504124 Robert Nicklin Royal Navy HMS Dorsetshire My most vivid memory of WW2 out of dozens of action's that I participated in was the sinking of Hitlers pride of the german navy the Bismark, my ship had raced through gales to take part in the action H.M.S. Dorsetshire was a County class cruiser eight 8" guns when we arrived on the scene the action had just started and in the next two hour's we fired 240 eight inch shells at the Bismark and I could see our's and another ships shells smashing into her superstructure and when she was nothing more than a burning wreck we were ordered to finish her off,and as we fired three torpedoe's into her I could see hundreds of men jumping into the very rough sea,we lay off and watched her turn over and bottom up with scores of men standing on her steel plates as she slowly sank beneath the waves' the pride of the german navy was no more and H.M.S.Hood had been avenged. We then started the dangerous task of picking up the survivors being stopped in the water for this task we were sitting ducks for any Uboat but we managed to pick up some eighty odd men and were still hauling men over the side when a lookout spotted what he thought was a periscope and as I have already pointed out to a question from a German 'would the skipper of that Uboat let us carry on picking up survivors?' I think not! so off we went.
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