No One Is Allowed to Touch the Bismarck. Here's Why.

In May 1941, the most powerful battleship in the German Kriegsmarine sailed into the Atlantic — and never came home. This is the full story of the Bismarck: how she sank the pride of the Royal Navy in under ten minutes, how Britain launched one of the largest manhunts in naval history to bring her down, and how her own crew ultimately sent her to the bottom rather than let her be taken. When Bismarck and the cruiser Prinz Eugen broke into the North Atlantic, they ran straight into HMS Hood and HMS Prince of Wales at the Battle of the Denmark Strait. In minutes, Hood was gone — one of the deadliest losses in Royal Navy history. Winston Churchill's response was immediate and absolute: sink the Bismarck. What followed was a desperate, days-long chase across the Atlantic. A torpedo strike from a handful of obsolete Swordfish biplanes jammed Bismarck's rudder, leaving her crippled and steaming in circles, unable to escape. The Royal Navy closed in, and on the morning of May 27, 1941, battleships HMS Rodney and King George V, along with a fleet of cruisers, opened fire — reducing Bismarck to a burning, silent wreck. As she went down, her own crew opened the ship's seacocks, scuttling her rather than allowing her to be captured. Of roughly 2,200 men aboard, only 114 survived. For decades, Bismarck's final resting place was unknown — until 1989, when oceanographer Robert Ballard located her wreck nearly 15,700 feet down in the North Atlantic, sitting upright on the seafloor, largely intact. This video covers the full story from launch to loss: the pursuit, the battle, the sinking, the men who died, and the exploration that finally found her.