Incredibly important. if the Bismark had been allowed to continue in existence there would still have been an excruciatingly large threat from her to the Atlantic and Arctic convoys. She had to be hunted down by the Home Fleet and sunk any which way possible. In the end it wasn't the battleship that claimed her but the many Destroyers and their torpedoes.
There's an interesting little snippet about the hunt/chase in Bob Whinney's The Uboat Peril when he was A/S officer on HMS Cossack. She might have ended up as a Tallboy/Grand Slam target eventually a la her sister. Certainly would have been tied up in a French port under almost constant air attack. Even in port she would have tied up a lot of Allied resources over potentially a longer period than the actual pursuit.
I wouldn't quite say that - she was reduced to a fiery wreck by gunfire from the battleships King George V and Rodney, but they couldn't quite send her under. That was eventually achieved by torpedoes from the cruiser Dorsetshire.
This is a very interesting piece on Bismarck with some great images! http://www.mikekemble.com/ww2/bismarck2.html
Interesting site - worth bookmarking. A few points: So possibly Bismarck was scuttled by her crew? We'll never know. The officers on the bridge were almost certainly dead by then, so who would have given such an order? Why, in one drawing, did she have red tops to her turrets until just before her final voyage? Was this just decorative propaganda, to counterpoint the Nazi flag painted on the deck? The photo of Hood's last moments clearly shows two large explosions almost simulataneously. It has been suggested that an after magazine exploded and the blast travelled along the machinery space and touched off the B turret magazine. With about 100 tons of TNT on board, the explosion was the size of a small nuclear bomb. The photo labelled Suffolk is either of a sister ship of hers, or if it is her it is pre-1935, because after that she had a large aircraft hanger aft - the first ship to have one. I am well aware of this because I built the Airfix model of her once -but I've seen the presence of the hangar confirmed in weightier sources than Airfix!
Great synopsis Adrian. It is interesting that all is not clear and proven over 60 years down the track.
