Comments by "" (@walterkronkitesleftshoe6684) on "" video.

  1. "Bro" seems to have more idea what he's talking about, unlike you "Bruh".
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  2. 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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  3.  @RavetacFN  "Won 1 on 1" against what? Rodney? Hahaha. When Rodney sailed over the horizon on the morning of 27th May 1941, the Bismarck's laundry team were put on double shifts to cope with the sudden increase in workload. Both Rodney & KGV were superior in armour and firepower. Bismarck's only worthwhile ability was that of running away from superior ships.
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  4.  @RavetacFN  You mean the untested HMS PoW with a completely inexperienced crew who still landed the first shot of the Denmark Strait engagement and stopped operation Rhineübung in its tracks with their heavily malfunctioning main batteries, and then shrugged off multiple large calibre hits from Bismarck? Oh THAT PoW.
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  5.  @RavetacFN  What on earth gives you the impression that PoW was "heavily damaged" or "almost sank"? She received just 7 hits, NONE of which detonated as they were intended to largely due to PoW's "all or nothing" armour scheme that allowed incoming shells to overpenetrate non vital areas before detonation. She withdrew because her main armaments were working at less than 60% of full capacity, and the Germans were admittedly having a "good day". BUT her speed was unaffected, and she was again shadowing Bismarck & PE within 25 minutes of withdrawing, and once her guns had been restored to some semblance of working order she twice again exchanged fire with the German over the next 36 hours before having to return to Iceland due to shortage of fuel. As for Hood, there's no accounting for "million to one" shots is there? PoW had good and back luck with her shooting, her first hit landed effectively made Bismarck an "operational kill" while her third hit merely damaged a motor launch on Bismarck's aft hangar and damaged her catapult. In case you're wondering, apart from HMS Hood which unfortunately targetted the wrong ship before realising her mistake and had to plot a second firing solution from scratch before her sinking, each of the other 3 ships in the Denmark Strait engagement each scored approximately ~5% hits of total shots fired.
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  6. Errr.. but the RN did !!! Its 15000ft below the Atlantic now. And save the "it's crew scuttled it" nonsense.
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  7. She also forgot to fire her main weapon (5 x 21in torpedoes) at Bismarck, making her the only one of the 5 destroyers of the 4th destroyer flotilla to fail to do so..
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  8. None.
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  9. Blah blah blah. She was tag teamed, spit roasted and BUMMED to death by two SUPERIOR RN battleships.
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  10. Don't delude yourself. Bismarck was ripped apart and already sinking when the crew decided they couldn't take any more pounding of the RN and pulled the plug.
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  11.  @jorgeckert3162  What I see is an opinion clash between yours (and lots of other Bismarck fanbois in comments) opinion and the eye witnesses who were actually there at the time the events took place. With regard to Bismarck's final battle, 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 a a few lines later 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. But regardless of that slight inconsistency 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. Bismarck's crew actually scuttled 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 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 the 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, his opponent gave in before he lost.", when the truth is the loser had his arse ripped off and handed back to him on a plate. 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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  12. PBY-5 Catalina from 209 Sqd flying out of RAF Castle Archdale (Lough Erne) Squadron code WQ-Z serial code WH545 was the catalina that spotted Bismarck on the morning of 26th May 1941.
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  13. You've got your facts mixed up. Lt Comm Eugene Esmonde was Officer Commanding 825 Sqd FAA flying off HMS Victorious, that was the squadron that attacked and torpedoed Bismarck on the 24th, the same day she had sunk the Hood. He was awarded the DSO for leading the squadron of junior, inexperienced pilots over 120 miles through DREADFUL Atlantic weather to attack Bismarck, and then after their successful attack, he then led them back safely to Victorious, without loss. The Attack that damaged Bismarck's rudder was carried out by Swordfish of 810 and 818 Squadrons FAA flying from HMS Ark Royal on the 26th May.
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  14. Were you a member of Bismarck's crew?
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  15. If it wasn't for Bismarck's million to one shot against Hood, she wouldn't have made it as far as she did. BOTH sides in the episode had their share of both good and bad luck.
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  16.  @julmdamaslefttoe3559  The 2 Bismarck survivors who were picked up by the German weather reporting ship "Sachsenwald" were Matrosengefreiter Otto Maus & Matrosengefreiter Walter Lorenzen. The 3 Bismarck survivors who were picked up by the German U-boat U-74 were Matrosengefreiter Herbert Manthey, Matrosengefreiter Otto Höntzsch, & Matrosengefreiter Georg Herzog.
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  17. The Swordfish that struck the crippling blow to Bismarck's rudders belonged to 810, 818 and 820 Squadrons of the Fleet Air Arm, which were the combined strike air group of HMS Ark Royal. 2 days earlier Swordfish of 825 Sqd FAA from HMS Victorious had previously struck at Bismarck, but with less spectacular results and only relatively minor damage inflicted.
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  18. Blah blah blah. She was tag teamed, spit roasted and BUMMED to death by two SUPERIOR RN battleships.
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  19. Even IF the Iowas were ready they would have done nothing, seeing as the US was still happily bystanding, watching the British Empire alone fight against totalitarianism, while the US profitted from and fuelled the European conflict by conducting business with BOTH sides of the European war THROUGHOUT WW2.
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  20. ​ @MIESE09  Yes I like survivor testimonies as well.... Lets look at some shall we? Here are some quotes from survivors regarding Bismarck's final battle. 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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  21. Though she was ageing, Hood was NO Jutland "Queen Mary" or "Indefatigable" class battlecruiser, she had both arms and armour that were on a par with other battleships of the WW2 era, only her deck armour was on the lower end of the scale.
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  22.  @aaronvegh3034  Hear what Bismarck's most senior ranking survivor (Kapitänleutnant Burkhard von Mullenheim-Rechberg) had to say about the matter. “Unable to leave our station because an inferno was raging outside, we knew little about what was going on elsewhere. Was the ship’s command still in the forward command post? Was Lindemann still in charge there? No reports came down to us nor were we asked what was happening in our area. We had not 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.” In conclusion, Mullenheim-Rechberg also admitted that no scuttling order EVER reached him. “The order was given to scuttle and abandon the ship, although I did not know it then. In fact, no such order ever reached me.” And this is despite the fact that a large portion of the surviving Bismarck crew came to his station, as a result of his armoured fire directing station being one of the few safer areas for fleeing German sailors. “Men who had had to abandon their own stations or protected rooms began arriving to take refuge in my station.” And so even if there was a “scuttle” order had been given by commander Oels it was clearly NOT received by much of the ship. There was NO mention of any "scuttling" from the 111 Bismarck survivors picked up and taken to Britain while they were interrogated there, No, instead the first ever recorded mention of "scuttling" was in a 1969 interview with Gerhard Junack, Bismarck's chief engineering officer. For "scuttled" read "sore arsed nazi losers & fanbois ignoring reality".
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  23. the "US Hood" !!! Good Grief !!!
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  24. HMS Dorsetshire. (My father's ship)
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  25. She then lost contact with Bismarck while the other 4 destroyers of the flotilla she was a part of (those other destroyers being HMS Cossack, Maori, Sikh and Zulu) continued to engage Bismarck through out the night of 26/27th May 1941.
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  26. There was no account of the fleet staff or captain Lindemann after the start of the final battle.... apart that is from the ludicrous account by one survivor of seeing Capt Lindemann struggling up the forepeak of the capsizing hull to stand saluting as she took her final plunge.
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  27. HMS Dorsetshire.... 2 torps into Bismarck's starboard side, and one into her port side.
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  28. After being torn apart by the ROYAL NAVY..... suck it up boy.
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  29. Prinz Eugen did NOT "leave Bismarck to sink by itself". It was ORDERED to leave Bismarck by the fleet commander Günther Lütjens and to carry out commerce raiding by itself. He was trying to rescue some value from "Exercise Rhine" which had been stopped in its tracks by HMS Prince of Wales' hit on Bismarck on 23rd May 1941. The plan to carry out commerce warfare by the lone Prinz Eugen didn't bear any fruit though as 2 days after parting from Bismarck, the heavy cruiser developed problems with its troublesome high pressure steam turbines and was forced to return to France on 1st June 1941... 4 days after Bismarck's sinking without ever having fired a shot at a British merchant ship.
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  30.  @bsalgrg-d9e  No matter what you think, that was the case. Unless you know better than Prinz Eugen's war diary that is. The one factor that gave a small semblance of hope to "exercise Rhine" was the simple fact of the physical enormity of the North Atlantic ocean. In the era before long range radars and comprehensive air coverage, it was INCREDIBLY difficult to track down ships that did not want to be found in the world's oceans. If you'd like some contemporary evidence of that fact, then read about "Operation Berlin" which took place just a few months before "Exercise Rhine" and involved just the 2 German battleships Scharnhost & Gneisenau. They operated mostly undetected in the North Atlantic for 2 months, inspite of Royal Navy efforts to track them down. It was only the ongoing introduction of ship and airborne radar equipment together with increasing air coverage of the North Atlantic that started to shrink down that 41,000,000 square mile "zone of uncertainty".
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  31. Sailing with the other destroyers of the 4th Destroyer Flotilla, they were HMS Cossack, Maori, Sikh & Zulu. They all remebered to fire their torpedoes at Bismarck.. ORP Piorun was too busy signalling "I AM A POLE".
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  32. It's a minor footnote of little importance, only to the current gender obsessed drones. Of more importance is the passing on of the story that ended over 3500 lives and was a step along the way of the eventual destruction of nazism.
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  33. "only sank when scuttled" ..... Other fairy stories are also available.
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  34.  @jorgeckert3162  Oh Ok Jorg, so you retract your comment in your OP "only sank when scuttled" then. That's cool.
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  35. "30Kts was no longer fast enough to outrun the old, 21-24Kt Battleships" ???
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  36. Aye, Herbert "Can I borrow your battleship's brass band" Wohlfarth.
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  37.  @adorable_rookie_69  I used to play "world of tanks" from the early days (2011.... Where did all that time go?), it was great to start off with, but jesus, as time & each "update" went by... it slowly but surely changed to complete rigged shit. Any game where the gameplay is affected by "ingame microtransactions" is to be avoided.... Cosmetic stuff is all well and good, but pay to win? No way....
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  38. What about the Swordfish from HMS Victorious 2 days earlier?
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  39. Very good Sergio, but U-556 (Kpt Lt Herbert Wohlfarth) which had earlier spotted Renown and Ark Royal and even seen swordfish taking off from her decks, had expended all of its torpedoes and was short of fuel and so passed over the duty to rescue Bismarck's war diary to U-74 (Kpt Lt Eitel Friedrich Kentrat).
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  40. In the case of Germany its a sort of inadaquacy type of thing. They HATE being beaten so much that when they're on the verge of defeat they kill themselves in the mistaken belief that they have denied the enemy some benefit. The fact that they have merely saved the enemy the cost of a few more shells to achieve the same end result seems lost on them.
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  41. Joe Brooks later in the war became a crewman onboard the British midget "X-craft" subs and took part in operations against the Tirpitz.
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  42. No they did sink it.
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  43. 111 crewmen rescued by the RN before a periscope sighting brought the rescue efforts to a premature conclusion. What excuse did Admiral Wilhelm Marschall have when he completely abandoned +1600 RN sailors to their deaths on 8th June 1940 after his ships sunk HMS Glorious and her two gallant destroyer escorts HMS Acasta & Ardent in the Norwegian sea? Even though there were no other allied ships were in the area.
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  44. "What it took to put her down"? reduced to a defencless floating target in 25 minutes, and below the surface in 100. Wow.... awesome.
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  45. What complete and utter cockwash, you silly boy. As opposed to your baseless nonsense, 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 an discussion he held with Capt Martin of the 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 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 naval captain he would have been SORELY aware of the actions of Otto Weddigen during WW1 during his attack on the British Cruisers Aboukir, Cressy & Hogue. I suggest you look up the details of that incident. Also google about U-74 (KptLt Eitel-friedrich Kentrat) and U-556 (KptLt Herbert Wohlfarth) who WERE in the vicinity of the sinkings, having spotted various British warships and heard the final battle. Indeed although U-556 had to depart for France due to lack of fuel and battle damage, U-74 surfaced after the departure of the RN rescue ships and searched for survivors eventually rescuing a further 3 sailors 9 hours after the sinking. The RN was so filled with hatred that the day following the sinking, one of the survivors who had been picked up, a badly injured German sailor named Gerhard Lüttich, died on the operating table in Dorsetshire's sick bay. His body was then "committed to the deep" with full military honours provided by both his German comrades AND sailors from HMS Dorsetshire together with a Royal Marine bugler. The remaining crew were treated EXCELLENTLY by the crews of HMS Dorsetshire & HMS Maori, being given the same bunking arrangements as the crew (under guard of course), and provided with 3 hot meals a day for the 4 days they were on board. They were also given Grog (rum and water) which was usually issued normally to the RN sailors, the survivors were also provided with sweets, chocolate and cigarettes by the RN crews, and this was just 3 days after the sinking of HMS Hood... so much for any imagined "deep hatred" by the RN. Here is what Mullenheim-Rechberg wrote of British treatment of the Bismarck survivors. ""The fight that the Bismarck put up to the bitter end earned the admiration of British seamen, which probably accounts for the good accommodations we were given and the way we were treated onboard ship. The fact that Captain Martin was well treated as a prisoner of war in Germany in World War One may also have had something to do with this. When he made his rounds among our men he always told them, "As long as you are here with me, you'll have it just as good." And the attitude of his crew was the same. The British seamen were always pleasant and helpful. "You today, us tomorrow," they said."" How do I know this? because my father was a crewman onboard Dorsetshire at the time. He later survived Dorsetshire's own sinking and along with the rest of the "HMS Dorsetshire association" members post war, was invited to various reunions with the Bismarck survivors through the 1960s and 70s. THAT was the level of respect and comradeship that was experienced between the crews of both sides... far removed from your own seemingly devious nonsense. For some further reading material on the matter, google "nineteenkeys dorsetshire" and look for a blog, written by a German researcher between 2008 until about 2012. If you read the entire blog, you will see that he starts with a viewpoint that concurs with your own, and then through further research and discussions with Capt Benjamin Martin's family members, that he changes his opinion 100% and indeed ends up paying respects to Capt Martin. If you're so heartbroken about the abandonment of sailors to their fate by the enemy, then I'll warn you NOT to read about the actions of Adm Wilhelm Marschall who on the afternoon of 8th June 1940, after his ships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau had sunk the British aircraft carrier HMS Glorious and her two gallant escorts HMS Acasta & Ardent then made not even the most rudimentary effort to provide humanitarian assistance, and instead sailed away leaving over 1500 RN sailors to die in the North sea, inspite of their being NO other vessels in the vicinity. Or is it only German sailors abandoned by the RN who you get "teared up" about?
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  46. Not another deluded wehraboo. Good job I have this ready to "copy and paste". Bismarck's crew actually scuttled a 51000 ton mountain of sinking, flaming scrap metal. All guns silenced, her superstructure devastated, her main armour belt broken in several places along her port side, her command staff 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 the 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 when he has been punched senseless by a more skillful & powerful opponent, and only a deluded child would say, "the loser wasn't beaten, he gave in before he was annihilated.", when the truth is the loser had his arse ripped off and handed back to him on a plate. Watch this https://youtu.be/9xX8XGMMXhE?t=3887 . It is a documentary that covers the 2003 expedition by one of the world's foremost marine recovery and forensics companies to carry out the most detailed & thorough survey of the wreck of the Bismarck to date. See what conclusions one of the world's top naval architects who is also a renowned expert in marine forensics (Bill Jurens), a world leading maritime wreckage investigation and recovery expert (David Mearns, one of the senior directors of the expedition company) and a preeminent professor in the academic world of naval military history (Eric Grove) come to about the condition of Bismarck as she sits on the seabed, and who was responsible for her sinking, but of course you're free to subscribe to the conclusions drawn by a Hollywood film director if you must.
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  47. 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 "powerful aero 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 HMS 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. 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.
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  48. Glad there are others with enough sense to realise that Arnie. :)
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  49. The sinking of unarmed civilian merchant shipping (which was bismarck's mission objective) also constitutes a "warcrime"? All Bismarck had to do to bring the trauma to an end was to lower her battle ensign (that being the internationally recognised signal for surrender of a naval vessel), as it was Bismarck's battle ensign was still fluttering at the top of her main mast as she capsized at 10:40am on 27th May 1941.
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  50. P.S If you're so angry about sailors, lost at sea, and abandoned to slow, agonising, lonely deaths, You should also read about the contemporary German Admiral Wilhelm Marschall, who on 6th June 1940, after his ships Scharnhorst & Gneisenau sank the British aircraft carrier HMS Glorious and her two accompanying destroyers HMS Acasta and Ardent, chose not to make even the slightest attempt to mount ANY rescue operations even though there were no allied ships or submarines nearby, his completely callous decision consigned 1566 Royal Navy sailors to the same agonising lonely death from hypothermia and drowning as befell the Bismarck survivors, the difference being that Capt Martin of Dorsetshire had just cause to abandon his ongoing rescue efforts due to nearby enemy units, where Admiral Marschall had NO reason to abandon 1566 sailors to their deaths.
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  51.  @avireks  Why not? The RN rescued 111 Bismarck sailors in the midst of potential U-boat attacks... Thats 111 lives more saved than during the sinking of the RN ships I mentioned above when no other RN ships were there to prevent Scharnhorst / Gneisenau from rendering assistance to those tragic 1566 RN sailors.
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  52. We're speaking English here... We traditionally refer to ships with the feminine pronoun. "She" will do just fine.
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  53. Bismarck top speed +30 knots U-Boat top speed 17.6 knots Like asking a sprinter to win a race carrying a rucksack full of rocks. U-boats WERE factored into "Exercise Rhine" but NOT as an "escort" for Bismarck, but as "U-boat traps", that is lines of u-boats positioned so that Bismarck could lead any shadowing RN ship into their sights to be torpedoed. But the idea of such traps is MUCH easier said than done, and the two traps that were laid played almost NO part in the overall story.
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  54. Where can I download that track? It's a number 1 !!!!
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  55. And the omission of the final torpedoes from HMS Dorsetshire that sank Bismarck.
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  56. When speaking English "She" is the traditional form of address for a ship.
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  57. You're completely at liberty to read as much history as you like. Its better to be honest, as school nowadays only tells the agenda laden shit that passes for history. Find your OWN way through YOUR favourite aspects of the past.
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  58. Initially they were landed back in Britain at the North East port of Newcastle. The handful of officers/petty officers were initially sent to an interrogation centre in London, the seamen to a POW camp in Scotland, a few months later they were all shipped to Canada to spend the rest of the war at the Monteith POW camp in Ontario.
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  59.  @Triscuit08  I actually have a photograph of a group of Bismarck survivors taken at Monteith. I'm sure while their conditions were certainly spartan, they seem to have been treated with kindness and respect, as a large number of them settled in Canada and the US after the war, due to their homes being within the Soviet sector of East Germany post WW2. I know this as my father was a stoker onboard HMS Dorsetshire during the Bismarck episode, and took part in the rescue of the 86 Bismarck survivors picked up by Dorsetshire. One of the crewmen he helped aboard gave dad his "Erkennungsmarke" (dogtag) which he kept. In 1973 the Bismarck survivors together with the suvivors of HMS Dorsetshire's sinking in 1942 (dad being one of them) arranged to share a joint reunion in Hamburg Germany. Dad planned to reunite the dogtag with the German sailor, but as fate would have it, the man concerned died 3 months before the reunion took place, he tried to locate the man's family but failed and so in 1993 dad donated the dogtag to the Merseyside maritime museum in Liverpool UK (its on display there to this day). Dad died in 2013 aged 93, and I decided to try to track down the sailors family, and found them living in Spokane, Washington, USA. They are currently in the process of having the dogtag returned to them.
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  60. Cuckoo !!! Cuckoo !!! Cuckoo !!!
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  61. The thing that I find most insidious is the attachment of modern day weirdo Japanese artwork to the whole story, so beloved by legions of modern day kidults.
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  62. German destroyers were not suitable for Atlantic operations as they had been so briliantly designed that they had a special tendency to capsize in rough seas if their fuel tanks were filled to capacity.
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  63. Don't mistake million to one luck for Hood being completely outclassed.
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  64. Piorun was a minor footnote in the overall operation. Can you name any of the four OTHER RN destroyers that attacked Bismarck for the WHOLE of the night? As opposed to Piorun who attacked alone for one hour before permanently losing contact with Bismarck?
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  65. The rescues were as follows HMS Dorsetshire - 86 (although 1 sailor died the following day from his wounds) HMS Maori - 25 U-74 - 3 Sachsenwald - 2 For a grand total of 116 rescued but 115 survivors. U-74 searched the area of the sinking and rescued 3 survivors in a raft at 7 o'clock in the evening (Bismarck had sunk at 10.37 that morning) . The following day 5 u-boats searched the area and found only dead bodies, but at midnight on the 28th (the day after the sinking) the German weather reporting ship "Sachsenwald" spotted a flare and rescued a final 2 sailors in a raft. That area was again searched the following day by the u-boats (and were also joined by a Spanish heavy cruiser the "Canarias"), but no more survivors were found.
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  66. If you believe a sailor's "tall tales" that is.
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  67. Well it didn't really have much competition in that category.
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  68. Dream on.
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  69.  @eosteo  Hello Tristan, YT doesn't always notify me of responses to comments... Here's my reply to "MIESE09" now you've pointed out this thread to me. 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 during his account of Bismarck's final battle. "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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  70. 115 men and the product of some drunken RN sailors "sailor's yarn".
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  71. Movie industry now largely seems to be only capable of making shit, agenda laden crap nowadays.
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  72.  @Frosty_tha_Snowman  Although slightly dated and (as with almost all historic films) laden with its fair share of inaccuracies, this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KPAPHW_EkA&list=PLWTUoEsRSnZUIjwdyIPbCM3HuG22gNeK5& is currently the only (and therefore the best) film on the subject. Its still very much worth a watch though. All the best.
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  73.  @Frosty_tha_Snowman  In that case Frost, I think you'll actually really enjoy the film, it really is very good for a 1960s film. All the best.
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  74. Bismarck was listing so much in the water that one of HMS Doresetshire's torpedoes impacted on her port side main deck / 2nd deck abaft her funnel.
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  75. Sorry You were next to uninvolved.
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  76. Mostly very good, obviously a lot of work gone into the visuals. The conclusion to the story misses out the MAJOR factor of the multiple Royal Navy torpedoes that put paid to Bismarck.
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  77. Really? So she wanted to be "tag teamed" and bummed to death by two RN battleships?
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  78.  @TheMeridian808  Hahahaha... cope harder kid.
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  79. Not quite but close.
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  80. ALL of Bismarck's weapons had been silenced more than an hour before she was finally sunk.
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  81. Being supplied from where exactly? Or do you mean just drifting mid ocean without fuel?
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  82. HMS Hood was an evolution of Royal Navy battlecruiser theory. Post Jutland her uparmoured redesign took her into the new realm of the "fast battleship". a THIRD of her 46000 displacement was armour, she was as well armoured as the Queen Elizabeth class battleships, such as HMS Warspite that had survived everything the Kaiser's navy could throw at her when at Jutland her steering motors overheated and she circled alone twice in front of the entire WW1 German battle fleet, and then went on into WW2 surviving encounters with Italian battleships and nazi glider bombs. Hood was as far removed from the likes of the WW1 Tiger and Indefatigable class battlecruisers as I am from a ballet dancer (and thats a VERY long way). The RN's nomenclature for Hood as a "battlecruiser" was entirely down to her speed, which outstripped all her WW1 battleship cohort by a factor of 7-8 knots, and not based on her being "lightly armoured". Bismarck belt armour = 12.6 inches Hood belt armour = 12 inches (Though angled so as to give 13 inches of protection). Bismarck armoured deck = 4.75 inches Hood armoured deck = 3 inches Hood's vertical armour was well upto the average standard of contemporary battleships, her weakest aspect was her horizontal deck armour, but Holland had raced to close on Bismarck and had escaped the "danger zone" of plunging fire, only to be then hit by a million to one shot that found an obscure "achilles heel" in her vertical armour. All the best.
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  83. Hahaha... comedy gold. If my auntie Betty had a pair of bollocks she'd be my uncle.
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  84. "Sink their own ship" oh not all THAT BS again.
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  85.  @aaronvegh3034  Don't take any notice of nonsense about "worried about being captured", it's UTTER nonsense. If the RN were thinking of trying to "capture" or "board" her, they would tend NOT to repeatedly fire torpedoes into the ship. By the time any "scuttling" actions may have been taken, she was ALREADY 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.
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  86. Maybe for you.
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  87. "Edited highlights" AKA Revised history.
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  88. Prinz Oy-ghen
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  89. While the Swordfish didn't sink Bismarck, without that torpedo hit to her rudders Bismarck would have been able to escape to the French Atlantic ports.... only to face incessant bombing by the RAF.
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  90. "Many great victories"? Could you name some of them please?
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  91. He died in the mind of the RN sailor whose imagination he was a figment of.
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  92. Why?
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  93. What about it?
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  94. The fact she was the first of the 5 RN destroyers of the 4th destroyer flotilla to spot Bismarck was purely a matter of luck. Why does ORP Piorun deserve any more mention than any of the other 4 destroyers of the flotilla, those being HMS Cossack, Maori, Sikh & Zulu, who ALL engaged Bismarck simultaneously? Why do Poles hate Britain?
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  95.  @mikolaex7932  What exactly did Britain get from this supposed "trade" with the Soviets? The honour of providing housing and welfare benefits for the over 200000 brave Polish ex-service personnel (and their families) that were granted UK citizenship and residency rights by the 1947 Polish resettlement act? Yes Poland did provide the BASIS for cracking wartime enigma. That is they had cracked early prewar luftwaffe & army 3 rotor enigma, (until the Germans changed their encyphering procedures in early 1939, bringing Polish decrypting to an end). It was a 90% British effort that broke wartime 3 rotor enigma, 4 rotor naval enigma (shark), Lorenz cypher (tunny) and the top level "geheim schreiber" (Sturgeon). As for ORP Piorun she was part of the valiant 4th Destroyer flotilla with the other 4 destroyers I named above, ALL of whom attacked Bismarck. In fact Piorun was the only destroyer of the flotilla that did NOT fire her main weapon (her 4 x 21in torpedoes) at Bismarck, Maybe if she'd not spent half the engagement signalling "I AM A POLE" she would have remembered what she was actually there for?
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  96.  @mikolaex7932  Miko, I am NOT trying to insult or demean the Poles, They are clearly brave, valiant and courageous fighters, no-one could argue otherwise. I admire Polish national pride, I'm personally thankful for their contribution to the eventual allied victory, but Poland's tragic history is NOT Britain's responsibility, but that of her physical geography. she was (and still very clearly is) sandwiched between two opposing power blocs. Britain sacrificed 450000 of her own citizens in a war against an enemy who wanted us to join them, We so easily could have done, and Poland would have for ever been the site of concentration and extermination camps. We chose the right side to fight on, but unfortunately in the end it was the Soviets who betrayed everyone post war. All the best.
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  97.  @mikolaex7932  I'm NO lover of Putin, but the way I see it, NATO is now just another tentacle of the growing tyranny of "globalism", and via globalist puppet governments that have been insinuated across Europe and the world over the last 30 years NATO has now moved upto the very border of Russia, who does not want to be ruled over by a future "one world government" of which it would have no control (ironic really as communism was attempting to do excatly the same thing, but with the Soviets at the head of it all). As I say I am NO lover of Putin, BUT even a broken clock is right twice a day. All the best Miko.
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  98. Or indeed the 4 other RN destroyers (HMS Cossack, Maori, Sikh & Zulu) that remembered to fire their torpedoes at Bismarck instead of signalling "I AM A POLE" repeatedly.
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  99.  @Alec-jo7ic  Not quite... 65 ships spread across the 44,000,000 square mile North Atlantic attempting to locate and then corral a fast single ship running away for its life.... the vast majority of those ships were nowhere near Bismarck.
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  100. inspite of my own personal dislike of Putin he seems to be alone in standing against the forces of corporate globalism that has ruined the world and has already torn down centuries old democracies in the west. He's not fighting for western civilisation but he's fighting against those who are intent on world domination.... seems that scenario has happened before with the communists and the western allies.
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  101. Yup... British torpedo warheads.....each carrying 365kg of Torpex explosive.
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  102. Wrong ship in a fantasy story.
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  103. Why? Britain still uses imperial, and we were doing the fighting so get with it !!!
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  104. Don't worry Mark, You're not missing much.
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  105. 3 from 1418 that is 0.2%. God bless those brave souls.
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  106. Why would a VERY minor piece of the story be included in a 12 minute video?
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  107.  @lordpapkin7540  Yes, minor. ORP Piorun was just one of the 5 destroyers of the RN 4th Destroyer flotilla (commanded by Captain Philip Vian). The flotilla had just arrived at the scene of operations (After having earlier detached from escorting the British WS8B troop convoy) when HMS Sheffield who had been shadowing Bismarck using her radar lost contact after shell splinters from one of Bismarck's broadsides damaged her antennae. Captain Vian immediately ordered his 5 charges to deploy in a fan shaped search pattern across the expected course of Bismarck, and it was purely by chance that ORP Piorun (Commanded by Eugeniusz Pławski) was the first of the 5 destroyers to regain contact with the German battleship shortly before 11pm. Pławski radioed to the other ships that he had contact, and Capt Vian ordered him to maintain that contact while the other 4 destroyers rushed to join him so they could make a joint synchronised torpedo attack on the German leviathon. Instead Captain Pławski valiantly, but misguidedly, chose to ignore those orders and instead rushed headlong into a one sided "pop gun" Vs "battleship guns" gunnery duel. He maintained this brave but pointless exercise for just over an hour before a consecutive number of main and secondary salvoes from Bismarck bracketted his little ship, whereupon he chose to withdraw having completely forgotten to use his most effective weapon (that being Piorun's 5 x 21in torpedo tubes) possibly because he was more focussed on signalling his Polish anger to Bismarck's crew. While withdrawing he managed to permanently lose contact with Bismarck in the gathering Atlantic darkness and never regained it. Luckily the other 4 RN destroyers had by this time located Bismarck and it was THEY (minus Piorun) that engaged Bismarck from midnight until ordered to withdraw by Admiral Tovey at 7am, thereby exhausting Bismarck's crew for the coming final battle. Can you name any of those OTHER 4 RN destroyers in that flotilla by any chance? My guess is you won't have ANY idea of the identity of those EQUALLY brave and gallant warships.
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  108.  @lordpapkin7540  No, I thought you wouldn't be able to name ANY of the brave British RN destroyers that engaged Bismarck for the seven hours from midnight until 7am. DON'T forget the names of HMS Cossack, Maori, Sikh & Zulu. I will be asking questions later.
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  109. Actually it was a ship. English speakers (which iz what we iz speakun) traditionally refer to ships in the feminine.
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  110. Oy-ghen
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  111. Nice summing up. Well done.
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  112. What "excuse" did the nazi admiral Wilhelm Marschall have when he, for no good reason, abandoned 1600 drowning RN sailors after his ships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, sank HMS Glorious, Acasta & Ardent on 6th June 1940. There were no other RN ships or subs in the area, what was HE "retaliating" against?
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  113.  @alastair9446  I understand moral relativism, but intentionally misrepresenting one unfortunate situation without making reference to the THOUSANDS of other equally unfortunate (and sometimes plain murderous) situations reveals either pig ignorance or some form of agenda, which is it?
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  114. To you maybe... but not 99.9% of the rest of the world.
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  115.  @Mark_Wulf190  The correct story according to the account of Baron Burkhard von Mullenheim-Rechberg (Bismarck's senior survivor) is recounted in his book "Battleship Bismarck : A survivor's story". On being posted to Bismarck as a young gunnery officer in late 1940 he was introduced to Bismarck's captain, Ernst Lindemann, who at the end of his talk to the new officer said. "One more thing. In the future, I would prefer to hear people on board use the masculine form when speaking of the Bismarck. So powerful a ship as this could only be a he, not a she." I resolved to accede to his wish and, although I have had a few slips of the tongue, have done so ever since. [Out of respect for the one and only commanding officer of the Bismarck, this rule has also been followed in the German edition of this book.] As for "Outdated view of genders" I'm more than comfortable with the truth that men are generally stronger than women, why pretend otherwise? Notice how he specifies that he only used the male pronoun in the German edition of his book, and only in honour of the wishes of Bismarck's one and only captain, as the feminine pronoun has ALWAYS been the customary choice for ships in BOTH the English and German language.
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  116. ORP Piorun was part of the 4th destroyer flotilla together with HMS Cossack, Maori, Sikh, Zulu, ALL of whom engaged Bismarck, infact ORP Piorun was the ONLY destroyer of the 4th Destroyer flotilla that forgot to fire her main weapons (that is her 5 x 21in torpedoes) at Bismarck. Maybe if they'd spent less time signalling "I AM A POLE" to Bismarck they would have remembered what they were actually there for.....
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  117.  @papaversomniferum2365  What couldn't happen?
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  118. Please move along to comment on the next video that you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.
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  119.  @shoddypeasant8762  Think you need to learn the definition of "sarcasm" little one.
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  120. She was ordered by Adm Lütjens to detach and attempt to carry out commerce raiding by herself while Bismarck ran for home. After detaching from Bismarck, Prinz Eugen refuelled in mid Atlantic from the German oil tankers "Spichern" and "Esso Hamburg" , but then developed turbine problems and had to cancel her mission and return to France for repairs. She arrived at Brest on 1st June 1941, four days after the sinking of Bismarck.
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  121.  @massimohack4747  Delusional. There was never ANY thought of Bismarck "falling into British hands". To air such a belief lets slip your lack of understanding of the situation that prevailed that day. In the world of boxing any scuttling effort on behalf of Bismarck's crew would be 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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  122.  @massimohack4747  Hahahaha..... delusional wehraboo nonsense. "Scuttled" indeed !!! Hear what Bismarck's most senior ranking survivor (Kapitänleutnant Burkhard von Mullenheim-Rechberg) had to say about the matter. “Unable to leave our station because an inferno was raging outside, we knew little about what was going on elsewhere. Was the ship’s command still in the forward command post? Was Lindemann still in charge there? No reports came down to us nor were we asked what was happening in our area. We had not 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.” In conclusion, Mullenheim-Rechberg also admitted that no scuttling order EVER reached him. “The order was given to scuttle and abandon the ship, although I did not know it then. In fact, no such order ever reached me.” And this is despite the fact that a large portion of the surviving Bismarck crew came to his station, as a result of his armoured fire directing station being one of the few safer areas for fleeing German sailors. “Men who had had to abandon their own stations or protected rooms began arriving to take refuge in my station.” And so even if there was a “scuttle” order had been given by commander Oels it was clearly NOT received by much of the ship. For "scuttled" read "sore arsed nazi losers & fanbois ignoring reality".
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  123.  @massimohack4747  test
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  124. Oh yes, the Royal Navy DEFINITELY intended to sink the Bismarck.
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  125.  @jameslowe3014  You do realise they "intentionally sunk" a 51000 ton mountain of sinking, flaming scrap metal. All guns silenced, her superstructure devastated, her main armour belt broken in several places along her port side, her command staff obliterated, internally aflame from end to end, her stern and port gunwales already underwater and hundreds of her crew already in the water behind her.... All the "intentional sinking" did was to sink her a few minutes earlier than was already happening. In the world of boxing the crew's "intentional sinking" is what is known as "throwing in the towel", submission of a boxer when he has been punched senseless by a more powerful opponent.
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  126. ​ @revbladez5773  https://youtu.be/9xX8XGMMXhE?list=PLWTUoEsRSnZUIjwdyIPbCM3HuG22gNeK5&t=3886
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  127. It did.
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  128. Won? She had, irrespective of the rudder hit, already completely failed in her mission by not intercepting a SINGLE merchant ship. I think you mean would she have survived.
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  129. The overall reaction of Germany would have been unbridled jubilation, but here is the account of Bismarck's senior survivor who was in charge of turrets Caesar & Dora on Bismarck. "The British ships were turning slightly to port, the lead ship showing an extremely long forecastle and two heavy twin turrets. On the telephone I heard Albrecht shout, "The HOOD...... it's the HOOD!" (his capitalisation), It was an unforgettable moment. There she was, the famous warship, once the largest in the world, that had been the "terror" of so many of our war games." Later he made these remarks following Hood's demise.... "At first the Hood was nowhere to be seen: in her place was a colossal pillar of black smoke reaching into the sky. Gradually at the foot of the pillar, I made out the bow of the battle cruiser projecting upwards at an angle, a sure sign that she had broken in two. Then I saw something I could hardly believe: A flash of orange coming from her forward guns! Although her fighting days had ended, the Hood was firing a last salvo. I felt a great respect for those men over there"
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  130. But HMS Rodney, King George V, Victorious, Suffolk, Norfolk, Sheffield and many others weren't.
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  131. How does a u-boat (top speed 17 knots) keep up with a Bismarck (top speed 30 knots)?
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  132. Intact? Please look up the dictionary definition of the word "intact" and then attempt to reconcile that definition with the battered hull minus most of its superstructure lying on the Atlantic seabed.
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  133. Complete BS & misrepresentation from start to finish Jim. You silly lefty. Go live in North Korea.
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  134. Or in the case of the Royal Navy in WW2 15 super sized ones were better than just two.
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  135. 1 on 1? she was part of the 4th destroyer flotilla with HMS Cossack, Maori, Sikh, Zulu ALL of whom engaged Bismarck, infact ORP Piorun was the ONLY destroyer of the 4th Destroyer flotilla that forgot to fire her main weapons (that is her 5 x 21in torpedoes) at Bismarck. Maybe if they'd spent less time signalling "I AM A POLE" to Bismarck they would have remembered what they were actually there for.....
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  136.  @siralcatraz9049  "Piorun was busy being shot at"... And you mean to say the other 4 destroyers weren't?
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  137. How is "114 are pulled alive out of the water" in any way "misleading"? The only error in the statement is that actually 116 were pulled alive from the water with one sailor, Gerhard Lüttich, dying the following day onboard HMS Dorsetshire as her ship's surgeon was operating on his severe burns. He was then buried at sea on the afternoon of the 28th May and given full military honours by the crew of HMS Dorsetshire. "After a few minutes only, Dorsetshire discontinued rescue operations and left", You then fail to detail the full reason WHY HMS Dorsetshire left the scene, let me fill in the gap. During the rescue efforts by Dorsetshire and the destroyer HMS Maori, (efforts which also included one Dorsetshire sailor jumping overboard to assist a severely wounded Bismarck crewman) One of Dorsetshire's crew (Lt/Cmdr Durant) reported a periscope sighting, which together with the RN's knowledge that Bismarck had been transmitting beacon signals on a known u-boat radio frequency for the previous 24 hours, left no option but for Capt B.C.S Martin of Dorsetshire to call off the rescue efforts. Mullenheim-Rechberg argued the point with him after his own rescue, but later conceded that "I am now convinced that under the circumstances, (Capt) Martin had to act as he did". How do you know 1390 men were left? According to Baron Burkhard Mullenheim-Rechberg (an eye witness to the events) he estimated that 700 - 800 men were left in the water after Bismarck had sunk. Who exactly confirmed that "no german U-boat was active in the area at that time"? Seems you've also failed to read about U-74 (Kpt Lt Eitel-Friedrich Kentrat) who details in his KTb (war diary) the viewing of "British Cruisers" through his periscope, as well as hearing the sounds of the battle from underwater, and who a few hours after the departure of the RN ships was responsible for the rescue of 3 of the 116 survivors picked up. Compare the rescue efforts of the RN on 27th May 1941, that is 110 German lives saved in the presence of German U-boat(s), to the sinking of HMS Glorious, Acasta & Ardent on 8th June 1940. After his ships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau sank the British aircraft carrier and her two gallant escorting destroyers, and inspite of NO other RN vessels being in the area, the German commander Adm Wilhelm Marschall sailed away leaving 1600 RN sailors without making even the most rudimentary effort to mount a rescue. In the end only 44 RN sailors were rescued, and those by Norwegian trawlers who accidentally stumbled across them. Be careful, your agenda is showing.
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  138.  @Ijineda  How does the video suggest “there were no other survivors to be rescued”, that is simply your own interpretation of its narrative. How exactly do you conclude that the periscope sighting was definitely "mistaken" in light of the facts I present in my first reply regarding the presence of U-74 in the vicinity of Bismarck's sinking? Which creditable source have you read that states "it is now established that there was no German U-boat(s) in the vicinity at that time" thereby contradicting the war diary of U-74 itself? There were also other U-Boats also in the area, U-556 (Kpt Lt Wohlfarth) was the original boat tasked to retrieve Bismarck's war diary, it had also encountered a number of the RN ships in the area in the 24 hours previous to Bismarck’s sinking, but it finally had to pass over the duty to U-74 by signal lamp due to damage she had already suffered in previous action and her fuel situation. Also U-48 and U-73 both searched the area within hours of Bismarck’s sinking (They were both btw part of the 5 boat “U-boat trap” positioned in the approaches to St Nazaire purposely to attack any RN ships in the area). The blithe dismissal of the presence of u-boats in the area of the rescues to fit in with your assertion carries no truth with it at all, and betrays the fact that the RN vessels concerned had EVERY reason to expect u-boat activity in the area. Why would you expect Mullenheim-Rechberg, an officer aboard a surface vessel, to have specific and exact knowledge of U-boat dispositions in the area, do you think they disseminated such information willy-nilly? With regard to Capt Martin's decision, there is a VERY exhaustive blog on that very subject, which unfortunately YT refuses to let me link to, but if you google search for "Capt Martin", "HMS Dorsetshire" & "Nineteen keys" (all together) you will find it. In it a German researcher who originally held a VERY vehement viewpoint opposing the "crime" of Capt Martin's decision spent several years conversing with various involved parties both British & German and after hearing all their accounts of the situation, unsurprisingly conceded that Capt Martin's actions WERE completely justifiable in the circumstances, but it is a VERY involved read. I'll divulge now that my own father was a crewman aboard HMS Dorsetshire at the time of the events, and specifically one of the crew who actually took part in the rescue efforts of the Bismarck survivors, hence my passion for the subject, and for that reason I'm perfectly happy that for the sake of his own crew Capt Martin made an unimaginably hard, but correct decision. You are of course entitled to your own opinion, but when you consider that someone (M-R) who survived those events by the skin of his teeth was later compelled by his own cool reasoning to eventually concede that Capt Martin took the only option that was seriously available to him, I know which opinion I put more weight in. The number of men in the water is of course academic, and we can argue till we're blue in the face, but I'm happy to accept an estimate from an actual eye witness, and not a purely contrived number made decades after the event. Note that M-R does not specify anywhere that the numbers he saw floating in the water were "on one side" only. Also how do you know that Generotzy, Springborn, Schmidt and other survivors were "all in different locations? and do you think they did a "headcount" while they were fighting for their lives in the tumultuous, storm lashed water? Finally ALL survivor accounts of the terrible end of Bismarck describe the MOUNTAINS of corpses on and within her upper works before her final sinking, most were of men who were attempting to abandon ship from their stations below Bismarck's armour deck who were killed in large numbers during their escape, So we will be forced to agree that we will never know the numbers that were tragically left behind. In your reply above you're also repeating some of the contrived nonsense supporting the myth of Bismarck's supposed superiority. "Later research" did NOT confirm that "only two shells were able to penetrate her protective armour belt". Instead, if you choose not to misrepresent selected phrases out of Cameron's report but read it in its entirety, you will see he says that while the very many SECONDARY shell hits on Bismarck’s belt armour that were unable to penetrate, that there were ONLY "two or three" MAIN calibre hits on the belt, each of which penetrated, the rest of the main calibre hits being on Bismarck's superstructure. Please feel free to read the full report and see that for yourself. With regard to HMS Courageous, You dismiss the very real (and later confirmed) danger of U-boats in the vicinity of Bismarck's sinking as a factor in the abandonment of the RN rescue efforts, and then justify the far worse abandonment of RN sailors on 8th June 1940 by saying the Germans left the RN sailors to die because they were simply EXPECTING RN ships in the area. Please make your mind up. While I have not challenged the first two correct points that you made in your OP, and chose not to argue about the questionable Lindemann sighting as Bismarck slid beneath the waves, (as I have my own opinions on that relatively unimportant matter, and indeed M-R himself in a later letter to the US naval specialist William Garske stated that despite those eye witness accounts to the contrary he himself believed that both Lütjens and Lindemann were killed early in the final battle), the entire biased and untrue phrasing of your 4th point reveals an agenda in your remarks regarding the rescue efforts mounted by the RN. I believe the only thing you feel "sad" about is that you have been "called out" over it. And finally thank you for the polite manner in which we’ve been able to conduct this discussion in, more often than not YT commenters feel unable conduct themselves so well.
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  139. (and forget to fire our main weapon... our 5 x 21in torpedoes) Doh !!!
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  140.  @jorgeckert3162  No I quite simply pointed out that YOUR original statement said that Bismarck ONLY SANK BECAUSE IT WAS SCUTTLED. Your OP was quite unequivocal about it, its still there for you to re-read at your leisure. I then provided eye witness statements that show the falsehood contained in your OP and that Bismarck was already in the process of sinking BEFORE any supposed "scuttle order" was issued. The first time you mentioned the RN was in your second reply, which for some reason has since disappeared from the thread. You now seem to be blustering and becoming offended by my clear logic and well reasoned take down of your initial post. Don't take it to heart. Just read my posts above and see the error in your initial post. All the best.
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  141. Got no credit cos they did nothing
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  142. You mean together with the other 4 destroyers of the 4th destroyer flotilla, those being HMS Cossack, Maori, Sikh, Zulu.
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  143. Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrriiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnnnnggggggggggg...... Wake up George... It's time for School !!!!
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  144. Don't be confused, your belief is correct.
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  145. 2 into Bismarck's starboard side, and a 3rd into her portside, which due to Bismarck's steep list from her ongoing flooding, actually detonated on Bismarck's main deck amidships near her catapult. The damage is visible here..... https://youtu.be/9xX8XGMMXhE?t=3887
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  146. "Fair"? We're discussing war here, not cricket !!! Was it "fair" for the Germans to launch unannnounced attacks against its unprepared neighbours such as Poland, Denmark, Norway, The Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Yugoslavia and the USSR? Each time with MASSIVELY overwhelming military power and without the internationally required "fair" legal declaration of war? Was it "fair" for the Germans to then send the world's largest warship out into the Atlantic to sink unarmed civilian merchant ships? If you're looking for "fairness" here's a video for you. https://youtu.be/-t5BPUhYHtw
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  147. HMS Hood was designed and built as a battlecruiser.... basically a battleship that sacrificed some armour for more speed, But while she was being built during WW1 it was discovered that the lack of armour was a major problem (As Britain lost a number of her other battlecruisers during WW1 from enemy gunfire) and so the whole concept of "battlecruisers" fell out of favour. It was decided to add lots more armour to her but she was still a very fast ship for her time, and so she became what later was known as a "fast battleship".
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  148.  @Blondi46  No probs, we all make minor mistakes, I'm just a "Bismarck" comments section stalker, offering corrections or other information to people who have an interest in the subject. All the best.
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  149. Just a pity she was so busy signalling to Bismarck that she was the only destroyer in her flotilla that failed to fire her torpedoes at Bismarck.
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  150. Its a handy tool, but FAR from perfect. Backup your interest that YT helps to kindle with WIDE reading on a subject. Then with all that reading you can make your own fair assessment of a subject, and minimise the chance of being "led astray" by any one prejudiced source. All the best. Keep learning... school is NOT everything !!!
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  151. You mean that she was part of the 4th destroyer flotilla with HMS Cossack, Maori, Sikh, Zulu ALL of whom engaged Bismarck, infact ORP Piorun was the ONLY destroyer of the 4th Destroyer flotilla that forgot to fire her main weapons (that is her 5 x 21in torpedoes) at Bismarck. Maybe if they'd spent less time signalling "I AM A POLE" to Bismarck they would have remembered what they were actually there for.....
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  152. Yes absolutely correct, but modern revisionism is now slowly wiping out British history. Give it another 10 years and the Bismarck will have sunk the entire British Home Fleet.
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  153. ALL MMO's are structured to remove the maximum amount of cash from your wallet on a regular basis, I like my games where you buy them and thats the end of the transaction, and the rules don't get constantly buffed and nerfed to keep you spending.
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  154. We also know that the vast majority of Royal Navy vessels survived the war, unlike the Kriegsmarine.
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  155.  @justsomeguyonyoutube3258  Tragic that not one of the RN capital ships were saved. Imagine HMS Warspite as a museum ship, all that history cut up to make food tins and razor blades.
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  156. After seperating from Bismarck, she twice refuelled in mid ocean, but soon developed turbine problems and returned to Brest on the French Atlantic coast on June 1st 1941 without ever having sighted a British merchant ship, 4 days after the sinking of the Bismarck. Operation Rhineübung was thus a complete failure.
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  157. Actually 1 Vs 4. Why don't you feel sympathy for British mechant shipping? 5,000 ton unarmed and unarmoured merchant ships would have been attacked by a very heavily armed and armoured 51,000 ton battleship?
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  158. You can choose to like whatever you fancy Declan, I'm also interested in U-boats, they ARE indeed fascinating, BUT whatever you do ALWAYS remember that life onboard in the north Atlantic was a hellish nightmare.
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  159. She played a TINY, relatively unimportant part in the Bismarck story, and actually was the ONLY destroyer in her flotilla NOT to use her torpedoes against Bismarck, preferring instead to engage in a symbolic but futile pop gun battle against the German Leviathon.... As usual with modern day Poles her insignificant involvement in the saga is hugely inflated to a RIDICULOUS level.
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  160. Because no one has ever heard of "Prioron" apart from you?
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  161. A battlecruiser with battleship armour and guns, as well as being 7-8 knots faster than all other battleships in existence when she was completed.
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  162. It seems she was so busy signalling "I AM A POLE" that she forgot to fire her main weapon at Bismarck, that is her 5 x 21in torpedoes, which all 4 other Destroyers of the flotilla (HMS Cossack, Maori, Sikh & Zulu) all remembered to do.
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  163. My father, who died aged 93 in 2013 was one of the last survivors of HMS Dorsetshire, he saw Bismarck take her final plunge and then participated in the rescues of the 86 Bismarck survivors picked up by her. Respects to ALL their memories.
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  164. Yes she was.
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  165.  @seppeldeppl  So we're agreed that Bismarck was already sinking, but that the crew may have accelerated the process to bring the terrible barrage to a more speedy conclusion. Thereby meaning that any scuttling efforts were unnecessary but preferable for the crew, and to a lesser extent the RN, but regardless of crew actions Bismarck was sunk as a result of the actions of the RN. I can accept that.
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  166.  @seppeldeppl  "sunk after days" don't talk BS. https://youtu.be/9xX8XGMMXhE?t=3887 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 nonsense 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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  167.  @seppeldeppl  "might have sunk after days" Don't talk nonsense. Before scuttling was even discussed, she 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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  168. What escorts were available? None. Why did they send Bismarck / PE out into the Atlantic? The Kriegsmarine needed a BIG victory to ensure its future relevance to the nazis, before the German Army and Luftwaffe took centre stage during Operation Barbarossa.
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  169. 5-1? How embarrassed must the Germans have been when they used 100 divisions to invade the Netherlands with just 15 antiquated divisions or the USN when it deployed 330 ships against the IJN's 67 ships at Leyte Gulf. The Royal Navy was happy to use as much of it's navy as was necessary to corral and sink the Bismarck which had spent it's ENTIRE operational career running away from the enemy and hiding in the 44,000,000 square miles of the North Atlantic.
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  170. HMS Dorsetshire "Pro patria et comitatu".
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  171. Look at these young lads, https://youtu.be/RSVrKErscEY?list=PLWTUoEsRSnZUIjwdyIPbCM3HuG22gNeK5&t=108. Signallers onboard Hood at the time of her destruction. utterly tragic.
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  172. Piorun was a small insignificant footnote in the saga, the Swordfish attack from Ark Royal was PIVOTAL. Poland was the ONLY country to receive TWO invites to the 1946 Victory parade but because of POLISH political hatred and hubris CHOSE to ignore them BOTH.
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  173. "Obsolete"? Why so?
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  174. Yes... they wanted the smoking, ruined hulk to sink quicker than it was already to make the "big boys" go away and leave them alone.
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  175. Luck? Lets discuss Bismarck's hit on Hood's 4in HA magazine.
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  176. @@JMUL15 That is the current most likely theory. But far from there being "non existent" armour, it would be more accurate to say the hydro dynamics of Hood's bow wave exposed her hull BELOW her 12" thick main armour belt. We don't want to give all the uninformed readers more fuel to say "Hood was unarmoured" do we? All the best.
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  177. The modern film industry is incapable of making a decent film nowadays. Stick with the 1963 classic "Sink the Bismarck".
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  178. @ Good god !!! it's DREADFUL yankee BS.
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  179.  @jshepard152  If you'd like to see a WORTHWHILE WW2 Sub film, then the 1981 classic "Das Boot", is your best bet.... accept no other.
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  180. The figment of a drunken matelot's mind.
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  181. She's with the rest of the other 4 destroyers (HMS Cossack, Maori, Sikh & Zulu) of the 4th Destroyer Flotilla
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  182. It didn't for me, then again I'm watching on a PC with Origin Ublock ad blocker installed.
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  183.  @FockeWulfFW-No  Firefox with Ublock origin, "Noscript", and a cookie / DOM storage deleter. When I use other peoples PCs and browse the internet, its UNBEARABLE the amount of BS people are prepared to wade through to get to where they want. All the best.
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  184. It was a figment of a drunken RN sailors mind.
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  185. 3 torpedoes that ALL hit the Bismarck, but well said !!!
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  186.  @alexrompen805  You do realise that the RN mobilised 60 odd ships to search for and corral a small fast German task force running from action in the 44,000,000 square mile North Atlantic ocean in the era before "over the horizon" radars, satellies or even comprehensive air coverage? When the Bismarck had been stopped from running away in that vast oceanic wilderness she was dismantled and demolished by just TWO superior RN battleships supported by two cruisers.
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  187.  @massimohack4747  In what way was she "already dead" Massimo? Apart from her rudders and a small part of her electrical generation reserve capacity, her systems were at the start of her final engagement 100% fully operational.
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  188.  @massimohack4747  No Bismarck was NOT "sailing in circles", which you'd know if you bothered your arse to look at a chart of the final battle, showing how she meandered as she struggled to steer using her propulsion. Instead you just trot out the same old uninformed nonsense that uninformed kids trot out. Come back when you know your a$$hole from your elbow.
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  189. The U-boat was U-556 commanded by Kpt Lt Herbert Wohlfarth. When U-556 had been completed at the Blohm und Voss shipyard in Hamburg in Jan 1941, as with all ships she underwent much testing and crew training before being commisioned into the Kriegsmarine. Having such a small crew, (just 56 men on a type VII u-boat) there were not enough musicians onboard to form a military band for U-556's commisioning ceremony, so Kpt Lt Wohlfarth called onboard Bismarck which was berthed next to her at the shipyard, to ask Bismarck's commander Capt Lindemann if he could have the use of Bismarck's own military band to perform at U-556's commisioning ceremony, Lindemann happily agreed and as a token of his appreciation Kpt Lt Wohlfarth presented Capt Lindemann with a light hearted "certificate" in which he promised that U-556 would protect Bismarck which he "adopted" as his "big ssiter". On this certificate he had drawn U-556 stopping aircraft and torpedoes from sinking the Bismarck and U-556 is then seen towing the Bismarck to safety, this was FOUR MONTHS BEFORE Bismarck's sinking, and a tragic foreshadowing of future events.
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  190. This is taken from the account of Baron Burkhard von Mullenheim-Rechberg, the senior ranking survivor of Bismarck, and her 4th gunnery officer, it's his account of the start of the battle of Denmark Strait. "The British ships were turning slightly to port, the lead ship showing an extremely long forecastle and two heavy twin turrets. On the telephone I heard Albrecht shout, "The HOOD...... it's the HOOD!", It was an unforgettable moment. There she was, the famous warship, once the largest in the world, that had been the "terror" of so many of our war games." Later he made these remarks following Hood's demise.... "At first the Hood was nowhere to be seen: in her place was a colossal pillar of black smoke reaching into the sky. Gradually at the foot of the pillar, I made out the bow of the battle cruiser projecting upwards at an angle, a sure sign that she had broken in two. Then I saw something I could hardly believe: A flash of orange coming from her forward guns! Although her fighting days had ended, the Hood was firing a last salvo. I felt a great respect for those men over there"
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  191. "A Thousand to one shot" Rather like the thousand to one shot the Fleet Air Arm had achieved just two months earlier against the Italian battleship "Vittorio Veneto" at the battle of Cape Matapan, or the thousand to one hit achieved by the Japanese torpedo bombers that Attacked HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse in Dec 1941. The stern of a ship, unprotected as it is by the torpedo defence systems that reinforced the midships of major warships during WW2, was a natural target for ANY torpedo bomber pilot. The British Fleet Air Arm being the world's most highly trained and respected naval aviators (They had taught the naval pilots of the IJN during the 1920s and early 30s) had long trained in achieving such hard to make hits. As the famous world champion golfer Gary Player once said.... "The more I practice, the 'luckier' I get !!!"
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  192. That'll be apart from all the German documentation & books that say "Die Bismarck".
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  193. 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 an discussion he held with Capt Martin of the 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 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 naval captain he would have been SORELY aware of the actions of Otto Weddigen during WW1 during his attack on the British Cruisers Aboukir, Cressy & Hogue. I suggest you look up the details of that incident. Also google about U-74 (KptLt Eitel-friedrich Kentrat) and U-556 (KptLt Herbert Wohlfarth) who WERE in the vicinity of the sinkings, having spotted various British warships and heard the final battle. Indeed although U-556 had to depart for France due to lack of fuel and battle damage, U-74 surfaced after the departure of the RN rescue ships and searched for survivors eventually rescuing a further 3 sailors 9 hours after the sinking. The RN was so filled with hatred that the day following the sinking, one of the survivors who had been picked up, a badly injured German sailor named Gerhard Lüttich, died on the operating table in Dorsetshire's sick bay. His body was then "committed to the deep" with full military honours provided by both his German comrades AND sailors from HMS Dorsetshire together with a Royal Marine bugler. The remaining crew were treated EXCELLENTLY by the crews of HMS Dorsetshire & HMS Maori, being given the same bunking arrangements as the crew (under guard of course), and provided with 3 hot meals a day for the 4 days they were on board. They were also given Grog (rum and water) which was usually issued normally to the RN sailors, the survivors were also provided with sweets, chocolate and cigarettes by the RN crews, and this was just 3 days after the sinking of HMS Hood... so much for any imagined "deep hatred" by the RN. Here is what Mullenheim-Rechberg wrote of British treatment of the Bismarck survivors. ""The fight that the Bismarck put up to the bitter end earned the admiration of British seamen, which probably accounts for the good accommodations we were given and the way we were treated onboard ship. The fact that Captain Martin was well treated as a prisoner of war in Germany in World War One may also have had something to do with this. When he made his rounds among our men he always told them, "As long as you are here with me, you'll have it just as good." And the attitude of his crew was the same. The British seamen were always pleasant and helpful. "You today, us tomorrow," they said."" How do I know this? because my father was a crewman onboard Dorsetshire at the time. He later survived Dorsetshire's own sinking and along with the rest of the "HMS Dorsetshire association" members post war, was invited to various reunions with the Bismarck survivors through the 1960s and 70s. THAT was the level of respect and comradeship that was experienced between the crews of both sides... far removed from your own seemingly devious nonsense. For some further reading material on the matter, google "nineteenkeys dorsetshire" and look for a blog, written by a German researcher between 2008 until about 2012. If you read the entire blog, you will see that he starts with a viewpoint that concurs with your own, and then through further research and discussions with Capt Benjamin Martin's family members, that he changes his opinion 100% and indeed ends up paying respects to Capt Martin. If you're so heartbroken about the abandonment of sailors to their fate by the enemy, then I'll warn you NOT to read about the actions of Adm Wilhelm Marschall who on the afternoon of 8th June 1940, after his ships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau had sunk the British aircraft carrier HMS Glorious and her two gallant escorts HMS Acasta & Ardent then made not even the most rudimentary effort to provide humanitarian assistance, and instead sailed away leaving over 1500 RN sailors to die in the North sea, inspite of their being NO other vessels in the vicinity. Or is it only German sailors abandoned by the RN who you get "teared up" about?
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  194. Aye, but in most "alternate realities" Bismarck gets ground into the sediment at the bottom of the Atlantic like she never existed.
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  195.  @Hshs726sjyz  As they both did.
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  196.  @Hshs726sjyz  I'm fully aware I'm a Bismarck thread "stalker". I've a particular interest in the story, and my morning routine now I've retired, is breakfast, and because TV and newspapers are so full of shit nowadays, viewing my laptop where I can catch up with the latest comments. My real aim isn't to annoy or irritate, except that proportion of commenters that talk complete BS or set out to be annoying themselves. As you've already seen my plentiful postings, you'll notice that a lot of my responses are "copy and pasted" because of the similar nature of a lot of the nonsense thats spoken in comments.
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  197. We're speaking English here... We traditionally refer to ships with the feminine pronoun. "She" will do just fine.
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  198. Just keep moving down the comments... no shortage there.
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  199. and a RN sailor's "tall tale".
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  200. Bismarck crew knew that if they were to bring the British bombardment to an end and have ANY chance of surviving they had to get Bismarck sunk as soon as possible, their actions accelerated Bismarck's sinking by a matter of minutes.
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  201. @AOD_AnkGrooger I know the history, my father was a crewman aboard HMS Dorsetshire at the time of Bismarck's sinking. (Truly... and not just the claim of a deluded child in YT comments). Also Dorsetshire's final torpedo actually detonated on Bismarck's portside main deck, due to the degree of list she was suffering from before her sinking. This damage was above the level of Bismarck's compartmentation and would have resulted in massive flooding onboard the already stricken battleship. Bismarck's hull is in almost one piece.... only her stern broke away during her sinking. Of course she was sunk by the Royal Navy, but the German navy does also have a history of scuttling its ships. I'm happy to accept that orders were given to scuttle, as told by many survivors.... but it contributed little at that late hour to Bismarck's sinking... its like saying that slapping the face of someone whose been punched unconscious is what knocked them out.
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  202. If the fuse of the shell had worked like it was supposed to it would have detonated hitting the water and have burst outside of PoW's hull. The ONLY reason it penetrated to where it did was because of the faulty fuse.
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  203. Complete BS. Please direct me to this book of "Maritime Warfare Rules"? It seems that NONE of the combattants during ANY naval warfare have been issued with any such rule book.
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  204. "wasn't really sunk" Do you understand what "scuttling" actually is? Though in the case of Bismarck any scuttling efforts only accelerated what was already happening courtesy of the Royal Navy.
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  205. Probably several... but none survived, only a tall tale that was told by some RN sailors after the sinking.
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  206. Hmmm....
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  207. Mores the pity.
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  208. " British torpedoes sank the Bismarck" - William Jurens. (World renowned Warship construction & marine naval forensics expert).
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  209.  @DeathknightDragon  Do a quick search for William Jurens, you will quickly find out his credentials and his fields of expertise. He is the co-author of the most widely respected and thoroughly researched book on the topic "Battleship Bismarck - A design and operational history". In 2003 a further (and more detailed) survey of Bismarck's wreck was carried out by David Mearns and his world renowned "Blue Water Recoveries" marine investigation company. Watch this https://youtu.be/9xX8XGMMXhE?list=PLWTUoEsRSnZUIjwdyIPbCM3HuG22gNeK5&t=3886 and see what they and a preeminent professor in the academic world of naval military history (Eric Grove) have to say about the condition of Bismarck as she sits on the seabed, and who was responsible for her sinking, but of course you're free to subscribe to the conclusions drawn by a Hollywood film director, an anonymous "wikipedia expert" or a jaded US columnist if you must.
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  210. P.S This is an English speaking forum, we traditionally refer to ships with the feminine pronoun, you don't have to adhere to the "masculine" that YT gender nazis espouse in comments.
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  211.  @DeathknightDragon  You can call Bismarck what you like, I'm all for freedom of speech, I am highlighting the fact that Lindemann's wishes extended no further than Bismarck's crew, and have no traction for the rest of the English speaking world... "She" is fine for the vast majority. I am "giving you one book", which is widely recognised as the most thoroughly researched book available on the subject, a book which stands head and shoulders above the legions of re-hashed nonsense printed every few years (although I do also own Robert Ballard's book amongst many others from the 1960s onwards). James Cameron himself was happy to have contributed to this book you attempt to "rubbish", as I'm sure you're aware. The fact of the matter is you choose to listen solely to a hollywood film director, I choose to pay more attention to the world's preeminent naval engineers and marine forensics experts. Remember it was known for decades as a "fact" by the general public that Hood was sunk by "plunging fire" when that was anything but the case. Bismarck's crew scuttled a 51000 ton mountain of sinking, flaming scrap metal. All guns silenced, her superstructure devastated, her main armour belt broken in several places along her port side, her command staff obliterated, internally aflame from end to end, her stern and port gunwales already underwater and hundreds of her crew already in the water behind her.... All the scuttling did was to sink her a few minutes earlier than was already happening.
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  212. She wasn't so deadly in her final battle.
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  213.  @alastair9446  Absolutely.
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  214. HMS Hood was considered as well armoured as the "Queen Elizabeth" battleships such as HMS Warspite that brushed off barrages of German battleship gunfire in WW1 as well as Italian battleships and German glider bombs in WW2.
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  215.  @Josh-zd9pq  Sorry, you're wrong, the British admiralty who know more about the matter than you or I considered Hood to be as well armed & defended as the Queen Elizabeths when she was built. The RN's nomenclature for Hood as a "battlecruiser" was entirely down to her speed, which outstripped all her WW1 battleship cohort by a factor of 7-8 knots, and not based on her being "lightly armoured". Bismarck belt armour = 12.6 inches Hood belt armour = 12 inches (Though angled so as to give 13 inches of protection). Bismarck armoured deck = 4.75 inches Hood armoured deck = 3 inches Hood's vertical armour was well upto the average standard of contemporary battleships, her weakest aspect was her horizontal deck armour, but Holland had raced to close on Bismarck and had escaped the "danger zone" of plunging fire, only to be then hit by a million to one shot that found an obscure "achilles heel" in her vertical armour.
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  216. On the orders of the fleet commander, Admiral Günther Lütjens, she detached from Bismarck (who had to abort to France suffering with the damage she had already sustained from HMS POW). Prinz Eugen's aim was of continuing "operation Rhine Exercise" alone, hoping to intercept an unescorted British convoy which she could attack. After departing Bismarck over the next few days she twice refuelled from waiting German resupply ships, failed to intercept a single merchant ship, developed turbine problems then had to abort back to France herself, where she arrived and tied up at Brest harbour on the 1st June 1941, 4 days after Bismarck had been sunk.
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  217. How many ships would YOU send to hunt and corral a fast powerful battleship in the 41,000,000 square mile North Atlantic ocean with no satellite surveillance, and only rudimentary short ranged radar and air cover?
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  218. Strangely enough ORP Piorun was the ONLY destroyer of the 4th Destroyer flotilla that forgot to fire her main weapons (that is her 5 x 21in torpedoes) at Bismarck. Maybe if they'd spent less time signalling "I AM A POLE" to Bismarck they would have remembered what they were actually there for.....
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  219.  @wojszach4443  The 4th destroyer flotilla arrived on the scene on the evening of the 26th May, just as HMS Sheffield's radar had been put out of action by a near miss from Bismarck. Sheffield took evasive action and in the gathering dusk lost sight of Bismarck, the 5 destroyers of the flotilla initially spread out in a fan formation to re-locate Bismarck, and purely by luck Piorun was the first destroyer to re-contact Bismarck a short while after the loss of contact by Sheffield. All 4 "tribals" (HMS Cossack, Maori, Sikh & Zulu) quickly engaged Bismarck and expended their compliment of 21in torps, while Piorun alone omitted to do so. I am NOT someone who hates Poland, and indeed I have the utmost respect for ALL the sailors involved in naval combat, but the CONSTANT harping on about Piorun while 4 other destroyers who faced exactly the same dangers are completely ignored quickly wears thin on people who know a bit more about the events during Bismarck's hunt and sinking.
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  220. Only to its crew... sadly all now dead... to the rest of us "she" is quite acceptable.
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  221. Yes HMS Dorsetshire fired 3 torpedoes, 2 into Bismarck's starboard side and one into her port side.... but for some reason Yarnhub forgot to mention it, who knows what reason?
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  222. Strangely enough ORP Piorun was the ONLY one of the 5 destoryers of the RN 4th Destroyer flotilla that forgot to fire her main weapons (that is her 5 x 21in torpedoes) at Bismarck. Maybe if they'd spent less time signalling "I AM A POLE" to Bismarck they would have remembered what they were actually there for.....
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  223. You mean ORP Piorun, one of the 5 destoryers of the RN 4th Destoyer flotilla that ALL engaged Bismarck on the evening of the 26/27th May, the other 4 destoryers being HMS Cossack, Maori, Sikh, Zulu.
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  224. I know, I've never understood kilometers.
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  225. Why?
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  226. Hood and PoW had their rear arcs cleared at the time of Hood's destruction meaning they were closer to broadside than bow-on at the time of Hood's loss.
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  227.  @GirlynSoriano  Jesus H Christ !!! That's the LONGEST recorded battleship on battleship hit in naval history.... seeing as HMS PoW was docked in Hvalfjord in Iceland while Bismarck was sunk about 1100 miles away off the coast of NW France !!!
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  228.  @CountScarlioni  If the Germans made any scuttling attempt it was purely to stop the murderous barrage Bismarck was on the receiving end of.... they couldn't care less if it got towed to GB... they just wanted to survive.
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  229. Bismarck's crew, terrified of the mortal pounding they were taking off the RN big boys chose to help the RN achieve their task, rather than carry on and "take it like a man". It could be considered treacherous by some people... assisting an enemy in wartime....
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  230.  @Краснаяармиясамаясильная-б9ы  What you on about? take the advice of your own account name.
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  231.  @Краснаяармиясамаясильная-б9ы  The only whiff of "madness" in this exchange isn't coming from me.
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  232. Wrong.
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  233. You mean that she was part of the 4th destroyer flotilla with HMS Cossack, Maori, Sikh, Zulu ALL of whom engaged Bismarck, infact ORP Piorun was the ONLY destroyer of the 4th Destroyer flotilla that forgot to fire her main weapons (that is her 5 x 21in torpedoes) at Bismarck. Maybe if they'd spent less time signalling "I AM A POLE" to Bismarck they would have remembered what they were actually there for.....
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  234. Well Bismarck Vs 2 RN battleships and 2 RN cruisers at the end to be precise.
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  235. It was sunk by the RN.
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  236. ​ @job38four10  "THE RN"... because of course there's only ONE "Registered Nurse" in the entire world.
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  237. ghen.....gen can be pronounced "jen"
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  238. Mostly good, but where do you get the idea that "the british spotted a submarine but for that there is no evidence from any site that this is true or not"? 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 an discussion he held with Capt Martin of the 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 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 naval captain he would have been SORELY aware of the actions of Otto Weddigen during WW1 during his attack on the British Cruisers Aboukir, Cressy & Hogue. I suggest you look up the details of that incident. Also google about U-74 (KptLt Eitel-friedrich Kentrat) and U-556 (KptLt Herbert Wohlfarth) who WERE in the vicinity of the sinkings, having spotted various British warships and heard the final battle. Indeed although U-556 had to depart for France due to lack of fuel and battle damage, U-74 surfaced after the departure of the RN rescue ships and searched for survivors eventually rescuing a further 3 sailors 9 hours after the sinking. The RN was so filled with hatred that the day following the sinking, one of the survivors who had been picked up, a badly injured German sailor named Gerhard Lüttich, died on the operating table in Dorsetshire's sick bay. His body was then "committed to the deep" with full military honours provided by both his German comrades AND sailors from HMS Dorsetshire together with a Royal Marine bugler. The remaining crew were treated EXCELLENTLY by the crews of HMS Dorsetshire & HMS Maori, being given the same bunking arrangements as the crew (under guard of course), and provided with 3 hot meals a day for the 4 days they were on board. They were also given Grog (rum and water) which was usually issued normally to the RN sailors, the survivors were also provided with sweets, chocolate and cigarettes by the RN crews, and this was just 3 days after the sinking of HMS Hood... so much for any imagined "deep hatred" by the RN. Here is what Mullenheim-Rechberg wrote of British treatment of the Bismarck survivors. ""The fight that the Bismarck put up to the bitter end earned the admiration of British seamen, which probably accounts for the good accommodations we were given and the way we were treated onboard ship. The fact that Captain Martin was well treated as a prisoner of war in Germany in World War One may also have had something to do with this. When he made his rounds among our men he always told them, "As long as you are here with me, you'll have it just as good." And the attitude of his crew was the same. The British seamen were always pleasant and helpful. "You today, us tomorrow," they said."" How do I know this? because my father was a crewman onboard Dorsetshire at the time. He later survived Dorsetshire's own sinking and along with the rest of the "HMS Dorsetshire association" members post war, was invited to various reunions with the Bismarck survivors through the 1960s and 70s. THAT was the level of respect and comradeship that was experienced between the crews of both sides... far removed from your own seemingly devious nonsense. For some further reading material on the matter, google "nineteenkeys dorsetshire" and look for a blog, written by a German researcher between 2008 until about 2012. If you read the entire blog, you will see that he starts with a viewpoint that concurs with your own, and then through further research and discussions with Capt Benjamin Martin's family members, that he changes his opinion 100% and indeed ends up paying respects to Capt Martin.
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  239. Strangely enough ORP Piorun was the ONLY destroyer of the 4th Destroyer flotilla that forgot to fire her main weapons (that is her 5 x 21in torpedoes) at Bismarck. Maybe if they'd spent less time signalling "I AM A POLE" to Bismarck they would have remembered what they were actually there for.....
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  240. SI realmente se produjo algún hundimiento, todo lo que se hundió fue una montaña de 51.000 toneladas de chatarra en llamas que se hundía. Todos los cañones silenciados, su superestructura devastada, su blindaje principal roto y penetrado en varios lugares, su estado mayor físicamente destruido, internamente en llamas de extremo a extremo, sus bordas de popa y babor ya bajo el agua, un millar de sus tripulantes muertos, y otros cientos de sus tripulantes ya en el agua detrás de ella .... Lo único que se consiguió fue hundirlo unos minutos antes de lo que ya estaba ocurriendo. En el mundo del boxeo los esfuerzos de la tripulación por hundirse son lo que se conoce como "tirar la toalla", la sumisión de un boxeador DESPUÉS de haber sido golpeado sin sentido por un oponente más hábil y poderoso, y sólo un niño iluso diría: "el vencedor no ganó porque su oponente se suicidó antes de perder", cuando la verdad es que el vencedor le arrancó el culo al perdedor y se lo devolvió en bandeja. ¿Imagina la ignominia de verse obligado a suicidarse por tu oponente?
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  241. Strangely enough when David Mearns did carried out a more detailed study of the wreck in 2003, he took the world's most renowned warship construction and naval forensics expert (Bill Durens) with him, and they concluded that British torpedoes had done FAR more damage to Bismarck than was previously believed.
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  242. Just a pity she was so busy signalling to Bismarck that she was the only destroyer in her flotilla that failed to fire her torpedoes at Bismarck.
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  243. Who exactly considered the Fairey Swordfish "ineffective"? It was indeed meant to be replaced by the Fairey Albacore, but it outserved that aircraft, and ended the war with an total of enemy shipping tonnage sunk unsurpassed by any other allied aircraft, using torpedoes, bombs, depth charges, even rockets.
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  244. You mean ORP Piorun, one of the 5 destoryers of the RN 4th Destoyer flotilla that ALL engaged Bismarck on the evening of the 26/27th May, the other 4 destoryers being HMS Cossack, Maori, Sikh, Zulu.
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  245. A battlecruiser in name, with battleship armour.
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  246. 1418
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  247. If you want accuracy then. 1. The Kriegsmarine did NOT use the prefix "KMS" on it's ships. 2. The long accepted traditional pronoun for a ship in the English language is "She" or "It".
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  248. Hood / PoW closed on the Germans NOT to get within gunnery range, as their 14" & 15" guns were MORE than capable of hitting the Germans at whatever range the Germans preferred. V/Adm Holland in Hood closed the range to avoid the "zone of plunging fire" from the German guns so as to minimise the potential for a German shell to penetrate Hood's slightly anaemic horizontal armour.
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  249. 3 torps from HMS Dorsetshire, 2 into her starboard side, and one into her port side, but Yarnhub obviously didn't think it was worth mentioning, prefering to sell the old lie that the Germans sank their own ship.
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  250. Or about the German U-boat (U-74) that was loitering in the area threatening the RN ships on the scene?
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  251. Hood did have "battleship" armour Ron, after her uparmouring on the stocks during her construction she ended up with the same overall armour scheme as the "Queen Elizabeth" battleships such as HMS Warspite and HMS Malaya, BUT whereas the QEs could only make 23 knots (like all pre 1930s battleships) Hood was capable of 32 knots. Hood because of her redesign had evolved from the battlecruiser she was originally intended into the wrold's first "fast battleship".
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  252. If you read Bismarck survivor's accounts you would see that they confirm she was already sinking at least 45 minutes before any supposed mention of a "scuttle order". For her remaining crew to survive they needed to get Bismarck underwater and for the RN big hitters to "go away" as soon as possible. Any scuttling that may have taken place just accelerated what the Royal Navy had already achieved. Regardless, the RN ships left the battle scene undamaged and the ruin of Bismarck remains there 14,000ft down to this day.
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  253. 3
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  254.  @Triscuit08  Here's a video of the Bismarck survivors beiong landed ashore at Newcastle 4 days after the sinking. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCCWGzMaTN8 They were treated onboard with great respect, but were warned that once ashore their reception might be a bit more "frosty".
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  255. You are aware that the correct fact you state at the end of your post (the relative close range of the final engagement) is the very reason why there was relatively few "penetrations to her armour belt" and not the actual thickness of Bismarck's 12 inch belt. Navweaps shows Rodney's 16in guns could be reliably expected to penetrate over 14 inches of armour at 15000 yards, and KGV's 14 inchers over 13 inches, and remember that one of Rodney's 16in shells went straight through Bismarck's even more thickly armoured conning tower (13in) as if it was butter. The lack of penetrations was due to the fact that at the relatively short range the final battle took place at, the shallow trajectories meant that there was no chance of plunging fire hitting Bismarck below the waterline, and so only the top of the main armour strake which was visible above the waterline was available to hit. A tiny target for the main guns of a rolling battleship to aim for. The survey of the wreck did not show any 14 or 16 inch hits that did not penetrate the main armour belt (though there were numerous 8in non pens) but just a lack of main gun hits on the belt overall.
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  256. For future reference the Japanese battleship was "Yamato"... "Yamamoto" was a Japanese admiral commanding her Combined Fleet.
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  257. Like being told an epic story, and the story teller missing out the final chapter.
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  258. Utter nonsense. The Royal Navy had been shadowing her for days. The cruiser HMS Sheffield had been following her using radar when a near miss damaged her radar antenna, Bismarck was out of contact for less than an hour when the 4th Destroyer flotilla arrived on the scene. Capt Philp Vian commander of the flotilla ordered his 5 destroyers to fan out and reacquire Bismarck. It was complete random chance the ORP Piorun was the first of the 5 ships to relocate her.
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