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WIFR Bismarck 70Th Anniversary WIFR FRONT COVER JUNE 2011_WIFR FRONT COVER JUNE 2011 06/05/2011 13:22 Page 1 INTERNATIONAL FLEET REVIEW www.warshipsifr.com TIME TO USMC HARRIER STRIKE CARRIERS PIRATEPIRATE BASES BASES UNDER THREAT? MISSION CREEPCREEP LIBYA June 2011 £4.10 EUROPE’SEUROPE’S NEWNEW FRIGATEFRIGATE BISMARCK ACTION 70...LIVE NAVY!...UK CARRIER BUILD UP-DATE...SSNs FOR AUSTRALIA’S FLEET? Battle of the Denmark Strait BISMARCK ACTION 70 The Bismarck Action began with the clash between Hood and Prince of Wales, and Bismarck, the latter supported by the Prinz Eugen, on May 24, 1941. Here, in artist Paul Wright’s epic painting, Hood is already on fire after suffering heavy hits from Bismarck. She would soon explode killing all but three of her men. Prince of Wales escaped, but badly mauled, after landing hits that damaged Bismarck. Image: Commissioned by Ron Feltham and subsequently donated to the National Museum of the Royal Navy. PURSUE AND KILL ROBERT FARLEY CONSIDERS to the defence of Crete BANDS OF THE MYTHS AND REALITY represented the first, and perhaps SURROUNDING DRAMATIC the more important, WW2 crisis EVENTS IN THE ATLANTIC for the Royal Navy. The overall SOME 70 YEARS AGO, IN strategic value of Crete was in WHICH THE ROYAL NAVY considerable question. While the PURSUED THE PRIDE OF island could help seal off part of the eastern Mediterranean, and HITLERS’ FLEET. provide a base for air attacks Brothers Even before she slipped beneath against Balkan targets, it would the waves, the inaugural cruise of always have been exceedingly USING ELEMENTS OF HIS RECENT BOOK ‘KILLING THE battleship Bismarck was shrouded vulnerable to committed Axis in myth. For a week, Bismarck efforts. Even less defensible was BISMARCK’, IAIN BALLANTYNE TELLS THE STORY OF HOW captured the world’s imagination, the commitment to Crete well THE NOTORIOUS GERMAN BATTLESHIP MET HER END, BUT representing the fear that Nazi beyond the point at which it had FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF TWO ROYAL NAVY WARSHIPS Germany might displace Great become clear that the island THAT PLAYED KEY ROLES, THE DESTROYER HMS COSSACK Britain as a dominant world could not be held. By the end of AND CRUISER HMS DORSETSHIRE. THOUGH THE BRITISH power, having starved the British the battle, three RN cruisers and into submission. The dramatic six of its destroyers would be at VESSELS THEMSELVES WERE NOT TO SURVIVE LONG AFTER destruction of the battle-cruiser the bottom, with two battleships THE BISMARCK ACTION, TO THIS DAY THEY BOTH HAVE HMS Hood, one of the most out of action for extended THRIVING VETERANS’ ASSOCIATIONS, WHOSE MOST RECENT famous and beautiful warships in periods. Although the Regia REUNIONS IAIN ATTENDED. HE MET SURVIVING WW2 the world, only added to Marina (the Italian Navy) had VETERANS AND HEARD THEIR REMARKABLE STORIES. Bismarck’s mystique. Inevitably, been battered by the twin blows myths and misunderstandings of Taranto and Matapan, it HMS Cossack returning to the carrier in about Bismarck would grow, retained potent capabilities for May 26, 1941 humiliation, for prior to immortalised in some cases by dominating the central film and song. The best approach Mediterranean. Into this strategic The Swordfish torpedo-bombers encountering Vian’s destroyers, the to busting the myths about picture charged the new German formed up on Lieutenant Swordfish had mistakenly attacked Bismarck is to place her journey battleship Bismarck. Seemingly Commander James Stewart-Moore’s the cruiser HMS Sheffield, within the proper strategic terrifying, she was truly large and aircraft for the flight back to HMS fortunately causing her no harm. context of WW2. Hunting powerful, but not a particularly Ark Royal. His attention was drawn Rearmed and determined to make Bismarck wasn’t the only well designed ship. She did not to an aircraft in the formation up for their error, the young British challenge the Royal Navy faced in compare favourably with most equipped with air search radar. Via aviators that night found and May 1941. In the Mediterranean, foreign contemporaries, suffering attacked Bismarck, her steering the Germans and the Italians from a series of design flaws that semaphore flags, a young officer in combined to strike a blow even arose because of Germany’s long its crew was indicating to his leader damaged so badly she stood no more telling than the destruction holiday from battleship that a contact had been picked up, chance of reaching safety in Brest. of the Hood. Moreover, the construction and operation. Every around ten miles away. Destroyers The British naval aviators could feel potential escape of Bismarck other world navy had operated came into view below, which the well satisfied. There was now a solid should be understood not in battleships since WW1. Most had aviators at first suspected might be chance for the Royal Navy to avenge apocalyptic terms, but rather in embarked on dramatic German ships coming out to help the loss of 1,415 shipmates killed what she would have meant for reconstructions that upgraded escort Bismarck to a French port, just over two days earlier when the conduct of the rest of the the capabilities and remedied the Bismarck’s shells blew apart battle- war in the Atlantic, the defects of older ships. These but they flashed a British Mediterranean, and, as events lessons found their way into new identification signal. It was Captain cruiser Hood. For many of the men turned and twisted several construction. Lacking this Philip Vian’s 4th Destroyer Flotilla, in warships scattered across the months later, in the Pacific. May experience, Bismarck was a WW1 battling rough weather in poor Atlantic - all heading towards a 1941 quite simply tested what battleship constructed on a WW2 visibility as it struggled south. showdown with the Nazi high seas seemed to be the endless scale. Nonetheless, Hood and Aboard HMS Cossack, junior rating raider - it was a deeply personal resources of the Royal Navy to Prince of Wales discovered that Ken Robinson, a loader on the ship’s mission. Many of them had known the limit. From the perspective of even a poorly designed 45,000 2pdr pompom anti-aircraft weapon sailors and marines serving in Hood. its enemies, the RN always had tons battleship remains potent. A good few of them had at one time more. It could always bring After destroying the elderly Hood recalled that one of the biplanes another battleship to the fray, during the Battle of the Denmark flew ‘practically alongside as the even served in Hood themselves. along with more cruisers, Strait on May 24, Bismarck and pilot waved to us before they flew Now, crippled by a torpedo dropped destroyers, and even dozens of her consort Prinz Eugen allowed away.’ The torpedo-bombers turned by one of Ark’s strike aircraft, the Swordfish torpedo-bombers. The the new battleship Prince of Bismarck was a wounded buffalo strategically myopic commitment Wales to disengage. Had back towards Ark Royal. They were Continued on P53 WARSHIPS INTERNATIONAL FLEET REVIEW 51 BISMARCK ACTION 70 about to be brought down by seascape was dotted with pursuing wolves and torn to pieces. converging British warships: “There In the darkness of a stormy Atlantic were large White Ensigns flying all night, Cossack and the 4th Flotilla’s over the place and the Bismarck was other destroyers did their best to sporting two large swastika flags. cause more damage and maintain Shots were soon hitting the contact with the enemy. Out in the Bismarck, who returned fire with blackness, the British battleships her 15-inch guns.” During an action HMS King George V and HMS between capital ships, unless called Rodney loitered, awaiting their forward to make a torpedo attack, curtain call to make the kill after destroyers were required to keep dawn. Cossack led the way, aboard out the way. They circled on the her Telegraphist Eric Farmer feeling periphery, keeping watch for adrenalin pumping: “Now was our U-boats. Robinson saw Bismarck’s chance. Cossack, full speed ahead, ensign fluttering defiantly despite went in to attack. We are spotted her being turned into a wreck. It and Bismarck opens fire on us. The was an image that would remain Bismarck & Prinz Eugen would also have shifted the first salvo was 50 yards short. The imprinted on his memory for the dynamic in the Pacific. Ironically, next one burst over the bridge rest of his life: “She was a right the unavailability of Prince of causing everyone to duck. The range mess. There was a lot of flame and Wales might have saved Repulse Norfolk was less than a mile now. A sharp smoke. The ship was just a mass of & Suffolk from being dispatched to her turn, several swishes as the wreckage under all that. I wouldn’t Hood sunk doom off Malaya, but it also torpedoes are fired...” Ken Robinson like to have been aboard her.” He would have put great pressure on recalled of the attack: “We went in noted with regret: “From the start of Hood & Prince of Wales the Allies in early 1942. The fast head to sea and fired a spread of the Bismarck Action, when Hood battleships of the US Navy might C. in C. not have been sent to the Pacific torpedoes. At the time, we thought was sunk, until the end, which was as early as they were; in one of them had hit.” Having tried four days, nearly four thousand November 1942 USS Washington her luck, Cossack did not hang seamen were killed.” could have found herself waiting around, Robinson remembering that follow Nelson’s instruction to his accurate in the Navy.” Dorsetshire Victorious for a sortie from Bismarck or his ship “turned and with the sea up HMS Dorsetshire sailors before the Battle of Trafalgar: turned broadside on and let rip Swordfish Scharnhorst instead of destroying attack contact Rodney HIJMS Kirishima.
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