Rescue Operations After Bismarck's Sinking

[MikeBrough]

This thread isn't about them, but about more than one thousand men of the Bismarck who were abandoned to the chill of the Atlantic, when they might otherwise have been rescued.

I HATE whataboutery but I don't remember the Bismarck or PE stopping to search from survivors from the Hood. PoW was heading away from the scene so there was nothing to stop them. Apart from the mission, of course.

[northcape]

This thread is becoming utterly ridiculous and disgraceful, and nothing new can be learned from it. The same weak assumptions are simply repeated over and over. We are now at the point where even dead and survivors from each side are counted against, be it jokingly or not. I ask the moderator to close this topic.

[MikeBrough]

I should probably have expanded on what I wrote. I wasn't trying to suggest that both sides were as bad as each other.

What I meant to say was that, unlike us, neither captain saw the sinking of their opponent as 'the end' of anything. We tend to see the sinking of the Bismarck as 'the end' of the operation and everyone can now go home. The captains at the time didn't think in episodes as we do now - having done their job, they would be keen to get out of Dodge before the current chapter had a few more pages added to it.

[Vic Dale]

So, are we suggesting that the victory over Bismarck relieved the ships of Tovey's fleet from the duty of hunting down and sinking enemy warships for the rest of the day? Perhaps it is thought that the fleet was having a Make-And-Mend day.

Dorsetshire was a fully armed man of war and if an enemy vessel was sighted it would be investigated and if possible destroyed. A cruiser has a great many very effective weapons it can call upon to do that job. A few salvoes of High Explosive fired over the spot would certainly scare the wits out of the enemy. If for any reason Dorsteshire was incapable of doing anything, other ships should have been called upon to deal with it.

Nothing was done, so either Captain Martin was asleep, or he didn't really think it was a U-Boat. Each alternative is horrifying in it's full implications. This was the man who announced to the whole ship's company earlier that day, that if given the chance he would ram his ship into the enemy battleship. This scared the wits out of Joe Brooks.

In the war at sea, the best form of defense is attack and I believe the same maxim applies to other arms of service, both nationally and internationally. A U-Boat which has attacked a naval vessel will always crash dive, lest the torpedoes miss and his position is tracked from their path. Had Dorsteshire attacked this U-Boat sighting, the boat would have been forced down and from that position it would have been impossible to attack. Dorsetshire would have been safe from attack, so would other ships in the vicinity. That boat would have been rendered useless for as long as the ships were above it. The U-Boat's crew would have heard the asdic pinging off the hull and would never be able to know whether or not they were being tracked. Their only recourse would be to lie low and hope. They would probably have to stay deep for the rest of the day and only venture to the surface after dark. They would stay well down, otherwise aircraft called up to hunt would spot them when close to the surface, so the periscopes could not be used. The boat would be completely blind.

Anyone who has served in the RN and has been stationed close to the command will have been able to observe the Captain in action. On leaving and entering harbour he will interrogate his officers, "What's that over there?" If there is no clear answer, he will tell someone to find out and tell him when it has been identified. Nothing is ever left to chance and when on an offensive operation, everything gets investigated, be it a sampan which might be carrying arms or insurgents, or a merchantman steering a little too close to the area of operations or even an exercise area, when they will be warned off. There is no area of visible sea which is not known when the Captain is on the Bridge and heaven help the officer of the watch who does not emulate the old man in every facet of his personality. That is the hidden meaning of command and no one gets command unless they have demonstrated that they are equal to the task and capable of maintaining it under all conditions of stress and strain.

There is no situation which would permit of a commanding officer "thinking" there was, "A U-Boat over there." Without him issuing a welter of commands and a string of attacking orders. Lookouts would be doubled, all guns which could bear would be trained on the spot and midshipmen would be detailed to calculate the farthest-on by the minute. Guns crews would be ordered to load with HE and to open rapid fire the minute the target broke surface. Meanwhile the asdic cabinet will have been switched to loudspeakers so that their tracking information can be heard as it is given. Signals would be sent to the Senior Officer of the squadron and to the Admiralty. Lookouts would be detailed to look for recognition signals in the form of coloured very lights fired from below the surface in the event that the target turned out to be one of ours, without which the ship would fire on sight.

A U-Boat sighting would be a very big and exciting event in one of HM ships and if the ship were not already at action stations, the bugles would be sounding and everyone soon would be closed up and reporting.

[phil gollin]

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Idiotic trolling.

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[Byron Angel]

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Idiotic trolling.

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..... Could not agree more. Time to lock this thread methinks.

B

[Vic Dale]

Here is part of an account from the battle of Dogger Bank in 1915, found on Wickipedia.

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Admiral Beatty's flagship was very badly damaged and by 1052 she had been hit fourteen times and had taken aboard some 3,000 long tons (3,000 t) of water which gave her a list of 10° to port and reduced her speed. Shortly afterwards her port engine broke down and her speed dropped to 15 knots (28 km/h; 17 mph).[28]

In the meantime Blücher had been heavily damaged by fire from all the other battlecruisers; her speed had dropped to 17 knots (31 km/h; 20 mph) and her steering gear had been jammed. Beatty ordered Indomitable to attack her at 10:48 am. Six minutes later Beatty spotted what he thought was a submarine periscope on the starboard bow and ordered an immediate 90° turn to port to avoid the submarine, although he failed to hoist the 'Submarine Warning' flag because most of Lion's signal halyards had been shot away.

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In the heat of battle, Beatty spots a periscope and takes immediate action, which can only be defensive, he tries to signal the alert, but his signal halyards have been shot away. Here we have a failure to take offensive action against a U-Boat sighting, but we are also given the clear reason why no action was taken, yet this is a minor incident compared to the events going on all around Beatty at the time.

Captain Martin rightly pulls his ship out of a rescue operation because of a suspected U-Boat and then does nothing about it. From what I have further been able to glean from various trolling activities on the net, it appears that Martin did signal Maori warning her of the U-Boat. We have as yet no explanation as to why Maori did not mount an attack.

It was Lt Cdr Durrant In Dorsetshire who spotted a smokey discharge on the water about 2 miles off and the decision to haul out of the area was made on this observation alone - not on a periscope sighting, as has been asserted.

In previous posts I criticised the fact that no Carley rafts were put over the side. However, it appears that Denton Floats and "anything which would float" was put over the side, according to one account the reference of which I cannot now find. So it appears that there was no restriction on what life saving gear could be used in aid of distressed enemy seamen.

When Scharnhorst was sunk at North Cape, the destroyers Matchless and Scorpion went in to rescue. Matchless deployed a huge scrambling net and a number of ropes, despite this she only managed to save 6. Scorpion did much better getting 30 men aboard. The Norwegian destroyer Stord also signaled for permission to help in the rescue, but apparently got no reply.

Burnett in Belfast signaled Fraser; "Several survivor samples being taken." And here lies the truth, blatant and shabby. The rescue of drowning men would be a sample only. U-Boats were known to be in the area in concentration and the risk being taken to get to those men was weighed against their potential value to military intelligence. It was a simple intelligence gathering exercise. Yes, war is a pure bitch. There is no glory except that which is painted to lure a gullible public into agreeing to go to war.

As far as the lower deck and junior officers were concerned, rescue would be an act of mercy accorded a defeated yet gallant foe and conducted in the hope of getting all of them safe, but to senior officers the rescue of the enemy would be limited to gathering intelligence assets only and that is the grim reality of war. A senior officer who would be charged with the responsibility for a warship of His Majesty's Navy and her crew would have to understand that, if he was to have the privilege of command in the first place.

Captain Martin will have been well aware of the danger his ship was being placed in right from the start. The Admiralty in London had signaled all ships to be on the lookout for U-Boats in that area. Heaving too in waters where U-boats were known to be forming patrol lines and proceeding to and from their respective stations out in the Atlantic, Martin will have known he needed a sample only and he will have risked his ship and her crew for not a minute longer than was absolutely necessary in fulfilling this task.

In the same way that an Army General may inspect his men before battle and know that he is going to get a lot of them killed, so too a Warship's Captain knows that through his actions his ship may be sunk and her crew lost to a man, yet still he takes his ship into the fight. That is the loneliness of command and his actions are deliberate, conscious and where possible cold bloodedly planned in advance. It is his job to face and destroy the enemy and he will not risk his assets and those of his country for the sake of that enemy, for humanitarian reasons or otherwise. If military necessity dictates that he must take a risk to get a sample of enemy survivors, that is all he will get and will then get the hell out. This is why no other ships than Dorsetshire and Maori were sent in to the rescue. I tend to think that had Martin deployed scrambling nets he could have been in and out much quicker. I think the final count would have been about the same.

There is no blame which can justifiably attach itself to Captain Martin. He did exactly what he was supposed to do and what any Commanding Officer should have done given those circumstances. Whilst a romantic notion of honour and brotherhood among seamen, friend and foe alike may may blossom down the years, the cold reality is; those men pulled from the sea were military assets and nothing more. If there had been no intelligence worth gathering, Dorsetshire and Maori would not have been sent in at all - too much risk and for no gain.

[phil gollin]

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I would lay off the bottle if I were you.

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[Vic Dale]

Having carefully weighed Mr Gollin's arguments and recognised the detail and effort he has put into formulating his Ideas, feel I must continue to disagree with him, despite the fact that he has expressed himself as articulately as he is able.

It seems to me that having received the signal from the Admiralty, warning of likely concentrations of U-Boats in the battle area, Captain Benjamin Martin was fully aware of the danger he was placing Dorsetshire in, when moving slowly into the area where he could expect to find survivors. He will not have taken that risk unless ordered, since the loss of his ship to a torpedo would rest soley upon his head. He would have been court martialled.

Knowing the risks he was sent in, not to rescue, but to sample the survivors who would be invaluable sources of information to British Military Intelligence for learning the state of morale in the German navy and perhaps indicators as to it's capabilities. A very great deal would be learned over time as the German sailors were permitted to mix and swap stories under hidden microphones in their new billets. As to numbers to rescue, I expect the board of trade could have worked that out according to the law of diminishing returns.

The threat of U-Boats will have been on Martin's mind the whole of the time she was hove too and this is probably the reason he did not deploy scrambling nets. Using single lines he could get out quickly when the time came.

Notably it was Lt Cdr Durrant and not one of the look outs who spotted the smokey discharge 2 miles off. The lookouts had all manner of optical aids and there can be little doubt that the lookouts were doubled during this operation, all detailed to be watching for U-Boats and aircraft. Apparently no one but Durrant saw the smoke.

Having been ordered to take a sample, Captain Martin will have been aware well in advance that a time would come to stop the operation and get out. When a sufficient sample had been taken, military necessity dictated that he should take his ship out of the area and sad as it may sound, those not already aboard would have to be left. The only possible reason for going into that area and stopping the ship in the first place would be to find assets. There can be no possibility of a warship being risked for reasons of humanity, at least not for the enemy. If it had been British seamen in that area, other ships would have been detailed to rescue them, not just a heavy cruiser and a destroyer.

Wake-Walker in Norfolk did not participate, so the matter of picking up survivors was obviously not governed by considerations about saving lives. Martin's hard reaction to Joe Brookes, who himself was nearly lost trying to save an injured man, can be summed up by the dictum of the secret service, "Never risk your life, or your job for an asset." Captain Martin was rightly living up to this dictum.

According to Adm. B. B. Schofield in his book, Loss of the Bismarck, Captain Martin signaled one of Ark Royal's aircraft to carry out an anti submarine patrol whilst Dorsetshire was stopped. In that sea, a U-Boat at periscope depth would have been clearly visible from the air, yet nothing was seen. Aircraft are far and away the best means of spotting and attacking U-Boats. The smokey discharge was spotted and identified in Dorsetshire as a U-Boat, but the aircraft was not directed onto it and nor was there any other action taken against this threat.

All of this happened 72 years ago and since then liberal thinking has tried to paint Britain as a gentle humanitarian society. Nothing could be farther from the truth. We only have to learn how opposition was treated under British rule in the colonies post war and in under-developed countries today, to see that humanitarianism is little more than a hazey dream. The guns of a warship are listed in the RN's electrical department under "External Communications" and the message they convey is, "Do as I say or I will kill you!" That basically is the reality of war at sea, let us remind ourselves. If once we give an enemy or potential foe the idea that he will be treated with kid gloves in defeat, more of his people will, join up to fight. If on the other hand they think they will be lost at sea in large numbers they will probably opt for other less dangerous jobs ashore. That fact does not go unnoticed by those in high positions. Not infrequently an army division's daily orders would include a note to the effect that; "We are not taking any prisoners today." Napoleon's maxim; "The moral is to the physical as three to one." has not been lost on the various high commands.

In convoy, owing to attacks on lone merchantmen who had stopped to rescue men from the icy waters, ships were forbidden to stop and their Masters were instructed to leave rescue operations to the escorts. The escorts would carry out rescue operations only as long as other more important duties did not call them away. For this reason, the Seaman's Union threatened strike action unless more was done to save drowning seamen and in response to this, specially designated rescue ships were commissioned. As they could not function as escorts there was nothing to stop them completing their task. Even so, not every convoy sailed with a rescue ship and the earlier conditions frequently applied. From this we can see that military necessity would over ride humanitarian considerations even for our own sailors. How little consideration would be given to the enemy who went to sea trying to sink our ships?

Down the years, attitudes have softened toward Germans, certainly among my own generation and later ones, but among those who fought and suffered under the privations of war, there was a much harder attitude, there had to be. With a naval leader such as Churchill who spat barbed wire each time he mentioned the "Narzies" it is to be expected that those who led Britain's navy held or espoused similar views. They would not have been able to function otherwise.

Those who were rescued should be under no illusion about being rescued because we wanted to save them. They were saved because we needed them. Attitudes among the lower deck may have been different, but those in command would have had a much firmer grip on the situation

[phil gollin]

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More fantasy trolling.

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[RNfanDan]

[Vic Dale]

It appears that most of what needs to be considered up to the present time has now been covered in this discussion, so it is necessary to review and see what has been learned. It is left to those viewing this topic to make their own judgements as to what they think actually happened.

This is what we have been able to learn;

1. Cruisers on both sides carried depth charges in WWII.

2. Depth charges were not fitted to any ship which did not carry Asdic/Sonar, so this particular weapons fit was a composite ASW fit and was not in any way a simple scare-charge fit, as has been suggested.

3. British cruisers are documented as having aggressively attacked U-Boats using Asdic and depth charges and have even worked in pairs to try and establish a target and sink it.

4. Cruiser Captains were properly trained in the use of ASW, so the weapons could be properly and effectively used if the opportunity presented itself. Any lack of success against U-Boats for this class of vessel, was down to lack of experience, since ASW would not be the general deployment for a cruiser.

5. A Cruiser Captain was able to contact naval aircraft operating in their area and direct them to perform A/S patrols to suppress or possibly sink U-Boats if appropriately armed. This is in addition to deploying the ship's own aircraft to locate and attack with depth charges.

6. Doresetshire was fully armed and equipped to deal with U-Boats and is documented as having attacked them herself and with her ship born aircraft. Two claims are said to have been made, one for the ship and one for her aircraft.

7. All ships operating in the battle area on 27th of May '41 were warned in a signal from the Admiralty in London, directing all ships to be on the alert for U-boats, which would be concentrating and ready to attack in support of Bismarck.

8. Captain Martin will have been well aware of this threat and will not have ventured as far as stopping his ship in that area, unless he was ordered to do so, or could himself see an important military advantage which over rode the question of safety of his ship. Such considerations would need to be carefully weighed before embarking on such a risky venture. Safety of his ship is the primary concern for any captain and is only set aside when actively engaging the enemy, or when performing a necessary and properly sanction operation. Rescuing the enemy would never be accepted at a court martial as any defence for risking or losing a ship to enemy action.

9. Dorsetshire contacted one of Ark Royal's aircraft and directed it to perform an A/S patrol around the ship, whilst he was picking up survivors.

10. Scrambling nets were carried in Dorsetshire but were not deployed, so there can have been no expectation of large numbers of survivors from Bismarck. In that event, no special arrangements would be made for getting large numbers aboard and this explains the use of single lines. At the range at which Dorsetshire loosed her last torpedoes, survivors will not have been readily visible, so the decision must have been made to go looking for them.

11. A smokey discharge was spotted 2 miles from the ship by Lt Cdr Durrant, though there was no indication of such a sighting from the ship's lookouts or from the patrolling aircraft. It was Captain Martin's decision to treat this sighting as a live U-Boat threat.

12. No attacking orders were issued either to the ship's company, to the ship's own aircraft, or to the patrolling aircraft and there was no general alert issued to warn other ships, who might possibly be able to deal with the threat. Only Maori, the other ship engaged in this operation was alerted by Martin. Maori herself did not investigate this U-Boat sighting. As far as can be ascertained, at this time, there was no sighting report sent to the Admiralty, as would be the case had a U-Boat been sighted. With only one U-Boat being sunk in the whole of 1941, this was a great opportunity missed.

13. It is known from study of signals sent during the Battle of North Cape where enemy survivors were being picked up, that this was for sampling purposes only, for the benefit of Military Intelligence. The risk to British warships of stopping to rescue enemy survivors with U-Boats about could only be justified on this basis. Even rescue of own personnel will have been over ridden in the heat of battle or when in pursuit of the enemy and even then, if other more important factors intervened, rescue would be delayed or abandoned. There would be no question of taking risks with HM ships to save the enemy, unless it was thought they might have useful information.

If anyone has disagreements or suggestions for further research, could they please indicate to which item they are referring, by number.

[wadinga]

To All,

The picture of the afterdeck of HMS Kent is printed much larger in the “Man O’ War” series book County Class cruisers, and clearly shows that the bundles on the after superstructures are composed of round baulks of timber lashed together. Each baulk is about 20cm diameter, and therefore appear to be fenders rather than scrambling nets. Many aerial photos exist in this book but none show similar bundles aboard sister ships. There is no evidence whatsoever that a high freeboard vessel like a County would deploy scrambling nets.

In the entertaining anecdote about HMS Albion and the scrambling nets , Vic forgot to mention she was a commando carrier from 1962 onwards, and needed nets to put her troops into the landing craft deployed from davits on her sides. Accidentally, Vic may have given the misleading impression that large vessels habitually deployed scrambling nets.

It is not surprising that destroyers have a large turning circle, as like cruisers their long narrow hulls packed with powerful machinery are built for speed not manoeuvrability. Their limited speed primary weapon, the torpedo, requires them to get close to and somewhat ahead of their target. Low speed manoeuvrability is not a required design characteristic. For A/S purposes their speed only helps them to get to the scene of the action rapidly. Specialist anti submarine vessels including the Flower and Castle class corvettes, Loch and Tay class frigates and the Black Swan sloops were all shorter and therefore handier than contemporary destroyers. Depth charges dropping vertically through the water from a rack, require the stern to be aimed accurately over the target. Not easy in a 1700 ton destroyer, virtually impossible in a 10,000 ton cruiser. Besides, once the attack is made, the ship must turn rapidly to put the submerged target back in the forward sector where the Asdic is more effective, time during which the slow moving, but quite manoeuvrable and third dimensionally active target has to evade. HMS Edinburgh, similar in size to Dorsetshire had a 640 yard tactical diameter at 12 kts according to this website and would make a useless sub-chaser.

In scientific and statistical terms a sample is the smallest amount of something you can get hold of, which allows an informed guess to be made about the nature of the whole thing. Saving 100 men out of 800 in the water and discovering they all speak german and wear german uniforms allows you to speculate the ship you just sank is from the German Navy. Not much more. A flippant observation by Admiral Burnett has been back projected through time to 1941 through a vaguely Trotskyite filter to suggest that whereas ordinary sailors held no grudges and would happily risk all for the lives of the predominantly ordinary seamen and stokers actually picked up, the Toff on the Bridge just wanted a few bods to show he had gone through the motions. In fact, all the high value intelligence targets, the ship’s officers, Admiral’s Staff, B-Dienst team, radar , ordnance and engineering specialists made up a relatively small proportion of the whole crew. They might be less physically robust than stokers and ammunition handlers, so might be at the back during a rescue, which suggests trying to get everyone out of the water if possible for maximum intelligence advantage.

Captain Martin and his crew risked their own lives to pick up any of Bismarck’s crew, and those they did save, owed and recognised a debt of gratitude for the gift of life to men they had very recently been trying to kill.

I love these opportunities to discredit a Troll, it's like shooting fish in a barrel. But so many threads and so little time. Minelaying aircraft flyng to the Denmark Strait to drop ground mines in thousands of feet of water, mishapen blobs in grainy photos positively identified definitely as something or other.

All the best

wadinga

[José M. Rico]

Thread closed-