Comments by "" (@walterkronkitesleftshoe6684) on "Drachinifel"
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Bismarck's main armour belt extended 2.3 meters below and 2.4 meters above the waterline (As can be seen at 6:43). To intentionally & directly strike that long, narrow strake of armour, showing above the water's surface even from the range of sub 3000m that HMS Rodney closed to whilst making headway in a heavy stormy North Atlantic swell would be nigh on impossible. As the report clearly says "the very large number of hits on the main belt WERE MOSTLY IF NOT ALL FROM SECONDARY guns". A number of the major calibre hits that impacted that long narrow main armour belt more than likely ricochetted off the surface of the sea due to the relatively short range and flattened trajectories involved and lost a large part of their momentum as they did so, that is apart from the two penetrations which were probably the only two direct major calibre hits on the 320mm armour belt..
Gun data for Rodney's 16"/45 Mark I main guns shows their penetration ability as 14.4 inches of vertical armour at 15000 yards. She was firing a LOT closer than this for much of the engagement, so even taking into account her shells striking the main belt at a reasonable angle she would have very little problem with penetrating Bismarck's main belt of 320mm (12.6 inches).
The principle is the same as arguing a dart cannot penetrate the skin of a balloon from 2 miles away. To which the answer is "of course it can.... if it can manage to hit it".
P.S And don't even get me started about Bismarck's wiki page. I've lost count of the exchanges I've had with the page's "self appointed guardian" A.K.A Parsecboy, who polices the page using his jaded, biased agenda, and who when presented with corroborated evidence supporting facts which he doesn't like (such as admiralty reports from the UK national archives), or even correcting blatant errors or misrepresentations on the page, he as a "wiki approved editor" deletes any changes he doesn't like with impunity, and if you've really rubbed his nose in it, will also temporarily ban your IP address from editing wikipedia at all. Not that it "gets my goat"... HONESTLY !!!!
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@_ArsNova WTF were "the Royal Navy under "no stop" orders"? Both HMS Dorsetshire & HMS Maori were directly ordered to pick up survivors by Admiral Tovey. As for your cooment "the dire conditions of those that were rescued", I assume you mean after having floated traumatised for 90 minutes in the oil covered raging north Atlantic, and not the conditions they were kept in onboard the RN ships. Read ANY survviors account and witness the dignity and humanity that was afforded each and every sailor that was rescued, 3 hot meals a day, supplied with rum, sweets and cigarettes, the best medical treatment available for the injured and a full military funeral for the one German sailor who died the following day. If you've any complaints about the events, direct them at Eitel-Freidrich Kentrat, the commander of U-74 who was in the area at the time, and whose periscope it was that was spotted, and which brought the rescue operations to an early end.
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My father (Ldg/st KX 108902 Stanley Higgins) was a stoker onboard HMS Dorsetshire From June 1940 until her sinking in April 1942.
During the final Bismarck action on 27th May 1941, he was off watch from his stoker's station in the boiler rooms, and was at his action station in a damage control party. Part way through the action he was told by the party leader to go "up top" to see what was happening, and he witnessed the flaming, smoke shrouded wreck of Bismarck being pounded before its sinking.
After being stood down from action stations, all available hands were called to "man the sides" and help in the rescue of the Bismarck's survivors. he took part in the rescues, and during his assistance, one particular survivor called Friedrich Junghans, gave dad his "erkennungsmarke" or ID tag in gratitude. It is currently on display in the Merseyside maritime museum in Liverpool, UK.
11 months later on 5th April 1942, at the time of Dorsetshire's own sinking, he was again very luckily off-watch from the boiler rooms ("lucky" as no-one on duty there survived the sinking) and was again called to action stations, at this time he was a leader of a damage control party up near the Dorsetshire's bows adjacent to the ships "paint locker". Very shortly after the commencement of the Japanese air attack, all comms in the ship were lost, though it was all too apparent that Dorsetshire was receiving a heavy pounding, with the ship heeling over and quaking from the impact of the Japanese bombs and the many near misses.
During the chaos and din of the Japanese dive bombing attack, one concussion dislodged a length of heavy suction hose from a bracket on the compartment's bulkhead, the heavy, solid hose, known as an "elephant's foot", hit dad on the head, knocking him senseless for several seconds. On regaining his wits in the now blacked out darkness of the compartment, sensing that the ship was starting to list heavily, he ordered the party to get on the upper deck via a ladder leading to the "bosun's hatch" in the compartment roof. The first man up the ladder shouted that he couldn't unlatch the hatch "dogs". and dad used a crowbar to release the latches and the party crawled out into the burning sunlight on the rapidly inclining foredeck. One party member, a South African named David van Zyl, confided to dad that he couldn't swim and despite desperate pleas from dad for him to jump overboard, he tragically went down with the ship, the rest of the party all survived.
The two cruisers each had a complement of approx 650-700 men on board. After both were sunk, only one intact lifeboat remained afloat from the two ships, This was used to hold the many severely injured sailors while the less heavily wounded and healthy (including my dad), had to cling to assorted flotsam. The sinkings took place at around 2:00pm on a sunday afternoon, they floated through the first night, and right through the following Monday, suffering horrible burns under the tropical sun whilst being crusted in salt from the seawater, dad said the saving grace was the men slathered themselves in thick oil from the sunken ships fuel tanks which began to surface a couple of hours after the ships had gone down, this gave some protection and relief, but they all increasingly believed that in their exhausted state that they were to die during that second night. The British Eastern fleet commander was aware that the two ships were overdue and mercifully sent a light cruiser and 2 destroyers to make a sweep. But it was a Fairey Swordfish from Ceylon that spotted a reflection of the rays of the dying sun on a biscuit tin that had been tied to an oar and held upright being rotated by a man in the boat full of wounded. A message was sent from the aircraft and shortly before sunset, the 3 ships (HMS Emerald, Panther & Paladin) arrived on the scene and rescued 1120 sailors from the approximately 1400 men who were on this ships before their sinking, after having spent 33 hours clinging to wreckage.
He "Crossed the bar" in 2013 aged 93.
Great vid as usual from your channel, all the best.
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You seem to put a lot of stock in survivor's accounts of the final battle and sinking... I'm fully with you on that point. Lets look at some shall we?
From "Battleship Bismarck: A survivor's story" Written by Baron Burkhard von Mullenheim-Rechberg, Bismarck's senior ranking survivor.
Page 211 "Our list to port had increased a bit while firing was going on" followed by "Around 9:30am gas and smoke began to drift through our station" This means that prior to 9:30am Bismarck was already flooding, not something that happens to a healthy seaworthy ship, in other words she was already starting to sink.
Then from an interview conducted for the highly regarded weekly history journal "Purnell's history of the second world war" in the late 1960's with Gerhard Junack (who was Bismarck's only surviving engineering officer and the survivor who supposedly enacted the "scuttle order"). He stated that...
"Somewhere about 1015 hours, I received an order over the telephone from the Chief Engineer (Korvettenkapitän (Ing.) Walter Lehmann) to 'Prepare the ship for sinking.' That was the last order I received on the Bismarck. Soon after that, all transmission of orders collapsed."
Heading back to the account of Mullenheim-Rechberg, on Page 212 he states that (before 10:00am) "I was using all the telephone circuits and calling all over the place in an effort to find out as much as possible about the condition of the ship. I got only one answer. I reached the messenger in the damage control centre and asked "who has and where is the command of the ship? Are there new orders in effect?".... The man said he was in a great hurry. He told me that everyone had abandoned the damage control centre, adding that he was the last one in the room and had to get out... then he hung up".
This vain seach for contact & information over the Bismarck's internal comms happened BEFORE 10:00am which throws some mild doubt on Junack's testimony where he says he was contacted by the chief engineer who supposedly gave him the "scuttle order" over the phone at 10:15am... Hmmmmm.
If taken at face value these survivor testimonies show that there was at least a 45 minute gap between Bismarck starting to sink and the first mention of a "scuttle order" being given. Even if Bismarck's crew had done nothing, Bismarck was going to sink, and if the beaten crew want to help the RN, then all the better... But face it, Bismarck's crew weren't going to scuttle a perfectly seaworthy ship in the middle of the storm tossed North Atlantic of their own free will, it was only for the fact that the RN had already dismantled Bismarck and initiated the sinking process. In other words in every sense the sinking of Bismarck was the result of actions dictated by the Royal Navy.
Anything else is just hurt German pride, bolstered by modern day delusional wehraboos. Germany was well known for trying to hide its national humiliations, such as when they scuttled their "grand fleet" at the end of WW1, like illogically saying "We lost.. but you didn't win", or a pathetic "You didn't beat us because we killed ourselves before you killed us" sort of idiocy.
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@richardbushey2666 First hit in Denmark Strait engagement? PoW on Bismarck. Bismarck achieved 6 hits from 98 380mm rounds expended... not bad, but made to look a lot better by the single "million to one" hit on Hood.
Lütjens had the sense not to chase PoW after Hood's demise, the reason being the German B-dienst team both on board and ashore had given him absolutely ZERO warning of the approach of two of the Royal Navy's largest capital ships, and he righly suspected that more were on their way from the direction of Scapa Flow. Not that he could have chased PoW down, with his speed reduced, down by the bow & with the unrepaired damage in his bow threatening to collapse his forward bulkheads, on top of his suddenly dire fuel situation he had no choice but to continue south and make for France, much to the annoyance of all the "armchair admiral" wehraboos on these threads.
Near stationary? Go check out a map for the final battle... and contrary to popular belief, she wasn't "steaming in circles" either. Aww poor Bismarck's crew had no sleep.... Rodney and KGV were in position to engage Bismarck on the late evening of the 26th May but decided to let Vian engage her through the night.... like a cat toying with its prey, leaving the RN "big hitters" rested and refreshed & ready to engage at first light.... fantastic planning by Jack Tovey in my book, not all battles are won with raw firepower (although they had that too). The only thing where Bismarck excelled was in her "running away power". As soon as she lost that and was engaged by contemporary British warships, she was shown for the mediocre 1930s waste of resources she really was.
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Its difficult to accept the charge that British documentaries in particular are biased !!! We are bottom of the "junior league" compared to the US "Major league champions". They inflict themselves on EVERY aspect of history even when they had little or nothing to do with it. You can see their intent with the US film industry's absolute OBSESSION with putting the yanks into every aspect of history (U-571 anyone?). Just yesterday I watched a documentary on British TV about "operation Dynamo" (The Dunkirk Evacuation) and the primary "talking head" throughout the programme was a US lieutenant colonel in full regalia, apparently the incongruity of a bemedalled senior US officer lecturing on the quintessentially European events of May/June 1940 was totally lost on the doc producers. Yes the man was probably a learned expert of WW2 military matters from West Point or wherever, but the bare faced crass US jingoism of the setup was incredbile !!! That's just one very recent example, but modern media is RIFE with such overbearing US inflection on world history.
Another example is the "battle of Britain". If you read a large amount (but thankfully not all) of US comment here on YT, the "BoB" was "won by the US", solely on the basis that the British bought supplies from the US, but strangely you never hear the counterpart cry of "Romania & the USSR conquered most of mainland Europe in 1939-41", which by using the rationale of US commenters that "we supplied you with fuel / materials" is exactly what Romania and the USSR did whilst using nazi Germany as their proxy.
I can though fully concur with your judgement regarding Thames TV's "The World at War", which is rightfully often described as "landmark TV", even so current repeats of "TWAW" are now savagely edited to make space for more advertising BS, its akin to plastering a landmark such as the Taj Mahal with "Tesla" "Amazon" and "Apple" adverts. Thankfully I have my own unedited, and uninterrupted copies of the entire series.
As you suggest, as the war generation leave our midst world history has (as it always has) been hijacked by those with their own contemporary agendas to push, with the consequence that almost nothing in the last 20 years can hold a candle to the best of pre 2000s documentaries.
Consider that what you now believe to be "British bias" is a reactionary counter balance to the increasing growth in juvenile wehraboo-ism as well as the globalist inspired "anti-Brit" sentiment now pushed in the general MSM, as a result of our rejection of their EUSSR branch of global hegemony, which seeks to "re-interpret" and undermine factual material and subvert the actualité of historical events,
All the best though Vincent.
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And yet here are you unbidden, STILL trying to suggest that the RN didn't sink Bismarck... Why are YOU so obsessed?
IF any scuttling actually took place then all that was scuttled was a 51000 ton mountain of sinking, flaming scrap metal. All guns silenced, her superstructure devastated, her main armour belt broken and penetrated in several places, her command staff physically obliterated, internally aflame from end to end, her stern and port gunwales already underwater, a thousand of her crew dead, and further hundreds of her crew already in the water behind her.... All that any scuttling did was to sink her a few minutes earlier than was already happening.
In the world of boxing the crew's scuttling efforts are what is known as "throwing in the towel", submission of a boxer AFTER he has been punched senseless by a more skillful & powerful opponent, and only a deluded child would say, "the victor didn't win because his opponent killed himself before he lost.", when the truth is the loser had his arse ripped off by the victor and handed back to him on a plate.
Imagine the ignominy of being forced to commit suicide by your opponent?
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"She might not have been sinking at the time"? Nonsense.
Lets look at some survivor testimonies (people who actually witnessed the events of Bismarck's sinking first hand), and not some winsome fantasy shall we?
From "Battleship Bismarck: A survivor's story" Written by Baron Burkhard von Mullenheim-Rechberg, Bismarck's senior ranking survivor.
Page 211 "Our list to port had increased a bit while firing was going on" followed by "Around 9:30am gas and smoke began to drift through our station" This means that prior to 9:30am Bismarck was already flooding, not something that happens to a healthy seaworthy ship, in other words she was already starting to sink.
Then from an interview conducted for the highly regarded weekly history journal "Purnell's history of the second world war" in the late 1960's with Gerhard Junack (who was Bismarck's only surviving engineering officer and the survivor who supposedly enacted the "scuttle order"). He stated that...
"Somewhere about 1015 hours, I received an order over the telephone from the Chief Engineer (Korvettenkapitän (Ing.) Walter Lehmann) to 'Prepare the ship for sinking.' That was the last order I received on the Bismarck. Soon after that, all transmission of orders collapsed."
Heading back to the account of Mullenheim-Rechberg, on Page 212 he states that (before 10:00am) "I was using all the telephone circuits and calling all over the place in an effort to find out as much as possible about the condition of the ship. I got only one answer. I reached the messenger in the damage control centre and asked "who has and where is the command of the ship? Are there new orders in effect?".... The man said he was in a great hurry. He told me that everyone had abandoned the damage control centre, adding that he was the last one in the room and had to get out... then he hung up".
This vain search for contact & information over the Bismarck's internal comms happened BEFORE 10:00am which throws some mild doubt on Junack's testimony where he says he was contacted by the chief engineer who supposedly gave him the "scuttle order" over the phone at 10:15am... Hmmmmm.
If taken at face value these survivor testimonies show that there was at least a 45 minute gap between Bismarck starting to sink and the first mention of a "scuttle order" being given. Even if Bismarck's crew had done nothing, Bismarck was going to sink, and if the beaten crew want to help the RN, then all the better... But face it, Bismarck's crew weren't going to scuttle a perfectly seaworthy ship in the middle of the storm tossed North Atlantic of their own free will, it was only for the fact that the RN had already dismantled Bismarck and initiated the sinking process. In other words in every sense the sinking of Bismarck was the result of actions dictated by the Royal Navy.
Anything else is just hurt German pride, bolstered by modern day delusional wehraboos. Germany was well known for trying to hide its national humiliations, such as when they scuttled their "grand fleet" at the end of WW1, like illogically saying "We lost.. but you didn't win", or a pathetic "You didn't beat us because we killed ourselves first" sort of idiocy.
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@WorshipinIdols I've only just spotted your first reply.
The "ALL" of the "all or nothing" armour scheme refers to the "box" that covers the machinery spaces, magazines, shell handling, barbettes and turrets, and the "NOTHING" refers to the rest of the ship. Its pretty self explanatory really. Compare a diagram of the armour distribution on KGV and Nelson classes to that of the German ships. you'll notice that apart from the armoured "box" of the citadel (and one or two minor localised areas on their superstructure) the British battleships have virtually NO thinner armoured areas, as opposed to the German ships using the outdated "incremental" armour scheme, where multiple decks and vertical surfaces have armour of between 1 and 4 inches of armour just ripe enough to activate the fuses of incoming shells whilst not being proof to those same shells, as well as sizeable chunks of much heavier armour dotted around her superstructure.
The hit on PoW's bridge as the photos you have no doubt already viewed will attest (they'll be there with the photos of PoW's perforated rear funnel) CLEARLY show the torn splinter plating on BOTH sides of the "flying" bridge and NOT the small area of 4 inch armour you suggest that actually faced the sides of the armoured conning tower 1 deck below.
You're ALMOST correct in saying that the main armoured belt of the KGVs covered the area between the front of the A turret barbette and the rearmost point of the Y turret barbette in the same manner as Bismarck, but like Bismarck it did actually extend BEYOND those points with both fore & aft lower belt extensions, as well as having much heavier horizontal deck armour both fore and aft of the main turrets than Bismarck.
I thought that we'd established that the idea of picking specific areas of a ship to target from 9 miles away was very much in the realm of "fantasy land", as the target you're aiming for is simply "the ship", with the precise point of impact being in the lap of the gods. Your erroneous "one bullseye is a lucky hit, 2 bullseye’s is skill and quality"s is once again drifting into the area of "nazi fanboism". You do realise that buying 2 lottery tickets does not halve the odds of winning, it merely gives you two chances at exactly the SAME outlandish odds that one ticket gives you. in the same manner two lucky shots are exactly that... two lucky shots. You cannot use a blunderbus of 8 x 15in shells to "snipe a bullseye" from 9 miles away.
I'm glad you've given a fair appraisal of Bismarck's design, I'd equally like to state that I am NOT ignorantly attempting to diminish the quality of the German gunnery at Denmark Strait, but merely hoping to "keep it real".
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@WorshipinIdols So now you've changed your original assertion from "Bismarck's hit wasn't luck but skill", to "everyone has a degree of luck". Thats fine by me. Of course the specific point of impact of ANY shell at longer ranges is affected by luck. The skill in long range naval gunnery is simply getting the shells within a couple of hundred feet of your intended target, the rest is providence.
As for Bismarck "scoring hits with every salvo" that means that Bismarck must've only fired 3 salvoes at PoW, as that is the number of hits she achieved, when the truth is that there were plenty of salvoes that scored no hits (which is not to mock German gunnery, its just the nature of the game ), and as we agree none of the three hits detonated as intended, due to the design of PoW's armour scheme.
Seems your entrallment with the German ships knows no bounds, attributing torpedoes to Bismarck (she had none fitted) and Prinz Eugen Who at no point during the Denmark Strait engagement was anywhere near in range to use her G7a TI steam torpedos even at their lowest speed setting.
In what way do you consider that the RN "lost the battle"? Because of the loss of the Hood? What about the fact that Hood and PoW were tasked with preventing the German ships from breaking out into the Atlantic, and as a result of the action "operation Rhineübung" was stopped in its tracks and Bismarck then had to futilely run for its life back to France? Job done.
Its the same reason that the RN won the battle of Jutland. German high seas fleet sets out to ambush the Home fleet with a view to breaking the RN North sea blockade, the RN suffers heavier losses BUT the blockade remains intact and the German fleet skulks back to port never to show its face again (except when it was surrendering to the RN at Scapa Flow).
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No there was a HUGE amount of luck involved in Bismarck's hit on Hood's magazine.
A full salvo of main gun fire from a battleship is analogous to a scatter of lead shot from a shotgun. During the battle of Denmark Strait, the Bismarck aimed at Hood from 8-9 nautical miles away. At that range the 38 cm SK C/34 (Bismarck's main armament) had a CEP (circular error probability - effectively the radius of a circle within which 50% of its shots would fall) of 100m. That means that if 8 of Bismarck's 15in guns fired at a single point 8-9 nm away, 4 of her shells would be expected to land (with completely random distribution) within an ellipse (think of it as a stretched circle, due to the angle of fall of the shells) measuring approximately 200m (660ft) wide, (or to put it another way 76% of HMS Hood's 860ft length), by more than two thousand feet long. The other 4 shots would land even further away from the aiming point. That being the case, how can an individual shell be aimed specifically at a tiny part of HMS Hood's structure, namely the 4in HA magazine, that its believed triggered off Hood's detonation? I'll give you a hint, there's a little clue in my paragraph above....where it says "completely random distribution".
A simplified analogy is that if you prop a dartboard up 50 yards away and can consistently knock it over with a shotgun at that range then that is pretty good shooting, just as Bismarck / PE achieved during the Denmark Strait encounter.
Now you can "knock the dartboard over" all day long with the shotgun and STILL NOT hit the bullseye (magazine) with an individual pellet. As opposed to being a skillful shot by knocking over the dartboard, whether you hit the bullseye with an individual pellet is complete luck.
The idea of HMS PoW not being more heavily damaged because of the failure of the German fuses, was less to do with luck and much more to do with the KGV class's "all or nothing" armour scheme. PoW was hit by a total of seven German shells during the battle of Denmarck Strait and not ONE of them detonated as designed. This is because in the "all or nothing" system of armouring only the most vital "citadel" is heavily armoured, the rest of the ship's superstructure being comprised of standard naval "splinter" plating. This meant that a shell hitting non vital areas of the ship, instead of having their fuse activated by the shock of impacting on a substantial piece of armour instead passed through without detonating (or only partially detonating or with a delayed detonation) menaing that far less damage was inflicted on the ship.
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@PhilipLeitch I don't demonstrate my point? Have you demonstrated YOUR point? I've provided FIRST hand accounts of it happening, but you choose to ignore it. You're ANOTHER self appointed "expert" making ridiculous blanket statements to make you sound authoratative, but failing miserably.
When does a sailor bobbing momentarily under the water have to hold his lungs to bursting point as described in the example I provided you, by Ted Briggs?
You even display your lack of understanding, by stating a case, that of Titanic (in which you make the seemingly groundless assumption that none of the 1512 deaths were caused by drowning by suction, can you direct me to where that is stated by a reputable source?), and even IF what you state was true then you baselessly extrapolate out from that to conclude that it somehow proves that suction NEVER happens, whereas I quite correctly state that while it may not happen in every situation, that it can and does happen when all of the myriad factors & forces in a complex dynamic system, i.e a large sinking ship, create the right conditions for it to happen.
Its the same as concluding that inspite of all the lightning strikes I've witnessed in my life, that because I've NEVER seen or know of anyone who has been struck by lightning, that proves that all the cases where people say they've been struck can be safely discounted as hearsay.
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@simonpitt8145 For some reason YT did not notify me of your reply 5 months ago, I've only spotted it now due to a notification of Geoff's comment above.
1. By "easy" I assume you mean the million to one golden shot? Hood had the same armour protection as a Queen Elizabeth battleship such as HMS Warspite that had survived everything the Kaiser's navy could throw at her when during WW1 at Jutland her steering motors overheated and she circled alone twice in front of the entire German battle fleet, and then went on into WW2 surviving encounters with Italian battleships and nazi glider bombs. The effort required to bring Bismack to task was as much governed by the operational / geographical situation, as it was down to the combat effectiveness of Bismarck. Consider how earlier in the year Scharnhorst & Gneisenau had roamed the North Atlantic during "Operation Berlin" for weeks without being brought to combat. it's easy from the comfort of an armchair to underestimate the effort required to find a fast ship at sea that doesn't want to be found.
2. Refer to my response to Geoff Barney above.
3. "Half the RN" you say? The ships involved in the search for Bismarck represented less than 20% of the RN establishment, and as I say above they were required to corral a fast battleship in the vastness of the 41 million square mile North Atlantic in the era before satelittes, GPS, advanced radar and comprehensive long range aircraft coverage were "a thing". Once Bismarck had been located and slowed down, she was rapidly dismantled in short order by two better armed and armoured RN battleships. Also I'll freely correct my "full speed" comment to the more factually correct "as fast as her damaged hull and reduced fuel bunkerage would allow".
4. We both know that a single Japanese torpedo hit the support strut of PoW's outer port propellor shaft which then enabled the unsupported propellor shaft to destroy the water integrity of over 40% of her hull and bring down her main electrical systems. If you read some more about the actual events of that day you'll see that the Japanese aircrew were so impressed by the handling of the 2 doomed ships in an insurmountable situation that their commander overflew the scene the following day to drop a wreath in their honour. No operational battleship on earth in the same (ridiculous) situation at that time (Dec 1941) would have performed any better.
5. I fully understand the various reasons for Bismarck's poor performance on 27th May (apart from the usual uninformed parrotted "she was sailing round in circles" nonsense) including her being harangued all night by the 5th destroyer flotilla to break down her crew, an effective tactical decision made by Admiral Tovey, but when you say "a million to one lucky shot" to her rudders, as Gary Player once said "the more I practice the luckier I get", and the FAA practiced quite a lot seeing as they also put a torpedo into the rudders of Vittorio Veneto at the battle of Cape Matapan, (and indeed as the equally skillful Japanese torpedo bomber pilots did to PoW at Singapore) The rudders of a ship were the hard to hit but "destination of choice" for an aerial torpedo seeing as 75% of the rest of the hull was protected by elaborate torpedo defence systems. Also please don't view my critique of Bismarck purely as trying to diminish her combat worthiness, but as a balance to the gushing pre-pubescent nonsense spouted by legions of impressionable wehraboo children in ALL Bismarck comment sections.
6. Agreed that the choice of unreliable magnetic detonators was questionable in the first place, (As I'm sure you know ALL navies at the time were having their own problems with the relatively new technology of influence fuses), but if you're talking luck, then if Bismarck's "lucky strike" on Hood had not likely impacted her 4in HA magazine and set off the domino effect, then she would have completed her turn to port, and then engaged in a bloody, close in "knife fight" that would have seen both of them crippled or sunk, with the result that Bismarck would not have got as far as she did.
All the best Simon.
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Its life Jim, but not as we know it.
IF any scuttling actually took place then all that was scuttled was a 51000 ton mountain of sinking, flaming scrap metal. All guns silenced, her superstructure devastated, her main armour belt broken and penetrated in several places, her command staff physically obliterated, internally aflame from end to end, her stern and port gunwales already underwater, a thousand of her crew dead, and further hundreds of her crew already in the water behind her.... All that any scuttling did was to sink her a few minutes earlier than was already happening.
In the world of boxing the crew's scuttling efforts are what is known as "throwing in the towel", submission of a boxer AFTER he has been punched senseless by a more skillful & powerful opponent, and only a deluded child would say, "the victor didn't win because his opponent killed himself before he lost.", when the truth is the loser had his arse ripped off by the victor and handed back to him on a plate.
Imagine the ignominy of being forced to commit suicide by your opponent?
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"Choosing such an idiot for the position", You seem to be forgetting that 3 months eariler Lütjens had commanded "operation Berlin", where he took the Kriegsmarine's "twins" into the Atlantic, sinking / capturing 22 allied merchant ships, and successfully evading the RN's efforts to engage.
As for Dorsetshire's torpedoes, listen to what one of the world's most experienced and knowledgeable marine forensic experts, Bill Jurens, thinks about the matter. https://youtu.be/9xX8XGMMXhE?t=3887
I'm no wehraboo apologist, but the failure was FAR from solely caused by Lütjens but mainly by the Kriegsmarine top brass ordering Rhineübung to take place inspite of it being under supported against a FAR stronger enemy, at a time when the German surface fleet was already losing the technology & resources battle. Lütjens suspected that was the case, but was duty bound to follow his orders.
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Thats one hot crock of BS. Luckily for the US the UK SAVED your self serving asses from being isolated and sandwiched between a nazi dominated Europe and a Japanese dominated Asia.
As for Bismarck she was spit roasted and tag teamed by two superior British battleships. IF any scuttling actually took place then all that was scuttled was a 51000 ton mountain of sinking, flaming scrap metal. All guns silenced, her superstructure devastated, her main armour belt broken and penetrated in several places, her command staff physically obliterated, internally aflame from end to end, her stern and port gunwales already underwater, a thousand of her crew dead, and further hundreds of her crew already in the water behind her.... All that any scuttling did was to sink her a few minutes earlier than was already happening.
In the world of boxing the crew's scuttling efforts are what is known as "throwing in the towel", submission of a boxer AFTER he has been punched senseless by a more skillful & powerful opponent, and only a deluded child would say, "the victor didn't win because his opponent killed himself before he lost.", when the truth is the loser had his arse ripped off by the victor and handed back to him on a plate.
Imagine the ignominy of being forced to commit suicide by your opponent?
P.S Have they stopped teaching punctuation to the rednecks nowadays?
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Lets look at some survivor testimonies (people who actually witnessed the events of Bismarck's sinking first hand), and not some unresearched, modern day nonsense written by the "hard of thinking" shall we?
From "Battleship Bismarck: A survivor's story" Written by Baron Burkhard von Mullenheim-Rechberg, Bismarck's senior ranking survivor.
Page 211 "Our list to port had increased a bit while firing was going on" followed by "Around 9:30am gas and smoke began to drift through our station" This means that prior to 9:30am Bismarck was already flooding, not something that happens to a healthy seaworthy ship, in other words she was already starting to sink.
Then from an interview conducted for the highly regarded weekly history journal "Purnell's history of the second world war" in the late 1960's with Gerhard Junack (who was Bismarck's only surviving engineering officer and the survivor who supposedly enacted the "scuttle order"). He stated that...
"Somewhere about 1015 hours, I received an order over the telephone from the Chief Engineer (Korvettenkapitän (Ing.) Walter Lehmann) to 'Prepare the ship for sinking.' That was the last order I received on the Bismarck. Soon after that, all transmission of orders collapsed."
Heading back to the account of Mullenheim-Rechberg, on Page 212 he states that (before 10:00am) "I was using all the telephone circuits and calling all over the place in an effort to find out as much as possible about the condition of the ship. I got only one answer. I reached the messenger in the damage control centre and asked "who has and where is the command of the ship? Are there new orders in effect?".... The man said he was in a great hurry. He told me that everyone had abandoned the damage control centre, adding that he was the last one in the room and had to get out... then he hung up".
This vain search for contact & information over the Bismarck's internal comms happened BEFORE 10:00am which throws some mild doubt on Junack's testimony where he says he was contacted by the chief engineer who supposedly gave him the "scuttle order" over the phone at 10:15am... Hmmmmm.
If taken at face value these survivor testimonies show that there was at least a 45 minute gap between Bismarck starting to sink and the first mention of a "scuttle order" being given. Even if Bismarck's crew had done nothing, Bismarck was going to sink, and if the beaten crew want to help the RN, then all the better... But face it, Bismarck's crew weren't going to scuttle a perfectly seaworthy ship in the middle of the storm tossed North Atlantic of their own free will, it was only for the fact that the RN had already dismantled Bismarck and initiated the sinking process. In other words in every sense the sinking of Bismarck was the result of actions dictated by the Royal Navy.
Anything else is just hurt German pride, bolstered by modern day delusional wehraboos. Germany was well known for trying to hide its national humiliations, such as when they scuttled their "grand fleet" at the end of WW1, like illogically saying "We lost.. but you didn't win", or a pathetic "You didn't beat us because we killed ourselves first" sort of idiocy.
P.S "unmatched and unparalleled" Hahahah, comedy gold.
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@wesleyjarboe9571 Likening HMS Hood to the "Invincible" and "indefatigable" class battlecruisers that took part in Jutland is akin to suggesting a Keonigsegg Gemera is the same as a Honda S2000. Yes, both are considered "super cars" but their handling & performance and specifications are leagues apart.
I realise Arizona was hit by more than 1 bomb, but it had shrugged off the others, just as Hood had shrugged of a number of previous hits in Denmark Strait, but like Hood its sinking was not attributable to progressive damage from multiple hits, but directly as the result of catastrophic damage from one single hit on Arizona's forward magazine.
I illustrate the "million to one" shot with the following explanation & analogy of long range naval gunnery.
A full salvo of main gun fire from a battleship is analogous to a scatter of lead shot from a shotgun. During the battle of Denmark Strait, the Bismarck aimed at Hood from 8-9 nautical miles (Approx 17-18,000 yards) away. The German's own naval gunnery data tables provided by their AVKS ("Artillerie Versuchs Kommando für Schiff" or naval artillery evaluation command) show that at that range of 18000 yards the 38 cm SK C/34 (Bismarck's main armament) had a CEP (circular error probability - effectively the RADIUS of a circle within which 50% of its shots would be expected to fall) of 100m. That means that if 8 of Bismarck's 15in guns fired at a single point 8-9 nm away, 4 of her shells would be expected to land (with completely random distribution) within an ellipse (think of it as a stretched circle, due to the angle of fall of the shells) measuring approximately 200m (660ft) wide, (or to put it another way 76% of HMS Hood's 860ft length), by more than two thousand feet long. The other 4 shots would probably land even FURTHER away from the aiming point. That being the case, how can an individual shell be aimed specifically at a tiny part of HMS Hood's structure, namely the 4in HA magazine, that its believed triggered off the "domino effect" of Hood's detonation? I'll give you a hint, there's a little clue in my paragraph above....where it says "completely random distribution".
A simplified analogy is that if you prop a dartboard up 50 yards away and can consistently knock it over with a shotgun at that range then that is pretty good shooting, just as Bismarck / PE achieved during the Denmark Strait encounter.
Now you can "knock the dartboard over" with the shotgun all day long and STILL NOT hit the bullseye (magazine) with an individual pellet. As opposed to being a skillful shot by knocking over the dartboard, whether you hit the bullseye with an individual pellet is complete "million to one" luck.
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@arunta5 Are you aware that Hood as originally conceived was an improvement on the earlier Lion, Indefatigable & Tiger class battlecruisers that you allude to in your OP, but as a result of the events at Jutland in 1916 she was FURTHER redesigned while still being constructed to include an extra 5000 tons of armour, which resulted in her armour levels being on a par with contemporary WW1 battleships, while STILL being 7-8 knots faster?
The earlier battlecruisers had belt thicknesses of 4 - 6in and decks in the region of 1 - 2 in. Hood sported an angled belt of 12in (effectively 13 inches due to the angling) and a main 3 inch armoured deck which was sufficiently thick to protect her from gunnery of the WW1 period, but due to improvements in range finding and gun technology throughout the 1920s and 30s, longer range gunnery with steeper plunging fire angles at those longer ranges meant that Hood's deck armour was rendered less and less effective. She did receive a number of refits during her 20 year career, but due to the demans placed on her during the interwar years, she was the last of the battlecruisers to receive a major redesign of her armour, which had been scheduled to tke place in 1942, had not WW2 & Bismarck intervened.
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"No French official was privy to the British plans"
Below is the vebatim British ultimatum delivered to Adm Bruno-Marcel Gentoul at Mers-El-Kebir on the 3rd July 1940
"It is impossible for us, your comrades up to now, to allow your fine ships to fall into the power of the German or Italian enemy. We are determined to fight on until the end, and if we win, as we think we shall, we shall never forget that France was our Ally, that our interests are the same as hers, and that our common enemy is Germany. Should we conquer, we solemnly declare that we shall restore the greatness and territory of France. For this purpose, we must make sure that the best ships of the French Navy are not used against us by the common foe. In these circumstances, His Majesty’s Government have instructed me to demand that the French Fleet now at Mers-el-Kébir and Oran shall act in accordance with one of the following alternatives:
(a) Sail with us and continue the fight until victory against the Germans and Italians.
(b) Sail with reduced crews under our control to a British port. The reduced crews would be repatriated at the earliest moment. If either of these courses is adopted by you, we will restore your ships to France at the conclusion of the war or pay full compensation, if they are damaged meanwhile.
(c) Alternatively, if you feel bound to stipulate that your ships should not be used against the Germans or Italians unless these break the Armistice, then sail them with us with reduced crews, to some French port in the West Indies—Martinique for instance—where they can be demilitarised to our satisfaction, or perhaps be entrusted to the United States and remain safe until the end of the war, the crews being repatriated.
If you refuse these fair offers, I must, with profound regret, require you to sink your ships within 6 hours.
Finally, failing the above I have orders of His Majesty's Government to use whatever force may be necessary to prevent your ships us from falling into German or Italian hands."
Even I can follow the clearly laid out options available in the ultimatum.... surely a French Admiral (Even a pompous, inadequate one such as Gensoul) would if in any doubt immediately consult his superior (Darlan) with the FULL text of the ultimatum he's been handed.
Instead the idiot Gensoul, promoted above his ability, pissed about at a CRUCIAL point in European history and caused the death of 1300 French sailors.
He was SO ashamed and embarrased about his handling of the whole episode that he never wrote a postwar account of it, OR took part in any interviews regarding the tragedy, right up to his death in 1970.
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@PhilipLeitch Wouldn't it be logical Philip that those Titanic passengers who survived to give evidence were obivously not subject to localised down currents, what about the +1500 dead Titanic passengers? While obviously a large number of them died due to hypothermia, who knows how many died due to other causes?
Why did you ignore Ted Briggs' account of his leaving the wreck of the Hood? Actually spoken by him? How do you explain that? Was the man a liar?
Look, Philip, the crux of the matter is you're making a unsubstantiated blanket statement that it can NEVER happen, as in you have utterly no conclusive evidence. I am saying that while it will not happen in every situation, there are enough first hand accounts of the phenomena to show that it might very well happen.
I'll happily take the word of people who've demonstrably experienced the phenomena over self appointed "online experts", with no scientific background, but only too eager to jump on any "bandwagon meme" that they come across while surfing. You don't believe the world is flat as well do you?
We both know I'm right, be a man and say, "yes, your point is correct".
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@dovetonsturdee7033 I was aware of US officers being onboard, but not of his convening of a "war council", but that still reinforces my impression of Capt Dalrymple-Hamilton. A highly regarded RN captain of a high profile capital ship in a desperate situation being cool headed & not too haughty to be able to convene a "council of juniors" and take account of their advice, while he alone, as a captain usually does carried, the sole responsibility.
My perception of Lancelot Holland is not quite so favourable.... I realise he and Hood were on the receiving end of extremely bad luck, but in all my reading of the accounts of the Bismarck saga, I've formed a vague impression that he was more autocratic, with possibly a hint of arrogance? Maybe I'm wrong, I know you'll have much more information to fill out my understanding of the man.
I'd be more than happy to hear your own appraisal of Holland, Doveton.
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@bookaufman9643 Worry not Boo, the reply above took me 2 minutes, no trouble at all.
Dont forget Boo, Naval gunnery is not the same as firing a rifle at a target. Rifle shooting at "normal" ranges means that the bullet trajectory is close to flat, and the bullet may have a flight time of a couple of seconds or so, therefore with correctly set sights and fair conditions reasonably good accuracy is a matter of the shooter's individual skill. Naval gunnery at 12 miles distance means shells being fired with an arcing trajectory with the time between the moment of firing and impact of the shell being 30 - 40 seconds or more. In that time both ships may have moved hundreds of meters (Hood moving at 29 knots would cover nearly 600m in 40 seconds), changed course, the wind may have strengthened or weakened and so on. A ship's fire control system has to take its range estimate from its rangefinders, then factor in a large number of variables (including the obvious ones mentioned above, but also many others less obvious) and then the spotters have to observe the fall of shot (30-40 seconds or more later) and then pass on corrective information to the fire control team, who then "rinse and repeat" the above process until hits are observed. This is why I said that Hood had effectively wasted a good number of salvoes directing her fire onto Prinz Eugen, before she realised her mistake and had to start again on Bismarck. It must be remembered that the first 4 salvoes from Bismarck also missed completely, as they were also ranging the British ships, but that said to land hits with her 5th salvo was excellent shooting (Though the inexperienced crew of Prince of Wales landed the first hit in the encounter with their 6th salvo hitting Bismarck).
HMS Hood (and Royal Navy warships in general) had what might be considered as "last gen" coincidence rangefinding equipment when compared to Bismarck / PE with their stereoscopic rangefinding equipment, though Hood & PoW did also have working gunnery radar fitted.
If you'd like a "crash course" in naval rangefinding and fire control theory and practice, then another of Drachinifel's vids here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbXyAzGtIX8 will give you a far better understanding of the problems faced by naval gunners than most people watching YT naval vids.
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Talk about COMPLETE nonsense !!!
You want evidence? I got Evidence !!! Where better to look than "the survivors" whose words you hold so dearly. Lets look at the testimonies of people who actually witnessed the events of Bismarck's sinking first hand, and not some unresearched, modern day revisionist nonsense written for those who know no better. The survivor's statements below are all with regard to Bismarck's final battle on the morning of 27th May 1941.
From "Battleship Bismarck: A survivor's story" Written by Baron Burkhard von Mullenheim-Rechberg, Bismarck's fourth gunnery officer, and her senior ranking survivor.
Page 211 "Our list to port had increased a bit while firing was going on" followed by "Around 9:30am gas and smoke began to drift through our station" This means that prior to 9:30am Bismarck was already flooding, not something that happens to a healthy seaworthy ship, in other words she was already starting to sink.
Then from an interview conducted for the highly regarded weekly history journal "Purnell's history of the second world war" in the late 1960's with Gerhard Junack (who was Bismarck's only surviving engineering officer and the survivor who SUPPOSEDLY enacted the "scuttle order"). He stated that...
"Somewhere about 1015 hours, I received an order over the telephone from the Chief Engineer (Korvettenkapitän (Ing.) Walter Lehmann) to 'Prepare the ship for sinking.' That was the last order I received on the Bismarck. Soon after that, all transmission of orders collapsed."
Heading back to the account of Mullenheim-Rechberg, on Page 212 he states that (before 10:00am) "I was using all the telephone circuits and calling all over the place in an effort to find out as much as possible about the condition of the ship. I got only one answer. I reached the messenger in the damage control centre and asked "who has and where is the command of the ship? Are there new orders in effect?".... The man said he was in a great hurry. He told me that everyone had abandoned the damage control centre, adding that he was the last one in the room and had to get out... then he hung up".
This vain search for contact & information over the Bismarck's internal comms happened BEFORE 10:00am which throws some mild doubt on Junack's testimony where he says he was contacted by the chief engineer who supposedly gave him the "scuttle order" over the phone at 10:15am... Hmmmmm.
If taken at face value these survivor testimonies show that there was at least a 45 minute gap between Bismarck starting to sink and the first mention of a "scuttle order" being given. Even if Bismarck's crew had done nothing, Bismarck was going to sink, and if the beaten crew want to help the RN, then all the better... But face it, Bismarck's crew weren't going to scuttle a perfectly seaworthy ship in the middle of the storm tossed North Atlantic of their own free will, it was only for the fact that the RN had already dismantled Bismarck and initiated the sinking process. In other words in every sense the sinking of Bismarck was the result of actions dictated by the Royal Navy.
Just remember IF any "scuttling" actually took place then all that was scuttled was a 51000 ton mountain of sinking, flaming scrap metal. All guns silenced, her superstructure devastated, her main armour belt broken and penetrated in several places, her command staff physically obliterated, internally aflame from end to end, her stern and port gunwales already underwater, a thousand of her crew dead, and further hundreds of her crew already in the water behind her.... All that any scuttling did was to sink her a few minutes earlier than was already happening.
In the world of boxing the crew's scuttling efforts are what is known as "throwing in the towel", submission of a boxer AFTER he has been punched senseless by a more skillful & powerful opponent, and only a deluded child would say, "the victor didn't win because his opponent killed himself before he lost.", when the truth is the loser had his arse ripped off by the victor and handed back to him on a plate.
Imagine the ignominy of being forced to commit suicide by your opponent?
Anything else is just hurt German pride, bolstered by modern day delusional wehraboos. Germany was well known for trying to hide its national humiliations, such as when they scuttled their "grand fleet" at the end of WW1, like illogically saying "We lost.. but you didn't win", or a pathetic "You didn't beat us because we killed ourselves first" sort of idiocy.
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@hajoos.8360 Rechberg was in the after range finding station not buried in the bowels of the ship he would have had VERY clear indications of Bismarck's pitch and roll trim as part of his rangefinding apparatus, so trying to "poo poo" his account of events is wishful ignorance of cold hard facts. Part of your misinformation comes from relying on wikipedia.... the page regarding Bismarck as well as the other covering her final battle are littered with errors, as well as the omission of various facts that are supported by primary documentation which are repeatedly deleted by "wikipedia preferred editors" who have their own, biased opinions on the matter. You need to read more widely than that. First hand survivor accounts are valuable, as well as some of the better researched works produced since. To pit an unsourced wikipedia statement against that of Rechberg & Bismarck's senior surviving engineering officer is unwise.
You talk of "supporting" strategic decisions, Lütjens wasn't part of naval planning, but a commander who would have had little to no input regarding the orders he'd been given. His, as the old saying goes, was to "do or die".
All that BS about being "shot on the quarterdeck" after Denmark Strait, you seem to be oblivious to the fact that Lütjens' orders forbade his seeking engagement with enemy capital ships, and the impetuous Lindemann wanting to chase PoW eastwards was EXPRESSLY against the SKL orders that Lütjens was forced to abide by, as well as ill-advised in as far as the Germans were aware that further major units of the RN would be heading westwards from the direction of Scapa Flow. (Also not forgetting the fact that Bismarck was unable to chase PoW who was still steaming at full speed while Bismarck was forced to lower speed due to the damage to her bows causing trim problems and her loss of two boilers due to flooding, as well as ignoring the concerns of the now critical fuel situation Lütjens faced as a result of PoW's hit on her fuel tanks).
The "oh she sould have sunk PoW as well" is just fanciful, uninformed wehraboo fantasy.
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@hajoos.8360 Do I think Opeartion Berlin was a success? Dislocation of the convoy system, the capturing and sinking of 22 merchant ships and running the Home Fleet ragged for 2 months, for no loss to the Kriegsmarine fleet? It certainly was a success!!!
You're confusing poor german strategical resource planning with a small but successful commerce raiding operation. Of course the men and materiel of the KM surface fleet would have been better used elsewhere, but that wasn't Lütjens fault. He was given a task in difficult conditions and carried it out relatively successfully. The Strategic overview was not of his making.
All very well calling them cowards, but when all you've got is the post "weserübung" remains of a piddling little fleet, you have to nip at the much stronger enemy when he is weak and run away when he isn't. Face it, ANY KM surface ship losses were NOT going to be made good, the RN easily replaced its losses and MORE.
It's true that Britain was on the sea what Germany was on land. The British army could NEVER have landed on the continent again, never mind liberate Europe, but on the other hand she was NEVER going to be cut off by the German Navy. A premier land power against a premier sea power... the classic stand off.
As for your assertion that the "scuttle order" was given between 09:15 and 09:21, Yes, I DO have a question.
Where did you get your (incorrect) information from?
Lets look at some survivor testimonies (people who actually witnessed the events of Bismarck's sinking first hand), and not some poorly researched, modern day revisionist TV nonsense made for the "hard of thinking" shall we?
From "Battleship Bismarck: A survivor's story" Written by Baron Burkhard von Mullenheim-Rechberg, Bismarck's senior ranking survivor.
Page 211 "Our list to port had increased a bit while firing was going on" followed by "Around 9:30am gas and smoke began to drift through our station" This means that prior to 9:30am Bismarck was already flooding, not something that happens to a healthy seaworthy ship, in other words she was already starting to sink.
Then from an interview conducted for the highly regarded weekly history journal "Purnell's history of the second world war" in the late 1960's with Kpt Lt Gerhard Junack (who was Bismarck's only surviving engineering officer and the survivor who supposedly enacted the "scuttle order"). He stated that...
"Somewhere about 1015 hours, I received an order over the telephone from the Chief Engineer (Korvettenkapitän (Ing.) Walter Lehmann) to 'Prepare the ship for sinking.' That was the last order I received on the Bismarck. Soon after that, all transmission of orders collapsed."
Heading back to the account of Mullenheim-Rechberg, on Page 212 he states that (before 10:00am) "I was using all the telephone circuits and calling all over the place in an effort to find out as much as possible about the condition of the ship. I got only one answer. I reached the messenger in the damage control centre and asked "who has and where is the command of the ship? Are there new orders in effect?".... The man said he was in a great hurry. He told me that everyone had abandoned the damage control centre, adding that he was the last one in the room and had to get out... then he hung up".
If taken at face value these survivor testimonies show that there was at least a 45 minute gap between Bismarck starting to sink and the first mention of a "scuttle order" being given. Even if Bismarck's crew had done nothing, Bismarck was going to sink, and if the beaten crew want to help the RN, then all the better... But face it, Bismarck's crew weren't going to scuttle a perfectly seaworthy ship in the middle of the storm tossed North Atlantic of their own free will, it was only for the fact that the RN had already dismantled Bismarck and initiated the sinking process. In other words in every sense the sinking of Bismarck was the result of actions dictated by the Royal Navy.
Anything else is just hurt German pride, bolstered by modern day delusional wehraboos. Germany was well known for trying to hide its national humiliations, such as when they scuttled their "grand fleet" at the end of WW1, like illogically saying "We lost.. but you didn't win", or a pathetic "You didn't beat us because we killed ourselves before you killed us" sort of idiocy.
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"(The Hood) ships were not worth their industrial cost"
Great Britain had FAR greater ship building capacity than did Germany. Germany had only TWO shipyards with the requisite capacity to construct the Bismarck class, which means Bismarck took up 50% of Germany's major slipways for 5 YEARS (and Tirpitz occupied the other), and all for 7 days of active service. Compare that to Hood, who utilised only a small percentage of GB's capacity and provided over 20 years of outstanding value to her mother country.
Then if you use "financial outlay" as the yardstick, then Bismarck qualifies as possibly the "worst buy" in naval history.
193,000,000rm for 7 days of active service, compared to Hood's £6,000,000 for 20 years of CEASELESS service.
Thats the same as buying a Bugatti Veyron and writing it off on its first outing, against buying a Rolls Royce Silver Ghost and getting 20 years of unstinting, loyal and prestigious service from it..... before the idiot in the Veyron crashed into it.
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I remember back in the late 1990s going on a full guided tour of U-534 (pre-vandalisation) when it was still in one piece next to the "Spillers" flour mills. The whole trip was a fascinating experience (Not many people can say nowadays that they have stood on the bridge of a type IX U-boat... well "health and safety" hadn't yet reached the ridiculous lengths it has nowadays) and I still drink out of the U-534 mug that I bought from the gift "portacabin".
One thing that sticks in my mind in particular was that when we inside the boat making our way through each of the internal compartments, was that although the vast majority of the internals of the sub were either rusted or rust stained, in each compartment there was a clearly defined area near the compartment roof above which the original paint finish could be clearly seen, I realised it was where trapped air had prevented the seawater from corroding the paint & steel. The sudden realisation of its significance was chilling as I thought of the hundreds of thousands of men who had been trapped onboard sinking vessels during the war, who must have fought for their last, dying breaths with their faces pressed into such air pockets, before they finally succumbed to hypothermia, or more likely asphyxia.... such was the grim reality of war away from the recruiting posters and blaring fanfares.
But on a more pleasant note, its absolutely fantastic to hear that there are still people who care enough to preserve what remains of her for future generations, I remember signing a local petition to stop U-534 being cut up, but as you can see it had the effect that most petitions have, I.E none. I'm just sorry I no longer live in Liverpool as I would be offering my services in whatever capacity was needed to take part in such a worthy undertaking. I sincerely wish them all the best.
P.S For anyone watching the video, the torpedo shown at 25:11 is extremely rare, being one of possibly only three remaining original G7es T11 "Zaunkonig II" acoustic homing torpedoes left in the world.... and wouldn't you know it Wirral borough council are clueless enough to leave it rusting away outdoors, the cretins.
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Same here NIck, my own father was onboard HMS Dorsetshire and witnessed Bismarck being sunk, survived the sinking of Dorsetshire in April 1942, and narrowly avoided death onboard HMS Warspite in 1943. At times through childhood, it felt in our closetted little minds as though we were serving in the RN during WW2 ourselves as he would recall incessantly things that had happened during the war, some truly terrible. It drove us mad, and inevitably we "switched off" to a lot of it. As I grew up and acquired some wisdom and empathy, it dawned on me that at war's end, after experiencing some truly traumatic events, Dad like millions of others was given a "demob suit" and told to "bugger off". They just had to "get on" with their lives with little or no support. It seems obvious to me now that we lived through dad's PTSD and we were his unwitting therapy.
We lost dad to dementia in 2013, but fortunately we made our amends before the end, and I spent much time with him in his final years, listening to his tales during his lucid times. Thank god our respective parents "stepped up to the plate" when the call was given. All the best Nick.
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@thatdude3938 "When separate parts of German crew tried to surrender, Anglos just ignored that and blasted away."...... That's because "surrender" doesn't work like that. When you've personally had enough, and "wave the white flag", does that mean the whole ship has surrendered? No it doesn't. Others in the crew are still prepared to fight and are taking action against you. Undoubtedly its a shit state of affairs, but hey!!! That's war for you.
There are, believe it or not, conventions in warfare, and in naval warfare "striking the colours" (hauling down your battle ensign) is the historically understood sign of surrender. It's more than possible that Bismarck's command staff were "neutralised" and unable to order the "striking of the colours", but also equally possible that due to their "post Prussian military Honour" they were unwilling to do so.
P.S As for the "more civilized" part, The Royal Navy did attempt to rescue Bismarck's survivors, but their efforts were interrupted by a submarine alert. And before you suggest that "the alert" was made up, the war diary of U-74 clearly records that she was in the vicinity of the Bismarck's last battle.
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@geoffbarney5914 Seems I missed the other replies above, not that I've missed much, but I'll address your point Geoff.
The Bismarck aimed at Hood from 8-9 nautical miles away. A battleship's broadside was analogous to a shotgun "scatter" in that at that range the 38 cm SK C/34 (Bismarck's main armament) had a CEP (circular error probability - effectively the radius of a circle within which 50% of its shots would be expected to fall) of 100m. That means that if 8 of Bismarck's 15in guns fired at a single point 8-9 nm away, 4 of the shells would be expected to land (with completely random distribution) within an ellipse measuring a couple of thousand feet long and just over 200m (660ft) wide, 76% of HMS Hood's 860ft length. The other 4 shots would land even further away from the aiming point. That being the case, how can an individual shell be aimed specifically at a tiny part of HMS Hood's structure, namely the 4in HA magazine, that triggered off Hood's detonation? I'll give you a hint, there's a little clue in my paragraph above....where it says "completely random distribution".
A simplified analogy is that if you prop a dartboard up 50 yards away and can consistently knock it over with a shotgun at that range then that is pretty good shooting, just as Bismarck / PE achieved during the Denmark Strait encounter.
Now you can "knock the dartboard over" all day long with the shotgun and still not hit the bullseye (magazine) with an individual pellet. As opposed to being a skillful shot by knocking over the dartboard, whether you hit the bullseye with an individual pellet is complete luck and nothing else.
P.S Why were the RN facing "half of (Bismarck's) normal armament"? Bismarck's arsenal was FULLY operational on the morning of 27th May, well it was for the first few minutes of the engagement at least.
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@FelipeScheuermann1982 Don't be mistaken Felipe. BOTH HMS Rodney & HMS King George V were superior in both firepower AND armour to Bismarck. Also HMS Prince of Wales inspite of an inexperienced crew and problems with her main guns due to being rushed into service without a "shakedown" period, had already done enough to cause the cancellation of Rhineübung. And far from "running for home" she was again shadowing Bismarck within 25 mintues of withdrawing and after repairing her main guns engaged in a further 2 gunnery exchanges with Bismarck before having to retire to Hvalfjord for refuelling.
IF any scuttling actually took place then all that was scuttled was a 51000 ton mountain of sinking, flaming scrap metal. All guns silenced, her superstructure devastated, her main armour belt broken and penetrated in several places, her command staff physically obliterated, internally aflame from end to end, her stern and port gunwales already underwater, a thousand of her crew dead, and further hundreds of her crew already in the water behind her.... All that any scuttling did was to sink her a few minutes earlier than was already happening.
In the world of boxing the crew's scuttling efforts are what is known as "throwing in the towel", submission of a boxer AFTER he has been punched senseless by a more skillful & powerful opponent, and only a deluded child would say, "the victor didn't win because his opponent killed himself before he lost.", when the truth is the loser had his arse ripped off by the victor and handed back to him on a plate.
Imagine the ignominy of being forced to commit suicide by your opponent?
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@TTTT-oc4eb 1. A full salvo of main gun fire from a battleship is analogous to a scatter of lead shot from a shotgun. During the battle of Denmark Strait, the Bismarck aimed at Hood from 8-9 nautical miles away. At that range the 38 cm SK C/34 (Bismarck's main armament) had a CEP (circular error probability - effectively the radius of a circle within which 50% of its shots would fall) of 100m. That means that if 8 of Bismarck's 15in guns fired at a single point 8-9 nm away, 4 of her shells would be expected to land (with completely random distribution) within an ellipse (think of it as a stretched circle, due to the angle of fall of the shells) measuring approximately 200m (660ft) wide, (or to put it another way 76% of HMS Hood's 860ft length), by more than three thousand feet long. The other 4 shots would land even FURTHER away from the aiming point. That being the case, how can an individual shell be aimed specifically at a tiny part of HMS Hood's structure, namely the 4in HA magazine, that its believed triggered off Hood's detonation? I'll give you a hint, there's a little clue in my paragraph above....where it says "completely random distribution".
A simplified analogy is that if you prop a dartboard up 50 yards away and can consistently knock it over with a shotgun at that range then that is pretty good shooting, just as Bismarck / PE achieved during the Denmark Strait encounter.
Now you can "knock the dartboard over" all day long with the shotgun and STILL NOT hit the bullseye (magazine) with an individual pellet. As opposed to being a skillful shot by knocking over the dartboard, whether you hit the bullseye with an individual pellet is complete luck.
2. Where did you get the "Rodney didn't straddle until her 18th salvo" nonsense from? If you're just going to make complete nonsense up there's no point continuing the discussion.
As was recorded in HMS Norfolk's war diary HMS Rodney obtained hits with both her 3rd and 4th ranging salvoes at 08:48. Please refer to "Battleship BIsmarck - A Design and Operational History" (Produced by the US Naval Institute) Appendix "B" Pg 518.
3. A heavy cruiser is neither a capital ship or a "heavy unit" in a firefight against a battleship. Trying to portray an 8" cruiser as a "RN heavy unit" is simply trying to make Bismarck's final drubbing look even more one sided. Even James Cameron's description of Bismarck's battle damage illustrated the point thus "On her main belt was counted HUNDREDS of shell gouges and splashmarks, almost all of which were from secondary and cruiser hits".
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@martinschnelle3077 5. "The ship had nearly one and a half the power and had better hydrodynamics because it was made for speed." I'll admit you're closer to being a "scientist" than you are to being a writer. (though that's not glowing praise as it's just more of your unsubstantiated nonsense, and not very analytical at ALL. I thought a "scientist" like yourself would be burrowing down into specifics, and FACTS and figures, or citing reputable research to back up your claim, rather than ungrammatical meaningless phrases?).
Please point me to your "stream of arguments" on how Bismarck was superior to the KGVs? I freely accepted my error (from memory) with regards to the speed issue (which you then desperately attempt to profit from by then spouting incorrect nonsense), but beyond that you STILL haven't described how Bismarck outstripped the KGV's or even the 13 year older Nelsons (again apart from Bismarck's "running away power"). Both the KGV AND the much older Nelsons were equally well gunned and better armoured inspite of being 25-30% lighter. It's called "design efficiency" and in the case of the British was necessitated by keeping within internationally agreed naval limits, something that never hindered the German naval designers. I can fire facts and figures back and forth regarding the ships with you all day, but as in the battle of Denmark Strait a fair percentage of the shots fired by you upto now have been "duds".
What "Lies" have I told about Bismarck? I've provided you with FACTS and even highly regarded sources for you to check them against. She had many plainly inefficient design choices, such as outdated incremental armour that saw her quickly shredded as the thinner layers of secondary armour initiated the fuses of incoming British shells causing FAR greater damage than if they had passed through unhindered. As opposed to the fusillade of hits on PoW that did virtually nothing of any real importance with most of the shots passing harmlessly through the largely unarmoured superstructure of her more up to date "all or nothing" armour scheme. Or Bismarck's needlessly duplicated secondary armaments and 4 double gunned turrets that added THOUSANDS of tons of unnecessary weight for no appreciable gain, as opposed to the dual purpose secondaries and triple and quad gunned main turret designs that were then being used by more modern naval designers. Not to mention her triple screw design that IMMEDIATELY saw a full 33% of her engine power consigned to the dustbin when it came to steering with the engines alone. At least the damage to PoW's outboard propeller support could be considered as an unforeseeable though unfortunate eventuality, Bismarck's primary design ignoring the facility her steering by her engines alone seems ludicrous in comparison.
Your problem is not people trying to demean Bismarck, but well informed people not buying into the utter fact free nonsense spoken by gushing enthralled nazi fanbois (or "wehraboos" as they've become known in YT threads), as well as the occasional pretend "scientist".
P.S With the standard of your posts so far, I'm dubious about you claim of chatting with Baron Mullenhiem-Rechberg (who knows? Maybe you're NOT giving false information for once?), though my own father who was a crewmember aboard HMS Dorsetshire at the time of the Bismarck episode, and as a member of the HMS Dorsetshire association WAS invited to and attended multiple joint reunions with the Bismarck survivors in Hamburg during the 1960s and 70s, and he DID meet and have the honour to include the Baron and many other of the Bismarck survivors amongst his friends and aquaintances.
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@martinschnelle3077 My better judgement tells me to leave you in your own little fabricated, fact free, world construct. But I feel a duty to challenge your misinformation in a public forum. (Plus I've just reread the thread, and once again it appears YT has been choosing to miss out some of your posts, which have now appeared).
Long experience has shown that people who haughtily announce themselves as "scientists" / "doctors" / "scholars" / <place your own complete BS here> to be amongst the most fact free posters of all on YT, hoping instead to intimidate their co-respondent with some fake air of "expertise" on a chosen subject in lieu of actual knowledge and understanding. That well worn tactic fazes me not ONE little bit. I'm MUCH more impressed with well written, well researched comments which contain a high degree of correct factual information. Your posts to date are somewhat lacking in those regards. (And whats this nonsense about "crappy performance"? The RN finds and tracks a fast ship that never stopped running to avoid contact in the 44,000,000 square mile North Atlantic in the era before satellites, GPS, over the horizon radars or even comprehensive air coverage, and after finding the needle in the haystick, stopped it running away and then dismantled it with 2 superior battleships who tag teamed it and raped it?") Suck it up lad, suck it up !!!!
1. Glad you've confirmed that Tovey's frustration has absolutely no bearing on the matter of Bismarck's armour. (BTW the "British performance" that morning saw 51,000 tons of flaming German wreckage sink beneath the Atlantic.)
2. I contrast your vague "smoke & mirrors" (I.E "a hit in the same area") with my own more accurate and verifiable facts. Resorting to "muddying the waters" to try to win a point is not something an analytical "scientist" would do, is it "mate"? As an example, hit someone on the shoulder with a golf club, then hit them across the throat with the same club, and see which "hit in the same area" has the most damaging effect. (But again, what does your point here have to do with the fact that you weakly tried to pass off nonsense as "fact" in your first post, were politely called out on it, and have since then flailed around wildly trying vainly to score an irrelevant point in return?)
3. At least we can agree on PoW's lack of combat readiness. But regardless of her unpreparedness, the fact remains that an untested and malfunctioning ship crewed by inexperienced men STILL single handedly put the WHOLE of SKL's planning to naught. A wonderful example of good ol' British pluck & improvisation, though once again none of your flailing around on this point has ANYTHING to do with the nonsense of your first post (as do ANY of your further "points").
4. Dear oh dear oh dear.... After my earlier faux pas I've given you a trial speed of 30.12 knots that I took from the highly regarded "Battleship Bismarck - a Design and Operational History" (ISBN 9781526759757) (pages 35 AND 47), whereas you are citing the trial speed of 30.81 knots attained by TIRPITZ. If you refer to wikipedia there they give 30.01 knots as Bismarck's maximum speed and "Jane's fighting ships" gives the rated speed of the Bismarck class as 29 knots. I give an unbiased top end estimate of Bismarck's maximum speed and you STILL then try to further inflate her abilities by citing incorrect info, in this case from a completely different ship, as your own "evidence". It's just another example, if any were needed, of your own bias and agenda. You're not REALLY a "scientist" are you, "mate"?
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@martinschnelle3077 My better judgement tells me to leave you in your own little fabricated, fact free, world construct. But I feel a duty to challenge your misinformation in a public forum. (Plus I've just reread the thread, and once again it appears YT has been choosing to miss out some of your posts, which have now appeared).
Long experience has shown that people who haughtily announce themselves as "scientists" / "doctors" / "scholars" / <place your own nonsense here> to be amongst the most fact free posters of all on YT, hoping instead to intimidate their co-respondent with some fake air of "expertise" on a chosen subject in lieu of actual knowledge and understanding. That well worn tactic fazes me not ONE little bit. I'm MUCH more impressed with well written, well researched comments which contain a high degree of correct factual information. Your posts to date are somewhat lacking in those regards.
1. Glad you've confirmed that Tovey's frustration has absolutely no bearing on the matter of Bismarck's armour. (BTW the "British performance" that morning saw 51,000 tons of flaming German wreckage sink beneath the Atlantic.)
2. I contrast your vague "smoke & mirrors" (I.E "a hit in the same area") with my own more accurate and verifiable facts. Resorting to "muddying the waters" to try to win a point is not something an analytical "scientist" would do, "mate". As an example, hit someone on the shoulder with a golf club, then hit them across the throat with the same club, and see which "hit in the same area" has the most damaging effect. (But again, what does your point here have to do with the fact that you weakly tried to pass off nonsense as "fact" in your first post, were politely called out on it, and have since then flailed around wildly trying vainly to score an irrelevant point in return?)
3. At least we can agree on PoW's lack of combat readiness. But regardless of her unpreparedness, the fact remains that an untested and malfunctioning ship crewed by inexperienced men STILL single handedly put the WHOLE of SKL's planning to naught. A wonderful example of good ol' British pluck & improvisation, though once again none of your flailing around on this point has ANYTHING to do with the nonsense of your first post (as do ANY of your further "points").
4. Dear oh dear oh dear.... After my earlier faux pas I've given you a trial speed of 30.12 knots that I took from the highly regarded "Battleship Bismarck - a Design and Operational History" (ISBN 9781526759757) (pages 35 AND 47), whereas you appear to be citing the trial speed of 30.81 knots attained by Tirpitz. If you refer to wikipedia there they give 30.01 knots as Bismarck's maximum speed and "Jane's fighting ships" gives the rated speed of the Bismarck class as 29 knots. I give an unbiased top end estimate of Bismarck's maximum speed and you STILL then try to further inflate her abilities by citing incorrect info, in this case from a completely different ship, as your own "evidence". It's just another example, if any were needed, of your own bias and agenda. You're not REALLY a "scientist" are you, "mate"?
5. "The ship had nearly one and a half the power and had better hydrodynamics because it was made for speed." I'll admit you're closer to being a "scientist" than you are to being a writer. (though that's not glowing praise as it's just more of your unsubstantiated nonsense, and not very analytical at ALL. I thought a "scientist" like yourself would be burrowing down into specifics, and FACTS and figures, or citing reputable research to back up your claim, rather than ungrammatical meaningless phrases?).
Please point me to your "stream of arguments" on how Bismarck was superior to the KGVs? I freely accepted my error (from memory) with regards to the speed issue (which you then desperately attempt to profit from by then spouting incorrect nonsense), but beyond that you STILL haven't described how Bismarck outstripped the KGV's or even the 13 year older Nelsons (again apart from Bismarck's "running away power"). Both the KGV AND the much older Nelsons were equally well gunned and better armoured inspite of being 25-30% lighter. It's called "design efficiency" and in the case of the British was necessitated by keeping within internationally agreed naval limits, something that never hindered the German naval designers. I can fire facts and figures back and forth regarding the ships with you all day, but as in the battle of Denmark Strait a fair percentage of the shots fired by you upto now have been "duds".
What "Lies" have I told about Bismarck? I've provided you with FACTS and even nighly regarded sources for you to check them against. She had many plainly inefficient design choices, such as outdated incremental armour that saw her quickly shredded as the thinner layers of secondary armour initiated the fuses of incoming British shells causing FAR greater damage than if they had passed through unhindered. As opposed to the fusillade of hits on PoW that did virtually nothing of any real importance with most of the shots passing harmlessly through the largely unarmoured superstructure of her more up to date "all or nothing" armour scheme. Or Bismarck's needlessly duplicated secondary armaments and 4 double gunned turrets that added THOUSANDS of tons of unnecessary weight for no appreciable gain, as opposed to the dual purpose secondaries and triple and quad gunned main turret designs that were then being used by more modern naval designers. Not to mention her triple screw design that IMMEDIATELY saw a full 33% of her engine power consigned to the dustbin when it came to steering with the engines alone. At least the damage to PoW's outboard propeller support could be considered as an unforeseeable though unfortunate eventuality, Bismarck's primary design ignoring the facility her steering by her engines alone seems ludicrous in comparison.
Your problem is not people trying to demean Bismarck, but people with well informed people not buying the utter fact free nonsense spoken by gushing enthralled nazi fanbois or "wehraboos" as they've become known in YT threads.
P.S With the standard of your posts so far, I'm dubious about you claim of chatting with Baron Mullenhiem-Rechberg (who knows? Maybe you're NOT giving false information for once?), though my own father who was a crewmember aboard HMS Dorsetshire at the time of the Bismarck episode, and as a member of the HMS Dorsetshire association WAS invited to and attended multiple joint reunions with the Bismarck survivors in Hamburg during the 1960s and 70s, and he DID meet and have the honour to include the Baron and many other of the Bismarck survivors amongst his friends and aquaintances.
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@martinschnelle3077 My better judgement tells me to leave you in your own little fabricated, fact free, world construct. But I feel a duty to challenge your misinformation in a public forum. (Plus I've just reread the thread, and once again it appears YT has been choosing to miss out some of your posts, which have now appeared).
Long experience has shown that people who haughtily announce themselves as "scientists" / "doctors" / "scholars" / <place your own nonsense here> to be amongst the most fact free posters of all on YT, hoping instead to intimidate their co-respondent with some fake air of "expertise" on a chosen subject in lieu of actual knowledge and understanding. That well worn tactic fazes me not ONE little bit. I'm MUCH more impressed with well written, well researched comments which contain a high degree of correct factual information. Your posts to date are somewhat lacking in those regards.
1. Glad you've confirmed that Tovey's frustration has absolutely no bearing on the matter of Bismarck's armour. (BTW the "British performance" that morning saw 51,000 tons of flaming German wreckage sink beneath the Atlantic.)
2. I contrast your vague "smoke & mirrors" (I.E "a hit in the same area") with my own more accurate and verifiable facts. Resorting to "muddying the waters" to try to win a point is not something an analytical "scientist" would do, "mate". As an example, hit someone on the shoulder with a golf club, then hit them across the throat with the same club, and see which "hit in the same area" has the most damaging effect. (But again, what does your point here have to do with the fact that you weakly tried to pass off nonsense as "fact" in your first post, were politely called out on it, and have since then flailed around wildly trying vainly to score an irrelevant point in return?)
3. At least we can agree on PoW's lack of combat readiness. But regardless of her unpreparedness, the fact remains that an untested and malfunctioning ship crewed by inexperienced men STILL single handedly put the WHOLE of SKL's planning to naught. A wonderful example of good ol' British pluck & improvisation, though once again none of your flailing around on this point has ANYTHING to do with the nonsense of your first post (as do ANY of your further "points").
4. Dear oh dear oh dear.... After my earlier faux pas I've given you a trial speed of 30.12 knots that I took from the highly regarded "Battleship Bismarck - a Design and Operational History" (ISBN 9781526759757) (pages 35 AND 47), whereas you appear to be citing the trial speed of 30.81 knots attained by Tirpitz. If you refer to wikipedia there they give 30.01 knots as Bismarck's maximum speed and "Jane's fighting ships" gives the rated speed of the Bismarck class as 29 knots. I give an unbiased top end estimate of Bismarck's maximum speed and you STILL then try to further inflate her abilities by citing incorrect info, in this case from a completely different ship, as your own "evidence". It's just another example, if any were needed, of your own bias and agenda. You're not REALLY a "scientist" are you, "mate"?
5. "The ship had nearly one and a half the power and had better hydrodynamics because it was made for speed." I'll admit you're closer to being a "scientist" than you are to being a writer. (though that's not glowing praise as it's just more of your unsubstantiated nonsense, and not very analytical at ALL. I thought a "scientist" like yourself would be burrowing down into specifics, and FACTS and figures, or citing reputable research to back up your claim, rather than ungrammatical meaningless phrases?).
Please point me to your "stream of arguments" on how Bismarck was superior to the KGVs? I freely accepted my error (from memory) with regards to the speed issue (which you then desperately attempt to profit from by then spouting incorrect nonsense), but beyond that you STILL haven't described how Bismarck outstripped the KGV's or even the 13 year older Nelsons (again apart from Bismarck's "running away power"). Both the KGV AND the much older Nelsons were equally well gunned and better armoured inspite of being 25-30% lighter. It's called "design efficiency" and in the case of the British was necessitated by keeping within internationally agreed naval limits, something that never hindered the German naval designers. I can fire facts and figures back and forth regarding the ships with you all day, but as in the battle of Denmark Strait a fair percentage of the shots fired by you upto now have been "duds".
What "Lies" have I told about Bismarck? I've provided you with FACTS and even nighly regarded sources for you to check them against. She had many plainly inefficient design choices, such as outdated incremental armour that saw her quickly shredded as the thinner layers of secondary armour initiated the fuses of incoming British shells causing FAR greater damage than if they had passed through unhindered. As opposed to the fusillade of hits on PoW that did virtually nothing of any real importance with most of the shots passing harmlessly through the largely unarmoured superstructure of her more up to date "all or nothing" armour scheme. Or Bismarck's needlessly duplicated secondary armaments and 4 double gunned turrets that added THOUSANDS of tons of unnecessary weight for no appreciable gain, as opposed to the dual purpose secondaries and triple and quad gunned main turret designs that were then being used by more modern naval designers. Not to mention her triple screw design that IMMEDIATELY saw a full 33% of her engine power consigned to the dustbin when it came to steering with the engines alone. At least the damage to PoW's outboard propeller support could be considered as an unforeseeable though unfortunate eventuality, Bismarck's primary design ignoring the facility her steering by her engines alone seems ludicrous in comparison.
Your problem is not people trying to demean Bismarck, but people with well informed people not buying the utter fact free nonsense spoken by gushing enthralled nazi fanbois or "wehraboos" as they've become known in YT threads.
P.S With the standard of your posts so far, I'm dubious about you claim of chatting with Baron Mullenhiem-Rechberg (who knows? Maybe you're NOT giving false information for once?), though my own father who was a crewmember aboard HMS Dorsetshire at the time of the Bismarck episode, and as a member of the HMS Dorsetshire association WAS invited to and attended multiple joint reunions with the Bismarck survivors in Hamburg during the 1960s and 70s, and he DID meet and have the honour to include the Baron and many other of the Bismarck survivors amongst his friends and aquaintances.
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@martinschnelle3077 My better judgement tells me to leave you in your own little fabricated, fact free, world construct. But I feel a duty to challenge your misinformation in a public forum. (Plus I've just reread the thread, and once again it appears YT has been choosing to miss out some of your posts, which have now appeared).
Long experience has shown that people who haughtily announce themselves as "scientists" / "doctors" / "scholars" / <place your own nonsense here> to be amongst the most fact free posters of all on YT, hoping instead to intimidate their co-respondent with some fake air of "expertise" on a chosen subject in lieu of actual knowledge and understanding. That well worn tactic fazes me not ONE little bit. I'm MUCH more impressed with well written, well researched comments which contain a high degree of correct factual information. Your posts to date are somewhat lacking in those regards.
1. Glad you've confirmed that Tovey's frustration has absolutely no bearing on the matter of Bismarck's armour. (BTW the "British performance" that morning saw 51,000 tons of flaming German wreckage sink beneath the Atlantic.)
2. I contrast your vague "smoke & mirrors" (I.E "a hit in the same area") with my own more accurate and verifiable facts. Resorting to "muddying the waters" to try to win a point is not something an analytical "scientist" would do, "mate". As an example, hit someone on the shoulder with a golf club, then hit them across the throat with the same club, and see which "hit in the same area" has the most damaging effect. (But again, what does your point here have to do with the fact that you weakly tried to pass off nonsense as "fact" in your first post, were politely called out on it, and have since then flailed around wildly trying vainly to score an irrelevant point in return?)
3. At least we can agree on PoW's lack of combat readiness. But regardless of her unpreparedness, the fact remains that an untested and malfunctioning ship crewed by inexperienced men STILL single handedly put the WHOLE of SKL's planning to naught. A wonderful example of good ol' British pluck & improvisation, though once again none of your flailing around on this point has ANYTHING to do with the nonsense of your first post (as do ANY of your further "points").
4. Dear oh dear oh dear.... After my earlier faux pas I've given you a trial speed of 30.12 knots that I took from the highly regarded "Battleship Bismarck - a Design and Operational History" (ISBN 9781526759757) (pages 35 AND 47), whereas you appear to be citing the trial speed of 30.81 knots attained by Tirpitz. If you refer to wikipedia there they give 30.01 knots as Bismarck's maximum speed and "Jane's fighting ships" gives the rated speed of the Bismarck class as 29 knots. I give an unbiased top end estimate of Bismarck's maximum speed and you STILL then try to further inflate her abilities by citing incorrect info, in this case from a completely different ship, as your own "evidence". It's just another example, if any were needed, of your own bias and agenda. You're not REALLY a "scientist" are you, "mate"?
5. "The ship had nearly one and a half the power and had better hydrodynamics because it was made for speed." I'll admit you're closer to being a "scientist" than you are to being a writer. (though that's not glowing praise as it's just more of your unsubstantiated nonsense, and not very analytical at ALL. I thought a "scientist" like yourself would be burrowing down into specifics, and FACTS and figures, or citing reputable research to back up your claim, rather than ungrammatical meaningless phrases?).
Please point me to your "stream of arguments" on how Bismarck was superior to the KGVs? I freely accepted my error (from memory) with regards to the speed issue (which you then desperately attempt to profit from by then spouting incorrect nonsense), but beyond that you STILL haven't described how Bismarck outstripped the KGV's or even the 13 year older Nelsons (again apart from Bismarck's "running away power"). Both the KGV AND the much older Nelsons were equally well gunned and better armoured inspite of being 25-30% lighter. It's called "design efficiency" and in the case of the British was necessitated by keeping within internationally agreed naval limits, something that never hindered the German naval designers. I can fire facts and figures back and forth regarding the ships with you all day, but as in the battle of Denmark Strait a fair percentage of the shots fired by you upto now have been "duds".
What "Lies" have I told about Bismarck? I've provided you with FACTS and even nighly regarded sources for you to check them against. She had many plainly inefficient design choices, such as outdated incremental armour that saw her quickly shredded as the thinner layers of secondary armour initiated the fuses of incoming British shells causing FAR greater damage than if they had passed through unhindered. As opposed to the fusillade of hits on PoW that did virtually nothing of any real importance with most of the shots passing harmlessly through the largely unarmoured superstructure of her more up to date "all or nothing" armour scheme. Or Bismarck's needlessly duplicated secondary armaments and 4 double gunned turrets that added THOUSANDS of tons of unnecessary weight for no appreciable gain, as opposed to the dual purpose secondaries and triple and quad gunned main turret designs that were then being used by more modern naval designers. Not to mention her triple screw design that IMMEDIATELY saw a full 33% of her engine power consigned to the dustbin when it came to steering with the engines alone. At least the damage to PoW's outboard propeller support could be considered as an unforeseeable though unfortunate eventuality, Bismarck's primary design ignoring the facility her steering by her engines alone seems ludicrous in comparison.
Your problem is not people trying to demean Bismarck, but people with well informed people not buying the utter fact free nonsense spoken by gushing enthralled nazi fanbois or "wehraboos" as they've become known in YT threads.
P.S With the standard of your posts so far, I'm dubious about you claim of chatting with Baron Mullenhiem-Rechberg (who knows? Maybe you're NOT giving false information for once?), though my own father who was a crewmember aboard HMS Dorsetshire at the time of the Bismarck episode, and as a member of the HMS Dorsetshire association WAS invited to and attended multiple joint reunions with the Bismarck survivors in Hamburg during the 1960s and 70s, and he DID meet and have the honour to include the Baron and many other of the Bismarck survivors amongst his friends and aquaintances.
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@martinschnelle3077 My better judgement tells me to leave you in your own little fabricated, fact free, world construct. But I feel a duty to challenge your misinformation in a public forum. (Plus I've just reread the thread, and once again it appears YT has been choosing to miss out some of your posts, which have now appeared).
Long experience has shown that people who haughtily announce themselves as "scientists" / "doctors" / "scholars" / <place your own nonsense here> to be amongst the most fact free posters of all on YT, hoping instead to intimidate their co-respondent with some fake air of "expertise" on a chosen subject in lieu of actual knowledge and understanding. That well worn tactic fazes me not ONE little bit. I'm MUCH more impressed with well written, well researched comments which contain a high degree of correct factual information. Your posts to date are somewhat lacking in those regards.
1. Glad you've confirmed that Tovey's frustration has absolutely no bearing on the matter of Bismarck's armour. (BTW the "British performance" that morning saw 51,000 tons of flaming German wreckage sink beneath the Atlantic.)
2. I contrast your vague "smoke & mirrors" (I.E "a hit in the same area") with my own more accurate and verifiable facts. Resorting to "muddying the waters" to try to win a point is not something an analytical "scientist" would do, "mate". As an example, hit someone on the shoulder with a golf club, then hit them across the throat with the same club, and see which "hit in the same area" has the most damaging effect. (But again, what does your point here have to do with the fact that you weakly tried to pass off nonsense as "fact" in your first post, were politely called out on it, and have since then flailed around wildly trying vainly to score an irrelevant point in return?)
3. At least we can agree on PoW's lack of combat readiness. But regardless of her unpreparedness, the fact remains that an untested and malfunctioning ship crewed by inexperienced men STILL single handedly put the WHOLE of SKL's planning to naught. A wonderful example of good ol' British pluck & improvisation, though once again none of your flailing around on this point has ANYTHING to do with the nonsense of your first post (as do ANY of your further "points").
4. Dear oh dear oh dear.... After my earlier faux pas I've given you a trial speed of 30.12 knots that I took from the highly regarded "Battleship Bismarck - a Design and Operational History" (ISBN 9781526759757) (pages 35 AND 47), whereas you appear to be citing the trial speed of 30.81 knots attained by Tirpitz. If you refer to wikipedia there they give 30.01 knots as Bismarck's maximum speed and "Jane's fighting ships" gives the rated speed of the Bismarck class as 29 knots. I give an unbiased top end estimate of Bismarck's maximum speed and you STILL then try to further inflate her abilities by citing incorrect info, in this case from a completely different ship, as your own "evidence". It's just another example, if any were needed, of your own bias and agenda. You're not REALLY a "scientist" are you, "mate"?
5. "The ship had nearly one and a half the power and had better hydrodynamics because it was made for speed." I'll admit you're closer to being a "scientist" than you are to being a writer. (though that's not glowing praise as it's just more of your unsubstantiated nonsense, and not very analytical at ALL. I thought a "scientist" like yourself would be burrowing down into specifics, and FACTS and figures, or citing reputable research to back up your claim, rather than ungrammatical meaningless phrases?).
Please point me to your "stream of arguments" on how Bismarck was superior to the KGVs? I freely accepted my error (from memory) with regards to the speed issue (which you then desperately attempt to profit from by then spouting incorrect nonsense), but beyond that you STILL haven't described how Bismarck outstripped the KGV's or even the 13 year older Nelsons (again apart from Bismarck's "running away power"). Both the KGV AND the much older Nelsons were equally well gunned and better armoured inspite of being 25-30% lighter. It's called "design efficiency" and in the case of the British was necessitated by keeping within internationally agreed naval limits, something that never hindered the German naval designers. I can fire facts and figures back and forth regarding the ships with you all day, but as in the battle of Denmark Strait a fair percentage of the shots fired by you upto now have been "duds".
What "Lies" have I told about Bismarck? I've provided you with FACTS and even nighly regarded sources for you to check them against. She had many plainly inefficient design choices, such as outdated incremental armour that saw her quickly shredded as the thinner layers of secondary armour initiated the fuses of incoming British shells causing FAR greater damage than if they had passed through unhindered. As opposed to the fusillade of hits on PoW that did virtually nothing of any real importance with most of the shots passing harmlessly through the largely unarmoured superstructure of her more up to date "all or nothing" armour scheme. Or Bismarck's needlessly duplicated secondary armaments and 4 double gunned turrets that added THOUSANDS of tons of unnecessary weight for no appreciable gain, as opposed to the dual purpose secondaries and triple and quad gunned main turret designs that were then being used by more modern naval designers. Not to mention her triple screw design that IMMEDIATELY saw a full 33% of her engine power consigned to the dustbin when it came to steering with the engines alone. At least the damage to PoW's outboard propeller support could be considered as an unforeseeable though unfortunate eventuality, Bismarck's primary design ignoring the facility her steering by her engines alone seems ludicrous in comparison.
Your problem is not people trying to demean Bismarck, but people with well informed people not buying the utter fact free nonsense spoken by gushing enthralled nazi fanbois or "wehraboos" as they've become known in YT threads.
P.S With the standard of your posts so far, I'm dubious about you claim of chatting with Baron Mullenhiem-Rechberg (who knows? Maybe you're NOT giving false information for once?), though my own father who was a crewmember aboard HMS Dorsetshire at the time of the Bismarck episode, and as a member of the HMS Dorsetshire association WAS invited to and attended multiple joint reunions with the Bismarck survivors in Hamburg during the 1960s and 70s, and he DID meet and have the honour to include the Baron and many other of the Bismarck survivors amongst his friends and aquaintances.
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@martinschnelle3077 My better judgement tells me to leave you in your own little fabricated, fact free, world construct. But I feel a duty to challenge your misinformation in a public forum. (Plus I've just reread the thread, and once again it appears YT has been choosing to miss out some of your posts, which have now appeared).
Long experience has shown that people who haughtily announce themselves as "scientists" / "doctors" / "scholars" / <place your own nonsense here> to be amongst the most fact free posters of all on YT, hoping instead to intimidate their co-respondent with some fake air of "expertise" on a chosen subject in lieu of actual knowledge and understanding. That well worn tactic fazes me not ONE little bit. I am MUCH more impressed by well written, well researched posts that contain a high degree of correct facutal information in them. Your comments are currently somewhat lacking in that department.
1. Glad you've confirmed that Tovey's frustration has absolutely no bearing on the matter of Bismarck's armour. (BTW the "British performance" saw 51,000 tons of flaming German wreckage sink beneath the Atlantic that morning.)
2. I contrast your vague uninformed guff ("a hit in the same area") with my detailed and verifiable facts. Resorting to "muddying the waters" to try to win a point is not something an analytical "scientist" would do, "mate". As an example, hit someone on the shoulder with a golf club, then hit them across the throat with the same club, and see which "hit in the same area" has the most damaging effect. (But again, what does your point here have to do with the fact that you weakly tried to pass off complete BS in your first post, were called out on it, and have since flailed around wildly trying vainly to score an irrelevant point in return?)
3. At least we can agree on PoW's lack of combat readiness. But regardless of her unpreparedness, the fact remains that an untested and malfunctioning ship crewed by inexperienced men STILL single handedly put the WHOLE of SKL's planning to naught. A wonderful example of good ol' British pluck & improvisation, though once again none of your flailing around on this point has ANYTHING to do with the nonsense of your first post.
4. Dear oh dear oh dear.... I've given you a trial speed of 30.12 knots that I took from the highly regarded "Battleship Bismarck - a Design and Operational History" (ISBN 9781526759757) (pages 35 AND 47), whereas you appear to be citing the trial speed of 30.81 knots attained by Tirpitz. Then again if you were to quickly to refer to wikipedia there they give 30.01 knots and "Jane's fighting ships" gives the rated speed of the Bismarck class as 29 knots. I give an unbiased top end estimate of Bismarck's maximum speed and once again you then further try to inflate her abilities by citing incorrect info, in this case a completely different ship as your own "evidence". You're not REALLY a "scientist" are you, "mate"?
5. "The ship had nearly one and a half the power and had better hydrodynamics because it was made for speed." I'll admit you're closer to being a "scientist" than you are to being a writer. (plus its just more unsubstantiated nonsense, and not very analytical at ALL. I thought a "scientist" like yourself would be burrowing down into specifics, and FACTS and figures, rather than meaningless phrases?).
Please point me to your "stream of arguments" on how Bismarck was superior to the KGVs? I freely accepted my error (from memory) with regards to the speed issue (which you then desperately attempt to profit from by then spouting incorrect nonsense), but beyond that you STILL haven't described how Bismarck outstripped the KGV's or even the 13 year older Nelsons (again apart from Bismarck's "running away power"). I can fire facts and figures back and forth regarding the two ships with you all day, but as in the battle of Denmark Strait a fair percentage of the shots fired by you upto now have been duds.
What "Lies" have I told about Bismarck? She had many inefficient design choices, with outdated incremental armour that saw her quickly shredded as opposed to the fusillade of hits on PoW that did virtually nothing of any real importance with most of the shots passing harmlessly through the largely unarmoured superstructure of her "all or nothing" armour scheme. Or her needlessly duplicated secondary armaments and 4 double gunned turrets that added THOUSANDS of tons of unnecessary weight for no appreciable gain, as opposed to the dual purpose secondaries and triple and quad gunned main turret designs that were then being used by the more modern naval designs. Not to mention her triple screw design that IMMEDIATELY saw a full 33% of her engine power consigned to the dustbin when it came to steering with the engines alone. At least the damage to PoW's outboard propeller support could be seen as an unlikely though unfortunate eventuality, Bismarck's primary design ignoring the facility of steering by her engines alone seems ludicrous in comparison.
Both the KGV AND the much older Nelsons were equally well gunned and better armoured inspite of being 25-30% lighter. It's called "design efficiency" and in the case of the British was necessitated by keeping within international naval limits, something that never hindered the nazis.
Your problem is not people trying to demean Bismarck, but people with more knowledge not buying a lot of the utter fact free nonsense spoken by gushing enthralled nazi fanbois or "wehraboos" as they've become known as that is posted in YT threads.
P.S As opposed to your equally far fetched guff about carousing with Baron Mullenhiem-Rechberg, my father who was a crewmember aboard HMS Dorsetshire at the time of the Bismarck episode, attended multiple joint reunions with the Bismarck survivors in Hamburg during the 1960s and 70s, and he DID meet and have the honour to include the Baron and many other of the Bismarck survivors as friends and aquaintances.
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@martinschnelle3077 My better judgement tells me to leave you in your own little fabricated, fact free, world construct. But I feel a duty to challenge your misinformation in a public forum. (Plus I've just reread the thread, and once again it appears YT has been choosing to miss out some of your posts, which have now appeared).
Long experience has shown that people who haughtily announce themselves as "scientists" / "doctors" / "scholars" / <place your own nonsense here> to be amongst the most fact free posters of all on YT, hoping instead to intimidate their co-respondent with some fake air of "expertise" on a chosen subject in lieu of actual knowledge and understanding. That well worn tactic fazes me not ONE little bit. I'm MUCH more impressed by well written, researched and most importantly factually correct discussion, which your posts upto now have been slightly lacking in.
1. Glad you've confirmed that Tovey's frustration has absolutely no bearing on the matter of Bismarck's armour. (BTW "British performance" that morning saw 51,000 tons of flaming German wreckage sink beneath the Atlantic.)
2. I contrast your vague uninformed "smoke and mirrors" (i.e "a hit in the same area") with my own more accurate and verifiable facts. Resorting to "muddying the waters" to try to win a point is not something an analytical "scientist" would do, "mate". As an example, hit someone on the shoulder with a golf club, then hit them across the throat with the same club, and see which "hit in the same area" has the most damaging effect. (But again, what does your point here have to do with the fact that you weakly tried to pass off nonsense in your first post, were politely called out on it, and have since flailed around wildly trying in vain to score an irrelevant point in return?)
3. At least we can agree on PoW's lack of combat readiness. But regardless of her unpreparedness, the fact remains that an untested and malfunctioning ship crewed by inexperienced men STILL single handedly put the WHOLE of SKL's planning to naught. A wonderful example of good ol' British pluck & improvisation, though once again none of your flailing around on this point has ANYTHING to do with the nonsense of your first post.
4. Dear oh dear oh dear.... I've given you a trial speed of 30.12 knots that I took from the highly regarded "Battleship Bismarck - a Design and Operational History" (ISBN 9781526759757) (pages 35 AND 47), whereas you appear to be citing the trial speed of 30.81 knots attained by Tirpitz. Then again if you quickly refer to wikipedia there they state Bismarck's top speed as 30.01 knots and "Jane's fighting ships" gives the rated speed of the Bismarck class as 29 knots. I give an unbiased top end estimate of Bismarck's maximum speed and once again you then further try to inflate her abilities by citing incorrect info from a different ship as your own "evidence". You're not REALLY a "scientist" are you, "mate"?... and once again what is the relevance of this point to your original assertion?
5. "The ship had nearly one and a half the power and had better hydrodynamics because it was made for speed." I'll admit you're closer to being a "scientist" than you are to being a writer. (plus its just more unsubstantiated nonsense, and not very analytical at ALL. I thought a "scientist" like yourself would be burrowing down into specifics, and FACTS and figures, rather than ungrammatical & meaningless phrases?). Relevance to your original point?
Please point me to your "stream of arguments" on how Bismarck was superior to the KGVs? I freely accepted my error (from memory) with regards to the speed issue (which you then desperately attempt to profit from by then spouting incorrect nonsense), but beyond that you STILL haven't described how Bismarck outstripped the KGV's or even the 13 year older Nelsons (again apart from Bismarck's "running away power"). I can fire facts and figures back and forth regarding the ships with you all day, but as in the battle of Denmark Strait a fair percentage of the shots fired by you upto now have been "duds". Both the KGV AND the much older Nelsons were equally well gunned and better armoured than Bismarck inspite of being 25-30% lighter. It's called "design efficiency" and in the case of the British was necessitated by keeping within internationally agreed naval limits, something that never hindered German naval designers.
What "Lies" have I told about Bismarck? I've given you facts, along with widely regarded sources with which to verify them. Bismarck PLAINLY had many inefficient and outdated design choices, such as incremental armour that saw her quickly shredded as the multiple thinner layers of secondary armour activated the fuses of British shells that would otherwise have passed through non essential portions of the ship, and compare it to the performance of PoW's armour scheme at Denmark Strait when the fusillade of hits on PoW did virtually nothing of any real importance with most of the shots passing harmlessly through the largely unarmoured superstructure of her "all or nothing" armour scheme. Or Bismarck's needlessly duplicated secondary armaments and 4 double gunned turrets that added THOUSANDS of tons of unnecessary weight for no appreciable gain, as opposed to the dual purpose secondaries and triple and quad gunned main turret designs that were then being used by the more modern naval designs. Not to mention her triple screw design that IMMEDIATELY saw a full 33% of her engine power consigned to the dustbin when it came to steering with her engines alone. At least the damage caused by the hit on PoW's outboard propeller support could be viewed as an unforeseeable or unlikely eventuality, Bismarck's primary design discounting the facility of steering with her engines alone seems ludicrous in comparison.
Your problem is not people trying to demean Bismarck, but well informed people debunking the utter fact free nonsense gushed by enthralled nazi fanbois or "wehraboos" as they've become known in YT threads.
P.S The general air of your posts leads me to (possibly incorrectly) treat your "friend of Baron Mullenhiem-Rechberg" as just so much more far fetched guff, in comparison my father who WAS a crewmember aboard HMS Dorsetshire at the time of the Bismarck episode, and was subesquently invited to and attended multiple joint reunions with the Bismarck survivors in Hamburg during the 1960s and 70s, DID meet and have the honour to include the Baron and many of the other Bismarck survivors as friends and aquaintances.
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@martinschnelle3077 Once again your post is full of misrepresentations and nonsense.
1. The ONLY reason why Tovey stayed as long as he did inspite of being on "bingo" fuel was to ENSURE the Bismarck was sunk. Which it did.... as a result of British gunfire and torpedoes.
2. Do you actually READ my posts? As I CLEARLY said above, the torpedo that crippled HMS PoW did NOT impact on her armoured belt. It hit the unarmoured support stanchion of her outer port propeller shaft and destroyed it, (The stanchion position was 10-15 meters aft of the aft edge of PoW's small lower belt extension). The destruction of that support stanchion meant that the now unsupported propeller shaft turning at maximum revs then precessed & snaked out of control along its full length and in doing so destroyed ALL the seals and stuffing boxes along its length through to the port engine room, which resulted in nearly a third of the ship flooding because its watertight integrity had been so greivously comprimised in a way that could never have been accounted for. Also the extensive flooding put most of PoW's electrical generation plant offline which meant the floodwater could not be pumped outboard, and counterflooding procedures could not be carried out. As I said above, such a hit would have sunk ANY ship that it happened to.
3.The 15" shell that was found in PoW's double bottom was ONLY there precisely because the shell fuse was faulty. IF the fuse had operated as was intended it would have been triggered as the shell impacted the water OUTSIDE of PoW's hull and would not have penetrated her hull.
4. My mistake. KGV's 28 knots was surpassed by Bismarck's 30 knots. My bad. I'll amend my assesment of the comparison to say. The ONLY aspect of Bismarck that surpassed the KGVs was her "running away power". When she lost that advantage she was decisively defeated in short order. Also when quoting the propulsion plant output remember to qualify it with the respective power to weight ratios of the two classes.
Bismarck = 2.944 hp/ton
KGV = 2.962 hp/ton
5. "Much faster fire rate". A May 1941 report by the German Artillerieversuchskommando - AVSK (Artillery Testing Command for Ships) stated that the turret ammunition hoists on Bismarck were capable of delivering between 23 and 25 rounds per minute (for all four turrets), the equivalent of 3 rounds per minute per gun. However, this same report stated that design faults in the hoists led to two significant breakdowns during the evaluation, both of which caused long interruptions in the ammunition supply. Finally, it should be noted that Bismarck fired a total of 93 rounds during her thirteen minutes of firing at the Denmark Strait battle, which is actually less than one round per gun per minute.
6. "superior range-finders" debatable. The Stereoscopic rangefinders had already been trialled by the Royal Navy years earlier, who found that while they were capable of more quickly establishing the correct range, they were less able to maintain a consistent firing solution due to operator eye fatigue, hence why they retained their conincidence rangefinders which displayed the opposite characteristics, slower to range but once established provided a more consistent ranging solution. Bismarck's stereoscoping range finders don't seem to have been working very well on the morning of 27th May when she failed to land a single hit on ANY of the 4 RN ships opposing her.
7. While Hood was still sporting her WW1 vintage Mk 5 Dreyer Table FC computer, The Mk IX AFCT (Admiralty Fire Control Table) onboard the KGVs was no slouch as it demonstated when PoW landed the first hit of the Denmark Strait engagement, KGV put shell after shell into Bismarck during her final engagement, as well as DoY doing likewise to Scharnhorst 2½ years later. I'm not sure where you got your "superior electronic-mechanic computing" from but judging by the nonsense you spoke about Bismarck's armour I won't put too much creedence by it.
But again ALL of this has NOTHING to do with your original assertion, which was completely groundless "wehraboo" nonsense.
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@martinschnelle3077 There is no such thing as "regular armour". Every nation had its own "recipes" for the alloy compositions and manufacturing processes of the various armours it employed, with a large degree of commonality in the various compositions, but also many variations. "Regular" naval armour does NOT exist. The oversimplification of your comment "Bismarck's armor was a little bit different from regular armor" highlights your misplaced simplistic belief that somehow "German armour is special". When it was not.
Also you appear to believe that the same armour is used all over a ship, which is NOT the case. Different armours had different performance characteristics which were suited to different applications. For example Bismarck's AA directors were protected by "Wotan Starrheit" composition armour, her decks were composed of "Wotan Weich" and her main belt of a different composition called "Krupp Cemented Neuer Art (New Type)" (or KC n/a) to name just a few examples.
When you say that "it withstood a direct torpedo hit", I assume you mean the hit amidships on the 25th May 1941 during the airstrike from HMS Victorious. While the lighter warhead of the aerial torpedo hit did not directly penetrate Bismarck's main belt armour, it DID buckle it and allow a degree of flooding amidships.
According to the metallurgical engineer Nathan Okun, a world renowned authority on naval armour metallurgy, the armour that was used for Bismarck's main belt (Krupp Cemented Neuer Art (New Type) (KC n/A)) was no better or worse than the equivalent British cemented armour, the Italian AOD (Acciaio Omogenee Duttile - homogenous ductile steel) armour, or the US STS Class "B" armour, though they were ALL slightly better performing than the Japanese VC (Vickers Cemented) armour, but even that information is HIGHLY simplified as the entire subject of armour metallurgy & performance is EXTREMELY complex. Here, have a read of a SMALL proportion of the late Mr Okun's work for yourself.
http://www.navweaps.com/index_nathan/index_nathan.php
But suffice to say Bismarck's armour was NOT a peculiar form of "super armour" as can be testified to by the fact that the THICKEST armour on Bismarck, that being the 360mm face plates of her main turrets (which was 40mm THICKER than her 320mm main armoured belt) and which was also built from the same KC n/a armour as her main belt, was such "super armour" that one of HMS Rodney's 16" shells went STRAIGHT through the face plate of Turret Bruno, continued on through the gunhouse that the 360mm plate was supposed to be protecting, then impacted on the INSIDE face of the 320mm thick REAR armour plate of the turret with sufficient force to simply knock the rear plate right off the turret and into the sea beyond (as turret Bruno was trained to port at the time this occured).
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@notsureyou I have to agree that the book, while being well researched, does seem to lack slightly in the "narrative cohesion" dept. In my mind there are two obvious sources for this, one of which would have been avoidable. It's a problem that appears often throughout the book.
The same facts are repeated, but told differently, it appears that each of the authors has made their contributions to the book, and no-one had been assigned to assimilate the joint research & construct a smooth cohesive overarching narrative from it, but such a task would require the wisdom of Solomon and the judgement of a diplomat to keep the authors contented that their research had been well represented.
Also the original source material is by its very nature is from many disparate sources. The example of HMS Rodney & Norfolk for instance highlights the principle well. Rodney from her viewpoint sees no hits, but Norfolk from a completely different angle does, and thats from two ships on the same side!!! The accounts from enemy ships as well as confirming many points also totally contradicts others and above all of this is the fact that the individual ship's chronometers were set at different time zones, and none were exactly synchronised as there was no "atomic clock" which all would have been set by, something which is taken for granted now in our internet age, meaning that attempting to build a reliable chronology of closely related events becomes incredible difficult to achieve.
So trying to judge relative performances by time alone is fraught with inaccuracies, what is left is individual events and the aftermath.
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@charlieb308 Total Rubbish. U-74 reported having British battleships & cruisers in his sight but due to the terrible sea conditions was unable to get into a position to attack them, it was then forced to sit submerged and listen to the battle taking place and surfaced after the departure of the RN surface vessels, as detailed by Kpt Lt Kentrat in his war diary. What is known with certainty is that Bismarck had for the previous 24 hours been transmitting beacon signals on known u-boat radio wavelengths and the scene of the final action was 350 miles (a relative naval stone's throw) away from the Kriegsmarine's Atlantic u-boat bases on the French coast. Was Captain BCS Martin of Dorsetshire expected to gamble the lives of his 750 man crew that it was indeed a dolphin's fin or a broaching whale? Or that if it WAS a u-boat the sub's capt would hold fire while he carried out the rescues? As an RN captain Benjamin Martin would have been SORELY aware of the actions of Otto Weddigen in U-9 during WW1 and his attack on the British Cruisers HMS Aboukir, Cressy & Hogue. I suggest you look up the details of that incident.
I may act as if it was 500m away, whereas you act as if it was miles away. The fact is that NEITHER of us know exactly where it was, and NEITHER of us are Royal Navy captains responsible for major units of the RN together with the lives of nearly 1000 sailors.
I refer you to the account of Baron Burkhard von Müllenheim-Rechberg, Bismarck's senior ranking survivor who in his book "Battleship Bismarck - a survivor's story" wrote this passage about a discussion he held with Capt Martin, commander of HMS Dorsetshire, after being rescued.
"Why," I burst out, "did you suddenly break off the rescue and leave hundreds of our men to drown?"
Martin replied that a U-boat had been sighted, or at least reported, and he obviously could not endanger his ship by staying stopped any longer.
The Bismarck's experiences on the night of 26 May and the morning of the 27th, I told him, indicated that there were no U-boats in the vicinity.
Farther away, perhaps, but certainly not within firing range of the Dorsetshire. I added that in war one often sees what one expects to see.
We argued the point back and forth until Martin said abruptly: "Just leave that to me. I'm older than you are and have been at sea longer. I'm a better judge."
What more could I say? He was the captain and was responsible for his ship.
Apparently some floating object had been mistaken for a periscope or a strip of foam on the water for the wake of a torpedo.
No matter what it was, I AM NOW CONVINCED THAT, UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES, CAPT MARTIN HAD TO ACT AS HE DID". (My caps)
What's your appraisal of the actions of Kriegsmarine Admiral Wilhelm Marschall who on the 8th June 1940 after his ships Scharnhorst and Gneisensau had sank the British aircraft carrier HMS Glorious and her two escorting destroyers HMS Acasta & Ardent, and despite NO other ships being in the vicinity, then made not even the SLIGHTEST effort to render assistance to over 1000 RN sailors left floating in the Norwegian sea and instead simply sailed away leaving them to their deaths?
As opposed to the RN who in hostile waters with KNOWN u-boat activity and on the edge of German airspace stopped TWO ships to render assistance. If the RN had only rescued ONE single German sailor, it would still have been INFINITELY more than the Germans bothered to rescue on 8th June 1940. As it was the RN saw to it that 111 Germans were rescued and then treated extremely well.
Or is it only German sailors left to drown who you get all "teared up" about?
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@balazsvarga1823 There was never ANY thought of boarding Bismarck its why the RN had flung so much firepower and torpedoes at her. You tend not to try to hole a ship below the waterline if you intend to board her, on top of which the RN Home Fleet was critically short of fuel, barely having enough to reach port.
Before she sank Bismarck was a 51000 ton mountain of sinking, flaming scrap metal. All guns silenced, her superstructure devastated, her main armour belt broken and penetrated in several places, her command staff physically obliterated, internally aflame from end to end, her stern and port gunwales already underwater, a thousand of her crew dead, and further hundreds of her crew already in the water behind her.... All that any scuttling did was to sink her a few minutes earlier than was already happening.
In the world of boxing the crew's scuttling efforts are what is known as "throwing in the towel", submission of a boxer AFTER he has been punched senseless by a more skillful & powerful opponent, and only a deluded child would say, "the victor didn't win because his opponent killed himself before he lost.", when the truth is the loser had his arse ripped off by the victor and handed back to him on a plate.
Imagine the ignominy of being forced to commit suicide by your opponent?
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@wesleyjarboe9571 Yes, admittedly my comparison of Hood to Arizona is somewhat comparing "apples with oranges", considering the 5 inches of thick faced MNC armour that Arizona had over her magazines... which proved incapable of preventing the penetration of that single Japanese bomb. Also USS Arizona sounded "General Quarters" at least FIVE minutes before the commencement of the air attacks, AMPLE time for her crew to "batten down the hatches".
What, in your expert capacity as one who has received US Navy damage control training, do you suggest sank USS Arizona? Distributed systems damage, localised fires and possibly some minor flooding? or the catastrophic detonation of possibly as much as 100 tons of SPCG flashless propellant in Arizona's turret II magazine https://youtu.be/ujquq7IU0uY, caused by a single 16in Japanese naval shell converted into an airborne bomb? I know what MY money is on.
You speculation as to the structural integrity of Arizona's forward deck armour just prior to her detonation is just that, speculation, and not of the particularly well informed variety either, as is your appraisal of Hood's value as a warship. The point remains.... Was USS Arizona a worthless laughing stock due to the relatively easy nature of her destruction?
P.S I'm probably older than you are, and the last time I played a naval game was with paper and pencil. Save your condescension for the video game generation, lad.
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@cisco9t5-y9e Take no notice of those ignorant commenters who say "it wuz uselezz"
The Fairey Swordfish were designed & built in Britain from 1935 onwards, originally for the Greek navy, But when trialled prior to delivery they were so capable that the Royal Navy bought them instead. They were biplanes for a very good reason. At the time they were designed existing aircraft engines were of relatively low power (especially for the British fleet air arm which was low down on the engine "priority list" at the time) so to enable a carrier aircraft to carry aloft heavy loads needed a large wing area. Their biplane wing area was SO great that they could take off fully loaded WITHOUT the use of a carrier's catapult. This meant that in the stormy North Atlantic where the Royal Navy mainly intended to operate them, instead of being forced to take off at the carrier's bows (where the catapults are) and which is the part of a ship that rises and falls by the greatest amount in heavy seas, the Swordfish could take of from the middle of the carrier's decks close to the bridge where the pitching and rolling was the least.
It was for this reason in May 1941 that they were able to take off from HMS Ark Royal to attack Bismarck when Ark Royal was struggling through an Atlantic gale in MOUNTAINOUS seas, with her bows rising and falling by nearly 60ft !!! Try to imagine how terrifying it must have been for the brave young crews flying them in those conditions. Those weather conditions would have prevented all other allied carrier aircraft of the era from flying and instead seen them safely lashed down inside the hangar deck.
They were also incredibly adaptable and throughout WW2 they were adapted to carry, bombs, depth charges, torpedoes, extra fuel tanks and even eight anti ship rockets as well as the world's very first naval airborne radars that we're talking about. They are widely regarded to have ended the war as the aircraft with the GREATEST amount of enemy shipping tonnage sunk, and were HUGELY loved by their crews.
They WERE to have been replaced mid war by a succesor, the Fairey Albacore, but the "stringbag" (as the Swordfish were affectionately known) were so ubiquitous that they outlasted the Albacore in service.
All the best.
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@peteenglish8773 Please feel free to provide us with any of the details of the apparently "regular" events you believe were carried out by RN subs in the Med.
Yes it is bollocks. Trying to portray TWO isolated instances by the same RN officer as "regularly".
HMSub Torbay (Lt Comm Anthony Miers) 4th July 1941 , unnamed Cretan schooner (~50 tons) 36'01N,23'06E
HMSub Torbay (Lt Comm Anthony Miers) 9th July 1941 , unnamed Cretan schooner (~50 tons) 35.43N,23.12E
His actions on the 4th & 9th July 1941 resulted in Torbay's commander (Lt Com Anthony Miers) being severely reprimanded and ordered to cease such criminal actions by Adm Max Horton. There are no further accounts of such actions taking place.
There are a larger (but still a relatively small number) of incidents of German U-boats gunning survivors,
U-37 (KL Victor Oehrn) 23 August 1940, British ship "Severn Leigh" (5242grt) 54'31'N,25'41W
U-552 (KL Erich Topp) 3 March 1942, US ship "David H. Atwater"(2428grt) 37'57N, 75'10W
U-126 (KL Ernst Bauer) 8 March 1942 Panamanian Tanker "Esso Bolivar" (10389grt) 19'38N,74'38W
U-172 (KL Carl Emmermann) 24 June 1942 Colombian Sailing Vessel "Resolute"(35grt)13'15N,80'30W
U-754(KL Johanns Oestermann) 28 July 1942 US Fishing Vessel "Ebb"(259grt) 43'18N,63'50W
U-852(KL Heinz-Wilhelm Eck) 13 March 1944 Hellenic Steamship "Peleus"(4695grt) 02'00S,10'00W
U-532(FK Ottoheinrich Junker) 27 March 1944 British Ship "Tulagi"(228grt) 11'00S,78'40E
The most egregious of which (known as the "Peleus incident" and committed by the U-852 commanded by Kpt Lt Eck) resulted in the post war execution of Eck and two of his officers for the murder of 33 survivors.
The war in the pacific was FAR harsher on survivors of sinkings with both US & Japanese captains far more likely to kill those taking to boats or in the water.
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@peteenglish8773 Please feel free to provide us with just a handful of the apparently "regular" events you believe were carried out by RN subs in the Med.
Yes it is bollocks. Trying to portray TWO isolated instances by the same RN officer as "regularly".
HMSub Torbay (Lt Comm Anthony Miers) 4th July 1941 , unnamed Cretan schooner (~50 tons) 36'01N,23'06E
HMSub Torbay (Lt Comm Anthony Miers) 4th July 1941 , unnamed Cretan schooner (~50 tons) 35.43N,23.12E
His actions on the 4th & 9th July 1941 resulted in Torbay's commander (Lt Com Anthony Miers) being severely reprimanded and ordered to cease such actions by Adm Max Horton.
The are a larger (but still a relatively small number) of incidents of German U-boats gunning survivors,
U-37 (KL Victor Oehrn) 23 August 1940, British ship "Severn Leigh" (5242grt) 54'31'N,25'41W
U-552 (KL Erich Topp) 3 March 1942, US ship "David H. Atwater"(2428grt) 37'57N, 75'10W
U-126 (KL Ernst Bauer) 8 March 1942 Panamanian Tanker "Esso Bolivar" (10389grt) 19'38N,74'38W
U-172 (KL Carl Emmermann) 24 June 1942 Colombian Sailing Vessel "Resolute"(35grt)13'15N,80'30W
U-754(KL Johanns Oestermann) 28 July 1942 US Fishing Vessel "Ebb"(259grt) 43'18N,63'50W
U-852(KL Heinz-Wilhelm Eck) 13 March 1944 Hellenic Steamship "Peleus"(4695grt) 02'00S,10'00W
U-532(FK Ottoheinrich Junker) 27 March 1944 British Ship "Tulagi"(228grt) 11'00S,78'40E
the most egregious of which (known as the "Peleus incident" and committed by the U-852 (KptLt Eck) resulted in the post war execution of Eck and two of his crew members for the murder of 33 survivors.
The war in the pacific was FAR harsher on survivors of sinkings with both US & Japanese captains far more likely to kill defenceless survivors.
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@peteenglish8773 Please feel free to provide us with just a handful of the apparently "regular" massacres you believe were carried out by RN subs in the Med.
Yes it is bollocks. Trying to portray TWO isolated instances by the same RN officer as "regularly".
HMSub Torbay (Lt Comm Anthony Miers) 4th July 1941 , unnamed Cretan schooner (~50 tons) 36'01N,23'06E
HMSub Torbay (Lt Comm Anthony Miers) 4th July 1941 , unnamed Cretan schooner (~50 tons) 35.43N,23.12E
His actions on the 4th & 9th July 1941 at resulted in Torbay's commander (Lt Com Anthony Miers) being severely reprimanded and ordered to cease such actions by Adm Max Horton. The are a larger (but still a relatively small number) of incidents of German U-boats gunning survivors,
U-37 (KL Victor Oehrn) 23 August 1940, British ship "Severn Leigh" (5242grt) 54'31'N,25'41W
U-552 (KL Erich Topp) 3 March 1942, US ship "David H. Atwater"(2428grt) 37'57N, 75'10W
U-126 (KL Ernst Bauer) 8 March 1942 Panamanian Tanker "Esso Bolivar" (10389grt) 19'38N,74'38W
U-172 (KL Carl Emmermann) 24 June 1942 Colombian Sailing Vessel "Resolute"(35grt)13'15N,80'30W
U-754(KL Johanns Oestermann) 28 July 1942 US Fishing Vessel "Ebb"(259grt) 43'18N,63'50W
U-852(KL Heinz-Wilhelm Eck) 13 March 1944 Hellenic Steamship "Peleus"(4695grt) 02'00S,10'00W
U-532(FK Ottoheinrich Junker) 27 March 1944 British Ship "Tulagi"(228grt) 11'00S,78'40E
the most egregious of which (known as the "Peleus incident" and committed by the U-852 (KptLt Eck) resulted in the post war execution of Eck and two of his crew members for the massacre of 33 survivors.
The war in the pacific was FAR harsher on survivors of sinkings with both US & Japanese captains far more likely to kill defenceless survivors.
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@peteenglish8773 Please feel free to provide us with just a handful of the apparently "regular" massacres you believe were carried out by RN subs in the Med.
Yes it is bollocks. Trying to portray TWO isolated instances by the same RN officer as "regularly".
HMSub Torbay (Lt Comm Anthony Miers) 4th July 1941 , unnamed Cretan schooner (~50 tons) 36'01N,23'06E
HMSub Torbay (Lt Comm Anthony Miers) 4th July 1941 , unnamed Cretan schooner (~50 tons) 35.43N,23.12E
His actions on the 4th & 9th July 1941 at resulted in Torbay's commander (Lt Com Anthony Miers) being severely reprimanded and ordered to cease such actions by Adm Max Horton.
The are a larger (but still a relatively small number) of incidents of German U-boats gunning survivors,
U-37 (KL Victor Oehrn) 23 August 1940, British ship "Severn Leigh" (5242grt) 54'31'N,25'41W
U-552 (KL Erich Topp) 3 March 1942, US ship "David H. Atwater"(2428grt) 37'57N, 75'10W
U-126 (KL Ernst Bauer) 8 March 1942 Panamanian Tanker "Esso Bolivar" (10389grt) 19'38N,74'38W
U-172 (KL Carl Emmermann) 24 June 1942 Colombian Sailing Vessel "Resolute"(35grt)13'15N,80'30W
U-754(KL Johanns Oestermann) 28 July 1942 US Fishing Vessel "Ebb"(259grt) 43'18N,63'50W
U-852(KL Heinz-Wilhelm Eck) 13 March 1944 Hellenic Steamship "Peleus"(4695grt) 02'00S,10'00W
U-532(FK Ottoheinrich Junker) 27 March 1944 British Ship "Tulagi"(228grt) 11'00S,78'40E
the most egregious of which (known as the "Peleus incident" and committed by the U-852 (KptLt Eck) resulted in the post war execution of Eck and two of his crew members for the massacre of 33 survivors.
The war in the pacific was FAR harsher on survivors of sinkings with both US & Japanese captains far more likely to kill defenceless survivors.
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@peteenglish8773 Please feel free to provide us with just a handful of the apparently "regular" massacres you believe were carried out by RN subs in the Med.
Yes it is bollocks. Trying to portray TWO isolated instances by the same RN officer as "regularly".
HMSub Torbay (Lt Comm Anthony Miers) 4th July 1941 , unnamed Cretan schooner (~50 tons) 36'01N,23'06E
HMSub Torbay (Lt Comm Anthony Miers) 4th July 1941 , unnamed Cretan schooner (~50 tons) 35.43N,23.12E
His actions on the 4th & 9th July 1941 at resulted in Torbay's commander (Lt Com Anthony Miers) being severely reprimanded and ordered to cease such actions by Adm Max Horton.
The are a larger (but still a relatively small number) of incidents of German U-boats gunning survivors,
U-37 (KL Victor Oehrn) 23 August 1940, British ship "Severn Leigh" (5242grt) 54'31'N,25'41W
U-552 (KL Erich Topp) 3 March 1942, US ship "David H. Atwater"(2428grt) 37'57N, 75'10W
U-126 (KL Ernst Bauer) 8 March 1942 Panamanian Tanker "Esso Bolivar" (10389grt) 19'38N,74'38W
U-172 (KL Carl Emmermann) 24 June 1942 Colombian Sailing Vessel "Resolute"(35grt)13'15N,80'30W
U-754(KL Johanns Oestermann) 28 July 1942 US Fishing Vessel "Ebb"(259grt) 43'18N,63'50W
U-852(KL Heinz-Wilhelm Eck) 13 March 1944 Hellenic Steamship "Peleus"(4695grt) 02'00S,10'00W
U-532(FK Ottoheinrich Junker) 27 March 1944 British Ship "Tulagi"(228grt) 11'00S,78'40E
the most egregious of which (known as the "Peleus incident" and committed by the U-852 (KptLt Eck) resulted in the post war execution of Eck and two of his crew members for the massacre of 33 survivors.
The war in the pacific was FAR harsher on survivors of sinkings with both US & Japanese captains far more likely to kill defenceless survivors.
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@Project_Prescott I apologise for my late reply. I did reply earlier to your message above but YT LOVES randomly deleting my posts. My now deleted message said...
I don't know if you're aware that the HMS Hood association website has a memorial page for EVERY known member of the ship's crew. A lot of these memorial pages contain photographs and history of the individual concerned, and they are a means to keep alive their memory for the future. There currently exists a page for Ordinary Seaman Leonard Moyal Peckham, Service Number: P/JX 158236, born on 04 December 1922 at Fratton, Portsmouth, Hampshire, but unfortunately there is no photograph and no further information. If you have a confirmed family photograph of Leonard the association would be delighted to receive a copy (and any other related information) which they will be only too glad to place on Leonard's page.
There is currently NO corresponding page for James William, but if you have his details (service number / dates of service aboard Hood etc) they will create a new page especially for him.
I would post a link to Leonard's page, but if I do so Youtube "kindly" delete the message, if you put leonard's name in google, his page at the website will be the first result that will show up. I hope this is of some use to your family. All the best, Project Prescott.
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@vincentlavallee2779 During the battle of Denmark Strait, Bismarck's "killing shot" was fired at Hood from 8-9 nautical miles away. At that range the 38 cm SK C/34 (Bismarck's main armament) had a CEP (circular error probability - effectively the radius of a circle within which 50% of its shots would fall) of 100m. That means that if 8 of Bismarck's 15in guns fired at a single point 8-9 nm away, 4 of the shells would be expected to land (with completely random distribution) within an ellipsis (due to the angle of fall) measuring approximately 100m (330ft) wide, (or to put it another way 38% of HMS Hood's 860ft length), by close to 2500 feet long. The other 4 shots would land even further away from the aiming point. That being the case, how can an individual shell be aimed specifically at a tiny part of HMS Hood's structure, namely the 4in HA magazine, that is believed to have triggered off Hood's detonation? I'll give you a hint, there's a little clue in my paragraph above....where it says "completely random distribution".
A simplified analogy is that if you prop a dartboard up 50 yards away and can consistently knock it over with a shotgun at that range then that is pretty good shooting, just as Bismarck / PE achieved during the Denmark Strait encounter.
Now you can "knock the dartboard over" all day long with the shotgun and STILL NOT hit the bullseye (magazine) with an individual pellet. As opposed to being a skillful shot by knocking over the dartboard, whether you hit the bullseye with an individual pellet IS complete luck.
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During the battle of Denmark Strait, the Bismarck's killer blow was fired at Hood from 8-9 nautical miles away. At that range the 38 cm SK C/34 (Bismarck's main armament) had a CEP (circular error probability - effectively the radius of a circle within which 50% of its shots would fall) of 100m. That means that if 8 of Bismarck's 15in guns fired at a single point 8-9 nm away, 4 of the shells would be expected to land (with completely random distribution) within an ellipse measuring approximately 100m (330ft) wide, (or 38% of HMS Hood's 860ft length), by more than two thousand feet long (an ellipse due to the angle of fall). The other 4 shots would land even further away from the aiming point. That being the case, how can an individual shell be aimed specifically at a tiny part of HMS Hood's structure, namely the 4in HA magazine, that triggered off Hood's detonation? I'll give you a hint, there's a little clue in my paragraph above....where it says "completely random distribution".
A simplified analogy is that if you prop a dartboard up 50 yards away and can consistently knock it over with a shotgun at that range then that is pretty good shooting, just as Bismarck / PE achieved during the Denmark Strait encounter.
Now you can "knock the dartboard over" all day long with the shotgun and STILL NOT hit the bullseye (magazine) with an individual pellet. As opposed to being a skillful shot by knocking over the dartboard, whether you hit the bullseye with an individual pellet IS COMPLETE LUCK.
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@VincentComet-l8e Don't for one second think I'm justifying Holland's decisions, yes they were flawed especially with the advantage of cool, unpressured hindsight... but he's not alone in making such bad calls, when the chips are down, the pressure is very much on, and a fluid situation calls for an immediate decision.
I'm aware of and agree with the points you make. On the other side of the scales of history is the fact that the inexperienced and mechanically imperfect HMS PoW singlehandedly stopped the German's plans to wreck the Atlantic convoy system, and that whereas the RN lost a revered and venerable 20 year old battlecruiser which comprised a relatively small part of the RN capital ship establishment and whose loss was replaced manifold, in exchange the Germans due to events precipitated at Denmark Strait lost a much vaunted nazi "uberschiff" who after 9 days at sea was put on the bottom of the ocean, a loss of 25% of the Kriegsmarine's capital ship force which was never replaced.
In all likelihood this only happened because of Holland's initially unplanned interception at Denmark Strait. Unplanned in the sense that his force was originally tasked to sail to Reykjavik to refuel and from there backup the Norfolk & Suffolk, but instead had to plot a long range, high speed interception course "on the fly", which as we know would have been a perfect interception but for the temporary loss of contact with the German ships at a CRUCIAL moment just hours before battle was joined.
What would have been the outcome if Holland complete with his attendant destroyer screen (which had been detached earlier to attempt to regain contact with the Germans, and as a consequence took no part in the action) had instead crossed the German's "T" at Denmark Strait, something that could easily have been achieved had it not been for the unfortunate crucial loss of contact in the early hours of 23rd May which threw all of his planning to the wind?
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Whilst concurring with most of your comment, I'd like to add some of my own thoughts.
Yes, in the engagement of Bismarck / PE Vs Hood / PoW there was on paper a superiority in RN firepower BUT.
1. The 2 RN heavy cruisers were at no time in gunnery range of the Denmark Strait engagement, being in a tail chasing position and with V/Adm Holland electing to retain radio silence and not communicating his intentions to Wake-Walker in HMS Norfolk. Norfolk did fire a couple of wishful salvoes at the German ships which fell woefully short.
2. The Destroyer escort that had accompanied Hood / PoW had been detached to search northwards for the German ships when Suffolk / Norfolk had temporarily lost contact with the German ships earlier in the night, and as a consequence of their detachment were NOT at the scene of the battle... Though they did arrive shortly after the engagement had concluded and it was the destroyer HMS Electra that finally rescued the three Hood survivors.
It's all very easy to make a charge of a "poor management of resources" in hindsight. But I wonder how the many armchair admirals that haunt comments would have handled a high speed interception at long range with the enemy on the very border of his intended scene of operations, in an era before satellites, over the horizon radars, GPS or even comprehensive air coverage, and then just as the plan was falling into place as planned through the "fog of war" the shadowing cruisers lose contact with the quarry shortly before contact, and all the careful plotting of the interception course has come to nought.
Sitting on the sidelines picking fault, is a universe away from being in sole command of major units in a bleak stormy North Atlantic with imperfect intelligence to base your decisions on.
Holland was not alone in making a "wrong call", Lütjens was in hindsight equally faulty in some of his decisions, in the immediacy of a fast moving dynamic engagement snap decisions have to be made. Make the right one and its "V/Adm Holland, the Hero of Denmark Strait"... make the wrong call and its "Why did the fool do that"?
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