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MAY 27, 1941: BRITISH SINKING OF THE GERMAN WARSHIP BISMARCK IN THE NORTH ATLANTIC HELPED CHANGE THE COURSE OF WORLD WAR II.

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FEATURE image: HMS Rodney unloading her guns. HMS Rodney’s 16-inch guns played a pivotal role at the last battle with the Bismarck in the North Atlantic in May 1941. The British battleship’s powerful broadsides at the Bismarck caused significant structural damage that sunk the German warship.  “HMS Rodney lightens her load sometime in the 1930’s.” by WWII in View is marked with Public Domain Mark 1.0.

In 1941 the Allies determined the war would need to be won in the Atlantic.1 From 1939 to 1945 the Battle of the Atlantic was the longest continuous military campaign in World War II. It stemmed from the start of the war in Europe with Hitler’s invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, and the declaration of war by France and Britain on the Third Reich. This was followed by the Battle of Britain and Fall of France in 1940 and the Allies’ declaration of war on Italy on June 10, 1941. The United States, as a non-belligerent and working through its neutrality laws, aided the Allies, namely Britain, through cash and carry and lend-lease purchases of large amounts of American-made armaments as well as providing reconnaissance to the British navy and air force who were in the fight against German U-boats and battleships aggressively attacking and sinking the merchant ships headed for Britain.

German submarine U-52. Public Domain.

A massive nearly square-shaped zone of conflict surrounded Great Britain and Iceland with its approximate boundaries from the southeast coast of Greenland across the Atlantic to France and north between Britain and Norway and back around Iceland towards Greenland. Since Denmark was occupied by German forces, the United States in April 1941 occupied their abandoned colony of Greenland and designated it as part of the Western hemisphere to categorize American non-belligerent military activity as self-defense. The Americans took the same approach with Iceland sending troops as a forward, if ostensibly defensive, posture.2

This situation brought the navies of the United States, Canada and Great Britain together as the Allies provided escort to the merchant ships into a combat zone with the German Kriegsmarine (navy), specifically U-boats (submarines) and warships, as well as the Luftwaffe (air force), who were severely disrupting the supply line. The commanders of the opposing forces were both World War I veterans. Vice-Admiral Gilbert O. Stephenson (1878-1972), a pioneer of anti-submarine techniques in the First World War, was training commander of the British escort groups while Admiral Karl Dönitz (1891-1980), whose navy career began before the Great War was the commander of the German U-boat fleet.

Vice-Admiral Gilbert O. Stephenson, 1929.  Stephenson who served in World War I was recalled at the start of World War II and aided in the evacuation of Dunkirk. In 1940 Stephenson was tasked with setting up the training base at Tobermory on the Isle of Mull in the Scottish Inner Hebrides. Stephenson was a noteworthy disciplinarian, and his training vision and methods had an influence within the service after the war ended. The Vice-Admiral believed the most important priorities for trainees were, in order, (1) to instill the will to win; (2) to accept discipline; (3) to execute a highly competent administration; and, (4) to display technical proficiency. Public domain.
German officer Karl Dönitz on the U-39 during World War I. Public domain.

Until the attack on Pearl Harbor by Japan on December 7, 1941 the United States was a non-belligerent and Hitler wanted to keep it that way. Germany was mounting its invasion of Russia called Operation Barbarossa, which, involving almost 4 million troops, was the largest offensive operation in military history. For American internationalists looking for a way into the war in 1941, American neutrality and Lend-Lease laws along with public opinion complicated that desire. American opinion, markedly isolationist through the 1930’s and into the early 1940’s, was, in spring and summer 1941, split on whether the U.S. should escort merchant marine vessels while a large majority was against entering the war. Most Americans polled believed the United States had already been doing too much for Britain.3 In April 1941, after a year of the largest armament production program in U.S. history, President Roosevelt decided for American patrols comprised of ships and airplanes, rather than escorts or convoys, to insure the delivery of needed supplies to Britain and other Allied combatants.  The mission, started without diplomatic or public fanfare, gave solely reconnaissance aid to Britain. This role in an expanding territory in the Atlantic was justified by FDR as hemispheric self-defense from the Nazis. This position was reinforced by Roosevelt in a fireside chat with the American people on May 27, 1941. By then the Bismarck was under attack and sunk. FDR’s rationale was based on the premise that the “supreme purpose” of the Axis powers was to achieve world domination by its control of the high seas and the capture of Great Britain was key to that endeavor.4 

In 1941, before America’s entry as a belligerent into World War II, President Roosevelt aided the Allies with immense U.S. armament production sent to Britain and American patrols in the North Atlantic to provide intelligence to the British navy to assure their safe delivery to Britain. Further, FDR worked within the parameters of U.S. laws as well as listening to, and helping shape, the American people’s sentiments as to how much to aid Britain short of war. President Roosevelt with Microphones, September 11, 1941 (NARA). “Public Domain: President Roosevelt with Microphones, September 11, 1941 (NARA)” by pingnews.com is marked with Public Domain Mark 1.0.

In the face of these American patrols that FDR spoke of, Hitler was, after the fall of Denmark, Norway, the Low Countries, and France, looking east. The Germans were on the offensive from Yugoslavia to Greece to North Africa. Though the invasion of Britain was off, the Atlantic remained under siege. In April and May 1941 German wolfpacks (coordinated attacks by U-boats on convoys) took a heavy toll on British merchant shipping in the combat zone south of Iceland.5

May 24, 1941.

On May 24, 1941, the German battleship Bismarck, accompanied by the cruiser Prinz Eugen, left Norway for the Atlantic. The British intercepted the German ships in the Denmark Strait between Greenland and Iceland, but the Bismarck fought back and sank the HMS Hood, the biggest battlecruiser in the world at that time, which exploded with the loss of 1,415 of its crew. The sinking of the Hood marked what remains the single greatest loss of life in Royal Navy history.

The battle also damaged the Prince of Wales. The Bismarck, under the command of Günther Lütjens (1887-1941), continued its passage south to the convoy routes but had sustained battle damage to its fuel tanks which led to subsequent flooding. Pursued by the damaged Prince of Wales and cruisers Norfolk and Suffolk, the Bismarck, traveling more slowly and trailing oil, changed course to head to Brest for ship repairs. In short order, the Bismarck turned on the British pursuers to allow the Prinz Eugen to escape into the Atlantic.

British battleship Hood. The biggest battleship in the British navy, the Hood was sunk in the Denmark Strait by the German Bismarck on May 24, 1941, with a staggering British loss of 1,415 crew lives. “H.M.S. Hood 1924” by State Library of South Australia is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
The film is recorded from the Prinz Eugen with Bismarck firing.
Günther Lütjens (1887-1941). Commander of the Bismarck. It was two days after celebrating his 52nd birthday that Adl. Lütjens perished in battle with his crew on May 27, 1941. “<div class=’fn’> <div class=’language de’ style=’display:inline;font-weight:bold;’>Günter Lütjens</div> <abbr class=’BArchtooltips’ title=’Short title assigned by the archive’><span typeof=’mw:File’><span><img src=’https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/53/Info_non-talk.svg/20px-Info_non-talk.svg.png’ decoding=’async’ width=’15’ height=’15’ class=’mw-file-element’ srcset=’https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/53/Info_non-talk.svg/40px-Info_non-talk.svg.png 1.5x’ data-file-width=’62’ data-file-height=’62’></span></span></abbr></div>” by Unknown author Unknown author is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

That evening, Fairey Swordfish planes — a resilient British torpedo bomber biplane that originated in the early 1930s —took off from the Home Fleet’s aircraft carrier Victorious for its first attack on the Bismarck. They engaged the warship but without important effect.  For the next 31 hours, since the sinking of the Hood, the Bismarck eluded the English fleet which was looking for it further to the west.

“Swordfish Salute 9648” by Thorbard is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

May 25, 1941.

Commander Lütjens was not aware that the British had lost him. In the early hours of May 25, 1941, he broke radio silence to send a coded message to Germany. Though its content was indecipherable, the British heard it and observed that the German commander had stopped communicating with Wilhelmhaven in Germany and began talking with Paris. This was a break that allowed the British to figure closely the actual vicinity of the enemy warship and that it was heading to France. British warships in search of the Bismarck were provided the new coordinates and the orders to pursue accordingly. This included King George V and Norfolk to be joined by a flotilla of 5 destroyers under the command of Captain Philip Vian (1894-1968).

British Captain Philip Vian in 1940. Taken before 1957, this work created by the United Kingdom Government is in the Public Domain.

May 26, 1941.

At 10 a.m. the Bismarck was spotted by an American pilot in one of the American-made Catalinas provided by Roosevelt to the British war effort. Flying out of a base in Northern Ireland, the plane was part of a squadron that had been assigned a specific search area for the Bismarck. It was piloted by American Ensign Leonard “Tuck” Smith (1915-2006) whose role was to familiarize RAF Pilot Officer, Dennis Briggs, with the plane’s controls.  Though revealed long after the war’s end, Smith was credited with being the first person to spot the Bismarck before the final battle. He was awarded the Navy’s Distinguished Flying Cross for his role in the sinking of the Bismarck. Leaving in the middle of the night on May 26, 1941, the weather was bad with a ceiling of about 100 feet. According to Smith’s report, it took six hours to reach the search area.  As soon as they spotted the Bismarck, they came under intense anti-aircraft fire from the warship and Smith had to take violent evasive action to escape getting blown out of the sky. Smith and the crew soon lost contact with the battleship, but their messages as to its precise location had been received. British ships and planes soon converged on an intercept course. Already the aircraft carrier Ark Royal had sent scouting planes and a pair of Swordfish spotted the enemy warship shortly after Smith did. When Smith landed his Catalina back in Northern Ireland at 9: 30 p.m., 18 hours after having taken off, it would be just 12 more hours that the 35,000-ton Bismarck would be at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.

After the Bismarck’s location was known, Captain Philip Vian’s flotilla that was to join King George V in the search for Bismarck, changed course and headed directly for the Bismarck. Three days earlier, on May 23, 1941, the British naval formation known as Force H had left Gibraltar for convoy duties that included the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal, battlecruiser Renown, and light cruiser Sheffield. On May 26, 1941, Force H set course to intercept the Bismarck.

Starting late on Monday, May 26, 1941, the last battle of the German battleship Bismarck started in the Atlantic Ocean The ship was sunk about 350 miles west of the port city of Brest in France. At 2:50 p.m. on May 26, 1941, fifteen Fairey Swordfish planes took off from the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal to attack the Bismarck.  

The British aircraft carrier HMS Rodney with fighter biplane. “Supermarine Walrus being hoisted onto HMS RODNEY (4888758875)” by whatsthatpicture from Hanwell, London, UK is licensed under CC BY 2.0

The attack failed and the British cruiser Sheffield fell under friendly fire. The British staked everything on one more attack to stop the Bismarck before it could safely enter into Brest harbor the next day. At 7:10 p.m., a second sortie of 15 Swordfish planes took off from the HMS Ark Royal armed with conventional torpedoes. At 8:47 p.m., these Swordfish began their attack. The Bismarck received a direct hit but it was not mortal. A second torpedo hit the ship’s stern that jammed and disabled the battleship’s rudders crippling it. The King George V and HMS Rodney joined the fray from the northwest about 6.00 p.m. and, at 10:00 p.m., the Sheffield directed Captain Vian’s destroyers towards the target where they harassed an unmaneuverable Bismarck with torpedo attacks through the night.

The battleship HMS King George V in 1941. Commanded by Admiral Sir John Tovey, it was one of the ships which sank the Bismarck. Public Domain.

May 27, 1941.

The next day, Tuesday, May 27, 1941, the Bismarck, unable to steer or repair the rudder, expected an attack from the British battleships. At 8:30 a.m., they readied battle stations. At 8:43 a.m. the HMS Rodney and HMS King George V, joined by cruisers and destroyers, including the HMS Norfolk and HMS Dorsetshire, spotted the Bismarck.  At 8:47 a.m., from a distance of over 10 miles, the battleship HMS Rodney opened fire commencing the final battle. Though Bismarck returned fire, with its disabled rudder, its gun platforms were unstable due to uncontrollable movements on a rising sea in gale-force winds. At two minutes past 9 a.m. the HMS Rodney unloaded its 16-inch guns and hit the Bismarck’s forward superstructure, severely damaging the bridge, command facilities, fire control, and observation posts, as well as killing most of the warship’s senior officers. Both HMS Rodney and HMS King George V engaged Bismarck in heavy gunfire with increasing precision as British shells dismantled the ship’s command structure and gun turrets making the Bismarck a floating hulk. With Bismarck’s ability to return fire random and infrequent the British warships came into closer range for the German warship’s final neutralization. HMS Norfolk and HMS Dorsetshire joined HMS Rodney to fire on Bismarck with its 8 -inch guns and torpedoes. With its four main gun turrets inoperable, at 9.31 a.m., the Bismarck had lost the capacity to fight back with orders down the chain of German officers to scuttle and abandon the ship.   

Nearly 3,000 projectiles were used against the Bismarck to achieve this outcome in the final battle.  In the final stages of the battle the British ships surrounded the Bismarck in a crossfire that overpowered the German crew. In addition to significant structural damage, this intense continuous British gunfire set off fires on the Bismarck that caused secondary explosions.

Following the battle with the Bismarck, the HMS Rodney continued its service in World War II. In November 1942, the HMS Rodney provided naval gunfire support in Operation Torch for the Allied landings of North Africa. In 1943 during the Italian Campaign the HMS Rodney provided support for the Allied landing in Sicily (Operation Husky). In 1944, as part of Operation Neptune (the navy component of Operation Overlord), the HMS Rodney provided gunfire support during the D-Day Normandy beach landings. Following the war, in 1948, the HMS Rodney was sold for scrap. “HMS Rodney lightens her load sometime in the 1930’s.” by WWII in View is marked with Public Domain Mark 1.0.

The British kept firing, the HMS Rodney at point-blank range and the King George V from a greater distance to lob in shells. At 10:05 a.m., the Bismarck was sunk. In the battle’s last stage, the British torpedoes tore holes in the Bismarck’s hull hastening the ship’s decline into the sea. Of the Bismarck’s crew of 2, 200 men only 114 survived. The Luftwaffe that the Bismarck hoped would intervene was not able to fly in meaningful number due to bad weather. The British left the rescue mission with hundreds of German sailors still in the water as a German U-boat periscope had been spotted.  

Winston Churchill with the Lord Privy Seal, Sir Stafford Cripps, and the Commander-in-Chief Home Fleet, Admiral Sir John Tovey, on the quarterdeck of HMS KING GEORGE V at Scapa Flow, 11 October 1942.  Adm. Tovey who made the above observations about the Bismarck served as Commander in Chief of the Home Fleet from 1940 to 1943 and served as Commander in Chief, Nore from 1943 to 1946. Adm. Tovey was First and Principal Naval Aide de Campe to the King from January 1945. Public Domain.

After the sinking, Admiral John Tovey (1885-1971) said: “The Bismarck had put up a most gallant fight against impossible odds worthy of the old days of the Imperial German Navy, and she went down with her colours flying.”6

Sink the Bismarck! is a 1960 black-and-white CinemaScope British war film based on the 1959 book The Last Nine Days of the Bismarck by C. S. Forester. It stars Kenneth More and Dana Wynter and was directed by Lewis Gilbert. Norman Shelley was the uncredited voice of Winston Churchill: “I want to make it unmistakably clear that there is absolutely nothing as vital to the nation at this moment as the destruction of the Bismarck. You are authorized to employ any means at your disposal regardless of risk and regardless of the price that must be paid. This is a battle we cannot afford to lose. I don’t care how you do it, you must sink the Bismarck!“
In 1960 the British black-and-white film production, Sink the Bismarck!, was a hit in the United States and, after its first run, regularly broadcast on TV through the 1960’s and 1970’s in reruns. It co-starred Kenneth More as Captain Jonathan Shepard who coordinates the hunt for Bismarck aided by Women’s Royal Naval Service Second Officer Anne Davis (Dana Wynter). More had served as a Royal Navy lieutenant on HMS Victorious during World War II.  “Kenneth More, ‘Sink the Bismarck’, 1960” by thefoxling is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

FOOTNOTES:

 1. Freedom From Fear: The American People In Depression and War, 1929-1945, David M. Kennedy, NY: Oxford University Press, 1999, pp. 490 and 493.

2. Freedom from Fear, p. 492.

3. Operation Barbarossa – Freedom from Fear, p. 495; polls- Ibid., p. 491.

4. Freedom from Fear, pp. 492-493. 

5. The Reluctant Belligerent: American Entry Into World War II, 2nd edition, Robert A. Divine, NY: John Wiley & Sons, 1979, p. 117.

6. Last battle of Bismarck – Wikipedia – retrieved October 18, 2025.

SOURCES:

The Reluctant Belligerent: American Entry Into World War II, 2nd edition, Robert A. Divine, NY: John Wiley & Sons, 1979.

Freedom From Fear: The American People In Depression and War, 1929-1945, David M. Kennedy, NY: Oxford University Press, 1999.

https://navalhistoria.com/hms-rodney-helped-to-sink-the-bismarck/#:~:text=The%20final%20battle%20between%20HMS%20Rodney%2C%20HMS%20King,turning%20point%20in%20the%20Battle%20of%20the%20Atlantic. – retrieved October 14, 2025.

The American Who Helped Sink the Bismarck | Defense Media Network – retrieved October 15, 2025.

Gilbert Stephenson Explained – retrieved October 18, 2025.







Bessie Coleman, first Black woman licensed aviator and civil rights figure was born today, January 26, in 1892. She died in an accident doing the work she loved on April 30,1926. Bessie Coleman’s important professional aviator and civil rights legacy lives on.

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FEATURE image: Contemporary poster of American aviator Bessie Coleman (1892-1926) along Bessie Coleman Street in the Gateway Gardens district at Frankfurt Airport in Germany. PHOTO CREDIT: DSC06136 Frankfurt Flughafen Gateway Gardens Bessie-Coleman-Straße” by X-angel is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Bessie Coleman, first licensed Black female aviator, was born on January 26, 1892 in Texas. Her father was American Indian and separated from the family when Bessie was 7 years old to live in Oklahoma. Bessie Coleman lived with her mother in Texas as her older siblings had moved away. In the 1890s and into the first half of the 20th century, segregation and discrimination against Blacks and people of color was not only the prevailing and demeaning social practice but also, to one degree or another, the law of the land. In this milieu of racism, Bessie was encouraged by her mother to work hard in school where Bessie became an avid reader. At 18 years old she spent one semester at today’s Langston University in Oklahoma but like many people then and now, she didn’t have the funds to continue. She returned to live and work beside her mother who was a maid and sharecropper. When Bessie was 23, full of life and ambition, she moved to Chicago to live with her older brothers where she worked hard at menial jobs – manicurist, restaurant server. But she also enjoyed living in the free(r) air of Chicago. During the war, her brothers served overseas in France and came back and told Bessie how much better the French treated women and Blacks than in America, even Chicago at the time of its Great Migration. In America, women could not even vote until 1920. Coleman’s brothers told Bessie that in France some women even flew airplanes! Stateside, that kind of thing was reserved for very wealthy, virtually all white men, who flew mostly for fun. Bessie applied to American flight schools anyway – and appallingly received a blanket rejection. Enter Black Chicago millionaire Robert Abbott (1870-1940), owner of the Chicago Defender. Abbott met and liked Bessie’s goals – he told her to go to France and get that pilot’s license. The French accepted her application and she crossed the Atlantic to enroll in flight school there. Flying in those days was an especially dangerous enterprise. There was not even a seat belt in the open cockpit to secure pilots in their seats. There were many accidents of the relatively new technology that involved what were often fragile and sometimes rickety aircraft and inexperienced pilots. Bessie became the first Black and American Indian woman to receive a pilot’s license and returned to the United States to practice her skills. But she had no money to execute her dream just yet. One way to earn money and eventually buy her own plane – as well as inspire other women and girls and people of color to fly – was to find regular, if acutely dangerous, jobs as a stunt pilot. But she ran into the same dead end as before – no American schools would accept a Black woman for the specialized training even though she had earned her pilot’s license.

Bessie Coleman’s photo on her first pilot’s license, issued June 15, 1921. Public Domain.

Bessie returned to France to find the training she needed. All her travails and successes were not ignored in America, and at her second return home from France as a licensed pilot and stunt person Bessie enjoyed mostly positive attention in the press. It was 1922 and Bessie was prepared to soar. Her lifelong friend, Robert Abbott stepped up to arrange her first show in New York City which got the press buzzing. Back to Chicago, her home, Bessie performed in more and more air shows. To be a stunt pilot meant to be fearless and Bessie’s stunts across the country were making her very popular. Bessie wanted to work and maintain her own plane but didn’t have the money to do so. So, she borrowed any plane she could get her hands on to continue her work as a Black woman licensed stunt pilot who was famous for her figure eights and loop-de-loops in the air. While some woman walked on airplane wings, none piloted the plane also like Bessie did. Americans nicknamed her “Queen Bess” and “Brave Bess” and she was a cultural phenomenon as the roaring 1920’s got going.

Bessie Coleman and airplane, 1922. Public Domain.

As she was determined to do so, Bessie Coleman was making a difference in the nation. Of all these remarkable things in the air Bessie was known for, none was more significant than what she also achieved on the ground. Bessie Coleman told show promoters and managers that she would not perform at any show whose audience or performers were segregated by race or anything else. “Brave Bess” insisted that for all shows she performed in, there had to be just one gate for all people to walk through. At the time this was a profoundly radical request, particularly south of the Mason-Dixon line. In addition to her stunt pilot work, Bessie lectured at schools and churches and proselytized for aviation, particularly to the young. Still wanting to buy her own airplane, in 1923 she bought one but ended up crashing it and broke her leg and several ribs. As she recovered in Chicago, Bessie didn’t fly for a year. When she finally returned to flying in 1926, she had no money to buy another plane and was generously given a used one by a wealthy businessman. It was more rickety than anyone desired and Bessie hired a mechanic to get it to hum. In Florida for what would be her final airshow, her plane was flown from Texas by her trusted mechanic, William Wills. Along the way Wills had to make several emergency landings -the plane’s engine kept conking out. Following repairs made in Florida, he and Bessie went up for a practice dry run on April 30, 1926, the day before the show. They tested the plane as Bessie hunted for locations for her stunts. During that practice flight, something went wrong mechanically and, as Bessie leaned out of the cockpit not wearing a seatbelt to surveil the landscape, she fell out to her death. When the plane crashed, William Wills also died. Coleman was 34; Wills was 24. By the third memorial service in Chicago where Bessie Coleman is buried (Lincoln Cemetery in Blue Island), over 20,000 people had attended her services. In Chicago there were 15,000 mourners and famous Black journalist and Chicagoan, Ida B. Wells (1862-1931), read an essay where she spoke on the important work and legacy of Bessie Coleman. In 1929 Black engineer, business owner, and aviator William J. Powell (1897-1942) founded a flight school in Los Angeles named for Bessie Coleman that taught Black men and woman to fly. By the 1930’s, large groups of Black female stunt pilots such as the Blackbirds, took their inspiration from Bessie Coleman to new heights. In 1940 Robert Abbott, the millionaire newspaper publisher who supported Bessie Coleman at the beginning, was also buried in Lincoln Cemetery, among many of its Black Chicago notables.

Bessie Coleman, first Black and American Indian licensed aviator, two days before her 31st birthday, January 24, 1923. Public Domain.

SOURCES:

Bessie Coleman Bold Pilot Who Gave Women Wings, Martha London, 2021, Capstone Press, North Mankato, MN.

Brave Bessie Flying Free, Lillian M. Fisher, 1995, Hendrick Long, Houston, TX.

Three Films for Memorial Day: The Crossing (2000), Gettysburg (1993) and The (Fighting) Sullivans (1944).

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Memorial Day Ceremony – North Africa American Cemetery and Memorial – May 31, 2010. “Memorial Day Ceremony – North Africa American Cemetery and Memorial – May 31, 2010” by US Army Africa is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

The first national observance of Memorial Day occurred on May 30, 1868 following the U.S. Civil War. Commander in Chief John A. Logan of the Grand Army of the Republic issued General Order Number 11 designating May 30 as a day of memorial “for the purpose of strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village, and hamlet churchyard in the land.” (see – https://www.loc.gov/item/today-in-history/may-30/ – retrieved May 27, 2024). It is a day for visiting cemeteries and memorials to mourn the military personnel who died in the line of duty.

Films, music and literature about the people, places and events in history where military personnel as individuals and as a unit are asked to pay the ultimate price and make the greatest sacrifice for freedom are among some of the greatest stories ever told.

THE CROSSING. The American Revolutionary War (1775-1783)

Directed by Robert Harmon and adapted by Howard Fast from his novel of the same name, The Crossing stars Jeff Daniels as George Washington.

In December 1776 — barely six months after the Declaration of Independence — Washington’s Continental Army was collapsing. Starved of men, artillery, and supplies, the revolution hung by a thread. So Washington made the most dangerous decision of the war: he would gamble everything on a surprise strike at Trenton, where more than a thousand feared Hessian mercenaries held the town.

To reach them, his exhausted army would have to force a night crossing of the ice‑choked Delaware River and march toward what looked like a hopeless fight. Instead, the attack became the stunning, against‑all‑odds victory Washington had scarcely dared imagine.

Washington’s surprise attack on the Hessian garrison at Trenton on December 26, 1776, produced a stunningly one‑sided American victory. The Continental Army suffered almost no combat losses — none killed in action, two men who froze to death during the night march, and only five wounded, including a young James Monroe, later of Monroe Doctrine fame, who took a musket ball in the shoulder.

The Hessians, by contrast, were effectively destroyed as a fighting force: 22 killed (among them their commander, Colonel Johann Rall), 92 wounded, and about 920 captured.

Detail. NYC – Metropolitan Museum of Art: Washington Crossing the Delaware. “NYC – Metropolitan Museum of Art: Washington Crossing the Delaware” by wallyg is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

GETTYSBURG. The U.S. Civil War (1861-1865)

Directed by Ronald F. Maxwell whose screenplay is based on The Killer Angels, a novel by Michael Shaara, Gettysburg starred an ensemble cast including Martin Sheen, Tom Berenger, Jeff Daniels, Stephen Lang and Sam Elliott.

One of the Union army’s most respected senior commanders during the American Civil War was 42-year-old General John F. Reynolds (John Rothman) who was killed on the first day of the Battle of Gettysburg at the very start of it. Reynolds was in command of the “left wing” of the Army of the Potomac commanded by Gen. George C. Meade and which included the cavalry division of 37-year-old Brig. Gen. John Buford (Sam Elliott).

Buford had occupied the town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, with his “headquarters” atop the cupola of the Lutheran seminary. With light defensive lines he resisted superior numbers of Confederate infantry brigades along the Chambersburg Pike who were blind to the Union Army’s smaller numbers because Major General J. E. B. Stuart had gone missing.

When Reynolds’ I Infantry Corps arrived, he rode out ahead, met with Buford, and then accompanied some of his soldiers into the fighting. As Reynolds was supervising the placement of the 2nd Wisconsin, he shouted: “Forward men! Forward for God’s sake! and drive those fellows out of those woods.” At that moment Reynolds was shot by a sniper and fell off his horse to the ground with a mortal wound to the back of the head.

The death of Reynolds impacted his troops and fellow commanders deeply. At that particular moment, they realized that any one leader (and the Union army had been through several at the top), even if he had the necessary zeal, vision, and sense of purpose, would not be enough to win the fight to save the Union. It must be a coordinated effort. Reynolds, by supporting Buford’s decision to set up defensive resistance as well as engaging his infantry, even in death effectively chose Gettysburg as that hallowed battleground for the next three days.

Since Confederate numbers were superior on that first day, Union troops eventually retreated through town and rallied on Cemetery Ridge where General Meade and Maj. Gen. Winfield S. Hancock, with many others, entrenched on the high ground. They faced Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee (Martin Sheen), and Lieutenant Generals Longstreet, Ewell, and A.P. Hill, among others. In the 1993 film, Confederate Major General Henry Heth is played by Warren Burton who was born and grew up in Chicago and attended The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Heth was from a coal mining area near Richmond, Virginia.

At the Battle of Gettysburg the two armies suffered between 46,000 and 51,000 casualties. Union casualties amounted to 3,155 killed, 14,531 wounded, and 5,369 captured or missing. Reynolds’ body was immediately transported to his home-town of Lancaster, PA, where he was buried on July 4, 1863. Buford died 5 months later possibly of typhus in Washington, D.C. and was buried at West Point Cemetery in New York. Like Lincoln, Buford was born in Kentucky and grew up in Illinois (Rock Island). His father was a leading politician, but as a Democrat supported Stephen A. Douglas and opposed Abraham Lincoln.

Lutheran Seminary, Gettysburg. “Lutheran Seminary, Gettysburg” by josullivan.59 is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

THE (FIGHTING) SULLIVANS. World War II (1941-1945)

Directed by Lloyd Bacon based on a story by Edward Doherty, Mary C. McCall Jr., and Jules Schermer, The (Fighting) Sullivans starred Anne Baxter, Thomas Mitchell, Selena Royle, Edward Ryan, John Campbell, James Cardwell, John Alvin, George Offerman, Ward Bond and Trudy Marshall.

Released as The Sullivans in 1944, this 20th-Century-Fox drama film tells the true story of five brothers – George, Frank, Matt, Joe and Al Sullivan – who grew up in Waterloo, Iowa, and who were all killed in World War II when their ship, Juneau, was sunk in combat at Guadalcanal in November 1942.

The film is a tearjerker not so much because it is sentimental but that it is honest. The final scene where the naval officer who recruited the five brothers (Ward Bond) comes to the boys’ house to tell the tragic news to their parents (Thomas Mitchell and Selena Royle) and the youngest brother’s widow (Anne Baxter) and mother of his child is one of cinema’s best conveyances of the price paid in a world war that claimed 420,000 American lives.

Memorial Day Ceremony – North Africa American Cemetery and Memorial – May 31, 2010. “Memorial Day Ceremony – North Africa American Cemetery and Memorial – May 31, 2010” by US Army Africa is licensed under CC BY 2.0.