HMS Prince of Wales, 4 torpedo hits (reserve buoyancy?).
HMS Audacious sunk after a single mine hit. It was that embarrasing that Admiralty kept it top secret. Germans just learned about this after the war.
HMS Hood tanked one 20cm shell from Prinz Eugen (started a huge fire and detonated an AA gun ammo rack, though) and broke into two after first hit by Bismarck’s 38cm guns.
HMS Repulse, as the POW, capsized after 4 torpedo hits.
HMS Queen Mary, hit by three shells from battlecruiser SMS Seydlitz and two shells from SMS Derfflinger. Detonated and broke into two.
HMS Invincible, suddenly appeared as clear target out of the mist before the guns of SMS Derfflinger and SMS Lutzow. Details are vague here, but the two German BCs fired three salvos each and after mere 90 seconds Invincible also broke into halfs.
HMS Indefatigable, was hit by two shells from SMS Von der Tann. Started to list due to massive flooding and fell out of formation. Two more hits detonated her magazines and it broke into half. This happened within 3 minutes.
HMS Vanguard, just detonated while mooring in Scapa Flow in 1917. No one knows why. The ship sunk in less than a minute.
Pre-Dreadnought ships excluded. I’ve got the impression Royal Navy’s success was rather a matter of numbers and abundant worldwide naval bases, than actually the qualtity of ships.
Let’s not ignore the Scharnhorst whom machinery was disabled by one single 14" hit which seal her fate. Unless you gonna say DoY still had to get close and finish her but then your argument of “no ship were sunk from flooding by one hit” can be applied to basically every capital ships in ww2, well, not even capital ships but cruisers as well.
Again a very basic reasoning: having the ship sunk by outnumbered gunfire doesn’t presumably mean it requires outnumbered gunfire to sink it. If the ship was already crippled and doomed it’s only the difference of leaving the ship a few more hours to sink (like Kirishima) or to finish it by outnumbered gunfire in a timely manner. In other words after receiving the few fatal blows in the first 20 minutes of the battle Bismarck was already a dead ship. Sticking with the fact that it received a lot more shells and torpedoes before sinking and assume the it would have required that amount of damage to sink it and call it a evidence of great survivability is just utterly ridiculous.
The British action reports also noted that when they approached to point blank Bismarck was already heavily flooded and noticeable listing was observed. As Cameron’s expedition of the wreck suggests that Bismarck’s turtleback was probably intact, this is exactly relevant to the fact that penetration of the 320mm belt alone could inflict severe flooding to the ship.
Apparently some people’s brain is too small to read. AoN was designed to have sufficient reserve buoyancy to keep the ship afloat if the citadel is unbreached while PoW had her shaft spin out which destroyed numerous watertight bulkhead and breached the citadel. Sounds like you are going to blame a bulletproof jacket not working properly when you are hit by cannon
This is because Bismarck was intentionally flooded and at that point no more efforts at damage control were made. Whether or not you want to consider that as scuttling is up to you, but those are the facts.
Hours of intermittent engagement at low visibility and almost no meaning full hit scored on both side. And still, a modern battleship that took the coup de grace at a range where every other modern battleship designs would have been immune to
I think there has been more than enough research on when the scuttling was done and how much it has contributed the ship’s sinking, Bismarck received first hit just about 9000hr and Rodney approached to point blank range at about 0925 while Bismarck continued to sail for a quite a few more zigzag before finally stop in the water (which is yet another evidence that the ship’s citadel was still intact by this point so she didn’t lose power entirely. It is clear that at this point the flooding and listing was rather a direct result of gunfire damage than her own actions.
Because there’s enough old shit talks that people would have been shamed to mention if they can read stuff properly. Not even the legacy of “quality over quantity” talks from mil forums 20 years ago. When mentioning this people seemed to forgot the fact that Bismarck and Scharnhorst was the only post-1930 “modern” battleships that was sunk by enemy gunfire and Bismarck was the only battleship that was sunk by an older battleship. So where’s the quality over quantity here?
That’s absolutely not true, 16:48 Belfast illuminates Scharnhorst after DoY has maneuvered to intercept, ~between 16:48 and 17:00 DoY uses gunnery radars to calculate firing solutions and scores a hits on the first salvo disabling A and B turrets, then the shot that destroyed the boiler room is made at 18:20, that’s hardly hours of exchanging gunfire really, you are strongly exaggerating that.
Particularly considering that DoY fired 52 salvos total and after she had slowed down the ship at 18:20 she fired more due to the closer range.
Reserve buyouncy was compromised by the propeller being knocked out of the shaft when it should have been shut down, however speed was needed to continue evading attacks from the surprise attack by the Japanese.
But as a result of restarting the shaft, the shaft ripped the ship open compromising its armoured citadel and thereby reserve buyouncy, this emphasises just how important reserve buyouncy was.
That’s also part of the reason why the British also went back to a vertical armour belt on the KGV’s despite inventing the sloped armour belt. On limited displacement, to ensure full protective reserve buyouncy, they deemed an external vertical belt was more effective. (Though by this point I would argue they should have just thrown a hail Mary and broken the limits like everyone else).
Your impression is incorrect. For starters the whole world was copying the Royal Navy or having them build their ships. Even Yamato was designed with some degree of inspiration from the British G 3 class.
Nelsons? Inspired Dunkerque and Richelieu classes.
The Queen Elizabeth class inspired the Bayern class etc.
I don’t have time to break it down right now, but it is simply the incorrect conclusion and vastly different from the conclusions drawn by every single other naval power that is not Germany.
I would also mention that HK is happy to call anyone out on an incorrect conclusion. He’s previously called me out when I swore the KGV class was the best thing since sliced bread.
Do I think its an excellent design still, yes and i’d still argue the best treaty design. But now i’m much more aware of the true limitations and flaws of the design, regardless of whether excuses for them exist.
For some reason people were pissed off like I was praising for British engineering miracle or whatever when I mentioned about the large volume of protected reserve buoyancy as a “opposite design idea compared to Bismaarck”. Like I mentioned somewhere else this was done in exchange of vertical armour belt which leading to one of the worst zone of immunity among treaty designs. KGV was a deign with a lot of compromises due to treaty limitations like many others at the time so there wasn’t really anything I was praising for.
On the other hand the failure to include sufficient reserve buoyancy inside the citadel due to low placement of main armour deck being a serious weakness had been discussed by historians for years and some people still refuse to raise their head from the sands. We’re not even saying turtleback being an absolute trash design, for instance Richelieu still integrated turtleback in a armour box design and she’s a perfect example to give an impression of how Bismarck’s armour scheme could have been improved to be more effective.
Even when shell room detonations don’t insta-kill a ship, they render it unable to fight.
Leaving aside all the catastrophic damages they still cause, a battleship that has had all its ammo removed just can’t do anything at all. At this point you are better off just J-ing out.
All of t his was caused by 2 salvos; one hitting the fore barbettes, and the other hitting the aft barbettes.
My mistake, I misremembered. Still, they were firing on each other for a fairly substantial amount of time before DoY scored her crippling hit.
It’s not that reserve buoyancy isn’t important, it is, but I don’t think it’s as important as you seem to think it is. You can look at strengths and weaknesses on paper but that isn’t necessarily going to reflect how things play out in practice, and in practice, not a single German battleship was lost due to a lack of reserve buoyancy.
The actual weakness of the Bismarck class was its abysmal anti-aircraft armament, in particular, the lack of a dual-purpose gun and a terrible medium calibre gun in the 3.7 cm SK C/30. Germany had developed solutions to both of these in the 12.8 cm SK C/41 and 3.7 cm Flak 36/37 but they never found their way on to a battleship.
Another weakness was, that these ships always operated alone, as they met their demise. Also the lack of naval bases they operated from.
Still the difference remains obvious. Ships of a certain side rarely lasted long. No battleship should ever sink with 3 or 4 torpedo hits, a mine hit or just deonate after a handful of main calibre shells hit. Thats where german desisngs were better.
she didnt sink is what im saying very durable well designed ship pretty both scarnhorst and bismarck had to be tag teamed to be sunk while they needed a massive bomb so big it caused three lancasters to crash before one finally got off the ground to sink tiriptz honorable mention prinz eugen got hit by a nuke and stay afloat for hours
Considering that all US battleships moving forward uses barbettes for shell room storage this is a serious problem. Tennessee is an interesting ship in the regards of ‘what if shell rooms dont insta-kill US BBs,’ which then leads into this next issue.
As HK said shells are tough, with some still being intact when Arizona blew up. The only solution here is removing detonation of the shells and make them guarenteed fires instead. That way, US BBs moving forward arent rendered useless in one salvo.
