standing like a carved statue on the Admiral’s bridge of Invincible, his face and eyes set. The long bow of the ship was carving through the sea, the wash of grey-green water high over the wet iron anchor chains stretched along the deck. Behind them the massive steel fingers of the guns reached for the enemy as the ship roared out its anger. Connors had shifted to a 6-3 pattern on his salvos, with both forward turrets firing together, while the X turret waited for the ship to turn and open its forward angle as Invincible jogged left and right.
The battlecruiser remained a difficult target, even as the range closed inside 15,000 meters, about nine miles from the German formation. The death of Lütjens, and the damage slowly accumulating on the Hindenburg, had dampened Adler’s ardor for battle somewhat, yet he still believed the day must surely be his. When he saw Bismarck score a hit amidships forward of the twin funnels on Invincible, he took heart. Yet the damage was not as severe as it might have been on a ship with a more conventional design. The entire area was swept clean to give X-turret clear angles of fire. There was no superstructure built there, and so the 15-inch shell found only the hard steel of the 8-inch deck, and its shallow angle could not penetrate. Shrapnel flailed the turret, causing no harm, and scored the forward funnel, causing it to stream smoke in odd places, but otherwise the ship was not hurt.
Hindenburg also scored a second hit, this time on the belt of the ship. While the flatter trajectory of the shell gave it much more penetrating power in a side armor hit, the angle of the blow was very small given the fact that the target’s bow was very nearly pointed directly into the line of fire. This caused a glancing blow instead of a more damaging direct hit had the round come in perpendicular. Again, it was the unorthodox design of the ship, and the way Tovey had boldly chosen to fight with it, that made these hits far less serious than they might have been.
The British gunners had also put additional damage on both German ships. The two forward turrets in Connors’ 6-3 salvos had concentrated on Hindenburg, and scored yet another hit amidships that smashed a secondary battery and started a bad fire. X-turret also managed to strike Bismarck forward on her bow, and very low, with the shell penetrating near the water line in that less protected area, and causing flooding from the wash of the forward bow. A second shell plunged into the water very near this point, struck the ship, but did not detonate, a bit of luck that saved Bismarck from serious harm.
The running battle had seen his formation steaming almost due east at about 90 degrees, with Invincible coming up from the southwest, steering a jogging course that varied from 30 to 50 degrees. At times the Germans were at 28 knots, and sometimes surged at their top speed of 30 knots, and the angle of convergence was gobbling up the range quickly. Tovey was inside the 12,000 meter range mark in minutes, dangerously close, and he could see the Germans were about to turn to cross his T, which is just what he expected. Now he began to maneuver the ship to prepare for his torpedo launch.
He made his sharp turn to starboard, with the intention of coming quickly around to expose the port side torpedo tubes and fire a spread of four lances at a point well out in front of the enemy ships. It was then that Adler made his first real mistake. He saw the sudden turn, just after that inconsequential hit amidships, but his mind saw much more in the maneuver than Tovey intended.
“Got him amidships!” he shouted. “Good shooting Eisenberg! Look now, he’s coming around in a hard turn. He’s thinking twice about trying to get any closer. We’ve crossed his T and he’s trying to come around and run with us at the broadside. He’s making a bad mistake!”
Eisenberg beamed down from his perch above with the main gun director, and the next three seconds would decide the battle. Adler snapped out an order, thinking he would easily frustrate the British maneuver by turning to starboard himself, using the slight lead he still maintained, and persisting in crossing the enemy’s T. It had never occurred to him that Invincible was about to