Alfred Hurley (Primary Source)

Transcript

Okay. My name is Al Hurley. I joined the Canadian Navy in April of 1940 and I served for five and a half years as a radar officer. Two of those years on loan to the Royal Navy and the last three years serving in Canada. Most of the time I was in a position of sort of pioneering, if you like, because the Canadians were the first people who took radar to sea in the British Navy. And they were recruited from Canadian universities very early after war broke out in 1939. Probably the most interesting part was our action in the Bismarck affair. Very, very, briefly, this was a case of the biggest and fastest battleship in the world being sent out expressly to shoot up convoys of food and material and armaments that were going into Britain. And it was very important that these convoys arrive, in 1940-41, before the Germans had a big, big submarine fleet. And they relied on these ships called surface raiders to disrupt the convoy routes. Meanwhile, the admiralty had been positioning ships to try and capture the Bismarck, wherever... or engaged her wherever they could find her. Our force of the Renown and the carrier Ark Royal and ourselves to be this last barrier of her run if she took a run into Brest. Anyway, she was sighted by a long range aircraft and she was headed, sure enough, for Brest and directly for the point which we were to patrol. We did sight her and reported her position. We were out there very close to the Bismarck and trailing her, and it's called shadowing. Fifty torpedo bombers took off and they came upon this ship in the Atlantic... I was on the bridge because I heard the Officer of the Watch say, "Here's the attacking air craft from the Ark Royal." But then, the next thing was, "My God, they're attacking us." And, as one of those unfortunate things that happen in warfare, of not recognizing your own forces, and they ran a great torpedo attack on us. Our captain was a great seaman and he avoided all the torpedoes. And then he, of course, signaled back and told the Ark Royal what had happened and the guys went back, re-loaded their torpedoes and, this time, they were given the order that you gotta locate the Sheffield first and then attack the Bismarck, which is what happened.