Denmark Strait

I mean, there's a sea state.

You know, the, the, the Denmark Strait, which is the, you know, the body of water between Iceland and, and Greenland, is notorious for being a really bad body of water, a really stormy, nasty body of water, which is another thing, right? It's like, well, I got this weather window, I really need to take advantage of it.

This, this isn't, [laughs] this isn't the right time of year, and, uh, this is a notoriously bad body of water.

But yeah, it's kind of motored here.

Admiral Tovey knew that there were three options available to Lutyens, but still didn't know which he would take.

He therefore ordered heavy cruisers to take up positions between Shetland and the Faroes, in the Icelandic Faroe Gap and in the Denmark Strait, the channel of water between Iceland and Greenland.

The Royal Navy had set its trap.

Whichever way into the rich hunting ground of the Atlantic that Bismarck and Prince Eugen chose to take, the Navy would be waiting.

Whether it was between the Faroes and Iceland or the Denmark Strait, between Iceland and Greenland, the German ships would have to pass through a British net.

All these British ships had to do now was keep their eyes open and wait.

On the 22nd of May, Bismarck and Prince Eugen were cruising off the coast of Norway and Lutyens needed to decide which passage they would take.

He knew that the Royal Navy would be out there somewhere, but he didn't know where.

It's probably worth mentioning here that the cruise of the Prince Eugen would be almost completely unsuccessful, and in fact it would return to port on June 1st without accomplishing much of anything.

It would then spend the next seven months in Brest because of damage caused to its propellers during the move through the Denmark Strait, where it had hit some ice.

However, aboard the Bismarck, they didn't know that that was going to happen in the future.

And they had accomplished their goal of separating from the cruiser.

Um- This is, this is big ... it's, there's one called...

It's found in Denmark Strait, um, Strait of Cataract, um, between Greenland and Iceland.

Yes, it's that, but in water.

All the weird shit is always in Greenland, bro.

And now to get out of the Baltic, it's a complete NATO lake.

And Denmark, time immemorial, can close the Denmark Straits when it wants to.

It doesn't do that anymore, but back in the day, you had to lower your top sails when sailing past Denmark, and you had to pay a toll.

Wow, so the geography hasn't changed, Jason.

Head on over to historyofthesecondworldwar.com slash members to find out more.

When Captain Kerr of the HMS Hood would order his gunnery officers to open fire 30 seconds after 5.52 a.m. on May 24, 1941, this moment would mark the beginning of the Battle of the Denmark Strait.

The range between the targets was less than 25,000 meters, about 16 miles, within the range where it was possible that the ships would be able to land hits on one another.

On the British side, both the Hood and the Prince of Wales would first target the Prince Eugen under the false belief that it was in fact the Bismarck that they were shooting at.

Shell entered port, exited starboard above the armored deck.

Third on a boat of no concern.

Denmark Strait, 50 nautical miles wide.

Drifting mines.

And for the men aboard those two ships, time would crawl by.

Between the time that the Suffolk first reported the position of the Bismarck, and when the Hood and the Prince of Wales would engage the German ships during the Battle of the Denmark Strait, ten and a half hours would elapse.

During that time, the men aboard the Hood and the Prince of Wales knew that they were moving towards contact, knew that they were moving towards battle.

But there was nothing that they could do to make that battle happen any sooner.

And usually that took hours.

Sometimes it took days.

And what's interesting is that their cruise actually started before the German ships made their way out into the Denmark Strait and before they were spotted by the Norfolk and the Suffolk.

because the 1st Battlecruiser Squadron would just begin its deployment to Iceland to be in the proper position to maybe intercept them if they moved through the Denmark Strait when the Bismarck was spotted off of Norway.

The fog between Iceland and Greenland is some of the worst in the world.

The water temperature in the Denmark Strait will kill you in minutes if you go in.

These are the facts you're sitting with when you taxi out of Reykjavik.

Here's where the Italian story crosses the American one.

In fact, she'd already held her own brush with the ship at the center of the next story.

Because Prince of Wales was one of two Royal Navy ships that engaged the German battleship Bismarck in the Denmark Strait that same May, days before Bismarck went to the bottom of the Atlantic.

And somewhere aboard Bismarck, by an account that would go on to become one of the single most famous and most disputed ship's cat story of the entire war.

There was a cat.