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The handful of German battleships and battle-cruisers pinned in their harbours in Germany were, throughout the Second World War, of immense concern to the British Admiralty.

If any one of them could have broken through the British air and sea defences between the Channel and Greenland it could being resupplied by submarine, have briefly devastated the shipping routes across the Atlantic on which British survival depended.

So close was the British watch on the exits into the Atlantic that this was never very likely, but the closest the Germans came was the attempt of the Bismarck, with the battle-cruiser Prinz Eugen, in May 1941.

The PSS game offers the player either side against the computer, and a choice of difficult levels.

Its main screen is the strategic map from Sweden to Greenland and from northern France to the Atlantic Ocean, showing the air cover and patrols provided by both sides. The main skill for either side is guessing when and how the Bismarck will attempt to break out.

The Bismarck's best chance is at night in bad weather.

On encountering an enemy ship, the player can opt for the combat screen. This is an improvement on the usual arcade screen offered by the PSS Wargamers Series.

The main skill in the battle screen is manoeuvring the ship and estimating the range to the enemy target.

This is a historically good application of the "hunt the enemy" program which features in a number of PSS Wargamers Series games. My one criticism is that, although a joystick option is offered, it is so sluggish as to be virtually unusable, and often causes the program to crash. This makes flying a torpedo bomber on keyboard controls alone rather harder than it should be.