Off to Meet the Bismark

Part Two of the story of radar through the eyes of Rear Admiral Stuart Paddon from St. Thomas, Ontario as he recounts his wartime service at the sharp end of this emerging technology.

Time's Up - The Hunt is On

Our workups and test exercises on the Prince of Wales were fairly extensive but we had had only one main armament shoot, when about May 22nd, HMS Hood and ourselves had to proceed to sea to intercept the Bismarck, being shadowed with radar by HMS Norfolk and HMS Suffolk, two county class cruisers. Our Captain came on the PA system and told the ship’s company that he anticipated intercepting the Bismarck at roughly six a.m. on the 24th of May, some thirty hours away.

The Captain was Correct

At exactly six a.m. on the 24th of May we encountered the Bismarck at 26,000 yards, roughly thirteen nautical miles, twenty degrees to starboard. The Flag Office was in Hood and we proceeded in line-ahead with Hood leading. The Hood was a battle cruiser, without the armour plating which the Prince of Wales enjoyed. We were doing roughly thirty knows and opened fire at 26,000 yards.

The System

My position was in the 281 receiving office and I personally manned the display tube. In those days we had no gyro repeats; we had to give bearings by red or green, but we did have M-type transmission units, little counterdrums on which we could transmit range. The counterdrum that I controlled had as its counterpart a receiver on the wall of the Transmitting Station, the TS. This had to be read and placed by someone into the calculations which were being carried out on the plot.

Radar Intel Not Used

Unfortunately, despite the fact that I transmitted these ranges, no one even knew they were coming in on the counterdrum and no radar ranges were used by our gunnery people. We had had only one previous shoot and had not developed any drill. This was unfortunate because I had three distinct echoes of three ships at 26,000 yards, clearly portrayed on the radar screen and A-scan with a linear blip. I was able to follow them with complete accuracy and complete detail, religiously giving the range as I have described. The third ship turned out later, on investigation, to have been a supply vessel in company with the Bismarck and the Prince Eugen. I have never seen any reference to this supply vessel in anything I have subsequently read.

Bismark vs. the Hood

• There are many interesting features, some of which I can recount from personal experience, some only from accounts from fellow officers, as I was in an enclosed office and did not see the Bismarck. A good friend of mine was a HA Director Control Officer and he watched the engagement from his station Since he was not being used at this particular time for that range, he watched five salvoes of Bismarck’s fall off short; the first was roughly a hundred yards beyond the Hood, the second was a straddle of Hood, with the third he saw a fire occur on Hood, the fourth he did not detect and on the fifth Hood blew, just exploded. Bits of her fell on our deck. He watched the foretop, the whole mast structure, go hurtling through the air for a great distance. Only three survivors were picked up by escorting ships.
  

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By Citypeek - Own work based upon the map Rheinuebung Karte2.png, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=25610223

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Bismark vs. the Prince of Wales

Here the fallacy of our Admiral is indicated, as far as I am concerned. The range for Prince of Wales was almost identical with Hood, and Bismarck was able immediately to turn her fire on us, causing severe damage. Our whole compass platform was shot away and of the ten or so personnel normally stationed on the Compass Platform, seven were killed; the three most important people surviving, the Captain, the Navigator and the Cox’n. A number of our Air Defence people were killed.

Interesting Aside

An interesting story is that Esmond Knight, the actor, was an RNR lieutenant who was a shipmate and was an Air Defence Officer. He was seriously injured, losing one eye and badly damaging the second. Several days later we dropped him off at Iceland thinking he would not live. Many years later he appeared in many shows including ‘Henry the Eighth; and he was the actor who portrayed the Captain of the Prince of Wales in the movie ‘Sink the Bismarck’.
 
The Prince of Wales continued to engage the Bismarck for twenty minutes before our Y turret seized by jamming of the loading trays so that the turret could not be trained. We did manage to fire a good number of rounds at Bismarck and subsequently found through other accounts that damage was done to Bismarck, seriously disrupting her control of armament.

Blood Dripping on Navigational Chart

That engagement in which Hood was sunk lasted twenty minutes and the plot shows that we broke action with Bismarck and that both ships proceeded on a parallel course at roughly fifteen miles separation. As stated, we had suffered severe damage to our Compass Platform. In my own case, I lost five of my personnel in the after 285 radar office who were killed when an 8 inch shell exploded there. I well remember going to the plotting office which was directly below the compass platform and our Schoolmaster, the senior plot officer, was adamantly and religiously plotting the course of ourselves and accompanying ships with the blood dripping on the navigational chart from the compass platform above. That’s a gory detail but it’s true. In all we lost fifteen to twenty men killed and a number injured.

What the Radar Saw

From the radar point of view I think there were two points worth mentioning. While operating the 281, I was able to observe the blip of the sixteen inch shells that were being fired at us come towards us on the radar screen. Also, a certain amount of interference occurred. None of the ships company had radars of the same frequency as the 281 on the Prince of Wales, yet I was able to lock into radar transmissions of some kind which I reported to Admiralty. Their scientists visited the ship later to discuss what had seen. Subsequently, the decision was that Bismarck had some form of radar of comparable frequency to our 281, which was operating at 86 megacycles.

Extensive Damage was Done

The damage done to the radar systems was extensive. As my 281 receiver mast had been shot away, I was denied the use of 281 as a surface set or as an air warning set. The after 285 office containing two sets had been seriously damaged, killing five persons. I was left with a 284 with its antenna mounted on the director control tower; two 285s mounted on HA/LA directors, one port, one starboard; and four 282s which were relatively useless. This becomes important later when we consider what happened during the night.

Y Turret Trays Jammed

The main problem Prince of Wales had encountered was that Y turret loading trays had jammed, preventing it from being trained. Work commenced on that; we were fortunate in having some of the dockyard maties on board. By roughly four o’clock in the afternoon we were ready to re-engage the Bismarck. We did so for a number of rounds, but before I go into that I would like to mention one other happening.

The weather had been worsening very seriously, with poor visibility occurring most of the afternoon. We were steaming on a parallel course, roughly fifteen miles from Bismarck, when suddenly steaming in the opposite direction another ship was detected. And all wheels, all gears, started to turn around to engage this new target, going 180 degrees in the opposite direction to the two of us. Just as we were about the engage and open fire, the Gunnery Officer in the DCT said, “Cease fire. That is the US Coast Guard vessel, such and such”. It happened that he had been reading the messages sometime during the day, had seen this ship was in the vicinity and it had steamed right up between the Bismarck and ourselves, going in the opposite direction. They probably didn’t even know that they passed between these two ships.

At 4:00 We Engaged the Bismark

As the day progressed, at about four o’clock, we did engage Bismarck at roughly thirty thousand yards. Our maximum range on our fourteen inch guns was fifteen to twenty miles, firing two thousand pound (roughly a ton) projectiles. We had three turrets, with four guns in A turret, two in B and four in Y. Thus we had ten 14 inch guns capable of a broadside of ten tons of metal, every thirty seconds.
 
When we engaged Bismarck, she replied, but not at us. She seemed to aim at either Norfolk or Suffolk, one of the escorting cruisers, I forget which. And her fall of shot was well off target. This led us to believe that she had trouble with her fire control. We were proceeding with this engagement when we were suddenly directed to disengage in order that a flight of torpedo bombers from the aircraft carrier Victorious (I’m not sure where she was) might attack. We disengaged and watched some twelve, fifteen, eighteen Swordfish carry out a torpedo attack on the Bismarck with fatal results to them, not to Bismarck. I don’t believe any damage occurred to her from the results of that attack.

The Weather Worsened

As the afternoon went on the weather got worse. I kept a watch on the type 284 and the gunnery people manned the director control tower and we were tracking Bismarck with the DCT, which is almost impossible from a mechanical point of view, because of the very great weight of the antenna and the director combined. In the long run we lost Bismarck during the night.

We were forced to return via Iceland after, we buried our dead at sea, a very impressive ceremony, and delivered our wounded to Reykjavik or was it Valfjord, including Esmond Knight whom I mentioned earlier. The only other feature that comes to mind is that as we proceeded then to Rosythe for damage repairs, we were still able to steam at thirty knots, although we had suffered some damage by an underwater hit of a sixteen inch projectile, which had caused us to take in a large volume of water. During our subsequent refit at Rosythe an un-exploded sixteen inch projectile was found in one of our underwater spaces and we cleared the dry dock while this suspicious looking animal was removed from the ship.

Not a Happy Memory

As an aftermath to the Bismarck show, I had mentioned earlier that we had a scientist from HM Signal School. He and I cleaned out the after 285 office and by that I mean we extracted portions of people from the equipment. With the transmitter of one type 285 and appropriate connections to the antenna and with the receiver of another 285, we got one system functioning in the HA/LA 5.24” Control System. It was not a pleasant task. We had five people distributed through there. Not a happy memory.

R & R and Another Canadian

One happier memory is that I was granted some leave while we were in Rosythe and I took £52, the pound then being worth $4.47 and went to London for two weeks’ leave; at the end of one week I had one pound left. I came back to my ship, went down to my cabin and in my bunk was a body; they were not expecting me. I shook this body and said, “What the hell are you doing in my bunk?” A Canadian voice said, “Well Christ! Who the hell are you?” And I said, “I’m the guy who owns this bunk.” The body was a Canadian, Ralph Ripley, who had joined the ship from the King Alfred while I was away. He became a close and fast friend but unfortunately he was lost, not when we were sunk of Malaya, but when Singapore fell. A fine, fine friend, and he was in my bunk when I got back from leave in 1941.
 
During the time we underwent damage repairs, I got a type 273 radar, a warning set of ten centimeters wavelength. The antennas were well up the foremast and the equipment was directly under them in a housing about the office It was maybe ninety to a hundred feet above water level.