IRL they were also highly immune to severe damage.
The cloth fabric that made up most of the airframe provided too little resistance for HE rounds to detonating and those that did pass through often didn’t do too much damage. One in the attack on the bismark took 117 rounds and still made it back to the carrier and landed. and the fire controls on the bismark were designed for faster aircraft. They struggled with the low and slow swordfish
Actually way much better turtleback than Scharnhorst but worse icebreaker.
But I’ll think still it would be problematic that no fast battleship has better survivability than her(and even Marlborough XD)
Yea Bismarck has 124mm turtleback so 19mm improvement, but my hope is that the thin belt will not fully remove the AP caps and start the fuse as early as on Scharnhorst so you have enough penetration left to penetrate through the TB.
If not then its pretty obvious that something needs reworking because IRL 14 inch shells got through her belt and turtleback, same as against Scharnhorst.
Yes she would be problematic if added now, but hopefully other ships are added around the same time as her. I do not want to see Bismarck added as the first of the WW2 generation of Battleships. Instead they should give that to France, Italy, Britain or even America.
She actually caused good amount of damage on Prince of Whales aka another KGV, so much so that Whales had to retreat in order not to get smacked by Bismarck.
Prince of Whales was lucky that Bismarck had an order to not to engage with other equal ships unless they were standing between their mission.
Gets legendary reputation cause she managed to sink the Pride of Royal Navy with one Salvo.
Shouldnt have way thinner belt and turtleback is also better.
Exactly although not sure about Nagato considering its not as armored as other ships but on the other hand she has quite good firepower.
She did not cause any particularly significant damage as per the post-engagement reports and her subsequent re-engagement. It was some minor flooding which was dealt with as well as surface level machinery damage.
She penetrated the lower belt and caused flooding but that’s about it, all hits to the belt did not penetrate and after she had done some flooding control 2 hours later she came back.
PoW did not even officially ‘retreat’, she gained distance in order to be able to avoid putting shells into the belt and turtleback at close range because that was part of Bismarck’s immunity zone.
Yes but the ‘Pride of the Royal Navy’ was 30 years older and a Battlecruiser, if it had been a KGV class (though it’s still a treaty Battleship) then the comparison would at least be balanced.
Bismarck’s belt as per German sources is 30mm thinner roughly with a thicker turtleback behind. 1.2 inches is a significant portion but ‘way thinner’ was probably an exaggeration.
Hopefully they nerf the effectiveness of this TB scheme as we have real life evidence that it can be penetrated from 10km.
Nagato class had armour upgrades interwar so should not find armour to be a huge issue.
Also didn’t help that KGV’s guns were experimental/new and kept failing when fired. If I remember, they had a team of civilian engineers on-board trying to keep the guns in working order
Do you have a source?
The encounter I know of is that after losing Bismark and failing to re-acquire her on radar. Bletchley park managed to pick up on signals and those signals were forwarded onto the fleet so that the destroyers could triangulate the signals. But they made a mis-calculations and thought bismark was heading back to Norway and not France. But as soon Bletchley confirmed bismark was heading towards Brest. KGV, Rodney and the cruisers set course.
But wouldn’t have caught bismark if it hadn’t been for ark royals swordfish knocking out bismarks rudder.
Which then enabled the interception by the rest of the fleet
https://www.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/rmgc-object-12171
KGV was definetly involved in the final battle with bismark alongside Rodney.
Though she had to return to port anyway because she was low on fuel and ammo. Im sure she got properly repaired before returning to sea again
Perhaps you’re confusing Prince of Whales with original King George V?
HMS Prince of Wales was the ship that engaged alongside HMS Hood. But could have sworn she also took part in the sinking as well
Could be true but i dont exactly remember it either.
This article actually refreshed my memory on this incident perhaps both of us remembering in wrong way and Prince of Whales actually didnt take a part in final stage.
Different sources seem to say different things. So I have no idea. At this point. I feel some though are confusing the class for the ship name. But I cant confirm that
Maybe they count the first engagement as part of sinking the Bismarck.
İf that is true then we might consider that she did in fact took a part in that incident.
You’ve got wrong idea of why Scharnhorst’s turtleback is invincible now. It is not only thick, but also at very steep angle(about 65 degree), which is massively increase it’s effectiveness and also near to 100% ricochet angle of old AP/APC(72 degree), which makes little angling can make any AP/APC shell(even Yamato’s Type 91 APC) richocet. Nowadays some claim of ‘we can penetrate Scharnhorst’s first magazine’ but it is higly due to armor hull not problem of hull turtleback as high explosive can kill her in the same spot.
And speak of Bismarck, she has not only thicker turtle back but angle is even better(68 degree). Also, Scharnhorst’s turtleback’s weakspot on engine where 80 mm vertical only stands, were removed on Bismarck. Same side armor means it would penetrated easier by higher penetration of later 15’’ and 16’'s, but turtleback would be still invincible unless Gaijin makes another stupid hole on modelling.
I keep forgetting about critical angle, IRL it does not seem to have had such an effect.
I think the only solution to such a problem (other than Gaijin messing with the critical angle until it works based on IRL), is to allow the ships to take flooding between TB and Belt in order for them to sink due to the lack of reserve buoyancy.
Critical angle does exist in IRL. Why naval doesn’t experience such thing as severe as ground was because of far combat range makes shell trajectory high(=angle of turtleback gets neutralized little) but even in naval critical angle can be in a consideration especially in a close range battle which Kriegsmarine want their battleship to excel.
And actually even without considering critical angle, 120 mm of 68 degree makes at least equivalent 320 mm vertical armor.
People do Not refer to the Bismarck as a Her it is a Him for He was hunted by the royal navy and he was sunk just for Historical reason the Ship is a Male because Germans did not believe in giving female names to their war machines.
Kaiserliche Marine had several female ship names. SMS Kaiserin, SMS Hela, SMS Hertha, SMS Victoria-Luise, Thetis, Freya, Medusa, Lorely, Frauenlob … many more. Kriegsmarine similar.
Despite of this, ships always get female pronoms (she/her). Even if the name is male. It dates back to classic antiquity. Ships always have been female.
Oh god. Never thought there would be a discussion on the politically correct pronoun for a ship. 🤣