27 May in military history: Sinking of the Bismarck, 1941

The German battleship Bismarck had broken out into the Atlantic with the cruiser Prinz Eugen, and on 24 May, in the Denmark Strait, she sank the battlecruiser HMS Hood. Hood's loss is told on our 24 May page.¹

On the evening of 26 May Swordfish torpedo bombers from the carrier Ark Royal hit Bismarck, and one torpedo wrecked her rudders, leaving her unable to steer.²

On the morning of 27 May Admiral Sir John Tovey's battleships King George V and Rodney came up with her: by Tovey's despatch Rodney opened fire at 0847 and King George V a minute later, while Royal Museums Greenwich puts the sighting and the opening of fire at about 8.45. By 10.15 Bismarck was a burning wreck. Tovey broke off the action with his battleships and ordered the ships with torpedoes to use them; the cruiser Dorsetshire torpedoed her, and she sank at 1037 by Tovey's despatch, whose times are zone minus 2, and at 10.39 by Royal Museums Greenwich.³

A suspected U-boat cut the rescue short: Tovey lists 4 officers and 75 ratings picked up by Dorsetshire and 24 ratings by the destroyer Maori, and the museum gives 110 men saved.⁴

Around the world to Vladivostok

Russia and Japan had been at war since February 1904 over Manchuria and Korea, and Japan had already worn down Russia's Pacific Fleet at Port Arthur and in the Yellow Sea. Tsar Nicholas II sent much of his Baltic Fleet east as the Second Pacific Squadron under Vice Admiral Zinovy Rozhestvensky. According to the British official history, it sailed from Libau on 15 October 1904. The engineer Eugène Politovsky, whose letters to his wife were published as a diary, dates the departure 2 October; his translator notes that the dates are Old Style, 13 days behind the New Style, and the book's preface dates the battle itself to 14 May.⁵

In the North Sea the Russians took British trawlers fishing near the Dogger Bank for Japanese torpedo boats and opened fire, sinking one trawler. Reinforcements under Rear Admiral Nikolai Nebogatov, the Third Pacific Squadron, left the Baltic in February 1905 and joined Rozhestvensky on 9 May. That day Rozhestvensky told his fleet, in an order the British official history quotes: "With the junction of this squadron our strength not only equals that of the enemy, but in ships of the line to some extent exceeds it".⁶

Politovsky had lost hope long before the end. In the entry he dated 31 March, on reaching Kamranh Bay in Indochina, he wrote: "No, there is no use our fighting. Things have come to such a pass that I can only wring my hands and feel assured that no one can escape his fate".⁷

Found in the dark

Rozhestvensky meant to reach Vladivostok, and he took the Tsushima Strait. Kubata quotes Nebogatov's later verdict that this choice was one of the chief faults that destroyed the squadron, because the strait lay close to the main Japanese base at Sasebo. In Kubata's account Togo was convinced the Russians would come that way and waited for them at Masampo in Korea.⁸

In the early hours of 27 May the auxiliary cruiser Shinano Maru sighted the Russian fleet and reported it to Togo by wireless. The two fleets came in sight of each other in the early afternoon. From Togo's flagship Mikasa flew a signal that the British official history renders as "On this battle depends the rise or fall of our Empire; do your utmost" and Kubata as "The fate of the Empire depends on the issue of this battle: Let every man do his utmost".⁹

Crossing the T

Togo turned his line in succession to place it ahead of the Russian column, so that his ships could concentrate their fire on the leading Russian ships. Kubata writes that the maneuver was later called crossing the T, or the Togo turn. The turn exposed his flagship to the fire of much of the Russian fleet, and the official history calls it "theoretically speaking" a "most hazardous movement". Rozhestvensky's flagship, Knyaz Suvorov, fired the first shot at 6,400 yards.¹⁰

The Japanese concentrated their fire on Suvorov and on the battleship Oslyabya. Oslyabya capsized and sank. According to the official history, four Russian destroyers saved 14 officers and 371 men from her complement of 48 officers and 852 men.¹¹

Suvorov's steering gear was damaged, and she swung out of the line on fire, with the admiral and most of her senior officers wounded. According to Semenoff, her commander, V. V. Ignatzius, ran up into the battery to fight a fire, shouting "Follow me, lads!". A shell struck the hatchway, and, Semenoff writes, neither the ladder nor the commander nor the men with him were left. Late in the afternoon the destroyer Buiny took Rozhestvensky off; the official history says his skull was fractured and he could mutter only a few incoherent words.¹²

In the evening Imperator Aleksandr III and Borodino, battered out of the line, sank as well, and command of the surviving ships passed to Nebogatov. Suvorov, crippled and still firing a small gun, was finished off by two torpedoes and sank at 7 p.m., according to the official history. Four Russian battleships were sunk in the day action.¹³

Night and surrender

After dark Togo sent in his destroyers and torpedo boats. Russian ships that switched on their searchlights showed the attackers where they were, and Nebogatov later put the escape of his own ships down to their not using them. The battleships Navarin and Sisoi Veliky were torpedoed and sunk.¹⁴

On the morning of 28 May the Japanese fleet closed in on Nebogatov's ships. After the Japanese opened fire, Nebogatov's flagship Imperator Nikolai I hoisted the signal of surrender, and the battleships with him followed; only the cruiser Izumrud ran, and she later went aground on the Siberian coast. According to Kubata, Nebogatov signed the surrender on board Mikasa.¹⁵

That afternoon, the official history says, the coast-defense ship Admiral Ushakov answered a Japanese signal, "I invite you to surrender", by opening fire; after a fight with the cruisers Iwate and Yakumo her crew scuttled her, and Captain Miklukha went down with his ship. The destroyer Byedovy, carrying the wounded Rozhestvensky, surrendered to two Japanese destroyers without fighting. Politovsky went down with Suvorov. His widow wrote that he was last seen below in the sick-bay, that those below "were not called", and that the staff "saved the 'valuable' life of Admiral Rojdestvensky".¹⁶

Counting the cost

The British official history, using Russian official figures, counts 216 Russian officers and 4,614 men killed or drowned, 278 officers and 5,639 men taken to Japan as prisoners, many of them wounded, and 79 officers and 1,783 men interned in neutral countries. From the Japanese medical history of the war it gives 110 Japanese officers and men killed and 590 wounded.¹⁷

Of the twelve ships of the Russian battle line, the official history says, eight were sunk and four captured. Only three Russian ships, two of them destroyers, reached Vladivostok. Togo lost three torpedo boats.¹⁸

Peace at Portsmouth

According to the official history, the news produced in St. Petersburg and Moscow "a feeling of despondency which the defeats on land had failed to arouse". The Treaty of Portsmouth, signed on 5 September 1905, ended the war. The whole story is told in our article on the Battle of Tsushima.¹⁹