Bismarck Talk
THE JULY 2010 EDITION OF WARSHIPS IFR MAGAZINE CONTAINED A REPORT ON A TALK GIVEN AT THE MUSEUM OF THE ROYAL NAVY IN PORTSMOUTH BY MYSELF WITH SUPPORT FROM FRIEND AND COLLEAGUE PETER HORE.
AN EDITED VERSION OF THE WARSHIPS IFR REPORT IS REPRODUCED BELOW. THE TALK SERVED AS THE FIRST PUBLIC UNVEILING OF MY NEW BOOK ‘KILLING THE BISMARCK’.
You can download a copy of the report here: Bismark & Hood Talk
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The talk painted a graphic and thrilling portrait of events surrounding the destruction of the British battlecruiser HMS Hood in May 1941, also considering the motivation of seamen and aviators involved in the subsequent pursuit and destruction of the German battleship Bismarck.
Iain Ballantyne’s account concentrated on fresh eyewitness accounts of key moments in the Bismarck Action, while during his portions of the talk, Captain Peter Hore unveiled a new photograph that possibly shows the exact moment a deep penetrating shell, or shells - fired by Bismarck during the Battle of the Denmark Strait on May 24 1941 - destroyed Hood, causing the deaths of all but three of the Royal Navy vessel’s 1,418 ship’s company. If the photograph, now in the collection of the National Museum of the Royal Navy (NMRN), truly does reveal the catastrophe that shocked the world, then it is one of the most incredible images of war to be discovered in recent times. Previously the only images of the event show a smoke column on the far horizon, the accepted last photograph of Hood herself being taken on the evening of May 23 1941. The image is published for the first time in ‘Killing the Bismarck’. See below for more on the photo.
The NMRN talk was well attended, by an audience numbering more than 80 that included veterans of the Bismarck Action, senior naval officers, historians and others. Among those present were members of not only the HMS Hood Association, but also from the veterans’ associations of cruiser HMS Dorsetshire and destroyer HMS Cossack, two of the ships that gained revenge for Hood. Ballantyne told the audience: “I decided to write ‘Killing the Bismarck’, to alter our perspective of a familiar story by presenting a powerful narrative almost entirely from a single point of view - that of the Royal Navy - but spread across a number of ships.” He went on: “My book is, therefore, not the story of Bismarck or Hood, but rather an attempt to piece together what it was like for the men in various vessels of the Royal Navy to pursue and destroy a single warship that could, by escaping their retribution, in the wake of Hood’s destruction, shape the whole course of the war. ‘Killing the Bismarck’ does not seek to put readers inside Bismarck, other than to provide minimal detail necessary for the propulsion of the narrative or illustrate the horror of war. We do go inside Hood, in the company of the three men who would survive her sinking, namely Ted Briggs, William Dundas and Robert Tilburn, whose stories are well known. However, by looking at events from the point of view of other sailors, marines and aviators, many of whom were in close company with Hood or at one stage or another fought Bismarck, we do actually throw new light on the stories of those two warships.” Ballantyne said that during his talk he would attempt to provide a brief insight into what it felt like to be engaged in the desperate hunt for Bismarck - the monster warship of Hitler’s fleet that had been awaited with such anxiety by the British. He suggested: “Surely a major motivating factor in the dogged pursuit of Bismarck by British sailors and marines was revenge for the deaths of 1,415 of their shipmates in Hood?” Ballantyne added: “It is fashionable to place a modern, touchy-feely slant on historic events, to rewrite peoples’ motivation and censor their darker feelings. What veterans felt after the war, with the softening of old enmities, is sometimes allowed to replace the way they really felt during hostilities. The reality is that avenging Hood was probably the major driver for those involved on the British side. They had known Hood as a feature of their lives since boyhood and, once they joined the Navy, either served in her, or had friends who were members of the battle-cruiser’s ship’s company, many of those pals dying at the hands of Bismarck. The pursuit and destruction of Bismarck was therefore an extremely personal endeavour for the men of the Royal Navy. Sympathy for the German battleship’s survivors - the brotherhood of the sea - exerted itself once more after the guns were silent.” Ballantyne told the audience: “You could say that the Royal Navy’s aim was not to kill the men in Bismarck, but rather what the German ship represented by way of a threat to the British nation’s existence.” Ballantyne then went on to sketch the drama through deft use of first-person accounts of the action, several of them found in the archives of the National Museum of the Royal Navy. The players in Ballantyne’s drama included a young medic aboard the battleship HMS Prince of Wales, who saw Hood’s destruction all too close, from an Action Station in an exposed position on his ship’s upper deck. According to Ballantyne, reading a quote from his book, Sick Berth Attendant Sam Wood lamented: ‘…my confused mind was telling me I should not have let the Hood go down, that I should have reached out and grabbed the bows as they were disappearing into the depths of the ocean.’
Wood conceded it was ‘crazy thinking…but everything seemed crazy that morning.’ Swordfish pilot Alan Swanton, who took part in the air strike a few days later that crippled Bismarck and enabled the Royal Navy to destroy her, was wounded by German shrapnel but was determined to bring his Swordfish back to the carrier HMS Ark Royal. On being told of his injuries by his concerned Observer, Swanton declared: ‘No problem. I’m perfectly okay.’ Ballantyne told the audience that Swanton described his landing aboard Ark Royal as ‘a bit of a controlled crash.’ Lieutenant Swanton clambered down from his Swordfish, but had to be helped to the sickbay and heard of Bismarck’s destruction the following day lying in his sickbay cot. Ballantyne told his audience that while Swanton would recover, his aircraft, with more than 200 shrapnel holes, would never fly again. Ballantyne described the finale of the Bismarck Action, in which the battleship HMS Rodney - with 16-inch guns - went in close to deliver maximum destruction. He revealed that young Royal Marine officer John Ruffer, in the cruiser Norfolk, which also participated in the battle, declared: ‘The ship [Bismarck] was being shot to pieces. She was clearly finished but had no means of surrendering. She had to be sunk!’ In the end it was the Dorsetshire that went in to try and deliver the coup de grace, Ballantyne quoting a veteran in the cruiser who from his Action Station saw torpedoes plant themselves ‘in the bowels of the Bismarck far below the water-line amidships.’ The same Dorsetshire sailor remarked that Bismarck appeared to shake ‘from Bow to Stern, like a piece of tissue paper and then she rights herself as though nothing had happened, but her guns are silent...’
Regardless of whether or not Bismarck’s own scuttling charges accelerated the process of sinking or Dorsetshire’s torpedoes did the job, Ballantyne’s conclusion was: “So much of the Bismarck saga is still open to debate, but one thing is for certain - just as Bismarck destroyed Hood, so the Royal Navy sought revenge and killed Bismarck just a few days later.”
THE MYSTERY PHOTO
As Captain Hore explained during his portion of the NMRN talk, at first glance the mystery photo does appear to show Hood being broken apart by a massive explosion. Having conducted detailed research in various museums, Capt Hore deployed a highly visual presentation - encompassing combat photographs, battle charts, sketches and paintings - to try and explain the likely reality of the image’s content. It came to light in 2009, when Capt Hore was researching the obituary of WW2 veteran naval officer Commander Norman Tod. He had served as Navigator in the light cruiser Ajax at the Battle of the River Plate, in December 1939, and was then appointed in the same post to the heavy cruiser Norfolk. Capt Hore explained the context of his find: ‘As he grew older Tod got rid of most of his possessions, but he kept a handful of photographs torn from an album, one of which he labelled as Graf Spee Dec ‘39. Bearing in mind Norfolk’s part in the pursuit and destruction of Bismarck, he also kept copies of two well known photos, one of Graf Spee on fire after being scuttled on the River Plate and the other of Bismarck on fire and being pounded by British guns during the final battle of 27 May 1941.’ Clearly, for Tod, who had discarded so much of the material he collected during his life, to keep these three images, they must have retained considerable sentimental value. It immediately struck Capt Hore that the Graf Spee Dec ‘39 image could not be of the German pocket battleship exploding, for she had scuttled herself on the River Plate. It bore no resemblance to any images of that event and also appeared to have been taken from a type of ship that was not present at the preceding Battle of the River Plate. Norfolk, a County Class cruiser, was, however, present throughout the Bismarck Action. ‘The ship in the foreground can be identified from its features as a County Class cruiser,’ explained Capt Hore, who consulted naval architects’ drawings at the National Maritime Museum, identifying distinctive features in the foreground of the image as belonging to Norfolk. However, Norfolk was not near enough during the Battle of the Denmark Strait for it to have been taken from her upper deck. The only ship close enough was the battleship Prince of Wales but the foreground of the image does not show any part of that vessel, but rather, as discovered by Capt Hore, the B gun turret platform of Norfolk.
Calling on the analytical skills of the NMRN’s Curator of Photographs, Stephen Courtney, and veteran maritime photographer Jonathan Eastland, the Editor-at-Large of WARSHIPS IFR, Capt Hore strove to reach some form of conclusion. Also enlisting the help of Iain Ballantyne, he ultimately concluded that in fact the photograph shows HMS Prince of Wales engaging Bismarck on the evening of May 24 1941, when both she and Norfolk continued to shadow the German battleship, in company with the cruiser HMS Suffolk. However, as Capt Hore pointed out for the audience at the NMRN talk, there is one niggling aspect of the photograph.
What is the tall column of smoke, indeed what could be a jet of steam or flame some hundreds of feet high beyond what appears to be Prince of Wales wrapped in her own gun smoke? It is similar to what eyewitnesses at the Battle of the Denmark Strait saw bursting from Hood shortly before she blew up. There are suggestions that this is smoke shooting out of Prince of Wales’ funnels as she fires her guns, but Capt Hore feels such an emission would not have the same vertical velocity, particularly as the battleship herself appears to be travelling at high speed. There was enthusiastic discussion of the photograph after the talk, with experts on the Bismarck Action, including Antonio Bonomi, who had flown over from Italy to attend, engaging in the debate. The general consensus was that it was not Hood blowing up, and it was likely the later action, but, as many agreed, the puzzle of the jet of flame (or steam) remains. The discussion continued in the evening, when Iain Ballantyne, Peter Hore, Antonio Bonomi and others were among guests at the HMS Hood Association annual dinner, also held in Portsmouth.
Pictured:
1) What the mystery photo appears to show...the final moments of Hood.
For the full story of Captain Hore’s investigations, see Appendix 5 in ‘Killing the Bismarck’, by Iain Ballantyne (Pen & Sword Maritime, £25.00, hardback). The book is now published.
www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/?product_id=2465
2) Iain giving his talk at the NMRN.
Credits: Photo and poster reproduced with the kind permission of the National Museum of the Royal Navy. Photo of Iain during the talk is by Stephen Courtney.
www.royalnavalmuseum.org
• If you would like to contribute to the debate on what the photo shows, please e-mail Iain via this web site, at iainballantyne@mac.com or in his capacity as Editor of WARSHIPS IFR, at editor@warshipsifr.com
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