If the first Swordfish strike had crippled Bismarck

How would Bismarck's sinking differ if the first Swordfish sortie had hit her rudder?

She would have been easier for the second strike to hit and might have been sunk during the destroyers' night attacks.

The key change is cumulative vulnerability: a circling ship is easier for the next aircraft to attack. The crippled raider would then have faced a full night of torpedo attacks before the battleships arrived. A surface raider remains dangerous while mobile, but an unsupported steering casualty exposes it to repeated attacks. Graf Spee offers a parallel because damage to her fresh-water system made a long independent voyage increasingly untenable even though the ship could still move. The earlier hit therefore changes the second Swordfish strike and the whole sequence of interception and attrition.