The Bismarck: steel behemoth of the Kriegsmarine

By the mid-1930s, Hitler had rejected naval restrictions, and this decision allowed Grand Admiral Erich Raeder to push forward with Plan Z, which aimed to rival British sea power.

As part of this strategy, Bismarck became the first of a new class of battleships, and construction began on 1 July 1936 at the Blohm & Voss shipyard in Hamburg.

Her design borrowed heavily from First World War dreadnought principles but also included lessons from interwar naval developments, with a focus on heavy armament and speed, combined with careful compartmentalisation. 

At 251 metres long and displacing nearly 51,800 metric tonnes when fully loaded, Bismarck ranked among the largest warships ever constructed.

Her propulsion relied on three geared steam turbines that delivered 150,170 shaft horsepower and pushed the vessel to over 30 knots.

Internally, the ship included advanced electrical systems and a heavily protected communications centre, along with radar that could track targets in poor visibility.

She carried the FuMO 23 radar set, part of the Seetakt family, which allowed for surface target detection and limited fire control.

Her armour included a 320 mm main belt, a 360 mm conning tower, and layered internal bulkheads that absorbed and deflected shellfire.

The primary armament featured eight 38 cm SK C/34 guns housed in four twin turrets (Anton, Bruno, Caesar, and Dora) capable of firing 800-kilogram shells up to 35 kilometres.

Supporting firepower included twelve 15 cm guns, sixteen 10.5 cm SK C/33 anti-aircraft guns in eight twin mounts, and dozens of smaller-calibre weapons.

A crew of roughly 2,200 personnel operated the vessel, and officers and sailors worked alongside essential support staff.

Her fuel capacity gave her a maximum range of approximately 8,870 nautical miles at 19 knots, though this would later prove a vulnerability when damaged.

By May 1941, the German High Command had set out to disrupt Allied supply routes crossing the Atlantic, which sustained Britain’s war effort.

For this purpose, Bismarck was assigned to Operation Rheinübung, which was a mission intended to break into open waters and attack convoys.

On 19 May, the battleship departed Gdynia under the command of Admiral Günther Lütjens and Captain Ernst Lindemann, and she sailed alongside the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen toward the Denmark Strait. 

Initially, poor weather and careful planning enabled the pair to avoid detection.

They navigated around Sweden’s coast, passed through Norwegian waters, and then accelerated into the North Atlantic.

At one point, Prinz Eugen led the formation as she carried the more advanced FuMO 27 radar system, which proved more effective in poor weather conditions than Bismarck's older FuMO 23 set.

As they advanced, British codebreakers intercepted fragmented radio transmissions that hinted at German naval activity.

In response, Admiral John Tovey ordered multiple Royal Navy squadrons into motion and directed cruisers and battleships, together with aircraft carriers, to close the escape routes before the raiders could begin their assault on merchant traffic.

At dawn on 24 May 1941, in the icy waters between Iceland and Greenland, Bismarck and Prinz Eugen sighted a British squadron consisting of the battlecruiser HMS Hood and the new battleship HMS Prince of Wales.

Although Hood carried immense symbolic weight as the pride of the Royal Navy, her design dated from the First World War, and her deck armour left her vulnerable to plunging shellfire.

Some British naval reviews had previously acknowledged these weaknesses, but delayed any structural overhaul.

After both sides opened fire around 05:52, the engagement escalated quickly. A shell from Bismarck that was likely fired from the Dora turret penetrated Hood’s rear magazine.

The explosion split the vessel in two, which sent a column of flame skyward and killed 1,415 sailors within minutes. 

Meanwhile, Prince of Wales continued the duel but suffered multiple hits and withdrew as she laid a smoke screen.

During the action, Bismarck absorbed several shells, one of which ruptured a forward fuel tank, which caused an oil leak and reduced her range.

At the same time, Prince of Wales scored at least three hits on Bismarck, possibly damaging a boiler room and one of her gun turrets.

Although Captain Lindemann favoured pursuing the retreating British ship to ensure its destruction, Admiral Lütjens rejected the proposal.

He ordered Prinz Eugen to break off and proceed with commerce raiding, and Bismarck, which now leaked fuel, turned toward occupied France to seek repair.

Immediately after the loss of Hood, Churchill issued a direct order to the Admiralty: “Sink the Bismarck.”

The Royal Navy responded with what contemporaries described as overwhelming force, deploying all available assets to intercept the battleship before she could reach safety.

Over the following days, aircraft from HMS Victorious attacked Bismarck, though with limited effect, and destroyers attempted to shadow her without closing the distance.

Bismarck had at times escaped pursuit because her crew exploited storm conditions and used radar countermeasures to break contact with HMS Norfolk and HMS Suffolk.

The pursuit stretched across the North Atlantic, complicated by deteriorating weather and the evasive actions of the damaged German vessel. 

On 26 May, a Catalina flying boat from RAF Coastal Command located Bismarck approximately 700 nautical miles from Brest.

That evening, Swordfish torpedo bombers from HMS Ark Royal launched an assault in rough seas and flew low to avoid radar detection and anti-aircraft fire.

During the second wave of attacks, one torpedo struck Bismarck’s stern, and it jammed her rudders and left her unable to steer.

Pilot John Moffat later claimed responsibility for delivering the critical hit, though multiple aircraft were involved, and no clear answer about who struck it has been confirmed.

Now locked in a slow circle, she lost the ability to evade and stayed vulnerable through the night as British destroyers harassed her from a distance. 

At first light on 27 May, the battleships HMS King George V and HMS Rodney opened fire at close range.

Their heavy shells smashed the superstructure and disabled turrets, and the bombardment ignited fires throughout the ship.

Bismarck continued to float long after her guns had fallen silent. She endured over 400 shell hits, and none of her main turrets were still operational by the time of her sinking.

Eventually, HMS Dorsetshire moved in and launched torpedoes into the crippled hull.

At the same time, German sailors opened the scuttling valves to flood the ship and prevent capture.

Eyewitness accounts noted that many wounded sailors who were still trapped aboard went down with her.

By 10:39 am, the battleship disappeared beneath the Atlantic waves. Of the 2,200 men aboard, only 114 survived to be rescued.

After her destruction, Bismarck became a symbol of both the power and limits of surface fleets in modern warfare.

Her ability to destroy the Hood in a single salvo shocked much of the British public and demonstrated how lethal concentrated gunfire could be.

Her vulnerability to air attacks, especially from outdated biplanes, showed how increasingly important aircraft carriers had become in naval strategy.

Her sinking ended Germany’s attempts to deploy capital ships in the Atlantic and forced the Kriegsmarine to rely on submarines for the rest of the war. 

In June 1989, oceanographer Robert Ballard was best known for discovering the wreck of the Titanic, and he was the person who located Bismarck nearly 4,800 metres beneath the ocean surface.

The wreck rested upright on the seabed, where her hull was scarred by shellfire but largely intact, with the remnants of her bow still painted with a swastika and visible.

Investigations confirmed that scuttling had accelerated her sinking, although the combined damage from British shells and torpedoes had already fatally damaged the ship.

Later explorations by James Cameron and others confirmed that the hull structure had not broken apart, and this evidence suggested that British torpedoes did not sink the ship on their own and that her own crew intentionally sank her before capture. 

As both a technical achievement and a cautionary tale, the Bismarck had a lasting effect on naval history.

Her launch showed the confidence of a regime convinced of its own strength, and her destruction showed the unforgiving nature of the sea and the increasing role of air power in deciding the outcome of battle.

Within a single voyage, Bismarck managed to define an era of warfare already in transition, and her story continued in cultural memory through portrayals in film and music, including the 1960 British film "Sink the Bismarck!" and the popular song of the same name by Johnny Horton.