This May 18 was the seventeenth anniversary of the day on which the battleship Bismarck sailed from Gotenhafen with the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen to carry out operations which, from the German point of view, began so hopefully and ended so tragically.
Because the Bismarck was lost in this venture, critics did not delay in voicing their opinions. There was some critical justification in questioning the wisdom of using battleships as commerce raiders, a purpose for which these capital ships were not designed. If such action was necessary, should not the Naval Staff have used the two other battleships, the Scharnhorst and the Gneisenau, to divert attention from the Bismarck? Or should not the war cruise have been delayed until the Tirpitz also was ready for combat? The operation itself was subjected to considerable criticism. After the victory over the Hood, why did the German ships not pursue and destroy the heavily damaged Prince of Wales? Why didn’t the damaged Bismarck return home after her success? These were some of the questions raised.
In the exploits of the Bismarck, luck and fate dogged the entire operation from beginning to end. Her fate shows all too clearly how easily superficial criticism can overlook essential points. But it also shows how difficult it is, even after a thorough study of the records of both sides, to determine what was right and what was wrong. It was of course much harder for those immediately involved to make the right decisions. There is one further consideration: the tremendous accomplishment of that beautiful ship, even in defeat.
The decision of the Naval Staff to deploy battleships without carrier support in the war against commerce had two basic psychological and military reasons. Germany had lost World War I, and in so doing did not utilize her fleet to its full capability. Inevitably after Germany’s defeat in 1918 there was much criticism of the limited use of the High Seas Fleet. This criticism had a strong influence on the basic operational concepts of the World War II Chief of Naval Operations. Grand Admiral Erich Raeder, who had been Admiral Hipper’s Chief of Staff in World War I, strongly disapproved of the half-hearted deployment of the Imperial Navy. Under no circumstances did he wish the later German Navy to make a similar mistake. For this reason he sent the few heavy German battleships into action against overwhelming British superiority during the first years of the war. These operations seemed to contradict all previous experience in naval war. The controversy over this point at this time twice resulted in Commanders in Chief of the Fleet being relieved of command. But the surprising commerce raiding successes of German task forces during the first two war years appeared to support the Grand Admiral’s point of view. British shipping sustained heavy damage inflicted by the heavy cruisers Admiral Scheer and Admiral Hipper in the Atlantic and the Indian Oceans, and by the battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau in the North Atlantic. The two battleships alone, logistically well supported at sea in the first two months of 1941, destroyed 22 British and Allied merchant vessels with an aggregate displacement of 115,622 tons, and the next month returned unscathed to Brest. And yet, aside from inflicting such heavy tonnage losses, we must not underestimate the other influences of the German Navy’s deployments of heavy task forces; worrying the enemy, causing him loss in prestige, and tying up his own forces. Thus the German naval command had good reason to hope that by sending into action their heaviest battleship, the Bismarck, British naval supremacy could be successfully challenged.
This spirit of confidence was considerably dampened when the Scharnhorst was put out of commission for several months by engine trouble. On April 6 the Gneisenau was hit by a torpedo from a British plane, and she, too, was relegated to the dry dock where she was hit by several bombs. Thus there was no way to utilize these battleships to create a diversion and cover the operation of the Bismarck. And yet, the main objective of the naval command was to continue pounding away at the enemy with surface strength.
At a conference in Berlin on April 25, Admiral Gunther Luetjens, the Fleet Commander, asked if it would not be advisable to defer operations until at least the Scharnhorst had been repaired, or even until the Tirpitz also was ready' for combat. We of the Tirpitz hoped that his proposal would be adopted. But of course the Fleet Commander could not stress his misgivings about an audacious venture he himself had to direct, unless he was prepared to share the fate of his two predecessors in command. Thus the Fleet Commander finally agreed with the Chief of Naval Operations that it was proper to continue surface operations in the Atlantic as soon as possible.
The heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen was assigned to him as cruiser escort. His mission was to attack enemy supply lines in the North Atlantic and to attempt a breakthrough and continue operations even if discovered by the enemy. Destruction of enemy tonnage was the main objective. The combat readiness of both ships was to be maintained. They were to elude battle with enemy forces of superior or equal strength, but were expected to fight to the limit if action were unavoidable. The Fleet Commander, supported by the tried and tested logistics and reconnaissance systems afloat, was to carry on operations as long as circumstances permitted, and then return home. By the middle of May, six U-boats were en route to their positions where they were to carry out operations with the Bismarck group against convoy' lanes in the North Atlantic.
The Departure
With the usual security escort, the Bismarck and the Prinz Eugen steamed out through the Great Belt during the night of May 19 and 20, and the following evening were located south of Kristiansund. Air reconnaissance had placed the position of the British Home Fleet at that time at Scapa, and no enemy forces had been sighted in the North Sea or in the Norwegian Sea. Thus, to the Fleet Commander, the situation appeared favorable.
In order to keep the departure as secret as possible, the German High Command had stopped all merchant shipping through the Great Belt and the Kattegat throughout May 19 and 20. In spite of this, British observers in Sweden succeeded in spotting the Bismarck group in the Kattegat on the afternoon of May 20, and on the same evening the British Naval Attache in Stockholm reported this to London. Not until the early morning of May 21 did the German Naval Command receive any indication that the departure had been discovered by their enemy. This realization came when an enemy radio message was picked up by our radio interception service. Then, at 0620, British planes aloft were ordered to search for two battleships and three destroyers reported on a northerly course.
On May 21 the German Fleet entered Hellwerden, located in the Korsfjord near Bergen, to refuel for the last time before the breakthrough. The Commander remained in the fjord until evening, hoping to be safer there from enemy air detection than if he remained at sea. Unfortunately these hopes were unrealized. Around noon a British plane completing its patrol discovered the unit, and the British soon identified the two ship types correctly from aerial photographs. Strangely enough, the ships themselves had not noticed the plane at all. The discovery could possibly have been prevented if the request of the Navy for its own naval air force had been granted, or if the High Command of the Air Force had shown a somewhat better understanding for the need for co-operation with the Navy. At 2300 the Fleet again set out to sea.
Evaluation and First Countermeasures by the British Admiralty
The British were aware of the departure of our ships. What should their estimation of the situation have been? The reactions of the enemy clearly show the world-wide ramifications of naval operations. Nothing was known except that the unit was at anchor in the Korsfjord. What were its probable intentions?
As mentioned before, British intelligence had spotted the Bismarck group on May 20 in the Kattegat. Since the ships had been delayed in approaching this spot, the unit arrived there in the afternoon, long after it should have passed this position. For this reason, the German convoys which had been held up at the entrance to the barrier had just started to move again, and thus, by pure chance, the warships had intermingled with these merchant ships. For this reason the intelligence agent in Sweden had reported a convoy. The British Admiralty therefore considered the following possibilities:
(a) the warships were to serve as escort for the merchant ships to Norway, and then would return to Germany;
(b) the convoy might be assigned to supply the warships, in case the latter were to operate off the coast of Norway;
(c) the convoy heading north might be carrying troops for landings on the Faeroe Islands or Iceland, and the warships were assigned as escort;
(d) the task of escorting the convoy might be purely incidental and the main objective of the warships might be to break through into the Atlantic. To accomplish this, the unit could take any one of three possible routes; the passage near Iceland, called the Denmark Strait (130 miles wide); the strait between the Shetlands and the Faeroes (190 miles wide); or the route between Iceland and the Faeroes (240 miles wide).
The error of the intelligence agent had hardly any adverse effect on British planning. Practical as usual, they directed their first countermeasures against the most threatening alternative, the breakthrough. In this manner they also protected themselves against the invasion of Iceland and the Faeroes, an alternative which must have appeared equally threatening to them. As a first step, the Admiralty retained and reassigned to the Home Fleet the battle cruiser Repulse and the carrier Victorious which had originally been detailed to escort on May 22 an important troop transport to the Middle East.
Naturally it was most important to the British not to lose sight of the Bismarck group. However, their air reconnaissance along the Norwegian coast ran into heavy fog and low ceilings. Although worsening weather conditions on May 22 made normal reconnaissance flights impossible, a particularly experienced and daring pilot risked a take-off and in the late afternoon, after an extraordinarily dangerous flight, he finally succeeded in getting a glimpse of the fjords around Bergen. He found that the German ships which had been there the day before had departed. Now the British Admiralty could concentrate on steps to prevent a breakthrough.
The Denmark Strait had already been blocked by the heavy cruiser Norfolk, the flagship of the Commander of the First Cruiser Squadron. The Squadron Commander ordered the heavy cruiser Suffolk, which was refueling at Hvalfjord, Iceland, to join him at once. The Commander of the Home Fleet, Admiral Sir Charles Tovey, sailed from Scapa at 2245. He was on board the battleship King George V and was accompanied by the aircraft carrier Victorious and the Second Cruiser Squadron consisting of four cruisers and seven destroyers. The Battle Cruiser Squadron of Vice Admiral Holland with the Hood and the Prince of Wales, which had left for Iceland on the night of May 22, received orders to cover the patrol of the cruisers in the Denmark Strait north of the 62nd parallel. The Commander of the Home Fleet himself was to take charge of providing cover south of this parallel. The cruisers Birmingham and Manchester were standing guard in the Faeroes. They were reinforced by the arrival of the cruiser Arethusa, en route to Iceland with an admiral bound for an inspection.
Breakthrough and Battle
The German Fleet welcomed the bad weather of May 22 and hoped that it would last through the next day. Admiral Luetjens therefore decided on an immediate attempt to break through, dismissed the destroyers when they reached the latitude of Trondheim, and took course for the Denmark Strait. His hopes were fulfilled. The weather on May 23 was unusually favorable for an unobserved breakthrough. The sky was cloudy and visibility through intermittent rain ranged from poor to bad. He held a course close to the Arctic Circle. Along it there was a strip of good visibility, three to five miles wide, while to the south there was dense fog.
The German Fleet unit was first sighted by the Suffolk on May 23 at 1922 and by the Norfolk an hour later. Both cruisers skillfully maintained contact throughout the night, relying on their radar. The Bismarck tried in vain to shake off these disconcerting contacts by taking advantage of the fog. This was a bitter disappointment for the Fleet Commander, for the Germans had expected the British not to l>e sufficiently advanced in the development of this device. As a matter of fact, it was due to the special interest of the Commander of the Suffolk in this new technique that his ship had installed the latest rotating radar equipment a few days before her departure. The Norfolk was still equipped with the older, non-rotating and less effective type of this device.
As soon as the British Admiralty learned the position of the German Fleet unit, Force H under Vice Admiral Sir James Somerville was ordered north from Gibraltar to take over the escort of the important troop transports originally assigned to the Repulse and the Victorious.
Advised of the radar contacts of the two British cruisers, the Hood and the Prince of Wales proceeded full steam ahead on a north westerly course toward the presumed point of encounter with the Bismarck and sighted the German ships in clear weather at dawn on May 24. Almost simultaneously around 0552, both sides opened fire in a running battle at a range of about 22,000 yards. The Bismarck and the Prinz Eugen directed their fire against the Hood, the leading British ship. The British fire was supposed to be concentrated on the Bismarck. But viewed from the Hood, the Prinz Eugen, which was out in front, was mistaken for the battleship (in fact, the silhouettes of the two ships were quite similar) and it took three minutes before the enemy realized his mistake. After about three rounds, the Hood was on target, and the Prince of Wales took somewhat longer. The Germans fired covering salvos, their pattern, according to British reports, being remarkably consistent.
During the first minute, the Prinz Eugen scored a direct hit on the Hood, which started a fire aft on the port side near the magazine elevator. The fire spread fast but appeared to be under control within about two minutes. In the meantime, the range had decreased to about 18,000 yards and the British Commander at 0555 ordered a 20-degree turn to port. Both ships were in the process of executing this maneuver when the Hood was straddled by a full salvo from the Bismarck and within seconds the fate of the unfortunate ship was sealed. A gigantic flame with explosions and white-hot clouds shot up between the masts and, ripped in two, the Hood sank. Only by turning hard to starboard did the Prince of Wales manage to steer clear of the sinking wreckage. Nothing remained to be seen of the proud 46,000-ton ship but a cloud of smoke which gradually drifted away in the wind. Of the crew of 1,300 men, only three survivors were later picked up by a destroyer.
After this unexpectedly swift success the Germans immediately shifted their target to the Prince of Wales which soon was covered by 38-cm. and 20.3-cm. hits to such an extent that she could hardly observe her own fire through the cascading German shells. Her own fire was inaccurate, and in quick succession she received three 38-cm. hits from the Bismarck and three 20.3-cm. hits from the Prinz Eugen. One 38-cm. hit pierced the bridge and killed almost the entire personnel thereon, destroying the larger part of their fire control system as well. Only the Commander and a signal man regained consciousness. Two shells pierced the armor and penetrated the interior of the ship; one, fired by the Bismarck, landed near a generator and one from the Prinz Eugen landed in a magazine, the most vulnerable part of a British battleship. Both shells misfired. Two 20.3-cm. shells hit below the water line and let 600 tons of water into compartments aft. One gun turret had collapsed after the first round of fire and another now jammed. Therefore the Captain of the embattled ship turned away at 0603 amidst a heavy cloud of black smoke. In order to shake off his persistent pursuer he fired, in turning, a fan of three torpedoes, none of which hit their mark. At 0609 the German ships ceased fire at a range of about 21,000 yards.
The Plans of the German Fleet Commander
It seems appropriate here to take up briefly one of the questions mentioned earlier. Why did the German Fleet Commander allow the Prince of Wales to get away? This was the first question which Hitler asked Admiral Raeder in his anger about the loss of the Bismarck. In answering this question, we, of course, must depend largely on speculation, since all men who could have answered the question went down with the ship. At that time the Grand Admiral answered Hitler that it was doubtful if the Bismarck, damaged as she was, still had enough speed to catch the Prince of Wales. On the other hand, it was quite conceivable that the Prince of Wales had taken on sufficient water to have lost considerable speed herself. Under these circumstances the following answer may be more nearly correct.
As shown by radio messages, Admiral Luetjens did not know that after the sinking of the Hood he was facing the Prince of Wales. Moreover, he could not have guessed it, since this ship had only quite recently joined the Home Fleet. For example, her guns had been delivered only three weeks before the battle. Admiral Luetjens therefore believed that his opponent was the flagship King George V, the sister ship of the Prince of Wales. For this reason he did not consider it consistent with his mission to pursue that ship and allow himself to be drawn toward the main body of the enemy fleet. If he had had the slightest suspicion that his target was the Prince of Wales, which was still in the testing stage, manned by a totally inexperienced crew with some of the shipyard personnel still on board and working to overcome “bugs,” he would hardly have permitted the enemy to escape. Instead, he would have finished her off if his reduced speed would have permitted pursuit. In that event, however, the German ship would have had to break off operations and return home. Instead, when the enemy withdrew from the battle under cover of a smoke screen, the Fleet Commander now saw the way open into the Atlantic and opportunity to attempt his main objective.
The Germans had suffered little in the battle; the Prinz Eugen remained undamaged and the Bismarck had received only two hits from the Prince of Wales. However, the battleship’s maximum speed had been reduced by a few knots. More serious was a leaking oil tank whereby the Bismarck left a trail. On May 24 at noon the Fleet Commander informed the Chief of Naval Operations by radio that he intended to detach the Prinz Eugen for the remainder of the operation and to set course with the Bismarck for St. Nazaire. He intended to swing as far west as possible in the hope of shaking his radar contacts during the night. He therefore ordered the U-Boats which were standing by between Newfoundland and Greenland, to rendezvous the next morning in a definite area. Apparently he had hoped to use them as decoys to lure his pursuers to this area and thereby elude them and then later refuel the Bismarck at sea. He succeeded in detaching the Prinz Eugen unnoticed under cover of a heavy rain squall. For a few brief rounds of fire the Bismarck again engaged the Prince of Wales, neither side gaining any advantage. At 2056 the Fleet Commander resignedly sent the following radio message home: “Impossible to break contact because of Dete (now called radar). On course directly to St. Nazaire for fuel.” Apparently the lack of fuel had become so pressing that the Fleet Commander, afraid to depend on refueling at sea, saw himself compelled to take a southeasterly course, the most direct approach to his repair facility, even before having succeeded in eluding radar contact. Now his U- Boats could be of no further assistance to him.
Further Countermeasures after the Loss of the “Hood”
After Vice Admiral Holland had gone down with the Hood, Rear Admiral Wake Walker, the Commander of the First Cruiser Squadron, remained as senior naval officer in the vicinity of the Bismarck. He immediately incorporated the Prince of Wales into his unit and maintained contact with his enemy. As soon as the Admiralty had received the dreadful news of the sinking of the Hood, the plan of using Force H as escort for the troop transport was abandoned. Admiral Somerville who at 0200 had steamed from Gibraltar with the battle cruiser Renown, the aircraft carrier Ark Royal, and the cruiser Sheffield, was ordered instead to go directly into action against the Bismarck. In addition, on the morning of May 24 the battleships Rodney and Ramillies and the cruiser Edinburgh, which were on escort duty in the North Atlantic, were ordered to leave their convoys and take a course to intercept the Bismarck. At this time the Rodney with four destroyers, only one of which was to remain on escort duty, was about 550 miles southeast, the Ramillies 900 miles south, and the Edinburgh was 860 miles south-southeast of the Bismarck.
From the radar signals, the Commander of the Home Fleet could calculate that in all probability he would catch up with the Bismarck by the following morning. In order to play safe, he intended to cut down the speed of his opponent by air attacks. He therefore immediately detached at 1500 his carrier Victorious with four cruisers from the Second Cruiser Squadron and ordered them to close in on the Bismarck.
The Enemy Loses Contact
At midnight the sound of planes was heard near the Bismarck and the alarm was given. The Victorious was attacking. Hidden by low clouds, the planes used radar for their approach. When they dropped below the clouds, they found themselves over an American Coast Guard cutter. The German battleship was six miles away and resisted the planes, now on target, with a most effective anti-aircraft fire. The first aircraft attack was unsuccessful. The second wave of planes made a torpedo hit amidships, but it exploded on the side armor without causing any damage.
Two hours after this air attack, the German radio service back home was wondering why the enemy no longer was sending out any radar contact signals. For the last time, at 0306 on May 25 a tracer message had been sent out by the Suffolk. Since then, the British seemed to have lost contact. The German Chief of Naval Operations lost no time in advising the Fleet Commander of this welcome news. He therefore was most surprised to receive at 0700 an answer stating “Two battleships and one heavy cruiser are maintaining contact.” Probably the Bismarck had picked up tracer messages which were not sufficiently strong to cause an echo in the radio transmitters back home. In any event, the Fleet Commander did not think that he was taking undue risks by now sending out some messages about his position and about necessary docking preparations.
Although the enemy had actually lost radar contact, he naturally now charted these messages. Ironically, however, these careless radio messages from the Bismarck really gave the hunted ship another great opportunity. Just as in classical tragedy, it appeared for a short while before the catastrophe as if everything was going to turn out well after all. The position of the ship as determined by tracing its messages was charted more northerly than the British Command had expected, because of a mistake in charting made by the Master of the Fleet. As a consequence, they believed the Bismarck had turned back. The unfortunate navigation officer seems, at least in our view, exonerated by the fact that even the British Admiralty held for more than five hours the same opinion that the Bismarck was on the way back to Germany. This resulted in uncertainty and confusion among the British, as revealed in the accompanying chart. Orders were given and immediately countermanded, and for nine hours the enemy searched in the wrong direction.
Doom and Defeat
On the morning of May 26, the Bismarck had approached to within 700 miles of the French coast and for 31 hours the enemy had been unable to get reliable information on her position. Lack of fuel would soon force him to give up the chase. Then, at 1030, a flying boat of the Coastal Command reported that it had sighted the Bismarck about 690 miles west of Brest. Upon this information, Vice Admiral Somerville, who with Force H was standing about 110 miles away, between the port and the Bismarck, immediately launched two long- range planes from the Ark Royal which were to take over the contact from the Catalina flying boat. They arrived just in time, since the flak from the Bismarck had already damaged the flying boat and chased it off. For further radar contact the Vice Admiral had at 1315 dispatched the cruiser Sheffield. For the same purpose, the Admiralty withdrew four destroyers from the Near East convoy and from a returning convoy escort the cruiser Dorsetshire, and directed them toward the Bismarck. However, the Admiralty expressly forbade Admiral Somerville to attack the Bismarck with his ships before the other battleships had arrived, because the Renown was considered no match for the Bismarck's 38-cm. guns.
The Home Fleet stood 130 miles north of the Bismarck and the Commander could only hope to catch up with the battleship if he succeeded in cutting down her speed considerably. It therefore fitted right into his plans when Vice Admiral Somerville launched a torpedo attack at 1450, despite bad weather, with fourteen Swordfish planes from the Ark Royal. The attack almost cost the Sheffield her life. Again the planes had to depend on their radar for the approach, and when they broke through the low clouds to attack, they found their own Sheffield below. Only three pilots realized their mistake and did not fire their torpedoes. Thus, the first attack was a complete failure. The second attack took place from 2055 to 2155. The planes had difficulty in finding their target and could not attack in formation because of the bad weather. But this attack was the decisive one. The Bismarck received two hits. One was amidship and insignificant, but the other hit the rudder. The German battleship was unable to maneuver and her doom was sealed.
Typical of the fateful role that luck played in these operations is the following extract from the log of U-556 which on its return home from action happened to enter the area:
“26 May 1941. Position: 640 miles west of Lands End; weather: northwesterly winds, velocity 6 to 7; sea 5; weather clear, partly cloudy, medium to good visibility.
1531: airplane sighted; submerged; detonations audible under water, maybe gunfire (Author’s Note: was this the attack on the Sheffield?).
1948: alarm; aft from the mist at full speed a battleship of the King George class and one aircraft carrier, probably the Ark Royal, came into view. 10 points off starboard. If only I had some torpedoes! I would not even have to get into firing position; I am lying exactly right for an attack. No destroyers, no zig-zag course. I could get into position between the two ships and finish both off at once. There is activity by the torpedo planes on the carrier. Maybe I could have helped the Bismarck.”
After the unfortunate hit, the Bismarck tried unsuccessfully to blast loose the damaged rudder. Had she succeeded, she might have escaped in the night, steering with her engines. But now the Commander saw that her fate was inescapable. In order to give at least part of the crew a slight chance, he set the anti-aircraft personnel, completely out of ammunition, out to sea on rafts. None of them were rescued.
According -to survivors’ reports, destroyer attacks during the night did not score any hits on the Bismarck. At 0848 on May 27 heavy British units started to concentrate their fire on the seriously crippled ship. The end came at 1015. At first, the Bismarck's answering fire was accurate and kept the enemy at a respectable distance. The first hits smashed the bridge and fore director tower, killing the admiral and the captain. With the turrets out of commission, the battle turned into mere target practice for the enemy.
Lack of fuel, fear of U-boats, and of German air attacks which were now being launched from the coast, all caused the Commander of the Home Fleet to order cease fire and return home. He assigned to the Dorsetshire, the only ship which still had some torpedoes, the task of giving the battleship Bismarck her death blow. After three hits the ship reared and sank at 1040. However, the sinking was not the result of these hits, since the torpedoes of the Dorsetshire came in too shallow and could not penetrate the heavy armor of the Bismarck. Thus, not a single shell had penetrated below the armored deck and with her engines still intact she was fully buoyant. But without any more ammunition and unable to move, the ship was defenseless. All the British had to do was to come alongside and take the Bismarck into tow. To escape this ignominy the Commander ordered his crew to scuttle the ship.
The rescue of survivors was hampered by the weather. But the main reason that so few were rescued lay in the fear of the British of attacks by airplanes or U-boats. The Dorsetshire picked up 75 survivors and the Maori another 24. German U-boats later rescued eight or ten more.
Conclusions
In evaluating briefly the exploits of the Bismarck, the following must be concluded. It took eight battleships, two carriers, four heavy and seven light cruisers, 21 destroyers, innumerable planes, and a good deal of luck for the British to catch and sink one solitary German ship. And at that, the British lost their biggest warship, one destroyer, many planes, and two battleships were severely damaged and forced to undergo lengthy repairs in “neutral” American shipyards. Most British units returned to their bases literally with their last drops of fuel and some even had to be towed home. There is, however, one more fact which was unknown to the uninitiated in Germany at that time and which is not known to many people even today. We can only evaluate this fact if we view the operation on a larger scale. A few days after the two German ships had sailed from Gotenhafen on May 20, German troops started to land on Crete, and on June 1 this operation came to a successful conclusion. Without the diversion created by the operation of the Bismarck, the landing might not have succeeded at all, or at least not in such a short time. First it was necessary to lure Force H away from the Mediterranean, and in this objective the Bismarck was successful.
For the British, the loss of Crete meant the temporary loss of supremacy in the Mediterranean. This again was the prerequisite for Rommel’s victories in North Africa. To be sure, 2,300 brave sailors had to lose their lives at sea. But what other armed force combines so few men with such endurance and striking power? What operation on land can with such small loss of life and against such superior opposition bring about such far-reaching decisions, can tie up opposing forces of such magnitude, can create such world-wide repercussions?
There is no more fitting and appropriate epilogue to the vanquished Bismarck and her crew than the remarks dedicated to her and to them by the Commander of the British Home Fleet:
"The Bismarck had put up a most gallant fight against impossible odds, worthy of the old days of the Imperial German Navy, and she went down with her colors still flying."