Comments by "doveton sturdee" (@dovetonsturdee7033) on "Plan Z - Practical, Effective, or High Seas Fleet Mk2?" video.

As they couldn't bring down Britain, across 20 miles of sea, how would they have brought down the US, across 100 times that?
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Why? The Essex class went straight to the Pacific, and only appeared from around mid 1943. Given the design flaws, understandable as Germany had no experience of naval aviation, Graf Zeppelin's operational career was likely to have been short and unspectacular.
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Hardly. The last battleships, those built from around 1920 onwards, were designed to resist 15 inch shellfire.
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How many of these wonder ships were actually built, by the way?
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You don't consider that the Bismarck's outdated design, involving as it did a low angle secondary armament, four twin main turrets, and obsolete incremental armour, among other flaws, was something of a disadvantage? Oh, and didn't the Germans have their opportunity to 'eat up' the British in 1940, when France had fallen, Genial Uncle Joe was supplying Adolf with raw materials, and the USA was watching from a distance? I am sure you have read what actually happened to the cunning plan that was Operation Sealion, so I won't enlighten you further.
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'The Germans needed 3-4 dozen Stukas dive bombing the Queen elizabeth's, revenge class, nelson class etc. No need for the heavy battleships AT ALL.' Do you, seriously, believe that, when in the whole of WW2 the Luftwaffe actually managed to sink no British warship bigger than a light cruiser? Oh, and Bismarck & Prinz Eugen were sent out to attack convoys, and certainly had the firepower to destroy any convoy escort. I wonder what happened next, and how many convoys Bismarck and Prinz Eugen actually managed to attack?
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@mel.3687 Tirpitz was sunk by large bombs from heavy bombers whilst at the end of a heavily protected fjord.
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@mel.3687 I know about the Tallboys. I was simply explaining how the British resolved the problem of destroying a battleship which never put to sea. I had no intention of producing an in depth account of ‘Operation Catechism’
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@mel.3687 You apparently seek an argument, little chap. As I wrote, I had no intention of giving an in depth account. Would you point out where I said the that ship was built where it was sunk, or indeed where I made any reference to smoke generators or her relocation following an earlier attack by Lancasters? You have precisely no idea what I know or don't know about the subject. I do, however, know that 'smoke generator’s' shouldn't have an apostrophe. Goodbye, little fellow.
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@bkjeong4302 All of this presupposes that Britain was Hitler's primary enemy, which wasn't the case.
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@mel.3687 The Germans might have called the Bismarcks 'he' but the British and Americans, with more and more powerful ships, always called them 'she.' Frankly, I don't much care what the Germans called them. You don't actually seem to understand what Lend Lease was. I will leave you to look that up as well. Do go away. The initial amusement you provided had degenerated into tedium.
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@mel.3687 Where did you get the Lindemann idea from? That was a decision well above his pay grade. The Kriegsmarine was the least nazified of the German armed forces, but because of Admiral Raeder Erich Raeder was a devout Christian, who retained Jewish, or half Jewish officers, within the navy. Commander Ascher, aboard Bismarck, was half Jewish, for example. Raeder also ordered the navy to use the traditional, rather than nazi, salute, and even kept chaplains on the larger ships. Actually, the process of withdrawal from Empire pre-dated WW2 by some years. Canada, New Zealand, & Australia, for example, had become self-governing democratic Dominions many years earlier. The whole point of Lend-Lease was that the items the US supplied did not need to be paid for until after the war.
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@ninodino444 Care to give any examples?
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The US Navy did have the advantage of watching from the sidelines for over two years, and even then in December 1941 had only two modern battleships and a serious shortage of smaller escort vessels.
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The FW 190 only entered service with the Luftwaffe in late 1941.
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It is always fascinating to read comments about the fantasy that was Plan Z. The idea was adopted in late January, 1939. By that time, the German Naval Ordnance department (on 31 December, 1938) had already issued a report, 'The Feasibility of the Z Plan,' which pointed out that requirements in materials and manpower were so great that the whole of German industry would need to be committed to it. In other words, no weapons production for the army, and no aircraft production for the Luftwaffe. At the time the plan appeared, the Kriegsmarine were still sorting out technical problems with the Scharnhorst class yet, apparently, Germany was going to build six 56000 ton battleships, ten 21000 ton battlecruisers, and four aircraft carriers, as well as large numbers of cruisers, destroyers, and U-boats, by 1947. As Hitler always viewed the Soviet Union as his primary enemy, does anyone really, seriously, consider that he would have regarded devoting Germany's entire industrial potential to building a large fleet as having any merit at all? Honestly, the very idea is utterly ludicrous.
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Bismarck's communication systems were above her armoured deck, which is why they were destroyed within around 20 minutes at the start of the action on 27 May. The KGVs had theirs below their main armour.
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@熊掌波清波 The bridge/forward superstructure, together with both forward turrets were destroyed very early in the action. Of course Bismarck was never going to survive, but I am not talking about radar (which, in Bismarck, wasn't working anyway) or optical rangefinders, but about the internal communications between departments within the ship. The senior survivor von Mullenheim-Rechberg, who was in the aft gunnery position, recorded in his book that communications with his superior, Schneider, in the main fire control position, was lost within 20 minutes, and that the gunnery plotting officer, Cardinal, contacted him shortly afterwards to say that he should take over the direction of the aft turrets, because contact with the main gunnery position had been lost. By 0930, Rechberg wrote, he knew little about what was going on within the ship. He had received no reports, nor had anyone asked him about his own situation. He writes that he used his telephone circuits to ring for information all round the ship, but only managed to get one answer, from a messenger in the damage control centre. From his account, it is clear that internal communications failed at an early stage. Bismarck's problems arose because of her outmoded, incremental, armour lay out, which, in effect, detonated incoming AP shells above the lower, second, belt, thus resulting in widespread fires and the destruction of internal cables. Similar things happened to other ships with this layout, such as Scharnhorst, Hiei, & Kirishima. The KGVs had the superior, all or nothing, armour, with all communications below it.
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Because the Fw190 was not around when the completion of Graf Zeppelin was being actively contemplated.
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And the life expectancy of such a ship in the Atlantic would be?
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Perhaps to give survivors a chance to escape should she ever have ventured into the Atlantic?
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Yes. JW51B. A force of two heavy cruisers and six destroyers tried to attack a convoys escorted by 5 destroyers. The destroyers successfully protected the convoy until a covering force of two light cruisers arrived. One German heavy cruiser was damaged, and a destroyer sunk, in exchange for one British destroyer and a minesweeper. As a result, Hitler decided to scrap his 'useless' heavy surface fleet and install their guns as shore batteries. Battle of the Barents Sea.
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As early as December, 1938, a senior marine architect in the Kriegsmarine's naval ordnance department published a report 'The Feasibility of the Z Plan' demonstrating the impossibility of the whole thing. Whoever produced the Plan seems to have assumed that the whole of German industry, in terms of resources, raw materials, and production capacity, would be devoted solely to warship production for around ten years. So, there would be no expansion of the army or air force, therefore no successful campaign in the west, no French bases from which to operate and, most significant of all where adolf was concerned, no possibility whatsoever of a campaign in the east. The whole thing, start to finish, was nothing more than fantasy.
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@mel.3687 Oh, so you are also a pedant as well. Tell me any occasion when Tirpitz was risked in combat with any allied warship. Of course she sailed from Germany to Norway, and then moved between hiding places. The point you seem unable to grasp is that Titpitz acted as a 'Fleet In Being,' and because of that the British found another means of dealing with her. I won't explain what a 'Fleet in Being' is. Perhaps you might look the term up?
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How did HMS Hermes have 'experience in ww1' when she only commissioned in 1924?
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It is rather difficult to sink a ship which never puts to sea.
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Very good. Unfortunately, to build such a navy, it would have been necessary to starve the army and air force of the materials and workers necessary to build them up to a level capable of successfully invading France. As a probable result, Italy remains neutral, the French navy remains active on the Allied side, and whatever ships the Germans do build remain trapped in the North Sea or, more precisely, the Jade estuary. You should read a report produced by the German Navy's Ordnance Department, entitled 'The Feasibility of the Z Plan' as this basically said that the whole idea was an impossibility, unless the whole of German industry was devoted solely to naval production. You seem, moreover, to view the Royal Navy in terms of big ships only. Instead of indulging in fanciful 'would haves' you might have done better to have actually found out what resources the Royal Navy had available to it in 1939. Ignore the capital ships, just start with the 64 cruisers, then add 193 destroyers, then total up the hundreds of smaller warships for yourself.
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The problem is German resources were limited. The more ships you build, the fewer assets you can give to the Luftwaffe and the army. When your true and ultimate enemy is the Soviet Union, ships really aren't much use.
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Actually, the most effective commerce raiders the Germans produced were merchant ships with concealed guns. Unlike ships such as the Deutschlands, which were immediately recognisable, such ships had the ability to fool allied observers into thinking that they were indeed innocents. After spending months of effort in intercepting one merchantman or another in distant waters, cruiser captains could, inevitably, become less than thorough, and either let a raider pass, or, in the case of Sydney, simply get too close. All in all, they were cheap to produce (armed with 6 inch guns from the old Schleswig-Holstein, or Schliesen), capable of carrying mines, and generally with crews mainly of ex-merchant navy men. Obviously, they weren't ever going to win the war at sea on their own, but they were far more cost-effective at tying up allied naval resources than 'regular' warships ever were.
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@KatyushaLauncher There was a book written many years ago, 'German Raiders of World War II ' by August Karl Muggenthaler, which is extremely interesting, and demonstrates what a damned nuisance they were in the early part of the war.
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Bismarck was crippled as a warship after 20 minutes on 27 May, 1941. Certainly, she took around 90 minutes to sink, but as a warship, she was quickly rendered helpless. Scharnhorst was overwhelmed by Duke of York, and Graf Spee couldn't cope with three small cruisers. Blucher was sunk by the Oskarsborg Fortress, using weapons which were over 40 years old in 1940. It is difficult to comment on the rest. Karlsruhe was scuttled after being crippled by a torpedo from HMSm Truant in 1940, Konigsberg was hit and damaged by Norwegian coastal batteries, before being finished off by dive bombers in 1940, Leipzig was damaged, in December, 1939, by a torpedo from HMSm Salmon, and never returned to front line service, and, again in 1940, 10 of 20 German destroyers were sunk by the RN at Narvik. Are you sure that German ships, at least in WW2, were 'well balanced & just work?'
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@swunt10 Bismarck was disabled by an aerial torpedo late on 26 May. By 'crippled' I was referring to the fact that her fighting ability was reduced almost to nothing within 20 minutes on the morning of 27 May. A battleship which is reduced to impotence so quickly is less impressive than you would have us believe. Are you aware of the weaknesses in her design? Outmoded incremental armour (which hadn't been used in British or American design for around 20 years) which resulted in widespread internal fires, just as it was subsequently to do aboard Scharnhorst, Hiei, & Kirishima, outmoded, low angle, secondary armament, and outmoded, twin turret, main armament. In short, an enlarged Baden, and not much more.
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@swunt10 So, All or Nothing Armour is 'Bullshit?' Clearly you are better informed than every naval designer for the last 100 years. By the way, simply quoting from Wikipedia doesn't impress anyone, especially when by so doing you merely suggest that you don't understand what you are quoting. Look up a proper book on the subject, and you will perhaps begin to grasp what 'All or Nothing' armour is, when compared to 'incremental.' You could start by reading Norman Friedman (US Battleships - An Illustrated Design History), followed by Willian Garzke & Robert Dulin (Battleships - United States Battleships in WW2). I have given you American sources, because I suspect that British ones, in your eyes, would probably be tainted. Failing that, read up on what happened to Hiei & Kirishima ( both 'incremental' ships) at Guadalcanal, compared to what happened to USS South Dakota, an 'all or nothing' ship. Indeed, Bismarck survived her battle against Hood & Prince of Wales, but in so doing sustained sufficient damage to force her to abandon her mission. Prince of Wales, by the way, withdraw because of the known problems with her quadruple turrets, but re-engaged later in the day once these had been repaired. Once Bismarck had lost her ability to escape, her design left her unable to resist Rodney's 16 inch shells, which reduced her to a defenceless wreck in around 20 minutes, as every book on the subject will confirm.
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