Ciao all,
of course I never met Admiral Gunther Lutjens personally so I cannot judge him as a human been.
To do that one should read evaluations of his crew when he was in command of Torpedo boats ( WW1 ) and light Cruiser Kalsruhe ( between the 2 wars ).
Mostly one should evaluate judgements of his family and his friends.
But I think that been an Officer myself I can share some guess about a Senior Officer.
It is usually very, very different the perception of soldiers and sailors of their directly connected Officers ( Lieutenant and Captains ) compared with Senior Officers coming on board.
That is why Bismarck crew members ( and Prinz Eugen ones too ) loved more their officers than the Admiral Staff ones and especially the Flottenchef ( Admiral Lutjens ).
All the above is common among all fleets, all flags , all ships.
Just make same guess about British, American, Italian and Japanese Admirals and ship commanders and you will see same results.
The film showing Admiral Lutjens inspecting Prinz Eugen shows a very athletic person that do not demonstrate his age, looking straight in the eyes of the sailors and shacking hands, a perfect Senior Officer conduct.
Not many Admirals ( and fleet commanders ) do that with ship's crew.
Admiral Reader that was known to be a very human person selected and protected Admiral Lutjens.
There must have been a good reason for that.
Now we move into the orders for Operation Rheinubung and how it has been executed.
Orders were NOT to engage battleships unless escorting convoys.
Perfectly followed even if he allowed the Denmark Strait engagement and perfectly directed both ships to win the battle.
Do not forget he won that battle, with several clear and perfect orders and NOT following German standard enegagement procedures for Prinz Eugen ( Nelson doing that at Trafalgar became an hero ).
Than Kpt H. Brinkmann ( loved by his crew and called '' Papa' '' Brinkmann ) screwed up a perfect victory by an ALARM for NOT existing torpedoes and with his collegue Kpt Lindemann turned away from Prince of Wales under a thunderstorm of shells on that moment.
Were is Admiral Lutjens failure here ??
He did not ordered to turn, Lindemann and Brinkmann did it, and there was nothing he can do there, as the ships were under their own commanders orders while in action, so not under his full control.
Than Kpt Lindemann wanted to come back pursuing the PoW, and there Admiral Lutjens authority came back.
But he cannot disregard his orders, as simple as that.
No engagements with battleships unless to sink convoys or to fight for your life ( like before and he made it clear to Berlin before allowing the engagement by Germans ), and that was not anymore the situation under his evaluation.
A perfect conduct according to me.
Lost of contact by the British.
Do not forget Bismarck had B-Dienst ( radar experts ) on board, and most likely they were the ones that did not understand Bismarck was not anymore under radar coverage.
Probably they were still receiving radar emissions from the British ( probably the signal was not able to come back to British ships ) and that was enough not to allow them to understand and communicate to Admiral Lutjens that he was not anymore under British radar control.
Very simple reason, you fail because your decisions do depends on others technical evaluations.
Unblock the rudder.
Bismarck had an Enginneering team on board to evaluate damages and repair them.
They were the ones that told Admiral Lutjens that the ship cannot be repaired.
Did you ever saw were the damage occurred ??
Did you evaluate the real damages on Bismarck ??
Have you ever seen the damages on the recent photos / films ??
Same as above, it is not your call, you must trust the real experts.
Now you can evaluate a bit more fairly Admiral Lutjens conduct.
Surely on documentaries they showed a persons that does not even come close to Admiral Lutjens, but we do know why they wanted to sell that pre-conceived image of him.
Hope your evaluations do not depend on those unfair scenes and you are able to judge yourself from the facts.
Ciao Antonio