Oftopic but I had to type all this:
Bismarck journy was pretty eventfull alot of ww2 battleships did never face their equals.
Im not sure who side was more unluck, both lost a powerful ship if not the most powerful in respective navies.
Only the Yamato's spent more tonage on armor than the Bismarck but I have heard Bismarck's armor was of better quality and the ship may have had better armor layout, making it extremely hard to sink, maybe the hardest warship ever to sink.
However Bismarck did have some vulnerability, a torpedo hit showed one of them, however Bismarck was hit by another torpedo in the side that did very little damage.
Italian battleships was destroyed by same type of planes alone with much better protection than Bismarck had.
Tirpitz, Bismarck sister ship was also extremely hard to sink, took alot of operations, and in the end tallboy bombs was used.
I have heard that after the war British was interested to understand why Bismarck was so hard to sink and got hands on Tirpitz armor, or produced it themself, proved it was extreamly hard to sink.
Losing Bismarck may have hurted Germany much more than just losing the ship, think about how things could have went if Bismarck had survived which very well could have happened.
The Bismarck's may have been the best battleship class ever built if you consider all the factors, however some other classes like Iowas are rather untested.
It would be interesting to see what if Germany had an H-44 instead of the Bismarck, that would probably give the British navy some more troubles than the Bismarck.