[BBell]

It's hard to believe that this

brought about the demise of the Bismark.

[yarddog]

When I saw the movie in the early 60s, I was a little surprised to see those bi-planes. I even wondered if they were using WWI stock footage.

It turned out they were using the correct planes. Fairly Fireflies or something like that.

[Simon Foxx]

Yes, and worse than that, BECAUSE the Swordfish planes were SOOOO slow (and maneuverable), the fairly sophisticated AA batteries of the Bismarck actually had trouble getting an accurate bead on them.

Still, the torpedo that hit the rudder was pure blind luck - and inexperience on the part of the Bismarck’s crew in torpedo avoidance.

The Japanese did it much better (plus the Yamato-class, for all their size, were AMAZINGLY maneuverable - check out some of the aerial photos of Yamato at Leyte Gulf basically ‘turning on a dime’ and causing a boatload of bombs to miss - you can find them on http://www.battleshipyamato.com There are some incredible sequential aerial photos of a couple of massive USN bombing runs on Yamato, and her sister Musashi, which took the brunt of the attack at Leyte and was sunk)...