Customer Reviews

The Destruction of the Bismarck

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4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is a fast and interesting read for those with little other knowledge of the subject. The authors are at their strongest when they describe actions, commander's choices, and the results of engagements. When they stray from this into wider socio-political arenas, they seem to have less knowledge and to get certain facts just wrong.

For example, they describe Churchill as essentially completely controlling the British War Cabinet after the fall of France. This is simply incorrect--according to Jenkins recent Churchill biography it took 9 contentious council meetings until Britain decided to fight on alone, and it was by no means certain Churchill would win the day over Halifax.

The authors make nasty 'asides' that reflect some ignorance--like "Why weren't the new British battleships like the Duke of York and Prince of Wales the equal of the Bismarck?" Well, the British built to comply with the Washington naval treaty of 1922 limiting battleship tonnage to 35,000 tons... Hitler, obviously, did not.

These factual errors grated on me, otherwise the book is certainly better done than the typical sinking of the Bismarck as an adolescent adventure story.

Anyone keen on the naval history of the 20th century will probably have read masses of stuff on the Bismarck chase, and may well share my initial reaction when I saw this book on the "new" shelf at the library:"What on earth is there left to be said?" Well, perhaps not a lot. I think the authors make a bit of a mountain out of a mole-hill in their discussion of possible U.S. roles in the chase -sometimes when folks deny something it is because it didn't happen, not because they are covering up for "national security". At the same time the book does a nice job discussing the possible motivations of the key players -particularly in the German Admiralty- and does a better job than most in pointing out both the effect of the failure of the Graf Spee on the Bismarck's mission and also the effect of the failure of the Bismarck on German naval strategy from that point on. The authors also give us a better sense of the damage sustained by the Bismarck in her encounter with the Hood and Prince of Wales -a factor that tends to be lost in the shock of the destruction of Hood but is in actuality key to the ultimate failure of the whole Rhine Exercise. Overall, a pleasant evening's read.

This book is disappointing. It has factual errors and tries to interjecta "subplot," as it were, of considerable American involvement in the BISMARCK operation. An American officer was flying a patrol plane that spotted BISMARCK, and the American Coast Guard cutter MODOC encounteredBISMARCK and pursuing British ships.Some "American involvement," huh?Let me sum up: If you know nothing at all about the BISMARCK operation, there's only two books you need to read: Battleship BISMARCK: A Survivor's Story by Mullenheim-Rechberg, and Pursuit: The Chase and Sinking of the Battleship BISMARCK by Ludovic Kennedy.

Overall, I found this book very interesting, with fast-paced, exciting descriptions of the chase and its associated battles and I appreciated the descriptions of the various personalities on all sides. There is also some new infomation that I have not encountered elsewhere. Some of the accounts, however, do not quite match those in earlier publications, particularly those describing he events of the night of the 23-24 May.

The description of the Denmark Strait battle is somewhat confused, and would leave a reader who has little or no previous knowledge, uncertain as to the exact sequence of events.

The authors are a bit harsh in their handling of the Royal Navy's interwar years and neglect to mention its modernization programme which transformed older ships into highly successful, effective weapons of war. They also neglect to mention that he US Navy's battleship fleet was just as old and it took Pearl Harbor to bring modernization to those vessels! I suppose this would not be in keeping with the overall "American" tilt of the book in general.

There are some errors which crop up occasionally, such as the use of an incorrect ship's name in a paragraph descibing another, or the referral to the KG5 as K3G.

These aside, the effort is good and makes for a worthwhile read.

In May, 1941, Germany unleashed a terror in the Atlantic; the battleship Bismarck. At over 50,000 tons and armed with 15 inch main guns, the Bismarck was the most powerful battleship afloat at the time. Germany's objective was to unleash the Bismarck and the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen in the Atlantic through the Denmark Strait against the vulnerable British convoys making their way across the Atlantic. These convoys were usually guarded by destroyers and corvettes, which would be no match for the heavy guns of the German ships. The transports would be slaughtered.

Due to information received by Swedish spies, the British were alerted to the Germans' plans. Two British Spitfires were sent to fly over a Norwegian fijord to discover if the Bismarck was at anchor. Sure enough, the Spitfires spotted the German ships. However, the Germans were still able to proceed into the Atlantic while the British were left trying to decide how to deal with them.

The British had two cruisers stationed near the Denmark Strait, and they eventually made radar contact with the German ships. The British managed to shadow the German ships and maintain radar contact while alerting other British forces to the location of the Bismarck. Two British battleships, the Hood and Prince of Wales, set course for the Bismarck. The Hood was the pride of the British fleet. She had the same size guns as the Bismarck, but much thinner armor. The British captain made several errors which, in the end, would turn out to be fatal. Instead of allowing each ship to fight independently of one another, both were forced to move in conjunction together. This allowed the Germans to "cross the T", allowing full broadsides to bear on the British, while the British ships could only fire with their forward guns. The Germans' fire support radar was also superior to the British, and soon the Bismarck had the range. In under six minutes, the Bismarck destroyed the Hood and severely damaged the Prince of Wales. Only three men survived from the Hood.

The chase continued for several more days and several thousand miles of ocean, with the Germans losing the British, and the British finally finding the Germans again. Other units of the Royal Navy had been following the Bismarck, and finally were close enough to launch an air attack against her. The only planes the British had available were obsolete Swordfish torpedo bombers, but they bravely took off from the aircraft carrier Ark Royal to attack the Bismarck. The Bismarck put up an umbrella of anti-aircraft fire, but the Bismarck suffered a torpedo hit in her most vital area; her steering gear. Now only able to manuver in a circle, the Bismarck became easy prey for the other pursuing warships. The following day, the British battleships attacked, and soon the Bismarck was a flaming wreck. Torpedoes finally put an end to her, and she disappeared under the waves of the Atlantic.

This book gives a very good account of the Bismarck chase. From the description of the German commanders, Admiral Lutjens and Captain Lindemann as well as the British commanders Pound and Tovey, to the sinking itself, the reader is drawn in by the excitement of the hunt. Lindemann and Lutjens never got along. Lutjens was a strict by the book commander who very rarely shared any information with anyone, while Lindemann was well-liked by his crew and loved his ship and continually feuded with Lutjens, all the while saying he would not have his ship "shot out from under him". Indeed, it was Lutjens and his constant radio messages to the German command that enabled the British to find the Bismarck in the first place.

One aspect of the book that I found intriguing was the participation by the United States in the hunt for the Bismarck. I was unaware that an American coast guard cutter could have directed British torpedo planes toward the Bismarck.

The chase and sinking are presented in great hour-by-hour detail throughout the book, as well as secret manuverings between Churchill and Roosevelt. Read this book and discover the story about one of the dramatic turning points of World War II.

This account of the tracking and destruction of the Bismarck is marred by annoying stupid errors that could have been eliminated by giving the manuscript to a seaman to read and by consulting an atlas, or a nautical chart. For example, in Ch.4 it says that (when leaving Gibraltar) 'Somerville's destroyers began to move south, past Algeciras to port and the Rock of Gibraltar to starboard'. I have sailed from Gibralter Bay on a ship, and the fact is that Algeciras is to the west and therefore to starboard on a ship heading south and the Rock is to port.

Later, in Ch.8, it says that two British battleships straightened on a course of east-northeast, then says they were steering 110 degrees, which is of course east-southeast. Later they received a signal from the cruiser Norfolk, giving the enemy's bearing as 130 degrees, which is south east, but then states that the battleships were 'now steering southwest as they bore down on the Bismarck's estimated position'.

Describing damage to the Bismarck's steering gear, it states the rudder was jammed hard a starboard, but then repeatedly tells us that the rudder indicator was showing 'Left 12 degrees' which is the exact opposite of starboard and is not 'hard over', which would be more like 30 degrees.

There is also frequent use of 'miles per hour' for windspeed, which is usually given in knots.

In addition to this, much of the purported 'new evidence' is no more than idle speculation about the role that a USCG cutter that happened to be in the vicinity might have played, and there is a curious amount of space devoted to the manoeuvres of the battleship USS New York, which was over 2,000 miles away at the time of the battle and was completely irrelevant to the proceedings. There is more idle speculation on what the commanders of the Bismarck or cruiser Prinz Eugen would have done in the event that they had encountered American ships, when the only recorded encounter in the book records that the Bismarck ignored the USCG cutter when challenged by it.

Frankly, there's nothing pertinent here that wasn't in Ludovic Kennedy's book 'Pursuit'.

The authors' description of the politics and psychology of the British Admiralty is probably the most interesting part of this volume; the number of little technical errors in ship descriptions, however, should have been caught in proofreading, and detract from the quality of the presentation.

Although good in parts, this book has numerous problems, the most annoying of which (for me) was the intrusion of speculation into what is supposed to be a historical work. The authors over-play the US involvement in the hunt for the Bismarck - yes, Churchill was trying to bring the US in to the war, yes, FDR was doing his best to help despite opposition at home, and this is an interesting area to explore, but the US involvement in this particular episode was negligible. The Bismarck (while being tailed by British warships) was overflown by US planes and spotted by one US coastguard vessel, but the authors present no evidence of active support or even of the sightings being reported, despite implying that the coast guard cutter directed a British torpedo bomber attack. Similarly, they spend a great deal of time discussing the presence of an old US battleship patroling the western Atlantic, ignoring the fact that at its closest it was 2100 miles away and took no part in the hunt. Their attempt to suggest that it was ordered to help in the search is undermined by their tacit admission that there is no evidence of any such order. I can only conclude that the authors added this material to try to attract US readers - something the story could do by itself if they had written a better book.

The authors of this book provide some new and provocative views on a subject many others have addressed. In particular, their exposition of the political imperatives behind the decision to send Bismarck into the Atlantic is quite informative. It was interesting to me to learn that Bismarck's sister -- Tirpitz -- was much nearer to completion in May 1941 than I had realized. The decision to push Bismarck ahead with only Prinz Eugen in support is even more puzzling in this context. The authors' case for U.S. collaboration, if not collusion, with the RN is interesting, but not conclusively proved.

Like other reviewers, I cannot escape from the pervasive mistakes on technical points. On page 104, we are told that Hood steamed eastward [from Scapa Flow] in pursuit of Bismarck when, of course, she steamed westward. On page 106, the reference to Charles II, as opposed to his father Charles I, is probably accurate, but not in 1630. On page 113, Adm Byng was shot, not hanged. On page 115, the QE's and the R class are said to have packed considerably less punch than Bismarck, although they all carried a main battery of 8- 15 inch guns. Frustratingly, nobody has addressed the ballistic differences in these seemingly identical guns.

The authors are also confused about what constituted a "capital ship." Heavy cruisers did not qualify -- see page 140 and 217. Additionally, the US heavy cruiser Augusta was not only not a capital ship, she was not the "newest" heavy cruiser -- Indianapolis and Wichita were newer at the time. The authors also seem to believe that the KGV class had 2, not 1 rear turrets. See pages 164 and 290. Rodney did indeed have 3 forward turrets, but the impression is left that she had some turrets aft -- another flaw. See page 290. As others have pointed out, Hipper was a heavy cruiser (a sister of Prinz Eugen), not a pocket battleship. See page 317. And the reference to "shoots" on page 288 instead of "chutes" is sloppy.

On balance, this book offers some new perspectives on a relatively well-known tale. It is a pity that the poor editing leaves errors that undermine its overall persuasiveness; so many errors ultimately leave the reader wondering what else is wrong?

Even now, more than sixty years after her sinking, the German battleship Bismark continues to capture the imagination. Having sunk the British battlecruiser HMS Hood (then the largest ship in the Royal Navy) in one engagement, she was--in turn--overwhelmed in a second by the battleships HMS Rodney and King George V. The irony, or course, is that the latter two warships could only catch up with the Bismark because her rudders were already damaged by an aerial torpedo launched from an antiquated, aircraft carrier-based, Swordfish biplane. In conjunction with the successful earlier attack on the Italian battle fleet in Taranto harbour by other such carrier torpedo bombers, the demise of the battleship as the ultimate agent of naval warfare was clearly demonstrated. (In fact, if the British carriers had been equipped with modern aircraft of the type even then operational with both the American and Japanese navies, there would have been no need at all for battlehips to participate in "The Destruction of the Bismark". This is a point that the book might have expanded on more fully.)

David Bercuson and Holger Herwig nonetheless do a clear and workman-like job presenting the facts of these events as they unfolded in 1941. They are good at revealing the human side of the major participants in both navies, and show how personality and service "politics" (again, both German and British) had a not insignificant influence on the outcome. Their description of the actions is detailed and carefully researched, and captures much of the drama which was inherent in the clash of large ships on cold and moody seas. In a somewhat tangential aside, they examine in an interesting fashion the minor role played by the less-than-neutral U.S. Navy, and the effect that the demise of first the Hood and then the Bismark had on the deepening American involvement in World War II.

The book is quite worth reading as a result so long as one does not become overly irritated by the numerous minor technical errors that are present throughout. (The armament of the British KGV class battleships is muddled on several occasions; the German warships Hipper and Lutzow were a heavy cruiser and a "pocket battleship" respectively, and not the reverse. These are just two examples of the type of niggling mistakes which should have been caught in proof-reading, and detract from what is otherwise a creditable piece of exposition.) Both of the authors (particularly Bercuson) are well known in Canada as academic military historians; one wonders what comments and grades they give to student essays which demonstrate a similar degree of carelessness.