SINKING OF THE BISMARCK

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28742, 13 November 1958, Page 14

SINKING OF THE BISMARCK

Claim Bv German Author • (Special Correspondent N.Z.P.A.) LONDON. November 12. The German battleship Bismarck was scuttled by her own crew and not torpedoed by the Royal Navy says the German author. Will Berthold, in a newly published book “The Sinking of the Bismarck.” The Bismarck’s crew, he stated, deliberately concealed the fact : that they had scuttled their ship and up to now the British had been allowed to believe that they sank the battleship. The German crew’s reasons, according to the United Press International comment on the book, was that the Bismarck had chrome and nickel armourplating which successfully resisted shells, mines and torpedoes and made her practically unsinkable. 1 The crew let the British believe they had sunk the battleship to prevent a hint of this secret armour-plating from leaking out. The book tells the full story from the German point of view of the Bismarck’s sortie into the Atlantic. It describes how the battleship sank H.M.S. Hood and battered the Prince of Wales into retreat and then tells of the Bismarck’s own hopeless battle which followed, against overwhelming odds. British aircraft and ships shadowed the Bismarck and attacked her with torpedoes, one of which put her steering gear 'out of action. Unable to manoeuvre the crippled German ship fired the last of her ammunition and then wallowed helpless under the pounding of the British forces. She would not sink but there was nothing to stop the British boarding and capturing her and learning all her secrets. So the crew sent her to the bottom themselves, the author claims.