Dear Sir:
In the Fort Frances Bulletin of October 14, 2025, you printed one of your recurring features Flashback Pop, Rock and Soul Trivia by a fictional author, Mick Harper. I wish to strenuously object to your printing something no sentient person with your organization bothered to read.
In explaining the context of the 1960 song Sink the Bismarck, the following statement was made: The Bismarck was a German battleship the United States sank in 1941.
EXCUSE ME!!!
The Bismarck was sunk by the Royal Navy without any participation from the US Navy. The students of today receive little enough instruction in history without being confused and misled by this sort of misinformation. I realize that these sorts of features do not originate with the Times but someone should read them before publication. There have been many other errors in them in the past but not rising to the offensiveness of this. Perhaps an apology to Royal Navy veterans is called for.
Americans have a disturbing tendency to believe in their military invincibility and how they won the war. I happened to be at a History teachers conference some time ago. An American was pontificating about this topic when one of my colleagues mentioned that Canada had made huge contributions to victory in WWII. His response was :Oh, were you in it too? He replied: Yes, and we were on time.
Yours truly,
Rudolf K. F. Zeitlhofer
Editor’s note:
The Times regrets the error contained in the quiz provided by King Features Syndicate and published in our October 14, 2025, edition. As the reader attests, the German battleship Bismarck was not sunk by United States forces but was, in fact, scuttled by its own crew on May 27, 1941, after its steering had been disabled by a British torpedo bomber and it lost offensive capability due to sustained shelling by British warships.
