User:Shandon/Bismarck

Summary

Veteran adventure writer Clive Cussler's 79th novel.

BISMARCK is the seventy-ninth novel by adventure writer Clive Cussler, published in 1983. Returning to a fantastical premise with few supporting technical facts, Cussler sends the reader on what Times reviewer Tim Blank called "a wild, alternate history post-War yarn in which the Americans are yet smiling."

Plot

Beginning with the 1951 discovery of the sunken battleship's wreck and its raising by a naval operation, the story misleads the reader by keeping vague about details such as uniforms, vessel names, and language spoken. To everyone's surprise the hull of the Bismarck is remarkably intact: the patching of two major above-waterline impact holes is all that is required to make the ship seaworthy. Following major but incomplete restoration efforts the Bismarck is seized upon as a publicity tool by the national government.

A whirlwind tour is organized and the mostly-restored battleship is to be sent to twenty international ports in 1953. A call for a volunteer naval crew is given. Among the over 2,000 successful responders is American Lieutenant Commander Dirk Pitt, given a spot as senior observer on the bridge. Pitt, however, is also a spy.

As the Bismark was sinking in 1941, its top secret Zenith communications system was transmitting coded data on the effectiveness of British torpedo and shell attacks and their effects on the ship's armor. Pitt hopes to find this data, and hopefully the Zenith and the means to decode it. At this point, the reader realizes the Bismarck is almost entirely crewed by German naval men, and is visiting twenty ports to both show the world the strength of NAZI war machines and to commemorate the twentieth year anniversary of the Third Reich.

Pitt is suspected by Fregattenkapitän Wolf Oels, nephew of the Bismarck's original first officer; however, as the Reich chose to bring on international observers to display the efficiency and skill of the German navy and ease tensions, Oels must move carefully. The tour and period allowed on board the vessel is a race against time. As Pitt works with another foreign observer to compile the data he needs and the Zenith codebreaker system, he stays one step ahead of Oels. In port at Sydney, Australia, though, Pitt and the other foreigner are caught by Oels in the act of dismantling part of the Zenith cabinet in the first officer's cabin. Pitt's helper is killed, but Oels is overpowered by the American.

Simultaneously, an attack by Japanese frigates and gunboats determined to symbolically re-sink what they believe to be a defenseless vessel is launched. As Germany is maintaining diplomatic relations with the United States, the Japanese consider the Bismarck to be an enemy combatant in their drawn-out conflict with America. Returning to the bridge, Pitt as the senior officer present (the captain is ashore) acts on secret information he has seen and directs the firing of the dozen newly-installed and operable 5.9 inch guns which make quick work of the Japanese flotilla.

With time running out and an investigation ongoing for the missing first officer, the Bismarck's final international port of call is New York. Under great suspicion and being pursued through the ship while compiling the last-needed data, Pitt realizes he cannot disembark under normal circumstances. In a dramatic scene, he leaps overboard into the harbor with a watertight satchel containing the information.

Concluding with a meeting with President Dewey who succeeded Roosevelt after the latter's 1940 election loss, Pitt is thanked for the service to his country. The data will serve well to design new American shells and bombardment techniques which will be used to more effectively battle and sink German warships in the war to come.

Reception

Bismarck sold over twelve million copies worldwide. The novel stayed on The New York Times fiction best-seller list for thirty-seven weeks. Generally reviewed as a fun, engaging alternate history race against time, critic Miles Reynolds called it "too premise-oriented" and "almost unbelievable." A 2006 fan poll rated it #16 in their list of Clive Cussler favorites.

Actual Supporting Evidence

The wreck of the Bismarck has been visited four times starting in 1989 by English and American teams, including director James Cameron in 2002. They discovered "no underwater penetrations of the ship's fully-armoured citadel," and according to Cameron's expedition, "the torpedo blasts had failed to shatter its armoured inner walls. All that was destroyed was an outer "sacrificial zone" of water and fuel tanks that German engineers had created to absorb torpedo hits and keep interior spaces flood free." "The inner tank walls are untouched by any explosive force"; "So the armor worked." The conclusion was that the Germans had scuttled the vessel rather than let it fall into British hands.