70 YEARS ON - KMS Bismarck tried to surrender, claims son of tormented Royal Navy sailor

[LunchboxOfDoom]

[QUOTE=scout1;30096372]I very much doubt the validity of his story. The last message bismarck sent to German naval command was that their rudder was damaged and they were going to try to fight to the end.

[editline]28th May 2011[/editline]

Lifted from wikipedia...[/QUOTE]

This message was written and sent by Admiral Lütjens, who was in charge of Operation Rheinübung. He was no Nazi. He wore his old dirk (a kind of ceremonial dagger) from the Kaiserliche Marine that he'd been issued when he was a member of the Torpedobootwaffe back in World War I, he was an outspoken critic of the persecution of the Jews in Germany, and he did not give the traditional salute of "Heil Hitler" (additionally, he was a well-known critic of National Socialist policies). He also believed that Bismarck's mission in the Atlantic Campaign would likely be unsuccessful.

In short, to claim that quote as evidence whilst leaving the story as short as that is misleading.

By the time this particular attempted surrender event took place that Mr. Byers (along with Mr. Campbell) attested to in his later years took place, the Bismarck's battle was already done with. The ship's guns had all been knocked out of action an hour before and had not been firing salvos at the British (all of them; Anton, Bruno, Caesar and Dora, along with most of the smaller secondary pieces), the gunnery tower (which was directing the fire of the ship earlier on) had been directly hit by a shell- killing most of the crew inside (including the chief gunnery officer, Adalbert Schneider)-- rendering all firing stations basically useless to begin with, the upper superstructure had been practically demolished with fires raging, Admiral Lütjens and most of the senior officers had been vaporized by nearly half a dozen shells which had struck the bridge, and the only things that were functioning properly for the ship were her engines.

It seems evident that Captain Lindemann (who had nearly been killed by the hits on the bridge I mentioned earlier) was attempting to surrender and ordered the various signals of parlay that he did which these RN sailors saw because he wanted to evacuate all the surviving German sailors off the battleship onto the nearby British vessels before she went down (it was evident the ship would sink, albeit it would take hours; it finally sank as it did, however, because one of the remaining senior officers had ordered the sea valves to be opened and scuttling charges to be set to flood the lower decks and take the ship down).