I do not have Bismark, but I have fought against it, and heard from others on the Forum
Its fine, a solid ship, good armour, great firepower, etc etc with one exception. It has the same turret lift weakness that the Scharnhorsts now have, which means that a well placed hit, by pretty much anything it faces, can kill it fairly easily.
Coupled with the 8.3 BR which means you are basically guranteed to be facing the strongest ships in-game… including Soyuz… It can be a bit problematic.
If anything hits you under turret,you blow up.
oS…Really ?
Don’t make jokes man…
Yes
It gets better the better crew you have, since then you have enough time to extinguish a lot of barbette fires before they reach the magazines. With manual repair control ofc. But like with scharn you gotta be quick to cancel everything else. Doesnt rly help that the shitty breach repair kicks in multiple times while youre trying to extinguish but well…“Not a bug”
But as the others said, it shines vs ships at or below its BR where the 8 guns with very good reload and tons of secondaries can deal lots of damage, while higher BR ships with longer reloads are overkill. But it struggles vs 8.7s, South dakotas and the Japanese 41 cm monsters.
Some of the fastest firing guns of its tier at 22ish seconds aced (24? Been a hot minute since I played my Bismarck). Only battleship that can beat it is Scharnhorst and those are only 28.3s.
Weakness wise is subpar (in the context of almost everything else is 40.6cms are larger) penetration and any shells down the elevators are a death sentence. The Kongou class can nuke you from across the map with terrifying consistency.
Fires in the elevators are also an almost guaranteed trip to the respawn screen (unless this was fixed recently) and the biggest killer is there is absolutely nothing else to use as a backup without shelling $80 for Gneisenau.
Bismarck also turns poorly at low speed.
50/50. Against anything of 8.3 or below (barring South Dakota), Bismarck can be a menace thanks to the firerate but Nagato has bigger guns and the same firerate. SoDak has better armor and penetration and Tosa doesn’t like to die period.
Pointing bow forward will get you killed pretty easily as the frontal plates covering the magazine is roughly 40 to 60mm thick. This is an issue with almost every German battleship barring the Nassau class. The Bayerns have about 230mm frontal plates but the sides of the same plates are about 40ishmm thick. I think Scharnhorst class is about 30mm.
Conversely, sitting at range isn’t a great option since shells getting dunked into the elevators are also a significant issue with the Bismarck, Ersatz Yorck and Mackensen. That said, when the armor does work, you get people complaining that the ship is ‘op’.
no do not grind germany go down america or russia genuinely zero reason to get bismarck as shes horrible in current meta the only ships shes better than are french and italian thats it
same br better alternatives
USS south dakota 8.3 same armor as IOWA which is 8.7 and can survive ammo racks a lot
USS north carolina slightly worse than dakota not by much
HMS Vanguard bismarck without fire problem and slower reload but not by a ton
for toptier its just US and Russia
britains like next best choice after that
She’s not that bad, the issue is there’s absolutely zero maps at high tier other than south african port that allows her to get in close.
She’s got flaws and most of them is due to non existent map design.
the people want bigger maps she also fighting ships out of her era IOWA wasnt even around before bismarck sank
bismarck is also the only ship you can literally cut scene kill its so bad even if you try ammo trick of like 100 rounds you still implode from the magazine
even toprank yamato or musashi can just run like 100-200 rounds and live bismarck cannot
Iowa was also built in roughly 2 years and was under construction in '41.
Bismarck, however, wasn’t constructed to fight fast battleships like Iowa. She was a commerce raiding battleship that was built to outspeed the british navy and outgunning most ships in the convoys she was supposed to prey on.
Although she did nearly kill Prince of Wales.
yes and wartime causes rapid advances in technology 1 year of wartime = 5 years of peace time
bismarck did not get that benefit
bismarck suffers same weakness as hood which is plunging fire
shes built of WW1 armor scheme and the only actual advantages she had irl arent modeled in game
for example her ZEISS optical range finders which where literally the best range finders in the world for how precise they where same with her radar range finder which certain ships like BB-55 USS north carolina did not have at the time
Germany was gearing up for war by as early as 1937.
The US didn’t enter WW2 until december 1941 (after pearl harbor). Iowa was completed about 6 months after.
Hood suffers from a lot of things in Warthunder that Bismarck doesn’t like horrible top heavy listing behavior that exposes her underside in a turn (which historically got her sunk) and just being an overall worse package that still has to see Pr23.
bismarck was laid down in 1936 shes a pre war battleship iowa was laid down literally as bismarck was commissioned
she is hopeless out matched by fast ships like IOWA or MISSOURI
her actual counter parts are north Carolina and Washington
And launched in 1939. Yes, there’s about 3 years of tech difference between Bismarck and Iowa but that’s not the issue.
As you pointed out in another thread; fires should be basically impossible to climb down Bismarck’s elevators. Similarly, these fires shouldn’t be able to climb down most ships as late as 1920 due to safety regulations, since I know for a fact Hood had a similar hoist construction to prevent fires from crawling down.
I am in agreement; Bismarck wasn’t constructed to fight 65k ton battleships and likely not anything above 50k.
now shes gonna be facing ships that dont exist like soyuz and lion
Honestly, Lion is arguably comparative to Bismarck given it’s the 1938 variant and not the 1945D loadout that would make her almost 1:1 comparable to Iowa.
The 40.6s on Lion have worse penetration than IJN 41s at close range and better penetration at long range.
*Based on what I’ve seen from dev server screenshots
the guns are actually worse in pen than the vanguards but why havent we gotten tirpitz yet ? every other country has there capital ships sisters or equivlants britain literally just got the prince of wales
it just gets to a point
Your guess is as good as mine. Germany desperately needs at least a second 8.0+ ship so its tree doesn’t look so anemic.
Edit
Eurgh, that low muzzle velocity on Lion is gonna be brutal.
next highest ship is 7.3 scarnhorst and the 7.0 bayern i also dont think britain knows how to make a 16 inch gun that can do better than there 15s
I know. The tree needs either Tirpitz or H39. Preferably both as tech tree.