The so called "Flash Effect" photo catalogued in US naval records as NH 69730 and described in the following terms on this website:
at http://www.kbismarck.com/denmark-strait-battle.htmlThis is the most well known photo of the battleship Bismarck and one the most famous of World War II as well. It was taken from the Prinz Eugen sometime between 0607 and 0609 hours. By then the Hood had already been sunk and the Bismarck hit by three 14-inch shells. The after turrets "Cäsar" and "Dora" are firing against the Prince of Wales in one of the last salvoes of the battle. Don't be misled, it's daylight but the flash of the guns led to the darkened underexposure of the photo.
It has been claimed as "author" by Paul Schmalenbach in the Warship Profile series, "Courtesy of Paul Schmalenbach" by Baron Mullheim-Rechberg in A Survivor's story, The other Denmark Straits pictures, are Propaganda Kompanie Lagemann's work as recorded in the Bundesarchiv. (Schmalenbach cheekily puts "author" against these in his work). In Fritz Otto Busch's Prinz Eugen Im Ersten Gefecht published 1944 it is credited to Lagemann, but does not appear in the Bundesarchiv collection today.
This photo is reproduced in cropped form in John Winton's "War at Sea" originally published in 1967 with the following caption:
Bismarck firing at HMS Hood. This picture was taken by Yeoman 1st Class Fritz Bunsert in Prinz Eugen and it came to light in America after the war was over, when Prinz Eugen was on her way to act as a "guinea-pig" for the atomic bomb tests at Bikini Atoll.
The photo was sourced from Associated Press.
When tracked through the AP website we find from the Denver Post, presumably February 1946:
I consider the exact content of what the photo depicts to still be up for debate, but this attribution is so specific it has the ring of truth about it. Even the errors give some authenticity "5,000 tons" and "the day the Bismarck went down". Dungert is a German surname eg Max Dungert the impressionist painter of the Weimar Period. Or was the yeoman just a "chancer" claiming ownership of the photo to impress an American journalist? It is surprising that Bundesarchiv would get all the other PK pictures but not this one.A direct hit blasts the 5,000-ton German battleship Bismarck shortly before it sank in the Atlantic 400 miles West of Brest, France, following a 1,750 mile chase from Bergen, Norway, by air and sea units of the British Navy. This picture was taken by Yeoman 1/c Fritz Dungert aboard the former German Cruiser Prinz Eugen which is now at Philadelphia prepared to sail to the South Pacific where it will be one of the targets in the atomic bomb tests next May. Dungert says the picture was taken May 27, 1941, the day the Bismarck went down.
Whereas the PK Kompanie photos are correctly exposed, as one might expect from professional photographers, this example suggests it might well have been taken by an excited amateur on the spur of the moment. Paul Schmalenbach, as a crew member of PG and most prolific writer on her history seems to have been the conduit by which Fritz Bunsert/Dungert's snapshot reached the naval history world, although AP might have got the attribution correct. Fritz Bunsert or Fritz Dungert? Are there any records of PG which could tell us?
All the best
wadinga