Sink the Bismarck! (1960) on Netflix
Approved19601h 37mActionDramaHistory
Captain Jonathan Shepard takes charge of naval operations in London in 1941 as the German battleship Bismarck puts to sea. He must find her before she reaches the convoy lanes.
- Netflix3.7/5
- IMDb7.2/109,306 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes86%
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Plot summary
Captain Jonathan Shepard arrives at the naval operations room in London in 1941, when word comes that the German battleship Bismarck and the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen are loose in the North Atlantic to strike at the convoys that supply Britain. Shepard presses for every available ship to be sent after them. Anne Davis, a Women's Royal Naval Service second officer, works beside him and is troubled by his cold manner. When the German ships turn on the British force, HMS Hood is lost and HMS Prince of Wales is damaged. Shepard moves ships from the Mediterranean, among them the carrier Ark Royal, where his son Tom serves as an air gunner.
Cast
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Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Sink the Bismarck! (1960)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Esmond Knight, who plays Captain John Leach of HMS Prince of Wales, had served as a gunnery officer on board the real Prince of Wales and was seriously injured and blinded during the battle with Bismarck.
- The Johnny Horton song "Sink the Bismarck", which reached No. 3 on both the US pop and country charts, was not an original movie tie-in and did not appear in the film; Variety estimated half a million of the gross could be attributed to the success of the song.
- Gilbert was surprised by the film's popularity in the US, as Reach for the Sky had flopped there and the battle did not involve the US at all; this led to him turning down the offer of a significant percentage of the profits, which he later regretted.
- Though the film has him saying "Never forget that you are Nazis", in reality Lütjens did not agree with Nazi policies: with two other navy commanders he had publicly protested against the brutality of antisemitic crimes during Kristallnacht, and he refused to give the Nazi salute when Hitler visited Bismarck.
- Producer John Brabourne was able to use his influence as son-in-law of Lord Mountbatten, then Chief of the Defence Staff, to obtain the full co-operation of the Admiralty; a soon-to-be-scrapped battleship provided footage of a capital ship's 15-inch gun turrets in action.
- Three surviving Fairey Swordfish aircraft were restored for the film, two of them flown from the carrier's flight deck, and those three aircraft now form the core of the Royal Navy Historic Flight.
