How Bismarck Sank
The American conclusions have infuriated the British, who denounce them as revisionist claptrap. December 3, 2002 Visiting Bismarck, Explorers Revise Its Story By William J Broad THE Bismarck was the world’s most feared warship, a Nazi superweapon meant to sever the convoy lifeline that kept Britain alive in World War II. Its guns could fire one-ton shells 24 miles. So upon its debut in 1941, the British responded with everything they had.
Resolve grew steely after the Bismarck destroyed the Hood, considered Britain’s finest ship, killing all but 3 of its 1,415 men. “Sink the Bismarck!” became the battle cry. After being pursued by a fleet of British ships and aircraft, and constant pounding by shells and torpedoes, the Bismarck went down in 3 miles of water, 600 miles off the coast of France,
on May 27, 1941. It was the eighth day of the warship’s first mission. The victory became a monument of British pride and, in time, a hit film, a popular song and a small industry of Bismarck books and television shows. There is just one problem. New evidence, detailed in interviews, videotapes and photographs, suggests that the story is wrong. “We conclusively proved there was no way the British sank that ship,” said Dr. Alfred S.
McLaren , a naval expert who studied the wreck on two expeditions, this year and last. “It was scuttled.” This conclusion is still hotly contested by British researchers. But five expeditions have reconnoitered the site, and three independent teams of American explorers, including Dr. McLaren, a retired submariner and emeritus president of the Explorers Club in New York, have concluded that the famous ship is in surprisingly good shape.
No major damage from enemy fire is visible on the sides of its hull, the American explorers say. That fact alone, they add, suggests that the Bismarck was in fact scuttled – as German survivors have claimed all along, saying that their naval tradition was to deliberately sink ships in danger of falling into enemy hands.
David Irving writes:
NOW what did I write in Hitler’s War (published in 1977) and then in ” Churchill’s War “, vol. i: “Struggle for Power” (published in 1987). Oh yes: Churchill’s War: The biggest battleship in the world was no longer a fighting machine, but she was unsinkable. Her guns fell silent by ten a.m., their last ammunition spent. A message from Admiral Tovey arrived in London: the battleship could not be sunk by gunfire.
It did not matter, because even as Churchill’s Cabinet met at ten-thirty to accept the loss of Crete, engineer officers aboard Bismarck were blowing open her seacocks to scuttle her. She went down at eleven a.m. Hitler’s War: At noon Hitler learned that the British government had announced the sinking of Bismarck an hour before.
Disabled and her last ammnition spent, Bismarck had scuttled herself under the guns of the British navy; she sank with her colours honourably flying and the loss of some twenty-one hundred lives. HOW was I so sure of this?
I had been told the facts by Rear Admiral Puttkamer , Hitler’s naval adjutant (