The Bismarck, at 42,000 tons, was the fastest, newest, most powerful battleship in the Navy of Germany and the pride of the German fleet. As with the rest of the German surface fleet early in the war, the role of the Bismarck was seen mainly as that of a commerce raider, its mission to attack British convoys. No less a figure than Winston Churchill put the highest priority on the sinking of the Bismarck, not just to protect the vital convoys, but to destroy a mighty symbol of the Nazi war-making machine.

On May 20, 1941, an intelligence officer in ostensibly neutral Sweden informed the Stockholm-based British naval attache of a conversation he had had at a cocktail party with a Norwegian official. He had learned that two very large German warships had been sighted steaming toward the Denmark Strait. Royal Navy command immediately assumed these were the Bismarck and the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen. Acting on the tip, HMS Norfolk, a cruiser on patrol in the Denmark Strait, sighted the ships on May 24. They were immediately engaged by the Polish destroyer Piorun. The light battleship (or battle cruiser) HMS Hood and the battleship HMS Prince of Wales soon joined the battle. Tactically, the British vessels were at a disadvantage, because the angle at which they had intercepted the German vessels prevented them from bringing all guns to bear. Worse, the Hood and Prince of Wales divided their fire between the Bismarck and Prinz Eugen. The Bismarck, under the highly skilled command of Admiral Gunther Lutjens (1889- 1941) and Captain Ernst Lindemann (1894-1941), directed all of its fire against the Hood. A 42,000-ton battleship laid down during World War I and completed in 1920, the Hood was a fleet flagship. Less than 10 minutes after the battle had begun, her inadequate armor having been penetrated by a shell that detonated an ammunition magazine, the Hood exploded and, within two minutes, sank. All but three of its crew of more than 1,400 men, including Group Commander Admiral Lancelot Holland (1887-1941), died. The Prince of Wales, which had sailed before final fitting had been completed (there were civilian contractors on board), was not fully operational and was now also damaged. Its captain broke off the engagement, and, fortunately for his ship, the Bismarck had also been damaged, a torpedo hit from an airplane launched from the aircraft carrier Victorious having opened up a fuel leak. The Bismarck, therefore, did not give chase to the Prince of Wales, but headed for repair facilities at Brest. The Prinz Eugen sailed to the west. . .

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