The German battleship KMS Bismarck had one of the shortest careers of any warship; from completion to destruction she lasted only nine months, eight of which were spent on training.

With her consort, the heavy cruiser KMS Prinz Eugen, she slipped out of the Baltic on 20 May 1941 bound for Bergen. Their objective was the disruption of the British convoy system in the North Atlantic, for if the British Admiralty could be forced to give up convoying, the U-boats would be able to cut off the flow of shipping from the United States to the UK. The Germans were not to know that the British had detected the break-out, partly through intelligence from Sweden and partly from analysis of radio traffic between Kiel and Bergen. The first sign that Vice Admiral Gunther Lutjens had of British preparedness came late on 23 May, when his force was detected in the Denmark Strait by the heavy cruiser HMS Suffolk.

Despite efforts to shake off the Suffolk, she and another cruiser, HMS Norfolk, kept in touch, with the result that on the morning of 24 May the battle-cruiser HMS Hood and the new battleship HMS Prince of Wales made contact.

At 05.32 the Hood opened fire on the Prinz Eugen at a range of 24225 m (26,500 yards), the Prince of Wales opening fire shortly afterwards. The German ships began to reply at 05.35, but both fired at the leading ship, Hood. A 203-mm (8-in) shell from the Prinz Eugen started a fire on the Hood's shelter deck, and at about 06.00 the Bismarck's fifth salvo hit. A minute later the Hood's after magazines blew up, destroying the ship with the loss of nearly all hands. Fire now shifted to the Prince of Wales, which was hit seven times and suffered one bad hit on the compass platform. But in spite of having everyone on the bridge except the captain killed or wounded, she fought back and hit the Bismarck with two or three 356-mm ( 14-in) shells. She was then ordered to break off the action by the surviving senior officer, the rear admiral commanding the two cruisers, as it was felt that the Prince of Wales was not fit for further action.

Admiral Lutjens now had two choices: to return to Bergen to repair the damage to Bismarcks fuel tanks caused by two underwater hits from the Prince of Wales, or to continue the

North Atlantic sortie. So convinced does he seem to have been that the Bismarck was unsinkable that he chose the latter course, despite having lost the element of surprise, despite having lost nearly a third of her fuel, and despite having 2,000 tons of water on board. Later both British and American assessments of the German tactics drew attention to the rashness of the German admiral in trying to conduct a North Atlantic cruise under such conditions.

Late that day, with speed dropping to 28 kts and one boiler room out of action, Lutjens realized his mistake, but instead of turning back he headed for Brest. The Prinz Eugen was now short of fuel; and she was ordered to proceed independently. The following evening the carrier HMS Victorious flew off a strike of Fairey Swordfish torpedo-bombers. These aircraft were ill-suited to the strike role, but the RAF's refusal to release a squadron of Albacores meant that they were the only torpedo bombers available to the Home Fleet. Around midnight the nine biplanes found their target, and managed to hit her with one torpedo on the main belt amidships, where the comparatively light warhead could not inflict serious damage. It was nevertheless a remarkable achievement to hit a fast, maneuvering target at night, in bad weather.

Later on that night the Bismarck shook off the Norfolk and Suffolk, which had been maintaining radar contact at extreme range. And yet, such was the bad luck which dogged the Bismarck, that Lutjens apparently assumed that he was still being tracked by radar. He therefore made a long signal back to Germany, providing the British direction-finding stations with the cross-bearing that they needed. RAF Coastal Command was then asked to provide a Con

solidated Catalina flying-boat to search in the right sector, with the result that the Bismarck was sighted at about 10.30 on 26 May. The sighting came in the nick of time for the Home Fleet had misinterpreted the direction-finding signals and was heading in the wrong direction.

Early on the morning of 26 May a Catalina made the vital sighting, but the gap between the Bismarck and her pursuers was now so wide that she could still reach the Brittany coast, and once she came under the protection of shore-based fighter aircraft the British would not dare to bring her to action. The only hope of slowing her down was a torpedo strike from the carrier HMS Ark Royal, which was coming up from Gibraltar with the battle-cruiser HMS Renown and the cruiser HMS Sheffield as escorts. The Ark Royal launched a first strike of 15 Swordfish at 14.50 but mistook HMS Sheffield for the target.

A tragedy was only averted because the magnetic pistols fitted to the torpedoes malfunctioned when dropped in the very steep seas running several detonated on hitting the water, and the Shefield was able to dodge the remainder. The incident was turned to advantage when the Shefield signaled the Ark Royal, so that for the second strike the Duplex pistols were set back to 'contact'. Around 20.30 the Swordfish found the real Bismarck, and this time they knew they had made no mistake when they encountered a hail of Flak. The biplanes flew at an almost suicidal height above the waves, and at times seemed likely to fly into the superstructure, but their bravery was rewarded with two torpedo hits. One hit amidships, causing little damage, but the second struck aft and jammed the rudders.

That hit doomed the Bismarck, for now she could only steam erratically, using her propellers for steering. She crawled away to the north west, towards the Home Fleet, while her engineers frantically tried to free the rudders and the ship was hauled painfully round onto the proper course. That night a force of British and Polish destroyers made an unsuccessful torpedo attack which further interrupted the work, and everyone aboard the battleship knew that their last battle was now only a few hours away.

On the next morning the Home Fleet battleships, the flagship HMS King George V and HMS Rodney, appeared on the horizon. At 08.4~ Rodney fired the first salvo. The Bismarck responded, getting a 'straddle' with her second salvo but the Rodney's 406-in (16-in) shells 'straddled' on the third and fourth, and a hit knocked out Bismarck’s forward turret 'Anton.

In fact Rodney's inexperienced gun-crews were not firing fast and her shoot got more ragged, so the commander-in-chief, Admiral Sir John Tovey, ordered her to go in close, 3650 m (4,000 yards) or less~ while he took the flagship out to 12800 m (14,000 yards), where her plunging salvoes of 356-mm ( I4-in) shells were more likely to penetrate the enemy's decks. This avalanche of fire silenced the Bismarck within half an hour, and by 09.20 only one after turret was still firing, under local control. Hits had destroyed the fire-control positions, fires were raging below decks, and communications with the engine rooms and compartments below the armored deck had been lost.

Paradoxically the damage was so extensive that it made the ship harder to sink. The Bismarcks armored deck was low down, to provide protection against long-range shellfire, and by 09.30 the ship was so waterlogged that most of the British shells were passing straight

over the deck. In years to come a myth grew up that the ship's Armour was never penetrated and that she only sank because she was scuttled, but the testimony of survivors in Admiralty records indicate that the British shells did immense internal damage, and all- communication with personnel below the armored deck had become impossible within the first 30 minutes. The argument is rather futile, because it rests on 'evidence' from personnel who did not survive. Gunhre is an efficient method of disabling a warship but it has always been a slow method of sinking one, unless a magazine explosion can be caused.

The king George V and the Rodney were both running low on fuel after the long chase, and so the heavy cruiser Dorsetshire was ordered to sink the Bismarck with torpedoes. At 10. 15 she fired two 533-mm (21-in) 'tin fish' into the starboard side, and then at 10.35 a third into the port side. The Bismarck began to heel over slowly and sank by the stern in about five minutes. Her flag remained flying to the end, as she sank with the loss of Admiral Lutjens, Captain Lindemann and practically her entire crew. Rescue operations began immediately but were broken off for fear of U-boats, and only 115 men survived out of a total of 2,192.