The campaign to sink the Bismarck

 The movie "Sink the Bismarck" is based on a novel "The last nine days of the Bismarck" by C.S.Forester. I thought that the movie made a good story. The battle for the island of Crete started about the same time as the Bismarck operation. The story is about the events in a command center beneath the city of London, blow street level. A very senior British navy captain commanded the command center. His assistant was played by Dana Wynter. She is in the navy and wears the woman's uniform with jacket and skirt.

The captain's son was a Swordfish pilot.

Rear Admiral Wake-Walker's two cruisers, Norfolk and Suffolk found the two German ships and followed them. Admiral Holland's ships, the Hood and Prince of Wales, found the Bismarck and Prins Eugen. Admral Tovey, in the King George V, headed for the area.

Hood and Prince of Wales opened fire, but assumed that thr lead ship was the Bismarck, but it wasactally the heavy cruiser Prns Eugen. That was eventually corrected. It was the Prince of Wales that got the first hits in the Bismarck. At about 6am, the Bismarck got the fatal hit on the Hood that caused the explosion that sank the Hood. The Prince of Wales changed course to miss the Hood's wreckage. The Prince of Wales took hits that disabled the armament for a time.

The captain's son was shot down by the Bismarck's anti-aircraft guns while he attempted a torpedo attack. The captain and his assistant saw a report about the son's plane being shot down.

A crew member of a Catalina flying boat saw the son in the water and rescued him.

before that, the Battleships Rodney and King George V made contact with the Bismarck. The Rodney armed wth nine high-velocity guns firing light shot. By 1941, that was considered to be a bad design. Still, the Rodney managed to reduce the Bismarck to a sinking wreck.

A British cruiser torpedoed and sank the wreck that was the Bismarck.

Before they left the command center, the Captain and his assistant saw the report that the Captain's son had been rescued. When the captain and his assistant climbed to street level, they had no idea of the time of day. They found it was morning and found a place to have breakfast.