The wreck was located in June 1989 by Robert Ballard, and has since been further surveyed by several other expeditions. Most experts agree that the battle damage would have caused her to sink eventually. 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. 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. Two days later, heading for occupied France to effect repairs, Bismarck was attacked by fifteen Fairey Swordfish torpedo bombers from the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal one scored a hit that rendered the battleship's steering gear inoperable. The destruction of Hood spurred a relentless pursuit by the Royal Navy involving dozens of warships. Bismarck suffered sufficient damage from three hits by Prince of Wales to force an end to the raiding mission. 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. At the Battle of the Denmark Strait, the battlecruiser HMS Hood initially engaged Prinz Eugen, probably by mistake, while HMS Prince of Wales engaged Bismarck. The two ships were detected several times off Scandinavia, and British naval units were deployed to block their route. The ship, along with the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen, was to break into the Atlantic Ocean and raid Allied shipping from North America to Great Britain. In the course of the warship's eight-month career, Bismarck conducted only one offensive operation that lasted 8 days in May 1941, codenamed Rheinübung. Bismarck and her sister ship Tirpitz were the largest battleships ever built by Germany, and two of the largest built by any European power. Work was completed in August 1940, when she was commissioned into the German fleet. 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.
0 kommentar(er)
