Deep Ocean Expeditions

Manned Deep-Sea Dives to the Wreck of the German Battleship Bismarck
Please note there is no expedition scheduled to the Battleship Bismarck wreck site in 2007. For further information on future expeditions please contact info@deepoceanexpeditions.com

In Conjunction with The P.P. Shirshov Institute of Oceanology, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow.

It was May 1989, 48 years to the month since the great battleship had gone down. A lone research vessel had arrived in the area for the final battle.

Their mission was to 'find the Bismarck'. The expedition was led by oceanographer Dr Robert Ballard who discovered the Titanic in 1985. He hoped to find, investigate and photograph Bismarck 's remains. It would not be easy, surviving records of the battle gave at least three different positions as to where the battleship sank.

The search area had to include all of them and would be some 200 square miles (520 square kilometres) in size, an enormous area of seafloor to survey. Success would not come easy.

Painstakingly they ran their track lines along the imaginary seafloor grid. Ballard's strategy was to first find signs of the debris field which would range from small, light objects to large heavy elements such as the four gun turrets which had fallen away as the ship rolled over while sinking. After days of searching on June 5 1989, Argo's cameras showed evidence of the debris field.

Now the search went into its final and most focused stage. Several more days were necessary before the Bismarck itself was pinpointed. It had been a difficult operation complicated by the fact that the seafloor in one area of the wreck was dominated by a massive group of underwater volcanoes rising up from the ocean floor.

Although Dr Ballard and his team concluded their brilliant expedition with excellent remotely obtained photographs and film footage, no manned submersible had ever visited the Bismarck wreck.

In May 2001, Deep Ocean Expeditions and the Shirshov Institute mounted a successful Expedition to become the first manned submersibles to witness the battleship at its final resting place.

bismarck.pdf (246Kb)