Comments by "Steve Valley" (@stevevalley7835) on "River class - Guide 216" video.

  1. A Bismark vs Hood question came up on another forum a few days ago. The theory was offered that Bismark penetrated Hood's deck by using a reduced charge, to lower muzzle velocity, enabling firing at a higher angle. Extracts from a 1935 USN gunnery table, were offered as evidence this was an established practice: for a USN 14" full charge, 2600fps MV, at 14,500 yards, angle of fall is 12 degrees, for reduced charge, 2000fps, angle of fall is 20 degrees. For a USN 16", full charge, at 23,500 yards, angle of fall is 22 degrees, reduced charge, 42 degrees. One pushback offered to this theory was that there was no record of Bismark doing this, but the records would be in the ship, at the bottom of the ocean, and no-one would have though it worth mentioning in the after action debrief of the surviving crew, because it was SOP. Additional challenge to the theory was that Bismark's guns used brass cased charges that could not be adjusted. But only the main charge was brass cased, the fore charge was in a bag, so the charge could be adjusted. What say you? Is it plausible that, knowing they were shooting at an old ship with inadequate protection against plunging fire, Bismark's gunners simply turned to the reduced charge page of their gunnery table, fired at high angle, and the eye-witness accounts, and narrative of the last 80 years, that it was a deck hit that penetrated to the magazine, are correct?
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  2.  @WALTERBROADDUS  I would not think the idea would be "out of the box" since the necessary data was in the printed gunnery tables, well before the war started, so someone else had to be thinking the same thing. As math works the same everywhere, I expect the Germans could calculate the equations just as well as the USN could. Your thought about what to do with the removed powder is a good one. Off hand, I don't know exactly how much the charge would be reduced to reduce the MV the required amount, but I'm sure someone 80 years ago had calculated that, otherwise, specs for reduced charge firing wouldn't be in the gunnery tables. Knowing the German fetish for organization, Bismark probably had reduced charge bags already made up. So, when they wanted to shoot through PoW's belt, they used a full charge for the wider danger space and higher kinetic energy, and they grabbed the smaller bags for lobbing shells at Hood that could punch through the deck.
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