On 24 May 1941 the German battleship Bismarck engaged in a gunnery duel with the flagship of the Royal Navy, the battlecruiser HMS Hood, and the newly commissioned King George V class battleship, HMS Prince of Wales. Within minutes, Hood found a watery grave beneath the devastating shellfire of the legendary German ship. Not much later, Prince of Wales made smoke and left the field of battle.But would it have been indeed so foolhardy to fight Bismarck alone? The purpose of this concise inquiry is to compare the relevant technical characteristics of the two ships and discover whether Prince of Wales alone could have achieved victory and, if so, under what conditions. - Highly technical, no-nonsense analysis based on primary sources including the British Admiralty's official documents dealing with the ballistic performance of the heavy armour plates of the German battleship Tirpitz, the armour-piercing projectiles of the King George V class battleships and more. - Lavishly illustrated with line drawings including armour penetration curves, immunity graphs, armour diagrams and more. - Imperial + metric units.

“A complete operational history of the Bismarck . . . with period photos [and] underwater photography of the wreck, allowing a forensic analysis of the damage.” —Seapower This new book offers a forensic analysis of the design, operation, and loss of Germany’s greatest battleship, drawing on survivors’ accounts and the authors’ combined decades of experience in naval architecture and command at sea. Their investigation into every aspect of this battleship is informed by painstaking research, including extensive interviews and correspondence with the ship’s designers and the survivors of the battle of the Denmark Strait and Bismarck’s final battle. Albert Schnarke, the former gunnery officer of Tirpitz, Bismarck’s sister ship, aided the authors greatly by translating and supplying manuscript materials from those who participated in the design and operations. Survivors of Bismarck’s engagements contributed to this comprehensive study including D.B.H. Wildish, RN, damage control officer aboard HMS Prince of Wales, who located photographs of battle damage to his ship. After the wreck was discovered in 1989, the authors served as technical consultants to Dr. Robert Ballard, who led three trips to the site. Filmmaker and explorer James Cameron has also contributed a chapter, giving a comprehensive overview of his deep-sea explorations on Bismarck and sharing his team’s remarkable photos of the wreck. The result of nearly six decades of research and collaboration, this is an “encyclopedic and engrossing” account (Naval Historical Foundation) of the events surrounding one of the most epic naval battles of World War II. And Battleship Bismarck finally resolves some of the major questions around her career, not least the most profound one of all: Who sank the Bismarck, the British or the Germans?

The Bismarck is perhaps the most famous – and notorious – warship ever built. Completed in 1941, the 45,000-ton German battleship sank HMS Hood, the pride of the British Navy, during one of the most sensational encounters in naval history. Following the sinking, Bismarck was chased around the North Atlantic by many units of the Royal Navy. She was finally dispatched with gunfire and torpedoes on 27 May, less than five months after her completion. Her wreck still lies where she sank, 4,800m down and 960km off the west coast of France. Drawing on new research and technology, this edition is the most comprehensive examination of Bismarck ever published. It includes a complete set of detailed line drawings with fully descriptive keys and full-colour 3D artwork, supported by technical details, photographs and text on the building of the ship and a record of the ship's service history.

Nelson to Vanguard is the third volume in D K Brown’s bestselling series on warship design and development looks at the Royal Navy’s response to the restrictions placed on it by the Washington Naval Treaties in the inter-war years, and analyses the fleet that was constructed to fight the Second World War. He focusses on the principal pre-war developments such as the first purpose-built aircraft carriers and the growing perception of the threat of air attack to warships. All the wartime construction programmes are covered, such as the massive expansion in escort ships to counter the U-boat menace, and the development of the amphibious warfare fleet for the D-Day landings in 1944. Full analysis is also provided of the experience of wartime damage, as well as the once top secret pre- and post-war damage trials. Illustrated throughout with a superb collection of contemporary photographs and numerous line drawings, this now classic work is required reading for naval historians and enthusiasts.

The author of Blitzkrieg covers one of the most dramatic events of the Second World War in an “outstanding book about naval warfare” (World War II History). When the German battleship Bismarck—a masterpiece of engineering, well-armored with a main artillery of eight 15-inch guns—left the port of Gotenhafen for her first operation on the night of May 18, 1941, the British battlecruiser Hood and the new battleship Prince of Wales were ordered to find her quickly, as several large convoys were heading for Britain. On May 24, Bismarck was found off the coast of Greenland, but the ensuing battle was disastrous for the British. The Hood was totally destroyed within minutes, with only three 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 two thousand 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. “Exciting story-telling . . . recreat[es] the thrill of the hunt.” —International Journal of Maritime History “[An] epic sea chase and its vivid, human details.” —World War II

The legendary Battle of the Denmark Strait, which saw the mighty German battleship Bismarck sink Britain's HMS Hood in an epic duel of the titans, has been dogged by controversy to this day. Was the doomed HMS Hood really sunk by a shell that penetrated her wooden decks to explode in one of her magazine compartments? Others believe that Bismarck's fortunate shell detonated in Hood's cordite supply - the powder that propelled 82-lbs shells some staggering 17,700 yards - suggesting that damage examined on the wreck indicates a more distinct explosion. Or was the Hood's destructive and violent demise a new, and until now, unexplained act of war? The sinking of HMS Hood on Empire Day, 24 May 1941, resulted in the single largest loss of life for the Royal Navy during the Second World War: 1,415 lives were lost. There were absolutely no traces of any crewmen save three survivors. Bismarck and Hood: The Battle of the Denmark Strait - A Technical Analysis is a controversial and electric study of this infamous battle. The author, a rear admiral in the Italian Navy, is a leading expert in gunnery and his book, a work of over two decades of study, further investigates this battle in an attempt to attain a more credible explanation. The events and tactics leading up to the battle are explained within their various contexts and a cinematic and ballistic model of the battle was developed, essential for a statistical analysis of Hood's sinking. Certainly, no one will ever be able to confirm what exactly happened in the Denmark Strait on that fateful day, but this fascinating book disposes of myths and falsehoods to give a more definitive and realistic interpretation of this iconic battle between HMS Hood and Bismarck.

“An excellent account . . . A suspenseful narrative that will keep readers on the edge of their seats.” —WWII History Magazine In May 1941, the German battleship Bismarck, accompanied by heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen, broke out into the Atlantic to attack Allied shipping. The Royal Navy’s pursuit and subsequent destruction of Bismarck was an epic of naval warfare. In this new account of those dramatic events at the height of the Second World War, Iain Ballantyne draws extensively on the graphic eyewitness testimony of veterans, to construct a thrilling story, mainly from the point of view of the British battleships, cruisers, and destroyers involved. He describes the tense atmosphere as cruisers play a lethal cat and mouse game, shadowing Bismarck in the icy Denmark Strait. We witness the shocking destruction of the British battle cruiser Hood, in which all but three of her ship’s complement were killed—an event that filled pursuing Royal Navy warships, including the battered battleship Prince of Wales, with a thirst for revenge. While Swordfish torpedo-bombers try desperately to cripple the Bismarck, we sail in destroyers on their own daring torpedo attacks, battling mountainous seas. Finally, the author takes us into the final showdown, as battleships Rodney and King George V, supported by cruisers Norfolk and Dorsetshire, destroy the pride of Hitler’s fleet. This vivid, superbly researched account portrays this epic saga through the eyes of so-called “ordinary sailors” caught up in extraordinary events—conveying the horror and majesty of war at sea in all its cold brutality and awesome power.