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  After that, the first man to step forwards with words of welcome was his executive officer, or first lieutenant in British parlance, Fregattenkapitän (Commander) Hans Oels. He was known as a strict disciplinarian, and a stickler for rules and regulations. Still, as the captain’s deputy, that was his job – and that morning he wanted to make sure everything went according to plan. The ship’s company was divided into 12 groups, or ‘Divisions’, each with an officer in charge of them. Minutes before, each of these officers had reported to Oels at the gangway, telling him that their men were all present and ready for inspection. Therefore, when his captain arrived, Oels was confident that everything was in order. The welcome complete, Lindemann turned forward and began his inspection of the crew.

  Each of the Bismarck’s ten divisions was divided by job, with four seamen’s divisions, three technical ones, two for flak gunners, and three more for various other roles. Kapitän Lindemann acknowledged the salute of each of these divisional officers and inspected the men, stopping occasionally to have a quiet word with them. Some of these sailors were men who had served under him before, in the cruiser Admiral Scheer, or in various shore bases. He worked his way forwards along the port side of the ship, then inspected his way down the starboard side. In the waist, near the starboard gangplank, was an armed honour guard, who snapped to attention as their captain approached. Keeping pace behind Fregattenkapitän Oels was Kapitänleutnant (Lieutenant) Burkhard von Müllenheim-Rechberg, the new battleship’s fourth gunnery officer. His job was to note down any comments or criticisms made by his two superiors.

  All the while the band played martial airs. Finally, Kapitän Lindemann reached the quarterdeck, and after inspecting the last divisions of seamen standing to attention there he mounted the small platform. On Oels’ order, the ship’s company turned and faced aft. In front of Lindemann, gathered beneath the muzzles of ‘Dora’ turret, were representatives of the Blohm+Voss shipyard, who technically still owned the great ship. Those civilians and the sailors standing on the quarterdeck strained to catch their captain’s words. For those further forwards, a microphone linked to loudspeakers carried his words. As he started to speak, two signal petty officers moved behind him carrying a neatly folded bundle – the battleship’s new ensign. With practised hands, they clipped it to the waiting halyards and waited for their next order. Meanwhile, their captain’s words echoed around the otherwise silent ship.

  ‘Soldiers of the Bismarck,’ began Lindemann. In the Kriegsmarine, sailors were officially called ‘soldiers’. He continued, ‘Commissioning day for our splendid ship has come at last.’ The captain then went on to thank the men of the Blohm+Voss shipyard for producing such an incredible ship, and doing it ahead of schedule. He called on her crew to weld her into a truly effective instrument of war. Next, he spoke briefly of the war and his expectation that Bismarck would play her part, and he then quoted the ship’s namesake – Germany’s ‘Iron Chancellor’ Otto von Bismarck, who once said: ‘Policy is not made with speeches, shooting festivals or songs. It is made only by blood and iron.’ Lindemann was sure this mighty new battleship would honour those words.

  His speech done, he turned aft, and with the entire crew standing to attention and officers saluting, Lindemann gave the order: ‘Hoist flag and pennant!’ With that, the two signalmen tugged on the halyard, until the red, black and white ensign of the Kriegsmarine was flapping in the fresh breeze. Simultaneously, the ship’s commissioning pennant broke out on the battleship’s mainmast. The band began playing the familiar strains of Haydn’s ‘Deutschlandlied’, the national anthem. With the unfurling of that flag and pennant, the battleship Bismarck officially became the latest addition to the German navy. Few who witnessed the simple naval ceremony would have imagined that in just nine months’ time the neat decks of that great battleship would be a tangled mess of ripped steel, and her battered remains would be lying 15,700ft below the surface of the Atlantic, or that Lindemann, Oels and all but a handful of the seamen who stood to attention that cold August day would be dead.

  Battleship ‘F’

  The Bismarck didn’t just emerge fully formed from the drawing board and the shipyard.2 She was the end result of an evolutionary chain that stretched back to the dreadnoughts of Kaiser Wilhelm’s Imperial Germany Navy. At the Battle of Jutland in May 1916, the German High Seas Fleet was not only outnumbered by the British, but they were outgunned as well. That said, the German 12in. gun carried by its more modern dreadnoughts was better than its British equivalent, and almost as effective as the 13.5in. guns mounted in the British ‘super dreadnoughts’. However, Jutland proved the superior hitting power of the latest 15in. guns used in the latest British ‘fast battleships’. The Germans had their own 15in. guns though, and just six weeks after the battle the first of Germany’s Bayern class dreadnoughts were commissioned into service. Now, at last, the High Seas Fleet had dreadnoughts with the firepower to counter these new British leviathans.

  By war’s end in 1918, only two of these new dreadnoughts had been completed. Although never tested in a real battle, they proved their worth bombarding shore targets in the Baltic. With a range of almost 18 nautical miles, and with excellent range-finding and fire control equipment, these were probably the most potent naval guns of their day. Germany’s defeat, however, and the savage naval restrictions imposed on the country by the Treaty of Versailles (1919), meant that there was no place for such ships in the Reichsmarine. With the old wartime dreadnoughts either scuttled or disposed of, this new German navy was restricted to a small coastal defence fleet. Its strength was limited to just six pre-dreadnought battleships, while no new armoured ships could be built to replace them if they displaced more than 10,000 tons. Essentially, the Versailles treaty meant the end of the German navy as a potent force.

  The Washington Naval Treaty of 1922, signed by the wartime Allies, was designed to prevent a post-war arms race.3 It limited the size of new battleships to 35,000 tons, and allowed everyone to scale back their wartime fleets. Naturally, Weimar Germany was excluded from the treaty, and they still were when it was revised eight years later. However, when a fresh naval conference was held in Geneva in 1932, German delegates were invited to attend, despite strong French objections. This was a tacit recognition that Germany had started rebuilding its ageing fleet, even though it was still constrained by the iron-bound restrictions of the Versailles treaty. The Reichsmarine had started the ball rolling by building three new armoured ships. The first Panzerschiff, the Deutschland, was launched in May 1931. This effectively represented the start of Germany’s naval recovery.

  In warship terms, these were neither fish nor fowl. The British dubbed them ‘pocket battleships’, because they carried six 11in. guns apiece, mounted in a pair of triple turrets.4 However, their armour was that of a contemporary heavy cruiser, and their diesel engines, though reliable and giving the ships a healthy range of operations, were generally slower than the steam turbines fitted in most contemporary cruisers. So, although they had the firepower to do some real damage in a fight, they didn’t have the speed to run away from danger. In the Battle of the River Plate, fought in late 1939, the Panzerschiff Admiral Graf Spee was forced to retire from a fight with three lighter British cruisers. So, while they had their strategic uses – and the German navy had a definite role for them – they were little more than well-armed commerce raiders.

  Next, German naval architects began drawing up secret plans for two much larger battlecruisers, each armed with nine 11in. guns. These were drawn up in secret, because at 19,000 tons apiece they were almost twice the displacement limit stipulated by the Versailles treaty. In fact, these warships, which became the Scharnhorst and the Gneisenau, would eventually displace more than 35,000 tons.5 Of course, drawing up plans was one thing. Building them in contravention of the treaty was another matter entirely. What that required was a strong political will to defy the treaty, both inside Germany and on the diplomatic stage. That, of course, was just about to happen.


  In the national elections of 1928, the extreme right-wing Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP), or ‘Nazi Party’, polled less than 3 per cent. 6 However, the party’s paramilitary wing – the ‘brownshirts’ – helped raise the Nazi profile through intimidation and violence. As a result, by 1932 the Nazis had become the largest party in the German Reichstag. In January 1933, President Hindenburg appointed the NSDAP leader Adolf Hitler as the new German chancellor, hoping that this would defuse the fraught political situation. Instead, it gave Hitler the opportunity to seize control of the state. Political opponents were silenced, and civil liberties suspended. Soon, rival political parties were disbanded and Germany became a one-party state, ruled over by Hitler, who increasingly assumed full dictatorial powers. So began Hitler’s Third Reich – the darkest period in German history.

  In March 1935, Hitler abrogated the Treaty of Versailles. He also withdrew Germany from the League of Nations and the Geneva Naval Conference – an act that left the Reichsmarine free to build its new battlecruisers and any other warships it fancied. Still, Hitler recognised that the dominant naval power in Europe was still Great Britain, and he needed their support for this naval expansion, or else risk a fresh blockade of the kind that brought Imperial Germany to its knees in 1918. So, he opened a diplomatic dialogue with the British, which in June 1935 resulted in the Anglo-German Naval Agreement.7 This effectively ripped up the limitations of Versailles and replaced them with a new lot of guidelines, which set the relative size of the British and German fleets. Just as importantly, Germany was now free to build battleships of up to 35,000 tons.

  This was just as well, as the previous month, work had begun on building two new battlecruisers – Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. They would push the new displacement ceiling to its limit. The term ‘battlecruiser’ was something of a misnomer, however. As any naval architect knows, designing a warship involves a balancing act between speed, protection and firepower. If you favour one element of this trinity it usually means sacrificing another part of it. The battlecruisers that saw service during World War I were capital ships, for which protection was sacrificed in exchange for speed. The danger of this was exposed at Jutland when four British battlecruisers blew up, while one German battlecruiser was so badly battered it had to be scuttled. In 1941, the Royal Navy still had three battlecruisers in service – Hood, Repulse and Renown. All would play a part in the drama to come. By contrast, the two new German warships were well armoured – their sacrifice had been in firepower rather than protection, as they only carried 11in. guns.8 Still, they represented a major step forwards for the German navy.

  At the same time, the Reicshmarine changed its name. From 1935 onwards, it would be known as the Kriegsmarine, or ‘battle fleet’. Work also began on a pair of new heavy cruisers, a powerful force of destroyers and, even more importantly, a new and formidable U-boat fleet.9 This, though, wasn’t enough. In 1935, plans were already under way for the design of a pair of battleships – warships that would be more powerful than anything else in European waters. So, after casting off the restrictions of Versailles, and ensuring the tacit approval of Britain for their naval expansion, Nazi Germany was free to flex its growing industrial and technological muscle and build a modern new battleship that reflected its growing sense of national pride and military might. They even had the means to do this, thanks to the Schiffbauersatzplan (Replacement Ship Construction Programme), a rolling programme funded by the Reichstag to replace Germany’s ageing pre-dreadnoughts. This scheme had been used to fund the building of the Deutschland class, as well as the Scharnhorst and the Gneisenau. Now it would be used again, for the building of a true battleship.

  In fact, plans for this modern battleship had first been drawn up as early as 1934, and by the following year they were well advanced. Once again, this work was shrouded in secrecy. Officially, the project was code named Schlachtschiff ‘F’ Ersatz Hannover (Battleship ‘F’, Hannover Replacement), as it was meant to involve a replacement of the old pre-dreadnought battleship Hannover, which had been decommissioned in 1931.10 This, though, would be no mere replacement. If the Hannover had been a Ford Model T, this new ship would be a luxury Mercedes-Benz, Duesenberg or Jaguar – three times as large and immeasurably more powerful. The design would change a lot on the drawing board, and even during construction, but what finally appeared on the slipway was arguably the finest capital ship of her day – the battleship Bismarck.

  The man in charge of her design was Dr Hermann Burkhardt (1881–1969), the chief of the Department of Ship Construction, who was based in Kiel. His initial brief from the navy was to produce plans for a battleship of no more than 35,000 tons. That ceiling was a diplomatic one since it conformed to the restrictions of the Washington Naval Treaty, and later the Anglo-German Naval agreement. The brief wasn’t just for one ship, either: he was told he would be building two ships – Battleships ‘F’ and ‘G’ – the latter becoming Bismarck’s sister ship the Tirpitz. In late 1934, he presented his plans for a ship mounting 13in. guns, like the battleships of the French Dunkirque class, to Admiral Raeder, commander-in-chief of the Reichsmarine. However, Raeder told Burkhardt to revise his designs so that Battleship ‘F’ carried 13.8in. pieces instead. Raeder’s other stipulation was that the new ship should be able to pass through the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal, allowing easy transit between the North Sea and the Baltic. So, Burkhardt and his team went back to the drawing board.

  By early 1935, the German naval command felt they could break through the 35,000-ton ceiling, which gave the designers a little more flexibility in balancing that trinity of speed, protection and firepower.11 That summer, Raeder changed the plans again, now demanding that she carry 15in. guns, in four twin turrets. He felt that any delay in completing the design was worth it in terms of the extra firepower the ship would have. Other design problems, such as the type of propulsion system used and the scale of the ship’s armour, were also overcome that summer. While changes were still being made, the final design of Battleship ‘F’ was finally taking shape. So much so, in fact, that by the autumn Raeder felt confident enough to officially order Battleship ‘G’ – the Tirpitz. In November, the final set of plans for Battleship ‘F’ was approved and the construction was duly awarded to the Blohm+Voss shipyard in Hamburg. Work was scheduled to begin the following summer, for delivery in the autumn of 1939.

  That, though, was only the start. Other plans and contracts were drawn up for everything from the guns and steam turbines to the ammunition hoists, galley equipment and plumbing systems. Building a modern warship was a complex business, involving not only the designers, the navy and the shipyard, but also myriad other contractors, both large and small. Meanwhile, Burkhardt and his team in Kiel continued to make a host of other modifications, largely caused by Raeder’s insistence on 15in. guns and a speed of 30 knots.12 That meant a slight reduction in armour thickness to compensate, and last-minute changes to the propulsion system. By then, however, international events had rendered the old 35,000-ton limit irrelevant. Japan, the USA and Italy were all known to be planning to build battleships that broke the treaty ceiling, so effectively the gloves were now off. This removed any lingering diplomatic doubts about the construction of Battleship ‘F’. So, after a brief ceremony, the keel of Battleship ‘F’ was finally laid on 1 July 1936.

  Building the Bismarck

  For just over two-and-a-half years, the battleship grew one weld at a time.13 Slipway 9 of the Blohm+Voss yard was a place where shipbuilding magic happened. The yard lay on the south bank of the Elbe, across the river from the bustling heart of Hamburg. It had built some of the Kaiser’s great warships, but now it was the scene of something even more spectacular – the construction of Germany’s first truly modern battleship.

  Building a battleship was a long and complex process. First came the great keel, and then the frames and bulkheads that gave the web of steel the skeletal appearance of a ship. If the keel was the spine of the ship, the frames at right
angles to it were its ribs. Banding these together was a series of longitudinal frames and transverse bulkheads. These would eventually divide the battleship into 22 watertight compartments, which, together with her double bottom, were there to make sure she stayed afloat, even if her hull were to be pierced by enemy shells. Work continued steadily, and bit by bit the great ship took shape.

  By the coming of spring in 1937, most of the framework of her hull had been completed.14 That meant that the builders could start attaching her outer skin of hardened steel plates. The armour of Battleship ‘F’ was concentrated in a citadel in the centre of the ship, protecting the magazines and engines. Forward and aft of this, the battleship would be less well protected. The central armoured citadel, however, was considered proof against hits from most calibres of naval guns. It was topped by an armoured deck, which was actually below the ship’s upper deck. This great armoured box was pierced by circular shafts, designed to house the ship’s four great gun turrets and her six secondary ones. By the end of the year, this armoured citadel had been completed, and most of the upper deck built and plated in. Then came the adding of the great tubular steel barbettes that would house the gun turrets, and the plating in of the bow and stern.

  The work continued steadily throughout 1938, while close by the first of the Kriegsmarine’s new heavy cruisers was being fitted out. Named the Admiral Hipper, she for all practical purposes looked like a slightly smaller version of the new battleship, or rather she would when Bismarck was completed.15 Over in the Germaniawerft shipyard in Kiel, meanwhile, the Hipper’s sister ship the Prinz Eugen was still on the stocks – she would be launched that August. Back on Slipway 9, the Bismarck was looking increasingly impressive.16 A steady succession of trains brought high-tensile steel plate directly to the shipyard, and one by one, plates were hoisted into position and welded into place. Once the hull was complete, work began on her superstructure. Her construction was planned with meticulous attention to detail, and so by the end of the year it was clear the new battleship would be launched on schedule, in early 1939.