The temperature drops to near freezing.
Inside the walls trickle with condensation.
The 16,000 foot freefall to the bottom will take three hours.
Bismarck made the same journey in less than 10 minutes.
As it left the surface buoyancy and hydrodynamic forces
ripped away the stern.
The ship plunged a 35,000 ton steel missile pointed into the depths.
The forces of the water roaring past ripped away the admiral's bridge,
the mast and the funnel.
Righting itself the ship then fell in this stable position for the rest
of its descent into darkness.
Okay MIR 2 we're about 30 meters off the bottom.
Can you see the bottom?
20 meters.
I see the bottom. Yeah.
Yep just coming into view.
Beautiful.
This is like landing on the moon.
Sure is.
Whoa look at the silt we are throwing up.
After its three-mile fall Bismarck hits with tremendous force,
forming an impact crater and hurling up
enormous clouds of debris.
MIR 2 MIR 2 this is MIR 1
we are on the bottom, depth 4820 meters.
Somewhere we can...
We're definitely looking toward the slope.
See we're facing the mountain.
Bismarck has hit the side of a volcanic sea mount.
It begins to slide downhill, plowing a deep trough
in the bottom clays.
Now 100,000 tons of water sucked down by the falling ship blasts
onto the slope,
becoming a torpidity flow, a kind of liquid avalanche.
The torpidity flow shoves the ship hard turning it sideways to the slope.
Pieces of the ship which have impacted in its path are now swept aside.
The hull bulldozes the sea floor ahead of it, starting an avalanche.
The bow carves deeply into the mud cutting across the slope to the west.
The leviathan finally comes to rest.
It has slid down the mountain two thirds of a mile.
This is all disturbed bottom so we're right in the middle
of the avalanche.
You can just see where the stuff was just ripped up, tumbled.
That ship just came roaring through here.
We may be actually in the slide scar.
You can see the shape of it on the sonar on the right.
This is, this looks like the slide scar to me.
Man look how deep this thing is.
Like a giant bulldozer just ploughed through here.
Absolutely, yeah, yeah.
Just follow the wall, it should lead us right to the wreck.
Yep. Starting to see some debris.
I see boots.
Where do you see the boot? On the left?
On the left yes.
Oh yeah I can see it now.
Just one boot?
Yes.
It's an officer's boot right?
MIR 2 what's your 20?
We're moving south through the debris field
and we're seeing some larger objects.
Bercuson any ideas what this is?
It's a search light Mike.
Okay I agree, yeah there's the louvers.
I see something. Yeah up there.
It's big whatever it is.
It's the bridge. It's the admiral's bridge, see it?
See the windows? It's landed upside down.
There's the bridge wing and platforms.
Powerful currents ripped away the admiral's bridge
as the ship plunged.
10 minutes later it impacted on the sea floor.
Bismarck's hull then shoved it aside and it came to rest upside down.
Really gives you an idea how big that thing is.
It was huge. It's like a four-story building just fell out of the sky.
Admiral Lutjens would have stood right there right at those windows.
MIR 2 this is MIR 1.
This is MIR 2 go ahead.
I think they are north of us...
You need to come to our coordinate now we're at the admiral's bridge.
We need to proceed to the right.
Okay we're proceeding to it now.
Let's suggest the sonar here.
I see.
Oh yeah. There it is.
I see Bismarck.
This is the bow.
Yes this is the bow.
Well Jim we think we're coming in on the starboard side over.
The hole comes in the side. There it is see it mate?
Yeah yeah there it is.
Yes we have visual on the wreck now.
Whoa oh my god.
Welcome to Bismarck.
Now guys you need to come up to deck level and get oriented on the wreck.
Okay he's coming up now.
My god this is incredible.
God it looks like a mountain we're climbing up.
There's the armor belt.
And I'll tell you right where we are in a second.
You're right here. Right here Genyu.
Proceeding to the bow now Jim.
Just coming up to the tip of the bow.
Yeah copy that we're right below you.
Roger that.
That's beautiful look at that.
Yep.
Wow! Holy Toledo oh my Lord!
Okay we're heading after along the foxhole and I can see
just a hint of the swastika.
Just coming up on the port capstan right now.
See all the sentiment on the deck from the slide,
but the teak is all here.
Look at that boom! That just went through there
and who knows where that blew up, probably made it
all the way to the turret.
There is a huge barbet.
Yeah that's Anton.
Look at that huge, huge opening right where the turret used to be.
These gaping five story shafts of barbets,
the armored mounts for Bismarck's four massive 15
inch gun turrets.
The turrets were held in place only by gravity
so when the ship capsized they slid out and plummeted to the bottom.
From the muzzles of its gun barrels to the back of its armor,
each turret was over 100 feet long and weighed 1,900 tons.
There's an anti-aircraft gun. The railings, it just looks intact.
Okay you two the next move is to come up
to the captain's bridge over.
Come up Genya. Coming up.
But does this glass magnify or not?
Yeah slightly.
There is a magnification.
It is just humongous.
There's the bridge I see it.
The captain's bridge right?
Yep Lindenmann and Lutjens would have fought the final battle
from right in there.
There's shell damage look.
Oh it's just unbelievable Mike.
I told you.
I cannot believe it.
It's hard not to be excited.
The subs head aft over the secondary gun turns.
They seem surprisingly intact.
Bismarck's 15-centimeter secondary turrets were as big as the main guns
on most warships.
Even in her silent grave Bismarck still seems lethal
with her guns aimed ready to engage an enemy which will never come.
The guns are silent now, the barrels home to gentle anemones.
A 10.5 centimeter flack gun still points skyward.
It will be an endless vigil under a night sky
which will never see a dawn.
Proceed aft to the hanger area.
Continue.
Continue aft to the hanger area.
And here's the catapult.
There it is, the port ship's right there. Yep.
Bismarck had four Arado-196 sea planes
which were launched from its catapult amid ships.
No one has ever seen inside the Bismarck's hangers to confirm
if any of the planes still exist.
Okay we're just about to open the door here.
Okay now open.
Okay I'm coming out.
Picking up, looks good.
Okay Mike what's the status?
Okay it looks like it's neutral.
I'm ready to go when you say so over.
Okay roger that go ahead and start your work.
Let's see you come down to the hangar area, over.
Copy that.
Yep looking good. We have a good visual on you.
Despite almost four tons of pressure per square inch,
Mike's bot is functioning perfectly.
Now it's time to do what they came here for.
Entering the hanger now. Copy that.
Voile airplane. Airplane wreckage.
See this, here's the cockpit. The cockpit Genya.
Genya do you see the airplane? It's the fuselage.
It's an airplane? Airplane. Yeah it's the frame for the window.
That last night the captain wanted to get as much information
and reports back to land as possible.
He wanted to send our seaplane back to land with our war diary.
Everyone was giving the pilot messages and notes to loved ones back home.
But the poor guy they couldn't get the catapult to work
so in the end he didn't go.
So the hanger took a direct hit.
Took a direct hit yep.
Ah it blew the tail of that rudder to smithereens.
It's an out of body experience absolutely.
It's like you become the bot and you forget where you are.
You see the sub and you say there's MIR 2 over there.
But wait a minute I'm in MIR 2.
After nine hours on the bottom the MIR's power is getting low.
It is time to make the long climb back to the surface.
But first Elwood needs to make it safely back into the garage.
Without the daring and the skill of MIR cowboys like Vladimir Patrovsky it
would not be possible to recover the MIRs.
After a rough ride on the surface
the dive crew really appreciates what the cowboys go through to get them
safely back on board.
It's a spectacular site, absolutely spectacular.
He's been waiting all day.
Your ship is in pretty good shape.
Is it?
Yeah, yeah.
Just comes out of the blackness as this kind of
ghostly pale wall of steel.
It's a very different look than Titanic.
It was just exciting.
I mean my god come along the ocean bottom we just climbed up
and up and up. I felt like I was going up a skyscraper.
That's what I need you to do.
Maintenance on Elwood is a lot like a surgical procedure.
The fluid compensated electronics are like a circulatory system
which must be given a transfusion during the operation.
Yeah the patient's going to live I think.
Das bot is alive.
Lori Johnston is a microbiologist
who specializes in the study of microorganisms in extreme environment.
It's not just one type of bacteria down there,
it's a community or consortia
so it's a whole bunch of bacteria working in a symbiotic relationship
by mining
or taking the elements out of the steal and they're using it
to build those icicle looking structures called rusticles.
The rusticles themselves are a living entity.
We're landing MIR 1 right over here. You guys are going to land...
Lori prepares for her dive to place rusticle growth experiments
at the wreck.
She will become the second woman ever to dive below 15,000 feet.
It's just going to be incredible to see in real living color.
Yeah we're very close to something Tonio.
Do you see this thing Tonio? What do you, can you see what it is?
Hey Mike what do you think this thing is?
What else would be a round structure with various levels
other than the core trunk of the turret?
You know this is the tower of our, of the gun turret.
You know the big main turret? Has this long tower underneath?
The turrets weighing 1,900 tons
each slammed into the seafloor and were instantly buried.
Their substructure towers were four decks high
and had duty stations for 21 men.
Now they stand over the turrets like monuments.
The team is able to identify this turret by the number of its
platforms and its position in the debris field.
It is turret Dora, the gun farthest aft.
During Bismarck's final minutes
Karl Walter and Heinz took shelter behind Dora
just before diving into the sea.
But very interesting guys I think there is a barrel sticking up
out of the mud.
It's just I think to your left slightly.
Roger that. We see it.
MIR 2 lands mid ships next to the starboard catapult track
to deploy Elwood for a more ambitious exploration of the wreck.
Okay come on out. Okay I'm coming out.
I got fiber out.
Tell me when you've turned.
Can we talk to him Lori please, and tell them I'm trim.
Elwood is now trimmed over. Copy that, looking good.
Most of the British shelling came from port leaving the upper decks severely
damaged on this side.
There's heavy rusticle growth where fire stripped away the paint,
indicating that this part of the ship was a raging inferno
during the final battle.
It's battle damaged.
Tell them it's really badly blown apart.
The alley is blown apart, lots of wires and battle damage over.
Can you guys continue to starboard and image this gun
which I think is S3 over.
Roger that. We're moving forward now we're coming in on what
looks like a shell hit.
All the secondary turrets had one or more entry holes
from medium caliber rounds,
six or eight inch shells which punched through the armor to detonate inside
killing the gun crews instantly.
So here is the barbet for turret Dora.
The tower underneath the turret out on the debris field, it went in here.
The main armament turrets fired 15-inch shells
which were so massive they required a hydraulic system to lift,
load and fire them.
The shells weighed over a ton and traveled at two and a half times
the speed of sound.
At impact the armor piercing shell burst
through hurling off lethal shrapnel
as well as a piece of the armor called the cartwheel
which becomes a second supersonic projectile.
Cart wheeling shell then punched through inner walls throwing off
more deadly shrapnel.
After a delay of one hundredth of a second the shell explodes
deep inside the ship to kill the maximum number of people.
That shell might have blown up from underneath for all we know.
It might have blown the radio room right out. So you...
The British used the same type of armor piercing shells
but did the British fire truly sink the Bismarck?
By analyzing the battle damage,
Mike and Jim hope to resolve a six decade old controversy.
You go all the way across the ship...
Was Bismarck sunk by shells and torpedoes as the British claimed...
It was the Dorsetshire who finally landed the coup d'grace that sunk
the mighty German battlewagon.
Or was she scuttled by her own crew as the German survivors
have always said?
We blew up the ship.
There were orders to set charges and blow up the ship.
Each side has its own reasons to claim the final sinking,
the British because of what happened to the Hood
and the Germans who want to believe that they had some control
over their own fate in those final hours.
Only a systematic damage survey from end to end inside
and out can resolve the debate.
I want to do a complete scan of the hull all the way around,
down here to see, to map all the holes and all the damage.
MIR 1 freefalls toward Bismarck's impact crater two-thirds
of a mile upslope from the main wreck.
Yeah, I see something.
Yeah something interesting.
Something very interesting.
We should, we should be careful here. Yeah.
I think this is crater. This is a little dangerous.
Oh. Yeah you need to come up we're on top of something.
This is part of the ship.
I can't go over this.
You need to come up Anatoli, come up,
come up, you're landing on something. Go up, go up, go up, go up!
Don't back up you don't know what's behind you,
you have to come up, you have to come up.
The enormous piece of hull lying far from the Bismarck is a mystery.
Later it will prove to be the key to unraveling the secrets of the wreck.
We landed right on that son of a bitch whatever it was.
I just come and... it was a crater.
Yeah with a ship in it.
That's about as exciting as I want it to get.
You could just see us landing right on something that
like hooks us you know?
All right. Good work you got us out of it.
You flew out of it.
They begin their damage survey at the bow.
Right there I see something.
They identify a historically important shell head.
As the Hood was sinking the Prince of Wales
was wounded in other heavy bombardment.
Fighting back desperately its gun crews scored a critical
hit on Bismarck.
The shell blasted right through the bow from port to starboard
leaving an exit hole six feet across.
That's a big outie. That's the exit wound right there.
Damage reports came to the bridge.
The Prince of Wales had scored two hits from 14,000 yards.
The shot through the bow was above the water line
but thousands of tons of water were pouring in
because of the storm swell.
The other round hit below the side armor
flooding a boiler room and causing a nine-degree list to port.
The damage forced Lindenmann to back off from his top speed by
just a few knots,
but enough to ultimately seal Bismarck's fate.
Switch master MIR breaker 24 volt to on position.
Jim prepares to pilot Elwood deep inside the wreck.
...RO V power.
You get a fantastic perspective on these wrecks that you don't get
flying around them in a sub. You really are like a person,
you know like it would have looked to somebody walking
the decks at that time.
On the starboard side a shell hole near Karl's office looked as
if it might be just big enough to get inside.
It's a risky maneuver.
I'm going to try to go in this hole okay?
Whether it's even bot rated I have no idea.
For better or worse we're going in.
I'm not even sure I can fit in here.
Okay we fit. Yep.
Well we're officially inside the ship.
God look at the damage, kabang.
Now if I turn to my right there should be a door.
Okay there's our door.
Interesting the growth around that door.
Yeah.
Now we're getting into something.
I think we're going into Karl's office.
This should be Karl's office this is where he worked.
This is right next to the adjutant's office.
This is Karl's duty station.
Check it out you see the chair?
So you have to tell us if it looks familiar.
Two tables.
Looks like my bookcase, shelving there.
This looks like shelving here. Yep.
So this is a very long table right here.
Three people sat there, one in here and another one in here.
Along this room on the long table at the far right end
the third person sat.
We looked for your typewriter but we couldn't find it.
Yeah that wakes up the memories.
It's right where you worked. Yeah.
One startling feature of the wreck is the missing stern.
The last 50 feet of the ship are simply gone.
Though the core of the ship was armored the stern was not
and the thin steel tore away as if chopped by a guillotine.
We're looking at the, we're looking at the aft bulkhead,
armored bulkhead, the whole stern's sheered off.
If the ship was intact we'd be sitting inside the ship right now.
There's the after deck up there.
What's interesting is how all this teak decking failed.
It must have been extremely violent.
Couldn't have ripped upward it must have snapped
from over that edge
which would be consistent with having inverted that a buoyant factor
to where it broke off that direction.
That's the swastika.
That's right where Hitler walked when he inspected the ship.
We're sitting on the swastika right now.
This is creeping me out.
Okay there's the propeller, the starboard propeller.
Beneath the severed stern
the dive team searches for evidence of the famous attack
by Swordfish torpedo bombers.
Slowed by the earlier hits from the Prince of Wales,
Bismarck was just barely in range of the rickety biplanes.
One of their torpedoes brought about her down.
But no one has ever actually seen the damage.
There's the rudder.
Looks like the rudder got stuffed into the propeller.
All right that's the center screw and that's the rudder.
Look and they're stuffed into each other
and the center screw is all wanged up which would you know pretty strongly
indicate it was turning when it happened.
What is that is that a hole?
That is for sure a hole.
All right so there's a big stinking hole right above the rudder.
Okay so that's our torpedo hole for sure.
Now let's get up in there. Mike will kill me for this but.
Yeah we're well inside the steering gear room now.
We're looking right at the aft bulkhead right now.
They had found a hole made by a single torpedo which changed history.
They know how desperate this mission is.
We have to remember that many of these men have never flown
a Swordfish before
and if they had they certainly never flew it in combat.
In the oncoming darkness with the bad weather
it takes them almost two hours to find Bismarck.
When they do they swarm around her attacking from port,
attacking from starboard
without any regard for their own safety.
They're up against a ship that put up a withering curtain
of anti-aircraft fire
and they're flying old and slow aircraft
but they are desperate to hit her.
And time after time they bear in just over the sea pulling up
just above her decks,
driving into the anti-aircraft fire trying to hide in the cloud
doing everything they can to try to bring their torpedoes to bear
on the side.
It's a courageous attack,
one of the most courageous charges of the war.
They launched torpedo after torpedo but Bismarck evades them
all except one.
Incredibly a single torpedo makes
a one in a thousand kill on the starboard rudder,
crippling the ship so they can only turn in circles.
The Achilles heel has been found.
Desperately the crew attempts to make repairs
but the storm seas swell in through the torpedo hole driving them back.
They never even knew the full extent of the damage.
Okay we're looking right down out of the hole
so if I just drop down, I should come right out.
Given what we now know despite all their best efforts
there was nothing that the Bismarck's crew
could have done to clear the rudder.
Lindenman's fired off a terse radio message to Naval command
ship unable to maneuver we will fight to the last shell,
long live the Fuhrer.
The suddenness and finality of the signal stunned the fleet staff
and the radiomen on board.
Word spread among the crew, hope turned to despair.
In the early morning hours Captain Lindenmann announced that
they could help themselves to anything they wanted from the ship's stores.
His words were like a death sentence.
As they hours ticked away until dawn
the men prepared themselves for their final battle.
Is this damaged right here?
Meticulous notes are taken recording the damage so that the battle
can be forensically reconstructed.
Shell damage on its port side.
They find hundreds of shell splashes, telltale marks
where incoming rounds exploded against the armor
but failed to penetrate.
The splashes tell the story of the massive barrage which rained down
on Bismarck during its final battle.
Just after dawn the British armada moves in for the kill.
Admiral Tovey opens up fire on the Bismarck at about 27,000 yards
and he constantly closes the distance to her
until finally they're down to 3,000 yards firing almost level shots
that penetrate the Bismarck through the turret,
through the superstructure.
No question that they wanted to get the German's back for what
they had done to the Hood.
Tovey himself ordered the captain of the King George V to bring that
battleship as close as he could to the Bismarck
so that he could look through his glasses and see big chunks
of that ship being shot off.
They had her. They wanted to destroy her.
The Rodney is firing 16-inch shells at the Bismarck.
Blow by blow...
The King George is firing 14-inch shells.
Hammer blow by hammer blow.
And the three cruisers are pounding her with eight-inch shells.
...put her under.
The prime target for the British gun crews was the bridge.
If they could take out the brain of the ship they
could render it helpless.
The four-story admiral's bridge was swept away in the sinking.
But Lutjens and Lindenmann commanded the battle from the captain's bridge
which still remains.
Just after the captain's bridge is an armored conning tower
from which the ship's main guns were directed.
It's an armored vault with walls 14 inches thick.
Approaching from the starboard side the sub crew
is surprised to find the bridge and conning tower almost intact.
This thing sure got scarred up but it doesn't look like it
got blow open.
Looks like they didn't crack that clam shell.
That's a hell of a door.
That is a good door.
But as they come around to port that illusion is shattered.
The big guns of the British armada have riddled the bridge
and ripped it apart.
Yeah it's working good. Lower it down.
Let's see if we can get a look inside.
This is the forward artillery director.
It was the battle nerve center of the ship.
Chief gunnery officer Schneider directed all four of Bismarck's main
turrets from inside the conning tower.
At 9:02 one of Rodney's 16-inch shells scored a direct hit
on the tower.
The shell ripped across the deck and exploded against the armored tower
blowing off the 14-inch thick door.
The concussion kills Schneider and the others inside
ending the coordinated command of Bismarck's guns.
Imagine it rocked the Kasbah when those shells hit it.
God bless look at these blast holes.
This is where that shell came in and blew right through the bridge.
Firing from starboard at point blank range Rodney made the kill shot.
A shell right through the captain's bridge.
Boom. God it just ripped it open didn't it?
Look it just ripped through there, just peeled it back
like some kind of cheese product.
This should take us right into the bridge
if there's anything left to go into.
So this big shell hole should be right here.
Rodney's shell would have instantly killed Lutjens and Lindenmann.
At least we're seeing paint... Yeah... for a change.
Okay. Somebody's office. You see the desk, see the two desks?
It looks like mattress springs?
Yeah this must have been somebody's bunk.
Um big mess. Big mess, total shell damage.
Jeez. This is devastating, just molten almost looking, you know?
It's like it just must have raged with fire.
All right let's get out of here.
MIR 1 completes the hull survey along the port side.
Once again the hull armor appears almost intact in stark contrast to
the ravaged superstructure.
Incredibly throughout the entire length of the armor belt
on both sides of the ship,
only two holes were found which penetrated all the way through.
Both are on the starboard side indicating they were 16-inch
shells from Rodney.
Two other large caliber rounds punched through the lighter armor
above the main belt.
The British ships fired 2,876 shells at Bismarck,
over 700 of them were 14 or 16-inch shells
which could have penetrated her side armor.
The team is astounded to find that
along 1,400 feet of side armor there are
only four penetrations, only four hits out of 700.
If British shells weren't penetrating the hull
then they weren't sinking the ship.
But what about torpedoes?
Dorsetshire's crew claimed
to have made three torpedo hits in the last few minutes
before Bismarck sank.
Could these have been the fatal blows?
To find torpedo holes
the team now needed to survey the lower hull, down at the mud line.
Uh Mike I'm seeing something pretty bizarre here.
They have found something amazing,
a gaping hole in the side of the ship over 100 feet long
with a surgically straight top edge.
Clearly this is no torpedo hole,
but what is it?
More of the long holes with the razor straight top edges are found on
both sides of the ship, both fore and aft.
Incredibly it turned out that over 40 percent of the lower hull
was completely missing.
Instead of answers the divers have found only more riddles.
I'm virtually certain that the piece of red painted Bismarck hull
that we landed on
which was about 80 or 90 feet long is the same piece
that came from the hole
which would leave me to believe that some of the damage that we're seeing
is not torpedo damage,
it's impact damage.
I think the ship comes down, hits that mountainside bow first,
buckles and then flops down.
Absolutely enormous force and the hull literally blows open.
Pieces of hull just go flying off, hundreds of feet long
and then the ship skidded off 1,000 meters down the slope
where it came to rest.
So we may never know what the torpedo damage was.
Only a detailed exploration inside the hull using the RO V
can provide the answers.
Where, when the hull burst it burst at weak points
and the weak points may have been created by torpedo impacts.
So in these long holes are we seeing that one end of the hole
is one torpedo impact
and the other end another? Maybe.
That might be a hole right there.
Oh that sure looks like a hole to me.
Yeah so this torpedo got them pretty well.
Maybe we can get up into this hole a little bit.
And we're going in.
All right we are deep in now.
So we are right where the torpedo exploded.
And there it is. There's the torpedo bulkhead.
It's pretty intact.
You can see that it's not dented.
It's not perforated. It's not buckled. It's absolutely seamless
and perfect all the way down.
So you can really see how it resisted the torpedo impacts, these holes.
There would have been fuel tanks,
water tanks and they acted as a buffer zone
so that torpedo impacts wouldn't kill people
on the inside of the ship.
The armored bulkhead was designed to withstand torpedoes and it did.
The thin tank walls were ruptured, but the inner bulkhead is intact.
The ship's core has not been penetrated.
Without flooding the core the torpedoes could not have sunk
the ship in those few final minutes.
The interesting thing is that everything that we've found in this
kind of you know forensic examination of the ship
supports their story,
and actually accounts for their survival.
Admiral Tovey constantly closes the distance to her until finally
they're firing almost level shots.
Ironically the point blank range made the shelling ineffective
because of the gun's flat trajectories.
Rounds were skipping off the water or unable to penetrate deep enough
to hit the lower hull.
The shells were riddling the superstructure
and decimating the crew
but not striking the armored core,
not sinking her, just torturing her.
To save themselves from this fury the crew sank their own ship.
With time running out
Karl, Walter and Heinz knew they would soon have to make their way up
into the hell storm above.
During the last battle it was generally known that the signal
had been given, abandon ship
and so rather than having a special exit route marked out
he simply joined the general piling of people,
rushing to get out, joined them
and he always kept looking up
to see if there was a hole, daylight anywhere.
And rather than plan an escape route he simply followed those
who were heading up towards light.
He said I walked past the officer's mess, my duty station
and all of a sudden I saw a shaft of light and up I went.
200 men are pushing and shoving to get up through the port
quarter deck hatch
including first officer Earls who has given the order to abandon ship.
A shell penetrates the armor on the port side
and explodes among them,
killing almost everyone.
This hole was made by the shell which killed over 200 men
in an instant.
As he came up here he went back this way to get to his locker
to get a few personal items.
Now this is where the water-tight door was
and as he was standing right here, a shell came right through here.
And he ended up on his ass right here.
It blew your ass to the right.
That's a literal translation.
Yeah, yeah got it, got it on his ass.
When I came out onto the deck portside
most of this was already in flames and destroyed.
There were wounded men everywhere
and just like the old Bismarck saying states here,
fear runs blood and iron, literally.
This is exactly the path that Heinz Steeg took when he escaped
from the ship.
He came out here and to the right.
See where this fare lead is to the right?
That was under water.
The ship was listed over to this side.
So over here the quarter deck was awash.
The blood was running down the decks
from all the wounded men that were piled dead,
dismembered, still alive
right over here
probably from this huge shell explosion that was aft by the turret.
There's a big hole in the deck right there.
This is where Heinz Steeg met a friend of his
who had his legs blown off right where the spotlight is right now
according to Heinz.
The guy asked for a last cigarette and Heinz gave it to him.
When he came up at Dora he said she was just a grizzly scene.
There were dead all around, the deck was red with blood
and by the ship listing the water was sloshing through the bodies
and the blood and sweeping it out again.
So he continued towards the stern of the ship.
Joined a group of about 20 or 25 people
and he remembers that Lilenhein Bechback was there
and he said okay now boys let's inflate our life vests
and then he said a final hail to the German people
and to the fatherland, but not to Hitler.
And then Karl remembers somehow they just slid off the deck
and off the port side.
So at this moment it just finally hit me my god this could be the end.
This really could be the end. This is it.
We slid into the water in a group
and he remembers for a little while the group was all around him
then they scattered in all directions
and to him it just looked like corks bobbing up and down on the sea.
The Dorsetshire and the Maury went in to rescue survivors
but left after sighting a u-boat.
A thousand men were left to die in the freezing water.
And on board of the Dorsetshire we became aware that
they could be our friends as well because of the way
they treated us on board.
We couldn't have been treated any better,
that's how you treat friends, not foes.
Sometimes you'll see a configuration that corresponds to a body
or you'll see the clothing laid out, you know.
But you don't know this might have just been a boot
or it might have been a guy.
There's no way to know, you know,
because the remains disappear, only the leather stays.
Michael Weiss, Michael Weiss everybody standing by please read the words
on the plaque over.
In memory of the thousands of young men who died here
and the thousands who died opposing this mighty ship
this wreck is their monument
and a monument to the madness of war.
This is Keldish we acknowledge and received your transmission.
Walter would like to say something in return.
Roger that.
We greet those who can no longer be here,
who could not make it home again.
For 61 years their home has been the bottom of the ocean.
Rest in peace down there.
Comrades you are not forgotten.
We will remember you and hopefully in the time of peace.
...did you receive transmission over?
Yes we copied you very well.
Thank you for those words Walter.
Former enemies now standing side by side.
The surviving men of Bismarck, King George and Dorsetshire
pay their respects to the fallen.
There are wounds from which the heart can never heal
and though they lived, their lives were taken,
shattered and changed.
But they see clearly now.
If their hard won wisdom is lost as these old men fade into history,
then it is at our peril.
The great battleships are gone like the reign of the dinosaurs
but only because they've been replaced by more fearsome weapons.
Bismarck stands her post in the underworld,
a home now to gentle sea creatures
and an eternal reminder of a time when the world went mad.
Ripped by: SkyFury