Bismarck was the first of two Bismarck-class battleships built
for Nazi
Germany's Kriegsmarine. Named after Chancellor Otto
von Bismarck, the ship was laid down at the Blohm & Voss shipyard in Hamburg
in July 1936 and launched in February 1939. Work was completed in August 1940,
when she was comissioned into the German fleet. Bismarck
and her sister ship Tirpitz were the largest
battleships ever built by Germany, and two of the largest built by any European
power.
In the course of the warship's eight-month career under its sole commanding
officer, Captain Ernst Lindemann, Bismarck conducted
only one offensive operation, lasting 8 days in May 1941, code named Rheinübung. The ship, along with the heavy
cruiser Prinz Eugen, was to break into
the Atlantic Ocean and raid Allied shipping from North America to Great
Britain. The two ships were detected several times off Scandinavia, and British
naval units were deployed to block their route. At the Battle of the Denmark Strait, the battlecruiser
HMS Hood
initially engaged Prinz Eugen, probably by mistake, while HMS Prince of Wales engaged Bismarck.
In the ensuing battle Hood was destroyed by the combined fire of Bismarck
and Prinz Eugen, which then damaged Prince of Wales and forced
her retreat. Bismarck suffered sufficient damage from three hits to
force an end to the raiding mission.
The destruction of Hood spurred a relentless pursuit by the Royal
Navy involving dozens of warships. Two days later, heading for occupied France
to effect repairs, Bismarck was attacked by 16 Fairey
Swordfish biplane torpedo bombers from the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal; one scored a hit that
rendered the battleship's steering gear inoperable. In her final battle the
following morning, the already-crippled Bismarck was engaged by two
British battleships and two heavy cruisers, and sustained incapacitating damage
and heavy loss of life. The ship was scuttled to prevent her being boarded by
the British, and to allow the ship to be abandoned so as to limit further
casualties. Most experts agree that the battle damage would have caused her to
sink eventually.
The wreck was located in June 1989 by Robert
Ballard, and has since been further surveyed by several other expeditions.
A detailed underwater survey of the
wreck in 2002 showed that the sustained close-range shelling was largely
ineffective in the effort to sink the ship, the many torpedoes launched at Bismarck
were also almost completely ineffective, and the massive plating of the armour
deck was also found to be virtually intact.
