William Broad, Visiting Bismarck, Explorers Revise Its Story nytimes.com
[ Read past the clip for the "life imitates art" angle with James Cameron ]
The Bismarck was the world's most feared warship, a Nazi superweapon meant to sever the convoy lifeline that kept Britain alive in World War II. Its guns could fire one-ton shells 24 miles. So upon its debut in 1941, the British responded with everything they had. Resolve grew steely after the Bismarck destroyed the Hood, considered Britain's finest ship, killing all but 3 of its 1,415 men. "Sink the Bismarck!" became the battle cry.
After being pursued by a fleet of British ships and aircraft, and constant pounding by shells and torpedoes, the Bismarck went down in 3 miles of water, 600 miles off the coast of France, on May 27, 1941. It was the eighth day of the warship's first mission. The victory became a monument of British pride and, in time, a hit film, a popular song and a small industry of Bismarck books and television shows.
There is just one problem. New evidence, detailed in interviews, videotapes and photographs, suggests that the story is wrong.
"We conclusively proved there was no way the British sank that ship," said Dr. Alfred S. McLaren, a naval expert who studied the wreck on two expeditions, this year and last. "It was scuttled."
This conclusion is still hotly contested by British researchers. But five expeditions have reconnoitered the site, and three independent teams of American explorers, including Dr. McLaren, a retired submariner and emeritus president of the Explorers Club in New York, have concluded that the famous ship is in surprisingly good shape.
No major damage from enemy fire is visible on the sides of its hull, the American explorers say. That fact alone, they add, suggests that the Bismarck was in fact scuttled — as German survivors have claimed all along, saying that their naval tradition was to deliberately sink ships in danger of falling into enemy hands.
The American conclusions have infuriated the British, who denounce them as revisionist claptrap.
"I just don't buy it," said David L. Mearns, who last year led a British expedition to the wreck. "Bismarck was destroyed by British gunnery and sunk by torpedoes." Anything else, he added, is ridiculous.
[ Somehow, the "anything but what I 'know' is ridiculous" line seems quite familiar from other contexts ]. |
