Bismarck

This abundantly illustrated book is definitely a worthwhile addition to the Bismarck canon. Here’s what you get:First, 40 pages covering historic background through commissioning.Next, 60 pages covering the famous sortie into the Atlantic.These historic sections are heavily photo illustrated, which is both good, but also bad. The photos, while including all the famous ones, do have many not seen in other Bismarck histories. However, the text is actually fairly brief, and while it covers all the essentials, there is not in-depth operational coverage.Next comes roughly 50 technical pages subdivided into topics like armament, fire control, and boats, and on to topics like anchors and chains, smoke generators, and sound locators (these last are representative of an interesting level of technical detail not easily found elsewhere).Roughly 10 pages on “Paint Schemes” have nice color profile drawings of Bismarck as painted during all phases of its short career. Elsewhere in the book are color profiles of the Prinz Eugen and even of each of the German destroyers that escorted Bismarck as far as Norway. The Arado floatplanes get color profiles as well. Plus there are a couple of pages capturing the few photos that exist of Bismarck in color.There is then a short section on James Cameron’s Bismarck diving expedition (in which the author participated) accompanied by eerie underwater color photographs of the wreck (as usual, due to lighting limitations these are always tight shots of fairly small areas).Twenty pages then offer photos of a couple of outstanding Bismarck models, one in 1:100 scale. Such hyper-detailed models are often the easiest way to visualize key design details, since the photography is inevitably better than it is ever possible to get of an actual ship. (The book is on high quality, but not high gloss, paper, so while photographic fidelity is very good, it is not of the absolute highest possible range.)Lastly, 40 pages of appendices cover things like ranks, flags, survivors’ names, and other pertinent miscellany.Overall, a very good book. The huge number of illustrations and level of detail in certain areas make this book well worth a look by modelers and by those fascinated with the dramatic story of this particular ship. Those whose interests are more oriented towards naval or military history may find it just a bit light on substance; hence four stars rather than five.

The first half of the book is devoted to the Bismarck's history from the laying of the keel to the final battle. While the battle narratives do not cover any new ground, they are very detailed. Salvo by salvo detailed. You have to be familiar with the account of the hunt for the Bismarck since that background story is not the focus of this book.The second half describes everything you could want to know about the ship, such as a range and penetration table for her main guns, which way the propellers rotated (2 counterclockwise, 1 clockwise), even the types of anchors. This book is filled with photographs and drawings - paint schemes, boat layouts, fire control radars, and rangefinders. There are photographs taken during the Battle of the Denmark strait which I doubt have ever been published.There are also chapters devoted to the discovery and exploration of the wreck. This is the weakest part of the book. The photos are of poor quality, some so muddy and low contrast that you have to take the author's word for what you see. If you are looking for a Robert Ballard style photographic wreck exploration, look elsewhere.Overall though, a good book filled with minutia that will make any Bismarck history fan happy.

A wonderfully put together book. Contains all that you can find on his website plus a few extras. If you can own Classic warships 19 and Skwiot's German Capital ships you will have nearly the majority of photos of Bismarck. Line drawings and maps are well presented and of high quality. Colour photos and black and white are clear. It does have some errors, like the colour photos on page 170 reverse imaged of port and starboard, but the same photos are also reproduced exactly the same in Siegried Breyer and Gerhard Koops book "The German Navy at war 1935-1945" on page 99 - so what, Beyer is an authority and if he can get it wrong then Asmussen is in the same league of peers. A book like this will always have some debate, the detractors should have better references than to open mouth before extracting feet. Yes there may be mistakes, so what , others have done the same on a first publish, but theses errors do not detract from the value and worth of this piece. A wonderfully set out book full of information and in all in one place - what more can you ask for. it is not the ultimate definitive work - it does come oh so close . Yes there are lots of books on Bismarck - Garzke, Battleships - Axis and Neutral Battleships in world war II, those mentioned above etc etc, but none of these give a better overall picture and history and look at the Bismarck. Full of photos, details on the armour and guns, 3D models, data. Its a one stop shop book and one well worth having on ones book shelf as reference and reading material. Yes, very highly recommended - you can't go wrong.

A very good account of this legendary Battleship, done by one of the foremost experts in the field, Mr. Asmussen covers the entire career of the ship, from concept through launching and construction. Add to this his workup and the fateful cruise. Lavishly illustrated, and well thought out, I recommend this book for any interested in this ship!

As described. Book corners bent slightly in to shipping. Abut Bismarck fanatic will want this book.

This is a well researched and excellently presented book. Many previously unpublished photographs. A must for any Bismarck enthusiast

Nice additon to my Bismarck book collection.

Item delivered on time, was as described

Because there are dozens of books about Bismarck any new one has the problem of justifying its publication, so I was hoping for real original research and an argued critical appraisal here - but sadly there is none. In fact the description of the design process occupies all of two pages and the ship is not assessed or even compared with its contemporaries abroad.Oddly, operational history precedes the technical description and this focuses on a 'minute by minute' account of Operation Rheinubung. As usual the destruction of HMS Hood is described in detail - and as usual Bismarcks crew decide to sink their otherwise unsinkable ship during her final battle. There is plenty of comment concerning the deficiencies of British Battleships, but Bismarck was 'helpless' and so was unable to fight. Well, actually she was initially still fully operational. The fact that her command and control systms were immediately lost and she then failed to put a shell on the British Battleships is, as usual, not mentioned. Bismarck was designed along the lines of the Baden of 1916 and carried her horizontal protection much too low in the hull: she also lacked efficient modern radar and her fire directors were enormous vulnerable targets. Scarnhorst was similarly deficient and suffered the same fate. As usual much is made of the supposed use of those scuttling charges: apparently without them Bismarck would still be floating about in the Bay of Biscay to this day. That was a peculiarly German 'thing' and thankfully the Royal Navy has never been keen on scuttling its own ships. Of course in this book there's no indication that Bismarck was anything less than a perfect ship.Following the operational history comes a great deluge of statistics giving weights, dimensions, gun calibres and performance, armour thickness and so on, though nearly all of this is found in various other books and again there is no critical appraisal. Really this book seeks to justify its hefty size and price through very pretty presentation, including many photographs and drawings, a large number of the latter being in colour (mostly not the 'real' colours of the ship, but just artistic embellishment). Despite this effort, some of the most important features are not illustrated- for example there are no profile or plan drawings showing the armour distribution.However the best feature in the whole book is a collection of colour profiles showing her actual paint schemes: it's almost bizarre how many paint schemes this ship had in a life that lasted just a few months - clearly whenever the crew had a bit of free time they were made to repaint the ship. The authors apparently vital contribution to Camerons exploration of the wreck is described next, complete with the usual ghostly indecipherable under water photographs. This is followed by sections on model kits, profiles of the famous senior officers Lindemann and Lutjens, details about Bismarck cinema films - and so on.Sadly, then, this is a typical 21st century book for people who like to admire pictures, browse rather than read and not be required to tax their brain cells. There are more than 500 images in 200 pages so it is certainly impressive to look at. The noted author Siegfried Breyer was a man whose opinions I often disagreed with, but his last book 'German Capital Ships' is many times better than this one, and so is the new book on the Japanese Yamato class by Lengerer and Ahlberg- also the one on the Italian Littorio Class published a couple of years ago. Authors can still come up with really interesting and original appraisals of these warships provided they do not start out misty eyed with adulation for the objects of their enthusiasm. I criticise Mr Asmussen's approach here, but I hasten to add that I have every respect for the crew of the Bismarck, who were as brave and capable as their countrymen proved to be in many other sea battles.I paid £22 for my copy of this book- it may be worth that, or a bit more, but in my view certainly not the £50 cover price.

This book is a big disappointment. Described in naval forums as a definitive work before publication, I looked forward to this book but it failed to fulfill my expectations. The book is a mixture of previous works and most information can already be found on the internet, with significant parts of the text content originating from the Kbismarck website. There is very little new apart from half a dozen rare photos.Here are just some of the errors I found:* A picture of the cruiser Hipper incorrectly captioned as being the Bismarck (page 21).* Another picture of Captain Lindemann incorrectly captioned (page 26).* The name of Prinz Eugen's torpedo officer was Sigurd Reinmann, and not Ernst Reinmann as it appears on page 65.* Incorrect plan of the ship on page 111 (there was no diesel engine room No. 2).* Two pictures of the Bismarck printed in reverse (page 170).There are also quite a few typos (on my copy at least), although to be fair these are probably not the author's fault. For example, if you remove the dust cover and take a look at the book's spine, the author's last name is misspelled "Assmussen" with a second "s" after the "A". Another typo- the name of Prinz Eugen's Captain is written "Birkmann" at least once, instead of "Brinkmann" (see page 65).The chapter dealing with the dives to the wreck I found as self-flattering considering the actual contribution of the author to the expedition. Phrases such as "... I reviewed the wreck footage and compiled a database that was of much assistance to the crew as they were not experts on the Bismarck, and could not identify different parts of the ship", are inappropriate since the expedition team had people like Dr. David Bercuson, Dr. Holger Herwig, Thomas Schmid and three Bismarck survivors who were all more than able to provide the necessary technical expertise to "identify different parts of the ship".This book could also have been vastly improved by better editing since the author's lack of proficiency in the English language becomes obvious at times with basic grammatical errors, but to be honest this didn't bother me much.My advice to those considering purchase would be to save your pennies and keep waiting for the definitive Bismarck book to be written. This one is not worth the money.

WOW!!! What an amazing book about the history of the Bismark. The author has gone to great lengths in the procurement of photographs and information.....Well Done John!!! I would highly recommend this book to anyone. Regarding shipping, someone who packaged the book had sticky fingers and left some kind of sticky sugar type of product on the cover which of course does not clean off paper that well.

Dopo una lunga attesa si è reso finalmente disponibile questo titolo. Il nome dell'Autore è già una garanzia di serietà fra molte pubblicazioni discutibili sul mercato. Il testo, sintetico ed essenziale, è rigoroso e completo, l'iconografia è eccellente e comprende foto finora mai viste, le dimensioni del libro sono generose e la veste editoriale è buona. Se dovessi trovare un difetto direi che la rilegatura non è proprio perfetta.

Well put-together, a "must-have" for the Bismark enthusiast ...