German battleship Bismarck

CG image of Bismarck as painted for Operation Rheinübung
History
Germany
Name	Bismarck
Ordered	16 November 1935
Builder	Blohm & Voss, Hamburg
Laid down	1 July 1936
Launched	14 February 1939
Commissioned	24 August 1940
Fate	Lost 27 May 1941 (see Controversy Section)
General characteristics
Displacement	41,700 tonnes standard 50,900 tonnes full load
Length	251 metres (823.5 ft) overall 241.5 metres (792.3 ft) waterline
Beam	36.0 metres (118.1 ft) waterline
Draft	9.3 metres (30.5 ft) standard 10.2 metres (33.5 ft) full load
Propulsion	12 Wagner high-pressure; 3 Blohm & Voss geared turbines; 3 three-blade propellers, 4.70 m diameter 150,170 hp (121 MW)
Speed	30.8 knots
Range	8,525  nm at 19 knots
Complement	2,092: 103 officers 1,989 men (1941)
Armament	8×380 mm/L48.5 SK-C/34 (4×2) 12×150 mm/L55 SK-C/28 16×105 mm/L65 SK-C/37 / SK-C/33 16 × 37 mm/L83 SK-C/30 12×20 mm/L65 MG C/30 (Single) 8×20 mm/L65 MG C/38 (Quadruple)
Armor	Belt: 145 to 320 mm Deck: 50 to 120 mm Bulkheads: 220 mm Turrets: 130 to 360 mm Barbettes: 342 mm Conning tower: 360 mm
Aircraft carried	4×Arado Ar 196 A-3, with 1 double-ended catapult

The German battleship Bismarck is one of the most famous warships of the Second World War. The lead ship of her class, she was named after the 19th-century German chancellor Otto von Bismarck. Bismarck's fame came from the Battle of the Denmark Strait in May 1941 (in which the battlecruiser HMS Hood, flagship and pride of the British Royal Navy, was sunk), from Churchill's subsequent order to "Sink the Bismarck" [1], and from the relentless pursuit by the Royal Navy that ended with her loss only three days later.

History

Design of the ship started in the early 1930s, following on from Germany's development of the Deutschland class cruisers and the Gneisenau class "battlecruisers". Construction of the second French Dunkerque class battleship made redesign necessary, and Bismarck's displacement was increased to 41,700 tons. Officially, however, her tonnage was 35,000 tons to suggest parity with ships built within the limits of the Anglo-German Naval Agreement (1935) that allowed Germany to build up to five 35,000-ton battleships, the maximum displacement agreed by the major powers in the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922. Fully laden, Bismarck and her sister-ship Tirpitz would each displace more than 50,000 tons. The prototype of the proposed battleships envisaged under Plan Z, Bismarck's keel was laid down at the Blohm + Voss shipyard in Hamburg on 1 July 1936. She was launched on 14 February 1939 and commissioned on 24 August 1940 with Kapitän zur See Ernst Lindemann in command.

This formidable ship was intended primarily as a commerce raider, having a broad beam for stability in the rough seas of the North Atlantic and fuel stores as large as those of battleships intended for operations in the Pacific Ocean. Still, with eight 15 inch main guns in four turrets, substantial welded-armour protection and designed for a top speed of not less than 29 knots (she actually achieved 30.1 knots in trials in the calmer waters of the Baltic, an impressive speed when set against any comparable British battleship), Bismarck was capable of engaging any enemy battleship on reasonably equal terms. Her range of weaponry could easily decimate any convoy she encountered. The plan was for Bismarck to break through into the spacious waters of the North Atlantic, where she could refuel from German tankers and remain undetected by British and American aircraft, submarines and ships, while attacking the convoys.

==

Aftermath

Over the years, the ship achieved near mythological status, and was popularized in 1960 by the film Sink the Bismarck! and Johnny Horton's hit song of the same title. The wreck of Bismarck was discovered on 8 June 1989 by Dr. Robert Ballard, the oceanographer also responsible for finding the Titanic. Bismarck rests upright at a depth of approximately 4,700 m (15,500 ft) about 650 kilometres west of Brest. Analysis of the wreck showed extensive damage to the superstructure by shelling and some minor damage to the hull by torpedo hits, but also suggested that the Germans scuttled the ship to hasten its sinking. This has never been proven by marine investigators but is confirmed by survivors. Ballard has kept the exact location of the wreck a secret to prevent other divers from taking artifacts from the ship, a practice he considers a form of grave robbing.

A later dive on the wreck also identified the location, and brought back further images, as part of a documentary sponsored by the British Channel 4 on Bismarck and Hood.

The documentary film Expedition: Bismarck (2002), directed by James Cameron and filmed using MIR submersibles, reconstructs the events leading to the sinking of Bismarck. His findings were that there was not enough damage below the waterline of the ship to confirm that she was actually sunk by shells and torpedoes. In fact, upon close inspection of the wreckage, it was confirmed that none of the torpedoes or shells penetrated the second layer of the inner hull. Hence this supports the Germans' story of having scuttled their own ship.

Controversy

The second Bismarck expedition in 2001 was Anglo-American and funded by a UK TV channel. It followed-on from the same team's prior discovery of the long-lost wreckage of Hood which was located and filmed for the first time.

The Anglo-American team (David Mearns and Bill Jurens from the USA and Professor Eric Grove from the UK) conducted its own sonar survey from scratch to find the Bismarck wreck site, based solely on available information that it was resting at the foot of the only undersea volcano in that area. Then they used ROVs to film the hull externally and concluded that the ship sank due to combat damage, having received numerous artillery and torpedo hits from the British.

Ballard criticised this documentary, citing what he considered nationalistic, biased research of limited historic value due to lack of thoroughness. A new American expedition visited the site using smaller and more agile ROVs. These provided some interior shots of Bismarck for the first time, which were aired as part of a one-hour documentary film on the National Geographic Channel (NGC).

The third survey found no underwater penetrations of the ship's fully-armoured citadel and only four direct hit holes on it above the waterline, all of them on one side, as delivered by the Rodney's 16 inch (406 mm) guns. Huge dents showed that the 14 inch (356 mm) shells fired by the King George V bounced off the Wotan type German belt armour[2]. Interior ROV footage showed that the "terrible destruction" the Anglo-American expedition reported was in fact the torpedo bulges, which were designed to absorb the energy of torpedoes and plunging shells. Underneath the torn bulge sheeting, the ship's 320 mm (12.6 inch) thick main belt armour appeared to be intact.

The American expedition's final conclusions were strikingly different from the findings of the Anglo-American team. They estimated that Bismarck could still float for at least a day when the British vessels ceased fire and could have been captured by the Royal Navy. They concluded the direct cause of sinking was due to self-scuttling, the sabotage of engine room valves by her crew, as claimed by German survivors. A detailed look at a modern computer analysis of the hull's eventual impact on the sea bottom explains some damage as a result of hydrodynamic impact shock inside the ship, which was still apparently girded by an uninterrupted curtain of armour.

In all 2,876 shells of various calibres were fired by the British ships. Approximately 300-400 hit. Only two hits fully penetrating the main armour were located. These holes were on the starboard side, suggesting that they were 16" shells from Rodney. Two other penetrations were found on the port side, albeit above the main armor belt, and appeared to be 14" shells. In all 714 14 inch and 16 inch shells were fired by the two battleships, of which about 80 hit the Bismarck. Only four penetrated the belt. In successive hits main gun shells destroyed A turret, B turret, each director and the bridge.

When senior Bismarck survivor, the late Baron Von Mullenheim-Rechburg, was asked for his opinion on the controversy in a British television interview he simply replied politely: "Both sides sank the Bismarck."

This controversy was of little relevance to the wider situation in 1941: Bismarck had been disabled and battered beyond repair; and her eventual sinking, whether it resulted from Dorsetshire's torpedoes or scuttling charges, meant little to the thousands of young men whose tomb Bismarck became. What was vitally important to the Allied cause was that the Royal Navy had silenced a major threat to Britain's shipping.

Criticisms of ship's design

While Bismarck was a powerful ship, the long hiatus in German capital ship building from 1919 until 1933 led to a conservative design that was to some degree flawed and outmoded. Borrowing from the design of the World War I Bayern class battleships and the incomplete Mackensen class battlecruisers, the ship was completed with some of her vitals above her armoured belt. This particular weakness left many communication systems, including her main damage control centre, open to destruction and may have contributed to her relatively rapid silencing in her final engagement. A further example of outmoded design was the provision of both a secondary armament of twelve 5.9inch guns and the inclusion of a separate battery of sixteen 4.1inch high-angle (anti-aircraft) guns. This fitting of two types of weapons lagged behind the dual-purpose secondary armaments of Allied ships that allowed them to engage both air or surface targets, thereby saving on weight used elsewhere in their designs and facilitating superior fire-control systems.

See also

• Tirpitz, the second ship of the Bismarck class battleships
• List of ship launches in 1939
• List of ship commissionings in 1940
• List of shipwrecks in 1941
• Last battle of the battleship Bismarck
• List of battleships of Germany
• List of naval ships of Germany
• List of Kriegsmarine ships

References

• Burkhard Baron von Mullenheim-Rechberg, Battleship Bismarck, A Survivor's Story (United States Naval Institute, Annapolis, 1980).
• Robert D. Ballard The Discovery of the Bismarck (Madison Publishing, Toronto, 1990). Describes the search effort for the wreck of the Bismarck, and includes pictures of the wreck.
• Jack Brower The Battleship Bismarck (Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, (Maryland), 2005) ISBN 1591140501 One of the "Anatomy of the Ship" series.
• John Roberts The Battlecruiser Hood (Conway Maritime Press), 2001) ISBN 0-85177-900-x One of the "Anatomy of the Ship" series.
• José M. Rico, The Battleship Bismarck. The Complete History of a Legendary Ship (KBismarck.com, 2004). PDF eBook describing the complete operational history of the Bismarck from inception to final demise with photos and drawings.
• Admiralty report CB 04039(2) Immune zone analysis of Tirpitz, KGV, Nelson, and QE
• Most recently (in 2006), the Bismarck was featured on an episode of the History Channel's "Dogfights" entitled "Hunt for the Bismarck".

Further reading

• Ludovic Kennedy, Pursuit: The Sinking of the Bismarck
• C.S. Forester, Hunting the Bismarck (first published by Michael Joseph Ltd in 1959)
• Ulrich Elfrath and Bodo Herzog, The Battleship Bismarck: A Documentary in Words and Pictures (Schifer Publishing; Atglen, Pennsylvania; 1989) (originally published in German as Schlachtschiff Bismarck, Ein Bericht in Bildern und Dokumentation, Podzun-Palles Verlag, Friedberg, 1975). Includes pictures of the ship under construction and interior pictures, detailed descriptions of fittings and equipment, and biographies of the principal admirals.
• Paul J. Kemp, Bismarck and Hood: Great Naval Adversaries (Arms and Armor Press, London, 1991)
• Siegfried Breyer, Battleships and Battlecruisers 1905-1970 (Doubleday and Company; Garden City, New York, 1973) (originally published in German as Schlachtschiffe und Schlachtkreuzer 1905-1970, J.F. Lehmanns, Verlag, Munchen, 1970). Contains various line drawings of the ship as designed and as built.
• David J. Bercuson and Holger H. Herwig The Destruction of the Bismarck (Stoddart Pulishing, Toronto, 2001). Includes personal accounts of the Battle Off Iceland and the Final Battle.
• Graham Rhys-Jones The Loss of the Bismarck: An Avoidable Disaster (Cassell & Company, London, 1999). Includes a description of the planning for Exercise Rheinubung.
• Antonio Bonomi, Stretto di Danimarca, 24 maggio 1941, printed on "Storia Militare" magazine, December 2005.

External links

• KBismarck.com - The Battleship Bismarck
• Battleship Bismarck & Tirpitz - English
• Bismarck Legend Lives
• Maritimequest Bismarck photo gallery
• Underwater footage of the Bismarck wreck
• A detailed article about the armour protection of the Bismarck

48°10′N 16°12′W