Battle of the Denmark Strait

24 May 1941, Denmark Strait, between Greenland and Iceland

German victory; Hood sunk, Prince of Wales driven off, Bismarck damaged

Admiral Günther Lütjens took Bismarck and Prinz Eugen out of the Baltic to raid the Atlantic convoys. Spotted in a Norwegian fjord near Bergen, they ran for the Denmark Strait, where the cruisers Suffolk and Norfolk found them in the evening of 23 May and held on to them by radar through the night. Vice-Admiral Lancelot Holland, coming up with Hood and the new Prince of Wales, met them at dawn. He turned towards them to close the range quickly, so that only his forward guns could fire, and both ships at first fired on Prinz Eugen, thinking her Bismarck. At 6 a.m., eight minutes after the first salvo, a shell from Bismarck's fifth salvo set off Hood's after magazines. She broke in two and sank in three minutes. Of 1,418 men, three survived. Prince of Wales, hit seven times with her guns jamming and builders' men still aboard, turned away under smoke. But she had hit Bismarck three times, and one shell holed a forward fuel tank; leaking oil, Bismarck could not raid the convoys, and Lütjens made for St Nazaire, while Prinz Eugen went on alone.