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    Bismarck: The Final Days of Germany’s Greatest Battleship
    Unavailable
    Bismarck: The Final Days of Germany’s Greatest Battleship
    Unavailable
    Bismarck: The Final Days of Germany’s Greatest Battleship
    Ebook469 pages7 hours

    Bismarck: The Final Days of Germany’s Greatest Battleship

    By Niklas Zetterling and Michael Tamelander

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    A gripping tale of heroism —and doom—on the high seas . . .

    The sinking of the German battleship Bismarck—a masterpiece of engineering, well-armored with a main artillery of eight 15-inch guns—was one of the most dramatic events of World War II. She left the port of Gotenhafen for her first operation on the night of 18 May 1941, yet was almost immediately discovered by Norwegian resistance and Allied air reconnaissance. British battlecruiser Hood was quickly dispatched from Scapa Flow to intercept the Bismarck, together with new battleship Prince of Wales. They were ordered to find the ship quickly because, on their way from the USA, several large convoys were heading for Britain.

    On 24 May, Bismarck was found off the coast of Greenland, but the ensuing battle was disastrous for the British. The Hood was totally destroyed within minutes (only 3 crewmen surviving), and Prince of Wales was badly damaged. The chase resumed until the German behemoth was finally caught, this time by four British capital ships supported by torpedo-bombers from the carrier Ark Royal. The icy North Atlantic roiled from the crash of shellfire and bursting explosions until finally the Bismarck collapsed, sending nearly 2,000 German sailors to a watery grave.

    Tamelander and Zetterling’s work rests on stories from survivors and the latest historical discoveries. The book starts with a thorough account of maritime developments from 1871 up to the era of the giant battleship, and ends with a vivid account, hour by hour, of the dramatic and fateful hunt for the mighty Bismarck, Nazi-Germany’s last hope to pose a powerful surface threat to Allied convoys.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCasemate
    Release dateMay 26, 2009
    ISBN9781935149828
    Unavailable
    Bismarck: The Final Days of Germany’s Greatest Battleship
    Author

    Niklas Zetterling

    Niklas Zetterling is a military historian and researcher at the Swedish Defense College. His previous books include Bismarck, The Korsun Pocket, and The Drive on Moscow, 1941.

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    • 4/5
      ..exciting and competent re-telling of the hunt, pursuit and final destruction of one of the mightiest battleships ever to put to sea. The authors did a great job of building up the tension and the heroism of the British and Allied sea-and-airmen involved is calmly and dispassionately portrayed in this fine account. After the shock of the loss of the Royal Navy's battleship Hood with virtually all hands, the attempts to shake off the pursuing pack and the desperate attacks flown by the Navy's venerable Swordfish torpedo bombers are nicely built up by the authors to the final denouement, as the Bismarck, crippled by a torpedo strike, is shelled into oblivion..A couple of small criticisms; the authors don't bring much new information to the table and their style is at times a bit ponderous and leaden much like the great lumbering beasts they are writing about. This is not helped by the authors attempt to weigh up and evaluate the decision making process undertaken at each stage of the hunt by the various interested parties. On the German side they rely heavily of course on Mullenheim-Rechberg's memoir but don't appear to realise that an English translation was published. The authors are not native-speakers and sentence construction is predictably and unfortunately rather wooden in places, while this work has many typos and omissions. In short the text desperately needed copy editing. Recommended despite these shortcomings.