Sink the Bismarck!
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| Sink the Bismarck! | |
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| Directed by | Lewis Gilbert |
| Produced by | John Brabourne |
| Written by | Edmund H. North |
| Starring | Kenneth More Carl Möhner Dana Wynter |
| Music by | Clifton Parker |
| Cinematography | Christopher Challis |
| Editing by | Peter R. Hunt |
| Distributed by | 20th Century Fox |
| Release date(s) | February 11, 1960 |
| Running time | 97 min. |
| Language | English |
Sink the Bismarck! is a 1960 black-and-white war film based on the book The Last Nine Days of the Bismarck by C. S. Forester, and recounts the true story of the Royal Navy's attempts to find and sink the famous German battleship during the Second World War. It stars Kenneth More and Dana Wynter. It was directed by Lewis Gilbert. It was the inspiration for Johnny Horton's song, "Sink the Bismarck". The film has a number of historical inaccuracies which have been discovered since its release in 1960.
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[edit] Plot
The film begins in 1939, with actual footage of Germany's largest and most powerful battleship, Bismarck being launched, in a large ceremony in Hamburg with Adolf Hitler attending. The launching of the hull of the ship to later be completed is seen as the beginning of a new era of German power in the sea.
Two years later in 1941, the British convoy routes are being ravaged by U-Boat and surface raider attacks which are cutting off vital supplies which Britain needs to continue its war against Germany. In May, British intelligence discovers that the Bismarck and the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen are attempting to make a breakout into the North Atlantic to raid convoys. The man assigned to hunt down the Bismarck, is a former ship captain, John Shepard, who has been deeply distraught and embittered over the loss of his wife during a German air raid and later the loss of his ship when it was destroyed by German ships commanded by Admiral Günther Lütjens. Upon receiving his new post, he discovers that his nemesis, Lütjens, is the fleet commander aboard the Bismarck. Shepard's experience of conflict with Nazi Germany's naval forces and his understanding of Lütjens' thinking allows him to predict the decisions of Bismarck's crew. Shepard is initially aggressive towards his staff, but comes to increasingly rely on his assistant, WREN Second Officer Anne Davies's coolness and skill to plot the operation against the Bismarck.
Meanwhile on the Bismarck, Gunther Lütjens, like Shepard, is also an embittered man. After Germany's loss in World War I, Lütjens perceived himself to have received no recognition for his efforts in the war and forgotten. He relates his loss of recognition to that of Germany after World War I. Lütjens promises his subordinate captain of the Bismarck, Ernst Lindemann, that this time both he, Lindemann and Germany will be remembered in greatness after this war.
The film goes on to depict the hunt of the Bismarck, including the sinking of HMS Hood. which culminates in the final destruction of the Bismarck by several British ships, with Lütjens in his final moments in complete disbelief of the loss around him, and in delusion he insists to Lindemann that German forces will arrive in time to save them, at that instant he is killed by an exploding shell.
After the sinking of the Bismarck, Shepard is emotionally relieved and reinvigorated by the experience. He and Davies are on friendly terms (within professional limits) and he asks her to be his personal assistant. He then invites her to dinner; and, before leaving the underground room, he picks up the ship marker of the Bismarck from the map table and takes it as an object to remember the experience. Upon leaving the underground facility, he and Davies discover that it is morning rather than night — they've both lost track of time having spent the best part of a week in the operations room — and so they decide to have breakfast.
[edit] Cast
- Kenneth More as Captain Jonathan Shepard
- Carl Möhner as Captain Lindemann
- Dana Wynter as 2nd Officer Anne Davis
- Laurence Naismith as First Sea Lord (Sir Dudley Pound)
- Karel Stepanek as Admiral Gunther Lutjens
- Maurice Denham as Commander Richards
- Mark Dignam as Captain, Ark Royal
- Michael Goodliffe as Captain Banister
- Esmond Knight as Captain, Prince of Wales. Knight actually served as a gunnery officer on board her, and was badly injured during the battle with the Bismarck.
- Edward R. Murrow as himself. Murrow recreates some of his historic wartime broadcasts for CBS for the film.
- (Sir) Michael Hordern as Admiral Tovey, Commander-in-Chief, King George V
[edit] Historical inaccuracies
In the film, the German fleet commander, Admiral Lütjens, is portrayed as overconfident, vengeful, egotistic, and an enthusiastic Nazi who is furious over his and Germany's lack of recognition following the end of World War I. This characterization is completely fictitious and is meant to make Lütjens the villain of the film. In reality Lütjens was the opposite of this characterization. Lütjens was pessimistic over the chance of success of Bismarck's mission and he publicly protested the brutality of Nazi anti-Semitic crimes during Kristallnacht along with two other navy commanders.[1].
The film also makes a mistake in the sequence of events aboard the Bismarck, showing Lütjens ordering Captain Ernst Lindemann, to open fire on the Hood and Prince of Wales. In the actual event, Lütjens actually ordered Lindemann to avoid engaging the Hood, in which Lindemann refused his order and ordered the ship's gun crews to open fire on the Hood and Prince of Wales.
Importantly, the film also misrepresents the movements of the Hood and Prince of Wales during the early part of the battle. The film shows an order being given to turn, thus allowing the Hood, and presumably the Prince of Wales, to fire full broadsides at the German ship. In reality, the British sought to close the distance first, thus only firing their forward turrets and negating their firepower advantage since the Bismarck was firing full broadsides. Only in the final moments before exploding did the Hood begin a turn to present all her guns to the Bismarck. By this time, however, it was too late and the Hood exploded. This tactical deployment has often been called into question and cited as a possible cause for the British defeat, an issue the movie simply sidesteps.
In addition, the film includes a scene aboard the Bismarck where Lutjens schemes about the aftermath of Bismarck undergoing its expected repairs in Brest, France. He (seemingly ingeniously) thinks of the possibility of two German battlecruisers based there, Gneisenau and Scharnhorst, going out with the Bismarck after the ship has undergone repairs. There is no evidence of such a discussion, though the idea of Bismarck going out to sea with the two battlecruisers from Brest to raid Allied shipping in the Atlantic would have been a possibility if Bismarck had reached the port. However, this concept was not an original idea of Lutjens: it had already been proposed by German naval staff before the battle but was scrapped because of the serious repairs that the two German battlecruisers needed, from damage sustained during an air raid.
Another mistake was made during the engagement between British destroyers and the Bismarck. The film portrayal shows three British hits by torpedoes, while the British destroyer Solent is hit and destroyed by the Bismarck. This never happened. There was no destroyer Solent.[2] The destroyers that attacked were HMS Cossack, HMS Maori, HMS Sikh, and HMS Zulu. In reality, the Royal Navy did make a failed attempt at a torpedo attack, but scored no hits. In return only Bismarck inflicted some minor damage to the British destroyers. Aboard Zulu, a sub-lieutenant in the gunnery control tower lost a hand to shell splinters while a shell landed on the destroyers forecastle, but did not explode. Cossack had its radio antenna sheared off by a shell[3]. Also, the attacks by the Swordfish biplane torpedo bombers in the movie show some of the planes being shot down. In the actual event, no Swordfish was shot down by Bismarck's anti-aircraft guns. The film also does not show the controversial details of what happened immediately after the Bismarck was sunk, including HMS Dorsetshire's quick departure after rescuing only 110 of Bismarck's survivors. The Dorsetshire's crew suspected that a German U-Boat was operating in the area; the captain of the Dorsetshire responded by calling off rescue efforts and departing. Hundreds of German sailors were left behind in the sea to die.
Some minor mistakes involve the visual appearance of the Bismarck. When a spy in Kristiansand, Norway sees Bismarck arrive in Norwegian waters, the ship has no apparent camouflage on it. In actual fact, upon arriving in Kristiansand, Bismarck had striped camouflage along its sides which was removed shortly before it headed out to sea. Upon sustaining significant damage during its battle with Hood and Prince of Wales, flooding caused Bismarck's bow to be barely maintained above the sea level, in the film, Bismarck's bow remains at the same level before, during and after the battle.
The Bismarck is referred to in the film as the largest and most powerful battleship in the world. Some naval experts criticized Bismarck's design for being antiquated, as its design was based on the World War I Bayern class battleships. Her fifteen-inch main guns were outsized by a number of warships that had sixteen-inch guns or significantly more weaponry. HMS Rodney was armed with sixteen-inch guns, and HMS King George V mounted ten guns in three turrets (compared to Bismarck's eight guns in four turrets). Two larger battleships were under construction in Japan — the Yamato and the Musashi — which were larger than Hood or Bismarck and had eighteen-inch guns and thicker armour.
In the film, the Hood is firing to port while the Bismarck is firing to starboard; in reality it was the other way around.
[edit] Notes
- ^ Bismarck: A portrait of the Men Involved
- ^ The Slip up Movie Archive
- ^ Ballard 1990, p. 117. Bismarck: Germany's Greatest Battleship reveals her secrets
[edit] External links
[edit] See also
- Sink the Bismarck A&E documentary
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