Battleship Bismarck

This new book on Bismarck offers a forensic analysis of the design, operation, and loss of Germany's greatest battleship. It draws 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 has taken fifty-six years of painstaking research, during which time they conducted extensive interviews and corresponded with the ship's designers and 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, greatly aided the authors 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, the damage control officer aboard HMS Prince of Wales, who located photographs of battle damage to his ship.

After the wreck of Bismarck was discovered in June 1989, the authors served as technical consultants to Dr. Robert Ballard, who led three trips to the site. Filmmaker and explorer James Cameron has contributed a chapter, giving the reader a comprehensive overview of his deep-sea explorations on Bismarck. His chapter is illustrated with his team's remarkable photographs of the wreck.

The result of nearly six decades of research and collaboration, this new work is an engrossing and encyclopaedic account of the events surrounding one of the most epic naval battles of World War Two. 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?