"the battlecruisers , which had been sunk by ""Bismarck"", and and the battleship , both of which were sunk by Japanese bombers in late 1941. The Royal Navy provided critical cover for the British and French troops during the Dunkirk evacuation and rescued the bulk of the troops, the remainder being evacuated by a fleet of small ships. Later the Navy provided cover for the Dieppe Raid catastrophe, that saw 3,623 of the 6,086 men who made it ashore killed, wounded, or captured. In the summer of 1941, the Soviet Union entered the war on the side of Britain. Although"
"by ""We march against England"" and other martial airs. The German public, already enjoying the news of Luftwaffe victories over the Royal Navy off Crete, received the news of ""Hood""s sinking euphorically. The British public were shocked that their most emblematic warship and more than 1,400 of her crew had been destroyed so suddenly. The Admiralty mobilised every available warship in the Atlantic to hunt down and destroy ""Bismarck"". The Royal Navy forces pursued and brought ""Bismarck"" to battle; the German battleship was sunk on the morning of 27 May. Moves were subsequently made to court-martial Wake-Walker and Captain John"
"loss of life. Most experts agree that the battle damage would have caused her to sink eventually. The wreck was located in June 1989 by Robert Ballard, and has since been further surveyed by several other expeditions. The two s were designed in the mid-1930s by the German ""Kriegsmarine"" as a counter to French naval expansion, specifically the two s France had started in 1935. Laid down after the signing of the Anglo-German Naval Agreement of 1935, ""Bismarck"" and her sister were nominally within the limit imposed by the Washington regime that governed battleship construction in the interwar period. The"
"Artillery and as a tank commander, was killed while fighting in Burma in 1945. Ralph Kerr Captain Ralph Kerr CBE (16 August 1891 – 24 May 1941) was an officer in the Royal Navy. He served in the First and Second World Wars, and was killed in the sinking of by the German battleship ""Bismarck"" at the Battle of the Denmark Strait. Kerr was born on 16 August 1891, the only son of Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Russell Kerr, and his wife Lady Kerr, of Newnham on Severn, Gloucestershire. He joined the Royal Navy on 15 May 1904, and after service as"
"German spelling, ""Oskar"", was sometimes used since he was a ""German"" cat). The black and white patched cat was supposedly owned by an unknown crewman of the German battleship ""Bismarck"" and was on board the ship on 18 May 1941 when she set sail on Operation ""Rheinübung"" (German for Rhine Exercise), ""Bismarck""'s only mission. ""Bismarck"" was sunk after a fierce sea-battle on 27 May, from which only 115 from her crew of over 2,100 survived. Hours later, Oscar was found floating on a board and picked from the water by the British destroyer HMS ""Cossack"". Unaware of what his name"
"of the battleship ""Bismarck"" on 27 May 1941 caused great consternation in the Kriegsmarine. Around the end of May, British Admiralty was reading Enigma messages with a delay of two to three days and was actively searching for ""Bismarck"" support shipping, and they found and sunk them. By 21 June 1941, they had sunk the tanker ""Belchen"", the tanker ""Esso Hamburg"" scuttled by her crew after taking fire from HMS London and HMS Brilliant on 4 June, the supply ship ""Egerland"" Although the British Admiralty had intelligence on the location of the tanker ""Gedania"" and the ex-Norwegian scout Gonzenheim, they"
"from the battleship ""Bismarck"" and operate independently against the enemy's merchant shipping. ""Prinz Eugen"" and ""Bismarck"" separated at 18:14 that evening. ""Bismarck"" was sunk by the concentrated effort of the Royal Navy on 27 May 1941 while ""Prinz Eugen"" arrived safely at Brest, France on 1 June 1941. Helmuth Brinkmann Helmuth Brinkmann (12 March 1895 – 26 September 1983) was a ""Vizeadmiral"" in the ""Kriegsmarine"" during World War II who captained the heavy cruiser . Prior to World War II he commanded the aviso , Adolf Hitler's state yacht. He was also a recipient of the Knight's Cross of the"
"Australia. He remained with Flinders until death. He has been the subject of a number of works of literature, and statues have been placed in his honour, including one that sits on a window sill at the State Library of New South Wales in Sydney. Previously named Oscar, he was the ship's cat of the German battleship ""Bismarck"". When she was sunk on 27 May 1941, only 116 out of a crew of over 2,200 survived. Oscar was picked up by the destroyer HMS ""Cossack"" (one of the ships responsible for destroying ""Bismarck""). ""Cossack"" herself was torpedoed and sunk a"
"as much as on the combatants themselves."" Its historical accuracy, in particular, met with much praise despite a number of inconsistencies. ""Sink the Bismarck!"" was the inspiration for Johnny Horton's popular 1960 song, ""Sink the Bismarck."" The film had its Royal World Premiere in the presence of the Duke of Edinburgh at the Odeon Leicester Square on 11 February 1960. The story starts with a clip of actual German newsreel footage from 14 February 1939, when Nazi Germany's largest and most powerful battleship, ""Bismarck"", is launched in a ceremony at Hamburg with Adolf Hitler in attendance. The launching of the"
"he conceded that scuttling ""may have hastened the inevitable, but only by a matter of minutes."" Ballard later concluded that ""As far as I was concerned, the British had sunk the ship regardless of who delivered the final blow."" Notes Citations Online sources German battleship Bismarck Bismarck was the first of two s 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"""
"Bismarck Archipelago. On 2 January 1943, ""Argonaut"" sank the Japanese gunboat ""Ebon Maru"" in the Bismarck Sea. On 10 January, ""Argonaut"" spotted a convoy of five freighters and their escorting destroyers—, , and —returning to Rabaul from Lae. By chance, an army aircraft—which was out of bombs—was flying overhead and witnessed ""Argonaut""′s attack. A crewman on board the plane saw one destroyer hit by a torpedo, and the destroyers promptly counterattacking. ""Argonaut""′s bow suddenly broke the water at an unusual angle. It was apparent that a depth charge had severely damaged the submarine. The destroyers continued circling ""Argonaut"", pumping shells"
"Ralph Edwards (Royal Navy officer) Admiral Sir Ralph (Alan Bevan) Edwards KCB CBE (31 March 1901 – 4 February 1963) was a Royal Navy officer who went on to be Commander-in-Chief, Mediterranean Fleet. Edwards joined the Royal Navy in 1914 and served in the battlecruiser HMS ""Tiger"" in the Grand Fleet during World War I. He also served in World War II as Deputy Director and then as Director of the Operations Division for the Home Fleet. During this time he oversaw the operation to sink the German battleship ""Bismarck"". He then became Chief of Staff for the Eastern Fleet"
"States Army Air Forces and Royal Australian Air Force from 2 March 1943, known as the Battle of the Bismarck Sea. ""Kyokusei Maru"" was bombed by B-17s of the 64th Bombardment Squadron on 2 March and sank at , the first ship in the Japanese convoy sunk during the battle. The destroyers ""Yukikaze"" and ""Asagumo"" plucked 950 survivors from the water. The two destroyers landed the survivors at Lae. The rest of the 486 soldiers and sailors on board were killed. SS Kyokusei Maru SS ""Kyokusei Maru"" (Kanji:) was a transport ship of the Imperial Japanese Army during World War"
"German battleship ""Bismarck"" in 1941, a stroke of tactical intelligence that helped lead to the warship's destruction. By the end of the war, 320 men had died in 41 missions by flying boats based at Lough Erne. In 2007, memorial plaques were unveiled in Counties Donegal and Fermanagh. Donegal Corridor The Donegal Corridor () was a narrow strip of Irish airspace linking Lough Erne to the international waters of the Atlantic Ocean through which the Irish Government permitted flights by British military aircraft during World War II. This was a contravention of Irish neutrality and was not publicised at the"
"for three years as an intelligence officer, radar operator and meteorologist aboard the cruiser HMS ""Sheffield"". In 1941, Hogben joined the newly formed Royal New Zealand Navy, though he continued to serve aboard British ships. On 24 May 1941, the German battleship ""Bismarck"" sank the British battlecruiser HMS ""Hood"" at the Battle of the Denmark Strait. Hogben's cruiser, HMS ""Sheffield"", was among the Royal Navy vessels subsequently tasked to pursue and destroy the ""Bismarck"". Hogben detected the German battleship on his radar, and reported its location for the Navy's torpedo bombers. However, on 26 May, the ""Sheffield"" itself was briefly"
"off the German battleship with torpedoes, probably causing the Germans to scuttle the ship. ""Bismarck"" (accompanied by the heavy cruiser ) previously sank the battlecruiser and damaged the battleship with gunfire in the Battle of the Denmark Strait. On 19 November 1941 sank in a mutually fatal engagement with the German raider ""Kormoran"" in the Indian Ocean near Western Australia. Twenty-three British cruisers were lost to enemy action, mostly to air attack and submarines, in operations in the Atlantic, Mediterranean, and Indian Ocean. Sixteen of these losses were in the Mediterranean. The British included cruisers and anti-aircraft cruisers among convoy"
"mine at the entrance to the harbor as they approached Tallinn, Estonia, on 17 September 1921, and ""Violent"", ordered to sink it, detonated it with gunfire while the other ships waited to proceed. The ships then pulled into Tallinn for a port call and went on to visit Helsinki, Finland; Stockholm, Sweden; Copenhagen, Denmark; Gothenburg, Sweden; and Kristiania, Norway, before crossing the North Sea and ending the voyage at Port Edgar, Scotland, on 15 October 1921. After World War I, the United Kingdom received the passenger liner SS ""Bismarck"" from Germany in 1920 as a war reparation, and she was"
"Altmark Incident The ""Altmark"" Incident (Norwegian: ""Altmark""-affæren; German: ""Altmark-Zwischenfall"") was a naval incident of World War II between British destroyers and the German tanker ""Altmark"", which happened on 16–17 February 1940. It took place in what were, at that time, neutral Norwegian waters. On board the ""Altmark"" were some 300 allied prisoners (officially internees), whose ships were sunk by the pocket battleship ""Graf Spee"" in the Southern Atlantic Ocean. British naval forces cornered the tanker and later the destroyer ""Cossack"" attacked the German ship near the Jøssingfjord and freed all the prisoners, killing eight German seamen with firearms and wounding"
"shell passed right through the bow from one side to the other. The third struck the hull plates underwater and burst inside the ship, flooding a generator room and damaging the bulkhead to an adjoining boiler room, partially flooding it also. These last two hits allowed of water into the ship. The ""Bismarck"" was sunk less than a week later after a concentrated effort by Britain's Royal Navy. At 23:30 (local time 19:30) on 24 May an attack was made by a group of nine Swordfish biplane torpedo bombers of 825 Naval Air Squadron led by Lieutenant Commander Eugene Esmonde"
"on board. Referred to as the Altmark Incident, this was the last true naval boarding action for the Royal Navy. ""Gurkha"" was an early loss, being sunk by German bombers off Stavanger. ""Afridi"" was lost soon afterwards to dive bombers while evacuating troops from Namsos. ""Bedouin"", ""Punjabi"", ""Eskimo"" and ""Cossack"" took part in the Second Battle of Narvik, where ""Eskimo"" had her bow blown off. In May 1941, ""Somali"", ""Bedouin"", and ""Eskimo"", along with the N-class destroyer , and Royal Navy cruisers , , and boarded the German weather ship ""München"", retrieving vital Enigma cypher codebooks. In the same month,"
"numerous publications that followed the film, as well as a variety of scale models that were produced. When the 1989 expedition by Dr. Robert Ballard to locate and photograph the remains of the battleship proved to be successful, further attention was directed to the story of the ""Bismarck"". A number of documentaries have also been produced including the Channel 4 miniseries ""Battle of Hood and Bismarck"" (2002) and ""Hunt for the Bismarck"" aired in 2007 on the History Channel network worldwide. Sink the Bismarck! Sink the Bismarck! is a 1960 black-and-white CinemaScope British war film based on the book ""The"
"2017, it will be on 26 February. In 2018, the 75th and final commemoration is scheduled for 8 July HMS Tigris (N63) HMS ""Tigris"" was a T-class submarine of the Royal Navy. She was laid down at Chatham Dockyard and launched in October 1939. ""Tigris"" had a relatively active career, serving in the North Sea and the Mediterranean. ""Tigris"" was active in the Bay of Biscay from July 1940, under the command of Commander Howard Bone. She sank the French fishing vessels ""Sancte Michael"", ""Cimcour"", ""Charles Edmond"" and ""Rene Camaleyre"", the French merchantmen ""Jacobsen"" and ""Guilvinec"", and the German tanker"
"Sink the Bismarck! Sink the Bismarck! is a 1960 black-and-white CinemaScope British war film based on the book ""The Last Nine Days of the Bismarck"" by C. S. Forester. It stars Kenneth More and Dana Wynter and was directed by Lewis Gilbert. To date, it is the only film made that deals directly with the operations, chase and sinking of the battleship by the Royal Navy during the Second World War. Although war films were common in the 1960s, ""Sink the Bismarck!"" was seen as something of an anomaly, with much of its time devoted to the ""unsung back-room planners"
"Sink the Bismark ""Sink the Bismark"" (later ""Sink the Bismarck"") is a march song by country music singer Johnny Horton and songwriter Tillman Franks, based on the pursuit and eventual sinking of the German battleship ""Bismarck"" in May 1941, during World War II. Horton released this song through Columbia Records in 1960, when it reached #3 on the charts. As originally released, the record label used the common misspelling ""Bismark""; this error was corrected for later releases of the song. It was inspired by the 1960 British war movie ""Sink the Bismarck!"" and was in fact (with the producer John"
"the German ships and and the British ships and . ""Hood"" was sunk and the damaged ""Prince of Wales"" was forced to retire. ""Bismarck"", also damaged, ordered her consort to proceed independently while she headed for the French port of St Nazaire, which was the only port on the Atlantic coast with a dry dock able to accommodate a ship of her size. She was intercepted by the British and sunk en route. Britain's Naval Intelligence Division first proposed a commando raid on the dock in late 1941. When the German battleship ""Tirpitz"" was declared operational in January 1942, the"
"German battleship Bismarck Bismarck was the first of two s 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 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 under its sole commanding officer, Captain Ernst Lindemann, ""Bismarck"" conducted only one offensive"
"on Mers-el-Kébir, carrying out strikes against the Vichy-French battleship ""Strasbourg"". They again saw action in attacks on Italian targets on Sicily, and in the Battle of Cape Spartivento, with attacks on the Italian battleship ""Littorio"" on 27 November 1940. They were also involved in providing air cover for the Malta Convoys, and in February 1941 carried out attacks on targets at Livorno, Genoa, Pisa and La Spezia. The breakout into the Atlantic of the German battleship ""Bismarck"" in May 1941 led to the ""Ark Royal"" being ordered into the Atlantic with the British fleet to hunt and sink the German"
"and two battlecruisers—to influence the Battle of the Atlantic by destroying Atlantic convoys supplying the United Kingdom. The superior numbers of British surface units devoted themselves to protecting the convoys, and to seek-and-destroy missions against the German ships, assisted by both naval and land-based aircraft and by sabotage attacks. On 24 May 1941, during its attempt to break out into the North Atlantic as a commerce raider, ""Bismarck"" engaged the British battleship and the battlecruiser . Due primarily to the ""Bismarck""s superior range-finding and accuracy, it soon sank ""Hood"" with an apparent hit to her magazines. ""Bismarck"" and ""Prince of"
"Ralph Kerr Captain Ralph Kerr CBE (16 August 1891 – 24 May 1941) was an officer in the Royal Navy. He served in the First and Second World Wars, and was killed in the sinking of by the German battleship ""Bismarck"" at the Battle of the Denmark Strait. Kerr was born on 16 August 1891, the only son of Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Russell Kerr, and his wife Lady Kerr, of Newnham on Severn, Gloucestershire. He joined the Royal Navy on 15 May 1904, and after service as a cadet he rose through the ranks, being promoted to Lieutenant on 28 February"
"at Stowe School, having won a scholarship. Vanneck joined the Royal Navy during World War II. He studied at the Royal Naval College as an officer cadet from 1 January 1940 to 1 September 1940, when he passed out as a midshipman. He served on during the operation to sink the ""Bismarck"", and on HMS ""Eskimo"". He commanded a LCA during service off North African coast. Having attended a promotion course in Portsmouth from May to August 1941, he was promoted to sub lieutenant on 10 October 1942 with seniority from 1 August 1941. He joined the crew of the"
"catching fire in 1939 and sinking. She was subsequently raised and scrapped in 1943. ""Bismarck"" was built by the Blohm & Voss shipbuilders in Hamburg, Germany. She was laid down in 1913 and launched on 20 June 1914 by Countess Hanna von Bismarck, the granddaughter of the 19th century German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. During the launching ceremony Countess Bismarck had difficulty breaking the bottle of champagne herself by swinging it too late and Kaiser Wilhelm II had to assist by quick-wittedly snatching the bottle that had missed the ship's hull and throwing it himself, finally causing it to break"
"Operation Rheinübung Operation ""Rheinübung"" (""Exercise Rhine"") was the sortie into the Atlantic by the new German battleship and heavy cruiser on 18–27 May 1941, during World War II. This operation to block Allied shipping to the United Kingdom culminated with the sinking of ""Bismarck"". During both World Wars, the island of Britain was dependent upon huge numbers of merchant ships to bring in food and essential raw materials, and protecting this lifeline was one of the highest priorities for British forces. If this lifeline could be severed, the British Empire in Europe would have to either sue for peace; negotiate"
"a 15° port turn. ""Bismarck"" was forced to sail in circles until a combination of alternating propeller speeds was found which would keep her on a reasonably steady course which, in the prevailing force 8 wind and sea state, forced her to sail towards the British warships with almost no manoeuvring capability. The German battleship suffered heavy attack during the night of 26–27 May, and sank at 10:39 hours on 27 May. ""Ark Royal"" and the ships of Force H returned to Gibraltar on 29 May 1941. Despite the boost in Allied morale from the sinking of the battleship ""Bismarck"","