I I piSl^KCK (L a . O^ This was the biggest day wMh news of naval warfare since A the Battle of Jutland a quarter of a century ago. There was no radic when that clash occurred between the fleets of Great Britain and th< Kaiser»s Germany. So today ranks as the greatest of all for radio ^ws about battle at sea. There are two phases of this - the , sinking of the BISMARCK and the naval and air battle off Crete. The sinking of the BISMARCK takes precedence - with a turn of startling drama. The story was breathtaking when the news first flashed this morning. But that was only the half of it - only a fraction of what the full account brings us tonight. It often happens that way - early brief reports giving us merely the central event and little hint of the fullness of the drama. That develops later. Today it came with the complet'e and official report by the British Ar^miralty. It turns out now that the BISMARCK was spotted days before the action began - was sighted by British scout planes in the fjords of Norway. th*Hpreseneo -ef- Ahat the BISMARCK was bent on a dash in the North Atlantic to attack \ I f pt .SMARCK « 2 convoys carrying United States war supplies^Qerofeay-gtni-4ti< ^ KfCL^ g a concerted I lwl attempt to intercept the raider. RvA-rF*-’' Norwegian, ghorCj did not--des±st lirtheir of -jjooutin^. Here^s a surprising thing revealed in the late admiralty account. The scout planes shadowed the great Nazi battleship all the way from Norway to the waters between Iceland and Greenland - the scene of action where the BISMARCK sank the k. HOOD, in one of the most startling episodes of war. Today's A,imiralty account gives us the full story of that episode. The naval action began last Friday - the day before the BISMARCK sank the HOOD. Two British cruisers^ngage* in the hunt for the Nazi battleship,spotted their quarry. A blizzard was raging in that northern latitude of Iceland and^Greenland. The . the giant BISMARCK at a cruisers, NORFOLK and SUFFOLK .. ,:ni,alls of sleet and snow and mist, range of six miles. There were squalls - sometimes only a mile. But the BISMARCK. They couldn't venture and the visibility was bad NORFOLK and SUFFOLK shadowed thii to exchange shots with the pride of the German Navy - would have been .^a a - 3 sunk by hsavier guns. So they merely kept the battleship located - all Friday night. And they sent wireless messages calling bigger tf : ships to the scene. On Saturday bigger ships airived, one al the biggest in the world, the forty-two thousand ton battle cruiser HOOD. With the HOOD was the PRINCE OF WALES, a sister ship of the ^ KING GEORGE, a thirty-five thousand ton battleship recently commissioned, the latest thing in naval power, as modern as the BISMARCK itself. Late* on Saturday, the HOOD and the PRINCE OF WALES came within gunfire range of their ehemy, and the naval action immediately began - brief and astounding. The Admiralty story says that as the salvos of giant shells were exchanged, the BISMARCK was seen to be on fire. But the9, however, came that devastating blow, what V.- 4 . cViell from the BISMARCK exploded London calls - an unlucky hit. shell irom me the powder magazine of the HOOD, and the greatest warship on earth was blown to bits. The PRINCE OF KALES too was struck by a German Shell, and slightly damaged. The BISMARCK thereupon broke off the .tUl tt. ... ...<■>».■> - W ▼ same cruisers, the NORFOLK and SUFFOLK. m 'I.' t ! f BISBIAKCK - 4 Presently, they saw that the BISMARCK was Joined by another German warship, the armored cruiser PRINCE EUGEN. The BISMARCK appeared to have slowed down - probably because of having been hit by a shell in the fight. The battleship PRINCE OF WALES was in pursuit, and caught up. There was a brief action, an exchange of shell fire, but the BISMARCK and PRINCE EUGEN got away - it was night, Saturday night. The visibility was poor, and the BISMARCK seemed to have escaped Meanwhile, the sinking of the HOOD had startled the world and shocked the British Empire. The extent to which Britain was dismayed is illustrated by the supreme effort made to catch the German battleship and avenge the HOOD. From all quarters of the f i'l V ilii 5 1 I' < 'll ocean, British warships * came at full steam. It was probable that to the coast of France the BISMARCK would try to escape across held by the Nazis. The naval might of Britain converged toward that area. The home fleet went speeding, headed by the new battleship GEORGE THE FIFTH - its flagship. The Western Mediterranean i iji' I i3 s 1; Gibraltar at full steam Leading it - the thirty-two thousand ton battle cruiser RESOUN. And the vessels in the chase included the -y.. a I I BISMARCK - 5 RAMILLES monster battleships RODNEY and^JodcW’ which were on Atlantic convoy duty but abandoned their convoy to take part in the hunt for the BISMARCK. It iib«.4:he greatest hunt ever staged on this earth. Rel6ntless quest for vengeance by the preponderant part of the British Navy. The fleeing BISMARCK evaded that enormous dragnet throughout Sunday, but then on Monday morning the craft was spotted by a British scout plane - an Amerioan-built Catalina flying boat, a unit of the Canadian air force. There was swift action in the air. Fighter planes from the BISMARCK took off to attack, but the Catalina flying boat got away - lost contact with the BISMARCK. BtrtVieanwhile the sctjut plane had wirelessed the position of the fugitive battleship. The result was that a few hours later the BISMARCK was spotted by planes operating from the British aircraft carrier ARK ROYAL - the one so often reported sunk by the Germans. The plane^shadowed the battleship and the British cruiser . SBEq^LD came upon th* scene - and continued the shadowing the MXM ARK ROYAL launched an attack by its torpedo carrying planes. The BISMARCK was seen to be hit by two a \ I RTSMARCK _ 6 torpedoes. One struck the steering gear and blasted it. The wa^unmanageable,^o©iii^ to make two complete circles. now swarms of the British fleet were descending t upon tne A ^ r --- helpless giant, unmanageable ^ around in circles. British destroyers dashed to the attack, hit the BISMARCK with more TP torpedoes.^ Then heavy British warships came onto the scene and opened with salvos of shell fire. The BISMARCK was batti=rt by a rain of explosive missiles, and turned into a shattered hulk inal blow - of steel. But still the Nazi battleship did not sink - magnificently built was the BISMARCK. At last^^he fi the cruiser DORCHESTER was ordered to administer th^ The DORCHESTER sank the BISMARCK with torpedoes. ^ minute past eleven o’clock this morning - four hundred miles west of \ of Brest. Thus ended the most intense sea drama of the present war - far more spectacular than the sinking of the GRAF SPEE. gritain has lost the greatest warship on earth - the HOOD. Germany loses a far more important naval unit ®or modern, more formidable , the worse of it. Britain In relative misfortune, Germany loses one of fifteen capital ships. Germany loses one of three - 7 ,p major craft, not counting tw^ battleships. Moreover,/Ar^miral Luetjens, Commander of the BISMARCK, was Germany’s Number One sea fighter - best known of Nazi naval commanders. Whether he survived the battle as a prisoner is not known, but probably he went down with his No stories have yet come in about possible survivors y6f the BISMARCK - though some of the crew may have got off/ ng boat, and may have been rescued. One may ask - why did the BISMARCK undertake so hazardous a gamble as to venture so far across the Atlantic - that Norway. realm of the British fleet? IPossibly the answer is, those aboard i. the battleship never guessed that they were being shadowed by British scouting planes from the moment they left the fjords of j CRETE The naval and air battle off Crete is still continuing — and today brought more news of that incredible action. The day’s tiding began with a report by the London Admiralty, an announcement of losses sustained in previous fighting. London concedes the sinking of two cruisers and four destroyers by air attack, and the bombing of two battleships and several other cruisers — these not damaged seriously. The losses are severe, but not as great as the Nazis claim, Berlin has reported the sinkiir^f'^eleven British cruisers, ;|| eight destroyers and ahalf doze^her craft. Twenty-five British warships sunk in the B^le of Crete - says Berlin. The Nazi T aq laree as those announced by London, figures are several times as laige ___ lost arp the GLOUCESTER wt and The two cruisers that were lost are FIJI, ships of nine thousand eight thousand tons respectively. The deseroyers are the JUNO, GREIHOODN, KASHMIR and KELM. flotilla leader, and was commanded by The destroyer KELLX was a personalities of England — Lord Louis one of the top-ranking l<ountb«tt.n, e.u>« of n»e “•»«' Haven. His mother — Princess Victoria, granddaughter of Queen CHESS - 2 Victoria. Lord Louis Mountbatten, of royal rank, earned renown as a naval officer in the war. A year ago his boat, the KELLY, was torpedoed, and the Germans announced it as having been sunk. The K el U. ihdeed, -as nearly broken in two by the torpedo blast, but ,t got back to port in the teeth of heavy air bombings. i>or that exploit. Lord Louis -as awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for Gallantry in Action. His boat, the so nearly destroyed. .paired, put back into service and sent bo the Mediterranean. ^3 been sunk in the Battle off Crete. There-s no word of , . King George wasaved, but it is known that whether the cousin of King British warships were rescued - of the battle of ships was Now it most of the crews of the lost f* In the wild flurry picked up by comrade era and planes. „t the first eyewitness account of the Today’s news brought the the air. A major of the ocean and the air of British battleships. giant clash of the floci^ or mo •»» • cruisers and destroyers. went into action Aboard one of the British battleships was a correspondent of United Press, Grattan-McOroarty. „ the naval and air battle and now He went through the nava sends us his account ^ J/, - 3 'Tiae three day naval engagement,« he writes, "was undoubtedly the heaviest aerial attack on ships in history." He relates that the mission of the British squadron was to give aid to two cruisers which had been damaged by air bombs. The ships pushed through the strait between the western end of Crte and the Greek mainland. There they were bombed by the Nazi air force, bombed constantly for more than fourteen hours. Hundreds of enemy bombers of all description, says the American newspaperman, attacked incessantly from five thirty A.M. until eight fifteen P.M. For more than two hours the Junkers Eighty-Eights dogged the fleet every mile that it moved. "Then," he goes on, " a new and larger air fleet tool^ up the fight. Thereafter more and more enemy planes filled the sky. The sky was murky," he explains," and enemy planes could hide in the clouds until they dived at us>" He tells of a destroyer buckling in the middle and puring out great clouds of smoke, after a hit that apparently blew up a magazine. Nazi bombers, he says, ra. .d in for the kill, and dumped bombs among seamen struggling in the water and then swooped down with machine guns going. "We saw a cruiser set afire by a rain of bombs, but her guns roared defiantly de^lte the flames - until the crew was '‘..a I I - 4 forced to abandon ship off Creoe.^’ "Another cruiser was hit," McGroarty writes," and sank as her crew abandoned ship. We were advised that another British destroyer had been sunk," Many enemy aircraft were destroyed by fleet guns, the account continues. The Nazi losses were heavy, but they pressed the attack. And the McGroarty account comes to a breathless climax - telling of a dive bomb attack against the battleship aboard which he was observing the action," Suddenly," he relates, "three Messerschmitt bomber-fighters flashed from the clouds with incredible ^ speed, and dived within a few hundred yards of this battleship before the guns could be turned on them. They dropped their bombs - causing superficial damage and a small fire, "By this time," he summarizes. "every ship in the fleet was engaged with ten or more enemy planes. and twenty-four attacked our craft." Cairo insists that the Germans hQve not been able to transport troops to Crete by sea — save perhaps for a few small vessels that may have slipped through the naval blockade. A British naval officer puts it in these words:- "Our squadrons have chased down almost every enemy ship, and blown it to pieces or rammed it." "1 There's another weird element - warships raioming vessels carrying troopty f • ^R£X£ - 5 Cur account of naval activity In the Battle off Crete concludes with a dispatch stating that today heavy guns of the British fleet shelled German forces operating near the shore of the Island. The invasion itself is progressing. Nazi forces brought b; sky are pushing on. Berlin today claimed a general advance. Cairo IS tells us that the British and Greek defenders have fallen backl The Germans, based at the ^alemi airdrome, launched an attack which carried them through fortlfiedpositlons of the British and the Grea'is. A counter-attack failed to dislodge the. They maintain their positions and capture still more ground, "necessitating", says Cairo, "the withdrawal of our troops to positions in the rear." The Sazi forces in Crete are growing larger all the time. The Cairo communique statement. "German reenforcements conyinued Conduces with this s fi tanks too. The Nazis launched to reach the isaldn by air." Getting tan^s t , .».lr .....It Cr,.. W tt. .B army is driving on with the support of aviation m Cn t!:i5 Irsjiitic of nr at sea there’s little tiat left to tell ar-v other news. In lashing tor. sCl ^olltioal attention is focused on President Roosevelt*5 fireside chat tonight. There are all sorts of speculations — and taut suspense. it*s to he one of the aost important of presidential pronouncements. As a last nlnute rove before the fireside chat a comrittee lighty percent of the people are opposed to any course which will take this nation into the European war. On the other hand, the lawmakers championing Aid to Britain are urging the President to take a decisive course in the crisis. All of which focuses attention on the hour of Half war PastTen tonight And now, as I leave for Canada, here*s Hugh. wmm 1 of non-interventionists in Congress sent a letter to the President. | In this letter they state the following:- ’’le find that over t !f I!