Sink the Bismarck! was made before 1975, when the British code-breaking at
Bletchley Park was declassified, so it did not reveal that Shepard's hunches about the movements of the
Bismarck were supported by intelligence. Direction finding and
traffic analysis showed that on 25 May,
Bismarck stopped talking to
Wilhelmshaven and resumed with
Paris, and Shepard committed to the belief that
Bismarck was headed for the French coast. The radio switch from Wilhelmshaven to Paris might have been caused by
Bismarck crossing the line between southern Greenland and the northern Hebrides, which placed her under Group West instead of Group North. Nonetheless, Shepard's hunch was proved correct when, by good luck, a
Luftwaffe Enigma transmission was intercepted and decoded at Bletchley Park, revealing that
Bismarck was headed for
Brest to repair an oil leak. The Luftwaffe's Enigma code had been broken early in the war, unlike the German naval Enigma code, which was only broken later and was subject only to traffic analysis during the
Bismarck pursuit. Damage during her battle with HMS
Hood and HMS
Prince of Wales caused flooding that put
Bismarcks bow barely above sea level. Oil slicks caused by hits from HMS
Prince of Wales were apparent. In the film,
Bismarcks bow remains at its normal height above sea level. Some minor errors involve the visual appearance of
Bismarck. When a spy in
Kristiansand, Norway, sees
Bismarck arrive in Norwegian waters (sailing from the east), the ship is shown sailing from right to left (from the west).
Bismarck has no apparent camouflage but in fact, the ship still had striped "
Baltic camouflage" along her sides, which was removed shortly before she headed out to sea. Also, the photo-reconnaissance Spitfire that photographs
Bismarck and
Prinz Eugen in a fjord is shown as two different versions, each with different
canopies.
Sink the Bismarck! simplifies the movements of HMS
Hood and HMS
Prince of Wales in the battle. The film shows an early order to turn to allow the British ships to fire full broadsides. In reality, they sought to close the distance first, presenting smaller targets to the German ships but using only their forward gun turrets which reduced their firepower advantage by eight big guns, while
Bismarck and
Prinz Eugen were
firing full broadsides of all their main guns. The film does not show that HMS
Hood mistook
heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen for
Bismarck, at first firing at the wrong ship before correcting her fire. Only in her final moments did HMS
Hood begin a turn to fire a broadside on
Bismarck. HMS
Hood was hit during this turn and she exploded. The turn presented
Hoods deck armour at an angle more vulnerable to shell penetration and has been cited as a possible cause for the explosion and her subsequent destruction, an issue the film does not cover. HMS
Hood is shown firing to port while the
Bismarck is shown firing to starboard; in fact it was the other way around. In one scene, Lütjens speculates that after
Bismarck has undergone repair in Brest, the two German battleships based there, and , could join
Bismarck in raiding Allied shipping. There is no record of such a discussion at that time, although it would have been possible for
Bismarck to sortie with the two battleships if
Bismarck had reached the port. Another historical deviation was made in depicting the night engagement between British destroyers and
Bismarck. The film portrayal shows three British hits by torpedoes, while the British destroyer HMS
Solent is hit and destroyed by
Bismarck. There was no destroyer named
Solent and no successful torpedo attack, although
S-class submarine did exist during the war as a submarine operating in the Eastern Fleet in 1944. On 26 May, a Royal Navy destroyer squadron, led by
Captain (later
Admiral)
Philip Vian in , did exchange gunfire during unsuccessful torpedo attacks, with
Bismarck inflicting minor damage to the destroyers. The heroic action of the attached Polish destroyer (ex N-class HMS
Nerissa) was not depicted, although she sailed straight for
Bismarck, signalling "I am a Pole" as she went, but none of her shots found their mark. The aircraft that finally located
Bismarck after she escaped detection by HMS
Suffolk and HMS
Norfolk is correctly shown as a
Catalina, but the fact that it was piloted by an American
Naval Reserve officer, Ensign Leonard Smith, could not be revealed until long after the war, since the United States was neutral at the time of the engagement. The attacks by Fleet Air Arm Swordfish show some aircraft being shot down; no Swordfish was lost to
Bismarcks guns and all were recovered. However, from HMS
Victoriouss air raid, two
Fairey Fulmar escort fighters ran out of fuel and ditched. Three fliers were picked up from a rubber boat.
Sink the Bismarck! also does not show controversial events after
Bismarck sank, including 's quick departure after rescuing only 110 survivors, because the British suspected that a German U-boat was in the area and withdrew. Perhaps the most significant historical error is that the film places the British naval intelligence operation in
the Admiralty,
Whitehall,
London. The actual centre of intelligence operations during the
Battle of the Atlantic and the pursuit of
Bismarck was at
Derby House,
Liverpool.
Portrayal of Günther Lütjens The film has been criticised for its portrayal of German Admiral
Günther Lütjens, who is portrayed as a stereotypical committed Nazi, crazed in his undaunted belief that
Bismarck is unsinkable. In reality, Lütjens did not agree with Nazi policies; along with two other navy commanders, he had publicly protested against the brutality of antisemitic crimes during
Kristallnacht. He is portrayed as saying "Never forget that you are Nazis", but the term "
Nazi" was a short form pejorative term used by Germans to refer to the full name "Nationalsozialisten" ("National Socialists") that has become the common name used in English to refer to the ideology and its followers. He was one of the few officers who refused to give the Nazi salute when Hitler visited
Bismarck before its first and final mission, deliberately using instead the traditional naval salute. The cruiser , now preserved in London, was used to depict the cruisers involved in
Bismarcks pursuit, including ,
Suffolk,
Sheffield and
Dorsetshire. A in reserve was used as the set for
Bismarcks destruction, and one of her tall raked funnels is glimpsed in the final scenes. The aircraft carrier is briefly shown as herself, despite the postwar addition of a large angled
flight deck and a massive
Type 984 "searchlight" radar; the same ship is also used to depict HMS
Ark Royal sailing from Gibraltar. All flying from both carriers was filmed aboard – clearly marked with her postwar
pennant number R06 – and three surviving
Fairey Swordfish aircraft were restored, of which two were flown from her flight deck. A 2010 article in
Aeroplane identifies the Swordfish flown in the production:
LS326, carrying its true serial, was marked as "5A" of
825 Naval Air Squadron, while
NF389 was marked as
LS423 / "5B". The same actor plays the leader of the Swordfish attack from HMS
Victorious (in reality, Lt Cdr
Eugene Esmonde VC, DSO), and also the pilot from HMS
Ark Royal who later fired the torpedo which crippled
Bismarcks steering gear (in reality
Lt John Moffat RNR). The destroyers used to depict the torpedo night attacks were the , representing the flagship of "Captain (D), of the 4th Destroyer Flotilla" (in reality,
Captain Vian in ) and the , representing the fictitious which
Bismarck destroys in the film. Their
pennant numbers can be made out quite clearly, although they are reversed because of the film's convention that British ships should move from left to right on the screen and German ships
vice versa. These were the last classes of destroyer built during the war, and the last to have the classic
War Emergency Programme destroyers' outline. HMS
Cavalier remained in service until 1972, the last RN destroyer to have served in the Second World War, and is now preserved at
Chatham Dockyard to commemorate all these vessels, but the newer and larger HMS
Hogue was broken up shortly after the film was completed, following a collision off Ceylon with the Indian cruiser (formerly ).
Bismarck anti-aircraft guns, however, are represented by
stock footage of British
QF 2-pounder naval guns. ==Other productions==