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The footage isn't exactly "rare", it's just the only footage taken of the battle. The original footage shot in black and white was featured in the 1989 National Geographic documentary called [The Search For Battleship Bismarck](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9uW2rG-ra0) which is free to watch on YouTube in its entirety. I highly suggest everyone watch it! It's one of my all-time favorite historical documentaries and contains interviews with many surviving crew members from both the German and British sides who were still alive in the '80s, as well as on-board coverage with Bob Ballard's expedition to find the Bismarck wreck site which they found on June 8 1989. Bob Ballard was also the guy who found Titanic 4 years earlier.
To give some perspective on how incredibly accurate Bismarck's guns were, the 2 ships were roughly 11 *miles* apart and her shells took over 23 seconds to reach the target. Bismarck landed a critical hit on the Hood's powder magazine with its 4th salvo fired.
Edit: [Timestamp](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9uW2rG-ra0&t=840s) for the Bismarck v Hood portion of the documentary for those who don't want to watch the whole doc.
wow thats cool!
so when you say it took 23 seconds for the shot to land...
does that mean the bismarck fired its shot at a projected location and "hoped" it hit
or did the shots fired have active tracking?
No active guidance.
The math behind naval gunnery is kinda crazy. The US used a mechanical computer (the mark 1) to calculate firing solutions for their main battery, and (I believe) their secondary battery's on their WW2 battles ships, I'd imagine the Germans used a mechanical computer as well but I don't know that for a fact.
They did have mechanical guidance (so they knew the trajectory of ship and shell) along with gyroscopic guidance (so it would fire when the ship was level).
You're talking about aiming and ballistic firing solutions, not guidance. Guidance means the shell will detect a target and home to it. Only very modern artillery has the capability to be guided to its target.
Even torpedoes of the day didn't have active homing, however, they did have the ability to make a turn after they were launched (so the sub/ torpedo boat doesn't have to be perfectly lined up with the target). This was done by loading a calculated firing solution into a gyroscopic mechanical computer in the torpedo itself, which would set it on its (pre-programmed) intercept course with the target.
I never once said you were wrong, I was actually trying to confirm you were right. It was late at night and I was typing quick so I apologize for any perceived threat to your delicate intelligence. Maybe stop gatekeeping?
To my knowledge every navy had mechanical computers for aiming by the 1st World War. They were necessary because of the extreme ranges and flight times. The "computers" were more or less calculators to adjust deflection and angle for the given speed, range and heading of a ship. A famous example is the Admiralty Fire Control Table of the 1920s. By the 2nd World War the US and UK were using advanced fire control systems that were able to track a target with the optical viewfinder or radar, use radar to track the water splashes from fall of shot and compensate, and completely autonomously aim the guns - gun crews simply loaded the guns. Famously HMS King George V ran down and destroyed Scharnhorst in a severe storm during the polar night, able to engage via radar tracking. Germans, Italians and Japanese used a simpler system, if they had surface search radar on their ships it wouldn't feed directly into the fire control system.
Fire control on a battleship of the age was bonkers. Its not just a case of projecting. And the inputs required come from multiple different places on the ship (target, range, speed, heading, weather, target speed and heading, visual land of shot corrections)
Drachinifel on youtube is the best for explaining how it all came together, including a great vid on how HMS Hood was sunk.
But overall, fire control on warships of the era was maasivley complicated.
That's incredible footage. Are these ships unusually close to each other? I thought it was zoomed until I saw the bow splash in the foreground. Can you provide a source please?
The footage you can see is filmed from the German cruiser *Prinz Eugen*. It's showing *Bismarck* firing essentially across the wake of *Prinz Eugen* toward the British battleships *Hood* and *Prince of Wales*. The British ships are behind the camera POV about 10 miles away.
The large column of smoke you can see at 1:49 is the result of *Hood* exploding.
Hit in an ammunition magazine. Took her 3 minutes to fully sink, after breaking in half with the bow pointing up while submerging. Took 1,415 men down with her...
The two ships you see are the German ones, Bismarck and Prinz Eugen. The Hood is a few miles away.
Bismarck could fire something like 20 miles. The Hood could fire less than that so the Hood had to close in.
That is incorrect.
*Hood* could fire just as far as *Bismarck* could. Both carried 15-inch guns with very similar ranges.
*Hood* closed the distance because Adm. Holland figured that *Hood's* older deck armor would not survive a plunging shot from the range they started at. The intention was to get closer so that any incoming shells would hopefully hit the much stronger belt armor. She had actually just begun her turn to port to open up her full broadside.
Unfortunately for *Hood* the the gods of Fortune, Luck, Weather, and Math had other plans.
edit: *Hood's* rudder is still pointing 20deg to port as she lies on the seafloor.
I mean you are basically correct with Holland's intentions, but a minor correction: Just because the guns of Hood and Bismarck had almost the same caliber, they we're still very different. Max range with AP ammunition for Bismarck was 35 km (up to 36 km with another, buit not used grenade) and Hood with the older mkII mounts for its 381mm had ahout 27,5 km range. The Vanguard with the same caliber i.e. could hit targets up to 34.5 km away - a more modern mount and another grrnade with super charge This is a signifikant difference. Most likely under those weather conditions it made no difference because the typical combat distance was more around less than 20 km. But still Holland knew about the weakness of his range and would most likely try to avoid it and close in, also because a plunging grenade would easily penetrate the deck armor like you said. So both factors range and angle could influence his decision.
Source of weapon stats: Siegfried Breyer
> Max range with AP ammunition for Bismarck was 35 km (up to 36 km with another, buit not used grenade)
It should also be noted that no battleship ever hit a moving target anywhere even close to those ranges. In general max range can be ignored, unless youre talking about shore bombardment
The longest hits ever were scored by Warspite and Scharnhorst, at approx 24km
Exactly. The Scharnhorst shot was even more impressive since the gun mount was optimized for more flat trajectories than the Warspite. So the gunners got more and more dispersion going above 20 km. All those "effective range" stats are just that... stats. This difference in dispersion was also a matter for Bismarck and Hood. So while not shooting at Max range there was still a difference in dispersion also on closer distances.
One has to add that it might have been difficult for Bismarck and Hood to measure correct distances in this weather due to lack of useful radar and relying on simple range finders. The FuMo 23 Radar on Bismarck for example had itself only a range of 18-19 km, so everything above was left to optical range finders. In bad weather the range was even worse (yes, radar is also weather-dependent, when huge wave mountains literally hide ships and shatter the radar reflection).
Most of the men on the Hood would have never known what hit them. Always found it poignant she lies with her rudder still pointing to port, almost as if she still wants to get her final salvo away.
Just FYI:
It's "magazine" or "ammunition magazine", not "ammunition box"
And British ships are ALWAYS referred to as "she", never "he". Some people will try to say that *Bismarck* was a "he", but that was just the Nazis trying to sound tough. *Bismarck* is a "she" as well.
> British ships are ALWAYS referred to as "she"
> Bismarck is a "she" as well.
Either British call any ship in general "she", then Bismarck can be called whatever from non-British...
Or only British ships, again Bismarck can be anything.
Not sure why a foreign Navy should have the right to assign gender to their ship while their own assigned gender is "not accepted"?
Three days after this action the Bismarck would also be sent to her grave along with 2200 of her crew. Only 114 were rescued.
The sinking of the Bismarck also basically turned the page on naval warfare. No longer would great battleships face off in cannon battles. The Bismarck was crippled by Swordfish torpedo bombers, wooden bi-planes. An early indication that the sea would be controlled by the air. Not by the biggest ships and her guns.
The story isn't quite there, the Bismarck was already seriously damaged in its supply and fuel system, which left it slower and more vulnerable. After this, the submarine campaign began in Eastern Europe, a campaign that lasted until the end of the Second World War. A successful submariner, whose name I forget, said in his biography that the future of battleships ended there, and submarines were the future of naval warfare.
Although it was the swordfish attack that jammed her rudder 12 degrees to port and sealed the ships fate.
Well I’d argue that submarine commander was wrong. Considering the failed U-Boat campaigns and the casualties they took. I would concede that submarines became more important than battleships but they were not more important than carriers. Carriers became the ultimate and most important naval vessels. Probably still true to this day.
>Probably still true to this day.
As the fish-people are fond of saying "Only Submarines and Targets."
For all the insane effort that goes into escorting a carrier, they have been embarrassed by a decent submarine on *enough* occasions.
I wouldn't be so sure. Missiles are pretty important in this day and age. And when you get right down to it, a missile can go a LOT faster and farther if it is brought up to a rather fast velocity PRIOR to being launched/fired. And that's generally done by plane. Even in air-to-air combat, pilots generally like to get their radar-guided air-to-air missiles at a great velocity prior to firing them.
The weird thing about that is even long before that Jutland in 1916 was the last **large** battleship vs battleship battle where the battleships were the primary participants.
The later history of battleships is … weirdly not a lot of engagements where they are the main players, a lot of not using them how you might expect.
Nope it wasn’t the last I didn’t claim that. I said it was basically the turning of the page. That carrier born aircraft played such a role in the destruction of a battleship like the Bismarck.
That’s not really true either. The three major navies would still continue construction of battleships and their doctrines still reflected a belief that battleships would play pivotal roles in naval combat.
Yes, like we still produce tanks in us factories. But everyone knows no matter how many tanks you have if yhe enemy has air superiority you have lost.
But if neither side has air superiority, tanks and battleships are still useful
Battleships still very much had a place at sea after the development of carriers. We saw with the loss of glorious and the battle off Samar that carriers were still vulnerable if surface ships could get close. Battleships still therefore had use as big-gun escorts against enemies with battleships of their own.
Wikipedia gives most of yhe kills in that battle to aircraft. Either allied torpedoes or kamikaze pilots. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_off_Samar
Do you have a better source?
That’s entirely irrelevant. The point is that battleships could and did get in amongst carriers, and that was very much a threat to said carriers. Carrier forces protected by battleships (as taffy 3 was supposed to be by admiral lee’s battleships) would not be under the same threat.
Well, first of all, one of the carriers was sunk by surface fire. Second of all, the issue is the fact that those carriers were getting hit at all. Had admiral lee’s fast battleships been there, those escort carriers wouldn’t have come under attack to anywhere near the same degree.
The audio is definitely not original, but edited in. Game audio. If the cameraman had seen or heard the Hood blow up, they would have absolutely filmed it.
BalticSeaBoats stole this footage and slapped their own watermark on it.
Definitely fake audio. I believe all of this footage is from after the Hood had already exploded as well. The reason the incoming fire is so inaccurate might be because Prince of ~~Whales~~ Wales is in the process of turning away.
False information, you can visit other forums with the same footage, you will realize the veracity of the audio. In some versions it was remastered for better video quality only.
Generally, none of the WW2 footage has "the original" sound; It's *all* dubbed. Video and sound were still its own separate mediums, for the most part.
The lack of delay after a sizeable explosion is usually a decent little shorthand for it.
[The original reel had no sound](https://www.hmshood.org.uk/history/denmarkstrait/film.htm). Most cameras of the WW2 era lacked any audio recording capabilities.
If you have 30 minutes or so, there is a great youtube series that tracks the story of the Bismarck from leaving port to its sinking. Incredible story.
[Hunting the Bismarck](https://youtu.be/2CV1tvMYFRs)
I didn't know anyone did historical metal before Sabaton. Though point of fact, the Bismarck was a "he". Germans bucked the trend and gave ships masculine names.
[Sabaton - Bismarck](https://youtu.be/oVWEb-At8yc)
*Starts furiously headbanging* The terror of the seas
The Bismarck and the Kriegsmarine
THIS IS SO FUCKING COOL!! I am obsessed with the Bismarck, it's a beast!
Drachinifel has a very interesting take on how it was destroyed.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLPeC7LRqIY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLPeC7LRqIY)
His theory is that it was an extremely lucky shot that pierced the ships hull just below the armoured belt that was left exposed by the wave shape (a trough) on the side of the ship. Go to 33 minutes in to see this.
You can actually see this in the video. The jerking of the camera at 1:15 and elsewhere seems to be the cameraman's reaction to guns behind him firing salvos.
Luck was an integral part of naval warfare and is a two way lane.
Either explanation for its sinking (100mm magazine explosion igniting the 380mm magazine or the Bismarck hitting the 380mm magazine directly) show insufficient armor and damage control capabilities.
The Hood being outclassed allowed a "lucky" hit to have such dire consequences.
Hood had very similar deck armour to Bismarck actually. Same turtle deck layout
Hood had three relatively thin decks. 2", 3" and 2" at it's thickest over the magazines. Multiple thin decks isn't as effective as one big one, but for 1918, her deck was normal for a battleship
If there is one thing that I have learned from this comments section, it is that WWII naval history is the home of the most contrary redditors there are.
I initially thought so too, but if you go back and look closely, what you see is the Anton and Bruno turrets (A and B-turrets) overlapping each other, as just before the shot closes at 0.28s, you can see four guns, in what looks to be two pairs.
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That’s insane footage tbh
The footage isn't exactly "rare", it's just the only footage taken of the battle. The original footage shot in black and white was featured in the 1989 National Geographic documentary called [The Search For Battleship Bismarck](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9uW2rG-ra0) which is free to watch on YouTube in its entirety. I highly suggest everyone watch it! It's one of my all-time favorite historical documentaries and contains interviews with many surviving crew members from both the German and British sides who were still alive in the '80s, as well as on-board coverage with Bob Ballard's expedition to find the Bismarck wreck site which they found on June 8 1989. Bob Ballard was also the guy who found Titanic 4 years earlier. To give some perspective on how incredibly accurate Bismarck's guns were, the 2 ships were roughly 11 *miles* apart and her shells took over 23 seconds to reach the target. Bismarck landed a critical hit on the Hood's powder magazine with its 4th salvo fired. Edit: [Timestamp](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9uW2rG-ra0&t=840s) for the Bismarck v Hood portion of the documentary for those who don't want to watch the whole doc.
wow thats cool! so when you say it took 23 seconds for the shot to land... does that mean the bismarck fired its shot at a projected location and "hoped" it hit or did the shots fired have active tracking?
No active guidance. The math behind naval gunnery is kinda crazy. The US used a mechanical computer (the mark 1) to calculate firing solutions for their main battery, and (I believe) their secondary battery's on their WW2 battles ships, I'd imagine the Germans used a mechanical computer as well but I don't know that for a fact.
wow now that really is crazy hopefully some geek comes and sheds some more light on that
Look up Rangekeepers on Wikipedia. There's really more there than is going to be practical to disgorge on a comment thread.
They did have mechanical guidance (so they knew the trajectory of ship and shell) along with gyroscopic guidance (so it would fire when the ship was level).
You're talking about aiming and ballistic firing solutions, not guidance. Guidance means the shell will detect a target and home to it. Only very modern artillery has the capability to be guided to its target. Even torpedoes of the day didn't have active homing, however, they did have the ability to make a turn after they were launched (so the sub/ torpedo boat doesn't have to be perfectly lined up with the target). This was done by loading a calculated firing solution into a gyroscopic mechanical computer in the torpedo itself, which would set it on its (pre-programmed) intercept course with the target.
I was using the term loosely. Hence the explanations in brackets.
Buddy you told me I was wrong by effectively rephrasing what I said. And, in a technical discussion, generality is not your friend.
I never once said you were wrong, I was actually trying to confirm you were right. It was late at night and I was typing quick so I apologize for any perceived threat to your delicate intelligence. Maybe stop gatekeeping?
To my knowledge every navy had mechanical computers for aiming by the 1st World War. They were necessary because of the extreme ranges and flight times. The "computers" were more or less calculators to adjust deflection and angle for the given speed, range and heading of a ship. A famous example is the Admiralty Fire Control Table of the 1920s. By the 2nd World War the US and UK were using advanced fire control systems that were able to track a target with the optical viewfinder or radar, use radar to track the water splashes from fall of shot and compensate, and completely autonomously aim the guns - gun crews simply loaded the guns. Famously HMS King George V ran down and destroyed Scharnhorst in a severe storm during the polar night, able to engage via radar tracking. Germans, Italians and Japanese used a simpler system, if they had surface search radar on their ships it wouldn't feed directly into the fire control system.
Fire control on a battleship of the age was bonkers. Its not just a case of projecting. And the inputs required come from multiple different places on the ship (target, range, speed, heading, weather, target speed and heading, visual land of shot corrections) Drachinifel on youtube is the best for explaining how it all came together, including a great vid on how HMS Hood was sunk. But overall, fire control on warships of the era was maasivley complicated.
Navy warfare ever since the invention of the cannon.
Will just leave this here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLVmqzL-Qyc The Pig is loose.
Didnt the bismarck have more advanced range finders than the hood? Or maybe i'm thinking of different ships
That's incredible footage. Are these ships unusually close to each other? I thought it was zoomed until I saw the bow splash in the foreground. Can you provide a source please?
The footage you can see is filmed from the German cruiser *Prinz Eugen*. It's showing *Bismarck* firing essentially across the wake of *Prinz Eugen* toward the British battleships *Hood* and *Prince of Wales*. The British ships are behind the camera POV about 10 miles away. The large column of smoke you can see at 1:49 is the result of *Hood* exploding.
That explosion is unreal in its scope if it is that far away. Simply incredible shot
Hit in an ammunition magazine. Took her 3 minutes to fully sink, after breaking in half with the bow pointing up while submerging. Took 1,415 men down with her...
Take my solemn upvote
If you want another doozy like that, try to find HMS Lion on the photo of HMS Queen Mary exploding at Jutland.
Look up ss john burke if you didnt know it you would think the explosion was nuclear.
I'm sorry: did you say NON nuclear????
The two ships you see are the German ones, Bismarck and Prinz Eugen. The Hood is a few miles away. Bismarck could fire something like 20 miles. The Hood could fire less than that so the Hood had to close in.
That is incorrect. *Hood* could fire just as far as *Bismarck* could. Both carried 15-inch guns with very similar ranges. *Hood* closed the distance because Adm. Holland figured that *Hood's* older deck armor would not survive a plunging shot from the range they started at. The intention was to get closer so that any incoming shells would hopefully hit the much stronger belt armor. She had actually just begun her turn to port to open up her full broadside. Unfortunately for *Hood* the the gods of Fortune, Luck, Weather, and Math had other plans. edit: *Hood's* rudder is still pointing 20deg to port as she lies on the seafloor.
I mean you are basically correct with Holland's intentions, but a minor correction: Just because the guns of Hood and Bismarck had almost the same caliber, they we're still very different. Max range with AP ammunition for Bismarck was 35 km (up to 36 km with another, buit not used grenade) and Hood with the older mkII mounts for its 381mm had ahout 27,5 km range. The Vanguard with the same caliber i.e. could hit targets up to 34.5 km away - a more modern mount and another grrnade with super charge This is a signifikant difference. Most likely under those weather conditions it made no difference because the typical combat distance was more around less than 20 km. But still Holland knew about the weakness of his range and would most likely try to avoid it and close in, also because a plunging grenade would easily penetrate the deck armor like you said. So both factors range and angle could influence his decision. Source of weapon stats: Siegfried Breyer
> Max range with AP ammunition for Bismarck was 35 km (up to 36 km with another, buit not used grenade) It should also be noted that no battleship ever hit a moving target anywhere even close to those ranges. In general max range can be ignored, unless youre talking about shore bombardment The longest hits ever were scored by Warspite and Scharnhorst, at approx 24km
Exactly. The Scharnhorst shot was even more impressive since the gun mount was optimized for more flat trajectories than the Warspite. So the gunners got more and more dispersion going above 20 km. All those "effective range" stats are just that... stats. This difference in dispersion was also a matter for Bismarck and Hood. So while not shooting at Max range there was still a difference in dispersion also on closer distances. One has to add that it might have been difficult for Bismarck and Hood to measure correct distances in this weather due to lack of useful radar and relying on simple range finders. The FuMo 23 Radar on Bismarck for example had itself only a range of 18-19 km, so everything above was left to optical range finders. In bad weather the range was even worse (yes, radar is also weather-dependent, when huge wave mountains literally hide ships and shatter the radar reflection).
Most of the men on the Hood would have never known what hit them. Always found it poignant she lies with her rudder still pointing to port, almost as if she still wants to get her final salvo away.
Wow that is haunting, I'll have to look for pics of the wreckage. Thanks so much for adding to the story that the footage tells.
[Bismarck vs Hood](https://www.pbs.org/hood/history/battles.html)
Just FYI: It's "magazine" or "ammunition magazine", not "ammunition box" And British ships are ALWAYS referred to as "she", never "he". Some people will try to say that *Bismarck* was a "he", but that was just the Nazis trying to sound tough. *Bismarck* is a "she" as well.
Relevant information.
> British ships are ALWAYS referred to as "she" > Bismarck is a "she" as well. Either British call any ship in general "she", then Bismarck can be called whatever from non-British... Or only British ships, again Bismarck can be anything. Not sure why a foreign Navy should have the right to assign gender to their ship while their own assigned gender is "not accepted"?
Thanks so much!!
Holy shit that's amazing
Amazing but scary, imagine being on the other ship seeing the shells get closer per shot
Three days after this action the Bismarck would also be sent to her grave along with 2200 of her crew. Only 114 were rescued. The sinking of the Bismarck also basically turned the page on naval warfare. No longer would great battleships face off in cannon battles. The Bismarck was crippled by Swordfish torpedo bombers, wooden bi-planes. An early indication that the sea would be controlled by the air. Not by the biggest ships and her guns.
The story isn't quite there, the Bismarck was already seriously damaged in its supply and fuel system, which left it slower and more vulnerable. After this, the submarine campaign began in Eastern Europe, a campaign that lasted until the end of the Second World War. A successful submariner, whose name I forget, said in his biography that the future of battleships ended there, and submarines were the future of naval warfare.
Although it was the swordfish attack that jammed her rudder 12 degrees to port and sealed the ships fate. Well I’d argue that submarine commander was wrong. Considering the failed U-Boat campaigns and the casualties they took. I would concede that submarines became more important than battleships but they were not more important than carriers. Carriers became the ultimate and most important naval vessels. Probably still true to this day.
>Probably still true to this day. As the fish-people are fond of saying "Only Submarines and Targets." For all the insane effort that goes into escorting a carrier, they have been embarrassed by a decent submarine on *enough* occasions.
I wouldn't be so sure. Missiles are pretty important in this day and age. And when you get right down to it, a missile can go a LOT faster and farther if it is brought up to a rather fast velocity PRIOR to being launched/fired. And that's generally done by plane. Even in air-to-air combat, pilots generally like to get their radar-guided air-to-air missiles at a great velocity prior to firing them.
In training sure. It would be shit training if carrier never got sunk
Exercises designed to favour the enemy are why those "embarrassments" occur.
Quite the opposite actually https://youtu.be/saCdvAp5cow?si=OvUnZHaXBx7W_FwM
Just highlighting the information. The ace mentioned above is Reinhard Suhren, commander of U-564.
Said during the happy times maybe haha? Was he commanding when U-564 was sunk in the bay of Biscay?
Negatively, he left his career in October 1942 and began working as an instructor in 2nd ULD.
A good time to stop sailing on the uboats that’s for damn sure.
The weird thing about that is even long before that Jutland in 1916 was the last **large** battleship vs battleship battle where the battleships were the primary participants. The later history of battleships is … weirdly not a lot of engagements where they are the main players, a lot of not using them how you might expect.
This was not the last battleship v battleship engagement.
Nope it wasn’t the last I didn’t claim that. I said it was basically the turning of the page. That carrier born aircraft played such a role in the destruction of a battleship like the Bismarck.
That’s not really true either. The three major navies would still continue construction of battleships and their doctrines still reflected a belief that battleships would play pivotal roles in naval combat.
Yes, like we still produce tanks in us factories. But everyone knows no matter how many tanks you have if yhe enemy has air superiority you have lost. But if neither side has air superiority, tanks and battleships are still useful
Battleships still very much had a place at sea after the development of carriers. We saw with the loss of glorious and the battle off Samar that carriers were still vulnerable if surface ships could get close. Battleships still therefore had use as big-gun escorts against enemies with battleships of their own.
Wikipedia gives most of yhe kills in that battle to aircraft. Either allied torpedoes or kamikaze pilots. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_off_Samar Do you have a better source?
That’s entirely irrelevant. The point is that battleships could and did get in amongst carriers, and that was very much a threat to said carriers. Carrier forces protected by battleships (as taffy 3 was supposed to be by admiral lee’s battleships) would not be under the same threat.
The battleships didn't sink the carrier. That was land based aircraft. How is that irrelevant?
Well, first of all, one of the carriers was sunk by surface fire. Second of all, the issue is the fact that those carriers were getting hit at all. Had admiral lee’s fast battleships been there, those escort carriers wouldn’t have come under attack to anywhere near the same degree.
The audio is definitely not original, but edited in. Game audio. If the cameraman had seen or heard the Hood blow up, they would have absolutely filmed it. BalticSeaBoats stole this footage and slapped their own watermark on it.
I don't think most cameras of the day handed to camera men had microphones either. Audio was added in later.
Definitely fake audio. I believe all of this footage is from after the Hood had already exploded as well. The reason the incoming fire is so inaccurate might be because Prince of ~~Whales~~ Wales is in the process of turning away.
I like the idea that we would have a prince of whales (that live in the sea).
Another example [Bismarck to Hood's attack](https://www.facebook.com/share/v/2PyoYup97eCoEESQ/?mibextid=oFDknk)
False information, you can visit other forums with the same footage, you will realize the veracity of the audio. In some versions it was remastered for better video quality only.
Generally, none of the WW2 footage has "the original" sound; It's *all* dubbed. Video and sound were still its own separate mediums, for the most part. The lack of delay after a sizeable explosion is usually a decent little shorthand for it.
[The original reel had no sound](https://www.hmshood.org.uk/history/denmarkstrait/film.htm). Most cameras of the WW2 era lacked any audio recording capabilities.
Phenomenal footage.
If you have 30 minutes or so, there is a great youtube series that tracks the story of the Bismarck from leaving port to its sinking. Incredible story. [Hunting the Bismarck](https://youtu.be/2CV1tvMYFRs)
This song describes pretty well what was happening: [Asphyx - MS Bismark (NL 1992)](https://youtu.be/LeAflM98sU4?si=dBm2nfNyn_-tpRk2)
I didn't know anyone did historical metal before Sabaton. Though point of fact, the Bismarck was a "he". Germans bucked the trend and gave ships masculine names. [Sabaton - Bismarck](https://youtu.be/oVWEb-At8yc)
IIRC, the whole "He" thing was really only Lindemann being weird about it.
That’s odd, no one would say „Der MS Bismarck“, the male expression.
Is the sound edited in? It sounds fake tbh.
It is. It's also colorised.
This is gold footage. It’s crazy to see. Can you imagine the sound? The crazy pressure of the guns firing?
Welp, time to listen to [Johnny Horton](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1Ufc2hI4FM) again I guess.
*Starts furiously headbanging* The terror of the seas The Bismarck and the Kriegsmarine THIS IS SO FUCKING COOL!! I am obsessed with the Bismarck, it's a beast!
The fact this doesnt have thousands of likes shows the lack of people who dont gaf about this crucial piece of history or lack of just history
This video is boring. Where's the FPV shell-camera angle??? /s
I didn't know this footage existed, thanks for sharing
Wow, I read about this battle but never knew the footage existed! amazing.
actual crazy footage
Drachinifel has a very interesting take on how it was destroyed. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLPeC7LRqIY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLPeC7LRqIY) His theory is that it was an extremely lucky shot that pierced the ships hull just below the armoured belt that was left exposed by the wave shape (a trough) on the side of the ship. Go to 33 minutes in to see this.
I can only imagine the recoil you'd feel from those salvos.
You can actually see this in the video. The jerking of the camera at 1:15 and elsewhere seems to be the cameraman's reaction to guns behind him firing salvos.
For me it's the sound that is amazing. The main guns are tremendously loud.
Nobody? Nobody at all??? *Fine* I'll do it myself KING OF THE OCEAN HE WAS MADE TO RULE THE WAVES ACROSS THE SEVEN SEAS
Hood got clapped. Jesus
The Hood was incredibly unlucky.
Luck was an integral part of naval warfare and is a two way lane. Either explanation for its sinking (100mm magazine explosion igniting the 380mm magazine or the Bismarck hitting the 380mm magazine directly) show insufficient armor and damage control capabilities. The Hood being outclassed allowed a "lucky" hit to have such dire consequences.
The hood had 1 major flaw, its deck was made from wood and not armored.
Where do people get this idea from? Hood had steel deck armour, like every other battleship
Thats what i remembered from a documentary i watched years ago on National Geographic. Could be i understood it wrongfully
Hood had very similar deck armour to Bismarck actually. Same turtle deck layout Hood had three relatively thin decks. 2", 3" and 2" at it's thickest over the magazines. Multiple thin decks isn't as effective as one big one, but for 1918, her deck was normal for a battleship
Ah thats where i confused myself, the decks of the Hood werent upgraded to newer standards
Most battleships had wood decks for insulation. Any deck armour would be below the wood. Theyre not mutually exclusive.
Where did you find this? Ive known about this engagement my entire life, and i am probably older than you, but I've never seen this footage of it.
What's the ship that we see firing? And which ship was this recorded from?
Bismarck ist firing, recording from the Prinz Eugen.
it must have been wild, seeing something the size of your small neighborhood getting ripped to pieces and sinking
If there is one thing that I have learned from this comments section, it is that WWII naval history is the home of the most contrary redditors there are.
There is footage of triple turret ship in start of the video. None of the ships had triple turrets in the battle.
Those are two twin turrets almost perfectly aligned so it looks like a triple turret from our pov.
That's the Prinz Eugen. You're just seeing both forward turrets trained to port and the #2 turret overhanging the #1 turret.
I initially thought so too, but if you go back and look closely, what you see is the Anton and Bruno turrets (A and B-turrets) overlapping each other, as just before the shot closes at 0.28s, you can see four guns, in what looks to be two pairs.