Bismarck displaced 41,700 tons standard and over 50,000 fully loaded, stretched 251 meters, carried eight 38-centimeter guns in turrets named Anton, Bruno, Caesar, and Dora, and secretly violated the 35,000-ton limit of the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty. Its active combat career lasted eight days. This episode follows the ship from Operation Rheinubung in May 1941 with Prinz Eugen to the bottom of the Atlantic, and on to Robert Ballard's 1989 discovery of the wreck nearly three miles down.

The story turns on a flaw found in Baltic sea trials in late 1940: with its broad beam and three closely clustered propellers, Bismarck could not be steered by engines alone if the rudders failed. Institutional arrogance and wartime urgency sent it to sea anyway, where Swedish aircraft, the cruiser Gotland, Norwegian resistance radios, an RAF Spitfire phot ...