Recent Groundbreaking Discoveries of World War II Artifacts

Recent Groundbreaking Discoveries of World War II Artifacts

Larry Holzwarth - January 13, 2019

Recent Groundbreaking Discoveries of World War II Artifacts
The German battleship Bismarck departing on its first and only combat sortie in May, 1941. Bundesarchiv

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3. The German battleship Bismarck still displays the swastika symbol as it lies on the ocean floor

The German battleship Bismarck had a short career which remains one of the great sagas of the sea. On its first voyage it eluded British detection long enough to approach the Atlantic sea lanes via the Denmark Strait, where it engaged and sank the British battlecruiser Hood, the most powerful ship of the Royal Navy, and severely damaged the new battleship Prince of Wales. Winston Churchill ordained that the German ship be sunk at all costs, and diverted ships meant to protect precious convoys to the chase. Bismarck had sustained damage too, and was losing oil, which forced the massive vessel to head for the French coast for protection by the Luftwaffe. The British closed in, and a combination of aerial torpedoes, destroyer attacks, bombardment by the battleships King George V and Rodney, and finally torpedoes fire from cruisers sank the ship.

German survivors, which were few as the Royal Navy left the scene out of concern over U-boats, leaving many survivors in the frigid water, claimed that they had sunk their own ship using scuttling charges. On June 8, 1989, an expedition led by Dr. Robert Ballard found the wreck of the ship, and extensive undersea surveillance of the wreck and the nearby site indicated that the claims of the German crewmen were likely true. A subsequent Russian expedition yielded similar results in 2001. All evidence points to the German battleship, which was completely wrecked topside, being sunk by scuttling, and its armored citadel was not penetrated by British shells or torpedoes. The ship sits upright on the side of a mountain, the swastika painted on its foredeck still clearly visible to undersea visitors.

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