Pursuit: The Chase and Sinking of the Battleship Bismarck

by Ludovic Kennedy

Book Overview

In May 1941, the German battleship Bismarck headed out into the North Atlantic to raid Allied shipping. She was accompanied by the Prinz Eugen and her pursuit was an epic of naval warfare. Found and... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0670583146
• ISBN13: 9780670583140
• Release Date: July 1974
• Publisher: Viking
• Length: 254 Pages
• Weight: 1.17 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Good but dated record of the sinking of the Bismarck

Overall, I was very pleased with Ludovic Kennedy's account of the chase and sinking of the Bismarck. I have since seen him interviewed in documentaries about the Bismarck so he is still a reliable source. From a documentation point of view, the main strike against this account is that it was written before the official revealing of the Ultra decryption secret in 1974. So there is no mention of any decripts or how much information was known about the Bismarck's breakout attempt from that area. There are some tantalyzing clues in the narrative though, including Kennedy's referral to the fact that the Bismarck left its home port down to "a high ranking diplomat" who had "a son" on the ship and his signal to know his son's location was somehow intercepted by "an agent." While there were some agents at work inside Nazi Germany at the time, this sounds all the world like an Ultra coverstory of the type that were generally developed to hide the ultimate origin of information coming from Bletchley Park. Kennedy writes in a very lively clipped newspaper man style which lumps clause after clause together in very brisque statements which each trying to be some sort of great statement. As Kennedy spent most of his professional life as a BBC reporter and presenter, this is to be expected. However, I found this style of writing a bit tiring after a couple of hundred pages... but that is mearly my own predilection. Finally, this account was written firmly from the British point of view. There are few quotes or statements from Germans, very little about the actual state on board the Bismarck except in passing. The book was written before it was fashionable to seek out the "other side of the story" like they do now with German veterens interviewed as well. This is mostly a product of the times as it was written over thirty years ago and many British WWII veterens were not ready to hear the Germans talking about their side of the story. Overall, though, this was a fascinating book. Kennedy himself was close to the action at the time, serving on the HMS Tartar. While it has flaws mostly from age and perspective, this is a must read for any professional or armchair student of the Bismarck or WWII German Kriegsmarine.

Workmanlike, but nothing new

This book is an account of the breakout, loss, discovery, and eventual destruction of the German battleship Bismarck by the British Navy during the early days of World War II. The ship was one of the largest battleships in the world, only topped in size by the later American ships and the Japanese superbattleships Yamato and Musashi. She was delivered to the German navy at a time when almost all of their capitol units had been damaged or sunk, and as a result when she sortied she was only accompanied by a heavy cruiser, the Prinz Eugen. The Royal Navy was of course very desperate to stop her from breaking out into the Atlantic, where she could wreak havoc among the convoys. As a result, they first sent the new battleship Prince of Wales and the older battlecruiser Hood to challenge her. When those ships confronted Bismarck and Prinz Eugen, the Hood blew up quickly, and the Prince of Wales was damaged and had trouble with her guns (being very new, and not completely shaken down). The Prince had to break off the action and trail the Bismarck along with a couple of cruisers. Eventually these ships lost the Bismarck, and the Prinz Eugen split off and eventually went home. Bismarck was rediscovered a couple of days later, attacked twice from the air, the second attack resulting in a lucky torpedo hit that crippled the ship and caused her to circle. Two other British battleships, King George V and Rodney, closed in and finished her off. There has been much written about the loss of both the Hood and the Bismarck in recent years. This book was written more than thirty years ago, and addresses none of the more controversial aspects of the two sinkings. There's no mention, for instance, of the possibility that the Hood was sunk by the Prinz Eugen, which has been alleged more than once. The closest thing to controversy that this book mentions is the alleged torpedoing of Bismarck by Rodney, which, if it happened, is the only time in history one battleship torpedoed another. Kennedy was a minor participant in the fighting (he was a junior officer on one of the destroyers that attacked the Bismarck the night before she was sunk) and he has a you-are-there approach to the story which serves him well. He hits all the high points, and pays close attention to the details. If this were an account of something less controversial, it might be a very good book. Instead it's only pretty good.

The best book I've ever read

The best book I've ever read. The ONLY book I've ever read about the sinking of the Bismarck. It's about a dark time in the early years of World War II. It's about the German superbattleship Bismarck. Its captain flouted naval tradition by referring to the ship as "He" instead of "She." The Bismarck was on its way to France, and then out into the Atlantic shipping lanes, where, if successful, she was to destroy Allied shipping. Fortunately, the British had gotten word of this, and sent the ships of the Home Fleet, including the battlecruiser HMS Hood, and the carrier Victorious, after her. The Hood was the first and last victim of the Bismarck. She was soon sunk by a combination of British cruisers and carriers. The famous Fairey Swordfish torpedo bomber, the only biplane torpedo bomber in the war, attacked the Bismarck and sank her.

True history based on actual interviews

In this book the author searches for actual survivors of the real event. Based on these interviews the reader is given a true picture of the chase and sinking of the Bismark. It even provides a very grizzly picture of what took place as the ship itself was being sunk. I am a friend of the American pilot who first spotted the Bismark and began the real chase. Knowing one of the characters in the book certainly made it more interesting to me. However, anyone intersted in world war II history should put this book on their must read list.