View source for Battleship Bismarck

==Operation Rhine==
[[Image:BismarckBB2.jpg|right|200px|thumb|''Bismarck'' fires a salvo at HMS ''Hood'' in the Denmark Strait, 24 May 1941]]
In an attempt to continue their successes from earlier in the year, the Kriegsmarine sent battleship ''Bismarck'' and heavy cruiser ''Prinz Eugen'' on a raid into the Atlantic on 20 May 1941. Spotted by observers in the Kattegat (near [[Sweden]]) who quickly alerted the British, Royal Navy patrols were increased. The two warships subsequently were sighted by cruisers ''Suffolk'' and ''Norfolk'' in the Denmark Strait. Through skillful seamanship, the cruisers managed to shadow the German raiders and send in repeated spotting reports, allowing the Royal Navy's Battle Cruiser Squadron to close on the area.

On the morning of 24 May, the German warships were engaged by battleship ''[[Prince of Wales]]'' and battlecruiser ''Hood''. As the British squadron closed the range, ''Bismarck'' and ''Prinz Eugen'' concentrated their fire on ''Hood''. After a German salvo straddled the battlecruiser at a range of about 18,000 yards, ''Hood'' blew up in a huge explosion that erupted between her after funnel and the mainmast. Only three survivors from her company of 95 officers and 1,324 men were rescued. Outgunned and damaged by German shell hits that followed almost immediately, ''Prince of Wales'' broke off the action and retired under a smoke screen.

The German battleship, however, had not escaped unharmed. Two 14-inch shells from ''Prince of Wales'' had hit ''Bismarck'', one of which caused a fuel leak and contaminated several oil bunkers with salt water. Unable to contemplate continuing her mission, ''Bismarck'' turned southeast and headed for Brest, in German-occupied France. Just after dusk, in order that the German cruiser might attack Allied shipping in the mid-Atlantic, ''Prinz Eugen'' broke away to the southwest and escaped. British naval forces continued to converge on the area and, just after midnight on 25 May, a strike by nine Swordfish aircraft launched from aircraft carrier ''Victorious'' managed to hit ''Bismarck'' with one torpedo. The damage proved minor, however, and the British prepared to launch another attack in the morning. Unfortunately, about an hour later both ''Suffolk'' and ''Norfolk'' lost contact with the German battleship, and she too slipped away in the darkness, this time by performing a classic maneuver of turning about to cross her own wake.