With the cruisers gone it would be up to King George V to keep a hold on Bismarck. Even now he was burning more precious fuel, increasing to 28 knots to try and make up the ground lost over night. He needed to make radar contact again quickly, but a last idea occurred to him, and he discussed it with his Chief of Staff.
“I’m afraid sending in the Swordfish again this morning will be fruitless, Brind,” he said. “But Victorious could do us one last service as she leaves and fly a search operation. What do you suggest?”
“Southwest arc, sir,” said Brind with little hesitation. “If I were Bismarck I’d see about a turn in that direction, if she already hasn’t done as much. There will be U-boats to form a picket line for her in the Atlantic, and she can rendezvous with an oiler there.”
“Make it so,” said Tovey.
Ten minutes later Victorious was turning into the wind for the last time on this mission, and seven of her nine Swordfish lumbered down the armored deck to take wing again, forming up and turning on a heading of 225 degrees southwest before they began to fan out on their individual search tracks. Each plane would fly out and back, with all seven plotted in such a way as to search a near 180 degree arc. When they landed on Victorious it would be their final mission in the hunt for Bismarck, and one came home with some very good news.
Lt. Pollard was in plane 5K off the Victorious that morning, his observer, Beattie, intently scanning the sea with his field glasses as they searched. His was the leftmost slice of the arc Victorious was searching, and it mostly covered the edge of the course where they had last sighted the battleship.
The winds were up and the sky was still broken with banks of ragged clouds, tinged pink and grey in the early morning hours. Not having radar in their plane, they searched for some time along the track, seeing nothing. Pollard was watching his fuel gauge closely as well. When he has consumed forty percent he would begin making a gradual turn to begin the homeward leg of his pattern.
When he did so Beattie spoke up, shouting over the engine noise. “Aren’t we turning the wrong way?”
“Too many clouds in that direction,” Pollard shouted back. “We won’t see a damn thing. This track is clear.”
They flew on for some time, and then Beattie noted a dark shape ahead, trailing a long, white wake in the sea. “Ship ahead!”
Pollard looked about, plotting the best way to approach under cover without losing the contact. He slipped into a cloud and when it broke to the clear in places, Beattie had a good look at the target through his field glasses. Amazingly, there was no flak from the ship.
“What’s her heading?” said Pollard.
“Looks to be due south.”
“That’s the Germans then. None of our ships this far out. Get a message off quick now. Sighted one ship bearing course 180 degrees south, our position.”
Beattie tapped out his intelligence report and, low on fuel, they banked into a cloud and turned north for Victorious, some sixty miles away now by Pollard’s calculations.
“I hope to bloody God we can still find Vicky,” said Pollard. “But what in the world is old King George going to do if she finds the Germans all on her own?”
Pollard had little to worry about just then, because the ship they had sighted was the cruiser Prince Eugen, still steaming due south as Lütjens had ordered. Her companion, Bismarck had bid her farewell and good hunting, turning 70 degrees to port ten minutes earlier.
When the signal came in to Victorious it was quickly passed on to Tovey on King George V, where it raised far more questions than it answered.
“One ship sighted?” said Tovey. “What kind of ship? A cruiser? A battleship? This information is not clear.”
“I’m sorry, sir,” said Brind, “but it’s all we have for the moment.”
“Bloody pilots need training in proper signals protocol,” said Tovey, obviously unhappy. “Anything from the other planes?”
“Not a word, sir. Oh, the rightmost plane in the search arc sighted Hood and Prince of Wales and signaled two ships—but it wasn’t coded, sir.”
“Not coded? Damn it, Brind! We should have kept the bloody planes on Victorious for all the good this does us. What if the Germans pick up that wireless message?”
“A bit of a mess here, sir,” Brind agreed.
“Very well,” Tovey fumed, thinking. “We’ll hold this course based on the one good sighting we do have. And I think we’d better get Hood and Prince of Wales off to the east somewhat, on a line to join up with us. She was in a good position for dawn, but it’s time we brought them our way. It’s going to be a bit lonesome out here today.”
“I understand, sir. I’ll signal Admiral Holland our intentions and ask him to make his turn as soon as practical.”
“Very well,” said Tovey, still upset with the sloppy reporting from the pilots of Victorious. “It’s likely the Germans suspect they are there in any case.” He had misgivings about bringing the carrier along, and now she seemed more of a liability than an asset. Yet her crews, raw as they were, had done their best and pulled off three missions to give them some salt. It was only fortune and good luck that none of them were killed.
He considered his situation. There was still at least one German ship ahead of him on this course, and very likely two. He didn’t relish the prospect of trying to engage them both on his own. All the more reason to join up with Admiral Holland and his ships. And what about this convoy, WS-8B, another ‘Winston Special’ outbound for Alexandria? It was steaming due south now, and Pound at the Admiralty had taken it upon himself to detach its only significant escort, the battleship Rodney. Her position at midnight had been some 160 miles east southeast of King George V, but he had heard nothing since. The big battleship was too slow for a chase like this, and she would have to be maneuvered with some foresight if he was to have any hope of getting her into the battle.
He considered sending a message asking where Rodney was so he could get his ships in hand and plot proper intercept headings. Yet something cautioned him to maintain radio silence on that issue for the time, at least until he determined what he still had in front of him. The situation was hardly satisfactory, but it was all he had for the moment, and he carried on.
Off to the east, the captain of HMS Rodney had called a committee together of all senior officers aboard to consider what he might do. He had been detached from convoy duty on expressed orders from the Admiralty. It seemed Admiral Pound was getting fond of moving ships about on his plotting table, he thought.
Rodney was a middle aged ship, ungainly at sea, yet powerfully built, with nine big 16 inch guns all forward. It was well enough they were placed there, for she was so slow that, more often than not, the ship would be well behind anything she was to fire at.