Customer Reviews

BISMARCK: The Final Days of Germany's Greatest Battleship

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The legendary naval battle is an inherently exciting topic, but unfortunately I was just not able to enjoy this book as a casual weekend read, due to its shockingly poor writing. If you can overlook the numerous basic spelling errors found throughout the text -- no exaggeration, things spell check would detect -- you will find it slow and difficult to read due to its disorganization, repetitiveness, and pervasively confusing grammatical structure. I am not super picky about writing style in general, but the publisher has seriously dropped the ball here.

No doubt it is thoroughly researched and historically accurate.

Surely, the raid of the German battleship Bismarck into the North Atlantic in May, 1941, and the Royal Navy's search for and destruction of the feared ship is one of the best-known incidents of World War II naval warfare, but perhaps never before has such a comprehensive, thoughtful analysis of the event been published as in Niklas Zetterling and Michael Tamelander's "Bismarck: The Final Days of Germany's Greatest Battleship", looking at what happened from both the German and British perspectives. The Bismarck's mission is carefully placed in the context of the German strategy of commerce raiding, with a comprehensive look at the strategic and tactical problems faced by the commanders of both sides, and possibly alternative actions at each stage are carefully explored. The text is well-illustrated with large-scale maps showing the changing positions of hunter and hunted, making clear the development of events. The narrative text is highly detailed
but does not, as books on naval history so often do, descend into a merely technical hardware descriptiion in which seemingly every bolt is counted and described. Instead, authors Zetterling and Tamelander concentrate upon the human element, always keeping in mind what each side knew and did not know at any given moment, with the result that a feeling of tense suspense builds, even though the reader already knows the Bismarck's fate. All in all, a gripping account.

..exciting and competent re-telling of the hunt, pursuit and final destruction of one of the mightiest battleships ever to put to sea. A tremendous British victory, the heroism of the sea-and-airmen involved is calmly and dispassionately portrayed in this fine account. After the shock of the loss of the Royal Navy's battleship Hood with virtually all hands, the attempts to shake off the pursuing pack and the desperate attacks flown by the Navy's venerable Swordfish torpedo bombers are nicely built up by the authors to the final denouement, as the Bismarck, crippled by a torpedo strike, is shelled into oblivion..
A couple of criticisms; the authors don't bring much new information to the table and their style is ponderous and leaden to say the least. This is not helped by the authors attempt to weigh up and evaluate the decision making process undertaken at each stage of the hunt by the various interested parties. On the German side they rely heavily of course on Mullenheim-Rechberg's memoir but don't appear to realise that an English translation was published. The authors are not native-speakers and sentence construction is predictably and unfortunately rather wooden in places, while this work has more typos and omissions than any other similar work I've ever read. In short the text desperately needed copy editing. Recommended despite these shortcomings.

Written from a military historian's perspective, Bismarck: a minute-by-minute account is both intellectual and highly accessible. The authors trace the doomed mission of the Bismarck in detail and give position-by-position accounts of the main players. They also intersperse some eyewitness accounts of the Bismarck's fall to keep things in perspective. My favorite moments are when the authors talk about the Bismarck's impact on Germany's war potential and their "cruiser warfare" policy in general.

Could be longer.

A few typos.

Otherwise, 5 stars through and through.

While I agree with the lower rated reviews that there are spelling errors and there is repetition in the text, it is most pondorous in the first half of the book. (They need to look up synonyms for "bunkering fuel".) Overall the book provides a good strategic and tactical overview of the naval war situation before and during the Bismark/Eugen sortie. The authors' analysis, rather than being intrusive, was broadening in the explaining the fog of war, possible options the commanders on each side faced and vagarities of equipment available at the time. Data on the book: Part 1 includes 82 pages of prior German capital ship sorties in the "cruiser war" against British merchant ships. A further 26 pages looks at the combatant's preparations prior to the Bismark sailing. Part 2 138 pages of the battle up until the final 24 hours. Part 3 is the sinking and aftermath and final analysis. There are 4 strategic maps on early cruiser war. 7 strategic maps that deal with Bismark's sortie with 6 of them having orders of battle. 3 tactical maps; sinking of the Hood, searches after British contact with the Bismark is lost and a map of the final battle. 8 pages of photos.

very well written book. complete with pictures , well documents the first and last voyage of the bismark from both sides of the story, and from survivors of both sides.i highly reccomend this book to others

Unlike the British, American, and Japanese navies of World War II, the German navy was comparatively small, having no aircraft carriers in her arsenal. Instead, the Germans relied on the guns of battleships and cruisers to attack convoys bound for England. Supporting this tactic, the Germans had commissioned several "pocket battleships" and cruisers to hunt down and destroy the Allied convoys. However, the Germans possessed the ultimate trump card in the early Battle for the Atlantic: the new battleship Bismarck. Possessing eight 15-inch guns in her main battery and displacing over 50,000 tons, the Bismarck dwarfed the ships of the Royal Navy. It was decided to combine Bismarck with the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen and unleash them on the lightly-guarded British convoys.

Despite efforts to maintain their secrecy, the Norwegian resistance as well as an overflight by an RAF Spitfire spotted the two ships. Alerted to the presence of the ships, the Royal Navy set sail to destroy them. What resulted over the course of the following week was perhaps the greatest sea chase of the war. The Bismarck managed to destroy the HMS Hood, the pride of the Royal Navy. However, the British kept up the pursuit until aircraft from the carrier Ark Royal managed to torpedo the Bismarck in her most vital point: her twin rudders. Reduced to manuvering in circles, the other British warships swarmed around the Bismarck, turning her into a smoldering wreck. Only about 100 men survived the sinking.

I found this to be an informative and interesting book. The author does a very good job of explaining the chase from both the British and German points of view. I highly recommend this fine book. Readers of naval history will surely enjoy it.

With one point of exception,this work is the most complete and detailed summary and analysis of the Bismarck episode of the many I have encountered. The summary of the second torpedo aircraft strike is exeptional and in a blow by blow description illuminates that four torpedoes struck the battleship: a fact glossed over in many histories. The final battle with The Rodney and King George V as well as the premliminary skirmish with Vians Deytroyers is unrivaled. The analysis of Germany's surface strategy and the mismatch between strategy and weaponry is well scrutinized. Only the battle of the Denmark strait, especially the role of the Prince of Wales, was a disappointment in being vague, sketchy and incomplete. this alone accounts for the four, as a opposed to a five star rating.

I really enjoyed this book.I've read several others,no not much "new" information in this text,but it does go into more description of what the commanders involved were probably thinking.Yes,there is a lot from the Mullenheim-Rechbergs' book but also more on the history of the reasons for sending this ship at this time.[Personally, I think Raeder should have waited for at least one of the other heavy ships to become available.]It gives more insight to the "cruiser" warfare early on in 1940/41.The maps are nicely done and even though the pictures are not anything new,it's always nice to see them.Bismarck was a beautiful ship.The cover picture is magnificent!

Ole Johnny Horton had it right in his classic sixties song, "Sink the Bismarck..."

And the author of this book gets it right in telling us the gripping tale of Bismarck and naval warfare at the start of WWII. It is a tale of technology, yes, but moreso a tale, a story, of men and decisons made and not made. An interesting, entertaining and gripping saga.

Have studied WWII to some extent, but this book, for the first time, helps me understand the naval warfare of the period and why sinking that one battleship was so important to the British.

"Churchill told the people 'put every ship asail cause somewhere on that ocean we know she's gotta be...we gotta sink the Bismarck to the bottom of the sea..."

(With apologies and appreciation to Johnny Horton!!!)