I suppose the classic “Bismarck was sunk by her own crew scuttling not the British gunfire” nonsense came up again. Keep going on.
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Haha, by his logic Kirishima wasn’t sunk by the loss of buoyancy from Washington’s gunfire either
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He never said that though, you’re just making a straw man.
Do you honestly believe that KGV or PoW would have survived in Bismarck’s place?
That extent of damage would have sunk Yamato, or any battleship regardless, for sure.
But implying an obvious weakness doesn’t exist because it wasn’t exploited in real battle or the ship took excessive damage that no ship can survive doesn’t make any sense. Similarly you can’t imply the flaw of TDS on Yamato class didn’t exist because the damage she took would have sunk any battleship, or the lack of underwater extensions of armour belt on European battleship designs would not render them vulnerable to diving shells because no ship in history took extensive damage from it.
Not to mention the weakness we are talking about is not some engineering nuances or whatever but something dominated by the physical rules that equally apply to everything in our universe.
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After reviewing several ship service histories, I’ll just put this here:
The only German post-dreadnought capital ship which sunk due to buoyancy issues was the SMS Lutzow after the Battle of Jutland. This was due to one of the side hull torpedo launchers and the adjacent torpedo room, which proved to be an achilles heel. It allowed the flooding to entirely bypass the the compartmentalization sceme of the ship. Key areas like an important generator room were flooded very quickly and the ship couldn’t move anymore. Any attempt to take it into tow failed and it was decided to sink it. The torpedo boat escort evacuated the crew and torpedoed the battlecruiser.
The first thing happened after Jutland: The torpedo room nonsense was removed for all remaining and following ships of this class.
And thats it. Germany never again lost a Battlecruiser or Battleship to lucky ‘golden’ hits . All losses were due to heavy enemy fire, always outnumbered. They all had to be slowly grinded down. Just look what was neccessary to finally sink the Tirpitz, which just moored motionless in a fjord all the time. Despite German ships hit mines, were struck by torpedos, bombs etc. during their missions.
While the british Naval History is full of post-dreadnought capital ship losses. Like BCs or BBs exploded or sank after just taking little enemy fire. Single mine hits, few torps, some shell hits and they were crippled, exploded or sunk.
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Hms barham sunk in minutes after three torpedos hit
this is just a example for what you where saying
HMS Barham, 3 torpedo hits.
HMS Royal Oak, 3 torpedo hits.
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.
yeah bismarck tank over 5000 shells and 4 torpedo hits before being scuttled before sinking
not to mention half the royal navy hunting her
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
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Having the shit beaten out of you for an hour after being disabled by a biplane and a single salvo is not the boast you think it is.
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After hours of exchanging fire with DoY.
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.
There is no need for that.
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?
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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.
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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.
This isn’t a unique thing to Bismarck.
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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.
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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.
So far, this has been my Tennessee experience.
It isn’t insta-killed like the other standards, no; but it is insta-disabled, instead. What an improvement (/s).
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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.
Yes, German ships rarely lasted particularly long in the war. Bit of a design flaw, to only build your ships to last a couple years, at most.
Warspite lasted from before the first world war to after the second, and nearly escaped the breakers.
All German ships above a certain tonnage; on the other hand, have ended up sunk.
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