092 - Sink the Bismarck! - The Pride of the Kriegsmarine's Demise - WW2 - May 30 1941

Are you chasing him now? Cool. With how many ships? 68??? Wow. May 30,

1941

This week there is fighting on fronts on three continents, but this week will be remembered in history for only three words spoken on the high seas:

sink

the Bismarck! I'm Indy Neidell; This is World War II. Last week the Battle of Southern Shanxi in China continued. The British effectively won the fight for East Africa, but in Crete the German invasion already made them think about evacuation. Furthermore, last week the German naval adventure, Operation Rheinubung, began. This is a trade assault operation carried out by the German heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen and the battleship Bismarck.

They will be able to refuel and rearm during their journey thanks to a network of tankers and supply vessels that reach the Cape Verde Islands and the coast of Labrador. Admiral Gunther Lutjens, who commands the operation, wants to delay it until the Scharnhorst can be repaired and join them, or the Bismarck's sister ship, the Tirpitz, can do so. Grand Admiral Erich Raeder refuses to do so. His reasoning for this is that Operation Barbarossa (the impending German invasion of the Soviet Union) is not going to really involve the Kriegsmarine (the navy), and he wants a big success before that with the Bismarck so Hitler doesn't cut the budget. for capital ships.

The British, for their part, are eager to destroy what they can of the German surface fleet when they can. In Scapa Flow, they have the battlecruiser Hood, which for over 20 years has been the

pride

of the Royal Navy, the aircraft carrier Victorious and the battleships Prince of Wales and King George V. To the south, in Gibraltar, they have the Force H , which we have seen a lot, including the aircraft carrier Ark Royal and the battlecruiser Renown. They also have other battleships and battlecruisers in the Atlantic sea. Well, Eugen and Bismarck sailed in the Baltic last week.

They entered the Kattegat and then the Skaggerak, and were sighted off the southern coast of Norway by the Swedes on the 20th. The Swedes notified the British Admiralty the next day and the hunt began. The German ships were already in the North Sea and planned to enter the Atlantic on the 22nd. The British sent Hood and Prince of Wales to the Denmark Strait, where they already had two cruisers, the Norfolk and the Suffolk, patrolling. The straits are the waters between Iceland and Greenland, and on the other side of Iceland the cruisers Birmingham and Manchester were on duty.

The King George, Victorious, and the battlecruiser Repulse joined the search. On the afternoon of the 23rd, as last week ended, Suffolk sighted the Germans and alerted the Admiralty. Both Suffolk and Norfolk escape into the fog, but then track their prey using radar. Just before 06:00 on the morning of the 24th, the Battle of the Denmark Strait begins when Hood and the Prince of Wales arrive on the scene. The British ships target the Prinz Eugen, which is traveling in the lead, but both Germans target the Hood. He takes a hit from Eugen, causing a fire, but then one of the Hood's magazines explodes, probably from a direct hit from the Bismarck, but whatever it was, it destroys the entire ship and

sink

s in just a few minutes, killing all. but three of the 1,417-man crew.

The Prince of Wales takes a few hits and then retreats under a screen of smoke. The Bismarck captain wants to move on, but Lutjens won't let him. The Bismarck has been hit 2 or 3 times by the Prince of Wales, and one of the hits near her hull has caused a serious oil leak. Instead of continuing into the Atlantic, the ship will head to Brest for repairs, avoiding pursuit, and the Prinz Eugen will continue the operation alone. Two submarine lines, one in the mid-Atlantic and one west of the Bay of Biscay, are ready to assist the Bismarck. On the night of the 24th to the 25th, the shadows lose track of the Bismarck, but Lutjens, without realizing it, breaks the radio silence and sends messages home.

The British can now roughly triangulate their position and send planes to hunt. However, it takes them time to realize that the Bismarck is heading for Brest, and on the afternoon of the 25th, the ship has escaped the British and overtakes them. Okay, the Bismarck has to slow her down because now she's out of fuel, but she's still pretty fast. But Force H ships head north to intercept. At 10:30 on the 26th, a Catalina seaplane sights the Bismarck, 1,100 kilometers west of Brest, too far away for Germany to provide air cover. After that, Ark Royal's Swordfish torpedo boats accidentally attack the Sheffield, thinking she is the Bismarck, but do not damage her.

Then a second attack by Ark Royal torpedo boats blocked Bismarck's rudder. Lutjens radioed his house at midnight that he could no longer maneuver. At 08:47 on the morning of the 27th, the battleships Rodney and King George V attack. They manage to disable most of the Bismarck's guns and start some fires aboard the ship, but they themselves are running out of fuel and are heading for home. The heavy cruiser Dorsetshire arrives and scores three torpedo hits on the sinking ship, whose own sailors launched sinking charges. The Bismarck, the

pride

of the German navy, capsizes and sinks at 10:40 a.m.

More than 2,000 men die, including Admiral Lutjens. To carry out this naval action, the Royal Navy has deployed 6 battleships, 2 aircraft carriers, 3 battlecruisers, 16 cruisers, 33 destroyers and 8 submarines. The Prinz Eugen heads to the Atlantic and refuels, but she has engine problems and has to head to Brest, where she will arrive in two days. The Operation, even with the destruction of the Hood, is a total failure, as she failed to sink, much less sight, any British merchant ships. Another failure this week is the Allied defense of Crete. Earlier in the week, Germany had managed, largely thanks to Allied errors, to seize the Maleme airfield and bring in thousands of mountain troops.

British and Dominion forces had held them at bay in Rethymus and Heraklion, but they have not escaped and, as of the middle of this week, there is a stalemate there. “Their garrisons, unaware of the sequence of disasters at Maleme, assumed that they just had to resist and the German invasion would die on the spot. Once again, the lack of wireless connection proved to be a major weakness.” On the other hand, Kurt Student, who planned the German airborne attack, arrives on the 25th and finds half of Flieger 7, his creation, dead. There is still plenty of fighting as the Germans advance across the island, but the writing is on the wall.

Allied commander Bernard Freyberg tells Middle East Theater commander Archie Wavell on the morning of the 26th that Crete cannot be held. The evacuation, yet another British evacuation, begins on the 28th. Australians, New Zealanders, Layforce and some Spanish Republicans fight in the rear against the advancing German mountain troops. “Fortunately” the 27th is the last day of intense German air attacks. Most of the planes are retired after that to prepare for the next German invasion of the USSR. However, there are planes dropping warnings to locals of severe retaliation if resistance continues once the allies are gone. The British may be losing in Crete, but they are winning in Iraq.

On the 27th they began their advance on Baghdad, the capital. On the 30th, the government of Rashid Ali al-Gaylani, which took power at the beginning of the month, flees the country. Jamil al-Madfaai will return from a month of exile to take over as Iraq's prime minister, Regent Abdallah returns to the throne and the Anglo-Iraqi war comes to an end. However, the British are making their own plans to return to the Libyan deserts. On the 28th, Wavell issues his main orders for Operation Battleaxe, which will begin on June 15. Look, this week the British Chiefs of Staff are informing the government that some form of military action is necessary to secure the Allies' northern flank in the Mediterranean.

A Germany occupying Crete could soon allow the Germans to supply Cyrenaica from mainland Greece, and to stop that supply route or the one to Tripoli, or hold Malta, the British would have to establish themselves somewhere between Sollum and Derna. “At the same time, the Prime Minister desperately needed a victory to offset the succession of defeats in Greece and Crete, and to counter the enemy's diversionary activities in Iraq and Syria; "justify the risks assumed when the Tiger convoy passed through the Mediterranean and encourage the Australian people with the relief of their besieged soldiers in Tobruk." Although the Anglo-Iraqi war is coming to an end with a British victory, it has been another thorn in the side of the British side.

And as for Syria, Vichy French Prime Minister Francois Darlan has been negotiating the Paris Protocols with Nazi Germany's ambassador, Otto Abetz. It is about giving Germany military bases in Syria, and also in Tunisia and French West Africa, and in exchange a group of French prisoners of war can return home and the cost of the occupation that the French have to pay to the Germans will be reduced from 20 million Reichsmarks/day to 15. German military bases in Syria could be bad news for Suez and Egypt. These protocols have not been ratified, but Charles Huntziger, Vichy's War Minister, whom you may remember from last May, sent orders weeks ago that German and Italian planes could refuel in Syria, and German planes could.

They did it en route to Iraq. The British have been conducting air raids against these aircraft, and the Vichy French claim to have shot down a British Blenheim on the 28th. The British have blockaded Syrian ports, but a telegram from Paris to German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop early of this month says: "... the French government is prepared... to grant German and Italian aircraft the right to make immediate landings in Syria, to resupply them within a reasonable time." possible deadlines... provide protection by French ships to German supply transports by sea... transmit to Germany the reports received by the French High Command on English military forces and war measures in the Near East. .. meet any other German demands for support of military operations in Iraq….

In consideration of these French contributions and with a view to strengthening the defense of Syria against England... the High Command of the Wehrmacht is willing... to authorize a series of measures for the military strengthening of Syria.” On the 27th, the Vichy and Nazi governments agree to a buildup of French AA guns, anti-tank guns, and artillery in Syria. General Henri Dentz is commander of the army of the Levant and the defense of Syria, and although he has always claimed that Vichy France is an independent nation that makes its own international decisions, the British find it difficult to believe this.

The situation in Syria is worrying for Wavell, but he does not want to attack there and further dilute his forces in North Africa, although he believes he may have to and is making plans. For now, he has other concerns about Operation Battleaxe. He has all those tanks that arrived the other week from Britain in Operation Tiger, and that's great, but now he discovers that the Mathilda tanks break down a lot and are vulnerable to the German 88mm anti-tank guns. The Germans also have better armored vehicles. He reports these misgivings to the General Staff on the 28th.

Those long-barreled 88mm weapons are a big problem, actually. They are not only anti-tank, they are also anti-aircraft, they are very powerful. Their 10 kilo projectile (just one) can take out a tank at more than 1.5 km, and they also shoot quite fast and are quite accurate. The German desert commander there, Erwin Rommel, only has 12 in total, but depending on how they are deployed, they can make a real difference. Well, these are fights that can break out. The fighting comes to an end this week. This is about the fighting in the Chinese province of South Shanxi, active for a couple of weeks, although less and less and ends on the 27th.

The Japanese strategy of "enveloping the enemy forces by completely blocking their retreat routes with forces "advance and taking advantage of the positions already existing on the front, the natural obstacles of the Yellow River and the advancing actions from both flanks" has been semi-successful; While many Nationalist forces managed to escape, many more did not, so although by their own criteria of success, the Battle was a failure for the Japanese, in terms of the tens of thousands of casualties inflicted on the Chinese. Nationalists: Up to 100,000, was a success, although the Japanese suffered about a fifth of their total force as casualties.

And that's the week, fighting in Iraq, China and Crete, plans for Syria and Egypt, and a British loss and a German loss at sea. The latter has torn a mix of feelings between both parties. The Hood lost with one shot! The Bismarck, the most advanced battleship Germany has ever built, sank before she could sink any merchant ships! Thus, both navies are reduced. And last week the British Mediterranean fleet suffered serious damage fromheaven. By now it should be painfully obvious to everyone: the era of the battleship is over. If you would like to watch a special episode about the Bismarck, you can click here.

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