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begun to send a series of coded radio messages to German naval headquarters reporting the Bismarck ’s position and other information. The British were dumbfounded—but grateful. They could not decode the German admiral’s figures giving his latitude and longitude. But they could determine his position fairly accurately by means of radio direction-finding stations in Britain and Northern Ireland.
    Why did the crafty and experienced German admiral take such a risk? Not one of his messages was urgent, or even necessary. (We discovered this after the war when the contents of the messages became available from the German naval archives.) Why did he send them and risk giving away his position when the whole British navy was vainly searching for a trace of him?
    Here again a human error crept in. Admiral Luetjens didn’t know the British had lost him! He thought he was still being shadowed. Indeed, in the very first radio message sent at 7:27 on themorning of May 25 he stated: “One battleship and two heavy cruisers maintaining contact.” He had no idea that the “one battleship” ( Prince of Wales ) and the “two heavy cruisers” ( Suffolk and Norfolk ) had completely lost him more than four hours before. So he continued to send off his radio messages. And the British direction-finding radio stations continued to get a fix on him.
    Then Admiral Luetjens had a stroke of luck. This, too, was due to a weird but human error—this time an error of the British. Aboard Admiral Tovey’s flagship a mistake was made in simple arithmetic.
    The British Admiralty in London had radioed the Admiral’s ship at 10:30 A.M. , giving the bearings on the Bismarck as received at 8:52 A.M. by their direction-finding sets. For some unexplainable reason the Admiralty failed to give the position of the Bismarck as it had been plotted from the radio bearings. This was a costly piece of negligence.
    But in the navigation room on the King George V , it was easy to plot the enemy’s position from the bearings given. A navigation officer proceeded to do so. Perhaps he was in a hurry. It is said thathis charts were not sufficiently detailed. Whatever the reason, he made a false mathematical calculation. This put the position of the Bismarck considerably to the north of where she had been when last seen on the Suffolk ’s radar at 3:00 A.M.
    Admiral Tovey was forced to conclude that the Bismarck had turned north in the darkness and was heading home. He immediately reversed course to northeast and advised all other search ships to steer accordingly.
    At full speed Sir John’s Home Fleet headed off in what turned out to be the wrong direction.
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    Two British warships declined to follow the orders of the Commander in Chief. Captain Dalrymple-Hamilton on the battleship Rodney concluded that if the Bismarck were really heading northeast he was too far south to catch her. But he was now sure in his seaman’s bones that the German battleship was making for France. In that case the Rodney would be in her way. The Captain, therefore, against superior orders, remained where he was.
    Rear Admiral Wake-Walker aboard the cruiser Norfolk also felt in his bones that the Bismarck must have turned toward Brest or St. Nazaire on the French coast. On his own—and also contrary to Admiral Tovey’s orders—he set course in that general direction.
    Force H, coming up from Gibraltar, was not under the direct command of Sir John. Vice-Admiral Somerville aboard the Renown received Admiral Tovey’s orders for the new search northeast but he also disregarded them. He decided to follow instructions of the Admiralty, received shortly before, and assume that the Bismarck was heading for France.
    In the Admiralty in London there was much confusion. No one at the nerve center of the British navy in London noticed that Admiral Tovey’s plotting of the position of the Bismarck was at variance to their own and that the Home Fleet obviously was going off on a mad chase in