The German battleship Bismarck is sunk in the North Atlantic
On this day · 27 May 1941
Days after sinking HMS Hood, the pride of the German navy was hunted down and destroyed; only a fraction of its crew survived.
On 27 May 1941, the Royal Navy sank the German battleship Bismarck in the North Atlantic west of France, ending a chase that had gripped Britain for days.
During its only sortie, code-named Rheinübung, Bismarck had stunned the navy on 24 May by destroying the battlecruiser HMS Hood in minutes. The British pursued relentlessly. A torpedo from a Swordfish aircraft jammed Bismarck’s rudder, leaving it circling and unable to escape.
On the morning of the 27th, the battleships King George V and Rodney closed in and pounded the crippled ship, which sank by 10:39 a.m. after shellfire, torpedoes, and scuttling.
Of a crew of around 2,200, only about 110 men were pulled from the sea.
The sinking removed Germany’s most powerful surface raider from the Atlantic.
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