Yesterday you said this is an enduring mystery of the Bismarck saga. Is there speculation as to his Lindemann's reasoning for not refueling? I can only think of two possibles - the extra time in port required and loss of secrecy. But if they were stopping for provisions anyway both become moot.
I've (so far) re-read passages from 5 books concerning this part of Bismarck's cruise and can find nothing that even guesses as to why he didn't top-up.
I'm going to check a few other sources because until it was mentioned on this thread, I had no idea how critical that decision, or non-decision, was.
I'm really curious now.
Here’s some enlightenment on the issue.
Battleship Bismarck: A Survivor’s Story
by Baron Burkard von Mullenheim-Rechberg
1980, U. S. Naval Institute, Annapolis, MD
Chapter 8 - Departure from Gotenhafen
pp. 75-76
“Liberty was cancelled as of noon May 17. Towards midday on the eighteenth the Bismark left the wharf at Gotenhafen... We did not put to sea immediately, however, but dropped anchor in the roadstead, in view of Gotenhafen. Great masses of provisions and fuel oil still had to be taken aboard. Although thousands of tons of fuel flowed into our bunkers, we could not fill them completely, because a hose ruptured, causing the fueling operation to be called off so that the mess could be cleaned up. By that time, our schedule forced provisioning to be brought to an end. The ship was not far short of being fueled to capacity, and no one then suspected how important this shortfall would become. The Bismark sailed at 0200 on 19 May.”
It wasn’t Lindemann’s call. It was Lutjens. It’s purely speculation on my part, but I believe there was no effort to refuel at Bergen because Lutjens had a tanker or two stashed off northern Norway, and he intended to use them [a practice he used during Operation BERLIN].
But a combination of being spotted at Bergen by British aircraft and the increasingly poor weather [a benefit from his point of view] probably led him to head straight [as it were] for the Denmark Strait with the belief he’d slip through [the German Navy had used the Strait as a super highway since the beginning of the war] and be able to refuel in the Atlantic.