Bismarck-Class Battleship

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.