How did the Bismarck really sink?

I am surprised that this is not on here since of its age, but here you go, the real reason the Bismarck sunk, according to this article.


[SIZE=+2]Visiting Bismarck, Explorers Revise Its Story[/SIZE]
By William J Broad
[SIZE=+1]THE Bismarck was the world's most feared warship, a Nazi superweapon meant to sever the convoy lifeline that kept Britain alive in World War II. Its guns could fire one-ton shells 24 miles. So upon its debut in 1941, the British responded with everything they had. Resolve grew steely after the Bismarck destroyed the Hood, considered Britain's finest ship, killing all but 3 of its 1,415 men. "Sink the Bismarck!" became the battle cry. [/SIZE]
After being pursued by a fleet of British ships and aircraft, and constant pounding by shells and torpedoes, the Bismarck went down in 3 miles of water, 600 miles off the coast of France, on May 27, 1941. It was the eighth day of the warship's first mission. The victory became a monument of British pride and, in time, a hit film, a popular song and a small industry of Bismarck books and television shows.
There is just one problem. New evidence, detailed in interviews, videotapes and photographs, suggests that the story is wrong.
"We conclusively proved there was no way the British sank that ship," said Dr. Alfred S. McLaren, a naval expert who studied the wreck on two expeditions, this year and last. "It was scuttled."
This conclusion is still hotly contested by British researchers. But five expeditions have reconnoitered the site, and three independent teams of American explorers, including Dr. McLaren, a retired submariner and emeritus president of the Explorers Club in New York, have concluded that the famous ship is in surprisingly good shape.

[SIZE=+1]No major damage from enemy fire is visible on the sides of its hull, the American explorers say. That fact alone, they add, suggests that the Bismarck was in fact scuttled - as German survivors have claimed all along, saying that their naval tradition was to deliberately sink ships in danger of falling into enemy hands. [/SIZE]​

[SIZE=+1]David Irving comments:[/SIZE]
NOW what did I write in Hitler's War (published in 1977) and then in "Churchill's War", vol. i: "Struggle for Power" (published in 1987). Oh yes:
Churchill's War: [SIZE=-1]... The biggest battleship in the world was no longer a fighting machine, but she was unsinkable. Her guns fell silent by ten a.m., their last ammunition spent. A message from Admiral Tovey arrived in London: the battleship could not be sunk by gunfire. It did not matter, because even as Churchill's Cabinet met at ten-thirty to accept the loss of Crete, engineer officers aboard Bismarck were blowing open her seacocks to scuttle her. She went down at eleven a.m.[/SIZE]
Hitler's War: [SIZE=-1]... At noon Hitler learned that the British government had announced the sinking of Bismarck an hour before. Disabled and her last ammnition spent, Bismarck had scuttled herself under the guns of the British navy; she sank with her colours honourably flying and the loss of some twenty-one hundred lives.[/SIZE]HOW was I so sure of this? I had been told the facts by Rear Admiral Puttkamer, Hitler's naval adjutant (back to camera in the picture), who passed the reports on to the Führer. Now that is how Real History is written.
I wonder what we would have found in a history of the episode by Prof. Richard "Skunky"Evans? Probably wild fantasies about SS officers on board shooting fleeing sailors, and plotting further atrocities, as they screamed "Heil Hitler!
The American conclusions have infuriated the British, who denounce them as revisionist claptrap.
"I just don't buy it," said David L. Mearns, who last year led a British expedition to the wreck. "Bismarck was destroyed by British gunnery and sunk by torpedoes." Anything else, he added, is ridiculous.
The newest assault is by James Cameron, director of the 1997 movie "Titanic." His television documentary - to be shown Sunday on the Discovery Channel - is based on an expedition last spring in which Mr. Cameron explored the Bismarck with robots and piloted submersibles. The expedition was able to probe the wreckage more deeply than earlier investigations.
Would the wounded Bismarck have sunk without the scuttling? "Sure," Mr. Cameron said in an interview. "But it might have taken half a day."
The new observations are challenging ideas about the Bismarck's end that once seemed self-evident, at least initially. In 1941, the British got a lucky break when an aircraft fired a torpedo that crippled the battleship's rudders. British ships then moved in, relentlessly firing rounds of shells and torpedoes.
Waves of German sailors abandoned the Bismarck as it sank, the men bobbing in the oily waters. The British picked up some survivors, but soon fled the area upon reports of U-boat activity. Of nearly 2,200 men on board the Bismarck, just 115 survived.
The German sailors told of setting off scuttling charges - explosives most military ships carry that shatter water intakes and other weak areas near the ship's keel. They said that those charges - exploded about 30 minutes before the sinking, and before the last torpedoes hit - were the real cause of the Bismarck's demise.
A British Admiralty report during the war concluded that German explosives might have hastened the ship's end, even if they were not the exclusive cause. But British patriots dismissed that idea.
New light on the controversy came when Dr. Robert D. Ballard, a discoverer of the wreck of the Titanic, subsequently found the Bismarck's resting place in 1989. The sinking battleship, he discovered, had slid down an undersea mountain for nearly a mile.
Despite the war damage and rough landing, it was in remarkably good condition - even a faded Nazi swastika was clearly visible. As for the ship's conning tower, he wrote in "The Discovery of the Bismarck," published in 1990, "Its heavy armor still looked capable of warding off enemy fire."
Dr. Ballard used a tethered robot that could not see far sideways, limiting his views of the hull's sides. He nevertheless leaned toward the scuttling theory, saying he saw no signs of large air pockets, which would have been crushed by rising water pressure as the ship sank.

[SIZE=+1]Such implosions shattered Titanic's stern. By contrast, the sunken Bismarck was largely intact. So it had apparently been completely flooded, suggesting, Dr. Ballard wrote, "how effective the scuttling was." [/SIZE]​

More than a decade later, in June 2001, people dived to the wreck for the first time, using two Russian minisubs, and the American explorers were able to study the Bismarck's sides closely. The trek was organized by Deep Ocean Expeditions, a private company. Experts, including Dr. McLaren, peered from portholes as video cameras operated by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute on Cape Cod photographed the ship.
The explorers could examine the hull only where it rose above the muck at the bottom. But the visible areas revealed no significant damage from enemy fire.
"You see a large number of shell holes in the superstructure and deck, but not that many along the side, and none below the waterline," recalled William N. Lange, a Woods Hole expert on the voyage.
More important, no major breach was found in the 13-inch-thick armor belt that girded Bismarck above and below the waterline as a shield against torpedoes and shells. Torpedoes may have hit the armor belt and detonated, Dr. McLaren surmised, but may nevertheless have done no damage other than making insignificant dents.
The next month, in July 2001, the British arrived with an expedition of their own, financed by British television and supported by the Ministry of Defense and British veterans groups. Using a tethered robot, the expedition found provocative gashes below the armor belt where the lower hull met the seabed.
The Americans assumed that the Bismarck's rough landing on the mountainside had made these openings - "mechanical damage," as Mr. Lange of Woods Hole put it. But Mr. Mearns, the British expedition leader and director of Blue Water Recoveries, an experienced deep-sea salvage company in West Sussex, England, saw them as evidence of enemy fire. "My feeling," he said in an interview, "is that those holes were probably lengthened by the slide, but initiated by torpedoes."
He ridiculed the idea that torpedoes bounced off the armor belt, but acknowledged that he found no signs of torpedo damage there.
In his book, "Hood and Bismarck," published in January, Mr. Mearns and his co-author, Rob White, concluded that scuttling "may have hastened the inevitable, but only by a matter of minutes."

[SIZE=+1]Dr. Eric Grove, a naval expert at the University of Hull in Britain who went on the expedition, strongly agreed and dismissed the scuttling theory. "I don't believe a word of it," he said. "From what I saw, that ship was very heavily holed below the waterline." [/SIZE]​

Mr. Cameron's expedition in May and June, with a team of American and Canadian experts, made unusually long dives. As with the earlier expedition, he hired the Russian Mir minisubs, run by the P. P. Shirshov Institute of Oceanology, based in Moscow. Each of the twin submersibles can hold three people.
From them, Mr. Cameron's team deployed tiny robots to probe inside the wreck and closely examine its exterior. He said little publicly about his findings until now.
High on the hull, he said, his team found a few shell holes but none below the waterline or big enough to quickly sink the ship. He also found no torpedo damage on the armor belt, echoing previous findings.
Down low, however, the explorers discovered much.
First, Mr. Cameron's study of the wreck's lower reaches and nearby debris fields led his team to a new explanation for the hull gashes previously attributed to torpedo hits or mechanical damage.
The Bismarck, he said, suffered a "hydraulic outburst" when it hit the bottom. Girded by the armor belt, the ship was like a water balloon wrapped in duct tape and then dropped. The belt held, but inner forces caused the sides to bulge out and break in places - especially at the bottom, as the ship slid down the mountain slope.
The surprise, Mr. Cameron said, came when his tiny robots were able to penetrate the gashes into the ship's interior. In two cases, he came upon torpedo holes at the ends of long gashes. But upon sending the tethered robots even deeper into the ship, Mr. Cameron discovered that the torpedo blasts had failed to shatter its armored inner walls. All that was destroyed, he said, was an outer "sacrificial zone" of water and fuel tanks that German engineers had created to absorb torpedo hits and keep interior spaces dry.
"The inner tank walls are untouched by any explosive force," Mr. Cameron said. "So the armor worked."
The German sailors and officers at the heart of the wounded ship, he added, "were protected in the armored citadel." The torpedoes, he said, caused "no significant flooding."
This July and August, after Mr. Cameron's voyage, Dr. McLaren of the Explorers Club and his colleagues again dived down to the Bismarck with the Mir submersibles.
At an Explorers Club program on Oct. 17, Dr. McLaren, who in the 1980's was an instructor at the United States Naval War College, showed videos of his Bismarck dives and told of the new findings.
"Every naval ship is prepared to scuttle," he said afterward in an interview. "If you're going to get boarded, you want to sink it as fast as you can, but leave sufficient time to get the hell out of there."

http://www.fpp.co.uk/History/General/Battleship_Bismarck/scuttled.html

 

Personally, I believe the Bismarck was in sinking condition and would have gone down with the scuttling charges. The charges only hastened the sinking.

 

WW2 dude hit the nail on the head. Charges or no charges, Bismarck was finished. The pounding she sustained at the hands of the Home Fleet on May 27th ensured she would never be seaworthy again.

 

It is likely that some or all of the main magazines were flooded to prevent magazine explosions given every main turret suffered penetrating hits. This can be seen in the condition of the barbettes alone on the wreck. Progressive flooding was also a likely culprit with so many holes of varying size over virtually the entire length of the hull. Given the sea state, flooding through these is a virtual certainty.
Whether the crew actually set off scuttling charges (something I find odd anyway as no other navy I know of had such a planned methodology for sinking their ships) makes little difference. The Bismarck was already in sinking condition and would have gone down in any case whether finished by British torpedoes, shell fire, or just progressive flooding.

Cameron's argument that the torpedo defense system held is meaningless. Both California and West Virginia were in the same condition versus Japanese torpedoes at Pearl Harbor. In both cases it was progressive flooding over the armored deck from above that sank the ships as they settled due to torpedo damage. No doubt, that in Bismarck's case the same thing was happening. Water flooding in over the armored deck found penetrations to the main spaces and began to flood them. This progressive flooding is extremely dangerous in a ship. It also sank Titanic.

 

Why do Americans try and compare the Tirpiz class to the the Iowa class there is no comparison to the two ship classes, it is really sad that you bother trying to prove that the ineffective fire from obsolete British ships was even capable of what you speak of. ( ineffective in there ability to damage the Bismarck not in there ability to hit the ship, seriously she was doing five knots after the torpedo hit her stern anyone could have hit her. The bottom line is this The Bismarck came out Kicked The Pride of the British navy up past there eyeballs. The only retribution the Royal Navy could muster was to Lie through their teeth about how she sank, its quite sad really i hoped that there navies long and lustrous history of bravery and excellence is not tarnished by this act of stupidity and cowardice. (40 on 1 is probably not very heroic, actually the Royal Navy's honor never really showed up for ww2 did it......... hmmm interesting i think. )

 

Just how much do you know about Iowa class BB's? Evidently not very much in reading your post since California & West Virginia weren't of the Iowa class.

 

bismarck thread... Royal Navy doesnt deliver fatal blow to the BISMARCK - World War ...
25 posts - 8 authors - Last post: 15 Dec 2002
And I must say I'm curious. Yes, the Bismark did sink, but why? Was it scuttled? Or did the British actually strike the fatal blow? ...
ww2f.com › General Discussion › WWII General -

 

Considering that HMS Rodney had 16" guns (all 9 of them) I'd say that she had more than enough 'in her locker' to damage the Bismarck, let alone the 10 14" guns of HMS KG V. Have you actually seen the images of the Bismarck and her damage sitting on the seabed?

As for honour, or the lack of it, care to give examples? Honour in Gneisenau & Scharnhorst attacking the armed merchant cruiser Rawalpindi? Honour in those same two ships attacking the aircraft carrier Glorious & her two escorts? By your definition of 'honour' these weren't very 'honourable' actions - 2 very capable and heavily armed battlecruisers attacking what was basically an ex-liner with a few medium calibre guns, and two destroyers and a completely outgunned carrier. Was it honourable for U-Boats to attack merchant ships without warning? No, but war is war and when it is a war where entire countries and regimes are at stake from an evil dictatorship you use every advantage you have, and in the Royal Navy's case that was numbers, aircraft carriers and a superior fighting skill - and fighting spirit, something the Germans lacked at sea (examples: Erich Bey at Narvik, Battle Of The Barents Sea, the employment, or rather the lack of employment, of Tirpitz) - compared to the Kriegsmarine (and if you want examples of the latter 2 (skill & spirit) look up HMS Onslow, HMS Glowworm, Capt Walker & his hunter-killer group, The First Battle of Narvik etc etc.)

It is obvious that you have an axe to grind about Germany losing this battle (and judging by your comment in the Prinz Eugen thread in the What If? section with regards to bias in American history writing, it isn't only the British you have a grudge against) and I can never understand why people still wish that Germany had of won battles they didn't. Do you wish that Germany had of won the war with all that would of entailed?

 

They fired at it, it sank....where's the lie ?

Silly troll...war is not about being fair.

 

Ineffective?!! The Rodney and KGV put all four main battery turrets out of action, three within a span of about 10 minutes, and then proceeded to pummel the Bismarck into wreckage. There is no denying the massive, overwhelming damage British gunfire did. The photos of the wreck clearly show this.

Even at Denmark Straight it was only luck of the draw that Bismark sank Hood. The Prince of Wales managed even with her balky malfunctioning four gun turrets (due to misalignment of the shell loading trays on the carousel in the lower turret shell room if you need to know why) seven hits on Bismark two causing serious flooding with the hit on the forecastle being the most serious. That one allowed an estimated 1500 tons of water in and put Bismarck dangerously down by the bow. Counter flooding had to be done just to make headway in the seas running at the time.

Whether Bismark was scuttled or abandoned and sank on her own; she sank. Also, given the amount of visible damage Bismark would have sunk from progressive flooding in a matter of a day or so in any case. To that end I would hold up the example of the Kirishima also sunk in similar circumstances. In the later's case it was clearly progressive flooding that was the cause.
Given Bismark's newer condition, much wider beam and, better internal subdivision such flooding would have taken longer to occur; that's all. The British finished the Bismark. Of that there is no argument. Whether her crew sank her or she would have sunk in another day or so on her own is a moot and irrelevant argument.

 

Hello fellows,

honestly I am not into navy matters at all.

Now besides this navy tradition of the captain remaining on his sinking ship, why would the Germans scuttle their own ship? thus killing what 2000 sailors?
Was there a reason to believe for the captain of the Bismarck, that the dissabled and badly damaged Bismarck could still be towed to a British harbor?

Regards
Kruska

 

Hi Red, fully agreed.

 

The German Navy had a habit of scuttling their own ships rather than allow them to be taken by the opponent. They scuttled their fleet which was in Scapa Flow's British harbor before allowing it to be taken over by the British at the end of WW1.

The Graf Spee was scuttled rather than allowing it to be taken after the Battle of the River Platte. Sinking their own rather than letting it be captured by the enemy seems to be a German naval tradition of the 20th century.

 

Didn't the HMS Rodney pepper the superstructure, while KGV fired from a longer range so as to penetrate through the deck? In which case it's not at all surprising that there are few shell hit's through the armored belt. Either way I find it highly suspect that no torpedoes did any damage other than slight dents. Torpedoes sank the Yamato and Musashi, who both had thicker armor.

As has been said before, who cares, the British fired at Bismark. Bismark sank. End of controversy. Scuttled or sank by gunfire, both were initiated by the Royal Navy

 

The European tradition on what is the honourable course of action of a captain on a sinking ship is that the captain remains at his post until all of his crew able to abandon ship do so, then he can leave the ship. It is not required he goes down with the ship.
The few officers who did decide to go down with their ship were normally those who felt their actions had lead to the ship being sunk

It has to be remembered that the scuttling order was given at the same time as the order to abandon ship was, designated members of the crew would remain behind for a minute or two to set the scuttling charges before they too abandoned ship.
The reason they set the scuttling charges was because they realised the ship was lost, and they needed to abandon ship, the scuttling was to prevent the British boarding the ship after the crew had left and getting hold of any code documents or secret equipment before she sank ( which did happen on a number of other occasions.)

 

Hello redcoat,

okay thanks, I can follow on that.

German sources? AFAIK state that the actual sinking (upon being scuttled) took more than 40 min - lots of time to get out sailors.

So was the scutteling too fast? or was it that due to the damage the Bismarck had sustained, that there weren't enough live boots still around to be used?

I am just asking since to me (not knowing much about naval issues) I would estimate that 80% of the crew must have been inside the ship - out of the damaged destroyed areas such as the gunturrets or the upper deck-structures. Reports state that the superstructure of the Bismarck had not been breached right? If so, how come they didn't make it out?

Survivors of the Bismark IIRC had stated that they were not informed about the ship being scuttled - they actually still felt save within the Bismarck and the rudder malfunction had even been repaired - whilst the captain gave orders to scuttle the Bismarck.
If that would be true, than the assumtion of the Bismarck not having been sunk due to direct bombardment would gain support. No?

That the Bismarck would not have survived further bombardment or torpedos is clear to me. However I feel according to the info I presented above (True?), then the Bismarck indeed had been sunk by it's captain rather to avoid the ship being towed to Britain, than being robbed of its features or codes.

Regards
Kruska