Surviving the Hood

Ted Brigg's account of the Battle of Denmark Strait

On this day in 1941 (24th May) HMS Hood and Prince of Wales engaged the German battleship Bismarck and heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen in the battle of the Denmark Strait with horrific results.

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The Battle-cruiser HMS Hood

I thought the best way to tell this story I would use the testimony of one of the three survivors of the ill fated Hood and so have taken a lot more time than I thought I would to transcribe Ted Brigg’s account from the IWM sound archive. Please bear with me as it is difficult to guess where punctuation should land so there are a few long sentences and repetition but here begins his account of chase and the Battle of Denmark Strait.

In May 1941 we heard that Bismarck had completed her trials and was coming out of the Baltic traced by the Norwegian underground and reported to be heading for a Norwegian port. The Commander-in-chief decided that she was obviously going to break out into the Atlantic where there were quite a large number of convoys shunting backwards and forwards at the time and he decided the best thing to do was to split the whole fleet up. He and King George V stayed at Scapa Flow to cover the area south of Iceland. Hood, Prince of Wales and six destroyers were detached to Harford in Iceland to cover the Denmark Strait and the area immediately south of Iceland which was the most likely place for the German ships to break out. Meanwhile the RAF had sighted Bismarck in Bergen with a heavy class cruiser - they weren’t sure which cruiser it was . We had sailed from Scapa Flow at midnight on the 21st May and we were, at that time, on our way to Halford. Visibility had closed down and the aircraft couldn’t keep contact. So there was a flying boat from Scapa that went out to try to see what they could see and they practically wave hopped across and he headed north of Bergen so he knew when he hit the Norwegian coast that all he had to head south and sooner or later he would come across it at a very low height. When he got to Bergen he found that it was empty and the ships had sailed. We had just about got to Halford when the cruisers Norfolk and Suffolk- Suffolk first of all, who were patrolling on an A to K line as we called them a line of cruisers that patrolled up and down the areas where the ships were likely to break out as a first stop. Suffolk sighted Bismarck and this heavy cruiser and reported it to the Admiralty.

We intercepted the enemy reports coming in over the radio and the Admiral ordered complete radio silence as far as were were concerned about the interception. We turned to intercept the two ships.

The course and speed they were doing, it was estimated that we would be in a position to engage them at 2 O’clock in the morning of the 24th May. Bismarck realised that he had been sighted by the Suffolk but she wasn’t particularly concerned because she could jolly well chase them.

Meanwhile Suffolk had been joined by Norfolk, Rear Admiral Wake-Walker, who again stationed themselves (the cruisers) on either quarter of the enemy ships and carried on reporting their movements and alterations of course and speed.

Bismarck then decided she would try and chase the ships off. She turned around and came straight in on them and opened fire. Of course Norfolk and Suffolk turned and got out of it. They had radar which was pretty much in its infancy and could only scan for’ard so they lost contact. By the time Bismarck resumed course they turned back but they lost contact.

Admiral L. E. Holland

Admiral Holland in Hood made the mistake of assuming Bismarck knew she had been sighted and had turned back.

In actual fact she hadn't, she had resumed course but Admiral Holland assumed that she was heading back and so consequently altered course to try to intercept on the new course. By the time Norfolk and Suffolk had regained contact Hood and Prince of Wales had lost an awful lot of ground and consequently the action would not now take place until a later time. However it became very obvious that action was going to be imminent and consequently we went to action stations at midnight.

Meanwhile the destroyers were rapidly losing ground on us because the sea was pretty heavy and they could not maintain the speed we were doing of 28.5 knots. So the Admiral made a signal to them saying:

“Regret that if you cannot keep up with this speed I will have to press on without you.”

Consequently by the time the action took place the destroyers were about fifty miles astern.

We gained contact with Bismarck on our radar at about 5 o’clock in the morning of the 24th May and at that time she was about thirty miles on our starboard bow. She was doing 29 knots herself steaming out towards the Atlantic.

Admiral Holland decided he would maintain a parallel course with her until such a time the weather moderated and visibility improved. Also he knew what we did not, or didn’t appreciate, and that was Hood, being a battle-cruiser, they had had to sacrifice a lot of armor for speed so consequently her deck armor was thin and vulnerable. His object was to get as close as he possibly could during the action so that the fall of shot would be of a flatter trajectory rather than higher plummeting effort from a longer range. Whereas our maximum gun range was twenty miles it was reduced to seventeen because of her age. The maximum effective gun range was about twelve miles. Admiral Holland wanted to get into eight to get a definite flat trajectory and he turned towards the Bismarck at about Four O’clock.

We sighted her just after Five O’clock at a range of twenty miles and that was verified on the Starboard bow. Just the spotting tops of the two ships. We got into about twelve miles range and we then opened fire.