Overwhelmed. Chapter Five: Losing Crete; Sinking the Bismarck

Churchill lost Greece and Crete and control of the Mediterranean. As he did, the House asked for a vote on his job. He survived 371-7. And then the Bismarck went to sea and he arose to kill her.

This Chapter: Crete was an island that would be difficult to invade, but it was indefensible to a Nazi attack from above that brought all of its aerial power to bear. Göring bragged to his Führer that he could soften it up with Luftwaffe bombers and then drop thousands of parachutists and glider troops to the battle as he had done in the previous year’s assault on the coastal regions of Holland. But there were differences in the geography of the two assaults, and even greater differences brought on by the British soldiers on the island evacuated from Greece and the Crete civilians who were ready to die for their homeland. Göring’s plan cost him hundreds of his planes and thousands of Hitler’s soldiers, but in time the simple arithmetic of power captured Crete for the Nazis.

In Commons, Churchill was brought to defend a vote of no confidence. He gave his detractors a tutorial in how wars must be waged and carried the day by a vote of 371-7. Then Hitler launched the Bismarck, indisputably the most powerful ship in the world. Winston knew how to wage a naval war that he could not afford to lose and he used all the resources at his command to sink the Bismarck. In a battle that historians remember yet, he did just that.

Contents of “Overwhelmed”:

1. Too Many Jews, Too Many Spies, and Lend Lease

2. The Decline of Missy LeHand. And Greece.

3. Plenty of Everything, especially Problems

4. Unexpected: Iraq War, Rudolf Hess, and the Soong sisters

5. Losing Crete; Sinking the Bismarck

6. “An Unlimited National Emergency!”

Chapter Five: Losing Crete; Sinking the Bismarck

Reading time: Twelve minutes

The turn of Crete came in May. With Greece conquered, the Nazis couldn’t allow the huge island to remain in British control. It had one operational airfield, and two smaller others under construction, from which the continent could easily be reached by bombers whose likeliest target would be the Rumanian oil fields. More, Crete’s seizure would severely compromise British naval operations in the eastern Mediterranean. For those reasons, Hitler was amenable to the island’s capture so long as the effort was soon and sudden, and did not alter his plan for beginning the attack on Russia in late June.

Crete’s geology made it a problem for invasion. The island ran for 200 miles, east to west, and a much narrower thirty from north to south. A mountain range, rising to 8,000 feet, ran the east to west length. Most of the north shore, facing Greece, was cliffs edging to the sea with few beaches for offloading an amphibious assault, though there were plentiful beaches on the southern shore. The British navy controlled the surrounding waters and occupied Crete’s ports. The only way in was from above. Göring was aching for a glorious triumph to offset the embarrassment of failing to bring down England with ten months of steady bombing, and he persuaded Hitler that the Luftwaffe could do the job with a bombing attack followed by a massive drop of paratroops, with reserves in gliders following their descent, and then more troops and heavy weapons arriving when the airfields and ports were taken.

Göring’s plan was inspired by the success of his Fliegerkorps, paratroops and glider forces, in the invasion of the Netherlands, where they landed behind the canals and waterworks and attacked air bases. In that attack, however, the mechanized forces of the Nazi army were approaching from the east, with only bridges between them and the airborne troops nearer the sea. When the two forces joined, the airborne detachment was provided with all the equipment — tanks, heavy guns, and ammunition — they were unable to land from the air. There was no equivalence between the waterworks of Holland and the seventy miles of sea that separated mainland Greece from Crete. But the Crete attack was conceived with no apparent recognition of that difference. The man who led the Fliegerkorps in the Netherlands assault was General Kurt Student who was shot in the head during the battle. He was now recovered from his head wound, or so it was hoped, and given command of the Fliegerkorps at Crete.

At a dozen airbases on the mainland, Göring assembled a fleet of 200 long-range bombers, 150 dive-bombers, 500 troop and equipment transport aircraft, 200 gliders, 200 Messerschmitt 109s, and 40 reconnaissance aircraft. Student had 10,000 parachutists and 5,000 glider troops to lead the assault, and more than twice that number, plus tanks and mechanized artillery, were set to arrive by air and ship as soon as the island’s approaches were secure. On the island were the forces stationed there to protect the garrison — 9,000 soldiers of the Greek army and 14,000 British. Another 20,000 British — poorly armed and disorganized evacuees from the battle on the mainland. A miscellaneous army of police, cadets, and non-infantry personnel working in engineering and airport construction made up the balance of the defense. And an angry civilian population.

The bombing attack that opened the assault accomplished not much other than sending the defenders to cover. The bomber pilots were instructed to avoid destruction of the ports and the airfields, which would both be needed for reinforcements and supplies. The primary targets were aircraft, anti-aircraft installations, troop barracks, and civilians in their homes and villages. But only two dozen Spitfires remained on the island after the evacuation of the British bombers to safety in Egypt, and the troops had left the barracks to take up hundreds of camouflaged positions in caves and hills. The airfields were mined for the discomfort of arriving Luftwaffe flights, and the anti-aircraft emplacements were too close to the ports to be effectively targeted, but not so close as to be useless in defense.

When the last bomber finished its business, they were replaced in the skies above Crete with hundreds of aircraft dropping thousands of parachutists and canisters from their doors. The descending troops carried lightweight rifles or machine guns, and pistols and a grenade or two. The canisters were color-coded to indicate their content, and mad scrambles of every man for himself ensued among the troops to get the ammunition and the heavier guns they needed to survive the withering fire they were taking from unseen ground forces. More planes, carrying more soldiers, landed at the Crete airfields and exploded as their tires met the mines. The paratroops scurried in small, confused packs to find their platoons and positions, and civilians rose up from the cover of shrubbery and rocks and olive trees to attack them with clubs.

And yet the heroic events of that first day soon gave way to ten days of guerilla war that ultimately favored the arithmetic of greater firepower and the preponderance of foot soldiers. The British navy suffered great losses from Göring’s dive-bombers and lost control of the ports. The airfields were repaired and Nazi planes landed and offloaded devastating mobile artillery. Many thousands of British soldiers escaped across the mountains and were evacuated from the beaches of the southern shore, but many thousands also were captured. Despite the Nazi embarrassment, Crete fell. The civilian population was decimated for its insolence in wholesale executions. Six thousand Greek soldiers were killed and 3,000 captured. Ten thousand British died and 15,000 were captured, with the balance escaping. Seven thousand of Student’s 10,000 paratroops were killed. Hitler would never again trust the Fliegerkorps. Their troops became foot soldiers.

*

The military visionaries in England and America examined the prospects after the fall of Crete. With the eastern Mediterranean secure, if Hitler now seized the Middle East keystone of Iraq, as it was agreed he very easily could, if Rommel continued to advance to Cairo and the Suez, as he was closer to doing every day, the Nazi conqueror would control all of Africa that mattered but for isolated Dakar and the British nation at its southern tip, all of Europe but for Gibraltar and Malta, all the Middle East principalities — and all their oil! — plus the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, and the Indian Ocean. If Japan would continue as Germany’s ally, India and the lesser nations of Asia would be Hitler’s, and China easy pickings for the Japanese. Only England’s island and the Western Hemisphere continents of the Americas would remain free. And Russia.

In Parliament, Churchill’s war wisdom was questioned. What had he accomplished since taking office? He had rallied his people to a gritty defense of their home island, but wars weren’t won by dying bravely. He had entered into a saving relationship with America, but nothing much had come of it. There was the temporary triumph in North Africa, but now that was gone, and Greece and Crete too. Leslie Hore-Belisha, the War Minister of the time before Churchill’s ascendancy, offered himself as the alternative, and Winston seized on that for his defense. It was far easier to attack Hore-Belisha for the efforts that had brought HMG to this sorry place than to defend the specific actions of the Mediterranean campaign that had resulted in one setback after another.

He said, “I am not throwing all the blame for this on my right honourable Friend. Not at all. But I think it is only fair when he sets himself up as arbiter and judge, and speaks so scornfully of the efforts of some others who have inherited his dismal legacy, it is only fair to point out to him that he is one of the last people in this country to take this line. The question arises as to what would happen if you allowed the enemy to advance and overrun, without cost to himself, the most precious and valuable strategic points? Suppose we had never gone to Greece, and had never attempted to defend Crete. Where would the Germans be now? Might they not already be masters of Syria and Iraq, and preparing themselves for an advance into Persia? There is this vitally important principle of stubborn resistance to the will of the enemy. The doctrine implied here that battles be chosen only with a certainty of winning flies into the face of the whole history of war and reveals a fatal absurdity.” He put his detractors back on their heels, and received a resounding vote of approval of 371-7. But he and his nation were clearly hanging by a slender thread.

Clementine hauled him off to Chartwell for a weekend’s respite. His manor had been closed for a year, but she reopened it sufficiently to accommodate a small gathering. After dinner, Clemmie and Jock Colville took to their backgammon board as Winston lay down on the floor beside the table and slept for hours. That was Friday of his holiday. On Saturday morning before dawn, in his own bed by now, he was awakened with the news that the great German battleship Bismarck was entering the Atlantic from the straits between Greenland and Iceland, and he returned to London for his favorite activity of conducting a naval battle from indoors.

Bismarck was the greatest warship in the world. She was 823 feet from stem to stern, studded with weapons of all calibers and ranges, armored to a sturdy resistance, and capable of traveling at 35 miles per hour. Or so it was rumored, because until that day she had never been out of the Baltic. Admiral Raeder had overseen trials and shakedown cruises and thought it was time to send her to do great damage to the Atlantic convoys. Hitler was less sure. The great ship was a source of immense pride to the Führer and he was uneasy about risking her in open combat with the Royal Navy. “That,” Raeder insisted, “is why we built her.”

Bismarck was accompanied by the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen. They made their way north by northwest around Iceland and into the strait that led to the Atlantic. They were tracked by now, though intermittently as fog and clouds obscured them. The British brought a fleet of cruisers and destroyers to the scene led by their two battleships Prince of Wales and Hood. Hood, “Mighty Hood” to the British, was in her twentieth year of service and had been refitted with stronger side armor in 1939, but her deck was still only three inches of steel, leaving her vulnerable to a descending shell hurled high and far. The battle opened and soon Hood took just such a shell from Bismarck that penetrated the deck and exploded in the ammunition magazine stored below. The ship broke apart and sank within six minutes. Prince of Wales was then targeted by both of the German ships and gave as much as she got until a shell passed through the bridge killing everyone but the captain. Another put half her guns out of commission and Prince of Wales retreated to repair.

Bismarck had taken three damaging shells, one that resulted in the contamination of her fuel supply with seawater. The two Germans headed into the North Atlantic with Bismarck slowing and spewing oil in her wake. Prinz Eugen was unscathed and sent into the Atlantic for convoy attacks. Bismarck needed fuel and repairs and the nearest safe harbor was distant Brest on the Brittany coast. The British brought all the ships in the area into the chase. Six battleships and battlecruisers, two aircraft carriers, thirteen cruisers, and twenty-one destroyers tracked her, Prince of Wales now back among them with nine of her ten main guns restored to working order. But the fleet that had tracked the great ship from Scapa Flow was itself running low of fuel, and withdrew to give the kill to Force H from Gibraltar under the command of Admiral James Somerville, the hero of the battle of Oran. Force H, including the aircraft carrier Ark Royal, went north to intersect Bismarck.

On Monday, the 26^th, a squadron of PBY Catalinas, sent from America just weeks before and stationed in Northern Ireland, joined the hunt and one, flown by an American Navy pilot, found Bismarck 700 miles northwest of Brest, a day away from safety. The Fairey Swordfish of the Ark Royal, biplanes armed with torpedoes, descended to the attack.

Their torpedoes struck Bismarck but to little effect until one found her port rudder shaft and locked the rudder in a twelve-degree turn to port from which she could not get relief. Bismarck became unmaneuverable. She could only steam in a wide circle. The great monster continued to hurl shells through the night at the many ships that came into range in her surround, but her escape was doomed. In the morning light she could be seen ablaze from end to end, listing and settling from the stern. By the code of naval warfare, the British would not stop shelling until those on board either ran up the flag of surrender or abandoned the ship. At 10:30, seamen began leaping from her and the shelling ceased. Bismarck capsized to the port and slowly sank by the stern. At 10:40 on Tuesday, May 27, she was gone. She had taken 400 direct hits. Of the crew of 2,200, 114 survived.