Free Battleship Bismarck by Burkard Baron Von Mullenheim-Rechberg

area.
    Group West allowed the Fleet Commander a free hand in carrying out the mission in the area of operations, but stipulated that, although the Prinz Eugen was to spend most of her time operating in tactical combination with the Bismarck , she would be subject to being sent on special missions at the direction of Group West or at the discretion of the Fleet Commander. It stated that if the breakout into the Atlantic should be detected, the mission would remain the same, being shortened or broken off, as necessary. Group West emphasized that the important thing was to preserve the combat-readiness of the ships; combat with enemy forces of equal strength should therefore be avoided. Contact with a single battleship covering a convoy was permissible only if it could be done without fully engaging her and if it gave the cruiser a chance to engage successfully the remaining escort or the convoy. If combat was unavoidable, it was to be conducted as forcefully as possible.
    Two points in the above directives require comment. One point is that the Seekriegsleitung’s admonition that our forces strive “gradually, methodically, and systematically” to establish command of the sea in the North Atlantic, even “local and temporary” command, was, in view of our limited surface strength, unrealistic. Apparently, it was born of a certain euphoria in Berlin.
    The other point is that the brevity with which the directives treated the matter of a sortie being undetected might give the reader the impression that this aspect of an operation, though desirable, was almost incidental. Such was far from the truth, but the few lines devoted to it sufficed because it was axiomatic with German naval officers at that time that if they could get out into the Atlantic without being detected the chances of their operations being successful were enormously improved. Indeed, concealment was their highest priority, at least until the first attack had been made on a convoy. For our side, the weaker side, surprise was half, if not more, of the battle. And it must be said that surprise in later phases of an operation was equally important. Once the position of a German commerce-raider had been disclosed by a contact with the enemy, the raider might just as well make for remote areas of the high seas, from which it could later emerge with renewed surprise. An undetected sortie was the first link in this hoped-for chain of surprise, and was recognized as a prerequisite to the success of our surface ships in the Atlantic.
    On the other hand, and this also should be noted, the Seekriegsleitung did not go so far as to make concealment a sine qua non of a sortie. If it had done this, every time a force was detected its commander would have had to immediately break off or at least delay his operation. And this in turn would have meant aborting any serious threat to Great Britain from the very form of warfare upon which the Seekriegsleitung had just decided. There was no getting away from the fact that Germany had to live with the risk of her intentions being prematurely disclosed because Great Britain was strategically situated on the routes to the Atlantic. It was left to the force commanders to decide whether to proceed immediately or to turn back and try again later.
    On the morning of 25 April the Bismarck received orders to depart Gotenhafen in company with the Prinz Eugen on the evening of the twenty-eighth. The 6th Destroyer Flotilla was to escort the task force. This order had hardly arrived on board when we were informed that our departure on Exercise Rhine would be postponed by fromseven to twelve days because, as the Prinz Eugen was making her way to Kiel, a mine exploded near her and did her considerable damage.
    Lütjens spent 26 April in Berlin, conferring with Raeder on Exercise Rhine. The mishap on the Prinz Eugen gave the two admirals an opportunity to go over once more the composition of our surface task forces in the Atlantic. Lütjens