The last battle of the German battleship Bismarck took place in the Atlantic Ocean, approximately 300 nautical miles (560 km) west of Brest, France, on 26–27 May 1941. Although it was a decisive action between capital ships, it has no generally accepted name.

The battle was a sequel to the Battle of the Denmark Strait, fought on 24 May 1941, in which Bismarck and her escort the Prinz Eugen had sunk the prestigious British battlecruiser HMS Hood and damaged the battleship Prince of Wales forcing it to withdraw. Following that battle Bismarck was pursued for more than two days by ships and aircraft of the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force. Eventually, on the evening of 26 May, she was crippled by a torpedo bomber attack, and on the following morning she was brought to battle and sunk. No British ship was sunk during this action, but the destroyer HMS Mashona was sunk by German bombers during the subsequent withdrawal.



German and Allied naval strategies in the Atlantic theatre of operations were complementary to the fact that south of the limits of aerial reconnaissance from Iceland there existed, in the early part of World War II (1940 – 1943) an area in the North Atlantic where surface combatants were immune from both aerial reconnaissance and aerial attack due to the absence in the theatre of land based aircraft of sufficient range (combat & reconnaissance radius), operational endurance (loiter capability), and remote sensing capability (radar), to search, identify, track and coordinate attacks upon such surface units as were found.