I really liked that movie when I was a kid, I was always hoping it would show up on TV. I especially rooted for the plucky Stringbags and was happy to see the big German go down.
Frankly the British were idiots to send a World War One vintage battlecruiser like Hood, that hadn't even been modernized, against a state-of-the-art heavy battleship like Bismark.
She was too slow and far too lightly armored. And the treaty battleship Prince of Wales, although newer, wasn't much better. Bismark had better speed, guns, and armor. The outcome was a forgone conclusion.
Well, true, but the decision on
Hood had effectively been made long before. You don't keep a hugely expensive capital ship and man it with 1400 sailors to
not use it in the war. The "habit of victory" and all that. She wasn't operating alone, and if a few lucky breaks had gone
Hood's way she could have survived the encounter, but yeah, a mis-match.
The only Allied battleships that could have taken Bismark, or her sister ship Tirpitz, in a one-on-one fight were HMS Vanguard or one of the American Iowa class ships.
No way to know for sure, of course, but I think a 9x16" North Carolina would be a pretty even match and a South Dakota would probably have the edge. Of course a one-on-one fight would mean a complete failure of US or British tactics.
Her AA suite, in particular, was inadequate for the era, which is mainly why she was destroyed. The Swordfish torpedo planes didn't sink her, but did stop her from reaching France and safety...
Though the RN's and USN's early AA outfits also had teething problems and were inadequate by later war standards. But a battleship versus a force with carrier air was not going to make it on AA alone, no matter how good. It needs its own carrier support.
I vote "meh." A technically strong design, but part of an unsound strategy, a battleship without a battle fleet (or even squadron), that spent her life on the run before the inevitable.
