The flag was more than death.
Forward, forward bring out the glorious fanfares.
I still remember.
Youth doesn't know any danger that's how it went.
With fists we meet whoever stands against us.
The flag is more than the death. That's how it went.
I've never met an Englishman but I hated them.
It was a long time until the hate went away.
We were so fanatic back then.
And then you will also ask yourself
why did it have to happen in the first place?
So today former enemies are now friends
so couldn't we have been friends back then as well?
You have to imagine a ship
so powerful it could bring an entire nation to its knees.
For me the Bismarck was the death star.
It was a kind of mechanized warfare that hopefully will never exist again.
It was this monstrous piece of steel that held together no matter
what the British could throw at it
and when it finally sank it became a legend
with the same kind of force in the human imagination
that Titanic had.
The Bismarck considered by most naval experts to be the most perfectly
equipped fighting ship in the world
was spotted leaving the Norwegian port of Bergin for the high seas.
Britain's largest warship the Hood joined in the hot pursuit.
Events were to end tragically
for the majestic English craft as she was sunk by the Bismarck
during the ensuing battle.
But England was to have its revenge.
The battleships Rodney and King George
steamed to the scene along with over 100 other vessels.
After a pursuit of almost 2,000 miles the armada caught up with the Bismarck
some 400 miles west of Brest, France.
It was the Dorsetshire who finally landed the coup d'grace that
sunk the mighty German battlewagon.
Only 100 of her crew could be saved.
The rest had gone down with their ship.
The highly bated Bismarck
had been sent to the bottom in one of the most historic moments
of World War II.
On the 60th anniversary of Bismarck's sinking
a handful of survivors come together to remember the past.
This year in an extraordinary gesture
they've also invited the men from the English ships who sank them.
That was my station up there on the King George V.
Once they met as enemies.
Now six decades later they meet as friends.
Oh yeah it was one of the very nice times that I...
You know the amazing thing is you know here are these guys
that are like 78, 79, 80,
one of them is 84
and you can see why they're survivors.
You know here you had hundreds and hundreds of men going
into the cold, you know North Atlantic waters
and these are the guys that made it.
I mean there's, you can see why because they have the will to live,
they're healthy, they're fit.
You know 80-year old guys that could probably run me around the block.
I really admire them.
You know you can really see they have a spirit, a spirit of life about them.
Is that you? Yes. Handsome devil.
He was an officer.
Officer?
Yeah. Yeah.
Now I saw every shell coming towards us.
You can actually see them in the air?
Oh yeah
and we saw all ours going towards the Bismarck.
I wasn't aware of that.
You can actually see the shell in the air...
Where I was...
I think you know we're obviously talking to the ones
that want to be interviewed
and the ones that can talk about it
so they've, they've made their peace with it
or they feel that the need to have people remember what happened
is greater than whatever their pain might be in going back to that place
in their lives in their memory.
But I know that they've said that when they went back home after the war
they couldn't tell their friends that there were you know that there
were things they couldn't talk about because people
would not understand.
What did you feel when you saw Bismarck for the very first time
when you walked up to the ship?
It was a very big ship
and I thought when you get on this ship nothing can happen to you.
Everyone believed she was unsinkable so you felt safe too.
Magnificent. Overwhelming.
The size of the ship as you can see here was amazing.
The most modern ship of its time.
Every ship that came after the Bismarck had learned from it
learned from us.
Back then I was 18 years old and I and many others of course,
we were convinced this is the right thing to do.
Now well, everyone knows better.
From the time Bismarck set out on its first sea campaign, Operation Rhine,
it only lived nine days.
These men were among the 115 sailors who survived.
2,300 of their shipmates perished.
Captain how are you doing?
Permission to come aboard? All right.
Jim Cameron arrives in Germany with a crew of 32 technicians,
scientists, historians and Bismarck survivors
to meet the Russian oceanographic ship the Academic Keldish.
Among the 90-member Russian crew are many old friends
from Cameron's two prior expeditions.
Hi Olga how are you doing?
Hello.
Good to see you? MIR's okay?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It has taken a year for the expedition team to prepare
for the technical challenges of exploring Bismarck.
I enjoy this to me it's an alternative to making movies
which is as technically challenging, as emotionally challenging
and it's something that I can use my skills as a filmmaker,
but it's not just about the filmmaking
It's about creating the technology, it's about the personal challenge
of actually going into this hostile environment,
doing things right, doing things safely and coming back with results you know?
And I find that very exciting.
Hello Walter, hello Karl.
Here we are. It's a great pleasure of ours.
Good to see you. Welcome aboard the Keldish.
I've done so much work at the Titanic wreck
over two expeditions
and never really had access to the survivors,
their perspective, their emotional perspective
so, I've always had to wonder I've always had to create it
in my mind based on things that might have been written.
But having them right here gives it an immediacy.
It's a real pleasure to drive down this beautiful canal
with the green scenery on both sides of us.
And it reminds me of when I went through the canal.
I went through it twice during that period.
When Bismarck first became operational
she set out for the North Sea through the Kiel Canal to begin her sea trials
Six decades later Keldish retraces the same path.
Looking back I would say that
we have been used by the government of the time.
As young men we risk our lives
but for whom?
That's how we grew up.
I was born in 1923.
When Hitler came to power I was 10.
Then we went through the whole drill, young folk, Hitler youth
and on Saturdays there was National Holiday.
That's when we did all kinds of sports shooting exercises and some other
and some other.
I was in the marine Hitler youth.
The ulterior motive was play and prepare for the real thing.
Today Adolph Hitler is an icon of evil.
But to Karl and Walter
and thousands of boys like them, he was a living god.
He guided them beyond morality, swept them up in the hysteria
of the Nazi cult.
He channeled their anger and their patriotic spirit
with calculated precision
capturing young hearts better than the biggest rock star.
They felt strong, proud,
a part of something great and immortal.
Nothing could touch them.
Thoughts of death, either their own
or the murders they were being sent out to commit,
were drowned out by the roar of the zeig hail.
We just have to admit our generation would have gone to hell
and back for Hitler.
Everyone can hear that from me.
It sounds crazy but we were proud to die for the fatherland.
But that's the way it was.
As if you were a hero to do so.
What you see here is where the Bismarck was built.
This entire area of the hulling is where she was built
and let down into the water.
Bismarck was built in secret in Hamburg and launched in 1939.
It was the embodiment of Hitler's vast ego
and a cathedral of steel.
It was the ultimate killing machine, the Death Star of its time.
At 830 feet it was almost as long as the Titanic
but it was 30 feet wider and so heavily armored
it weighed almost twice as much.
Despite its mass
it could make 32 knots driven by engines generating 150,000 horsepower.
Each barrel of its 15 inch guns weighed 250,000 pounds.
They could destroy a ship over 15 miles away.
The side armor was an advanced formula Krups Steel 13 inches thick
designed to resist a fury of torpedoes and the largest caliber shells.
On this side you will still find armor plates from the Bismarck.
After all those years I recognize them
due to this incision made here to analyze the steel.
Pretty good steel right?
The German naval strategy at the time was ruthless.
Bismarck's sole purpose was to hunt the convoys in the North Atlantic
and destroy the ships bringing food and supplies to England,
starving that country into surrender.
Sink the ships, kill the crews, take no prisoners.
Fast, deadly and virtually invulnerable,
Bismarck was a fierce predator.
It had to be stopped before it could reach the open Atlantic
and begin its reign of terror.
It was the afternoon of May 22
when Keldish heads out for the open sea west of Denmark.
61 years earlier to the day
Bismarck was also steaming west into open sea
at the beginning of its voyage after leaving safe harbor in Norway.
Keldish has not guns or armor.
It's a ship of peace.
The largest oceanographic research ship in the world.
The Russian word for peace is "mir"
and Keldish is
the mother ship for two deep submersibles
called MIR 1 and MIR 2.
There are only four submersibles in existence capable
of diving 20,000 feet
and Keldish operates two of them.
The MIRs are the only double sub system in the world
and have the most powerful batteries of any deep submersible,
making them ideal for lighting up
the depths where no sunlight has ever penetrated.
The architect of the MIR program is Dr. Anatoli Satalevich
who not only designed the MIRs
but has logged the most hours piloting them.
As the head of the Russian manned submersible program,
Anatoli is chief pilot, chief scientist
and the unofficial mayor of the seafaring village called Keldish.
Jim's brother Mike
is the designer and builder of most of the deep sea technology
used on the expedition.
Mike's remotely operated vehicles or RO Vs
will photograph for the first time ever the interior
of the Bismarck wreck.
They are nicknamed Jake and Elwood.
This RO V is designed to go inside of the wreck.
If you took a normal RO V in there that had a tether
it would get hung up very quickly.
This RO V pays out its own tiny fiber and it pays it out
like a spider spinning a web
so that if it goes around a corner and goes around a bunch of debris
the ROV just pays more out.
So you can go in one window or door and come out a whole different place
on the wreck.
It's taken Mike and his team three years to develop
this RO V technology.
Tried to think of every single scenario possible...
...of how the RO V was going to travel through the wreck
and what was required.
So we tried to package everything into as small a package as possible.
The design is so cutting edge that no off the shelf components
could be used.
Every part was designed and built from scratch.
Jake and Elwood each carry 2,000 feet of fiber optic cable.
Inside the cable are two tiny glass fibers only half
the diameter of a human hair.
I'd say we were about still two pounds negative.
You're only going to dive it slightly negative.
Video of what the RO V sees as well as flight control signals race
along the fibers as pulses of light.
The delicate glass fibers are the pilot's only link to the RO V.
Damage them and the vehicle is lost.
Based on the blueprints from the shipbuilder
Jim and his team have made detailed diagrams of every deck of the Bismarck.
With the help of the survivors
they're attempting to compile a list of access points to the wreck
which might be large enough for the RO V to get inside.
Start with where you're work station was,
where your duty station was on the ship okay?
The secret encoding room.
The wood deck, the outer deck.
I was stationed at the secret correspondence room
and my daily duties were to analyze any correspondence or intelligence
coming from the outside. We never knew a thing down below.
We were kids. Officers were like gods to us,
we never asked and we were never told.
But we were allowed on deck as we got to Norway.
My duty station was the writing basic correspondence between stations
with naval headquarters and the commanders in chief.
Where we would go when we would leave basic mail, etc.
The adjutant's chamber was right next door
and he would dictate orders and other information to process.
For example when Hitler came on board on May 5
his adjutant Puttkamer, I believe, would be in correspondence with me
telling me when and where Hitler would come on board.
Admiral Lutjens took charge of our task force the week
before we left.
We hated Lutjens.
Lindemann was a nice captain. We all liked him,
but the atmosphere really changed when Lutjens came on board.
Admiral Lutjens was known as the man in the iron mask
because his face was always set like steel.
There were never discussions with his captains, he simply gave orders.
Terse, sharp to the point no emotion, no feelings.
Now I'm the Bismarck
on the 24th of May 1941.
And I'm coming out of the Denmark Strait
with the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen ahead.
You're the Hood and the Prince of Wales.
Over the horizon I can just barely make out your two ships.
This is just an incredible distance.
We're both moving fast,
I'm going at 27 knots. I can barely see your superstructure.
Imagine shooting that far.
Hood and Bismarck turned toward each other at full speed
like two armored knights charging.
Hood fires first.
Bismarck returned fire.
Fire!
When you're firing at 27,000 yards you're firing salvos,
four or eight shells.
If you're trying to straddle the enemy's battle ship,
so you fire off and you're watching very closely from up
in the director tower.
You see the splash of shells.
And somebody yells over, short, straddle
and the minute somebody yells straddle you start pumping
more shots in.
On the bridge they can only count the seconds as the shells fly.
And you simply keep pumping in shells all around him,
straddling him, still some short some long
and then finally the fatal hit.
Hit! Hit!
The Hood's magazine has been hit.
The explosion breaks the ship's back.
As the Hood sinks
the forward gun crew heroically fires the final salvo.
The Prince of Wales was seriously damaged and must retreat
after firing one last salvo.
There were 1,415 men on the Hood when it exploded.
Only three survived.
From childhood on I was taught that the English were our enemies.
I never saw an Englishman.
I never talked to an Englishman
and yet they were our enemies
and when we destroyed the Hood
after all the hurrah and hurrah from the ship
we looked at all the sailors lying out there in the ocean.
We didn't know how many had survived,
but many of us realized they are human beings like we are
and wondered why are they our enemies?
Walter and Karl have awoken before dawn
to stand in honor of the men of the HMS Hood who died
at this moment 61 years ago.
On that other morning Karl, Walter and the rest of the crew
felt only the thrill of victory.
They had vanquished the mighty Hood and bloodied the Prince of Wales.
They were heroes of the fatherland.
Bismarck was invincible.
In England the news of Hood's sinking was devastating.
Winston Churchill, Prime Minister of England and fierce adversary to Hitler
understood instantly the terrible blow which had been dealt.
The reaction was one first of disbelief
and then of a national tragedy.
The Hood was almost a loved ship,
she'd been adopted by the British nation.
She was the symbol of the Royal Navy.
And now that symbol had been destroyed with
what seemed contemptuous ease.
It was a mortal blow to the English spirit
at a critical moment.
At that time the English were terrorized by the nightly
horrors of the blitz
and starving as their supply lines were slowly strangled.
The Nazi juggernauts seemed unstoppable.
Churchill understood the stakes and responded with calculated fury.
He pulled his naval forces from all points of the compass to converge
on the Bismarck.
There is absolutely nothing as vital to the nation at this moment
as the destruction of the Bismarck.
I don't care how you do it,
you must sink the Bismarck.
I am getting very strong feelings,
memories are coming back the closer we get
and I can feel it in my stomach. Quite upsetting.
Six decades apart Bismarck and Keldish are boring in on the same spot
in the ocean on the same date
and in virtually identical storm conditions.
It is an eerie convergence.
Bismarck pounded on through storm seas toward the coast
of France and safety.
The British forces were too far away to stop her.
For Karl and Walter it seemed they were home free.
We still had the hope we could make it
at least that was the case with me.
But fate proved fickle.
Desperate to slow the juggernaut
the British launched a near suicidal attack through the storm
with five plane torpedo bombers.
Incredibly a single torpedo made a lucky hit on the rudder.
Crippling the ship so that it could only turn circles,
the British wolf pack closed in for the kill.
I heard in the radio room about how many ships were coming.
More and more fleets were closing in
and that we were getting circled in.
After that the last ray of hope was gone.
On Keldish there's a different sense of anticipation building
as they approach the wreck site now only hours away.
The RV comes in there...
The expedition crew burns the midnight oil
preparing for the first dive.
As a gray dawn broke on the morning of May 27
the crew of the Bismarck tried their best to prepare
for the coming battle.
At 8:47 Admiral John Tovey
commanding the British forces ordered his battleships Rodney
and King George V to open fire.
Rodney and King George closed rapidly firing salvo after salvo.
The crews of Suffolk, Norfolk and Sheffield soon joined
in the attack.
Shells tore through Bismarck's superstructure
and its crew.
In all 2,876 artillery shells were unleashed toward the Bismarck.
The merciless pounding lasted for an hour and a half leaving Bismarck
a burning hulk.
But still it refused to sink.
In frustration Admiral Tovey ordered the cruiser Dorsetshire
to fire its torpedoes.
They claimed three hits.
Five minutes later at 10:40 am Bismarck capsized and plunged
into the abyss.
May 27th 10:40 am
they have reached the site of the sinking.
In an unsettling parallel
the Keldish arrives on the exact spot 61 years later almost to the minute.
For Karl and Walter the present collides with the past.
On that other gray morning
thousands of their shipmates plunged into the depths
and lie entombed now beneath them.
We the survivors of the gruesome naval battle in May of 1941
on this day especially want to remember all those who died in this
very spot on that tragic day.
On this day we wish to place a crown upon your heads,
the crested crown of the forever moving sea.
Peace on Earth for all time and everywhere never again war.
It affected me very much looking down into the water and remembering what
had occurred 61 years ago at this very site.
Struggling for my life
and to realize that I belonged to the very few lucky ones
that had survived this catastrophe.
So step one is we do a nice pass,
a nice shot all the way down.
Step two we meet here okay?
And then we do some photography just in this area kind of...
Because it is a war grave the wreck may not be disturbed in any way.
All forensic analysis must be based only on imaging
so the coordination of lighting and camera operation is critical.
Yeah little moves, little moves. You know we let the current drift back
Genya Chemiaev...
...is regarded as one of the best submersible pilots
in the world.
If it could be done with the MIR, Genya will do it.
Can you land MIR on top of this, area?
I think it's possible...
Good morning.
Genya when you're on the bottom
if you see some debris or you find the slide scar or something like this,
we just need...
The most important ceremony of dive day is the MIR meeting.
This is where the dive plans are carefully reviewed.
...plot that we can look at afterwards.
Yes, yes. And if we have time of course we will...
By Russian tradition
every diver must sign Lydia's book before entering the MIR.
When you see Lydia with the book you know the dive is on.
Smile everybody.
This is me smiling. This is as much as you get.
There's always the little thing you didn't think of.
Thanks see you in the sunshine.
Everybody's thought about this for months.
They've thought about the electronics, they've thought about the optics.
You know we have the GPS coordinates,
we know how to get on the wreck site, we know how to get down there
so it's going to be some little thing we haven't thought of.
You know it's what I always call the X-factor
and it might be some little 10 dollar part that fails at a,
at a critical moment.
It's an enormous amount of pressure.
There's all kinds of things on that sub that could go wrong.
There's a lot of places to get tangled up on the wreck.
There's lights that could implode.
It's a roll of the dice!
I don't have any great fears about human safety.
The Russians know how to do what they do with the submersibles.
MIRs are fully capable and tested to 20,000 feet plus,
so I feel pretty comfortable there.
But you know always in the back of your mind is the fact that
you are pitting human technology and human cleverness
against the force of the ocean
and the ocean is not a trivial force to mess with.
I love this, there's no place I'd rather be.
That's a whole lot for me like being in a helicopter.
I love flying helicopters so this is a lot like that.
It's got some risk, you've got to be precise,
you've got to know what you're doing.
It's a pretty scary place we're going to.
I mean 15, 700 feet deep.
MIR 2 sensor booms are packing a wallop, over 8,000 watts of light.
MIR 1 is also loaded for action with the stereoscopic
high definition camera system.
The dive has begun.
The two submersibles are now free falling toward the bottom
three miles below.
The camera housing also built by Mike
is the largest implodable volume ever attached to a manned submersible.
Any flaw in the design could cause it to implode under the pressure.
The effect would be like a depth charge creating a shockwave
that would rupture the sub's hull and kill everyone inside instantly.
Okay we're on the clock on all recorders.
Okay timer is started. All four tapes are running.
This is a triple check, triple check throughout the dive. Triple check,
Yep.
Throughout the long fall the pressure mounts relentlessly.
It will reach 7,000 pounds per square inch.
Nestled within the submersible structure is the man sphere.
This steel bubble resists the force of the three mile column
of water above it.
The total pressure on its surface will be 155 million pounds.
Within the first 500 feet all light from the surface is gone.