The map which illustrates this article is adapted from Ludovic Kennedy's 'Pursuit' (1974). It is too detailed to render successfully on this website, but can be viewed as an Adobe Acrobat file [ available here ]

Sixty years ago, on Sunday, 18 May 1941, Admiral Lutjens took the battleship Bismarck, the pride of the German Navy, out to sea from Gdynia in the Gulf of Danzig, along with the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen. His mission was to sink as many ships of the vital Atlantic convoys as possible. He hoped to skirt the Norwegian coast, unseen, and filter through the Denmark Strait, north of Iceland. From there, the Atlantic and its convoys would be wide open. Lutjens had to sail without the battlecruisers Gneisenau and Scharnhorst, both of which were being repaired at Brest, and the Bismarck's sistership, the Tirpitz, which wasn't yet ready. He told a friend: 'In this unequal struggle between the British Navy and ourselves I shall sooner or later have to lose my life. But I have settled my private affairs and I shall do my best to carry out my orders with honour' - which he did.

LRB 19 April 2001 | PDF Download