Royal Navy forces landed two torpedoes into the Bismarck, the second disabling the rudder and forcing her into a turn. From there Royal Navy warships closed in to unleash their justice on the warship which was now, more or less, a floating fortress. The end result would see thousands of British and German sailors lives cast about as thousands of shells were lobbed back and forth until the Bismarck finally went silent. At the end of it all, just 115 Bismarck sailors were recovered while the ship itself sank to the ocean floor off the French coast.
The engagement proved a strategic and morale victory for the British in the early going though at the expense of the battleship HMS Hood and her 1,413 souls and other Royal Navy warships damaged. The Germans, however, were dealt what became the first of many irrecoverable blows which led to a heavy reliance on the U-boat submarine fleet to contain Allied shipping ventures in the Atlantic
There are a total of (19) Hunt for KMS Bismarck - WW2 Timeline (May 1941) events in the SecondWorldWarHistory.com database. Entries are listed below by date-of-occurrence ascending (first-to-last). Other leading and trailing events may also be included for perspective.
