May 16, 2011 • 18 mins
The German battleship Bismarck was the most feared warship in the world - a powerful complement to U-boats. But when she sank the pride of the British fleet, the battle cruiser Hood, in a matter of minutes, her fate was sealed. Tune in to learn more.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm fair Dowdy and I'm to blame a chark reboarding.
And as you know, we've been talking about shipwrecks quite
a bit recently, and most recently we talked about military shipwrecks,
(00:23):
the Vassa, the Monitor, the Hunley, and the Yamato and
between the four. I was thinking about this, trying to
go over that list in my head. We had design flaws,
we had rushed schedules, we had air attacks, and we
had torpedoes. But this episode is going to combine all
of that. We have all four of those things in
one ship, plus a really heavy dose of revenge, which
(00:47):
always makes a good podcast. Yes, before we get to that, though,
we're gonna set the scene for you a little bit.
In early nineteen forty one, the United States was still
nearly a year away from entering World War Two, but
the country provided vital wartime supplies to the Allied nations,
and to do so, American merchant ships had to cross
the Atlantic to get to Europe. And this unbroken chain
(01:08):
of supplies was really vital for the United Kingdom since
they're an island nation. Yeah, so we all know pretty
much how effective the German u boats were at disrupting
this chain thinking the merchant ships. But the German navy
also knew that having a few massive battleships out there
would make the blockade a whole lot easier around England.
(01:28):
So that's why in May one they sent the battleship
Bismarck and the cruiser Prince Eugen to blockade Britain. That's
pretty scary because at this time the Bismarck was the
most feared warship in the world. Yeah, launched pretty recently
before that, and it was tough, very thick armor, very
(01:50):
fast and armed with very very big guns. It had
an efficient crew top equipment. It was like the ultimate ship. Yeah,
and everybody knew it too. In the first volumes of
his memoirs, Winston Churchill wrote that finishing work on two
new British battleships, the King George the Fifth and the
Prince of Wales, was vital because quote, the arrival of
the Bismarck on the oceans before these two ships were
(02:13):
completed would be disasters in the highest degree, as it
can Neither be caught nor killed, and would therefore range
freely throughout the oceans, rupturing all communications. And just in
case Churchill's quote isn't enough for you, there's a National
Geographic peace titled Nazi super Ship describing the Bismarck. So
I think that gives you a pretty good idea of
(02:36):
what kind of vessel this was, Yeah, pretty intimidating. So
May ninety one, the Bismarck and the Prince Eugen are
deployed from Gottenhoffen on the Baltic coast and they're planning
to wind their way around to the Atlantic. They're then
spotted off the coast of Norway by Royal Air Force reconnaissance,
but they slip away before anything can be done. So
(02:57):
the British Home Fleet converges onto the Atlantic to try
to off the ship, and they're covering all the routes
that they can. They cannot let the Bismarck get out
into the open, so there's no sign of the ship
for days and then finally on May twenty three, the
cruiser Norfolk sites the Bismarck in the Denmark Straight and
this is perfect because the Prince of Wales, which is
the new British battleship that England was rushing to complete
(03:19):
is there along with six destroyers and the battle cruiser Hood. Yeah,
and the Hood was a type of battle cruiser that
had been developed before World War One, and this type
of ship was really fast, designed to outrun ships, but
consequently not quite as well armored as other as some
other ships were. Nevertheless, the British really liked the battle
(03:41):
cruisers and had built quite a few of them during
the war during World War One, and the Hood was
built in nineteen eighteen and final British battle cruiser. But
even though she needed a refit by this point, she
was still kind of a point of pride for the
British and she had been sent out with the powerful
but still untested Prince Wales is kind of protection guidance.
(04:03):
You know, they would tag team. I guess. Yeah. So
the day after the cruiser Norfolk learns that the Bismarck
is in the area, the Prince of Wales spots the
German battleship. The Hood fires first, but she's going too
fast to be really accurate. The Bismark, on the other hand,
has stereoscopic range finders, so a hit to the Hood
causes an explosion and a huge fire. The ship then
(04:24):
breaks into two and sinks all of a sudden, and
all but three of the one thousand, four nineteen men
who are on the Hood die. Yeah, and so the
hood thinking means that it's payback time now for the British.
And even FDR was worried that with the Bismarck on
the looth, all sorts of damage might ensue. He was
actually afraid that the Bismarck might come bombard Halifax or
(04:47):
New York City, or maybe it would go around the
world and go to Japan, or maybe it would even
take Martinique. So there were all sorts of gloomy scenarios
about what the Bismarck on the loose might do. Churchill's response,
those pretty definitive think the Bismarck so this is revenge. Yeah,
it's literally revenge, right, because one of the ships that
(05:09):
the British deploy is actually called Revenge, the battleship Revenge
from Halifax and it's sent to the situation. But the
British actually deployed most of their available warships at this
point they take them off of their original missions. So
joining the Revenge are the battleships Rodney and the Ramillies,
for example, which leave behind their convoys and head straight
(05:29):
to the situation, which I have to imagine it would
be pretty scary to be out in you boat filled
waters if you were one of these convoys and you
see your battleship and most of the destroyers sail on
off all of a sudden and not comforting. They can't
spare any of them. So meanwhile, the Bismarck has a
few different options about what she can do. Admiral gun
(05:50):
thro Lutgens can take out the injured Prince of Wales,
which you know sustained a little bit of damage during
the same battle that sunk the hood Um, so they
could finish off the Prince of Wales and then go
back to Norway for repairs and refueling. Or the Bismarck
could head out into the Atlantic and the plan could
(06:11):
be to head to France for repairs and possibly resume
the blockade operation from there, because landing in France you'd
have a straighter shot then for the Atlantic. And the
Admiral chooses this second option, going out into the Atlantic
and eventually trying to get over to France. But the
Germans are also converging a lot of their fleet in
(06:31):
the area too, so they know that the British want
to sink the Bismarck, and they're bringing every available worship
they can into the area. So the Germans are thinking
if they put all of their available U boats in
the area, the Bismarck might be able to trail all
these British ships into a trap of sorts. If the
U boats stretch across the ocean and create a net
(06:52):
of sorts, it could be really, really disastrous for the British.
There's a big problem though with the plan. Yeah, the
Bismarck is running low on fuel and it becomes clear
that there will be just enough for them to get
to France, none for the traps or more importantly, for
any diversions. And to make the situation more complicated, on
tiny swordfish planes are launched from the aircraft carrier Victorious.
(07:15):
A torpedo hit causes minimal damage, but it's the Bismarck's
first casualty. Yeah, there's actually the first sailor is killed
aboard the Bismarck, so literally its first casualty. But the
next day the Bismarck reduces its speed and starts performing
some repairs because it's accumulated a few problems by this point,
and also engages a little bit with the Prince of Whales,
(07:38):
even though neither ship is ultimately hit. That night, though,
the Bismarck finally manages to shake off the British ships
that have been nearby and breaks free and the British
ships lose contact. Unfortunately, though for the Bismarck, they don't
realize that the British have lost that radio contact. They've
lost their signal. They don't know where they are, but
(08:00):
the Bismarck doesn't know that. Yeah, so they keep sending
messages out that get all bunched together and end up
coming out in one very, very long signal. And by
the time they're warned that the Brits actually did lose contact,
and by the time they start maintaining that strict radio silence,
it's too late. The British have already picked up on
the signal again. Yeah. Still, though, the mood is actually
(08:22):
merry on board the Bismarck. That night, Hitler even sends
a birthday message to add religions. But by the next
morning patrol aircraft find the ship. The Bismarck still has
a chance, though, to make a break for France. At
this point, there's no way that the British ships that
are nearby can catch up with them unless the Bismarck
slows down considerably slowed down, right, But the best option
(08:43):
the British have is to use their aircraft carrier, the
Arc Royal, to deploy more tiny swordfish planes with torpedoes. Yeah,
and this time those swordfish planes get two hits and
one of them jams the Bismarck's twin rudders and makes
it so she can't maneuver anymore and it will be
impossible for her to get away. And just by the way,
you might want to look up the swordfish planes. They
(09:04):
really look kind of like balsa wood biplane, super tiny,
especially when you see them compared to something the size
of the Bismarke. It's pretty striking. So the ship, the
Bismarck is bombarded through the night by nearby British and
Polish destroyers, but there are no hits. By the next morning,
the Rodney and the King George the Fifth arrive and
(09:26):
open fire. The Norfolk arrives pretty soon and joins in.
Then the cruiser the Dorset shore, and ultimately it's a
two hour long attack, with the Rodney even getting into
point blank range by the Bismarck. Ultimately, two thousand, eight
hundred and sixties seven shells are fired on this ship,
but it just won't go down. Finally, though, the Bismark
(09:48):
does go down, and it's three torpedoes from the Dorset
shore that sink her the morning of May with the
captain saluting on deck and the flag flying, So just
to give you an image of what that would have
looked like. Some people though, have suggested that the Bismarck
was scuttled by her own crew, yeah, instead of being
sunk by the Allied ships. But regardless, the captain had
(10:10):
already given the order to abandon ship and around eight
hundred people on board managed to escape. Some of the survivors.
You can actually see interviews taped interviews with some of
the survivors, and they were count working really deep inside
the ship at their stations and eventually realizing that the
British were shooting more and more and they were shooting
(10:32):
less and less, and when the ship went silent, it
was time to go, and they picked their way out
of the labyrinth I mean this huge ship, you can
imagine what it might be like underneath it all. And
for those who made it onto the deck, of course,
there's still the bombardment going on, so there's metal everywhere,
and there's bodies and they try to protect themselves behind
the gun turrets. And finally, of those eight hundreds who survived,
(10:56):
not really that many managed to ultimately escape and be rescued.
The British ships picked up a little more than one
hundred men, but then they left the area after a
U boat scare. Some accounts even say that men were
in the process of being hauled up when the British
ships had to leave. A little bit later U boats
and a Spanish heavy cruiser come around and find a
(11:18):
few more guys. But basically, if you weren't on that
those first American ships in the area, that was it. Yeah.
There were only one hundred and fifteen men of the
eight hundred that escaped which were rescued. Two thousand, two
hundred officers and men were killed total, and the survivors,
of course then are prisoners of war. They were interrogated
(11:39):
and kept as prisoners for for the rest of the war.
I don't think that, uh, there was too much information
that was obtained from them, though they seemed to be
like they were knowledgeable about their own immediate job, but
not how the whole ship operated. But the Royal Navy
nevertheless considered sinking the Bismarck to be one of its
biggest comp Blishman's It's still pretty highly regarded, and that's
(12:03):
partly because the battleship seemed invincible. But clearly something went
wrong for this huge monster ship too ultimately be taken
down like this. Yeah, so what was it? Well, some
people think that the Bismarck just might not have been ready.
She had lost training time at sea due to the
severe winter of and there was no making up for
(12:25):
lost time. Basically, her schedule was absolutely inflexible. There wasn't
even enough time to put her through the complete battery
of naval ordinance tests. Some of her artillery, fire control
and radar equipment was actually installed too late to test
even so there was no way to know. Yeah, and
even the stuff that was tested didn't seem entirely up
to snuff. The report, which was filed ironically four days
(12:47):
after the ship had already thunk, made a hundred and
seventeen observations and recommendations regarding improvements to weapons systems, and
a lot of these were minor, but there were a
few pretty serious ones, and some regarded the ammunition. Um
that was pretty telling because the Prince of Wales had
actually been struck by several German duds, that suggests the problem.
(13:09):
And the onboard anti aircraft artillery made up one third
of the suggestions. And if we think about those swordfish,
not a single swordfish was was shot down, so clearly,
even though the Germans were firing pretty heavily on them,
there was a problem there. And I think the report
even noted that there weren't the correct anti aircraft technical
(13:31):
manuals and diagrams on board, so not even the literature
they needed. Yeah, but of course all these recommendations came
way too late. Um. But the takeaways here where that
even though it went down eventually, the Bismarck was remarkably tough,
that withstood a constant barrage for hours. Well the hood
had gone down in just a matter of minutes. It
just wasn't equipped to fight aircraft. I mean that seemed
(13:53):
like the thing that kind of really did it in
and I mean clearly that was also a hint that
air power would be the future of the war, months
before Pearl Harbor even happened. So I guess historically that's
probably one of the biggest interests in the Bismarck, that
it's this hint about what ends up coming later in
the war. But and since this is a shipwreck, we
(14:15):
gotta we gotta close out with our our fine, there's right, definitely.
In nine Robert Ballard, the famous explorer, discovered the Bismarck
six hundred miles off the French coast at fifteen thousand
feet and it was in very good shape. Still. He
had of course found the Titanic just three years earlier,
(14:35):
and then in two thousand and four the Hood was
located and both of the ships weren't touched out of
respect to the dead, but they were thoroughly photographed and
videoed and documented. Um I think you can look up
a lot of pictures of the two of them and
look at diagrams, and you know, people have tried to
figure out what exactly went wrong, you know, what were
(14:56):
the fatal strikes and what explosions occurred on the Hood,
and just trying to piece together what happened trips to
both of the sites were also sort of memorial services too,
because um, there were still survivors of both of them,
and at the Hood a memorial plaque was actually released
by its full living survivor. At the time, I thought
(15:16):
that was one of the most interesting things about researching
this episode, seeing some of the survivor's accounts. And you
can even see pictures of the men in the water
from the Bismarck trying to get aboard the Dorset shore well,
you know, grabbing the ropes and grabbing onto floating things.
It's pretty scary looking. Well, that about does it for
(15:37):
this shipwreck mini series that we've put together here. Um,
we've covered a lot of cool shipwrecks, and thank you
to everyone for all of your great suggestions, and we're
holding on to the rest so hopefully we can do
more podcasts on them later. I think we realized from
doing this that all of these, even though we did
a lot of them as a list, a lot of
these make great standalone podcasts. We want to save the
rest so we can cover them fully definitely later on.
(15:59):
The Bismarck was ultimately intended for a list, It was
just too long. It was just too long. The story
is too good. But um, it's like I said, we've
have it covered here and we're gonna now move on
to listener mail. So this is kind of an upbeat
listener mail because I don't want to clothe down on
such a sad ending. Um it's from Jenny and she wrote,
(16:22):
Dear Sarah and Dablina. The summer will be a long
one for me as I finished my year abroad in
France this week but did not go back to university
until October. So I've decided to take a grand tour
like Lord Byron. Although I live in the UK, I've
never visited much of the continent before, but your podcast
have definitely inspired me to take some of Europe's history.
(16:43):
My stops will include Paris, were all thie Versy and
Marie Intonett's house, Florence where Michelangelo's David is displayed and
many medic cheese are buried, Rome, with a day to
see the Vatican and Mad King Ludwig's castle. And then
she thought that she's gonna stop in Vienna, so she
was hoping maybe she'd get a little Habsburg history and
(17:05):
I know that's a popular quest too. I think they
came up a few times in our in our Bourbon theory,
and I got mentions. Yeah, but it sounds like a
really good trip, Jenny, I'm kind of jealous. Can we come?
I know you pack us in your suitcase, but um,
I always like hearing about people's podcast inspired vacation. It
(17:25):
makes me feel good. If y'all go visit museums we
talked about and stuff, but ye, send us postcards. Definitely
send us postcards and and just let us know if
you're going somewhere cool this summer. We promise we won't
be too too Jella, No, we won't. Well like reading
your stories. We may read some here and you can
send those, of course, always to our email at history
(17:45):
podcast to how stuff works dot com, or you can
hit us up on Facebook or on Twitter at mist
in history. And if you want to check out what
we're up to, you can find us on the blogs
on our home page at www dot how stuff works
dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics,
(18:06):
visit how stuff works dot com. To learn more about
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app has a Rise Download it today on iTunes, M
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm fair Dowdy and I'm to blame a chark reboarding.
And as you know, we've been talking about shipwrecks quite
a bit recently, and most recently we talked about military shipwrecks,
(00:23):
the Vassa, the Monitor, the Hunley, and the Yamato and
between the four. I was thinking about this, trying to
go over that list in my head. We had design flaws,
we had rushed schedules, we had air attacks, and we
had torpedoes. But this episode is going to combine all
of that. We have all four of those things in
one ship, plus a really heavy dose of revenge, which
(00:47):
always makes a good podcast. Yes, before we get to that, though,
we're gonna set the scene for you a little bit.
In early nineteen forty one, the United States was still
nearly a year away from entering World War Two, but
the country provided vital wartime supplies to the Allied nations,
and to do so, American merchant ships had to cross
the Atlantic to get to Europe. And this unbroken chain
(01:08):
of supplies was really vital for the United Kingdom since
they're an island nation. Yeah, so we all know pretty
much how effective the German u boats were at disrupting
this chain thinking the merchant ships. But the German navy
also knew that having a few massive battleships out there
would make the blockade a whole lot easier around England.
(01:28):
So that's why in May one they sent the battleship
Bismarck and the cruiser Prince Eugen to blockade Britain. That's
pretty scary because at this time the Bismarck was the
most feared warship in the world. Yeah, launched pretty recently
before that, and it was tough, very thick armor, very
(01:50):
fast and armed with very very big guns. It had
an efficient crew top equipment. It was like the ultimate ship. Yeah,
and everybody knew it too. In the first volumes of
his memoirs, Winston Churchill wrote that finishing work on two
new British battleships, the King George the Fifth and the
Prince of Wales, was vital because quote, the arrival of
the Bismarck on the oceans before these two ships were
(02:13):
completed would be disasters in the highest degree, as it
can Neither be caught nor killed, and would therefore range
freely throughout the oceans, rupturing all communications. And just in
case Churchill's quote isn't enough for you, there's a National
Geographic peace titled Nazi super Ship describing the Bismarck. So
I think that gives you a pretty good idea of
(02:36):
what kind of vessel this was, Yeah, pretty intimidating. So
May ninety one, the Bismarck and the Prince Eugen are
deployed from Gottenhoffen on the Baltic coast and they're planning
to wind their way around to the Atlantic. They're then
spotted off the coast of Norway by Royal Air Force reconnaissance,
but they slip away before anything can be done. So
(02:57):
the British Home Fleet converges onto the Atlantic to try
to off the ship, and they're covering all the routes
that they can. They cannot let the Bismarck get out
into the open, so there's no sign of the ship
for days and then finally on May twenty three, the
cruiser Norfolk sites the Bismarck in the Denmark Straight and
this is perfect because the Prince of Wales, which is
the new British battleship that England was rushing to complete
(03:19):
is there along with six destroyers and the battle cruiser Hood. Yeah,
and the Hood was a type of battle cruiser that
had been developed before World War One, and this type
of ship was really fast, designed to outrun ships, but
consequently not quite as well armored as other as some
other ships were. Nevertheless, the British really liked the battle
(03:41):
cruisers and had built quite a few of them during
the war during World War One, and the Hood was
built in nineteen eighteen and final British battle cruiser. But
even though she needed a refit by this point, she
was still kind of a point of pride for the
British and she had been sent out with the powerful
but still untested Prince Wales is kind of protection guidance.
(04:03):
You know, they would tag team. I guess. Yeah. So
the day after the cruiser Norfolk learns that the Bismarck
is in the area, the Prince of Wales spots the
German battleship. The Hood fires first, but she's going too
fast to be really accurate. The Bismark, on the other hand,
has stereoscopic range finders, so a hit to the Hood
causes an explosion and a huge fire. The ship then
(04:24):
breaks into two and sinks all of a sudden, and
all but three of the one thousand, four nineteen men
who are on the Hood die. Yeah, and so the
hood thinking means that it's payback time now for the British.
And even FDR was worried that with the Bismarck on
the looth, all sorts of damage might ensue. He was
actually afraid that the Bismarck might come bombard Halifax or
(04:47):
New York City, or maybe it would go around the
world and go to Japan, or maybe it would even
take Martinique. So there were all sorts of gloomy scenarios
about what the Bismarck on the loose might do. Churchill's response,
those pretty definitive think the Bismarck so this is revenge. Yeah,
it's literally revenge, right, because one of the ships that
(05:09):
the British deploy is actually called Revenge, the battleship Revenge
from Halifax and it's sent to the situation. But the
British actually deployed most of their available warships at this
point they take them off of their original missions. So
joining the Revenge are the battleships Rodney and the Ramillies,
for example, which leave behind their convoys and head straight
(05:29):
to the situation, which I have to imagine it would
be pretty scary to be out in you boat filled
waters if you were one of these convoys and you
see your battleship and most of the destroyers sail on
off all of a sudden and not comforting. They can't
spare any of them. So meanwhile, the Bismarck has a
few different options about what she can do. Admiral gun
(05:50):
thro Lutgens can take out the injured Prince of Wales,
which you know sustained a little bit of damage during
the same battle that sunk the hood Um, so they
could finish off the Prince of Wales and then go
back to Norway for repairs and refueling. Or the Bismarck
could head out into the Atlantic and the plan could
(06:11):
be to head to France for repairs and possibly resume
the blockade operation from there, because landing in France you'd
have a straighter shot then for the Atlantic. And the
Admiral chooses this second option, going out into the Atlantic
and eventually trying to get over to France. But the
Germans are also converging a lot of their fleet in
(06:31):
the area too, so they know that the British want
to sink the Bismarck, and they're bringing every available worship
they can into the area. So the Germans are thinking
if they put all of their available U boats in
the area, the Bismarck might be able to trail all
these British ships into a trap of sorts. If the
U boats stretch across the ocean and create a net
(06:52):
of sorts, it could be really, really disastrous for the British.
There's a big problem though with the plan. Yeah, the
Bismarck is running low on fuel and it becomes clear
that there will be just enough for them to get
to France, none for the traps or more importantly, for
any diversions. And to make the situation more complicated, on
tiny swordfish planes are launched from the aircraft carrier Victorious.
(07:15):
A torpedo hit causes minimal damage, but it's the Bismarck's
first casualty. Yeah, there's actually the first sailor is killed
aboard the Bismarck, so literally its first casualty. But the
next day the Bismarck reduces its speed and starts performing
some repairs because it's accumulated a few problems by this point,
and also engages a little bit with the Prince of Whales,
(07:38):
even though neither ship is ultimately hit. That night, though,
the Bismarck finally manages to shake off the British ships
that have been nearby and breaks free and the British
ships lose contact. Unfortunately, though for the Bismarck, they don't
realize that the British have lost that radio contact. They've
lost their signal. They don't know where they are, but
(08:00):
the Bismarck doesn't know that. Yeah, so they keep sending
messages out that get all bunched together and end up
coming out in one very, very long signal. And by
the time they're warned that the Brits actually did lose contact,
and by the time they start maintaining that strict radio silence,
it's too late. The British have already picked up on
the signal again. Yeah. Still, though, the mood is actually
(08:22):
merry on board the Bismarck. That night, Hitler even sends
a birthday message to add religions. But by the next
morning patrol aircraft find the ship. The Bismarck still has
a chance, though, to make a break for France. At
this point, there's no way that the British ships that
are nearby can catch up with them unless the Bismarck
slows down considerably slowed down, right, But the best option
(08:43):
the British have is to use their aircraft carrier, the
Arc Royal, to deploy more tiny swordfish planes with torpedoes. Yeah,
and this time those swordfish planes get two hits and
one of them jams the Bismarck's twin rudders and makes
it so she can't maneuver anymore and it will be
impossible for her to get away. And just by the way,
you might want to look up the swordfish planes. They
(09:04):
really look kind of like balsa wood biplane, super tiny,
especially when you see them compared to something the size
of the Bismarke. It's pretty striking. So the ship, the
Bismarck is bombarded through the night by nearby British and
Polish destroyers, but there are no hits. By the next morning,
the Rodney and the King George the Fifth arrive and
(09:26):
open fire. The Norfolk arrives pretty soon and joins in.
Then the cruiser the Dorset shore, and ultimately it's a
two hour long attack, with the Rodney even getting into
point blank range by the Bismarck. Ultimately, two thousand, eight
hundred and sixties seven shells are fired on this ship,
but it just won't go down. Finally, though, the Bismark
(09:48):
does go down, and it's three torpedoes from the Dorset
shore that sink her the morning of May with the
captain saluting on deck and the flag flying, So just
to give you an image of what that would have
looked like. Some people though, have suggested that the Bismarck
was scuttled by her own crew, yeah, instead of being
sunk by the Allied ships. But regardless, the captain had
(10:10):
already given the order to abandon ship and around eight
hundred people on board managed to escape. Some of the survivors.
You can actually see interviews taped interviews with some of
the survivors, and they were count working really deep inside
the ship at their stations and eventually realizing that the
British were shooting more and more and they were shooting
(10:32):
less and less, and when the ship went silent, it
was time to go, and they picked their way out
of the labyrinth I mean this huge ship, you can
imagine what it might be like underneath it all. And
for those who made it onto the deck, of course,
there's still the bombardment going on, so there's metal everywhere,
and there's bodies and they try to protect themselves behind
the gun turrets. And finally, of those eight hundreds who survived,
(10:56):
not really that many managed to ultimately escape and be rescued.
The British ships picked up a little more than one
hundred men, but then they left the area after a
U boat scare. Some accounts even say that men were
in the process of being hauled up when the British
ships had to leave. A little bit later U boats
and a Spanish heavy cruiser come around and find a
(11:18):
few more guys. But basically, if you weren't on that
those first American ships in the area, that was it. Yeah.
There were only one hundred and fifteen men of the
eight hundred that escaped which were rescued. Two thousand, two
hundred officers and men were killed total, and the survivors,
of course then are prisoners of war. They were interrogated
(11:39):
and kept as prisoners for for the rest of the war.
I don't think that, uh, there was too much information
that was obtained from them, though they seemed to be
like they were knowledgeable about their own immediate job, but
not how the whole ship operated. But the Royal Navy
nevertheless considered sinking the Bismarck to be one of its
biggest comp Blishman's It's still pretty highly regarded, and that's
(12:03):
partly because the battleship seemed invincible. But clearly something went
wrong for this huge monster ship too ultimately be taken
down like this. Yeah, so what was it? Well, some
people think that the Bismarck just might not have been ready.
She had lost training time at sea due to the
severe winter of and there was no making up for
(12:25):
lost time. Basically, her schedule was absolutely inflexible. There wasn't
even enough time to put her through the complete battery
of naval ordinance tests. Some of her artillery, fire control
and radar equipment was actually installed too late to test
even so there was no way to know. Yeah, and
even the stuff that was tested didn't seem entirely up
to snuff. The report, which was filed ironically four days
(12:47):
after the ship had already thunk, made a hundred and
seventeen observations and recommendations regarding improvements to weapons systems, and
a lot of these were minor, but there were a
few pretty serious ones, and some regarded the ammunition. Um
that was pretty telling because the Prince of Wales had
actually been struck by several German duds, that suggests the problem.
(13:09):
And the onboard anti aircraft artillery made up one third
of the suggestions. And if we think about those swordfish,
not a single swordfish was was shot down, so clearly,
even though the Germans were firing pretty heavily on them,
there was a problem there. And I think the report
even noted that there weren't the correct anti aircraft technical
(13:31):
manuals and diagrams on board, so not even the literature
they needed. Yeah, but of course all these recommendations came
way too late. Um. But the takeaways here where that
even though it went down eventually, the Bismarck was remarkably tough,
that withstood a constant barrage for hours. Well the hood
had gone down in just a matter of minutes. It
just wasn't equipped to fight aircraft. I mean that seemed
(13:53):
like the thing that kind of really did it in
and I mean clearly that was also a hint that
air power would be the future of the war, months
before Pearl Harbor even happened. So I guess historically that's
probably one of the biggest interests in the Bismarck, that
it's this hint about what ends up coming later in
the war. But and since this is a shipwreck, we
(14:15):
gotta we gotta close out with our our fine, there's right, definitely.
In nine Robert Ballard, the famous explorer, discovered the Bismarck
six hundred miles off the French coast at fifteen thousand
feet and it was in very good shape. Still. He
had of course found the Titanic just three years earlier,
(14:35):
and then in two thousand and four the Hood was
located and both of the ships weren't touched out of
respect to the dead, but they were thoroughly photographed and
videoed and documented. Um I think you can look up
a lot of pictures of the two of them and
look at diagrams, and you know, people have tried to
figure out what exactly went wrong, you know, what were
(14:56):
the fatal strikes and what explosions occurred on the Hood,
and just trying to piece together what happened trips to
both of the sites were also sort of memorial services too,
because um, there were still survivors of both of them,
and at the Hood a memorial plaque was actually released
by its full living survivor. At the time, I thought
(15:16):
that was one of the most interesting things about researching
this episode, seeing some of the survivor's accounts. And you
can even see pictures of the men in the water
from the Bismarck trying to get aboard the Dorset shore well,
you know, grabbing the ropes and grabbing onto floating things.
It's pretty scary looking. Well, that about does it for
(15:37):
this shipwreck mini series that we've put together here. Um,
we've covered a lot of cool shipwrecks, and thank you
to everyone for all of your great suggestions, and we're
holding on to the rest so hopefully we can do
more podcasts on them later. I think we realized from
doing this that all of these, even though we did
a lot of them as a list, a lot of
these make great standalone podcasts. We want to save the
rest so we can cover them fully definitely later on.
(15:59):
The Bismarck was ultimately intended for a list, It was
just too long. It was just too long. The story
is too good. But um, it's like I said, we've
have it covered here and we're gonna now move on
to listener mail. So this is kind of an upbeat
listener mail because I don't want to clothe down on
such a sad ending. Um it's from Jenny and she wrote,
(16:22):
Dear Sarah and Dablina. The summer will be a long
one for me as I finished my year abroad in
France this week but did not go back to university
until October. So I've decided to take a grand tour
like Lord Byron. Although I live in the UK, I've
never visited much of the continent before, but your podcast
have definitely inspired me to take some of Europe's history.
(16:43):
My stops will include Paris, were all thie Versy and
Marie Intonett's house, Florence where Michelangelo's David is displayed and
many medic cheese are buried, Rome, with a day to
see the Vatican and Mad King Ludwig's castle. And then
she thought that she's gonna stop in Vienna, so she
was hoping maybe she'd get a little Habsburg history and
(17:05):
I know that's a popular quest too. I think they
came up a few times in our in our Bourbon theory,
and I got mentions. Yeah, but it sounds like a
really good trip, Jenny, I'm kind of jealous. Can we come?
I know you pack us in your suitcase, but um,
I always like hearing about people's podcast inspired vacation. It
(17:25):
makes me feel good. If y'all go visit museums we
talked about and stuff, but ye, send us postcards. Definitely
send us postcards and and just let us know if
you're going somewhere cool this summer. We promise we won't
be too too Jella, No, we won't. Well like reading
your stories. We may read some here and you can
send those, of course, always to our email at history
(17:45):
podcast to how stuff works dot com, or you can
hit us up on Facebook or on Twitter at mist
in history. And if you want to check out what
we're up to, you can find us on the blogs
on our home page at www dot how stuff works
dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics,
(18:06):
visit how stuff works dot com. To learn more about
the podcast, click on the podcast icon in the upper
right corner of our homepage. The how stuff Works iPhone
app has a Rise Download it today on iTunes, M
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Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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