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
Classification
Service Status Weapon Class Introduced Year Weapon Class
Weapon Class (category) FAQs
What happened to Tirpitz, the second ship of the Bismarck class?
Tirpitz sat in Norway threatening convoys, was capsized by Tallboy bombs in 1944 and scrapped afterward.
Tirpitz had a quieter career than her sister ship. She operated briefly in the Baltic Sea in 1941, then moved to Norwegian waters in 1942, where she acted as a fleet in being that threatened the convoys sent from Britain to the Soviet Union. The Royal Navy and Royal Air Force attacked her repeatedly between 1942 and 1944, though most of those attacks did not seriously damage her. An attack by X-craft in late 1943, Operation Source, inflicted significant damage and neutralized her for six months. In 1944 Lancaster bombers hit her with two Tallboy bombs, which caused extensive internal damage and capsized her. She was broken up for scrap between 1948 and 1957.
Connections
Operated By
Source Wikipedia: Bismarck-Class Battleship
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.
Lead
Bismarck was defeated and sunk in a final engagement after a three-day chase by the Royal Navy.
Used In: World War II, Article text
Even though Raeder and other senior naval officers envisioned using Bismarck and Tirpitz 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.
In Group: Battleships and Ironclads, Lead sentence
The Bismarck class was a pair of fast battleships built for Nazi Germany's Kriegsmarine shortly before the outbreak of World War II. The ships were the largest and most powerful warships built for the Kriegsmarine; displacing more than 41,000 metric tons (40,000 long tons) normally, they were armed with a battery of eight 38 cm (15 in) guns and were capable of a top speed of 30 knots (56 km/h; 35 mph).
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