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Early in World War II, Nazi Germany used its navy to isolate Britain from resupply by sea.
Germany capital ships, like the battleship Bismarck, were an important part of that strategy.
But it was Bismarck s destruction in May 1941 that solidified U-boats as Hitler s weapon of choice.
On the night of May 18, 1941, the German heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen steamed out of its base at Gotenhafen (now Gdynia, Poland), followed five hours later by the Kriegsmarine s crown jewel, the battleship Bismarck.
Bismarck and Prinz Eugen were on a mission to wreak havoc on British merchant shipping. German U-boats were already very effective at this, but Grand Adm. Erich Raeder, head of the Kriegsmarine, hoped to demonstrate to Hitler the value of Germany s surface fleet in order to avoid future budget cuts.
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On May 23, 1941, the Battleship
Bismarck was on a roll. The largest and most powerful ship in the German Navy, the mighty
Bismarck had broken out into the Atlantic Ocean, sunk a Royal Navy battlecruiser, badly damaged a battleship and was poised to add its guns to a naval blockade that threatened to strangle Great Britain.
Ninety-six hours later, heavily damaged, the battleship was on the bottom of the North Atlantic.
Bismarck’s swift reversal of fortune was the result of a heroic effort by the Royal Navy to hunt down and destroy the battlewagon, and avenge the more than 1,400 Royal Navy personnel killed in the Denmark Strait.
Published:
On 27 May 1941, HMS
Dorsetshire sent the following signal to the commander-in-chief of the Home Fleet: “Torpedoed
Bismarck both sides before she sank. She had ceased ring, but her colours were still flying.”
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So ended the German battleship
Bismarck’s only operational sortie, which had begun from the Polish coastal city of Gotenhafen (modern-day Gdynia) just over a week before. The dramatic story has been told and retold in books, documentaries, a feature film – and even a country and western song. But the truth remains, perhaps, the most compelling account of all.
Bismarck was launched in February 1939. Weighing in at over 50,000 tons when fully loaded, she displaced more than any other European battleship in service; she was fast, well-protected and heavily armed. When Burkard von Müllenheim-Rechberg joined Bismarck in June 1940 as fourth gunnery officer and personal adjutant officer to the ship’s captain, Ernest Lindemann, he w