World War II Day by Day

London, England • May 21, 1941

On this date in 1941 the German heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen and the German battle­ship Bismarck set out from occu­pied Norway into the main Atlan­tic shipping lanes, there to act as long-distance com­merce raiders. It was the maiden combat voyage of Nazi Germany’s mon­strous battle­ship, the most lethal wea­pon in any navy’s arsenal, and had been the focus of the Royal Navy’s atten­tion since the battleship was commissioned nearly two years earlier.

Germany’s major surface warships, combined with its fleets of sub­marines and armed mer­chant raiders, had caused exten­sive damage and dis­ruption to Britain’s vital trans­oceanic routes to and from North Amer­ica almost since the out­break of Euro­pean hosti­lities in Septem­ber 1939. As well as sinking mer­chant ships belonging to bellig­erent and neu­tral nations alike, the German Navy forced Brit­ish-bound con­voys carrying food and war mate­rials to be diverted or halted, there­by imperiling the very survival of the island nation (click Battle of the Atlantic).

The Royal Navy, continuously seeking out and destroying con­voy-prowling German U‑boats, now set out to destroy the 50,000‑ton pride of the Kriegs­marine in the most famous sea chase in history. (U.S. long-range naval patrol air­craft from Ice­land and the Ber­mudas were also active in the search for the German battle­ship.) On May 27, 1941, off the south­west coast of Ireland, the HMS King George V and the HMS Rodney pul­verized the Bismarck with their 14- and 16‑inch guns, respec­tively, finishing off the job the Prince of Wales and carrier air­craft from the Ark Royal had begun hours earlier. More than 2,100 offi­cers and enlisted men (including the entire German fleet staff) perished; only 114 survived the sinking.

Much further south, this off the coast of Brazil and also on this date, German U‑boat U‑69 tor­pe­doed and sank the un­armed Amer­i­can freighter SS Robin Moor. Though pas­sen­gers and crew were per­mitted to disem­bark, Presi­dent Franklin D. Roose­velt declared an un­limited state of national emer­gency a week later in response to the U.S. quasi-war with German U‑boats. (The U.S. still formally con­sid­ered itself a neu­tral party in the Euro­pean con­flict.) Roose­velt vowed that America’s so-called “Neu­trality Patrol” operating up and down the U.S. east coast, begun on Sep­tem­ber 6, 1939, with the aim of dis­couraging German war­ships from threat­ening ship­ping inside U.S. and Cana­dian waters, would be extended deeper into the Atlantic. On July 1, 1941, Adm. Ernest J. King, Com­mander-in-Chief of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet, estab­lished escort services for mer­chant ships flying flags of any nation sailing between U.S. and Cana­dian waters and the North Atlantic island nation of Ice­land provided that one ship in the convoy was Amer­i­can or Ice­landic. King instructed U.S. escort vessels to attack any “hostile forces which threaten such shipping” in what Roosevelt declared was “our defensive waters.” The escorting job was made easier when Ice­land permitted U.S. forces to be stationed on the island seven days later.

Sink the Bismarck: The Royal Navy’s Operations Between May 21 and May 27, 1941, that Destroyed the Pride of the Kriegsmarine

Above: Map of the Royal Navy’s operations against the mammoth German battle­ship Bis­marck and the German heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen, with approx­i­mate move­ments of ship groups (red German, black British), places of aerial attacks on the two German war­ships, and the Bis­marck’s final resting place. The wrecked battle­ship was dis­covered about 400 miles west of Brest, France, on June 8, 1989, by Robert Bal­lard, the oceano­grapher respon­sible for finding the RMS Titanic.

Left: The 823-ft-long Bismarck on the River Elbe in Blankenese near the North German city of Ham­burg. Protected by 13 inches of armor and armed with eight massive 15‑inch cannons in four turrets and a dozen 5.9‑inch rifles in six turrets, the world’s newest, most-advanced battle­ship was never­the­less sunk nine days into her maiden voyage. The voy­age began auspi­ciously enough with the Bis­marck quickly and neatly destroying the 20‑year-old, heavily armed but thinly armored British battle­cruiser HMS Hood, with a loss of 1,415 offi­cers and sea­man (the single-worst dis­aster inflicted on the Royal Navy in its four cen­turies of exis­tence), and severely damaging the newly com­mis­sioned battle­ship, HMS Prince of Wales, in the ship-to-ship Battle of the Den­mark Strait, May 24, 1941. (The Denmark Strait is a wide chan­nel sepa­rating Green­land from Ice­land; see map above.) In all, six British battle­ships and battle­cruisers, two air­craft carriers, thirteen cruisers, and twenty-one destroyers—in other words, all avail­able war­ships—were committed to the search-and-destroy chase. Thrown into the mix were dozens of patrol air­craft, making this the largest force ever tasked with the destruction of a single ship.

Right: British aircraft carrier Ark Royal with a flight of Fairey Sword­fish canvas-covered bi­plane tor­pe­do bombers over­head, circa 1939. One of these obso­lete planes scored a hit that ren­dered the Bis­marck’s steering gear inoper­able, making the battle­ship’s destruc­tion the next morning all but inev­i­table. At least in the North Atlantic, Germany’s floating gun plat­forms like the Bis­marck and the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen would no longer decide naval engagements in their favor.

Left: Surrounded by shell splashes, the Bismarck burns on the hori­zon, bringing to an end a chase that had lasted five days and covered more than 1,700 sea miles. Four British war­ships fired more than 2,800 shells at the Bis­marck, scoring more than 400 hits, which reduced the battle­ship to a shambles, and avenging the Hood. The photo was taken on May 27, 1941, from one of the Royal Navy war­ships chasing her. German demo­li­tion (scuttling) charges were the direct cause of the Bismarck’s sinking, the stern sliding under the surface first as the ship capsized to port.

Right: Two British warships attempted to rescue the Bismarck’s sur­vivors after the HMS Dorset­shire (shown here) managed to inflict a coup de grâce by firing two tor­pe­does into the badly listing battle­ship. A U‑boat alarm, how­ever, caused the ships to leave the scene after having res­cued only 110 out of some 400 sai­lors in the water. Later a Ger­man U‑boat and a German trawler picked up five survivors.

Combat Footage of British Air and Naval Forces Sinking the German Battleship Bismarck, May 27, 1941