Big Guns in the Atlantic: Germany's battleships and cruisers raid the convoys, 1939-41

In the early months and years of World War II, it was Germany's cruisers and battleships that most ravaged the Atlantic Convoys. This is the history of those raids, and how the success of 1941's Operation Berlin led directly to the Kriegsmarine sending into the Atlantic its greatest battleship - the mighty, ill-fated Bismarck.

At the outbreak of World War II the German Kriegsmarine still had a relatively small U-boat arm. To reach Britain's convoy routes in the North Atlantic, these boats ha...