H.M.S. Hood vs. Bismarck: The Battleship Battle

By Theodore Taylor

An account of the WWII sea battle by the author of The Cay: “The story of the Bismarck is one of exciting high adventure, and [Taylor] captures it nicely.” —The New York Times

From the award-winning author, this is a compelling history of the sinking of British battlecruiser H.M.S. Hood in the cold waters of the North Atlantic in 1941. It was a great loss to the Royal Navy and resulted in the deaths of more than fourteen hundred sailors. Soon the Allies were in hot pursuit of the Bismarck, the German fleet’s biggest and most fearsome ship.

The Nazi battleship would meet its end just days after it sank the Hood—and this book tells the riveting story of this deadly confrontation at sea.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Media
• Release date: Aug 30, 2022
• ISBN: 9781504077163

Theodore Taylor

THEODORE TAYLOR (1921-2006), an award-winning author of many books for young people, was particularly known for fast-paced, exciting adventure novels. His books include the bestseller The Cay, Timothy of the Cay, The Bomb, Air Raid--Pearl Harbor!, Ice Drift, The Maldonado Miracle, and The Weirdo, an Edgar Award winner for Best Young Adult Mystery.

Book preview

1. Churchill’s Fears

For a long time now, England’s Prime Minister, Sir Winston Churchill, has feared the new German battleship Bismarck, though she has yet to fire a single shot in combat. But he’s known about her for six uneasy years, ever since July 1936, when her keel was laid at the massive Blohm & Voss shipworks in Hamburg. All along he’s suspected that she’s larger than the Germans ever admitted, and he is correct.

Urging the British Royal Air Force (RAF) to bomb her repeatedly, destroy her before she could ever become operational, Churchill, in August 1940 (while he was still First Lord of the Admiralty, civilian head of the British navy), wrote to the Air Ministry:

"Even a few months’ delay in Bismarck will affect the whole balance of sea power to a serious degree."

Two months after this message, he addressed the Combined Chiefs of Staff:

"The greatest prize open to Bomber Command is the disabling of Bismarck and Tirpitz."

Tirpitz was the other battleship soon to become available to the German navy. Churchill had been First Lord of the Admiralty during World War I, so was an old adversary of Germany and knew quite a lot about naval affairs. His current code name is Former Naval Person.

Thus far, spring 1941, despite his urgings and attempted attacks by the RAF, neither ship has been disabled, and British naval intelligence experts in London estimate that the Bismarck will soon operate against merchant shipping in the Atlantic. Worse, the Tirpitz will be ready in a matter of months.

In this bleak third year of war for England, the armed forces of dictator Adolf Hitler do seem to be almost invincible in Yugoslavia, Greece, and Africa. They have already conquered most of Europe. And although Great Britain has held her own in savage air battles over the homeland, has withstood nightly bombing, she could still lose control of the seas to submarines and surface raiders.

At the moment, another two German battleships, the Scharnhorst and Gneisnau are in the occupied French port of Brest undergoing repairs. Sir Winston believes that Germany’s Grand Admiral Erich Raeder may eventually team them up with the Bismarck and Tirpitz.

The idea is terrifying: four huge battleships roaming the sea lanes to blow up merchant vessels carrying war supplies to England, shooting up entire helpless convoys after destroying their escorts.

Only recently, England had a painful sample of such destruction. Scharnhorst and Gneisnau had raided ships as far south as the hump of Africa. Commanded by Admiral Günther Lütjens, they’d easily downed 122,000 tons of shipping while avoiding contact with the Royal Navy.

It is of little surprise, then, that this is exactly what Grand Admiral Raeder now has in mind—an operation coded Rheinubüng, or Rhine Exercise, the new bristling Bismarck to steam with the equally new heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen as raiding partner.

And as soon as possible, he’ll add the Tirpitz, twin sister of the Bismarck. There is even a plan for larger ships, 56,000 ton H-class behemoths, to go a-raiding. Above all, Raeder is a dedicated battleship man and has complete faith in their destructive abilities.

At any rate, Churchill’s fears are not at all groundless. During World War I, Germany almost strangled England by waging war against the island nation’s merchant supply lines. What is happening now is a repeat. German Unterseebootes, U-boats, are operating successfully halfway around the world, sinking ships daily. German merchant raiders—heavily armed vessels disguised as peaceful freighters of another nation—are taking a toll too. If Raeder does succeed in this latest battleship adventure, Churchill is of the chilling opinion that England may not survive.

However, Raeder does not even have to deploy his heavy ships to hamper British war efforts. Their mere existence in German, Baltic, French, or Scandinavian ports ties up a major portion of the British Home Fleet. The Royal Navy must keep its own battleships and carriers in readiness at the Scapa Flow fleet anchorage, north of Scotland, in case the Germans do break out and head for the Atlantic.

Churchill has dealt with that, too. In no way could Hitler have used his two giant battleships more effectively than by keeping them in readiness in the Baltic and allow rumours of an impending sortie to leak out from time to time. We should have been compelled to keep concentrated at Scapa Flow or thereabouts practically every new ship that we had…. As ships have to go for periodic refits, it would have been almost beyond our power to maintain a reasonable margin of superiority. My thought had rested night and day upon this awe-striking problem….

When war began, September 3, 1939, just after Germany invaded Poland, the British navy had twelve battleships, three battle cruisers (fast battleships), and four large aircraft carriers. Germany had two battleships (Scharnhorst and Gneisnau), three so-called pocket battleships, and three heavy cruisers, plus some older war vessels.

On paper, the British navy was vastly superior to the German fleet, but many of England’s capital ships were a quarter-century old, of World War I vintage. With its fast new heavies, Germany might have a chance to tip the sea balance its way, even with fewer vessels.

2. Bismarck

There is a strange and terrible beauty about the Bismarck, fourth warship to carry the name of the Iron Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, who ruled Germany from 1871 to 1890.

She was properly, richly launched in late winter 1939, with the political hierarchy—Nazi bigwigs—looking on. Hitler himself made the principal speech, and applauding were such soon-to-be infamous patriots as Air Chief Marshal Goering, Josef Goebbels, the propaganda chief, and Heinrich Himmler, head of the secret police. It was a posh occasion, rebirth of the German navy.

No ship on earth is more powerful than this one. Menacing guns stick out everywhere, but her lines are sleek and graceful. Although she is wide for a battleship, 118 feet, affording steadiness when shooting, the gray giant slides through the waters of the Baltic with comparative ease.

Her 150,000-horsepower turbine engines and triple propellors, set beneath twin rudders, give her a top speed of slightly over 30 knots. She is 823 feet in length, and her sole mission is to act as a gun platform. The fact that she is a ship is incidental.

In her forward turrets, Anton and Bruno, are four 15-inch guns, and the after main turrets, Caesar and Dora, have similar devastating firepower. Shooting simultaneously, they can send tons of screaming, hot high explosives toward targets. Each projectile weighs about 1,600 pounds, and they travel at about 1,600 mph.

Additionally, there are twelve 5.9-inch quick-firing guns in other turrets for use against smaller surface targets; sixteen 4.1-inch antiaircraft batteries, plus another thirty-six lighter guns, also for the purpose of knocking down enemy fighters and bombers. Though battleships seldom have the opportunity to use them, the Bismarck is equipped with six 21-inch torpedo tubes.

Four low-wing Arado-196 aircraft, the most successful seaplane built for the German navy, are in hangars beneath the mainmast and by the stack. The single-engine twin-float Arados, able to range out 600 miles, are intended for gunnery spotting, aerial reconnaissance, and communications work.

German ship designers have always paid great attention to armor, and the Bismarck is the most highly protected ship on earth. Forty percent of her entire weight is armor, including a belt of twelve-and-a-half-inch Krupp Wotan case-hardened steel around much of her shell. Her main turrets have even greater protection, while other parts of the ship are covered in Wotan of varying thicknesses.

Officially, back in 1936, Germany had told the world that sisters Bismarck and Tirpitz would be 36,000 tons each, abiding by past treaties. Germany lied! Actually, they are 41,700 tons each, and when fully loaded displace more than 50,000 tons.

First of the fraudulent sisters to be completed and commissioned, the Bismarck is, like other capital ships, a floating city. More than two thousand officers and men live and work in her. Of life’s general necessities, whatever can be found ashore can also be found on her decks—laundry, dry-cleaning shop, shoe shop, tailor shop, ship’s stores. Of course she has medical and dental facilities, and her food lockers contain enough provisions for three months at sea.

Any large warship, taking three or four years