Bismarck and her sister ship Tirpitz were the largest battleships ever built by Germany, and two of the largest built by any European power. They were designed in the mid-1930s by the German Kriegsmarine as a counter to French naval expansion. In the course of the warship’s eight-month career under its sole commanding officer, Captain Ernst Lindemann, the ship conducted only one offensive operation, codenamed Rheinübung. 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.
About German battleship Bismarck in brief
Bismarck and her sister ship Tirpitz were the largest battleships ever built by Germany, and two of the largest built by any European power. They were designed in the mid-1930s by the German Kriegsmarine as a counter to French naval expansion, specifically the two Richelieu-class battleships France had started in 1935. In the course of the warship’s eight-month career under its sole commanding officer, Captain Ernst Lindemann, the ship conducted only one offensive operation, codenamed Rheinübung. 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. The wreck was located in June 1989 by Robert Ballard, and has since been further surveyed by several other expeditions. A detailed underwater survey of the wreck in 2002 showed that the sustained close-range shelling was largely ineffective in the effort to sink the ship. The massive plating of the armour deck was also found to be virtually intact. The battleship was Germany’s largest warship, and displaced more than any other European battleship, with the exception of HMS Vanguard, commissioned after the war. The first six divisions were assigned to the ship’s main and secondary armament, and five and six anti-aircraft guns. The seventh division consisted of specialists, including cooks and carpenters, and the eighth division of ammunition handlers.
The crew was divided into twelve divisions of between 180 and 220 men, with a standard crew of 103 officers and 1,962 enlisted men. In her final battle the following morning, the already-crippled Bismarack was engaged by two British battleships and two heavy cruisers, and sustained incapacitating damage and heavy loss of life. The ships were built after the signing of the Anglo-German Naval Agreement of 1935, and were nominally within the 35,000-long-ton limit imposed by the Washington regime that governed battleship construction in the interwar period. But before either vessel was completed, the international treaty system had fallen apart following Japan’s withdrawal in 1937, allowing signatories to invoke an \”escalator clause\” that permitted displacements as high as 45,000 long tons. Bistarck displaced 41,700 t as built and 50,300 t fully loaded, with an overall length of 251 m, a beam of 36 m and a maximum draft of 9.9 m. The ship had a cruising range of 8,870 nautical miles at 19 knots. The ship’s standard crew numbered 103,2 enlisted and 196,96 officers and enlisted men, including chief radio operators, signalmasters, and quartermasters, quarter-masters and quarter-master of the ninth division. It was commissioned in August 1940, when she was commissioned into the German fleet. The warship was the first of two battleships built for Nazi Germany’s Krieg’smarine.
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