Naval History Forums

I first became interested in the Bismarck when my Grandfather showed me his medals these include the Distinguished Service Medal he received for the Bismarck action he being LSBA on the Battleship HMS Prince of Wales and watched the whole action before being the first person on the shattered bridge of the Prince of Wales after it was hit by a shell ....not supriseingly I was captivated.

Martyn.

I rather think that, whilst the Bismarck was a marvellous piece of marine engineering, interest was rekindled thanks to Ballard and his historical undersea explorations. Other than that Bismarck was just 'another piece of WW2 memorabilia'. I built a Bismarck model many years ago as a young lad and was captivated by its design and 'beauty'. And my interest, whilst dimmed, was never diminished. She was without doubt a beautiful ship but was, as with all other capital ships, at the end of her days before she began. As with Prince of Wales and Repulse and the Yamato, her nemesis was - AIRCRAFT.

mike kemble wrote:I rather think that, whilst the Bismarck was a marvellous piece of marine engineering...... As with Prince of Wales and Repulse and the Yamato, her nemesis was - AIRCRAFT.

in Bismarck's case an inability to steer with propellers alone, for which there would have been a clean escape, was the true nemesis. Plus lack of supporting forces. In fact the lack of supporting forces is the common factor in the loss of all these ships, rather than just enemy air attack per se.

Numerical inferiority.

Numerical inferiority indeed - but Bismarck faced numerical inferiority exactly seventy years ago today and spectaculary came up trumps......

I first read about bismarck in a issue of National Geographic magazine when I was a kid. Since then I have tried to learn as much information on it as I am able to find, but the info trail never seems to stop.

Not for Bismarck at least.

When I was four I remember playing with my dad's model ships and having him tell me the stories about each of them. The one model that he wouldn't let me play with though was Bismarck, unless he was playing with me. He told me the story, read me Ballard's book, and then I read William Shirer's book "The Sinking of the Bismarck". Since then, it has been one of my all-time favorite subjects and I have created several projects throughout school about Bismarck. I am now preparing to build my own model of Bismarck (1/350 Tamiya) and working on a 20-page essay regarding Bismarck.

My interest in the Bismarck stems from Tanks, or Landships.

I would have to say that reviewing battleships, and abstracting that into tank design has had a significant effect on the way I view any armor, fire control, or gun system.

I know you're probably wondering how comparing a battleship to a tank has any effect on anything, but that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

my daughter was born on the 27 may and i collect militaria !

steffen19k wrote:I know you're probably wondering how comparing a battleship to a tank has any effect on anything, but that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

An interesting concept. But I would make the observation that not even the Heer could dream up a tank with four turrets instead of one.....

I think I discovered my infatuation for Bismarck after watching the movie "Sink the Bismarck". Perhaps it sounds slightly too obvious, but everyone starts somewhere.

Jagdboot

Indeed they do.

My interest started when I was about 12 (way back in 1960 or so) when my parents gave me a book written by a German Journalist named Will Berthold called 'The Sinking of the Bismarck' (it was English translated) and since then the subject has always 'grabbed' me. In the book a picture of the Hood blowing up is clearly in fact that of the Barham, but if I can allow for Jornalistic licence the description of the last 2 hours of what it was like on the Bismarck were horrific...as war is.

To be honest I’d always hated the Bismarck and her crew. I served in the Royal Navy and knew his story from my own reading pretty well, to me he was the ship that sent HMS Hood and 1,400+ men to their deaths.

Of course as I got older I stopped thinking in black and white and realised that as evil as the Nazi regime was the servicemen in the Kreigsmarine were by enlarge the same as the Royal Navy servicemen and didn’t deserve hatred and given the choice wouldn’t chose to fight in WW2.

Earlier this year I decided I’d give scale modelling another go and joined modelwarships.com, I was browsing the gallery and there were some pretty impressive models on there and I noticed the Bismarck is a pretty popular subject for modellers. Some of the kits made me think that actually the Bismarck is a rather good looking ship so I decided to do a little reading up on the ship and found this site. As far as I was concerned he was sunk by a near 20 year old HMS Rodney so wasn’t that impressive, but I as I’ve read on this site he actually was that impressive and deserves to be thought of as one of the most powerful battleships ever built.