The Battleship Bismarck Sinks into North Atlantic

24 minutes later, Dorsetshire delivers the coup de grace to Bismarck. Two torpedoes are fired at the ship followed by a second salvo six minutes later. >> If you read through any extensive number of the survivors accounts, you realize just what an absolute hell it was at that last minute because you have people realizing that every single major escape route is blocked, the conventional [music] escape route. So, you have people climbing up communications passages because all the ladders, all the hatchways are destroyed or areas above it are destroyed, bits of plate are on fire. They're finding absolutely every possible [music] exit they can and some of them aren't. And then they get there's a account of a large group of men and they're all waiting their turn to go up this little communications [music] tube that's mostly for wiring and then the ship takes a hit in the side, there's a massive explosion and most of the people who were waiting in the queue are just dead. I met one Bismarck survivor before he passed away years and years ago and he mentioned that when he was trying to get off the ship, one of the biggest problems was actually getting from where he was sheltering in the superstructure to the side of the ship because there [music] were fires and hits in the deck where he could look down and he could see a just a glow in the hull of the ship and just I just navigating safely to get over into the water was hard enough. Other survivors in the water talk about the fact the fires internally were so intense towards the [music] end that as the ship began to list, every time it listed a bit further and more hull came into contact with the waves, there would be clouds [music] of steam billowing up because the hull was so hot.