Did you know that the Bismarck, unlike all other ships in the Kriegsmarine, was not a she. We have to talk about the German language which has 3 articles instead of the as in English: Der(masculine) ,Die(feminine) Das(Neutral). All ships of the German navy are female for example the Tirpitz the lone queen of the north.

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A survivor of the Bismarck told in his book that Captain Lieutenant Ernst Lindemann ordered the crew to call the Bismarck male out of respect for the Chancellor and the power this ship had. Funnily enough, this term makes little grammatical sense in German, but I find it interesting

Another interesting fact is that German ships did not have a prefix such as British HMS (His Majesty's Ship) or the American USS (United States Ship) they were usually simply called by their name. After the Second World War, historians then gave the prefix KMS (Kriegsmarine Schiff) to separate ships