Скачать или смотреть Three Minutes to Sink HMS Hood — 72 Hours to Find Bismarck — Classified 70 Years

Three minutes. That's how long it took the Bismarck to sink HMS Hood, the pride of the Royal Navy. 1,415 men. Gone. Three survivors pulled from the freezing Atlantic.

What happened next became the largest naval hunt in history. And the truth about how it ended stayed buried in British Admiralty files for seventy years.

May 24th, 1941. 0600 hours. Denmark Strait.

The German battleship Bismarck — 50,000 tons, eight 15-inch guns — faces HMS Hood and HMS Prince of Wales. The engagement lasts six minutes. At 0600 hours, Hood explodes. The blast tears the ship in half. 1,418 souls aboard. Three survive.

Prime Minister Churchill issues a three-word order: "Sink the Bismarck."

What follows: 1,750 miles of pursuit across the North Atlantic. Seven British warships. Two aircraft carriers. Multiple torpedo attacks. Running gun battles. And one final engagement that official records still don't fully explain.

This declassified account examines:
• Why Hood exploded in three minutes — the armor flaw the Admiralty knew about
• The 31 hours Bismarck disappeared from British radar
• The American naval officer aboard the Catalina that found Bismarck (classified until 1977)
• One torpedo hit to the rudder — 388 pounds versus 50,000 tons
• The final question: Did British torpedoes sink Bismarck, or did the German crew scuttle first?
• Why this debate stayed classified for 70 years

All information sourced from British Admiralty documents (released 2011-2017), German naval archives (post-reunification access), survivor testimony, and underwater surveys by Ballard (1989) and Cameron (2001).

CHAPTERS:

3,364 lives lost. 1,750 nautical miles. 74 hours from Hood's explosion to Bismarck's sinking.

The complete truth took 70 years to declassify.

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