DOC Bismarck: The Final Days of Germany’s Greatest Battleship by Niklas Zetterling; Michael Tamelander in History

Review

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful. Very informativeBy Botnik RollerWithout boring you to death with technical details; this book will give at least all the basic facts about this unbeliavable chase and unequal battle between dozens of ships (and airplanes!) against one German ship (even being a very powerful one). It is a fast read; breathtaking and despairing at the same time.However; there are indeed various typo errors. Also; a new world record for the use of the word "unfortunately" beginning a sentence must have been set in this book!3 of 3 people found the following review helpful. Fascinating rough draft awaits final edit!By meyestone(Review is of the Kindle edition) I have to agree with others that this is a fascinating story; and the author has clearly done his homework to assemble credible courses and to think through the events in a way that I found compelling - I really could not put this down.At the same time; the book is more of a rough author's draft than a product ready to be published! It's repetitive; individuals are referred to repeatedly and only much later introduced; and; it's riddled with spelling and grammatical errors (some bad enough to make the meaning of sentences unclear.) On my Kindle (even when using the Kindle computer reading apps; so I could have the big screen) the various maps are pretty much illegible.The book needs a good edit to be a great book. But; as I say; I still could not stop reading this compelling story; and I feel I understand what happened much better.One substantive criticism is that there is little mention of some of the controversies about the sinking - in particular; whether it was scuttled or sunk by Allied action.One other thing - the Bismarck was subsequently located on the ocean floor; which would; one might think; be worth at least a post-scriptural mention!3 of 3 people found the following review helpful. Good Account; Numerous Errors are difficult to overlookBy a_wienkeI must preface this review by saying that I am by no means an expert of the German Navy in World War II. I have read several accounts of the Bismarck that focused solely on 14FEB1939 and 19-27MAY1941. This book gives a good overall account. As other reviews have stated; this work draws heavily on Mullenheim-Rechberg's memoir (which I have yet to read). The authors do a good job placing the mission of the Bismarck in the context of the Kriegsmarine's overall strategy for naval warfare concerning surface ships.The main drawbacks of the book are the numerous editing and proofreading mistakes. The main drawback--I was willing to overlook the grammatical errors with some effort--was that the footnotes in the back of the book do not match up with the ones in the text. They are off by one. This caused some confusion at first; as the first footnote does not seem to have a place in the text. The footnote was interesting; and I would have liked to see how it matched up within the main text.If one is willing to overlook these moderately serious shortcomings; the main text and the explanation of Cruiser Warfare and what the Germans were hoping to accomplish are quite interesting.