By an ironic and amazing coincidence — and it happened almost exactly at the same time — just as Lutjens aboard the BISMARCK had received a completely misleading report on the position of the enemy, so did Tovey on the KING GEORGE V. In Tovey's case, however, the bearings had been correctly transmitted but were wrongly worked out on the plot of the battleship. The result, however, was the same. Both admirals were misled, and misled at a vital moment.
The calculations made on the KING GEORGE V showed that the BISMARCK was north, instead of, as expected, south of her last reported position. This could mean only one thing — she was headed for Norway and home, instead of Brest, as everyone had thought. There wasn't a moment to lose — even now it might be too late. Tovey at once ordered his far-scattered fleet to turn in their tracks and make for the North Sea.
This every ship did — with the major exception of the RODNEY. Captain Dalrymple-Hamilton on the RODNEY doubted that the BISMARCK was, in fact, making for the North Sea and as he was then sitting nicely astride her escape route to Brest he decided to remain there. Some time later the Admiralty, too, sent him a signal to the same effect, but Dalrymple-Hamilton ignored it, backed his own judgment and stayed where he was.
Later in the afternoon, in an atmosphere of increasingly mounting tension and almost despairing anxiety, further BISMARCK position reports came in to Tovey that made it clear that the previous estimated BISMARCK positions had been wrong and that she was indeed heading for Brest. Tovey was deeply worried, for the Admiralty, he knew, had the same information and yet were acquiescing in the Home Fleet's search to the north-east. It is now obvious that some powerful person in the Admiralty — we shall probably never know who it was as their Lordships can hardly be accused of garrulity as far as the admission and explanation of their mistakes are concerned — was going in the face of all the evidence and backing his wildly wrong hunches.
Admiral Tovey backed his own hunch, decided he could not wait for the Admiralty to make up its mind and turned his fleet for Brest. Or, rather, such as was left of his fleet, for, apart from his own ship, the NORFOLK, the RODNEY, the DORSETSHIRE coming up from the south, and the RENOWN, ARK ROYAL and SHEFFIELD of Force H, all the others were one by one being forced to retire from the chase by reason of the Admiralty's non-existent fuelling arrangements.
The BISMARCK, too, was now short of fuel — desperately short. Through some almost unbelievable oversight or carelessness she had left home 2,000 tons of fuel short, and when the PRINCE OF WALES shell, during the action with the HOOD, had smashed into her bunkers, many hundreds of tons more had been lost, either directly to the sea or by salt water contamination. She had hardly enough oil left to reach Brest, even at an economical steaming speed — at a moment when she needed every knot she possessed.
The crew knew this, as crews always get to know these things, and to counteract the breaking morale and steadily mounting despair reports were circulated that an oil tanker was already en route to refuel them, and that, before long, the seas around them would be alive with their own U-boats and the skies black with the bombers of the Luftwaffe, to escort them safely into harbour.
But the oil tanker never came. Neither did the U-boats nor the Luftwaffe. What came instead, after thirty-one hours of increasingly frantic searching by British planes and ships, was a long range Catalina of the Coastal Command. At 10.30 on the morning of 26 May, the long wait was over and the BISMARCK found again, her last hope gone. She was then about 550 miles west of Land's End, and heading for Brest.
An illuminating comment on the state of the morale at that moment aboard the German battleship is provided by Baron Mullenheim, who says that the BISMARCK had all prepared for instant use a dummy funnel and set of Naval code recognition signals. But, so frustrated and self-defeated — von Mullenheim's own words — were the crew that neither of these were used at the very moment when it might have been the saving of the BISMARCK.
Sir John Tovey's relief, just as he was convinced that the enemy had finally escaped him, must have been immense — but it was shortlived. His ship and the RODNEY, with whom he was now in contact, were, he soon realized, much too far behind the enemy to cut him off before he reached Brest. Neither the NORFOLK, the DORSETSHIRE nor the five destroyers under the command of Captain Vian on the COSSACK, recently pulled off a southbound convoy, could even hope to stop the BISMARCK — they would have been blown out of the water before they had even begun to get within gun or torpedo range. The last remaining hope of stopping the BISMARCK lay with the aircraft of the ARK ROYAL, approaching rapidly from the south. Accordingly, at 3 p.m. in the afternoon of the 26th, torpedo carrying Swordfish took off in what was regarded at the time as a last desperate effort to stop the BISMARCK. In the words of the official communique, 'the attack proved unsuccessful'. This was hardly surprising in view of two facts that were not mentioned in the Admiralty's communique — many of the torpedoes, fitted with experimental magnetic warheads, exploded on contact with the water, which was just as well as, by what might have been a tragic mistake in identification, the attack was directed not against the BISMARCK but their own escorting destroyer, the SHEFFIELD.
Admiral Tovey was now in despair. There was, he felt, no stopping the BISMARCK now. Both he and the RODNEY, by that time desperately short of fuel, would have to turn for home in only a matter of hours and allow the BISMARCK to continue unmolested to Brest. It would have been the cruellest blow of his long and illustrious career.
The blow never fell. Sir John Tovey, and, indeed, the entire Royal Navy, were saved from this bitterest of defeats by a handful of young Fleet Air Arm pilots on the ARK ROYAL, who were desperately determined to redeem their ignominious blunder of that afternoon.
And redeem it they did. In almost a full gale, in rain squalls and poor visibility, they somehow, miraculously, took off from the treacherously wet, plunging, rolling flight deck of the ARK ROYAL, sought out the BISMARCK in appalling flying weather and pressed home their attack, in face of intense anti-aircraft fire, with splendid gallantry. Only two torpedoes struck home — von Mullenheim says three, but the number is unimportant. Only the last torpedo counted, and that one, exploding far aft on the starboard quarter, buckled and jammed the rudders of the great battleship. The BISMARCK circled twice, then came to a stop, unmanageable and dead in the water, 400 miles due west of Brest. The long chase was over and the BISMARCK was at bay.
PART THREE
Thus, with the crippling of her steering gear by the torpedo bombers of ARK ROYAL, began the agonizing last night of the brief life of the BISMARCK.
The greatest battleship in the world was about to go to her death, and it was almost as if nature knew that nothing could now stay her end, for the weather that night was in dark and bitter harmony with the moods, the thoughts, the bleak and sombre despair of the hundreds of exhausted men who still kept watch aboard the BISMARCK.
The wind blew hard, the cold, driving rain lashed pitilessly across their faces, the waves ran high and rough and confused and the darkness was as absolute as darkness ever becomes at sea: there was no moon that night, and even the stars were hidden by the scudding rain-clouds.
Dead in the water, engines stopped, the BISMARCK lay in the troughs between the great Atlantic combers rolling heavily, continuously, while the engine room crews worked frantically to free the jammed rudders. Their lives, the life of every man in the ship, depended on the success or failure of their efforts: Brest and safety were only twelve hours' steaming away, even six hours would have taken them under the protective umbrella of their own Luftwaffe, and there no British battleship would dare venture. But with steering control lost, they were helpless.