The Destruction of the Bismarck

📖 The Scoop

Late in the morning of May 27th, 1941, the German battleship Bismarck was sunk by an overwhelming British armada in a fierce battle that lasted ninety minutes. Admiral Gunther Lutjens, Captain Ernst Lindemann and 2,206 men of her crew were lost; only 115 survived. Five days earlier, at 5:00 p.m. on May 22nd, an RAF reconnaissance plane flying low off the coast of Norway spotted four large warships in the sea below. At 32,000 tons apiece, the sight of the battle cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau was shocking enough; even more so was the sight of the 42,000-ton sister ships - the pride of the German navy Bismarck and Tirpitz, ships shrouded in myth, awesome and mysterious behemoths of destruction. Their purpose in these waters was obvious and chilling: the German navy was sending this powerful four-battleship task force to seize control of the North Atlantic sea lanes. What was at stake in the late spring of 1941 was nothing less than the survival of a free Britain. With almost all of Europe under Hitler's thumb, and the United States still frustratingly neutral, Britain and the Commonwealth alone were left to fight Germany ... [This volume offers an] account of the battle. This is history of the best sort, at once vivid and authoritative, the definitive account of one of the most dramatic and momentous events of the Second World War.

Genre: History / Wars & Conflicts / World War II / General (fancy, right?)