Armor design? Yes to some degree, bigguest issue was the things they didnt armor rather than what they did.
Armor thickness? It was pretty much middle of the pack with most of the fast BB’s of its time. Higher than Litorio, roughly matched with Richelieu, S.Dakota, and N.Carolina, lower than KGV, and thats only if you dont consider the internal armor, in which case im pretty sure it beats them all in raw thickness prior to the magazine or machinery.
The guns arent particularly bad either. They arent the 16" guns of the US/UK/JP, but theyre pretty analogous to the 15" from all EU nations.
As far as I can tell, the fire control was generally considered pretty good. It had some issues, namely the fact it wasnt armored properly, but it was far from bad at the time.
Absolutely. The AA on German BB’s was a sick joke, with some of the german cruisers and DD’s having some advantages over it, namely in medium range systems. Unfortunately the Bismarck class never lasted long enough for the possibility of a late war refit to 37mm autocannons and 128mm DP guns as seen on the cruisers and DD’s.
That being said, most ships with “good” AA in WW2 only gained said good AA later in the war from refits (or had access to VT shells in the case of the US and I think maybe the UK?), and by the time major AA refits were occuring, Bismarck had been sunk for 2-3 years, and Germany was very much struggling in other more vital areas than the naval war.
Tirpitz did get somewhat of a refit though. Much like Yamatos refit, it was all 20mm guns, bringing her number from 28 up to 58, but much like the Yamato, the refit failed to address the flaw in the AA armament, namely the subpar long range (105mm, should have been bumped up to the excellent 128mm DP guns the germans had access to) and medium range (37mm SK C/30 was horrendous and should have just been tossed into the ocean to save weight and allow replacement with the 37mm M42 or M43, which was analogous to the widely used 40mm Bofors).
Wasnt particularly slow either, faster than N.Caroline, S.Dakota. Similar speed to Litorio, and slightly slower than Richelieu.
Rudders were bad yeah.
It wasnt a titan of the pacific like the US and Japanese BB’s, and came from a country without the technical knowledge of the other nations it was competing against, and without the knowledge share othet nations were privy to at the time for their BB development.
The fact it competed in many ways to the ships of other nations is incredible in itself considering the circumstanfes of its building, and the fact you’re widely negative/dismissive about all facets of the ship class despite most of your points being demonstrably false proves my point about people juat being overly negative about the ship.
