Comments by "" (@walterkronkitesleftshoe6684) on "Drachinifel" channel.

  1. The 1st Viscount Hood. Samuel Hood (1724 - 1816)
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  2. You think that's purely a British trait?
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  3.  @mpetersen6  The cutter USCG Modoc was ostensibly taking part in life saving sweeps of the convoy lanes on the lookout for drifting lifeboats and floating hulks as part of the "Greenland patrol" when she encountered Bismarck after the battle of Denmark Strait. Another fallacious story is how Fairey Swordfish from HMS Victorious "very nearly" torpedoed Modoc. The truth is the swordfish, flying through cloud on their way to attack Bismarck detected a "blip" on their ASV 1 radar set and the attack commander, Eugene Esmonde, Descended below cloud to "eyeball" the contact. He correctly identified the US cutter, but in doing so his aircraft was spotted by Bismarck which was 3 miles away and this lost the benefit of surprise the Swordfish hoped to have in attacking Bismarck.
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  4. We British could easily have got Swordfish near to Iowa if we so chose... simply by refusing to hand over to the US in 1940 the blueprints for the world's first operational proximity fuse, as well as the British designed cavity magnetron which together were the basis of the US WW2 radars and AA defences. Then send in the swordfish and put Iowa "on the bottom" to join Bismarck.
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  5. Bill Jurens' work IS indeed of the highest standard. His, together with Drachinifel's contribution to the subject, is probably the best analysis of the subject matter available. With regard to your Aunt's fiance, if you know his name then search out the site of the Hood association (I can't include a link, if I do then YT benevolently delete the post) and there you will find a "memorial page" for every known member of Hood's crew throughout her illustrious 21 year career. Many of the pages contain certified photographs of the individual crewmen and a "potted history" of their naval service. Its a respectful way of honouring the memories of those brave lads, young and old, who lost their lives on that fateful May morning 81 years ago. All the best.
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  6. I see you're COMPLETELY unfamiliar with the facts of the matter. The original "plunging fire" theory doesn't stand up to informed scrutiny. Using the German's own AVKS (Artillerie Versuchs Kommando für schiff - Naval Artillery Testing Command) data tables gives an "angle of fall" for shells from Bismarck's 38 cm SK C/34 cannons of approximately 12° from the horizontal at the range where Bismarck's killing shot was fired from (approx 8½ nautical miles). Prebuild Admiralty testing of Hood's armour had demonstrated that her 3in deck armour was proof against 15" shellfire anywhere below 20° angle of fall. V/Adm Holland was well aware of Hood's vulnerability to "plunging fire" it was specifically why he had raced to close the engagement distance from the start of the battle, to cross & escape the "danger zone" from plunging fire. Having succesfully done so he was in the process of a turn to port to open his aft gunnery arcs when the fateful shots landed. The current favoured (and very plausible) theory suggests that Hood's bow wave at speed exposed a section of her lower hull abaft her mainmast (indeed many plan view photos of Hood clearly show this "wave trough"), and a shell from Bismarck hit the exposed area and penetrated BELOW her 12" side armour belt. There were also eyewitness reports from a number of HMS PoW crew members of unusual behaviour of Hood's "X" turret shortly before Hood's deflagration, which give some grounds to the theory that there MAY have been a "misfire" or malfunction within that turret which resulted in a "magazine event".
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  7. All fascinating "what ifs", but just to correct a point, a recent estimate concluded that 68 RN ships were diverted from their regular duties in response to Bismarck's sortie of which maybe 15 actually caught sight of Bismarck. The Royal Navy at that point had around 330 ships on her establishment, meaning about 20% of the Royal Navy responded to Bismarck's sortie, and about 4.5% of the RN actually saw Bismarck.
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  8. The hit on turret Bruno also destroyed the hydraulic lines feeding turret Anton, causing its guns to droop to maximum depression, rather like a middle aged man who can't find his "little blue tablets".... not that I'd know anything about that.
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  9. Ashwani, still pumping out his love of fascism.
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  10.  @akaj188  You believe that while everyone else knows that Bismarck's final battle began at 8:45am on 27th May 1941. Regarding "Bismarck's superb gunnery" as you put it, and hits landed by both sides during that battle, the score was as follows... Bismarck - 0 Royal Navy - 400
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  11. Germany started the fight in 1939 HiMO.
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  12. Possibly, but she was well and truly "cauterised" after the wounding.
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  13. They appear to be what was known as "gash chutes", and its where all the dirty water from "swabbing the decks", food scraps from the ship's galleys, and other assorted ship's refuse would have been jettisoned down (to avoid all the rubbish blowing across the decks!!!). the black paint underneath was to mask the stains and dirt which would otherwise spoil the look of a ship.
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  14. To place the third "X" turret in a superfiring position (that is stepped higher again than "B" Turret) would have involved placing a turret weighing somewhere around 1500 tons in a VERY high position above her waterline, causing massive instability and hugely increased the risk of the ship capsizing, but I have to agree that for me, the Nelson class is the most powerful looking leviathon of the seas.
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  15.  @TTTT-oc4eb  "4 heavy units"? You mean two "heavy units" and 2 cruisers with 8" guns. Bismarck scored a one in a million hit on Hood. The RN didn't have that RNG with their gunnery dice rolls, and so had to dismantle Bismarck bit by bit. All guns knocked out by the RN in less than 30 minutes was good no matter which way you choose to look at it.
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  16.  @TTTT-oc4eb  1. A full salvo of main gun fire from a battleship is analogous to a scatter of lead shot from a shotgun. During the battle of Denmark Strait, the Bismarck aimed at Hood from 8-9 nautical miles away. At that range the 38 cm SK C/34 (Bismarck's main armament) had a CEP (circular error probability - effectively the radius of a circle within which 50% of its shots would fall) of 100m. That means that if 8 of Bismarck's 15in guns fired at a single point 8-9 nm away, 4 of her shells would be expected to land (with completely random distribution) within an ellipse (think of it as a stretched circle, due to the angle of fall of the shells) measuring approximately 200m (660ft) wide, (or to put it another way 76% of HMS Hood's 860ft length), by more than three thousand feet long. The other 4 shots would land even FURTHER away from the aiming point. That being the case, how can an individual shell be aimed specifically at a tiny part of HMS Hood's structure, namely the 4in HA magazine, that its believed triggered off Hood's detonation? I'll give you a hint, there's a little clue in my paragraph above....where it says "completely random distribution". A simplified analogy is that if you prop a dartboard up 50 yards away and can consistently knock it over with a shotgun at that range then that is pretty good shooting, just as Bismarck / PE achieved during the Denmark Strait encounter. Now you can "knock the dartboard over" all day long with the shotgun and STILL NOT hit the bullseye (magazine) with an individual pellet. As opposed to being a skillful shot by knocking over the dartboard, whether you hit the bullseye with an individual pellet is complete luck. 2. Where did you get the "Rodney didn't straddle until her 18th salvo" nonsense from? If you're just going to make complete nonsense up there's no point continuing the discussion. As was recorded in HMS Norfolk's war diary HMS Rodney obtained hits with both her 3rd and 4th ranging salvoes at 08:48. Please refer to "Battleship BIsmarck - A Design and Operational History" (Produced by the US Naval Institute) Appendix "B" Pg 518. 3. A heavy cruiser is neither a capital ship or a "heavy unit" in a firefight against a battleship. Trying to portray an 8" cruiser as a "RN heavy unit" is simply trying to make Bismarck's final drubbing look even more one sided. Even James Cameron's description of Bismarck's battle damage illustrated the point thus "On her main belt was counted HUNDREDS of shell gouges and splashmarks, almost all of which were from secondary and cruiser hits".
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  17. Do you mean "minus her entire supertructure" "in one piece"?
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  18. Hood was an evolution of 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 deck armour = 4 inches Hood deck armour = 3 inches Hood's vertical armour was well upto the standard of contemporary battleships, her weakest aspect was her horizontal deck armour, but V/Adm 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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  19. Hood received a "head shot" running into battle, while Bismarck was "tag teamed" and "spit roasted" after spending 6 days running away from battle. You decide which is the more "honourable" death.
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  20. "she" for the VAST majority of English speakers.
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  21. Of course the internationally recognised signal of naval surrender being the lowering of a ship's battle ensign never take place. I well imagine that a sizeable proportion of Bismarck's crew did indeed wish to throw in the towel, but as in any combat, the intention & desire of the individual is placed way below that of the parent unit of which they are a part.
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  22. Any such story was complete nonsense.
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  23. "Belli Dura Despicio"
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  24. Still championing nazis and Japanese militarists? Luckily for you Ashwani, you never had to live under either of them.
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  25. "as we all know conservatives are inherently stupid".... I prefer the sentiment of "If you're not a socialist as a teenager, then you've got no heart........ If you're still a socialist when you're retiring, then you've got no brain".
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  26. Nice write up Ben, a much more accurate portrayal than the wehraboo "Bismarck wuz scuttled" nonsense. The horror those men experienced onboard in that last 90 minutes is completely unimaginable & beyond comprehension.
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  27.  @benwilson6145  I've not stumbled on that, Ben, but I'll be sure to hunt it down and give it a "good coat of looking over". Thanks for that.
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  28. Its solid basis in fact is just the cherry on the cake.
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  29. Admiral Ernest J King. Personally responsible for the deaths of thousands of allied merchant sailors, and the loss of hundreds of thousands of tons of allied shipping and cargoes, largely based on his intense dislike for the British nation.
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  30. Another blustering clueless yank... comes in comments to "shoot some shit" no realising that amongst the "white noise" there are other commenters who actually know their history, and can disabuse (look it up) you of the utter garbage you try to pass off as "intelligent comment". P.S If you want to see something truly embarrasing, go and read about how a worn out group of Afirka Korps soldiers utterly kicked the arses of the fresh and fully supplied US army at Kasserine Pass in north Africa in Feb 1943. It took the British army to come and drag your sorry arses out of the shit. Stupid redneck.
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  31. We are all just a fibre in the thread of our own family history, Mes. Good to see others who also recognise this. All the best.
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  32. HMS Hood WAS originally conceived and designed as a lightly armoured "battlecruiser". Just after her keel was laid in John Brown's Shipyard on the River Clude in Glasgow the battle of Jutland took place with the result of 3 of Admiral Beatty's battlecrusiers blowing up. Building of Hood was then postponed while D’Eyncourt and his team redesigned Hood to incorporate 3500 tons of extra armour, with the result that when launched she had the same degree of armour protection as the Royal Navy's then premier battleships the "Queen Elizabeth" class, BUT was 7-8 knots faster than the "QEs". When a ship has A. Battleship firepower B. Battleship armour and C. 7-8 knots faster than all contemporary battleships, I don;t care whether it was originally designed and named as a "battlecruiser", what you have is the world's first "FAST battleship". As Shakespeare's Juliet said..."What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet".
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  33. The RN did not have the luxury to wait for other ships to arrive, Bismarck was on the very threshold of the convoy lanes and the wide open expanse of the North Atlantic in which to take evasive action, as she did not want to engage RN warships. The best chance they had to engage the unwilling German ships was in the Denmark strait, bordered as it was to the west by the Greenland ice pack. It was the hit achieved by the PoW that drastically reduced Bismarck's fuel capacity and stopped "Operation Rhine Exercise" in its tracks.
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  34. Best use a PC or Mac, install an adblocker and watch YT without all the annoying advertising BS.
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  35. Being in an enclosed space close to 100 tons of detonating cordite n the middle of the stormy Atlantic is not a good place to be.
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  36. Why "theatrical"? What do you believe would happen?
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  37. What was "meaningless" about "full HD"? It was the sales jargon for the non-technical consumer that specifically related to the 1080p screen resolution, "ordinary" HD being the lower 720p screen resolution.
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  38. ITs what's called "scrutiny".
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  39. neither of which were at sea when Hood and Bismarck were.
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  40. Capt Walker wasn't an American, that's why !!! Instead we get the BS of "greyhound".
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  41. It was not a battleship but a Courageous class light battlecruiser. The 2 single main guns were actually 18"/45 Mark II. They were experimental and were found to be not as effective as anticipated and so were not futher developed. AA guns weren't a feature on ANY capital ships at that time as naval aviation had barely began. All navies commision ships to meet future, projected threats, sometimes those threats materialise, sometimes not. The purpose these ships were designed for, that is fast, shallow draught ships to operate in the Baltic sea, never became a reality, and they were quickly redesigned as pioneering aircraft carriers.
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  42. And caused the sinking of the Bismarck which in the end the German crew assisted in.
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  43.  @hajoos.8360  Do I think Opeartion Berlin was a success? Dislocation of the convoy system, the capturing and sinking of 22 merchant ships and running the Home Fleet ragged for 2 months, for no loss to the Kriegsmarine fleet? It certainly was a success!!! You're confusing poor german strategical resource planning with a small but successful commerce raiding operation. Of course the men and materiel of the KM surface fleet would have been better used elsewhere, but that wasn't Lütjens fault. He was given a task in difficult conditions and carried it out relatively successfully. The Strategic overview was not of his making. All very well calling them cowards, but when all you've got is the post "weserübung" remains of a piddling little fleet, you have to nip at the much stronger enemy when he is weak and run away when he isn't. Face it, ANY KM surface ship losses were NOT going to be made good, the RN easily replaced its losses and MORE. It's true that Britain was on the sea what Germany was on land. The British army could NEVER have landed on the continent again, never mind liberate Europe, but on the other hand she was NEVER going to be cut off by the German Navy. A premier land power against a premier sea power... the classic stand off. As for your assertion that the "scuttle order" was given between 09:15 and 09:21, Yes, I DO have a question. Where did you get your (incorrect) information from? Lets look at some survivor testimonies (people who actually witnessed the events of Bismarck's sinking first hand), and not some poorly researched, modern day revisionist TV nonsense made for the "hard of thinking" shall we? From "Battleship Bismarck: A survivor's story" Written by Baron Burkhard von Mullenheim-Rechberg, Bismarck's senior ranking survivor. Page 211 "Our list to port had increased a bit while firing was going on" followed by "Around 9:30am gas and smoke began to drift through our station" This means that prior to 9:30am Bismarck was already flooding, not something that happens to a healthy seaworthy ship, in other words she was already starting to sink. Then from an interview conducted for the highly regarded weekly history journal "Purnell's history of the second world war" in the late 1960's with Kpt Lt Gerhard Junack (who was Bismarck's only surviving engineering officer and the survivor who supposedly enacted the "scuttle order"). He stated that... "Somewhere about 1015 hours, I received an order over the telephone from the Chief Engineer (Korvettenkapitän (Ing.) Walter Lehmann) to 'Prepare the ship for sinking.' That was the last order I received on the Bismarck. Soon after that, all transmission of orders collapsed." Heading back to the account of Mullenheim-Rechberg, on Page 212 he states that (before 10:00am) "I was using all the telephone circuits and calling all over the place in an effort to find out as much as possible about the condition of the ship. I got only one answer. I reached the messenger in the damage control centre and asked "who has and where is the command of the ship? Are there new orders in effect?".... The man said he was in a great hurry. He told me that everyone had abandoned the damage control centre, adding that he was the last one in the room and had to get out... then he hung up". If taken at face value these survivor testimonies show that there was at least a 45 minute gap between Bismarck starting to sink and the first mention of a "scuttle order" being given. Even if Bismarck's crew had done nothing, Bismarck was going to sink, and if the beaten crew want to help the RN, then all the better... But face it, Bismarck's crew weren't going to scuttle a perfectly seaworthy ship in the middle of the storm tossed North Atlantic of their own free will, it was only for the fact that the RN had already dismantled Bismarck and initiated the sinking process. In other words in every sense the sinking of Bismarck was the result of actions dictated by the Royal Navy. Anything else is just hurt German pride, bolstered by modern day delusional wehraboos. Germany was well known for trying to hide its national humiliations, such as when they scuttled their "grand fleet" at the end of WW1, like illogically saying "We lost.. but you didn't win", or a pathetic "You didn't beat us because we killed ourselves before you killed us" sort of idiocy.
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  44.  @hajoos.8360  Rechberg was in the after range finding station not buried in the bowels of the ship he would have had VERY clear indications of Bismarck's pitch and roll trim as part of his rangefinding apparatus, so trying to "poo poo" his account of events is wishful ignorance of cold hard facts. Part of your misinformation comes from relying on wikipedia.... the page regarding Bismarck as well as the other covering her final battle are littered with errors, as well as the omission of various facts that are supported by primary documentation which are repeatedly deleted by "wikipedia preferred editors" who have their own, biased opinions on the matter. You need to read more widely than that. First hand survivor accounts are valuable, as well as some of the better researched works produced since. To pit an unsourced wikipedia statement against that of Rechberg & Bismarck's senior surviving engineering officer is unwise. You talk of "supporting" strategic decisions, Lütjens wasn't part of naval planning, but a commander who would have had little to no input regarding the orders he'd been given. His, as the old saying goes, was to "do or die". All that BS about being "shot on the quarterdeck" after Denmark Strait, you seem to be oblivious to the fact that Lütjens' orders forbade his seeking engagement with enemy capital ships, and the impetuous Lindemann wanting to chase PoW eastwards was EXPRESSLY against the SKL orders that Lütjens was forced to abide by, as well as ill-advised in as far as the Germans were aware that further major units of the RN would be heading westwards from the direction of Scapa Flow. (Also not forgetting the fact that Bismarck was unable to chase PoW who was still steaming at full speed while Bismarck was forced to lower speed due to the damage to her bows causing trim problems and her loss of two boilers due to flooding, as well as ignoring the concerns of the now critical fuel situation Lütjens faced as a result of PoW's hit on her fuel tanks). The "oh she sould have sunk PoW as well" is just fanciful, uninformed wehraboo fantasy.
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  45.  @hajoos.8360  You admit that Bismarck was solely intended to "occupy" any capital ships carrying out direct convoy escort. Did Hood/PoW have an "O.N" convoy accompanying them? His orders expressly forbade him to engage in the situation he was confronted with, which is why you correctly state Lütjens hesitated to open fire at Denmark Strait, as he was judging to see if he could outrun the ships approaching him off the port beam. The reasoning for SKL's orders were confirmed, because as the result of the Denmark Strait engagement "Exercise Rhine" was cancelled due to the damage that Bismarck suffered due to combat with RN capital ships. So what that Hitler asked why PoW was not finished off? LOTS of uninformed people still do ask the same question, the answers being those I gave above. 1. It was in contravention of the Fleet Commander's orders. 2. It was VERY likely that PoW would have been drawing Bismarck towards further RN heavy units closing from Scapa Flow. 3. Bismarck was unable to match PoW's speed due to damage sustained during the prior engagement. I'm actually surprised to find myself speaking up for the Germans as I almost always find myself shooting down the excessive claims, mythology & BS of juvenile wehraboos in these threads, but for the reason of "being fair" I do feel that Lütjens was given a "tall order" and apart from a small number of errors (not refuelling in Norway / Excessive use of RT especially) carried out those orders in a not unskillful manner. It is ALWAYS easier to criticise with the benefit of hindsight, especially as those doing the criticising in YT threads have utterly NO idea of the burden of the weight of command & the "fog of war" when alone in a hostile ocean. Neither do I, but I have the wisdom to acknowledge it, and try to take it into account when assessing the decisions made.
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  46.  @hajoos.8360  Dear oh dear "Lütjens had a blackout"... such utter emotive nonsense. Do you have any evidence that he issued no orders? Apart from Lindemann issuing the order to open fire that is? Bismarck / PE altered course a number of times during the engagement, not least for the imaginary torpedoes that PE had supposedly detected on her hydrophones. There is no record at all of what tactical orders were given on Bismarck's bridge apart from those relayed to PE. It's laughable that you seriously beleive that you have a better grasp of what was occuring that did the actual people involved. You do realise that prior to PE picking up the first hydrophone contact aft of her port beam at 0500 that Lütjens had been advised that the RN Home Fleet was still at anchor in Scapa Flow, as the last available luftwaffe reconnaisance of Scapa Flow on May 21st had indicated that the Home Fleet had not sortied, and neither landbased or Lütjens own shipboard "B-dienst" teams had detected any reason to believe that major units of the RN had since deployed and were now at sea, such had been the radio silence exercised by Tovey & Holland. So the shock of being apprehended by 2 previously undetected major units of the RN Home Fleet only hammered home to Lütjens how poor the German's knowledge of RN dispositions was. Try and imagine being in command of 2 lone ships at sea, knowing you've been located by the enemy, and then realising that for your own part you have no idea of where the world's most powerful navy has its major units in relation to your position. THAT is what should be kept in mind when assessing Lütjens decisions.
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  47. Most would call it complete bollocks.
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  48.  @MostHigh777  Bismarck main armaments = 8 x 15in guns Hood main armaments = 8 x 15" guns Bismarck belt armour = 12.6 inches Hood belt armour = 12 inches (Though angled so as to give 13 inches of protection). Bismarck armoured deck = 3.75 inches Hood armoured deck = 3 inches There was EVERY expectation that Hood would give as good as she got. The fortunes of war saw to it that that never happened.
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  49. Obviously not been keeping abreast of the performance of the current Leopard tank in hot climes then?
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  50.  @jamesgascoyne.7494  I and a number of others have spent a few years stalking these threads enlightening young commenters into the true state of affairs with regards to Bismarck's final battle. You have only to read Bismarck survivor's accunts of the final battle to see what an utter charnel house Bismarck was turned into at the end. Glad to have another contributor who has an understanding of the horror that was visited on Bismarck's crew on 27th May 1941. All the best from the UK .
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