Comments by "doveton sturdee" (@dovetonsturdee7033) on "Banijay History" channel.

  1.  Ben Siener  Perhaps the real goon is the person who doesn't even know the correct name of the Japanese battleship concerned? Isn't it interested that people tend to resort to insults when they are out of sensible comments? Anyway, for what it is worth, I will try again. Battleships didn't have wooden decks, as you seem to think. They had thin wooden planking (usually teak) laid over steel decks, and the following is an explanation of why, from a former crewman aboard USS Iowa:- The deck was covered in teak wood. It served a number of purposes. The wood deck served to insulate the boat from the heat of the sun making the below decks more comfortable. The wood also wasn’t as slippery when oil or grease got on the deck. Oil and Grease made a steel deck, even with a slip resistant coating, dangerously slippery. The wooden deck performed better and could be cleaned up rather quickly in the heat of the moment. Stains on the deck were scrubbed with a brick and a modified handle. Each bosun took one plank and pushed the brick back and forth until the wood was clean, a pain staking process. If the wood was too stained, it could be easily replaced. As others pointed out, teak wood is slip resistant when wet. Additionally the wooden decking would allow the standing water to drain quickly so there was less chance of having standing water. The teak wood also protected the deck from normal wear and tear. There were a lot of people and equipment moving around on deck, and eventually the standard slip resistant material would need maintenance which was a huge pain. Wood could be replaced quickly and easily. Perhaps, were you to read up on the practical problems involved in maintaining a large warship at sea, you might began to understand.
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  2.  @potusdumbledore3481  My opinion is based on facts, not prejudice. Hitler did not order his generals to halt, the order came from the commander of Army Group A, von Rundstedt, for sound military reasons. Since their breakthrough on the Meuse, the German armour had travelled a considerable distance on their own tracks, and were sorely in need of a period of servicing and maintenance, especially since they would shortly been needed for the drive south. This, by the way, was not seen by most German generals, at the time, as the foregone conclusion that it actually became. Consequently, von Rundstedt ordered the halt on the line of the Aa canal on 24 May. This is clear from Army Group A's war diary, which was captured after the war. Hitler could have countermanded the order, especially since he was at von Rundstedt's headquarters at the time, but chose not to, firstly because he agreed with the reasons, secondly because his knowledge of the area from WW1 convinced him that the area was unsuitable for tanks, and thirdly because, on 23 May, Goering had told him that the elimination of the allied troops in the Dunkirk area was 'a special job for the Luftwaffe.' Your suggestion that the Luftwaffe was only allowed to target ships is nonsense, and not worthy of comment. Certainly, it made sense to target the ships, because the evacuation could not proceed without them, but no such restrictions were ever imposed, unless of course you can provide documentary evidence to the contrary, perhaps? Yes, Hitler always regarded his main enemy as the Soviet Union, but the attack in the west was intended to neutralise France as an enemy, and persuade the United Kingdom to accept peace terms. It was always a gamble, and it almost succeeded, and probably would have done had Halifax become Prime Minister. If the British had allowed an armistice to be, effectively, imposed upon them, then Hitler could then have turned East without hindrance, and carried on butchering Jews, Slavs, Jehovah's Witnesses, Gypsies, mental defectives, homosexuals and any else who caught his eye, to his heart's content. You might think this might have brought about a better Europe, happily my parents' and grandparents' generation did not.
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  3.  @ursodermatt8809  No they weren't. Bismarck had put her own forward radar out earlier when firing at HMS Norfolk. This is why Prinz Eugen was leading. German naval radar tended to work well until the guns fired, whereas US & British types were far more robust.
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  4.  @potusdumbledore3481  English (and French, by the way) soldiers were not 'allowed' to escape from Dunkirk. They were evacuated by an Allied (mainly British) naval force in the face of heavy bombing.
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  5. Actually, on 27 May, she didn't put up much resistance. Rodney had reduced her to a more-or-less helpless target with around 20 minutes of opening fire, and Bismarck didn't score a single ht in reply. She was, indeed, difficult to sink, but her obsolete armour layout meant that she was comparatively easy to neutralise. Incidentally, both Ballard & Mearns attributed her sinking to the British, and they led the two separate professional expeditions to examine the wreck.
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  6. No. Bismarck's radar had been put out of action when she fired at Norfolk on 23 May. That is why Prinz Eugen was leading.
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  7.  @NormAppleton  Sailed on 18 May, sank Hood on the morning of 24 May, and was sunk on the morning of 27 May.
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  8.  Ben Siener  Hood had wooden planking, but also horizontal deck armour.
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  9.  Ben Siener  Why don't you tell me which battleships didn't have wooden decks? The Iowas and Yamatos had them. Would you conclude from this than neither Iowa nor Yamato had adequate armour?
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  10. When you are on a ship in the middle of a sea battle, you don't really have many alternatives.
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  11. Actually, I believe Lightoller survived by standing on the upturned hull of a collapsible lifeboat.
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  12. Hood had 3 inches of deck armour. As did a Queen Elizabeth class battleship.
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  13.  @trevdean540  Yes. Because it ensured that Bismarck and Prinz Eugen would not be able to break out into the wider Atlantic, where they would have been harder to track down, it ensured that the supply convoy routes would not be threatened by German surface ships, and it led to the destruction of Bismarck herself, as well as the virtual withdrawal of the German surface fleet from the war. Unlike the crew of Bismarck, the crew of Hood did not die for nothing.
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  14.  @bamboozler02  Being used for what was, effectively, target practice, does not count as 'fighting back.' You might want to check your figures for torpedo & shell hits, by the way.
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  15.  @attackhelicopter7403  It actually took about 100 minutes to sink Bismarck, although after the first 20 she had been so badly disabled that she was no longer a warship, more a helpless target.
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  16. The Californian was the nearest ship. Her officers reported Titanic's rockets, and her lights to their captain.
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  17. Nothing to do with National Pride. The British began a programme of modernisation, starting with their older battleships first. The policy was to take no more than two ships out of service at any one time. The first four were three of the Queen Elizabeths and Renown. The third and fourth of these, Queen Elizabeth & Valiant, were almosat completed in September, 1939. Hood was programmed, had war not intervened, for reconstruction along the lines of Renown, from 1941. Hood was not a traditional battlecruiser, by the way. Her redesign after Jutland resulted in a ship with armour very similar to that of a Queen Elizabeth, but some six knots faster. Much more a fast battleship, in fact.
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  18.  @idiedoof4339  You didn't exist in May, 1941.
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  19. Perhaps because the sinking of HMS Hood was the only, even if partial, success achieved by the German surface fleet in the whole of the war?
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  20.  Ben Siener  ?????????????????????
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  21. Hood was far more a fast battleship than a true battlecruiser. Her armour was comparable to that of the Queen Elizabeth class battleships. The previous battlecruiser class, the Renowns, had 6 inch armour belts. Hood had a 12 inch belt. The battlecruisers at Jutland were not 'thrown into the line with battleships in order to augment the fleet's firepower.' They fought as a separate fleet, supported by four fast battleships, Hood was one of four capital ships available to Tovey with the speed to chase down Bismarck. Two, King George V and Repulse, were positioned in the Iceland-Faroes Gap, and the other two, Hood & Prince of Wales in the Denmark Strait. These were the two exit points into the wider Atlantic, and it was essential to prevent Bismarck & Prinz Eugen from breaking out, which would have made them far more difficult to hunt down. The reasoning, without ther benefit of hindsight, was that both units were independently capable of doing this. It worked, by the way, in that the damage Prince of Wales inflicted on Bismarck was sufficient to force Luyjens to call off his mission and make for St. Nazaire. The simple fact is, that if Hood had not been there, Prince of Wales could not have been sent unsupported.
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  22. Hood had armour which was on a par with that of a Queen Elizabeth class battleship.
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  23. The deck had three inches of armour. As much as a Queen Elizabeth class battleship.
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  24. A brand new German warship sank a 20 years old British one, but was then largely destroyed by a 14 years old British one, I think you mean?
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  25. Sorry, but HMS Belfast was not in service in May, 1941, as she was undergoing a major repair. Perhaps you are thinking of Scharnhorst, where Belfast certainly was present?
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  26. Not in the war against Germany and Italy they didn't. WW2 naval warfare involved rather more than carrier battles in the Pacific.
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  27. Nevertheless, the result of the Denmark Strait action was that Bismarck's admiral abandoned his mission and ran for St. Nazaire.
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  28. Operational life of about three weeks. Impressive?
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  29. Prinz Eugen used 8 inch HE shells throughout the action. She started a fire on Hood's boat deck among the ready-use 4 inch & UP AA ammunition, but nothing more, whatever fanciful nonsense people might, long after the event, seek to claim.
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  30. How much of a part did the US Navy and Army play in ensuring that an attempted invasion did not take place in 1940? By the time the US was reluctantly dragged into WW2 by Japan and Germany, invasion was a half forgotten memory, and the Germans had already mired themselves in their Russian campaign. Moreover, the US Navy played a minor role in the western naval war. Of 808 U-boats lost in WW2, less tha 50 were sunk by US naval forces.
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  31. Hood's destroyers weren't present.
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  32. If I recall correctly, Germany tended not to bother declaring war, and the first warning their victims received was the arrival of bombers, troops, tanks, and einsatzgruppen. See Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Belgium, & The Soviet Union for further details.
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  33. Nonsense. Why do you feel an odd need to make something like that up?
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  34. I must have been absent the day that we were told that Germany did not invade Belgium in WW1, or Czechoslovakia & Poland in WW2. How unfortunate!
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  35. You mean the one that won the WW2 naval campaigns in the Atlantic, the Arctic & the Mediterranean? The Navy which successfully evacuated 336,000 British & French troops from Dunkirk? The one which planned and largely executed every successful Allied assault landing in the west, except Operation Dragoon? Mighty indeed! Glad that you noticed.
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  36. You don't seriously think that gunners of large warships could actually choose where on an enemy vessel they intended to land their shells, do you? Oh dear!
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  37. Bismarck's radar had been out of action since her own guns had disabled it firing at HMS Norfolk. That was why Prinz Eugen was in the lead.
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  38. There is no evidence, in reality, that the Captain was subjected to any such pressure. Indeed, five of Titanic's boilers were never connected.
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  39. No. Bismarck was damaged by Prince of Wales during the action, Lutjens abandoned his mission, and tried to France.
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  40. No one who knows anything about the subject thinks for a moment that Prinz Eugen's HE shells sank Hood. Aside from the fact that PE fired HE shells throughout, after 0557 she was firing at Prince of Wales. Hood exploded at 0600. Hood was so popular because of her world cruise immediately after he commissioning, which showed the flag in many parts of the Empire which had previously never seen a RN capital ship.
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  41. Try again. Hood' armour compared with that of a Queen Elizabeth class battleship, and she had the firepower of a capital ship, with a greater weight of broadside than that of Bismarck.
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  42. The teak decking was placed on top of the armour, as it was on every battleship.
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  43. Not it Bismarck was typical. A warship built in the late 1930s to a design from the late 1910s.
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  44. In terms of Bismarck, outdated armour, obsolete twin main turrets, and poor layout of internal communications above the main armour. An operational career of three weeks as a result of her shortcomings.
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  45. Yes. Iron Duke in the late 1930s, after conversion to a training ship, with armour and some main turrets removed.
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  46. Your opinion is evidently an ill-informed one. Bismarck's design (her main armament, armour pattern, and secondary armament) was outdated. She was probably a generation behind the King George Vs and the North Carolinas. Do you seriously suggest that naval gunners in 1941 could pick the spot on an enemy warship they intended to hit? Keep that opinion to yourself, unless you wish to be ridiculed.
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  47.  @walterCronkitesleftshoe6684  German gunnery officers, some would have us believe, was so advanced that they could put a 15 inch shell into the bull at the centre of a dartboard from 25,000 yards. Whilst blindfolded, of course.
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  48. Hood wasn't 'lightly armoured.' Her protection was on a par with that of a Queen Elizabeth.
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  49. Hood had armour which eas on a par with that of the Queen Elizabeth class battleships, after her redesign post Jutland. British heavy ships at Jutland did have effective magazine protection, as the High Seas Fleet's failure to inflict significant damage on all but one British battleship demonstrated, The problem with the battlecruisers was that their Admiral believed in the importance of rate of fire, and encouraged the storage of cordite outside the handling rooms.
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  50. Holland sought to close the range as quickly as possible because he was fully aware of Hood's vulnerablity to plunging fire. Her decks were amoured to WW1 battleship standards, but not up to the level of more modern capital ships. The only possible error of which he might be accused was in not allowing Prince of Wales, a ship with far superior deck & hull armour to that of Bismarck, to operate independently at longer range. Tovey did precisely this with Rodney on 27 May. That is, however, being wise after the event, and doubtless Holland was concerned about the fact that PoW was far from fully worked up.
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