The Bismarck was estimated to be 52 miles distant. With a strong crosswind, the Swordfish struggled to maintain course and keep speed at 80 knots. 45 They calculated they’d be onto the Bismarck in about forty-five minutes. The first aircraft in the No. 4 subflight, piloted by Sub-Lieutenant M. J. Lithgow, was equipped with an ASV (air search) radar watched intently by observer Sub-Lieutenant N. C. Cooper. As they droned through clouds and mist, Cooper spotted something on his screen. Against the roar of the engine he shouted the contact course and speed through the voice tube connecting him to Lithgow. Then he stood up into the slipstream and signaled the rest of the squadron that he had picked up a radar contact about 20 miles to starboard. He swung his arm to indicate the direction. The squadron banked sharply to settle on the new course. In the second aircraft of Lithgow’s subflight, the officer commanding the squadron, Lieutenant Commander J. A. Stewart-Moore, thought that the contact did not correspond with the position of the Bismarck as given to the pilots in the carrier ready room. But, “as there were said to be no British ships in the area, it had to be German.” Then they saw a dark gray shape on the sea sliding by gaps in the clouds. It looked more like a cruiser than a battleship. Was it the Prinz Eugen? The Royal Navy pilots took up attack position, dove through the clouds, lost sight of each other as they descended, then poked through the cloud bottoms. Stewart-Moore’s pilot, Lieutenant H. de G. Hunter, yelled through the voice tube, “It’s the Sheffield!”
With her twin funnels, the Sheffield looked nothing like the Bismarck, but the adrenaline was flowing and the blood was up. Hunter pulled up and waggled his wings. Neither his Swordfish, nor any of the others were equipped with radios to talk to each other; they could speak only to the Ark Royal. One by one the other aircraft executed their attacks in textbook fashion as Hunter and Stewart-Moore looked on in horror. The Swordfish dove toward the British cruiser, flattened out near the water, held their speed and altitude, then dropped. One by one the torpedoes entered the water as the men aboard HMS Sheffield watched, transfixed by the terrible fate about to overwhelm them. A cool customer on the outside, Captain Larcom was sorely tempted to order his antiaircraft gunners to open fire. But the immediate job was to save the Sheffield. He tensed and waited for the torpedoes to hit the water, ready to bark out orders to the coxswain to turn this way and that to comb the tracks and avoid the deadly fish.
Then, a miracle. One by one all the torpedoes except one or two exploded within a minute of hitting the water. The Sheffield easily avoided the rest. The duplex pistols had malfunctioned. Perhaps this was due to a quirk in the earth’s magnetic field, or to tired, seasick men in the Ark Royal’s hangar deck who had failed to set them properly. Maybe the extreme turbulence on the sea had tossed the torpedoes about, upsetting the delicate firing mechanism. But whatever it was that gave a hint of divine intervention, it saved the Sheffield. The aircraft maintenance crews on the Ark Royal quickly exchanged duplex pistols for contact detonators when the next flight went out to attack the Bismarck.
The first strike force returned to the Ark Royal at 5:20 P. M., flying over four of Captain Vian’s destroyers and reporting their presence. Immediately every available torpedo bomber was scraped together for a second attack. Maund and Somerville hoped against hope that they might get a third attack in before darkness and weather closed flying operations, but neither one was really optimistic about it. One by one the aircraft were laboriously refueled, rearmed, and checked for damage, all on the open, sea-swept flight deck. Again, fifteen aircraft were to be sent out. The weather had not improved from earlier in the day, when the first strike had been launched, but at 7:10 P. M. the first of the aircraft lifted ponderously off the flight deck, directly into the spray thrown up by the Ark Royal’s bow, and climbed to the cloud base. Fourteen other aircraft followed. They formed up, flew over the Renown at 7:25, and headed under the cloud layer for the Sheffield-this time not to attack her, but to use her as a reference point from which to attack the Bismarck. At 7:55 they spotted the Sheffield, calculated their direction and distance from the Bismarck, then climbed into the cloud layer for the run to the German battleship. At 8:47P. M. the squadron began to lower through the clouds.
“Aircraft! Alarm! “The cry cut short Admiral Lütjens’ musings about his precarious situation and the Luftwaffe’s failure to start from their Biscay bases. Spotters on the Bismarck saw fifteen Swordfish torpedo bombers overhead, swooping down through the violent rain squalls and heavy clouds. But then, once more, they were gone as quickly as they had appeared.
“Aircraft! Alarm!” Time: 8:30 P. M. Another wave of Swordfish torpedo bombers dove out of the clouds, singly and in pairs, recklessly coming at the Bismarck from all angles. Once more, the battleship became a mountain of fire. First Gunnery Officer Schneider ordered his main as well as secondary armament to fire at the bubbling tracks approaching the Bismarck just below the surface of the sea, hoping to explode some of the incoming torpedoes. At the same time, the four hundred men of the flak sprang into action with their heavy 4-inchers, as well as lighter 1.5-inch and 75-inch “pom-pom” guns. Soon the barrels became red-hot and what little paint remained blistered. The Swordfish were so close, Seaman Georg Herzog remembered, that he was ordered to send up barrage fire rather than to target single craft. Suddenly the Bismarck began to heel violently from side to side. Next she lost speed. On the captain’s bridge, Lindemann once more was barking out furious commands: “All ahead full!” “All stop!” “Hard a-port!” “Hard a-starboard!” On and on, the staccato commands went, for fully fifteen minutes. One after another, the Bismarck evaded the deadly torpedoes.
Seaman Herzog, manning his port third 1.5-inch flak gun, saw three Swordfish approach the Bismarck from astern, at 270 degrees, then bank hard right, to 180 degrees. They were flying too low to allow accurate antiaircraft fire. Most of the planes were concentrating on the battleship’s port side. Then Herzog saw two other torpedo bombers on the port beam. They also banked right to come at the ship from starboard, and at 875 yards off the Bismarck’s stern they released their torpedoes. Two of the “fish,” only 13 to 20 feet apart, were headed to cross the battleship’s projected course. Captain Lindemann, afraid that a torpedo might hit his bow, thus seriously impairing the Bismarck’s maneuverability, screamed at his coxswain: “Hard a-port!” Perhaps he could cut in front of the expected track of the torpedoes. From the captain’s bridge, Lindemann anxiously watched as the Bismarck and the bubble tracks closed on each other second by second.
At that moment the Bismarck’s great 15-inch guns spewed out their deadly fire-at HMS Sheffield. Commander Adalbert Schneider’s first salvo splashed into the Atlantic short of the light cruiser. His second salvo straddled the ship; four further salvos fell close. Lethal shell fragments caused a dozen casualties, three of them fatal. The Sheffield at once began to lay down dense smoke and to flee the scene at flank speed.
