Bismarck was the first of two s built for Nazi Germany's . 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 commissioned into the German fleet. Bismarck and her sister ship 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, Bismarck conducted only one offensive operation that lasted eight days in May 1941, codenamed . The ship, along with the heavy cruiser , 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 initially engaged Prinz Eugen, probably by mistake, while 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 by Prince of Wales 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 for repairs, Bismarck was attacked by fifteen Fairey Swordfish torpedo bombers from the aircraft carrier ; 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.
Design
The two s were designed in the mid-1930s by the German as a counter to French naval expansion, specifically the two s France had started in 1935. Laid down after the signing of the Anglo-German Naval Agreement of 1935, Bismarck and her sister were nominally within the limit imposed by the Washington Naval Treaty that governed battleship construction in the interwar period. The ships secretly exceeded the figure by a wide margin, though before either vessel was completed, the international treaty system had fallen apart following Japan's withdrawal in 1937, allowing signatories to invoke an "escalator clause" that permitted displacements as high as .
General characteristics
Bismarck displaced as built and fully loaded, with an overall length of , a beam of and a maximum draft of . The battleship was Germany's largest warship, and displaced more than any other European battleship, with the exception of , commissioned after the war. Bismarcks hull used 90 percent welded construction to save weight; it was divided into 22 watertight compartments and had a double bottom that ran for 83 percent of the ship's length.
Bismarck was powered by three Blohm & Voss geared steam turbines driving three 3-bladed screw propellers. Steam was provided by twelve oil-fired Wagner superheated boilers, which were vented through a single large funnel amidships. The propulsion system was rated to produce for a top speed of , but the ship significantly exceeded both figures on speed trials, reaching for . The ship stored of oil for the boilers, which gave her a cruising range of at .
The standard crew numbered 103 officers and 1,962 enlisted men. When Bismarck left port, fleet staff, prize crews, and war correspondents increased the crew complement to over 2,200 men. Roughly 600 of the crew came from the light cruiser , which had been lost during Operation Weserübung, the German invasion of Norway. Bismarcks crew published a ship's newspaper titled Die Schiffsglocke (The Ship's Bell). Bismarck carried four Arado Ar 196 reconnaissance floatplanes in a double hangar amidships and two single hangars abreast the funnel, with a double-ended thwartship catapult.
Armament and armour Bismarck was armed with a main battery of eight SK C/34 guns arranged in four twin gun turrets: two super-firing turrets forward—"Anton" and "Bruno"—and two aft—"Caesar" and "Dora". Secondary armament consisted of twelve L/55 guns. The main-battery and secondary guns were aimed from three fire-control director stations, using mechanical computers to plot target distances and courses and to calculate angles for the guns. On top of each fire-control station a rangefinder was mounted in a rotating cupola, a FuMO 23 Seetakt radar set was installed by March 1941 on the front of all three cupolas.
The heavy anti-aircraft armament consisted of sixteen C/33 guns in eight twin mountings. The forward two pairs of gun mountings were of the old C/31 type while the aft two pairs were of the newer C/37 type. The middle and light anti-aircraft armament consisted of sixteen C/30, and initially twelve C/30 anti-aircraft guns. In April 1941 two of the single 2 cm guns mounted on the searchlight platform on the foretop were replaced by two quadruple 2 cm C/38 guns. Anti-aircraft fire control for the 10.5 cm guns was provided by four stabilised SL-8 directors, though the 3.7 and 2 cm guns were only given portable rangefinders.
The ship's main belt was thick and was covered by a pair of upper and main armoured decks that were and thick, respectively. The turrets were protected by thick faces and thick sides.
Service history
Bismarck was ordered under the name ("Hannover replacement"), a replacement for the old pre-dreadnought , under contract "F". The contract was awarded to the Blohm & Voss shipyard in Hamburg, where the keel was laid on 1 July 1936 at Helgen IX. The ship was launched on 14 February 1939 and during the elaborate ceremonies was christened by Dorothee von Löwenfeld, granddaughter of Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, the ship's namesake. Adolf Hitler made the christening speech. Fitting-out work followed the launch, during which time the original straight stem was replaced with a raked "Atlantic bow" similar to those of the s. Bismarck was commissioned into the fleet on 24 August 1940 for sea trials, which were conducted in the Baltic. Ernst Lindemann took command of the ship at the time of commissioning.
On 15 September 1940, three weeks after commissioning, Bismarck left Hamburg to begin sea trials in Kiel Bay. Sperrbrecher 13 escorted the ship to Arcona on 28 September, and then on to Gotenhafen for trials in the Gulf of Danzig. The ship's power-plant was given a thorough workout; Bismarck made measured-mile and high speed runs. As the ship's stability and manoeuvrability were being tested, a flaw in her design was discovered. When attempting to steer the ship solely through altering propeller revolutions, the crew learned that Bismarck could be kept on course only with great difficulty. Even with the outboard screws running at full power in opposite directions, they generated only a slight turning ability. Bismarcks main battery guns were first test-fired in late November. The tests proved she was a very stable gun platform. Trials lasted until December; Bismarck returned to Hamburg, arriving on 9 December, for minor alterations and the completion of the fitting-out process.
The ship was scheduled to return to Kiel on 24 January 1941, but a merchant vessel had been sunk in the Kiel Canal and prevented use of the waterway. Severe weather hampered efforts to remove the wreck, and Bismarck was not able to reach Kiel until March. The delay greatly frustrated Lindemann, who remarked that "[Bismarck] had been tied down at Hamburg for five weeks ... the precious time at sea lost as a result cannot be made up, and a significant delay in the final war deployment of the ship thus is unavoidable." While waiting to reach Kiel, Bismarck hosted Captain Anders Forshell, the Swedish naval attaché to Berlin. He returned to Sweden with a detailed description of the ship, which was subsequently leaked to Britain by pro-British elements in the Swedish Navy. The information provided the Royal Navy with its first full description of the vessel, although it lacked important facts, including top speed, radius of action, and displacement.
On 6 March, Bismarck received the order to steam to Kiel. On the way, the ship was escorted by several Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighters and a pair of armed merchant vessels, along with an icebreaker. At 08:45 on 8 March, Bismarck briefly ran aground on the southern shore of the Kiel Canal; she was freed within an hour. The ship reached Kiel the following day, where her crew stocked ammunition, fuel, and other supplies and applied a coat of dazzle paint to camouflage her. British bombers attacked the harbour without success on 12 March. On 17 March, the old battleship , now used as an icebreaker, escorted Bismarck through the ice to Gotenhafen, where the latter continued combat readiness training.
The Naval High Command ( or OKM), commanded by Admiral Erich Raeder, intended to continue the practice of using heavy ships as surface raiders against Allied merchant traffic in the Atlantic Ocean. The two Scharnhorst-class battleships were based in Brest, France, at the time, having just completed Operation Berlin, a major raid into the Atlantic. Initial planning for the next major operation involved these two ships and the recently completed Bismarck, which was to sortie from the Baltic and rendezvous with the two Scharnhorst-class ships in the Atlantic. The operation was initially scheduled for around 26 April 1941, when a new moon period would make conditions more favourable.
required a boiler overhaul following Operation Berlin; the workers discovered during the overhaul that the boilers were in worse condition than expected. She would also be unavailable for the planned sortie. Attacks by British bombers on supply depots in Kiel delayed repairs to the heavy cruisers and . The two ships would not be ready for action until July or August. The former was also too slow to keep up with Bismarck, and the latter had serious reliability problems, and were unsuitable in any event. Ultimately, it was decided that Bismarck and the heavy cruiser would sail together with the intention of meeting Gneisenau at sea. While preparations were underway, was torpedoed in Brest and damaged further by bombs when in drydock.
Admiral Günther Lütjens, (Fleet Chief) of the Kriegsmarine, chosen to lead the operation, wished to delay the operation at least until either Scharnhorst or Tirpitz became available, but the OKM decided to proceed with the operation, codenamed Operation Rheinübung, with a force consisting of only Bismarck and Prinz Eugen. At a final meeting with Raeder in Paris on 26 April, Lütjens was encouraged by his commander-in-chief to proceed and he eventually decided that an operation should begin as soon as possible to prevent the enemy gaining any respite.
Operation Rheinübung
On 5 May 1941, Hitler and Wehrmacht High Command Chief Wilhelm Keitel, with a large entourage, arrived to view Bismarck in Gotenhafen. The men were given an extensive tour of the ship, after which Hitler met Lütjens to discuss the forthcoming mission. On 16 May, Lütjens reported that Bismarck and Prinz Eugen were fully prepared for Operation Rheinübung; he was therefore ordered to proceed with the mission on the evening of 19 May. As part of the operational plans, a group of eighteen supply ships would be positioned to support Bismarck and Prinz Eugen. Four U-boats would be placed along the convoy routes between Halifax and Britain to scout for the raiders.