Bismarck 1941
Marker: recorded wreck position (Second World War).
Key facts
| Name | Bismarck | Wikidata label |
|---|---|---|
| Year lost | 1941 | Wikidata P793 significant event, point-in-time qualifier |
| Era | Second World War | derived from year |
| Ship type | battleship | Wikidata P31 instance of |
| Cause of loss | Scuttled | Keyword match in English Wikipedia lead sentence |
| Nationality / flag | Nazi Germany | Wikidata P8047 country of registry |
| Operator | Kriegsmarine | Wikidata P137 operator |
| Conflict | World War II, Battle of the Denmark Strait | Wikidata P607 conflict |
| Sea / ocean | North Atlantic Ocean | Natural Earth marine areas (public domain), point-in-polygon |
| Position | 48.1667, -16.2000 | Wikidata P625 coordinate location (CC0) |
About the wreck
Bismarck was the first of two Bismarck-class battleships built for Nazi Germany's Kriegsmarine. Named after Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, the ship was laid down at the Blohm & Voss shipyard in Hamburg in July 1936 and launched in February 1939. Work was completed in August 1940, when she was commissioned into the German fleet. Bismarck and her sister ship Tirpitz were the largest battleships ever built by Germany, and two of the largest built by any European power.
In the course of the warship's eight-month career, Bismarck conducted only one offensive operation that lasted eight days in May 1941, codenamed Rheinübung. The ship, along with the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen, was to break into the Atlantic Ocean and raid Allied shipping from North America to Great Britain. The two ships were detected several times off Scandinavia, and British naval units were deployed to block their route. At the Battle of the Denmark Strait, the battlecruiser HMS Hood initially engaged Prinz Eugen, probably by mistake, while HMS Prince of Wales engaged Bismarck.
Diving & visiting
The wreck of Bismarck was discovered on 8 June 1989 by Robert Ballard, the oceanographer responsible for finding RMS Titanic. Bismarck was found to be resting on her keel at a depth of approximately 4,791 m (15,719 ft), about 650 km (400 mi) west of Brest. The ship struck an extinct underwater volcano, which rose some 1,000 m (3,300 ft) above the surrounding abyssal plain, triggering a 2 km (1.2 mi) landslide. Bismarck slid down the mountain, coming to a stop about two-thirds of the way down. Ballard kept the wreck's exact location a secret to prevent other divers from taking artefacts from the ship, a practice he considered a form of grave robbing.
Ballard's survey found no underwater penetrations of the ship's fully armoured citadel.
Location
- Recorded position: 48.1667, -16.2000 (Wikidata P625 coordinate location (CC0); may be approximate)
- Sea / ocean: North Atlantic Ocean
Wreck positions on this site are for interest only and are not for navigation. Many wrecks are war graves or legally protected: never disturb human remains or remove artefacts, and check local law before diving.
Text adapted from the Wikipedia article German battleship Bismarck (revision 1380769728), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes: excerpted from the article lead section and section(s) “Discovery by Robert Ballard”; condensed by selecting paragraphs and trimming at sentence boundaries; citations and formatting removed. No text added. This excerpt is available under the same licence.
Wreck facts from Wikidata (CC0).
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Browse more: Open ocean wrecks · North Atlantic Ocean · Second World War