Battle of the Denmark Strait

And if you were the British public member going to watch this film, you know all the beats.

You know about the Battle of the Denmark Strait, which is the bit we've talked about already where Hood is sunk.

That's beat one you know.

You know the name Bismarck.

One of the first questions asked after Churchill gave the overview of events that I started this episode with was a question about the Hood and if it had been provided with enough armor.

Concerns about the decisions made by the British during the Battle of the Denmark Strait, which had resulted in the loss of the Hood, came from many different British leaders, including Churchill himself.

And Tuvvy was told that Rear Admiral Wake Walker, who had been on board the Suffolk, and Captain Leach of the Prince of Wales, were going to be court-martialed.

This stemmed from their decision to disengage from the Bismarck after the sinking of the Hood, believing that the Prince of Wales was too damaged to continue the fight.

But that was mostly just down to some lucky positioning and routing by the Bismarck and mistakes by the Royal Navy.

It had been forced to slow down to the point where many ships of the Royal Navy could catch up with it.

And even though the result of the Battle of the Denmark Strait had been a striking success due to the sinking of the Hood, this damage justified the very cautious approach that Lütjens had taken during the Operation Berlin with the Scheinhurst and Gneisenau in which he constantly just ran away from conflict.

He was criticized for that a lot, but it might have been the better decision.

And Esmond Knight was a midshipman, I think he was, on the Prince of Wales at the time of the battle.

So that must have been really cool for him to play his captain on the Battle of the Denmark Strait.

Yeah, well,

this is the thing.