The Last Nine Days of the Bismarck

The Last Nine Days of the Bismarck (Little Brown, 1959), also published as Hunting the Bismark (Michael Joseph, 1959), was written by C.S. Forester (1899-1966), the author of the popular Horatio Hornblower series of naval-themed books. Closely based on the actual naval battle, the book is a novel with fictionalized dialogue and incidents.

The Last Nine Days of the Bismarck tells the story of the breakout of the German battleship Bismarck into the Atlantic as a major threat to the convoys that sustained Britain in the early days of World War II and the Royal Navy's desperate pursuit and destruction of the Bismarck. A movie based on Forester's book, Sink the Bismarck! was released by Twentieth Century-Fox in 1960, with the book reprinted in paperback under the title Sink the Bismarck! (Bantam, 1959) as a promotional tie-in.