Thursday, March 28, AD 2024 2:20pm

Sink the Bismarck

Something for the weekend.  Johnny Horton singing Sink the Bismarck.  The Bismarck was the German “pocket” battleship, a superb ship for her day, which was sunk by the Royal Navy on May 27, 1941.  A superb movie, albeit with many inaccuracies, Sink the Bismarck!, chronicled the events in 1961.  Here is a trailer for the film.

Johnny Horton’s song was written for the film.

Compare and contrast Johnny Horton’s original with this Blues Brothers rendition:

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Zak
Zak
Saturday, August 1, AD 2009 8:30am

Wasn’t the Bismarck a full battleship?

Gorgasal
Gorgasal
Saturday, August 1, AD 2009 8:33am

The Bismarck was quite decidedly not a pocket battleship. “Pocket battleship” was a British term for a relatively small battleship (“fits in a pocket”) with heavy firepower, viz., the Deutschland class, with a displacement of 16,200t under full load. The Bismarck was the lead ship of a new class, though only the Bismarck was ever built, and displaced 50,900t under full load – fully three times as much as the older pocket battleships.

Emilio III
Emilio III
Saturday, August 1, AD 2009 4:14pm

Gorgasal, there were actually two Bismarck class ships finished. Fortunately, Hitler being an idiot, Tirpitz spent most of her life anchored in Norway. The British spent quite a bit of effort in trying to sink her, first with two different kinds of midget submarine before switching to heavy bombers. The final effort was with 36 Lancaster bombers each carrying a single 6-ton 21-foot-long “Tallboy” bomb, which finally sank her.

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