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The battleship Bismarck, jewel of the Kriegsmarine, was prosecuted and finally sunk by combined
British war fleets when she was in route on the northern Atlantic, escorted by the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen, which escaped
and survived the hunt. The Bismarck managed to sink the imposing battlecruiser HMS Hood during an encounter three days prior
to the fatal outcome.
One of the happy returnings to base of Lieutenant Gunther Prien, turned into "ace" of the
submariners thanks to the epic episode on Scapa Flow.
One of the most important guests in a submarine: the torpedo. Before being hoisted aboard every torpedo was covered with fat
to protect it from humidity.
A mariner on anti-aircraft service watches from the bridge of an U-Boot the sky sector assigned
to him. The threat of anti-submarine aircraft fitted with electronic detection devices was ever increasing during the war and
eventually ruined the German plans for a blockade of the maritime traffic towards England.
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The battleship Bismarck and her twin Tirpitz were the largest warships operated by the Kriegsmarine
during the war. The Bismarck was a really powerful warship, but she was assigned to the fight against the Allied merchant convoys
because the Kriegsmarine possessed only a small group of important warships which should not comfront the much more numerous
groups of the Royal Navy. However, the British took the Bismarck as a serious threat and started a chase against her already
in her first journey on open sea, in May 1941, which ended only with the sinking of the German flagship. Ill fate had as well
the Tirpitz, sunk by an air attack in November 1944, while anchored next to the Norwegian coast.
The flag of the Nazi Party waves on top the conning tower of another U-Boot which navigates across
the Atlantic in search of a prey. Hitler, following his terrestrial mentality, never paid much attention to the Kriegsmarine;
however, even if naval warfare could seem of secondary importance for winning the war, it had a strategic importance and the
much lesser power of the Axis war fleets altered the course of the conflict to the detriment of Germany.
In the late 1942, the Germans launched the Operation Rainbow in an attempt to eliminate the Allied convoys travelling by
the Arctic; in this enterprise took part the pocket battleship Lützow (which was actually a
heavy cruiser) and the heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper. The failure of this operation induced Hitler
to order the dismantlement of the German fleet of battleships and cruisers, because he considered these units useless for
a modern war.
An American tanker burning near the coast of United States. With the entry into war of this country started the second
phase of the Atlantic War, during which the German submarines operated on the whole Atlantic Ocean, threatening the maritime
traffic of New York and other cities on the eastern coast of United States.
In Norway the Luftwaffe had emplaced, along the coast of the fiords Alten and Kaal, numerous anti-aircraft positions equipped
with fog generators which could hide the area if necessary. This method was used to protect the battleship Tirpitz and was
effective at least during the first attacks against her.
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