Battle of The Denmark Strait - Plan Gone Awry

Plan Gone Awry

Holland's battle plan was to have Hood and Prince of Wales engage Bismarck while Suffolk and Norfolk engaged Prinz Eugen (which, Holland assumed, still steamed behind Bismarck and not ahead of her). He signalled this to Captain John C. Leach of Prince of Wales but did not radio Rear Admiral Frederic Wake-Walker, who as Commander of the 1st Cruiser Squadron directed Suffolk and Norfolk for fear of disclosing his location. Instead, he observed radio silence. Holland hoped to meet the enemy at approximately 02:00. Sunset in this latitude was at 01:51 (ship's clocks were four hours ahead of local time). Bismarck and Prinz Eugen would be silhouetted against the sun's afterglow while Hood and Prince of Wales could approach rapidly, unseen in darkness, to a range close enough not to endanger Hood with plunging fire from Bismarck. The Germans would not expect an attack from this quarter, giving the British the advantage of surprise.

The plan's success depended on Suffolk's continually unbroken contact with the German ships. Suffolk lost contact, however, beginning at 00:28. For 90 minutes, Holland neither sighted the enemy nor received any further news from Norfolk or Suffolk. Reluctantly, he ordered Hood and Prince of Wales to turn south-south-west while the destroyers would continue searching to the north.

Before contact was re-established, the two squadrons missed each other by a hairsbreadth. Had the German ships not altered course to the west at 01:41 to follow the line of the Greenland icepack, the British would have intercepted them much earlier than they did. The British destroyers were just 10 mi (8.7 nmi; 16 km) to the southeast when the Germans made this course change. Had visibility not been reduced to 3–5 mi (2.6–4.3 nmi; 4.8–8.0 km), the German ships would probably have been spotted.

Just before 03:00, Suffolk regained contact with Bismarck. Hood and Prince of Wales were 35 mi (30 nmi; 56 km) away, slightly ahead of the Germans. Holland signalled to steer toward the Germans and increased speed to 28 kn (32 mph; 52 km/h). Suffolk's loss of contact had placed the British at a disadvantage. Instead of the swiftly closing head-on approach Holland had envisioned, he would have to converge at a wider angle, much more slowly. This would leave Hood vulnerable to Bismarck's plunging shells for a much longer period. Its situation worsened further when, at 03:20, Suffolk reported that the Germans had made a further course alteration to the west, placing the German and British squadrons almost abeam of each other.

At 05:35, lookouts on Prince of Wales spotted the German ships 17 mi (15 nmi; 27 km) away. The Germans, already alerted to the British presence through their hydrophonic equipment, picked up the smoke and masts of the British ships 10 minutes later. At this point, Holland had the option of joining Suffolk in shadowing Bismarck and waiting for Tovey to arrive with King George V and other ships to attack or to order his squadron into action, which he did at 05:37. The rough seas in the Strait kept the destroyers' role to a minimum. The cruisers Norfolk and Suffolk would be too far behind the German force to reach the battle.