Sinking of the Battleship Bismarck - Animated

the Bismark a brand-new German battleship that some believed to be unsinkable leaves Gerson Arvind if the Royal Navy can't find and stop her she will do fatal damage to the Atlantic convoys that are feeding Britain and keeping her in the war the great pursuit has begun with the growing u-boat threat in the Atlantic Britain is struggling to keep her supply lines open naval convoys transport food and oil and war materiel from the rest of the Empire and the North America's but the silent underwater hunters are doing great damage the situation is bleak but in May 1941 still just sustainable however the German plan for bismarck operation Reiner book is to escape the British naval blockade on Germany and make her way into the North Atlantic for you to prey on merchant shipping at range with her H 15-inch guns and with 320 millimeter thick belt armor there's nothing that convoy escorts can do about it if successful Bismarck could dealer damaging blow to the British war effort after skirting the Norwegian coast Bismarck arrives at Bergen with her s ports heavy cruiser Prinz Morgan for a final resupply the Royal Navy surface fleet dominates the North Sea so they hope to remain undetected they never see the Coastal Command Spitfire that spots them and return German recon flights over Scarpa flow to show the British fleet still anchors Vice Admiral Gunther Lucian's has no reason to believe the British know of their whereabouts and the two German ships sail north the Spitfire returns the photographs of Bismarck and the Royal Navy deploys its first forces to find her British battleship HMS Prince of Wales battle cruiser HMS hood and six destroyers slip their moorings and set sail into the Atlantic HMS Haute jewel of the Royal Navy the most powerful ship in the world for twenty years is about to meet her match other ships are already patrolling the Atlantic and join the search for this mark Reuters Norfolk and Suffolk are the first to spot her they are no match in firepower so try to keep a safe distance and observe on the morning of the 24th Hood and the Prince of Wales arrive the two pairs of heavy ships are pretty evenly matched but the wind is blowing spray into the rangefinders of British ships at 5:52 a.m. they open fire food initially fires on the oigan before changing to target the Bismarck itself at 5:55 Bismarck and the Prince organ fire back the Prince of Wales and Bismarck sustained some damaging exchanges and Bismarck develops an oil leak who takes a hit causing fire at 6:00 a.m. a new salvo tears through hoods weak top deck armor a shell burrows into the heart of the ship and detonates the entire spine of the ship snaps into as the magazine explodes and both rear turrets are blown into the sea within seconds the mighty Hood the naval superpower of the interwar years sings now outnumbered and taking punishing heads the Prince of Wales disengages defeated Liu Chen's realizes that this mark took too much damage in her last engagement to carry on the convoy raiding mission she will have to make her escape suppressed for repairs the British Admiralty is shocked by the loss of HMS hood and decide to commit more of their Atlantic naval firepower to find and sink Bismarck Bismark oil slick is giving the Suffolk and Norfolk an easy shadow to direct the first reinforcements approaching to join the chase aircraft carrier victorious battleship King jaws v and battle cruiser repulse move in from the east there's a problem mate such was the need to react quickly to send ships into the Atlantic to find this man victorious has been routed straight from exercises where she was introducing her new squadron of swordfish torpedo bombers to ship operations her pilots are not operational have no experience and some have only performed a carrier landing for the first time days previously Prince Egan is to continue the raiding mission alone Bismarck turns and fires on her pursuers to allow organ to escape at 10 p.m. or 6 p.m. local time victorious launches had nine inexperienced swordfish cruise and Faulkner fighters to observe the attack they have difficulties finding bismarck that eventually make their attacks under heavy fire 1 swordfish drops a torpedo which detonates against the hull but doesn't cause any major damage as day turns to night the pursuers lose sight of Bismarck and then lose radar contacts Bismarck changes course directly towards France away to the southeast the Royal Navy has ordered battleship Rodney and cruises Dorsetshire and Edinburgh to join the chase force H is on route from Gibraltar made up of carrier Ark Royal battle cruiser renown and Cruiser Sheffield the pursuers are searching for Bismarck loo Chen's makes a mistake he continues to transmit frequent radio message reports to the German Admiralty letting them know that he now intends to sail to Brest radio direction finders across Britain pick up the message and are able to broadly triangulate of this mast position at each message transmission the code breakers are Bletchley Park then used their top-secret Enigma machine to decipher the message the British Admiralty now know where she is and where she is heading five destroyers including one Polish are re tasks from escorting nearby convoy WS 8b to the chase Coastal Command aircraft are dropping mines on the approaches in two breasts British love changes a long-range RAF Catalina flying boat clients was it came to search for and reports the location of Bismarck to the British fleet the problem to overcome now is that the Bismarck is still matching the speed of the Royal Navy ships to catch it would require slowing it down a few hours later our Royal Air Force H launches her swordfish torpedo bombers it hasn't been communicated to the pilots that light cruiser Sheffield has used her speed to catch up with the Bismarck and shadow her and in the terrible weather conditions they miss identify the two ships they drop their torpedoes against HMS Sheffield luckily the new and untested magnetic detonators in the torpedoes explode the weapons prematurely and Sheffield gets away unscathed the mishap allows Ark Royal to replace the faulty detonators for use against Bismarck fifteen swordfish again launched and this time they find Bismarck they attack from different directions almost simultaneously under ferocious a a fire three torpedoes hit critically one has jammed her rudder and she loses nearly all steering vice-admiral Nugent's sends a message to germany ship a maneuverable we shall fight to the last shell overnight the Royal Navy repositioned for the final engagement while destroyers harass Bismarck with torpedo attacks she may be disabled but the guns that son HMS hood in six minutes are still very much a threat at 8:43 a.m. HMS Rodney and King jaws v move head-on against Bismarck both battleships for most guns fire the first salvo and as they fall the Bismarck returns a full broadside against them the 55 second flight time of the massive barrage is tense but the shells fall short of the British ships cruiser Norfolk joins the engagement with her 8-inch guns at 8 miles range king george v and rodney turned to bring their bra size to bear and Cruiser Dorsetshire joins the engagement Bismarck is beginning to take hits to her superstructure igniting deck fires Rodney aggressively continues to close the distance a shell lands danger close off the starboard bow it's the closest to a direct hit the British receive as the return fire from Bismarck begins to wane under the ferocious bombardment she's lost hydraulic power to her a gun turret her B turret takes a direct hit disabling one of the guns and another barrel bursts in her after turret rodney moves in closer hounding bismarck with continuous broadsides the shorter range secondary guns on the king jaws v are brought into action she never raises a flag of surrender and so the onslaught continues over an hour later the British commanders cannot help but look at Bismarck in awe and admiration the mighty ship has taken a pounding remains afloat for now a burning wreck that still defiantly flying her colors she never surrenders knowing that the job is done and the German u-boats are nearby the British withdraw Dorsetshire torpedoes Bismarck and then begins to pick up survivors with the destroyer Maori surely after the Bismarck finally goes under the waves the loss resulted in the German command deciding that they would never again risk German battleships to raise supply convoys in the Atlantic after the sinking Admiral John Toby of the Royal Navy said the Bismarck had put up a most gallant fight against impossible odds worthy of the old days of the Imperial German Navy and she went down with her colours flying

Channel: The Operations Room

Views: 3,124,147

Keywords: bismarck, battleship, ww2, hms hood, battle of the atlantic, royal navy, Kriegsmarine, swordfish, history, time-lapse, animated, time lapse, bismark, warship, second world war, war, documentary

Id: my3oaSqfIEU

Length: 10min 23sec (623 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 07 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/Lanhdanan]

The Canadian Band, The Tragically Hip, made a song about this sinking. To this day I still get chills and tears listening to it. Powerful.