Original subtitles

The flag was more than death.

Forward, forward bring out the glorious fanfares.

I still remember.

Youth doesn't know any danger that's how it went.

With fists we meet whoever stands against us.

The flag is more than the death. That's how it went.

I've never met an Englishman but I hated them.

It was a long time until the hate went away.

We were so fanatic back then.

And then you will also ask yourself

why did it have to happen in the first place?

So today former enemies are now friends

so couldn't we have been friends back then as well?

You have to imagine a ship

so powerful it could bring an entire nation to its knees.

For me the Bismarck was the death star.

It was a kind of mechanized warfare that hopefully will never exist again.

It was this monstrous piece of steel that held together no matter

what the British could throw at it

and when it finally sank it became a legend

with the same kind of force in the human imagination

that Titanic had.

The Bismarck considered by most naval experts to be the most perfectly

equipped fighting ship in the world

was spotted leaving the Norwegian port of Bergin for the high seas.

Britain's largest warship the Hood joined in the hot pursuit.

Events were to end tragically

for the majestic English craft as she was sunk by the Bismarck

during the ensuing battle.

But England was to have its revenge.

The battleships Rodney and King George

steamed to the scene along with over 100 other vessels.

After a pursuit of almost 2,000 miles the armada caught up with the Bismarck

some 400 miles west of Brest, France.

It was the Dorsetshire who finally landed the coup d'grace that

sunk the mighty German battlewagon.

Only 100 of her crew could be saved.

The rest had gone down with their ship.

The highly bated Bismarck

had been sent to the bottom in one of the most historic moments

of World War II.

On the 60th anniversary of Bismarck's sinking

a handful of survivors come together to remember the past.

This year in an extraordinary gesture

they've also invited the men from the English ships who sank them.

That was my station up there on the King George V.

Once they met as enemies.

Now six decades later they meet as friends.

Oh yeah it was one of the very nice times that I...

You know the amazing thing is you know here are these guys

that are like 78, 79, 80,

one of them is 84

and you can see why they're survivors.

You know here you had hundreds and hundreds of men going

into the cold, you know North Atlantic waters

and these are the guys that made it.

I mean there's, you can see why because they have the will to live,

they're healthy, they're fit.

You know 80-year old guys that could probably run me around the block.

I really admire them.

You know you can really see they have a spirit, a spirit of life about them.

Is that you? Yes. Handsome devil.

He was an officer.

Officer?

Yeah. Yeah.

Now I saw every shell coming towards us.

You can actually see them in the air?

Oh yeah

and we saw all ours going towards the Bismarck.

I wasn't aware of that.

You can actually see the shell in the air...

Where I was...

I think you know we're obviously talking to the ones

that want to be interviewed

and the ones that can talk about it

so they've, they've made their peace with it

or they feel that the need to have people remember what happened

is greater than whatever their pain might be in going back to that place

in their lives in their memory.

But I know that they've said that when they went back home after the war

they couldn't tell their friends that there were you know that there

were things they couldn't talk about because people

would not understand.

What did you feel when you saw Bismarck for the very first time

when you walked up to the ship?

It was a very big ship

and I thought when you get on this ship nothing can happen to you.

Everyone believed she was unsinkable so you felt safe too.

Magnificent. Overwhelming.

The size of the ship as you can see here was amazing.

The most modern ship of its time.

Every ship that came after the Bismarck had learned from it

learned from us.

Back then I was 18 years old and I and many others of course,

we were convinced this is the right thing to do.

Now well, everyone knows better.

From the time Bismarck set out on its first sea campaign, Operation Rhine,

it only lived nine days.

These men were among the 115 sailors who survived.

2,300 of their shipmates perished.

Captain how are you doing?

Permission to come aboard? All right.

Jim Cameron arrives in Germany with a crew of 32 technicians,

scientists, historians and Bismarck survivors

to meet the Russian oceanographic ship the Academic Keldish.

Among the 90-member Russian crew are many old friends

from Cameron's two prior expeditions.

Hi Olga how are you doing?

Hello.

Good to see you? MIR's okay?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It has taken a year for the expedition team to prepare

for the technical challenges of exploring Bismarck.

I enjoy this to me it's an alternative to making movies

which is as technically challenging, as emotionally challenging

and it's something that I can use my skills as a filmmaker,

but it's not just about the filmmaking

It's about creating the technology, it's about the personal challenge

of actually going into this hostile environment,

doing things right, doing things safely and coming back with results you know?

And I find that very exciting.

Hello Walter, hello Karl.

Here we are. It's a great pleasure of ours.

Good to see you. Welcome aboard the Keldish.

I've done so much work at the Titanic wreck

over two expeditions

and never really had access to the survivors,

their perspective, their emotional perspective

so, I've always had to wonder I've always had to create it

in my mind based on things that might have been written.

But having them right here gives it an immediacy.

It's a real pleasure to drive down this beautiful canal

with the green scenery on both sides of us.

And it reminds me of when I went through the canal.

I went through it twice during that period.

When Bismarck first became operational

she set out for the North Sea through the Kiel Canal to begin her sea trials

Six decades later Keldish retraces the same path.

Looking back I would say that

we have been used by the government of the time.

As young men we risk our lives

but for whom?

That's how we grew up.

I was born in 1923.

When Hitler came to power I was 10.

Then we went through the whole drill, young folk, Hitler youth

and on Saturdays there was National Holiday.

That's when we did all kinds of sports shooting exercises and some other

and some other.

I was in the marine Hitler youth.

The ulterior motive was play and prepare for the real thing.

Today Adolph Hitler is an icon of evil.

But to Karl and Walter

and thousands of boys like them, he was a living god.

He guided them beyond morality, swept them up in the hysteria

of the Nazi cult.

He channeled their anger and their patriotic spirit

with calculated precision

capturing young hearts better than the biggest rock star.

They felt strong, proud,

a part of something great and immortal.

Nothing could touch them.

Thoughts of death, either their own

or the murders they were being sent out to commit,

were drowned out by the roar of the zeig hail.

We just have to admit our generation would have gone to hell

and back for Hitler.

Everyone can hear that from me.

It sounds crazy but we were proud to die for the fatherland.

But that's the way it was.

As if you were a hero to do so.

What you see here is where the Bismarck was built.

This entire area of the hulling is where she was built

and let down into the water.

Bismarck was built in secret in Hamburg and launched in 1939.

It was the embodiment of Hitler's vast ego

and a cathedral of steel.

It was the ultimate killing machine, the Death Star of its time.

At 830 feet it was almost as long as the Titanic

but it was 30 feet wider and so heavily armored

it weighed almost twice as much.

Despite its mass

it could make 32 knots driven by engines generating 150,000 horsepower.

Each barrel of its 15 inch guns weighed 250,000 pounds.

They could destroy a ship over 15 miles away.

The side armor was an advanced formula Krups Steel 13 inches thick

designed to resist a fury of torpedoes and the largest caliber shells.

On this side you will still find armor plates from the Bismarck.

After all those years I recognize them

due to this incision made here to analyze the steel.

Pretty good steel right?

The German naval strategy at the time was ruthless.

Bismarck's sole purpose was to hunt the convoys in the North Atlantic

and destroy the ships bringing food and supplies to England,

starving that country into surrender.

Sink the ships, kill the crews, take no prisoners.

Fast, deadly and virtually invulnerable,

Bismarck was a fierce predator.

It had to be stopped before it could reach the open Atlantic

and begin its reign of terror.

It was the afternoon of May 22

when Keldish heads out for the open sea west of Denmark.

61 years earlier to the day

Bismarck was also steaming west into open sea

at the beginning of its voyage after leaving safe harbor in Norway.

Keldish has not guns or armor.

It's a ship of peace.

The largest oceanographic research ship in the world.

The Russian word for peace is "mir"

and Keldish is

the mother ship for two deep submersibles

called MIR 1 and MIR 2.

There are only four submersibles in existence capable

of diving 20,000 feet

and Keldish operates two of them.

The MIRs are the only double sub system in the world

and have the most powerful batteries of any deep submersible,

making them ideal for lighting up

the depths where no sunlight has ever penetrated.

The architect of the MIR program is Dr. Anatoli Satalevich

who not only designed the MIRs

but has logged the most hours piloting them.

As the head of the Russian manned submersible program,

Anatoli is chief pilot, chief scientist

and the unofficial mayor of the seafaring village called Keldish.

Jim's brother Mike

is the designer and builder of most of the deep sea technology

used on the expedition.

Mike's remotely operated vehicles or RO Vs

will photograph for the first time ever the interior

of the Bismarck wreck.

They are nicknamed Jake and Elwood.

This RO V is designed to go inside of the wreck.

If you took a normal RO V in there that had a tether

it would get hung up very quickly.

This RO V pays out its own tiny fiber and it pays it out

like a spider spinning a web

so that if it goes around a corner and goes around a bunch of debris

the ROV just pays more out.

So you can go in one window or door and come out a whole different place

on the wreck.

It's taken Mike and his team three years to develop

this RO V technology.

Tried to think of every single scenario possible...

...of how the RO V was going to travel through the wreck

and what was required.

So we tried to package everything into as small a package as possible.

The design is so cutting edge that no off the shelf components

could be used.

Every part was designed and built from scratch.

Jake and Elwood each carry 2,000 feet of fiber optic cable.

Inside the cable are two tiny glass fibers only half

the diameter of a human hair.

I'd say we were about still two pounds negative.

You're only going to dive it slightly negative.

Video of what the RO V sees as well as flight control signals race

along the fibers as pulses of light.

The delicate glass fibers are the pilot's only link to the RO V.

Damage them and the vehicle is lost.

Based on the blueprints from the shipbuilder

Jim and his team have made detailed diagrams of every deck of the Bismarck.

With the help of the survivors

they're attempting to compile a list of access points to the wreck

which might be large enough for the RO V to get inside.

Start with where you're work station was,

where your duty station was on the ship okay?

The secret encoding room.

The wood deck, the outer deck.

I was stationed at the secret correspondence room

and my daily duties were to analyze any correspondence or intelligence

coming from the outside. We never knew a thing down below.

We were kids. Officers were like gods to us,

we never asked and we were never told.

But we were allowed on deck as we got to Norway.

My duty station was the writing basic correspondence between stations

with naval headquarters and the commanders in chief.

Where we would go when we would leave basic mail, etc.

The adjutant's chamber was right next door

and he would dictate orders and other information to process.

For example when Hitler came on board on May 5

his adjutant Puttkamer, I believe, would be in correspondence with me

telling me when and where Hitler would come on board.

Admiral Lutjens took charge of our task force the week

before we left.

We hated Lutjens.

Lindemann was a nice captain. We all liked him,

but the atmosphere really changed when Lutjens came on board.

Admiral Lutjens was known as the man in the iron mask

because his face was always set like steel.

There were never discussions with his captains, he simply gave orders.

Terse, sharp to the point no emotion, no feelings.

Now I'm the Bismarck

on the 24th of May 1941.

And I'm coming out of the Denmark Strait

with the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen ahead.

You're the Hood and the Prince of Wales.

Over the horizon I can just barely make out your two ships.

This is just an incredible distance.

We're both moving fast,

I'm going at 27 knots. I can barely see your superstructure.

Imagine shooting that far.

Hood and Bismarck turned toward each other at full speed

like two armored knights charging.

Hood fires first.

Bismarck returned fire.

Fire!

When you're firing at 27,000 yards you're firing salvos,

four or eight shells.

If you're trying to straddle the enemy's battle ship,

so you fire off and you're watching very closely from up

in the director tower.

You see the splash of shells.

And somebody yells over, short, straddle

and the minute somebody yells straddle you start pumping

more shots in.

On the bridge they can only count the seconds as the shells fly.

And you simply keep pumping in shells all around him,

straddling him, still some short some long

and then finally the fatal hit.

Hit! Hit!

The Hood's magazine has been hit.

The explosion breaks the ship's back.

As the Hood sinks

the forward gun crew heroically fires the final salvo.

The Prince of Wales was seriously damaged and must retreat

after firing one last salvo.

There were 1,415 men on the Hood when it exploded.

Only three survived.

From childhood on I was taught that the English were our enemies.

I never saw an Englishman.

I never talked to an Englishman

and yet they were our enemies

and when we destroyed the Hood

after all the hurrah and hurrah from the ship

we looked at all the sailors lying out there in the ocean.

We didn't know how many had survived,

but many of us realized they are human beings like we are

and wondered why are they our enemies?

Walter and Karl have awoken before dawn

to stand in honor of the men of the HMS Hood who died

at this moment 61 years ago.

On that other morning Karl, Walter and the rest of the crew

felt only the thrill of victory.

They had vanquished the mighty Hood and bloodied the Prince of Wales.

They were heroes of the fatherland.

Bismarck was invincible.

In England the news of Hood's sinking was devastating.

Winston Churchill, Prime Minister of England and fierce adversary to Hitler

understood instantly the terrible blow which had been dealt.

The reaction was one first of disbelief

and then of a national tragedy.

The Hood was almost a loved ship,

she'd been adopted by the British nation.

She was the symbol of the Royal Navy.

And now that symbol had been destroyed with

what seemed contemptuous ease.

It was a mortal blow to the English spirit

at a critical moment.

At that time the English were terrorized by the nightly

horrors of the blitz

and starving as their supply lines were slowly strangled.

The Nazi juggernauts seemed unstoppable.

Churchill understood the stakes and responded with calculated fury.

He pulled his naval forces from all points of the compass to converge

on the Bismarck.

There is absolutely nothing as vital to the nation at this moment

as the destruction of the Bismarck.

I don't care how you do it,

you must sink the Bismarck.

I am getting very strong feelings,

memories are coming back the closer we get

and I can feel it in my stomach. Quite upsetting.

Six decades apart Bismarck and Keldish are boring in on the same spot

in the ocean on the same date

and in virtually identical storm conditions.

It is an eerie convergence.

Bismarck pounded on through storm seas toward the coast

of France and safety.

The British forces were too far away to stop her.

For Karl and Walter it seemed they were home free.

We still had the hope we could make it

at least that was the case with me.

But fate proved fickle.

Desperate to slow the juggernaut

the British launched a near suicidal attack through the storm

with five plane torpedo bombers.

Incredibly a single torpedo made a lucky hit on the rudder.

Crippling the ship so that it could only turn circles,

the British wolf pack closed in for the kill.

I heard in the radio room about how many ships were coming.

More and more fleets were closing in

and that we were getting circled in.

After that the last ray of hope was gone.

On Keldish there's a different sense of anticipation building

as they approach the wreck site now only hours away.

The RV comes in there...

The expedition crew burns the midnight oil

preparing for the first dive.

As a gray dawn broke on the morning of May 27

the crew of the Bismarck tried their best to prepare

for the coming battle.

At 8:47 Admiral John Tovey

commanding the British forces ordered his battleships Rodney

and King George V to open fire.

Rodney and King George closed rapidly firing salvo after salvo.

The crews of Suffolk, Norfolk and Sheffield soon joined

in the attack.

Shells tore through Bismarck's superstructure

and its crew.

In all 2,876 artillery shells were unleashed toward the Bismarck.

The merciless pounding lasted for an hour and a half leaving Bismarck

a burning hulk.

But still it refused to sink.

In frustration Admiral Tovey ordered the cruiser Dorsetshire

to fire its torpedoes.

They claimed three hits.

Five minutes later at 10:40 am Bismarck capsized and plunged

into the abyss.

May 27th 10:40 am

they have reached the site of the sinking.

In an unsettling parallel

the Keldish arrives on the exact spot 61 years later almost to the minute.

For Karl and Walter the present collides with the past.

On that other gray morning

thousands of their shipmates plunged into the depths

and lie entombed now beneath them.

We the survivors of the gruesome naval battle in May of 1941

on this day especially want to remember all those who died in this

very spot on that tragic day.

On this day we wish to place a crown upon your heads,

the crested crown of the forever moving sea.

Peace on Earth for all time and everywhere never again war.

It affected me very much looking down into the water and remembering what

had occurred 61 years ago at this very site.

Struggling for my life

and to realize that I belonged to the very few lucky ones

that had survived this catastrophe.

So step one is we do a nice pass,

a nice shot all the way down.

Step two we meet here okay?

And then we do some photography just in this area kind of...

Because it is a war grave the wreck may not be disturbed in any way.

All forensic analysis must be based only on imaging

so the coordination of lighting and camera operation is critical.

Yeah little moves, little moves. You know we let the current drift back

Genya Chemiaev...

...is regarded as one of the best submersible pilots

in the world.

If it could be done with the MIR, Genya will do it.

Can you land MIR on top of this, area?

I think it's possible...

Good morning.

Genya when you're on the bottom

if you see some debris or you find the slide scar or something like this,

we just need...

The most important ceremony of dive day is the MIR meeting.

This is where the dive plans are carefully reviewed.

...plot that we can look at afterwards.

Yes, yes. And if we have time of course we will...

By Russian tradition

every diver must sign Lydia's book before entering the MIR.

When you see Lydia with the book you know the dive is on.

Smile everybody.

This is me smiling. This is as much as you get.

There's always the little thing you didn't think of.

Thanks see you in the sunshine.

Everybody's thought about this for months.

They've thought about the electronics, they've thought about the optics.

You know we have the GPS coordinates,

we know how to get on the wreck site, we know how to get down there

so it's going to be some little thing we haven't thought of.

You know it's what I always call the X-factor

and it might be some little 10 dollar part that fails at a,

at a critical moment.

It's an enormous amount of pressure.

There's all kinds of things on that sub that could go wrong.

There's a lot of places to get tangled up on the wreck.

There's lights that could implode.

It's a roll of the dice!

I don't have any great fears about human safety.

The Russians know how to do what they do with the submersibles.

MIRs are fully capable and tested to 20,000 feet plus,

so I feel pretty comfortable there.

But you know always in the back of your mind is the fact that

you are pitting human technology and human cleverness

against the force of the ocean

and the ocean is not a trivial force to mess with.

I love this, there's no place I'd rather be.

That's a whole lot for me like being in a helicopter.

I love flying helicopters so this is a lot like that.

It's got some risk, you've got to be precise,

you've got to know what you're doing.

It's a pretty scary place we're going to.

I mean 15, 700 feet deep.

MIR 2 sensor booms are packing a wallop, over 8,000 watts of light.

MIR 1 is also loaded for action with the stereoscopic

high definition camera system.

The dive has begun.

The two submersibles are now free falling toward the bottom

three miles below.

The camera housing also built by Mike

is the largest implodable volume ever attached to a manned submersible.

Any flaw in the design could cause it to implode under the pressure.

The effect would be like a depth charge creating a shockwave

that would rupture the sub's hull and kill everyone inside instantly.

Okay we're on the clock on all recorders.

Okay timer is started. All four tapes are running.

This is a triple check, triple check throughout the dive. Triple check,

Yep.

Throughout the long fall the pressure mounts relentlessly.

It will reach 7,000 pounds per square inch.

Nestled within the submersible structure is the man sphere.

This steel bubble resists the force of the three mile column

of water above it.

The total pressure on its surface will be 155 million pounds.

Within the first 500 feet all light from the surface is gone.

The temperature drops to near freezing.

Inside the walls trickle with condensation.

The 16,000 foot freefall to the bottom will take three hours.

Bismarck made the same journey in less than 10 minutes.

As it left the surface buoyancy and hydrodynamic forces

ripped away the stern.

The ship plunged a 35,000 ton steel missile pointed into the depths.

The forces of the water roaring past ripped away the admiral's bridge,

the mast and the funnel.

Righting itself the ship then fell in this stable position for the rest

of its descent into darkness.

Okay MIR 2 we're about 30 meters off the bottom.

Can you see the bottom?

20 meters.

I see the bottom. Yeah.

Yep just coming into view.

Beautiful.

This is like landing on the moon.

Sure is.

Whoa look at the silt we are throwing up.

After its three-mile fall Bismarck hits with tremendous force,

forming an impact crater and hurling up

enormous clouds of debris.

MIR 2 MIR 2 this is MIR 1

we are on the bottom, depth 4820 meters.

Somewhere we can...

We're definitely looking toward the slope.

See we're facing the mountain.

Bismarck has hit the side of a volcanic sea mount.

It begins to slide downhill, plowing a deep trough

in the bottom clays.

Now 100,000 tons of water sucked down by the falling ship blasts

onto the slope,

becoming a torpidity flow, a kind of liquid avalanche.

The torpidity flow shoves the ship hard turning it sideways to the slope.

Pieces of the ship which have impacted in its path are now swept aside.

The hull bulldozes the sea floor ahead of it, starting an avalanche.

The bow carves deeply into the mud cutting across the slope to the west.

The leviathan finally comes to rest.

It has slid down the mountain two thirds of a mile.

This is all disturbed bottom so we're right in the middle

of the avalanche.

You can just see where the stuff was just ripped up, tumbled.

That ship just came roaring through here.

We may be actually in the slide scar.

You can see the shape of it on the sonar on the right.

This is, this looks like the slide scar to me.

Man look how deep this thing is.

Like a giant bulldozer just ploughed through here.

Absolutely, yeah, yeah.

Just follow the wall, it should lead us right to the wreck.

Yep. Starting to see some debris.

I see boots.

Where do you see the boot? On the left?

On the left yes.

Oh yeah I can see it now.

Just one boot?

Yes.

It's an officer's boot right?

MIR 2 what's your 20?

We're moving south through the debris field

and we're seeing some larger objects.

Bercuson any ideas what this is?

It's a search light Mike.

Okay I agree, yeah there's the louvers.

I see something. Yeah up there.

It's big whatever it is.

It's the bridge. It's the admiral's bridge, see it?

See the windows? It's landed upside down.

There's the bridge wing and platforms.

Powerful currents ripped away the admiral's bridge

as the ship plunged.

10 minutes later it impacted on the sea floor.

Bismarck's hull then shoved it aside and it came to rest upside down.

Really gives you an idea how big that thing is.

It was huge. It's like a four-story building just fell out of the sky.

Admiral Lutjens would have stood right there right at those windows.

MIR 2 this is MIR 1.

This is MIR 2 go ahead.

I think they are north of us...

You need to come to our coordinate now we're at the admiral's bridge.

We need to proceed to the right.

Okay we're proceeding to it now.

Let's suggest the sonar here.

I see.

Oh yeah. There it is.

I see Bismarck.

This is the bow.

Yes this is the bow.

Well Jim we think we're coming in on the starboard side over.

The hole comes in the side. There it is see it mate?

Yeah yeah there it is.

Yes we have visual on the wreck now.

Whoa oh my god.

Welcome to Bismarck.

Now guys you need to come up to deck level and get oriented on the wreck.

Okay he's coming up now.

My god this is incredible.

God it looks like a mountain we're climbing up.

There's the armor belt.

And I'll tell you right where we are in a second.

You're right here. Right here Genyu.

Proceeding to the bow now Jim.

Just coming up to the tip of the bow.

Yeah copy that we're right below you.

Roger that.

That's beautiful look at that.

Yep.

Wow! Holy Toledo oh my Lord!

Okay we're heading after along the foxhole and I can see

just a hint of the swastika.

Just coming up on the port capstan right now.

See all the sentiment on the deck from the slide,

but the teak is all here.

Look at that boom! That just went through there

and who knows where that blew up, probably made it

all the way to the turret.

There is a huge barbet.

Yeah that's Anton.

Look at that huge, huge opening right where the turret used to be.

These gaping five story shafts of barbets,

the armored mounts for Bismarck's four massive 15

inch gun turrets.

The turrets were held in place only by gravity

so when the ship capsized they slid out and plummeted to the bottom.

From the muzzles of its gun barrels to the back of its armor,

each turret was over 100 feet long and weighed 1,900 tons.

There's an anti-aircraft gun. The railings, it just looks intact.

Okay you two the next move is to come up

to the captain's bridge over.

Come up Genya. Coming up.

But does this glass magnify or not?

Yeah slightly.

There is a magnification.

It is just humongous.

There's the bridge I see it.

The captain's bridge right?

Yep Lindenmann and Lutjens would have fought the final battle

from right in there.

There's shell damage look.

Oh it's just unbelievable Mike.

I told you.

I cannot believe it.

It's hard not to be excited.

The subs head aft over the secondary gun turns.

They seem surprisingly intact.

Bismarck's 15-centimeter secondary turrets were as big as the main guns

on most warships.

Even in her silent grave Bismarck still seems lethal

with her guns aimed ready to engage an enemy which will never come.

The guns are silent now, the barrels home to gentle anemones.

A 10.5 centimeter flack gun still points skyward.

It will be an endless vigil under a night sky

which will never see a dawn.

Proceed aft to the hanger area.

Continue.

Continue aft to the hanger area.

And here's the catapult.

There it is, the port ship's right there. Yep.

Bismarck had four Arado-196 sea planes

which were launched from its catapult amid ships.

No one has ever seen inside the Bismarck's hangers to confirm

if any of the planes still exist.

Okay we're just about to open the door here.

Okay now open.

Okay I'm coming out.

Picking up, looks good.

Okay Mike what's the status?

Okay it looks like it's neutral.

I'm ready to go when you say so over.

Okay roger that go ahead and start your work.

Let's see you come down to the hangar area, over.

Copy that.

Yep looking good. We have a good visual on you.

Despite almost four tons of pressure per square inch,

Mike's bot is functioning perfectly.

Now it's time to do what they came here for.

Entering the hanger now. Copy that.

Voile airplane. Airplane wreckage.

See this, here's the cockpit. The cockpit Genya.

Genya do you see the airplane? It's the fuselage.

It's an airplane? Airplane. Yeah it's the frame for the window.

That last night the captain wanted to get as much information

and reports back to land as possible.

He wanted to send our seaplane back to land with our war diary.

Everyone was giving the pilot messages and notes to loved ones back home.

But the poor guy they couldn't get the catapult to work

so in the end he didn't go.

So the hanger took a direct hit.

Took a direct hit yep.

Ah it blew the tail of that rudder to smithereens.

It's an out of body experience absolutely.

It's like you become the bot and you forget where you are.

You see the sub and you say there's MIR 2 over there.

But wait a minute I'm in MIR 2.

After nine hours on the bottom the MIR's power is getting low.

It is time to make the long climb back to the surface.

But first Elwood needs to make it safely back into the garage.

Without the daring and the skill of MIR cowboys like Vladimir Patrovsky it

would not be possible to recover the MIRs.

After a rough ride on the surface

the dive crew really appreciates what the cowboys go through to get them

safely back on board.

It's a spectacular site, absolutely spectacular.

He's been waiting all day.

Your ship is in pretty good shape.

Is it?

Yeah, yeah.

Just comes out of the blackness as this kind of

ghostly pale wall of steel.

It's a very different look than Titanic.

It was just exciting.

I mean my god come along the ocean bottom we just climbed up

and up and up. I felt like I was going up a skyscraper.

That's what I need you to do.

Maintenance on Elwood is a lot like a surgical procedure.

The fluid compensated electronics are like a circulatory system

which must be given a transfusion during the operation.

Yeah the patient's going to live I think.

Das bot is alive.

Lori Johnston is a microbiologist

who specializes in the study of microorganisms in extreme environment.

It's not just one type of bacteria down there,

it's a community or consortia

so it's a whole bunch of bacteria working in a symbiotic relationship

by mining

or taking the elements out of the steal and they're using it

to build those icicle looking structures called rusticles.

The rusticles themselves are a living entity.

We're landing MIR 1 right over here. You guys are going to land...

Lori prepares for her dive to place rusticle growth experiments

at the wreck.

She will become the second woman ever to dive below 15,000 feet.

It's just going to be incredible to see in real living color.

Yeah we're very close to something Tonio.

Do you see this thing Tonio? What do you, can you see what it is?

Hey Mike what do you think this thing is?

What else would be a round structure with various levels

other than the core trunk of the turret?

You know this is the tower of our, of the gun turret.

You know the big main turret? Has this long tower underneath?

The turrets weighing 1,900 tons

each slammed into the seafloor and were instantly buried.

Their substructure towers were four decks high

and had duty stations for 21 men.

Now they stand over the turrets like monuments.

The team is able to identify this turret by the number of its

platforms and its position in the debris field.

It is turret Dora, the gun farthest aft.

During Bismarck's final minutes

Karl Walter and Heinz took shelter behind Dora

just before diving into the sea.

But very interesting guys I think there is a barrel sticking up

out of the mud.

It's just I think to your left slightly.

Roger that. We see it.

MIR 2 lands mid ships next to the starboard catapult track

to deploy Elwood for a more ambitious exploration of the wreck.

Okay come on out. Okay I'm coming out.

I got fiber out.

Tell me when you've turned.

Can we talk to him Lori please, and tell them I'm trim.

Elwood is now trimmed over. Copy that, looking good.

Most of the British shelling came from port leaving the upper decks severely

damaged on this side.

There's heavy rusticle growth where fire stripped away the paint,

indicating that this part of the ship was a raging inferno

during the final battle.

It's battle damaged.

Tell them it's really badly blown apart.

The alley is blown apart, lots of wires and battle damage over.

Can you guys continue to starboard and image this gun

which I think is S3 over.

Roger that. We're moving forward now we're coming in on what

looks like a shell hit.

All the secondary turrets had one or more entry holes

from medium caliber rounds,

six or eight inch shells which punched through the armor to detonate inside

killing the gun crews instantly.

So here is the barbet for turret Dora.

The tower underneath the turret out on the debris field, it went in here.

The main armament turrets fired 15-inch shells

which were so massive they required a hydraulic system to lift,

load and fire them.

The shells weighed over a ton and traveled at two and a half times

the speed of sound.

At impact the armor piercing shell burst

through hurling off lethal shrapnel

as well as a piece of the armor called the cartwheel

which becomes a second supersonic projectile.

Cart wheeling shell then punched through inner walls throwing off

more deadly shrapnel.

After a delay of one hundredth of a second the shell explodes

deep inside the ship to kill the maximum number of people.

That shell might have blown up from underneath for all we know.

It might have blown the radio room right out. So you...

The British used the same type of armor piercing shells

but did the British fire truly sink the Bismarck?

By analyzing the battle damage,

Mike and Jim hope to resolve a six decade old controversy.

You go all the way across the ship...

Was Bismarck sunk by shells and torpedoes as the British claimed...

It was the Dorsetshire who finally landed the coup d'grace that sunk

the mighty German battlewagon.

Or was she scuttled by her own crew as the German survivors

have always said?

We blew up the ship.

There were orders to set charges and blow up the ship.

Each side has its own reasons to claim the final sinking,

the British because of what happened to the Hood

and the Germans who want to believe that they had some control

over their own fate in those final hours.

Only a systematic damage survey from end to end inside

and out can resolve the debate.

I want to do a complete scan of the hull all the way around,

down here to see, to map all the holes and all the damage.

MIR 1 freefalls toward Bismarck's impact crater two-thirds

of a mile upslope from the main wreck.

Yeah, I see something.

Yeah something interesting.

Something very interesting.

We should, we should be careful here. Yeah.

I think this is crater. This is a little dangerous.

Oh. Yeah you need to come up we're on top of something.

This is part of the ship.

I can't go over this.

You need to come up Anatoli, come up,

come up, you're landing on something. Go up, go up, go up, go up!

Don't back up you don't know what's behind you,

you have to come up, you have to come up.

The enormous piece of hull lying far from the Bismarck is a mystery.

Later it will prove to be the key to unraveling the secrets of the wreck.

We landed right on that son of a bitch whatever it was.

I just come and... it was a crater.

Yeah with a ship in it.

That's about as exciting as I want it to get.

You could just see us landing right on something that

like hooks us you know?

All right. Good work you got us out of it.

You flew out of it.

They begin their damage survey at the bow.

Right there I see something.

They identify a historically important shell head.

As the Hood was sinking the Prince of Wales

was wounded in other heavy bombardment.

Fighting back desperately its gun crews scored a critical

hit on Bismarck.

The shell blasted right through the bow from port to starboard

leaving an exit hole six feet across.

That's a big outie. That's the exit wound right there.

Damage reports came to the bridge.

The Prince of Wales had scored two hits from 14,000 yards.

The shot through the bow was above the water line

but thousands of tons of water were pouring in

because of the storm swell.

The other round hit below the side armor

flooding a boiler room and causing a nine-degree list to port.

The damage forced Lindenmann to back off from his top speed by

just a few knots,

but enough to ultimately seal Bismarck's fate.

Switch master MIR breaker 24 volt to on position.

Jim prepares to pilot Elwood deep inside the wreck.

...RO V power.

You get a fantastic perspective on these wrecks that you don't get

flying around them in a sub. You really are like a person,

you know like it would have looked to somebody walking

the decks at that time.

On the starboard side a shell hole near Karl's office looked as

if it might be just big enough to get inside.

It's a risky maneuver.

I'm going to try to go in this hole okay?

Whether it's even bot rated I have no idea.

For better or worse we're going in.

I'm not even sure I can fit in here.

Okay we fit. Yep.

Well we're officially inside the ship.

God look at the damage, kabang.

Now if I turn to my right there should be a door.

Okay there's our door.

Interesting the growth around that door.

Yeah.

Now we're getting into something.

I think we're going into Karl's office.

This should be Karl's office this is where he worked.

This is right next to the adjutant's office.

This is Karl's duty station.

Check it out you see the chair?

So you have to tell us if it looks familiar.

Two tables.

Looks like my bookcase, shelving there.

This looks like shelving here. Yep.

So this is a very long table right here.

Three people sat there, one in here and another one in here.

Along this room on the long table at the far right end

the third person sat.

We looked for your typewriter but we couldn't find it.

Yeah that wakes up the memories.

It's right where you worked. Yeah.

One startling feature of the wreck is the missing stern.

The last 50 feet of the ship are simply gone.

Though the core of the ship was armored the stern was not

and the thin steel tore away as if chopped by a guillotine.

We're looking at the, we're looking at the aft bulkhead,

armored bulkhead, the whole stern's sheered off.

If the ship was intact we'd be sitting inside the ship right now.

There's the after deck up there.

What's interesting is how all this teak decking failed.

It must have been extremely violent.

Couldn't have ripped upward it must have snapped

from over that edge

which would be consistent with having inverted that a buoyant factor

to where it broke off that direction.

That's the swastika.

That's right where Hitler walked when he inspected the ship.

We're sitting on the swastika right now.

This is creeping me out.

Okay there's the propeller, the starboard propeller.

Beneath the severed stern

the dive team searches for evidence of the famous attack

by Swordfish torpedo bombers.

Slowed by the earlier hits from the Prince of Wales,

Bismarck was just barely in range of the rickety biplanes.

One of their torpedoes brought about her down.

But no one has ever actually seen the damage.

There's the rudder.

Looks like the rudder got stuffed into the propeller.

All right that's the center screw and that's the rudder.

Look and they're stuffed into each other

and the center screw is all wanged up which would you know pretty strongly

indicate it was turning when it happened.

What is that is that a hole?

That is for sure a hole.

All right so there's a big stinking hole right above the rudder.

Okay so that's our torpedo hole for sure.

Now let's get up in there. Mike will kill me for this but.

Yeah we're well inside the steering gear room now.

We're looking right at the aft bulkhead right now.

They had found a hole made by a single torpedo which changed history.

They know how desperate this mission is.

We have to remember that many of these men have never flown

a Swordfish before

and if they had they certainly never flew it in combat.

In the oncoming darkness with the bad weather

it takes them almost two hours to find Bismarck.

When they do they swarm around her attacking from port,

attacking from starboard

without any regard for their own safety.

They're up against a ship that put up a withering curtain

of anti-aircraft fire

and they're flying old and slow aircraft

but they are desperate to hit her.

And time after time they bear in just over the sea pulling up

just above her decks,

driving into the anti-aircraft fire trying to hide in the cloud

doing everything they can to try to bring their torpedoes to bear

on the side.

It's a courageous attack,

one of the most courageous charges of the war.

They launched torpedo after torpedo but Bismarck evades them

all except one.

Incredibly a single torpedo makes

a one in a thousand kill on the starboard rudder,

crippling the ship so they can only turn in circles.

The Achilles heel has been found.

Desperately the crew attempts to make repairs

but the storm seas swell in through the torpedo hole driving them back.

They never even knew the full extent of the damage.

Okay we're looking right down out of the hole

so if I just drop down, I should come right out.

Given what we now know despite all their best efforts

there was nothing that the Bismarck's crew

could have done to clear the rudder.

Lindenman's fired off a terse radio message to Naval command

ship unable to maneuver we will fight to the last shell,

long live the Fuhrer.

The suddenness and finality of the signal stunned the fleet staff

and the radiomen on board.

Word spread among the crew, hope turned to despair.

In the early morning hours Captain Lindenmann announced that

they could help themselves to anything they wanted from the ship's stores.

His words were like a death sentence.

As they hours ticked away until dawn

the men prepared themselves for their final battle.

Is this damaged right here?

Meticulous notes are taken recording the damage so that the battle

can be forensically reconstructed.

Shell damage on its port side.

They find hundreds of shell splashes, telltale marks

where incoming rounds exploded against the armor

but failed to penetrate.

The splashes tell the story of the massive barrage which rained down

on Bismarck during its final battle.

Just after dawn the British armada moves in for the kill.

Admiral Tovey opens up fire on the Bismarck at about 27,000 yards

and he constantly closes the distance to her

until finally they're down to 3,000 yards firing almost level shots

that penetrate the Bismarck through the turret,

through the superstructure.

No question that they wanted to get the Germans back for what

they had done to the Hood.

Tovey himself ordered the captain of the King George V to bring that

battleship as close as he could to the Bismarck

so that he could look through his glasses and see big chunks

of that ship being shot off.

They had her. They wanted to destroy her.

The Rodney is firing 16-inch shells at the Bismarck.

Blow by blow...

The King George is firing 14-inch shells.

Hammer blow by hammer blow.

And the three cruisers are pounding her with eight-inch shells.

...put her under.

The prime target for the British gun crews was the bridge.

If they could take out the brain of the ship they

could render it helpless.

The four-story admiral's bridge was swept away in the sinking.

But Lutjens and Lindenmann commanded the battle from the captain's bridge

which still remains.

Just after the captain's bridge is an armored conning tower

from which the ship's main guns were directed.

It's an armored vault with walls 14 inches thick.

Approaching from the starboard side the sub crew

is surprised to find the bridge and conning tower almost intact.

This thing sure got scarred up but it doesn't look like it

got blow open.

Looks like they didn't crack that clam shell.

That's a hell of a door.

That is a good door.

But as they come around to port that illusion is shattered.

The big guns of the British armada have riddled the bridge

and ripped it apart.

Yeah it's working good. Lower it down.

Let's see if we can get a look inside.

This is the forward artillery director.

It was the battle nerve center of the ship.

Chief gunnery officer Schneider directed all four of Bismarck's main

turrets from inside the conning tower.

At 9:02 one of Rodney's 16-inch shells scored a direct hit

on the tower.

The shell ripped across the deck and exploded against the armored tower

blowing off the 14-inch thick door.

The concussion kills Schneider and the others inside

ending the coordinated command of Bismarck's guns.

Imagine it rocked the Kasbah when those shells hit it.

God bless look at these blast holes.

This is where that shell came in and blew right through the bridge.

Firing from starboard at point blank range Rodney made the kill shot.

A shell right through the captain's bridge.

Boom. God it just ripped it open didn't it?

Look it just ripped through there, just peeled it back

like some kind of cheese product.

This should take us right into the bridge

if there's anything left to go into.

So this big shell hole should be right here.

Rodney's shell would have instantly killed Lutjens and Lindenmann.

At least we're seeing paint... Yeah... for a change.

Okay. Somebody's office. You see the desk, see the two desks?

It looks like mattress springs?

Yeah this must have been somebody's bunk.

Um big mess. Big mess, total shell damage.

Jeez. This is devastating, just molten almost looking, you know?

It's like it just must have raged with fire.

All right let's get out of here.

MIR 1 completes the hull survey along the port side.

Once again the hull armor appears almost intact in stark contrast to

the ravaged superstructure.

Incredibly throughout the entire length of the armor belt

on both sides of the ship,

only two holes were found which penetrated all the way through.

Both are on the starboard side indicating they were 16-inch

shells from Rodney.

Two other large caliber rounds punched through the lighter armor

above the main belt.

The British ships fired 2,876 shells at Bismarck,

over 700 of them were 14 or 16-inch shells

which could have penetrated her side armor.

The team is astounded to find that

along 1,400 feet of side armor there are

only four penetrations, only four hits out of 700.

If British shells weren't penetrating the hull

then they weren't sinking the ship.

But what about torpedoes?

Dorsetshire's crew claimed

to have made three torpedo hits in the last few minutes

before Bismarck sank.

Could these have been the fatal blows?

To find torpedo holes

the team now needed to survey the lower hull, down at the mud line.

Uh Mike I'm seeing something pretty bizarre here.

They have found something amazing,

a gaping hole in the side of the ship over 100 feet long

with a surgically straight top edge.

Clearly this is no torpedo hole,

but what is it?

More of the long holes with the razor straight top edges are found on

both sides of the ship, both fore and aft.

Incredibly it turned out that over 40 percent of the lower hull

was completely missing.

Instead of answers the divers have found only more riddles.

I'm virtually certain that the piece of red painted Bismarck hull

that we landed on

which was about 80 or 90 feet long is the same piece

that came from the hole

which would leave me to believe that some of the damage that we're seeing

is not torpedo damage,

it's impact damage.

I think the ship comes down, hits that mountainside bow first,

buckles and then flops down.

Absolutely enormous force and the hull literally blows open.

Pieces of hull just go flying off, hundreds of feet long

and then the ship skidded off 1,000 meters down the slope

where it came to rest.

So we may never know what the torpedo damage was.

Only a detailed exploration inside the hull using the RO V

can provide the answers.

Where, when the hull burst it burst at weak points

and the weak points may have been created by torpedo impacts.

So in these long holes are we seeing that one end of the hole

is one torpedo impact

and the other end another? Maybe.

That might be a hole right there.

Oh that sure looks like a hole to me.

Yeah so this torpedo got them pretty well.

Maybe we can get up into this hole a little bit.

And we're going in.

All right we are deep in now.

So we are right where the torpedo exploded.

And there it is. There's the torpedo bulkhead.

It's pretty intact.

You can see that it's not dented.

It's not perforated. It's not buckled. It's absolutely seamless

and perfect all the way down.

So you can really see how it resisted the torpedo impacts, these holes.

There would have been fuel tanks,

water tanks and they acted as a buffer zone

so that torpedo impacts wouldn't kill people

on the inside of the ship.

The armored bulkhead was designed to withstand torpedoes and it did.

The thin tank walls were ruptured, but the inner bulkhead is intact.

The ship's core has not been penetrated.

Without flooding the core the torpedoes could not have sunk

the ship in those few final minutes.

The interesting thing is that everything that we've found in this

kind of you know forensic examination of the ship

supports their story,

and actually accounts for their survival.

Admiral Tovey constantly closes the distance to her until finally

they're firing almost level shots.

Ironically the point blank range made the shelling ineffective

because of the gun's flat trajectories.

Rounds were skipping off the water or unable to penetrate deep enough

to hit the lower hull.

The shells were riddling the superstructure

and decimating the crew

but not striking the armored core,

not sinking her, just torturing her.

To save themselves from this fury the crew sank their own ship.

With time running out

Karl, Walter and Heinz knew they would soon have to make their way up

into the hell storm above.

During the last battle it was generally known that the signal

had been given, abandon ship

and so rather than having a special exit route marked out

he simply joined the general piling of people,

rushing to get out, joined them

and he always kept looking up

to see if there was a hole, daylight anywhere.

And rather than plan an escape route he simply followed those

who were heading up towards light.

He said I walked past the officer's mess, my duty station

and all of a sudden I saw a shaft of light and up I went.

200 men are pushing and shoving to get up through the port

quarter deck hatch

including first officer Earls who has given the order to abandon ship.

A shell penetrates the armor on the port side

and explodes among them,

killing almost everyone.

This hole was made by the shell which killed over 200 men

in an instant.

As he came up here he went back this way to get to his locker

to get a few personal items.

Now this is where the water-tight door was

and as he was standing right here, a shell came right through here.

And he ended up on his ass right here.

It blew your ass to the right.

That's a literal translation.

Yeah, yeah got it, got it on his ass.

When I came out onto the deck portside

most of this was already in flames and destroyed.

There were wounded men everywhere

and just like the old Bismarck saying states here,

fear runs blood and iron, literally.

This is exactly the path that Heinz Steeg took when he escaped

from the ship.

He came out here and to the right.

See where this fare lead is to the right?

That was under water.

The ship was listed over to this side.

So over here the quarter deck was awash.

The blood was running down the decks

from all the wounded men that were piled dead,

dismembered, still alive

right over here

probably from this huge shell explosion that was aft by the turret.

There's a big hole in the deck right there.

This is where Heinz Steeg met a friend of his

who had his legs blown off right where the spotlight is right now

according to Heinz.

The guy asked for a last cigarette and Heinz gave it to him.

When he came up at Dora he said she was just a grizzly scene.

There were dead all around, the deck was red with blood

and by the ship listing the water was sloshing through the bodies

and the blood and sweeping it out again.

So he continued towards the stern of the ship.

Joined a group of about 20 or 25 people

and he remembers that Lilenhein Bechback was there

and he said okay now boys let's inflate our life vests

and then he said a final hail to the German people

and to the fatherland, but not to Hitler.

And then Karl remembers somehow they just slid off the deck

and off the port side.

So at this moment it just finally hit me my god this could be the end.

This really could be the end. This is it.

We slid into the water in a group

and he remembers for a little while the group was all around him

then they scattered in all directions

and to him it just looked like corks bobbing up and down on the sea.

The Dorsetshire and the Maury went in to rescue survivors

but left after sighting a u-boat.

A thousand men were left to die in the freezing water.

And on board of the Dorsetshire we became aware that

they could be our friends as well because of the way

they treated us on board.

We couldn't have been treated any better,

that's how you treat friends, not foes.

Sometimes you'll see a configuration that corresponds to a body

or you'll see the clothing laid out, you know.

But you don't know this might have just been a boot

or it might have been a guy.

There's no way to know, you know,

because the remains disappear, only the leather stays.

Michael Weiss, Michael Weiss everybody standing by please read the words

on the plaque over.

In memory of the thousands of young men who died here

and the thousands who died opposing this mighty ship

this wreck is their monument

and a monument to the madness of war.

This is Keldish we acknowledge and received your transmission.

Walter would like to say something in return.

Roger that.

We greet those who can no longer be here,

who could not make it home again.

For 61 years their home has been the bottom of the ocean.

Rest in peace down there.

Comrades you are not forgotten.

We will remember you and hopefully in the time of peace.

...did you receive transmission over?

Yes we copied you very well.

Thank you for those words Walter.

Former enemies now standing side by side.

The surviving men of Bismarck, King George and Dorsetshire

pay their respects to the fallen.

There are wounds from which the heart can never heal

and though they lived, their lives were taken,

shattered and changed.

But they see clearly now.

If their hard won wisdom is lost as these old men fade into history,

then it is at our peril.

The great battleships are gone like the reign of the dinosaurs

but only because they've been replaced by more fearsome weapons.

Bismarck stands her post in the underworld,

a home now to gentle sea creatures

and an eternal reminder of a time when the world went mad.