The Bismarck class is a class of two German battleships built for Nazi Germany's Kriegsmarine, its lead ship, the battleship Bismarck, laid down in July 1936, launched in February 1939 and commissioned in August 1940, and named after the nineteenth-century Prussian and German statesman Otto von Bismarck. The largest battleships Germany ever built, displacing over 41,000 tons standard and more than 50,000 tons fully loaded, they mounted eight 38 centimeter main guns, carried advanced radar for the period and could exceed 30 knots in trials, making Bismarck herself, on completion, one of the most powerful warships afloat. Bismarck's operational career lasted barely eight months and included only a single major offensive sortie, the May 1941 raid into the Atlantic codenamed Operation Rheinubung intended to attack Allied convoy shipping between North America and Britain, during which the ship sank the British battlecruiser HMS Hood before being crippled by a torpedo strike and finally sunk by British naval forces on 27 May 1941.
Facts
Weapon Class Introduced Year Weapon Class
Weapon Class (category) Connections
Used In
Source Wikipedia: Bismarck-Class Battleship
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Bismarck-Class Battleship
WikipediaLede, paragraph 1, sentence 1
The Bismarck class was a pair of fast battleships built for Nazi Germany's Kriegsmarine shortly before the outbreak of World War II.
Lede, paragraph 1, sentence 3
Bismarck was laid down in July 1936 and completed in September 1940, while the keel of her sister ship, Tirpitz, was laid in October 1936 and work finished in February 1941.
- Weapon class classified from the entity's own sourced description text.
- Correction: a class of battleships, not a guided missile.
Used In: World War II, Wikipedia article text
Even though Raeder and other senior naval officers envisioned using and as commerce raiders against first French and later British shipping in the Atlantic, and in fact used them in that role during World War II, the ships were not designed for that mission.
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