National Geographic: The Search For the Battleship Bismark Page #4

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deliver the final blow.

They know their quarry is wounded,

but no one can guess how badly.

At about midnight, or shortly after,

the conclusion had to be drawn:

It was impossible to do useful repair.

And was just giving up at next morning

after we waited.

We ate our meals at our guns.

There was no more warm food just

bread with something on it,

And once we had boiled potatoes.

And we stayed at our guns

the whole time.

And this was perhaps

the most difficult,

the most dreadful part of the entire

operation, as far as I remember:

The certainty you could

not escape anymore.

You couldn't do anything.

And you could probably not do anything

equal up to the battle

that would be shaping up next morning.

It was like sentence of death.

Tuesday, May 27th.

Two hors after sunrise,

the Rodney and King George

finally spot the Bismarck emerging

from a rain squall.

Battle stations are called.

At 8:
47 AM the British

warships open fire.

The only thing that struck me

when the battle started

was all the color contrasts.

The Bismarck was black.

The British ships were grey.

The seas were green with the wind

creaming the tops, creamy tops.

There was the brown of the cordite

when the guns fired on both sides;

there was the brown puffs

of cordite smoke.

Then there was the flash,

the orange flash of the guns.

And then these enormous shells

splashes-high as houses,

white as shrouds.

And it was majestic.

It was a majestic scene.

It was an awesome scene.

And I can see it today

as clearly as I saw it then.

For one full hour the relentless

British salvos continue.

She'd had a lot of damage on the

forecastle forward the right side.

And every time she plunged in the

sea the plates on her port bow,

extending over a large area,

were red hot as she came out.

And then when she went into the sea

there was a cloud of steam.

What I saw made me sick.

There were mountains of dead

people in pieces.

There was one crazy man still at

his gun still firing.

Ammunition was exploding.

The entire upper deck was on fire.

It looked like a heap of rubble.

The beauty of the ship was gone.

Then eventually we saw men

trickling down,

running down the quarter deck

and then jumping into the sea

because it was all over.

It was finished.

It was a dreadful light, you know.

No sailor likes to see another ship

sunk even if it's an enemy.

This piece of film,

showing the Bismarck burning

on the far horizon,

is the last view of the battleship

before she began to sink.

I thought about what to do.

I was no longer needed.

What good is antiaircraft

in a sea battle?

And we were almost out of ammunition.

So I left with some others and we

drifted away from

the Bismarck on a life boat.

The admiral decided the only way

to sink her was to torpedo.

So we went in close and

fired our torpedoes.

And then we watched her sink.

Thursday, June 8th, 1989.

A rainy, overcast morning very much

like Bismarck's last hours at sea.

And once we've established that,

we're gonna turn around,

come back west of that line...

Looks like we have a big target

coming up on the port side,

about 45 meters out.

Closing on the target it's

about 30 meters ahead.

All right!

Still closing.

Staying strong... lot of debris

port starboard.

This is a strong one guys.

This could be it.

This is incredible.

Gun decks right across the bridge.

Look at that baby!

Our ship was at the very spot

that the Bismarck must have been.

With all of the rounds coming,

the total chaos, confusion,

splashes, the impacting, rounds,

explosions going off,

A fire burning just the tremendous

carnage that took place.

And then to realize that the ship sank

and then there were all these people

in the water around you.

You can almost see them

swimming in this churning sea

full of oil and relate to that.

How awful that would be.

We swam for a little while,

just to keep moving

so we wouldn't freeze.

The water was about 10 degrees Celsius.

And it was so difficult to swim in

the oil that had assembled on the

surface of the ocean

from the sunken ship.

It penetrated our faces and ears.

It was terrible.

It made everything most difficult.

We were ordered to go and rescue

them in the ship I was in.

So we came up slowly to them

and tried to pull them up

the ship's side on ropes.

I remember a story that spread

right away on the Dorsetshire.

A British seaman saw a German sailor

who had no arms trying to swim.

So he climbed down into the sea

and fastened a rope around

the man's body.

I reached one of the ropes to help

them pull this survivor up

and then we noticed that he had both

his arms shot off

and was holding the rope

with his teeth.

And he fell off just as we got

him to the upper deck.

And I went over the side to tie

a bowline around him.

So I did that. Then I lost him.

For those of us on the Dorsetshire,

the name Joe Brooks means something.

Our government should give that man

a medal for humaneness.

In the days following the

discovery of the Bismarck,

Argo maneuvers slowly around

the half-buried hull,

trying to determine the

extent of the damage.

Well, I think any time

you retell a story,

particularly World War II

people aren't from it.

I mean, the futileness of it,

the stupidity of it.

The wastefulness of it.

I think we need to be reminded of that.

And I think one needs to be

reminded of all that happened

during World War II.

I think it's very critical

that people reflect back

so we don't repeat these things.

All right.

All right, Martin, sequence through.

Okay... stop. What's that?

It's a swastika. Look at it.

Is it a swastika? A cross.

No, that's not a cross...

It's a swastika.

Part of it is covered up

by the sediment and the

other part is chopped off.

All right, down look.

Now the ship that Hitler called

"this majestic giant of the sea"

can only be glimpsed in fragments.

A ghostly section of the bow

with decks of polished teak.

Bismarck's 15-inch guns,

once held in place by their own weight

fell free when she rolled underwater.

Only empty holes remain.

Across one of the four turret holes,

a crane lies toppled.

Much of the forward superstructure

was destroyed.

But the open bridge and conning tower

still remain.

A moment's glory...

then 50 years of darkness.

We've got it all. I mean,

the whole ship is here.

We're missing, it looks like,

all the big turrets.

But almost all the other armament

is present on the ship.

We're only missing the big guns...

Although the four main

turrets are gone,

Bismarck's smaller guns

remain in place,

as if still menacing the sea.

That's gone. I'm sure the stack's gone

this gun is lost...

little anti-aircraft guns... zoom down.

There's an anti-aircraft gun.

See him?

That guy's pointed...

The fact that the ship is in one

piece seems to confirm

German reports that it was scuttled,

though the issue

is still being debated.

I'm sure that it was a combination of

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