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Swordfish Torpedo Attack on Bismarck
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Sub-Lieutenant John Moffat is credited with hitting the Bismarck with a torpedo as the pilot of a Fairey Swordfish. In his memoir "I Sank the Bismarck: Memoirs of a Second World War Navy Pilot" Moffat recalled the run in on Bismarck. Follow The War Office Podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or The War Office Podcast YouTube Channel.
Categories:Military History
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Auto-generated transcript. Not time-synced to the video.
Swordfish pilot Sub Lieutenant John
Moffett recalls in his memoir his
torpedo run on Bismar.
The Germans in their big battleship were
trying to kill me and it was not
pleasant.
I continued to drop height with Bismar
blooming bigger. Some of her guns
flashing from amid ships with vivid
orange flames now aimed at us.
The big explosions that had blown us
about did not follow us down to this
height. But the smaller cannon and
machine gun fire with their red tracer
bullets were coming towards us in a
torrent.
As he gets closer to Bismar, Moffad
hears his observer, temporary
subleutenant JD Dusty Miller, shouting
into his ear, "Not yet. Not yet." And I
thought, "Has he gone mad? What is he
doing?" Miller is leaning out of the
cockpit to make sure that Moffett does
not fire the torpedo into the crest of a
wave from which it may be knocked off
course.
Moffett continues, "We were getting
closer and closer. The ship was getting
bigger and bigger and I thought, bloody
hell, what are you waiting for?" Then he
said, "Let her go, John." And I pressed
the button on the throttle. Dusty
yelled, "I think we have got a runner.