HMS Campbeltown and the Raid on St Nazaire, 28 March 1942
By John Dudek @ The Wargamer
The embattled German battleship Bismarck shuddered as British 14 and 15 inch shell salvos rained down around her, sending huge, cascading waterspouts skyward. One British shell struck her up forward at the waterline near the bow, piercing a number of fuel tanks and venting her to the sea. Bismarck’s 15 inch guns thundered back at her British tormentors HMS Hood and Prince of Wales, straddling and striking both ships. Bismarck’s heavy cruiser escort Prinz Eugen fired her lighter, but still dangerous main battery 8 inch guns at the British as fast as they could be serviced. In the highly confused sea battle that followed, a German shell struck the lightly armored battle cruiser Hood amidships, causing a massive chain reaction explosion that touched off her secondary magazines and broke her back, splitting the ship in two. Hood immediately sank, taking all but three of her crew to the bottom of the Denmark Strait. German observers on both their warships momentarily froze in shock and horror as they gazed uncomprehendingly at the sight of the mighty Hood exploding and sinking. The greatest and most storied, symbolic warship of the Royal Navy had just blown up before their very eyes. The two German warship’s guns now switched targets to bring all their fire down upon the newly built HMS Prince of Wales. The new British battleship was rocked while taking a number of direct hits, tearing up her upper works and setting fires, but her armor belt prevented more serious damage. Just as Prince of Wales appeared about to undergo the same fate as the Hood, the German task force sheered off and withdrew from the action. The battered Bismarck, now trailing an oil slick and running a few degrees down at the bow, set a course for German occupied France to repair damage to her shell punctured hull. There was but one dry dock outside of Germany that could repair and accommodate so large a warship as Bismarck. The Normandie dry dock at St Nazaire, France.
