16 Fairey Swordfish biplane torpedo bombers from the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal attacked the Bismarck as it was on her way toward occupied France to carry out repairs
The first of two battleships of the Bismarck class constructed for Nazi Germany’s Kriegsmarine was named Bismarck. The ship, which was built at the Hamburg shipyard Blohm & Voss and was given the name Otto von Bismarck, was laid down in July 1936 and launched in February 1939. She was commissioned into the German fleet in August 1940, following the completion of construction.
Throughout the warship’s eight-month service, under the sole leadership of Captain Ernst Lindemann, Bismarck only engaged in one offensive operation, code-named Rheinübung, lasting eight days in May 1941. In order to attack Allied cargo from North America to Great Britain, the ship and the powerful cruiser Prinz Eugen were intended to enter the Atlantic Ocean. The two ships were seen off Scandinavia on numerous occasions, and British naval personnel were sent to block their route.
The battlecruiser HMS Hood accidentally engaged Prinz Eugen at the start of the Battle of the Denmark Strait as HMS Prince of Wales engaged Bismarck. The combined fire of Bismarck and Prinz Eugen in the ensuing fight wrecked Hood, damaging the Prince of Wales and forcing her to retreat. Three hits from the Prince of Wales were enough to cause enough damage to Bismarck to stop the raiding mission.
Following Hood’s destruction, the Royal Navy pursued relentlessly, sending forth scores of warships. Two days later, the battleship Bismarck was attacked by 16 Fairey Swordfish biplane torpedo bombers from the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal while it was making its way to occupied France to carry out repairs. One of the bombers scored a hit that rendered the battleship’s steering gear unusable.
‘Bismarck like a lot of German vessels didn’t make it beyond its first outing before it was crippled by a torpedo launched from a Fairey Swordfish biplane. A slow plane from the early 1930s era,’ Andy Lee, an aviation expert, explains on Quora.
‘Next stop?
‘Captain: The seabed.
‘The oversight on the part of the Germans unwittingly exploited by the British?
‘The Bismarck’s gunner crews could not calibrate Bismarck’s guns to target planes moving so slowly [as the video in this post explains]. Bismarck’s timed fire basically kept exploding short of the planes due to its range finders inability to accurately marry target range and altitude with target speed. There was a target speed dial on Bismarck’s guns and it simply didn’t dial down to a speed slow enough to match the Swordfish.’
Lee concludes;
‘Once modified by a torpedo from a Swordfish, Bismarck became great moving target practice for The Royal Navy Ships that engaged [it] to the point in the fire exchange that Bismarck was eventually scuttled by her own crew rather than let the British victors board her.’
Photo by The Aviation History Online Museum