Comments by "doveton sturdee" (@dovetonsturdee7033) on "Drachinifel"
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@ralphbernhard1757 Which comment doesn't actually make sense, except as a repetition of German wartime propaganda. The British had just lifted around 120,000 French troops out of Dunkirk, and had begun, from 7 June, landing the 'Reconstituted BEF' in Cherbourg.
Until, that is, General Weygand, on 14 June, informed Alan Brooke that the French army was no longer capable of 'organised resistance.' Two days later, on 16 June, Weygand became Petain's Minister of National Defence.
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@TTTT-oc4eb Oh dear, another wehraboo. Bismarck had been working up for seven months. Exactly how long did she need? USS South Dakota worked up in four and a half, and HMS King George V in three and a half.
Bismarck had outdated incremental armour, a generation behind the all-or-nothing of US battleships, and RN battleships from the Nelsons onwards. She also had outdated low angle secondary 5.9 inch armament, at a time when her contempories, the KGVs, & the Washingtons, had DP secondaries. She also had four twin main turrets, rather than the triples of the Washingtons, the Nelsons, and the KGVs, resulting in unnecessary dispersal of armour. Finally, her internal communications were placed above the main armoured deck. In her last battle (if, indeed, it could even be called a battle) these were put out of action in minutes.
Then, of course, there is the matter of weight of broadside. Bismarck's was 14.112 lbs. A KGV's was 15,900 lbs, a Nelson's 18,432 lbs, and a Washington's 24,300 lbs.
One thing I will acknowledge. however. Her speed when undamaged gave her the ability to avoid action with a Nelson and, perhaps, with a Washington or a KGV.
Again, on the subject of AA atmament, she carried 16 x 105mm guns, 16 x 37mm guns, & 12 x 20mm guns. However, when they were as badly directed as they were aboard Bismarck, they were largely irrelevant in any case.
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@ricoh.3162 Did HMS Rodney also have a poor output of shells? I wonder if the crew Of Scharnhorst would agree with your assessment of the guns of the KGV class as 'flawed?'
There are indeed many books. Perhaps you haven't read that by Von Mullenheim-Rechberg, the senior surviving officer. To quote from page 211 of the English version, published by the United States Naval Institute, Annapolis, in 1980 :-
'Was Lindemann still in charge there? No reports came down to us, nor were we asked what was happening in our area. We had nor heard a single word from the forward part of the ship since the action began but, considering the large number of hits we had felt, there must have been some drastic changes............ Had Albrecht been directing the secondary battery from there? (the forward fire control station). Was his own station serving only as a place of refuge? Those questions were never answered.....
I reached a messenger in the damage control center. The man was in a great hurry, and said only that both the First Officer and the Damage Control Engineer had had to abandon the damage control center, adding that he was the last one in the room and had to get out. Then he hung up. That was my last contact with the forward part of the ship.'
Of course, that was merely an account given by Baron Burkard Von Mullenheim-Rechberg, presumably, in your mind, another British Fanboy?
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Prince of Wales' engines were not 'in trouble' and her captain was not injured. Her masin armament was quickly restored, although certainly unreliable.
However, Bismarck had been damaged by a hit in her bows which left her down by the bows and leaking fuel oil. After the action Lutjens signalled Prinz Eugen to proceed at reduced speed.
Aside, of course, from Bismarck's inability to bring PoW to battle (although PoW did re-engage Bismarck later, twice on the same day) was Lutjens' worry about the failure of Luftwaffe intelligence, which had led him to believe that there were no British capital ships in the area. It was, in his mind, a real possibility that following PoW might lead him into other approaching British heavies.
As to sinking Norfolk & Suffolk, how would that be achieved when both were several knots faster than Bismarck, and radar-equipped?
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@jugganaut33 Nothing remotely like the Grand Slam existed in May, 1941. Development only began in July, 1943. Furthermore, the two German capital ships already in a French port had already been attacked by Bomber Command, but had only sustained slight damage. Nor, indeed, did the British need even to consider so absurd a possibility, as they caught Bismarck with one new and one middle-aged battleship, and destroyed her, within three days of the sinking of the Hood.
Your use of the term 'raped' is rather peculiar, by the way. Bismarck had embarked on a raiding sortie intended to intercept and destroy Atlantic convoys. The Admiralty was intent upon preventing this. What do you think the Royal Navy was going to do when Bismarck was 'intercepted?' Give Lutjens a stern talking to and send him on his way? The British intention was always to ensure that Bismarck never saw a French or German port again. In view of events currently unfolding around Crete, half measures were never considered, and nor would they have been desirable.
As to vessels capable of catching Bismarck, actually, King George V, Prince of Wales, Repulse, Renown, and every cruiser and destroyer in the Royal Navy could, as well as the two modern carriers Victorious & Ark Royal. The successful Swordfish strike was not launched 'in desperation' by the way. The British already knew Bismarck's position, and launched the strike as soon as she was in range. The weather was indeed poor, but not poor enough to prevent the attack, and no aircraft were lost either taking off or landing. There was never any suggestion that they might not find the Ark after making their attack, and, of course, they all did.
Certainly, losing Hood was a serious setback, but hardly a 'global catastrophe' largely because the British have always understood what the Price of Admiralty means. In practical terms, the impact on British control of the Atlantic was barely affected, and the events of 27 May proved this in full.
As to the casualties from Bismarck's crew, this is what happens when countries get involved in war. Do you think that, when Rodney & King George V closed the range sufficiently, their captains should have declined to open fire because some Germans might have been injured?
As to 'surrender' tell me any occasion when a warship surrendered at sea in WW2. The Germans did have a habit of scuttling their ships, but not one of surrendering them intact.
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During the time Tirpitz was in Norway, there were five Fleet Air Arm strikes ( Operations Tungsten, Mascot, and Goodwood 1-3) involving a total of 187 dive bombers, followed by three separate Bomber Command attacks, using 98 bombers in total. Tirpitz suffered severe superficial damage from the dive bomber attacks, was crippled by the first Bomber Command attack, and destroyed by the third. 'Lots of losses?' Losses were 18 FAA aircraft and 1 Lancaster.
The two strikes that sank Yamato involved 380 US aircraft.
However, you are not comparing like with like. Whereas Yamato was exposed at sea with no air cover (and, moreover, already intent upon a suicide mission) Tirpitz was hidden away in a fjord, with a large array of smoke dischargers, shore based AA positions and radar installations to support her, and nearby fighter bases to intercept incoming attacks. Moreover, her sheltered position, and surrounding torpedo nets, prevented the fleet air arm from using torpedoes at all.
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@ClassicFormulaOne1 So, we shouldn't accept the words of biased British officers, but should accept your prejudiced opinion without question? Perhaps you might supply credible sources for your claims. One of us needs to be smarter, but it isn't me. Actually, by the way, landing a thousand or so German survivors in a British port would have been seized upon by the British as a wonderful propaganda opportunity, at a time when the war was going badly. Haven't you seen the newsreels of large numbers of surrendered Italian troops in North Africa? The British would have done the same with Bismarck survivors.
As for Scharnhorst, the nearest U-boats were the eight boat Eisenbart pack, which was tracking Convoy JW55B. No boats were reported by any British observer during the rescue operations, and your emotive nonsense about men screaming in the dark is just that, nonsense, which you have made up. However, at least you have admitted that it was dark, even if the freezing seas and the rough weather are still too much for you.
Incidentally, the highest ranking British officer present at either rescue operation was a captain, hardly a high-ranking individual making 'political' decisions, but a professional seaman of many years' service, who would have had instinctive sympathy for the crews of the enemy ships, based upon the principle that 'today it was them; tomorrow it might be me.' Your insinuations insult their memory.
I notice you haven't commented on the Scharnhorst/Gneisenau/Glorious action. Why might that be?
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@ClassicFormulaOne1 I regret that you consider my correcting of your errors to be 'hatred.' This, of course, is your problem, not mine. The BBC World Service account comes from December,2011. It also includes the following comments :- 'We were full speed at 36 knots and going through those mountainous seas' 'It was a full gale blowing. To go through that at full speed, the bow would rise in the air and come down, hover there and come down with a clatter as if on concrete; mountains of water coming all over the ship.' 'It was pitch black and we shadowed with the use of radars.' 'At that point it went pitch black.' 'It (steaming away) seemed a terrible thing to do and it was. But it was the right thing to do.
If we had stayed a moment too long we could have joined those unfortunate men.'
As to Scharnhorst & Gneisenau. Of course they shouldn't have stayed to pick up survivors. It would have been foolish in the extreme to risk Germany's only two battleships, one of which was damaged Devonshire actually received one (corrupt) signal from Glorious, which read ' R.A.A. from Glorious. My 1615 2PB Time of origin 1640.' This was not a distress signal, but a signal addressed to the Rear Admiral, Aircraft Carriers, Admiral Wells. Neither escorting destroyer made any distress signal (at least, none was ever picked up by any British warship,) No other British ship or shore base received anything at all from Glorious, by the way. Admiral Cunningham, aboard Devonshire, concluded that the signal related to routine aircraft carrier signals traffic, and took no action. Indeed, what action should he have taken, given the garbled nature of the transmission? You do seem to have a remarkable ability to put the worst possible construction on every British action, assuming as you do that every British report was falsified, yet you accuse me of 'hatred.'
Perhaps, instead of trawling the internet, you might consider reading the writings of professional naval historians, where you might possibly find out something about the realities of naval warfare. Alternatively, you could simply continue spouting your prejudiced anti-British bile.
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The radar system had already failed, after Bismarck had fired at HMS Norfolk on 23 May. The blast from Bismarck's forward guns had disabled her own radar, which was rather more 'delicate' than the British type 284.
Bismarck's design was outdated, featuring incremental armour of the type used in WW1, which had been superseded long ago in the US & Royal Navies by the All or Nothing type more suited to longer range engagements. It was also significantly thinner than the armour of either the Nelson or King George V classes. These two classes also fired a heavier weight of broadside.
There was no possibility of salvaging Bismarck. At the end, she was listing by 20 degrees, sinking by the stern, and suffering from serious internal fires. The leaders of both scientific expeditions to the wreck, Bob Ballard & David Mearns, both opined that any scuttling attempt would only have hastened what was inevitable anyway.
You don't consider the losses in Norway of half of the total German destroyer fleet, the sinking of two (out of a total of six) light cruisers, and the crippling of a third in December, 1939, the long term damage to Deutchland/Lutzow, and the damage caused to Scharnhorst & Gneisenau, putting them out of action until November, 1940, to have been significant setbacks, then? Well, I suppose you are entitled to your opinion.
In reality, after the sinking of Bismarck, the German surface fleet was more or less reduced to an irrelevance. Prinz Eugen, Scharnhorst, & Gneisenau escaped back to German waters. Gneisenau never sailed again, Scharnhorst sailed once more, and was sunk, Prinz Eugen made a abortive attempt to reach Norway, but was torpedoed, and thereafter pottered around the Baltic until surrender to the Allies, and Tirpitz functioned as an expensively maintained Fleet in Being.
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@shalaconballard9912 Hood had armour on a par with that of, for example, the Queen Elizabeths, and thicker than the Iron Dukes or the Nagato, and her belt was the same as that of the North Carolinas. That is, simply, a fact.
The post-Jutland redesign changed Hood, from a conventional battlecruiser into a fast battleship, and did result in her being lower in the water, but there was never any intention to add further armour to the ship in her existing form. There was a proposal, never implemented because of the war, for her to undergo a complete modernisation along the lines of Queen Elizabeth, Valiant, or Renown, which would have seen her with new, lighter, engines, and a totally different superstructure. Significant weight savings would result, which permitted installation of enhanced protection without increasing the overall displacement of the 'new' ship.
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You don't consider that the Bismarck's outdated design, involving as it did a low angle secondary armament, four twin main turrets, and obsolete incremental armour, among other flaws, was something of a disadvantage?
Oh, and didn't the Germans have their opportunity to 'eat up' the British in 1940, when France had fallen, Genial Uncle Joe was supplying Adolf with raw materials, and the USA was watching from a distance?
I am sure you have read what actually happened to the cunning plan that was Operation Sealion, so I won't enlighten you further.
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