on the starboard side,’ Corporal Zimmermann recalled, ‘and in the boiler room it caused bolts and nuts to ricochet around with such violence that they threatened to kill somebody.’329
A seaman on one of the lower decks was hurled several metres by the shock wave. Dazed, he got up and could hear his Chief engine room artificer ask calmly: ‘But Budich, where were you going in such a hurry?’330
When the British planes hastened east, to return to the Victorious, a few final salvos were fired by the Bismarck’s main guns. One of the shells struck the water beneath Gick’s machine and the impact was so powerful that it ripped open a gaping hole in the bottom of the fuselage. ‘We must have been in the outskirt of one such cascade,’ Sayer told, ‘that ripped away part of the canvas. The plane hadn’t suffered any significant damage. It was just that suddenly you could see the sea between your feet.’331
The British airmen were not yet safe. Although they were beyond the range of the Bismarck’s guns, they still had to survive a perilous flight in the darkness before they safely landed aboard the carrier. At these longitudes dusk occurred after midnight, with the clocks set as they were on the British and German ships and aircraft. The radio beacon on the Victorious was out of order and despite the dangers posed by German submarines, Captain Bovell decided to switch on searchlights and direct them on the clouds, to help the air crews to find the carrier. When Admiral Curteis ordered him to switch the lights off, Bovell pretended he had not understood the signal. Curteis had to send another signal, in sharper words, before Bovell complied. Still, he periodically flashed with the most powerful signal lamp on the carrier.
Esmonde never saw any beams from the Victorious. His division missed the task force. It soon became apparent that they had flown too far. Esmonde and the other pilots had to make a 180° turn and flew towards the area where they expected to find the carrier. They struggled on in the darkness and were finally rewarded a light, which turned out to originate from Curteis’ cruisers. Despite their lack of experience, the pilots successfully landed on the flight deck in the dark night. All machines made it safely. Bovell and his officers felt relieved, as did the British airmen, in particular Gick with his damaged Swordfish. During most of the return flight he had heard the increasingly desperate words from the chilled Sayer in the intercom system: ‘It’s getting really cold back here!’332
Far less luck accompanied two Fulmar aircraft, which had started at 01.00 hours to relieve the aircraft reporting on the attack. Both lost their way and disappeared. Thirty-six hours later two of the airmen were found by the freighter Braverhill. The other two were lost.333