This is a book with multiple personalities, which are easy to accommodate in its 610 pages. The story of the Kriegsmarine battleship Bismarck is a familiar one to almost anyone with an interest in World War II. Books about the Bismarck episode have appeared from mostly British sources since the end of the war, usually in the form of personal memoirs that set in train a narrative that has seen little change over the passing decades. The narrative began to shift in the 1980's as details about the British use of "special intelligence" via Ultra in tracking German naval operations were declassified. The narrative saw further changes after the discovery of the Bismarck wreck by Robert Ballard in 1989. Simultaneously the book world saw the rise of warship design histories by authors like D.K. Brown, Norman Friedman, and some of the authors of this book.

Those two authors, William Garzke and Robert Dulin, were professional naval architects and marine engineers, with Dulin also having served as an officer in the U.S. Navy. Garzke and Dulin put together in the 1980's and 90's a trilogy of design history books that focused on the design of battleships that served in World War II. They differed from their contemporary Norman Freidman in that they include the operational histories of the ships they describe. For this work Garzke and Dulin are joined by William Jurens, who has made a name for himself as an associate editor of the naval history journal Warship International. To top it off, Hollywood director and wreck explorer James Cameron makes unique contributions to this volume. The combination of contributors makes for a busy book.

This volume, published in 2019, has a total of 26 chapters, preceded by a prologue and followed by five lettered appendices. The book is arranged chronologically with the opening chapter discussing the origins of the German battleship and the following chapters progressing through the entire Bismarck operation. Although not evident in the titles of the chapters, they contain and combine the elements of ship design histories, naval operations histories, ship operational histories, survivors' accounts, and marine forensics analysis. The ship design history component is not limited to the Bismarck--the authors bring in design history information for HMS Hood and the Nelson and King George V class capital ships as well. It's a lot for a reader to digest, but you get your money's worth out of these pages.

I do have some nits to pick. First, while I respect the engineering prowess of this writing team, I found their projection of the motives for Vice Admiral Holland's tactical decisions (which led to the loss of the Hood) to be without any supporting sources, hence relegated to mere speculation and inappropriate for a work of this quality. Second, I wish the authors followed tradition in referring to naval ordnance caliber. The authors made such references in millimeters throughout the work, while convention would normally have been use of inches for British naval ordnance and centimeters for German naval ordnance. Third, the comprehensive marine forensics analysis depends a great deal upon tracking the hits made by the combatants on each other in the course of various engagements. I wish the authors had followed the U.S. Navy Bureau of Ships war damage report convention of numbering shell hits--this would have made the marine forensics aspects of the book far less confusing, especially given the number of hits made on Bismarck in its final battle. Finally, and I include the book editors at USNI in this critique as well, there is far too much repetition. The same incidents are repeatedly discussed in both the naval operations and marine forensics portions of the book, which adds unnecessarily to the page count.

Overall, however, my criticisms are quite minor compared to what the authors give the reader. This volume is as comprehensive as can be made about this very brief but extremely significant naval operation and is a most valuable addition to any naval historian's shelf. ( )