Just watched the weekly WW2 video about this and I was a little confused about why they only sent the Hood and Prince of Wales against the Bismarck and it’s sole escort? Did they not have any other ships in the North Sea or was there no benefit in sending more? Would Battleships not normally have a few smaller ships with them as standard practice?
The British task force included two heavy cruisers and six destroyers, however due to various circumstances the British admiral decided to commence an engagement without waiting for these supports.
There is a good account of the battle on Wikipedia.
It may also have been a matter of not wanting them to slip by. The Bismarck and Prinz Eugen were fairly new ships with impressive cruising speeds, it's conceivable the Hood engaged because the commander wasn't confident the ships coming to his aid could close the distance before the target came under air cover.
Here's an excellent video (almost two hours long) that gives a detail breakdown (including minute by minute accounts of the actual engagements) of the entirety of Operation Rheinübung, with the how's and why's of pretty much everything.
creeping-deth87 wrote: It may also have been a matter of not wanting them to slip by. The Bismarck and Prinz Eugen were fairly new ships with impressive cruising speeds, it's conceivable the Hood engaged because the commander wasn't confident the ships coming to his aid could close the distance before the target came under air cover.
The evolution of navel speed and maneuverability from WW1 to WW2, plus the increases in technology that made it actually possible to not have the Mk. 1 eyeball be the top of the line tracking technology are fascinating.
From memory of reading Ludovic Kennedy's Pursuit: The sinking of the Bismark.
1. It was the opinion of the admiralty that anything less than a heavy cruiser would be blown out of the water by Bismark unless engaging in optimal conditions. This was not overcautious.
2. The Norfolk a light cruiser was shadowing Bismark with a radar set but the radar was unreliable. Norfolk got lucky, Bismark changed course while the radar was down and Norfolk was dead reackoning. Norfolk also changed course as a precaution. Had she not done so the cruiser would have been more or less at Bismarks position at first light, and likely be promptly destroyed. Being anywhere near a battleship while not being in another battleship or submarine is a bad idea.
3. The Royal Navy had more than enough battleships to engage Bismark with but some were very slow and could only engage by prepositioning or happenstance, faster assets were available in limited numbers but they had to cover much of the North Atlantic on their own.
4. Hood and Prince of Wales was more than a match for Bismark and Prinz Eugen, two battleships vs a battleship and a heavy cruiser (yes Hood was technically a battlecruiser, but this definition is by role not tonnage). However Prince of Wales had severe technical issues with her guns which severed firepower. She put to sea with dock crew on board in this campaign, such was the rush to present her.
5. Admiral Hollands plans for the engagement were sound, Holland was aware of the danger of plunging shot, but the chances of a critical hit were low, in fact when struck Hood was emerging from the danger zone of plunging fire and into direct fire, where she was on par with Bismark. Survivors indicated that Hood was ordered into a hard port turn when hit, had the manoeuver been completed she would have been in broadside engagement. This was supported by examination of the wreck of the Hood which showed the rudder hard over.
6. With Hood sunk and three of the four turrets inoperable, due to technical fault, not enemy fire, Prince of Wales withdrew.
What would have happened if Hood was not struck in the magazine?
Well Hood and Bismark would have likely pounded each other for hours, even if Prince of Wales was out of action due to malfunctions. Likely Bismark would have come off better from the exchange, she had superior fire control (wandermark), and support from Prinz Eugen. However this would be to Hood's advantage, as any damage dealt would be more tactically significant to Bismark. In the final engagement Rodney despite being a slow battleship was able to engage her alongside King George V. This battle gives a good account of what likely would have happened in a direct level engagement between Hood and Bismark. Bismark was heavily shelled and not combat viable, but was actually sunk by a scuttling charge rather then enemy fire. Even with events ending the way they did Hood did play a major part in the sinking of the Bismark. A shell from Hood split the forward fuel tank causing Bismark to lose a substantial amount of fuel. 2000 tons from memory, most likely from sea water contamination. This forced Bismark to split from Prinz Eugen take a very risky direct route to port rather than south and across to North Africa.
Could escorts have helped?
Escorts were used earlier and later, destroyers are primarily anti-submarine escorts, and to help with anti-aircraft, though the latter was not a factor in the campaign. later in the campaign a flotilla of destroyers Vian's squadron of five destroyers harassed Bismark. Though they were insufficient to cause real damage. Destroyers are slower than battleships and waiting from them in an engagement is not worth losing initiative for. Yes use them if you have them, as per Vian's squadron, but the deployment is largely supplemental. When Vian did attack it was while manoeuvering so wildly neither side were likely to score hits (or did) and Vian did not close any nearer than four miles from Bismark. Frankly not much could be expected from destroyers in such an engagement. Cruisers are another matter altogether, with Dorsetshire scoring torpedo hits, though only closed after Bismark was defanged by battleship fire.
All in all I have no critique of Hollands judgement in engaging without escort support. as for Hood, weak deck plating was not her true flaw. This was a design feature compromise from the start the admiralty and her commanders were well aware of and was unlikely to fail without extraordinary ill fortune. To adequately armour against plunging fire from a battleship shell would have required a substantial tonnage of armour plating, and said plating would have made the ship top heavy. Hood's actual weakness was her very poor AAA coverage, which the Germans were not in a position to exploit. Had Hood survived Bismark she would most likely seen service in the Pacific and met the same fate as most of the Royal Navy battleships sent to that theatre, including Prince of Wales.
Yes. Most of the raider hunts in both WW1 and WW2 failed. They were hard to find and harder to catch. Royal Navy tactical syllabus called for raider hunters to immediately engage and get close enough to have a chance of damaging the enemy with gunfire, as the opportunity might not arise again. Commanders who failed to follow this tended to see their seaborne commands come to quick end.
Holland had to engage as soon as he could, weather was too rough for destroyers and cruisers were too far away.
Not entirely true in this case. Bismark and Prinz Eugen were being shadowed by Norfolk and Suffolk intermittently, and the Germans had no answer to radar.
A delay was possible but not tactically advisable. Destroyer support adds extremely little to the offensive output especially against an undamaged battleship. Norfolk could have closed but it was not advisable to, her radar range was twenty miles, further then horizon and Bismarks engagement range. She was far more useful shadowing Bismark.
The real issue was that of speed. A modern battleship has about a six knot lead on a cruiser or destroyer, only other capital ships could engage in a high speed chase.
Also German surface assets rarely escaped undetected for long in WW2, mostly due to good air cover and later radar. Most could expect only a brief raiding campaign.
Radars of the era were short ranged and not too reliable so it was not wise to rely on them too much. Lets not forget that Bismarck eventually did get away from Suffolk and Norfolk.
Previous winter, Royal Navy had experienced a complete failure trying to catch any of the German raiders so the pressure to stop Bismarck was considerable. Even when they did not sink too many ships, they sometimes caused convoys to reschedule or even disperse, which made them easy targets for submarines and aircraft.
Totalwar1402 wrote: Just watched the weekly WW2 video about this and I was a little confused about why they only sent the Hood and Prince of Wales against the Bismarck and it’s sole escort? Did they not have any other ships in the North Sea or was there no benefit in sending more? Would Battleships not normally have a few smaller ships with them as standard practice?
The Royal Navy mobilized more than just Hood and Prince of Wales, in total the admiralty mobilized six battleships, three battlecruisers, two aircraft carriers, 16 cruisers, 33 destroyers and eight submarines, along with patrol aircraft, in several groups to search for and destroy the Bismarck. Once the Norfolk and Suffolk had identified her position, many of those other vessels were either redeployed to escort convoys in the area (Bismarcks actual target) or to close in on the Bismarck herself in an effort to limit her operational mobility depending on their relative orientation to Bismarcks known position. Hood and Prince of Wales were sailing with a screen of a half dozen destroyers which were detached shortly before the engagement as contact with the Bismarck had been lost and they needed the destroyers to re-locate her position, Norfolk and Suffolk were ordered to basically hold their positions in the event that Bismarck attempted to double back the direction it had come from, the Hood and Prince of Wales essentially stumbled into Bismarck by accident at this point (well, nothing like this is ever really an accident, but both sides made rather consequential decisions in the time between Bismarck being lost and relocated that played a huge role in the outcome of things) without the destroyer escort.
You have to keep in mind that the ocean is a large place and warships are not particularly fast, while the British admiralty knew where Bismarck was likely going the moment they first heard reports of her sailing in the North Sea, the area was still thousands of square miles large, and the question of "when" was relatively unknown.
As to your last point re: smaller ships - yes and no. Its a common misconception (largely as a result of gaming and parallels drawn with modern carrier battlegroups) that battleships were singular entities thats served as the centerpiece of a fleet, surrounded by all manner of smaller vessels like cruisers and destroyers, etc. The reality is that Battleships *were* the fleet and the principal combatant of naval forces that would be formed into squadrons consisting of just Battleships.
Cruisers functioned as scouts and outriders as the eyes and ears of the fleet, and served as screens to protect the battleships from flanking attacks and didn't generally partake in the main thrust of an engagement (as they were too vulnerable to attack by battleships and battlecruisers themselves). As such their place was on the margins of the fight and they were typically employed in very dispersed formations covering very large areas to the point that they might not be in visual contact with one another.
Destroyers were similar to battleships in that they were typically formed into dedicated squadrons of just destroyers that operated together in close proximity, but different in that they often served as the vanguard element of the fleet, operating forwards of the fleet along its path of travel or in screening positions between the cruisers and the battleships. Typically once the lead destroyers identified enemy fleets they would initiate the attack against the enemy formations in an effort to force them to break formation or maneuver themselves into a position of weakness by forcing the enemy fleet to commit to the battle on unfavorable terms while the cruisers would attempt to cut off their paths of travel and retreat and attempt to corral them so that their options for maneuver were limited. Once the battleships joined the fight the Destroyers would generally break off the attack and screen the battleships and/or assist the cruisers in harassing the enemy formation (often destroyers would "cycle" through various missions as once a destroyer expended its torpedoes in an attack run it had limited capability of attack against the main surface fleet, so the destroyers coming in fresh off their attack run would pull back and relieve another destroyer squadron serving in a screening roll, allowing them to attack and rinse/repeat) while the battleships centered the engagement.
So in short - yes usually there would be smaller warships operating in conjunction with a battleship, as was the case with the Hood, but those other vessels tended to be operate over a much broader area and would not generally be a close escort of the battleships themselves.
It wasn't necessarily that the Hood and Prince of Wales could actually take the Bismarck and Prinz Eugen in a head to head fight, it was more to slow them down by forcing a running engagement. And even though the Bismarck and Prinz Eugen outmatched their opponents, it wasn't such a huge advantage that an engagement was risky. So Hood and Prince of Wales could realistically engage the two ships and slow them down till the rest of the fleet arrived.
Realistically, these huge warships could pound each other for a long time without taking serious damage. Battleships and similar ships take obscene amounts of damage to actually sink unless you get lucky. Hood blowing up was a freak occurrence. Bismarck took over 400 direct hits from cannonfire and did not sink, though any ability to fight had long since ceased. The British only managed to sink Bismarck by sending a few torpedoes into her at point blank range. And this was even with Bismarck being helpless thanks to a jammed rudder. If Bismarck's rudder had not jammed she would have made it to France even if the other British ships had caught her.
As to your last point re: smaller ships - yes and no. Its a common misconception (largely as a result of gaming and parallels drawn with modern carrier battlegroups) that battleships were singular entities thats served as the centerpiece of a fleet, surrounded by all manner of smaller vessels like cruisers and destroyers, etc. The reality is that Battleships *were* the fleet and the principal combatant of naval forces that would be formed into squadrons consisting of just Battleships.
It highlights the difference between modern naval doctrine and older doctrines.
The combined arms approach that prevails today in all branches didn't really exist at the time.
As to your last point re: smaller ships - yes and no. Its a common misconception (largely as a result of gaming and parallels drawn with modern carrier battlegroups) that battleships were singular entities thats served as the centerpiece of a fleet, surrounded by all manner of smaller vessels like cruisers and destroyers, etc. The reality is that Battleships *were* the fleet and the principal combatant of naval forces that would be formed into squadrons consisting of just Battleships.
It highlights the difference between modern naval doctrine and older doctrines.
The combined arms approach that prevails today in all branches didn't really exist at the time.
I don’t think it’s so much the concept of combined arms, it’s simply the role of your primary asset; with battleships you need to draw/drive the enemy in on favourable terms, you want to get in close. Whereas carriers are a lightly armoured stand-off weapon, you want to keep enemy assets as far away as possible and let the aircraft (and more recently, missiles) do their work. Also the fact that modern weapons are ridiculously effective against ships compared to WW2.
It highlights the difference between modern naval doctrine and older doctrines.
The combined arms approach that prevails today in all branches didn't really exist at the time.
Well it did in a way, it's just that contributions of smaller ships in battleship action was often limited. First of all, battleships had much longer effective gun range than smaller ships. They could lay down accurate and deadly fire from distances where cruisers would be hopeless and destroyer guns would not reach at all. Destroyers main role was to protect battleship from enemy torpedo carrying vessels, and if necessary, make torpedo attacks of their own at enemy battle line - which usually was effective only as distractive measure.
Good example would be Battle of Jutland, where Scheer ordered his destroyers to charge British battle line to cover his own battleships retreat. Destroyers didn't hit anything, but forced Brits to turn away and break contact with their German counterparts. So destroyers were used in fleet actions, just not in a way a modern RTS gamer might envision (swarm the enemy with every possible unit).
Then in battleship engagement, friendly cruisers shooting enemy battleships might be more of a hindrance than help. It was difficult to tell apart 8" and 15" splash, and for fire controllers, it was crucial to identify ships' own fall of a shot (sometimes shells contained colour dyes to help with this). There were many instances where gunnery officers followed shell falls made by some other ship shooting the same target, made completely wrong adjustments and then wondered why they were not hitting anything. So in a multi-ship engagement, cruisers might be asked to not shoot at enemy battleships as they were not like to cause much damage anyway and their fall of a shot would only confuse matters.
Also, there is consideration of weather, rougher the seas, less useful smaller ships were. A destroyer can easily outrun battleship in calm seas, but when sea state gets worse, then battleship might suddenly be much faster. In case of Denmark Straits, destroyers were unable to keep up with ~28 knot speed of Hood and Prince of Wales.
And finally, range might be an issue. Destroyers were much shorter ranged that cruisers or battleships, and sometimes were simply left behind.
Vaktathi wrote: Here's an excellent video (almost two hours long) that gives a detail breakdown (including minute by minute accounts of the actual engagements) of the entirety of Operation Rheinübung, with the how's and why's of pretty much everything.
You’re right, that is an excellent video, thanks for posting it.
Kilkrazy wrote: The British task force included two heavy cruisers and six destroyers, however due to various circumstances the British admiral decided to commence an engagement without waiting for these supports.
There is a good account of the battle on Wikipedia.
The thing is Swordfish were so obsolete the Germans could not track them. Bismark's AAA cannon sights had a minimum target speed setting of 100kph, a Swordfish with laden torpedo flew at 60kph. Swordfish also had reasonable performance and accuracy themselves and were airworthy in bad weather, more so than later designs. Being able to fly bombing missions in poor weather and high sea states is an overlooked asset of the design. I am frankly not surprised the RN stuck with them.
What was less forgivable was using biplanes as fighters. You can skimp on torpedo bomber 'quality' especially if there are positive bonus features, but obsolete CAP is a no no. That being said the RN was still using biplanes as carrier assets in Korea, and one did shoot down a Chinese Mig-15, the only time in history a biplane has shot down a jet.
I do agree that the RN should have cut the BS in early '42 and simply replaced all carrier air wing assets with US ones. It would have made a major difference.
One should remember the Fleet Air Arm was under the control of the Royal Air Force for most of the 1930s. As a result, the Fleet Air Arm was very much an afterthought in the RAF's planning and budgeting. They were very much a fleet air service made of leftovers and make-do aircraft and not at all what the Royal Navy actually wanted.
Orlanth wrote: The thing is Swordfish were so obsolete the Germans could not track them. Bismark's AAA cannon sights had a minimum target speed setting of 100kph, a Swordfish with laden torpedo flew at 60kph. Swordfish also had reasonable performance and accuracy themselves and were airworthy in bad weather, more so than later designs. Being able to fly bombing missions in poor weather and high sea states is an overlooked asset of the design. I am frankly not surprised the RN stuck with them.
What was less forgivable was using biplanes as fighters. You can skimp on torpedo bomber 'quality' especially if there are positive bonus features, but obsolete CAP is a no no. That being said the RN was still using biplanes as carrier assets in Korea, and one did shoot down a Chinese Mig-15, the only time in history a biplane has shot down a jet.
I do agree that the RN should have cut the BS in early '42 and simply replaced all carrier air wing assets with US ones. It would have made a major difference.
What biplanes were the FAA using in Korea?! As far as I’m aware they were equipped with Sea Furies and Hornets (and the Sea Furies certainly got a few kills against MiG-15s). Even later in WW2 they’d switched to Wildcats, Hellcats and Corsairs, not biplanes.
Easy E wrote: Yes, Korea was the turbo diesel prop Hawker Sea Fury. Not biplanes but prop driven.
Sorry it was two stories mixed. Sea Furies did get some Mig kills. The recorded case of a biplane that shot down a jet was a North Korean Polikarpov which got a crit against an F-94.
As for Korean War FAA biplanes, IIRC they had some for ASW air recon due to their long flight endurance, sorry for the mix up. I still swear I heard of a FAA biplane shooting down a Mig-15, but it was on History channel which is not a realiable source at best of times, then likely watered down by memory leakage over about a decade.
I think the Polikarpov is credited with a kill by the North & Allies,
but the South & Allies claim the F-94 slowed down so much to try and target the Po it stalled and crashed (although personally i'm not convinced this is a 'better' story)
As has been mentioned, speed played a role. Most of the British battleline couldn't keep up with Bismarck. Hood could because it was more or less the genesis of the fast battleship archetype and Prince of Wales could because it was so state-of-the-art brand spankin' new that, as mentioned by other posters, they still had civilian personnel on board working on making the guns work.
The older Queen Elizabeths has a top speed of around 23 knots, while Bismarck's was around 30. Obviously these were not speeds used in practice, but it still illustrates the difference. The Revenge-class battleships were slower still and the two post-war battleships Nelson and Rodney were also slow. This left the new King George V-class battleships (including Prince of Wales), Hood, and the battlecruisers Renown and Repulse as the only capital ships fast enough to stand a practical chance of catching up to Bismarck. Renown and Repulse would have been in trouble trying to fight Bismarck, being both significantly outgunned and outarmoured, leaving Hood and the KGVs as the only reasonable response.
Hood was also slated for a refit including an upgrade to deck armour to protect against plunging fire IIRC, but the outbreak of the war meant Hood was needed elsewhere.
The Hood was a battlecruiser, not a fast battleship. In fact it was the last battlecruiser to be built by the Royal Navy. There are some who refer to her as a fast battleship on the basis that her armament and protection schemes were roughly equivalent to the Queen Elizabeth class battleships (but faster), but she and her 3 (never completed) class-mates were all built with the intent of serving as battlecruisers and she was utilized as such through their entire careers in battlecruiser squadrons (although it might be worth mentioning that the original design study that evolved into the Admiral-class battlecruiser *did* start life as a battleship replacement study before being revised into a battlecruiser design). Its important to note that while the Hood was comparable to the Queen Elizabeth class in terms of weapon and armor, the level of firepower and protection this offered her was insufficient to serve as a first-line battleship (fast or otherwise) by the time she was built compared to the other battleships that were being laid down and built at the same time - that she wasn't totally outclassed vs contemporary battleships is more due to the fact that post WW1 naval treaties stalled further development than it is because the Hood was particularly well armed or armored.
Yes, Hood was a battlecruiser on paper, but as you note the armour scheme was ridiculously heavier than any contemporary battlecruisers (12" belt as opposed to the 7" belt design of the Lexingtons, for example). Hence my comment that Hood really had more in common with the later fast battleship designs than the battlecruisers that came before it. Hood stood a decent chance against Bismarck; Renown or Repulse would not have.
EDIT: If the Kongōs are regarded as fast battleships after their rebuilds rather than battlecruisers then I see no reason not to call Hood a fast battleship. The distinction between a battlecruiser and a fast battleship kinda becomes moot following Hood (as evidenced by the eternal debate about Scharnhorst and Gneisenau's designation).
The differences in designation have more to do with doctrinal application than the do physical design (although in many/most/all cases the doctrinal application informed the design choices).
In Kongo's case, the battleship conversion were pretty extensive - her armor was thickened ship-wide (and in many areas the armor scheme was redone almost entirely from scratch), her boilers and engines were replaced and other elements of her propulsion system rebuilt (funnels removed and replaced, etc.), etc. etc. etc. None of Hoods refits were ever anything approaching that extensive.
I agree that it's more a matter of doctrine than capability from Hood onwards, which is why I called Hood the "genesis of the fast battleship archetype" in the first place (technically that'd be the Queen Elizabeths, but they weren't THAT much faster than the Iron Dukes or Revenge). For all intents and purposes Hood was a 31-knot battleship when built, with armour not too far behind the planned South Dakotas. Hood was designated a battlecruiser (although sometimes so was Vanguard...) but by then the technical distinction between battlecruiser and a battleship with high speed was essentially null. No one calls the Iowas battlecruisers despite having no better armour protection than their predecessors, so Hood is, I argue, a battlecruiser in name only.
Alternatively, I guess it could be argued that "battlecruiser" changed meaning after WW1. Compare Renown and Repulse to Hood and it's clear that if Hood counts as a battlecruiser then something has changed drastically.
I've always thought the birmark was one of the most overrated units in the history of war. Basically it sunk one obsolete ww1 era British ship and got famous, but in simple gamer terms it's unlikely she even "made her points back" .
Yes, she sunk the hood, a ww1 era battleship in a war that was dominated by carriers and subs,
Speaking of subs, thank god hitler built the busmark instead of listening to Donitz and building uboats. The Uboat was the best weapon system the Nazis ever had, and hitler was stupid enough to short change them early on in the war when they could have forced england to surrender.
After the war churchill admitted the only thing he was ever scared of was Uboats killing england's supply lines with the few the kriersmarine had. If Hitler had put the resources sunk into the Bismark into building Uboats early on when there were no counters to them, the war might have gone differently.
You could have probably built at least 50 uboats for the resources wasted on bismark, If donitz had 50 more uboats early on germany may have won.
One single uboat that weighed like 1% what bismark weighed did far more damage to the enemy that bismark did.
As a wargamer I see the bismark as one of the most overrated and romanticized units in ww2 and a complete waste of resources.
As someone glad the nazis lost ww2 I'm damn glad she was built.
Historical fun fact: The bismark's escort, the prinze eugen, survived ww2 and was used by the US as an atomic bomb test target. She survived not one but two nuclear blasts with minor damage but was soaked in fallout. A small routine leak occurred, unsurprisingly, and the navy was not willing to risk a repair team's exposure to enough rads to mutate a couple fruit flies into a herd of purple cattle so the ship sank in shallow water, her stern still above the waterline.
chaos0xomega wrote: The Hood was a battlecruiser, not a fast battleship. In fact it was the last battlecruiser to be built by the Royal Navy. There are some who refer to her as a fast battleship on the basis that her armament and protection schemes were roughly equivalent to the Queen Elizabeth class battleships (but faster), but she and her 3 (never completed) class-mates were all built with the intent of serving as battlecruisers and she was utilized as such through their entire careers in battlecruiser squadrons (although it might be worth mentioning that the original design study that evolved into the Admiral-class battlecruiser *did* start life as a battleship replacement study before being revised into a battlecruiser design). Its important to note that while the Hood was comparable to the Queen Elizabeth class in terms of weapon and armor, the level of firepower and protection this offered her was insufficient to serve as a first-line battleship (fast or otherwise) by the time she was built compared to the other battleships that were being laid down and built at the same time - that she wasn't totally outclassed vs contemporary battleships is more due to the fact that post WW1 naval treaties stalled further development than it is because the Hood was particularly well armed or armored.
The British definition of a battlecruiser differed from that by the US, French and Germans. By all accounts Hood was a fast battleship. Certainly she was seen as one operationally, she was fast enough to run down any ship afloat, and that was her core role, as a 'battlecruiser' but she was also very heavily armoured and gunned and could and did lead squadrons of battleships in line.
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Matt Swain wrote: I've always thought the birmark was one of the most overrated units in the history of war. Basically it sunk one obsolete ww1 era British ship and got famous, but in simple gamer terms it's unlikely she even "made her points back" .
Yes, she sunk the hood, a ww1 era battleship in a war that was dominated by carriers and subs,
Speaking of subs, thank god hitler built the busmark instead of listening to Donitz and building uboats. The Uboat was the best weapon system the Nazis ever had, and hitler was stupid enough to short change them early on in the war when they could have forced england to surrender.
After the war churchill admitted the only think he killing england's supply lines with the few the kriersmarine had. If Hitlet had put the resources sunk into the birmark into building Uboats early on when there were no counters to them, the war might have gone differently.
You could have probably built at least 50 uboats for the resources wasted on bismark, If donitz had 50 more uboats early on germany may have won.
One single uboat that weighed like 1% what bismark weighed did far more damage to the enemy that bismark did.
As a wargamer I see the bismark as one of the most overrated and romanticized units in ww2 and a complete waste of resources.
As someone glad the nazis lost ww2 I'm damn glad she was built.
Historical fun fact: The bismark's escort, the prinze eugen, survived ww2 and was used by the US as an atomic bomb test target. She survived not one but two nuclear blasts with minor damage but was soaked in fallout. A small routine leak occurred, unsurprisingly, and the navy was not willing to risk a repair team's exposure to enough rads to mutate a couple fruit flies into a herd of purple cattle so the ship sank in shallow water, her stern still above the waterline.
Bismark was not a bad idea, however she was insufficiently supported. Part of this was bad luck, Gneisenau and Scharnhorst could not accompany Bismark on her journey, bother were initially intended to, but one was laid up in dock the other took battle damage while doing a channel run. The Germans misused their heavy warships. Some people suggest Graf Zeppelin was the missing element, I disagree, one carrier would not have been enough to secure a fleet in the Atlantic. Bismark should have been sent to Brest directly, under continual CAP, then raided the eastern Atlantic under Me110 protection. That would have killed the convoy system and added as a force multiplier for the uboats, more than having more uboats. If given enough support by the Luftwaffe a three month siege by a surface fleet from Brest, massed Luftwaffe and uboats would have a very good chance of starving out the British.
As usual Hitlers interference changed much. Bismark sailed at the wrong time due to the Feurer's impatience, given three months the Germans could have put four heavy capital ships to sea at once, given three more Tirpitz may have joined them.
As for starving out the UK, it wouldnt have worked as well as it sounds. While at times the Uk was only one convoy ahead of critical shortfall, people forget what happens after critical shortfall occurs. This get bleak but not hopeless. When supplies actually have run out people get creative and draw 'hidden' reserves. Leningrad passed the point of desperation long before she was relieved but held on. Had the UK ran out of supplies trams would have cancelled, non coal based energy would be severely curtailed and it may well effect the night bombing campaign. However three contingencies would likely be crossed in time. First, the government would stop pussyfooting around with the NUM. The Miners Union was powerful enough to hold a general strike during WW2 and even Churchill caved to them. With coal being the only majopr resource the Uk is self sufficient on lines would have been crossed and the mines would be forced into double shift at gunpoint. That would remove reliance on oil power power stations. Second more sinister change would be an invasion of Iceland. Iceland remained neutral and the neutralirty was reluctantly respected. Should the convoys be blocked completely the UK would have invaded Iceland, most likely allowing self government but temporarily annexing a portion of the island to act as an airbridge. i.e you keep quiet and you get your country back when it is all over. Massed air conveyance would then be realistic. Third diets and eating patterns would change, chocolate would be gone, tea itself might be restricted. It might not be available in the home but only in communal tureens. People might end up eating rat etc if things got very bad. I reckon six months after official food exhaustion the UK would be a very different place but there would be a new normal, just as Germany itself found out. It would not have meant defeat or surrender any more than for Leningrad or for Germany itself.
On the other hand once Bismarck is in Brest the Royal Navy would presumably have shifted a tonne of resources to the area. The four German battleships having to go up against the four KGVs would already have been a fight that favoured the Royal Navy; get Rodney or Nelson along with some Revenges or Queen Elizabeths to back them up and the Germans have no choice but to keep running and hoping they can snag some convoys while dodging the various elements of the Home Fleet. As long as Scharnhorst and Gneisenau haven't received their 15" gun refit they're not even a match individually for a Revenge class despite their much higher speed. Waiting for Tirpitz to come online would have given the Royal Navy three more months to work out the kinks in the KGVs quad turrets, and we saw what happened historically when Duke of York went up against Scharnhorst.
Pooling their strength could probably have let the Germans do a chunk of damage, but in the end two light battleships and two inefficient but modern battleships were never going to outright the Home Fleet.
EDIT: Also, Iceland was invaded by the UK 17 days before the Bismarck was sunk. The idea that Iceland's neutrality was respected is the complete opposite of what happened.
It's worth noting the mere existence of the German heavy naval units soaked a LOT of Allied resources. Older battleships were required for escort duty to fend off the Pazerschiffe and Scharnhorst class. Several front-line battleships were kept close to the Bismark or Tirpitz to keep them contained. Vast aerial resources were expended in attacking these ships. They easily tied down twice their value in Allied military resources even when sitting in port.
Without the surface force threat, and only U-boats to worry about, it's quite likely even more allied resources would have been put toward dealing WITH said U-boats much earlier.
At the same time the UK had a bunch of older battleships to commit; if Germany had gone full U-boat it's not like the Revenges or Queen Elizabeths could have been much use in anti-submarine warfare, as Barham could attest to. It did keep the Japanese and Italians from just getting completely swamped in battleships though.
Well, Churchill himself admitted after the war that the only thing that had him scared in ww2 was the uboats. Not the blitz, not a possible invasion, not even the evacuation at Dunkirk, it was the Uboats.
People often underestimate the sheer scope and planning of the UK islands' rationing system. The phrase "starve the UK out" might have come into play regarding oil supplies, but even cutting the incoming food off from the UK entirely wouldn't have actually brought starvation. Years of planning had gone into the preparation to support the population at hand with just the food resources made on the island, in a pinch, and it was a pretty impressive feat. The multiple layers of careful rationing is still held up by modern nutrionists as just about the healthiest diet the british ever lived on. So not literally starved out.
I am not saying some things might have gone awry for Great Britain -- but they really did have adequate protein/energy reserves for their masses, which is rather impressive compared to the german strategy (the germans ALSO planned to prevent a repeat of WWI food shortages in their coutnry .. but by stealing it from greece and france and poland and russia...)
But when the oil goes the RAF and the Royal Navy (mostly) goes and the Luftwaffe gets free reign. It's not about literally starving Britain's population, it's about starving the industry keeping Britain fighting. Once that happens the food either gets bombed or doesn't matter any more.
Orlanth wrote: The thing is Swordfish were so obsolete the Germans could not track them. Bismark's AAA cannon sights had a minimum target speed setting of 100kph, a Swordfish with laden torpedo flew at 60kph. Swordfish also had reasonable performance and accuracy themselves and were airworthy in bad weather, more so than later designs. Being able to fly bombing missions in poor weather and high sea states is an overlooked asset of the design. I am frankly not surprised the RN stuck with them.
What was less forgivable was using biplanes as fighters. You can skimp on torpedo bomber 'quality' especially if there are positive bonus features, but obsolete CAP is a no no.
Last biplane fighter of Fleet Air Arm was Sea Gladiator, which was already leaving service as WW2 began - I think they might have been used in Norwegian campaign, but not much after that. It was replaced by Fairey Fulmar, which, to be fair, did not really have much better performance than Gladiator...
Easy E wrote: Yes, Korea was the turbo diesel prop Hawker Sea Fury. Not biplanes but prop driven.
Sorry it was two stories mixed. Sea Furies did get some Mig kills. The recorded case of a biplane that shot down a jet was a North Korean Polikarpov which got a crit against an F-94.
As for Korean War FAA biplanes, IIRC they had some for ASW air recon due to their long flight endurance, sorry for the mix up. I still swear I heard of a FAA biplane shooting down a Mig-15, but it was on History channel which is not a realiable source at best of times, then likely watered down by memory leakage over about a decade.
The funny thing about that was the Polikarpov got the kill because the F-94 tried to slow down so much to track that target that the Jet stalled and crashed! IIRC the American pilot did manage to escape unharmed, but I may be misremembering.
I'm sure he got a serious dressing down after that incident. The F-94 had a super top secret gun radar at the time and was the top of the line US interceptor jet.
AlmightyWalrus wrote: At the same time the UK had a bunch of older battleships to commit; if Germany had gone full U-boat it's not like the Revenges or Queen Elizabeths could have been much use in anti-submarine warfare, as Barham could attest to. It did keep the Japanese and Italians from just getting completely swamped in battleships though.
Which is rather the point. The Italians sank a LOT of British ships. Having the ships tied down by Germany instead serving in the Med would have allowed the British fleet to battle more on their terms instead of the Italians. This would likely have resulted in a lot more Italian ships being sunk more quickly and ending that naval conflict a lot faster. This then would have freed up more light ships from the Med which could have then served against the u-boats.
Or the battleships and carriers held back to catch those surface units could have gone after the u-boat pens much more aggressively than they did historically...
Relating to this, the bismark's short career followed by the kriegsmarines poor performance at the battle of the barents sea in 1942 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Barents_Sea ) convinced hitler to switch production away from surface units and to focus on uboats, which by this time were being countered by more and more advanced measures like convoy systems, hydrophones, observation planes, sonar, depth charges, etc.
This is part of the reason the nazis never built a functional aircraft carrier.
Grey Templar wrote: Even if they had they probably couldn't have supplied it effectively for it to make a difference.
Yes, not only the planes, but their quality of pilots had diminished so much towards the end of the war their pilot loss in simple mishaps (training, landings, etc.) was staggering. Imagine trying to have these poor gents taking off and landing from a carrier.
Carriers are a tool for naval supremacy. Japan could try a hand at that Germany could not. Battleships can sortee into the Atlantic do some damage and retire. Carrier deployments mean 'this portion of sea is mine'. Germany was never in a position to do that outside the Baltic.
Orlanth wrote: Carriers are a tool for naval supremacy. Japan could try a hand at that Germany could not. Battleships can sortee into the Atlantic do some damage and retire. Carrier deployments mean 'this portion of sea is mine'. Germany was never in a position to do that outside the Baltic.
Agree - not the sort of thing Germany really needed to do, given their blitzkrieg method of warfare to take ove the immediate ground area.
...back OT, it was just a one in a million shot in a spot known to be vulnerable, but still considered an acceptable risk when Hood began in her role during WWII since her deck retrofit before the war began was never done. Those one in a million shots are what will always intrigue historians and rally the nation, similar to what the Japanese did to the Arizona at Pearl Harbor.
Matt Swain wrote: Relating to this, the bismark's short career followed by the kriegsmarines poor performance at the battle of the barents sea in 1942 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Barents_Sea ) convinced hitler to switch production away from surface units and to focus on uboats, which by this time were being countered by more and more advanced measures like convoy systems, hydrophones, observation planes, sonar, depth charges, etc.
This is part of the reason the nazis never built a functional aircraft carrier.
Well a German aircraft carrier would have come out when the US was deep into the war. With no functional air doctrine (as in not even knowing how to launch aircraft), it would have been a major but shortlived target for US and UK carrier groups.
It likely saved a couple of thousand German lives.
Yes, I think Germany had its fair share of technological firsts and advances and spreading so thin as to have carriers? That would have been disastrous.
One of the most vital ships in the convoy was a fuel tanker, the SS Ohio. Towards the end she was severely damaged with a broken stern and cracked keel. Two ships literally lashed themselves to her sides to hold her together while others towed the slowly sinking ship into shallow water so her vital fuel cargo could be saved.
The Ohio when she arrived at port.
One ship survived because an torpedo dropped by plane got caught up in part of her paravane rig. The ship could not slow for fear the topedpo would hit her hull if she did so the rig was cut off and the torpedo sank and detonated when it hit the bottom.
They really should have done a good movie about this operation.
Matt Swain wrote: Relating to this, the bismark's short career followed by the kriegsmarines poor performance at the battle of the barents sea in 1942 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Barents_Sea ) convinced hitler to switch production away from surface units and to focus on uboats, which by this time were being countered by more and more advanced measures like convoy systems, hydrophones, observation planes, sonar, depth charges, etc.
This is part of the reason the nazis never built a functional aircraft carrier.
They were looking at building one and equipping it with navalized Bf-109's and Ju-87's. I don't even want to think about what casualties among the Ju-87s would have been in combat, and somehow I think the problematic landing gear of the Bf-109's would have handled carrier landings terribly well...
On the other hand, with it's large battery of 5.9" guns the Graf Zeppelin would have made a serviceable (if grossly oversized and overpriced) light cruiser.
The worst part of the Bismark's story was over 2,000 men on her died so needlessly. The captain must have known after here rudder was jammed by that torpedo plane hit she was doomed. He could have scuttled the ship after evacuating it. A portion of c=]his crew might have reached a friendly port, many may have been taken POW but most would have survived.
In the end the captain scuttled her after she was a flaming wreck and just out of spite to deny the British the honor of sinking her. Out of 2200 men onboard only 114, and possibly a cat, survived. The rest died pointlessly over vainglory and the nazi's twisted concept of honor and valor.
Contrast this to the story of the Cruiser Graff Spee:
The captain of the Graff Spee, believing his ship was doomed and almost certain to be destroyed before she could reach a safe harbor, ordered her evacuated and then destroyed with a massive blast that left her quite unusable by the enemy. He saved the lives of his crew from a doom he believed was real but was in fact a clever deception. Nonetheless he decided not to lead his men to a pointless death.
Maybe bismark's captain believed he was being tricked like the graf spee's captain was. But once it became apparent his ship was doomed he could have signaled surrender, evacuated his men and scuttled the ship, which he did later anyway, too late to save over 2000 of his men.
Graf Spee was scuttled in port. Bismarck was in the middle of the Atlantic.
Besides, naval officers don't usually surrender their ships unless they absolutely positively have no other option. No one's giving Taffy Three flak for not surrendering despite Yamato alone outweighing the entire task force.
AlmightyWalrus wrote: Graf Spee was scuttled in port. Bismarck was in the middle of the Atlantic.
Besides, naval officers don't usually surrender their ships unless they absolutely positively have no other option. No one's giving Taffy Three flak for not surrendering despite Yamato alone outweighing the entire task force.
Taffy Three was defending the unarmed transports behind them with everything they had. Had they just surrendered the entire landing force was in danger of destruction.
AlmightyWalrus wrote: Graf Spee was scuttled in port. Bismarck was in the middle of the Atlantic.
Besides, naval officers don't usually surrender their ships unless they absolutely positively have no other option. No one's giving Taffy Three flak for not surrendering despite Yamato alone outweighing the entire task force.
The above post deals with one issue. I must raise another.
While task force taffy 3 was outweighed and outgunned terribly by the japanese force, she has one significant advantage: Air power.
TFT3 was contained 6 small carriers. It had a number of aircraft in total equal to the compliment of a large carrier. The japanese fleet had no appreciable air power whatsoever. While it is true the aircraft of tft3 were not exactly piloted by ace pilots and they were not ideally armed to deal with heavy cruisers and battleships they wreaked merry hell on the destroyers screening them.
Bismarck was defending, as silly as it sounds, the reputation of the Kriegsmarine. Having your most powerful ship just surrender would be a ridiculously huge blow to German morale; far worse than getting sunk.
Also, Taffy Three fought out of desperation. The air assets would probably not have made a difference if Kurita just pressed the attack. They faced the same certain annihilation as Bismarck (more so, as they were actively fighting) but they're upheld as heroes. Bismak had far greater chances of survival than Taffy Three which survived because Kurita had a brain fart, not because the planes from Taffy One, Two and Three were stopping him.
Two things: U-boats had a HARD counter: Blimps. blimps were very fuel efficient, had incredible loiter times, and were really great at spotting U-boats. If I remember correctly, no ship was lost with a blimp accompanying it. With the US having control over the vast bulk of the world's helium I think Blimp production would have hit overdrive if there were more U-boats.
Also, as to the "Bismarck was overrated" argument, I will admit that I've had several conversations about WWII in several forums where the Bismarck got a bit of a fanboy problem. In one memorable thread someone was animate that the Bismarck would have come out on top if it went up against an Iowa class Battleship.
Naval officers of the period generally didn't have a habit of surrendering their vessels to the enemy. Langsdorf ended his life because he had to scuttle his ship in a neutral port. That's the kind of mental emphasis a naval command officer is going to have. On a ship like the Bismarck (or Hood, or really any of them), everyone knows the score, they don't head out to sea crewed by unwilling conscripts. Likewise, safely evacuating a warship like Bismarck on the high seas into enemy hands would have been...difficult and awkward.
It should also be pointed out that the orders to the Royal Navy were to *sink* the Bismarck, not to force its submission, not to take it as a prize. They continued hurling steel into the vessel long after it was clear to anyone involved that the ship was unable to resist or fight, and chose to put torpedoes into the ship to finish it off even as the battle damage & scuttling was clearly causing the ship to heavily list and was pretty clearly in the process of sinking. The RN's orders were pretty blunt.
The story of Taffy 3 is amusing in that neither side really grasped entirely what the other was, the US thought Yamato was much more in scale with maybe something more akin in displacement to maybe the Iowa's (which was still huge) until well after the war, nobody realized how truly big they were at the time, the Japanese had done a really intense job keeping the details of their construction secret and destroying records at the end of the war, while the Japanese also thought the carriers of Taffy 3 were fleet carriers not escort carriers during the initial part of the engagement
With regards to the Bismarck itself being "over-rated", I think it could be called "overweight". For the foe it was designed to fight in the seas it was intended to operate at the time it was designed, Bismarck met its objectives well and obviously was able to match the pride of the Royal Navy in the North Atlantic in the early 1940's and required the attention of everything the RN could muster at that moment to deal with it. However, the Germans hadn't been on the cutting edge of capital ship development for a couple of decades, and the US got a whole lot more out of the same general displacement in the Iowa's (more guns, bigger guns, more speed, broadly equal armor qualities and quantities, etc), which undoubtedly would have clobbered a Bismarck (but also had a several more years of advanced radar and fire control technology) in open seas, probably wouldn't have been able to operate in the North Atlantic as well for as long as Bismarck was expected to.
Especially the mission, basically, scare the british royal navy to have a big detachment of surface fleet in circulations due to fear of the Bismark, wasting ressources to keep them there, therefore make the gamble of the mission and then basically retire the ship somewhere safe but in reach to work as a potential threat in the atlantic, lowering the pressure for Italy.
Now, the bismark also comes into play with the general political infighting in the german highcommand for ressources and strategey, beeing part of what is known as Plan Z to my knowledge.
Yes, as with the Tirpitz, the Bismarck in a French port (or worse, roaming the Atlantic) would have been a considerable fleet-in-being and tied down a lot of British forces.
There’s an interesting “what-if” (covered in one of Drachinifel’s other videos) that the Germans would have been a lot better off not sinking Hood. The extreme “sink her at all cost” orders were really an act of revenge. If Hood had survived, with both sides likely withdrawing after taking damage, the RN would probably have been a lot more cautious and circumspect.
Well, my view is the bismark was a mistake from the get go and one that may have lost the war for germany, thank god.
Consider: Bismark masses 41,770 tons. A type 7 Uboard masses 769 tons. This means bismark consumed 247 times the material of a Uboat.
Bismark's crew was ~2,000 men. A Uboat crew, ~50.
One sees quickly that it would have been quite feasible to construct 50-100 uboats for what was sunk (figuratively and literally) into the bismark, with plenty of material left over.
There were single Uboats that did more actual damage to the enemy than the bismark.
The only thing the bismark could do a Uboat couldn't was shell targets up to 20+ miles inland with high explosive artillery rounds. But the bismrak was meant to be a 'commerce raider" by the german admiralty.
A dozen or two Uboats would have done many many times more damage as commerce raiders than the bismark did.
Had the bismark not been built and even a good fraction of the resources wasted on her used for uboats and strategic bombers (Another disastrous blunder the nazis made, they had no heavy bombers at all) I think the war would have gone seriously worse for the world.
i disagree, moslty due to the fact that more engines = more oil wasted.
Also the statement as a surface raider is wrong, the bismark was planned according to Z-Plan armamament programm, which was to rebuild in essence the highseasfleet.
Not to mention that, as we've been through already, submarines can't tie down battleships to keep them off the Regia Marina's back.
Plus, you can't just do a tonnage conversion like that. Germany does not have the drydocks to build 100 extra subs instead of the Bismarck, for one. As mentioned above there's also fuel to consider.
The main reason that German didn't have a heavy bomber was that their aircraft were seen as a tool to support a moving infantry force, which is part of the reason so many fighters (including the ME-262) were required to also be able to be light bombers as well. Strategic bombers don't really do this. They started to see the errors of their ways near the end of the war, but too little too late.
Matt Swain wrote: Well, my view is the bismark was a mistake from the get go and one that may have lost the war for germany, thank god.
Consider: Bismark masses 41,770 tons. A type 7 Uboard masses 769 tons. This means bismark consumed 247 times the material of a Uboat.
Bismark's crew was ~2,000 men. A Uboat crew, ~50.
One sees quickly that it would have been quite feasible to construct 50-100 uboats for what was sunk (figuratively and literally) into the bismark, with plenty of material left over.
There were single Uboats that did more actual damage to the enemy than the bismark.
The only thing the bismark could do a Uboat couldn't was shell targets up to 20+ miles inland with high explosive artillery rounds. But the bismrak was meant to be a 'commerce raider" by the german admiralty.
A dozen or two Uboats would have done many many times more damage as commerce raiders than the bismark did.
Had the bismark not been built and even a good fraction of the resources wasted on her used for uboats and strategic bombers (Another disastrous blunder the nazis made, they had no heavy bombers at all) I think the war would have gone seriously worse for the world.
Well, the war certainly would have gone a lot worse for the Italians, that's for certain. Without the surface raiders to pin down a large chunk of the British fleet the Italians would have lost their fleet in short order, and their African holdings would have followed soon after. So no Rommel, no El Alamein, no battles around Malta, and not much interdiction of supply coming through the Med.
The Japanese would likely have also suffered some reverses with more of the British fleet available to serve away from the North Sea.
I mean you can make the argument that they should've built more pocketbattleships? More specific raiding ships , with big enough guns to threaten BB's and BC's?
That might've been a possibility though i don't know how well the Panzerschiffe did overall, and cost effectiveness is an issue, not to mention that you then also run into the more engines = more fuel used = ressources you allerady got issues with even moer strained.
The Panzerschiffe did pretty poorly overall and are, as far as I am aware, generally considered a dead end. Guns are nice and all, but they had ridiculously light armour.
AlmightyWalrus wrote: The Panzerschiffe did pretty poorly overall and are, as far as I am aware, generally considered a dead end. Guns are nice and all, but they had ridiculously light armour.
I believe that is the core issue , beeing still planned and built under Versailles did Make them rather akward in that regard.
Building them bigger basically gives you Scharnhorst and Gneisenau though. Then again, if they'd gotten the 15" replacement guns in place that might not have been a bad plan. It's essentially Battlecruiser 2.0 at that point though.
Yeah, the Panzershiffe were 1920's era designs of the Weimar era that had to work their way around various legal/treaty obligations Germany had at the time, and like a lot of ships of that era (from many nations) ended up being awkward as a result. Really, they're not really even "pocket battleships", they're really just basic heavy cruisers, they just carried six 11" guns of a recycled pre-WW1 vintage instead of the more typical (and generally more modern) eight or ten 8" guns.
Likewise, it helps to remember that many of Germany's interwar ships were not necessarily originally designed as foils to the Royal Navy, but rather for use primarily against the French, and a lot of ships make way more sense in that light. The Scharnhorsts couldn't be built with their planned 15" guns (as such industry was still being rebuilt at the time), making them unable to directly challenge the RN battle line, but that was ok as the enhanced 11" guns they were armed with (much better than those on the Panzershiffe) were capable of dealing with a Dunkirque just fine.
With regards to the Bismarck losing Germany the war, there are a million other things that would have contributed more to that course of affairs. For the war that did break out, it was not the correct tool, but that couldn't be foreseen entirely, and the resources used in its creation wouldn't have directly translated to hundreds of submarines had it never been made, though probably certainly more than otherwise were built. The Tirpitz certainly had an effect as a fleet-in-being even as it just sat in fjords doing nothing, how valuable that is is up for debate, but a lot of that is only possible with hindsight.
Not Online!!! wrote: I mean you can make the argument that they should've built more pocketbattleships? More specific raiding ships , with big enough guns to threaten BB's and BC's?
That might've been a possibility though i don't know how well the Panzerschiffe did overall, and cost effectiveness is an issue, not to mention that you then also run into the more engines = more fuel used = ressources you allerady got issues with even moer strained.
That would have required redesigning them entirely. 11" guns are not a serious threat to WWII era battleships, even the older refitted ones. Heck, three cruisers not only survived 11" gunfire but did significant damage in return with 6" and 8" gunfire.
The Scharnhorsts had more potential, being big enough to trade 9-11" guns for 6-15" guns that were a threat to modern battleships.
To put it bluntly the Bizmark didn't have enough AA guns to survive much longer than she did.
She had what, 16x 10.5cm Flak 38s, 16x 3.7cm SK C/30's and 12x 2cm FlaK 30 guns.
The Yamato has 162x 25mm guns and was bombed and torpedoed to pieces.
Now the FlaK 38 and SK C/30 vastly out performed the Type 96 25mm guns, and many of the Yamato gun positions were unarmoured and affected by strafing runs, but the simple fact that strafing runs can get through 162x25mm guns and a handful of 13mm guns too shows how vulnerable ships can be to aerial attacks.
If she wasn't sunk outright she'd have eventually suffered the same fate as the Tirpitz
As I understood, bismark's AA guns were basically taken directly from an older cruiser and simply bolted onto her hull wherever they could be. I think I read that there wasn't even an intercom to the AA guns from the bridge.
Some people claiming a degree of naval expertise have some things to say on the status of Bismarck's AA capacity here:
As for myself, I see that the big B didn't shoot down a single obsolete swordfish bomber that attacked her and put the torpedoes into her that sealed her fate.
On a similar track, aircraft, often launched from carriers, took a heavy toll on battleship and cruisers in ww2. The two biggest and most heavily armed battleship ever built, the Japanese Yamato and Musashi, were both sunk by aircraft.
Japan's Admiral Yamamato declared two things early on in ww2. One, that in modern naval warfare a battleship was about as useful as a samurai sword, and that the attack on pearl harbor would awaken a sleeping giant.
Looks like history proved him right on both counts.
The Swordfish that attacked the Bismark were hit quite often by Bismark's AA fire. Several returned to their carriers with dozens of holes in them.
But that's all they were, holes. The fabric-covered Swordfish offered little resistance to shells hitting them. Thus, the fuses were never activated, and the shells never detonated. Damage done was minimal, if not trivial.
A more modern aircraft, with aluminum skin, would have been damaged much more heavily by Bismark's guns. Now the question is, would it have been enough to stop the attacks? Probably not. But the casualties would have been significantly heavier.
Which was the case even when biplanes were the new hot thing. The only way to really shoot down a biplane is to hit the engine or the pilot. Doable but you basically have to have a perfect shot. I don't think it was till you had metal skinned planes that shooting up the wing was enough to reliably down a plane.
Actually, this discussion (and a question about how to make a baneblade seem more like it was a PDF baneblade) cross polinated. My idea to have an older baneblade tank not quite with all the armor it is supposed to have was directly taken from the Hood sailing out without its upper deck armor, and having the little guy painting "PDF1" on the turrent while in battle seemed a reasonable way to convey that things were not quite done prepping.
I originally thought maybe make the top armor all tore up, and then cut up a bunch of one ofthose cargo carries that they use as terrain and put bits of it over the broken parts of armor, would be a way to make the baneblade look "Hood like" .. but a blasted off sponsoon and being painted seemed more subtle.
Matt Swain wrote: The worst part of the Bismark's story was over 2,000 men on her died so needlessly. The captain must have known after here rudder was jammed by that torpedo plane hit she was doomed. He could have scuttled the ship after evacuating it. A portion of c=]his crew might have reached a friendly port, many may have been taken POW but most would have survived.
In the end the captain scuttled her after she was a flaming wreck and just out of spite to deny the British the honor of sinking her. Out of 2200 men onboard only 114, and possibly a cat, survived. The rest died pointlessly over vainglory and the nazi's twisted concept of honor and valor.
If the captain of the Bismark gave up to easily his family and those of his officers may have been punished by Hitler. Also they sank Hood, so they were not without hope, Bismark also didnt know what she was facing until it happened.
Now at the sinking about 700 men entered the water, so few survived because one of the rescuing ships detected a periscope and the rescuers broke contact. 111 were rescued prior to this. The next morning U-71 made a surface search and rescued five more. A late search by the Royal Navy was abandoned after a Luftwaffe strike which cost a destroyer, though in fairness the Luftwaffe were likely unaware they had disrupted an operation to look for Bismark survivors.
Now there was a U-boat that manoeuvred to protect Bismark but she had had a good hunt and had no torpedoes remaining and could only do spotting for her. Lucky for the Royal Navy as she came upon and had a clear line at the aircraft carrier HMS Victorious during the battle. This may have been the same U-boat spotted by Dorsetshire.
Matt Swain wrote: Well, my view is the bismark was a mistake from the get go and one that may have lost the war for germany, thank god.
Yes and no. Bismarck was part of an overall plan for Germany's navy. A primarily surface force that never really materialized. Plan Z consisted of 230 ships of all types, of which, 82 were finished, because Hitler assured the fleet that the war wouldn't begin before 1948. As we all know, it started a lot sooner than that, and so two battleships and two battlecruisers were rushed into readiness. Which was the actual mistake, not that they built them, but that they had not been intended as heavy raiders at all.
And, further, to be fair, Gneisenau and Scharnhorst both proved fairly effective at this regardless.
On a similar track, aircraft, often launched from carriers, took a heavy toll on battleship and cruisers in ww2. The two biggest and most heavily armed battleship ever built, the Japanese Yamato and Musashi, were both sunk by aircraft.
This one is a particular item I see come up a lot and wish to address.:
Musashi: Both Musashi and Yamato both had a structural defect in their torpedo protection. Musashi was struck by 19 Torpedoes and 17 bombs. Which would have sunk... anything. The Yamato, despite being the most powerful individual warship in the world at the time, was attacked by over 400 aircraft from CVs who displaced something like 20 times it's own.
For those occasions where the Yamato caught US carriers inside it's range, see the Battle off Samar and the fate of Taffy 3.
Carriers don't beat BBs on a ton for ton basis. Aircraft at the time actually struggled to kill BBs, outside lucky hits (Roma) or stationary targets (Tirpitz and Pearl Harbor). The real secret to US carriers victory over the battleships was that the US was able to produce 151 carriers during the war, most of which were cheap escort carriers that were barely seaworthy by the end of the war, and every last one of them had been scrapped by the 1960s.
Matt Swain wrote: Well, my view is the bismark was a mistake from the get go and one that may have lost the war for germany, thank god.
Consider: Bismark masses 41,770 tons. A type 7 Uboard masses 769 tons. This means bismark consumed 247 times the material of a Uboat.
Bismark's crew was ~2,000 men. A Uboat crew, ~50.
One sees quickly that it would have been quite feasible to construct 50-100 uboats for what was sunk (figuratively and literally) into the bismark, with plenty of material left over.
Cost of Type VII Uboat was about 4.1 million Reichsmark, Bismarck costed 197 million RM. So you would get about 45 to 50 ocean-going Uboats with the cost of one battleship.
Having said that, with one enemy battleship less, it also means Royal Navy could free crews and escorts for convoy war. So it is not so simple tradeoff "build 1 less battleship and get 50 more submarines which will win the war" but more complicated question.
Had the bismark not been built and even a good fraction of the resources wasted on her used for uboats and strategic bombers (Another disastrous blunder the nazis made, they had no heavy bombers at all) I think the war would have gone seriously worse for the world.
Germans were smart in that they did not waste money to heavy bombers, not stupid.
Without a fighter to provide long range escort, not sure what a big strategic bomber for Germany would have done, especially considering that the only real reachable target would have been the UK (they weren't going to be bombing the US or deep into the interior of the USSR in any minimally realistic scenario) which was far more defensible than what the Germans had to defend during the war, while such bombers turned out to be unnecessary for other campaigns.
It should also be remembered that WW2 wasn't exactly planned to unfold in the way it did, with hostilities opening between great powers years earlier than even the most aggressive nationalists had planned and in very different ways than was initially imagined, with pretty much every power involved being in the midst of some sort of crisis or reorganization or re-equipping when hostilities began.
For the air campaign, the problem with a lack of heavy bomber was more the limit on the size & quantity of bombs they could carry, rather than the range particularly. Medium size tactical bombers could carry a couple of thousand pounders and maybe a scattering of incendiaries, whereas something like a Lancaster could carry several times that amount. Or one stupidly massive bomb like the Grand Slam or Grand Slam, with relatively small increase in crew size. So it’s a more efficient delivery (basically buying in bulk).
As far as the naval campaign goes, it’s the mirror of the Allies issues; until we could afford to release heavy bombers for patrol duties the convoys took an absolute hammering in the mid-Atlantic. Now imagine how much worse that would have been if the Germans had had far more long-range aircraft with which to find the convoys and coordinate the wolf packs than they did.
Vaktathi wrote: Without a fighter to provide long range escort, not sure what a big strategic bomber for Germany would have done, especially considering that the only real reachable target would have been the UK (they weren't going to be bombing the US or deep into the interior of the USSR in any minimally realistic scenario) which was far more defensible than what the Germans had to defend during the war, while such bombers turned out to be unnecessary for other campaigns.
I think high-performance four-engined aircraft might have been useful for Battle of the Atlantic as a replacement for Condor. I do not think they would have been particularly great investment for Germany otherwise - they could have been built only at the expense of other types of aircraft, and what aircraft Germans had a surplus of? All those much-maligned dive bombers were crucial for the campaigns in Low Countries, France and Poland.
Not Online!!! wrote: isn't the issue with replacing the bismark with that many uboats, material and manpower and not money?
That and the fact that they forget that the uboat campaign went into the toilet pretty quickly once Enigma was decoded.
I mean, manpower is one, but the manpower issue is also that i need suddendly alot more technicians, repair crews, facilities for producing torpedos, electromotors, etc.
A whole slew of changes to the supply line that is, the dockyards were there for a bismark from the highseafleets time, but uboats in such a quantity more....
Now if people argue that they'd just build them before all this, and by the time the bismakrs out they allready have finished these uboats where they could be effective before the enigma accident then they might've been more effective but what would be the real issues for their main opponent?
Would 5 more hunting packs really be that impactfull?
Winston Chruchill admitted after the war the Uboat was the one thing that had him scared during the war, not the defeat at dunkirk, not the blitch, not a possible invasion, it was the Uboat that made churchill worry about losing the war.
Karl Donitz said if he'd had significantly more Uboats early on before anti submarine warfare was better developed he could have knocked england out of the war.
Churchill was worried about U-boats because he couldn't do as much about them. He could shore up beach defences, he could build more AAA guns and visit bombed out districts and raise morale. He could not close the Atlanitc gap where aircraft were out of range to operate, or make submarines visible to the Royal Navy. Convoys ran a gauntlet and like Scylla the U-boats took some ships there and back.
Karl Donitz was wrong in hindsight. What he could have said was that U-boats were the most effective weapon against England, this was true for much of the war, but they would not have knocked Britain out of the war, just ramped up the difficulty for those living in Britain.
When pushed people can live on less than they expect. The UK never had the resources shortages seen in the Soviet Union or late war Germany, both fought on hard.
Matt Swain wrote: Winston Chruchill admitted after the war the Uboat was the one thing that had him scared during the war, not the defeat at dunkirk, not the blitch, not a possible invasion, it was the Uboat that made churchill worry about losing the war.
Karl Donitz said if he'd had significantly more Uboats early on before anti submarine warfare was better developed he could have knocked england out of the war.
But hey, what'd those two know anyway?
During the '30s, it was widely believed submarine's success in WW1 had been due to novelty factor. Uboats were defeated when convoy system was adopted. Since then, Brits had developed ASDIC, hydrophones had become much better, aircraft had much better performance, all the warships were faster...by contrast, submarine performance was about same it had been during Great War. So it seemed reasonable to believe that submarines were going to be much less of a factor in the next war. Most of the German admiralty certainly believed so. Royal Navy was also somewhat dismissive. When the war broke out, Royal Navy sent its aircraft carriers out to sub hunts. This turned out to be very bad idea.
Not entirely OT, but I am really looking forward to the Tom Hanks Greyhound movie, where a novice destroyer commander trying to protect a convoy is pitted against lots of subs in the early part of the war.
I just hope the release goes wider than the Apple channel...
Kayback wrote: To put it bluntly the Bizmark didn't have enough AA guns to survive much longer than she did.
She had what, 16x 10.5cm Flak 38s, 16x 3.7cm SK C/30's and 12x 2cm FlaK 30 guns.
The Yamato has 162x 25mm guns and was bombed and torpedoed to pieces.
Now the FlaK 38 and SK C/30 vastly out performed the Type 96 25mm guns, and many of the Yamato gun positions were unarmoured and affected by strafing runs, but the simple fact that strafing runs can get through 162x25mm guns and a handful of 13mm guns too shows how vulnerable ships can be to aerial attacks.
If she wasn't sunk outright she'd have eventually suffered the same fate as the Tirpitz
Bismarck AAA suite was actually quite good for the time period. She carrier sixteen 105mm guns, and large number of heavy AA guns is really important, because when you are trying to repel the attack, instead of just causing losses for the attacking force, you need long range guns able to engage the planes before they drop their ordnance. Comparing her main AA battery to some other battleships of the era: KGV: 16* 5.25inch. -now this is arguably more powerful battery, though 5.25 incher was quite slow firing gun
Richelieu: 12* 100mm, 9*152mm -six-inchers did not work very well as AA guns as intended, leaving twelve four-inchers as the main defence. In practice Bismarck's battery was better.
Nelson: 6* 120mm -this is really weak battery, typical of the 1920's ship
Vittorio Veneto: 12* 90mm -inferior number of small calibre guns, saving grace was supposed to be very advanced stabilized turrets, but they were unreliable
North Carolina: 20* 5 inch -newer American battleships of course enjoyed superlative 5"/38 dual purpose gun, although muzzle velocity was bit lower than in equivalent European guns.
But overall, Bismarck's heavy AA battery was quite powerful. 3.7cm SK C30 was however the weak point, as it was a single-shot semiautomatic weapon with much inferior rate of fire.
Karl Donitz said if he'd had significantly more Uboats early on before anti submarine warfare was better developed he could have knocked england out of the war.
But hey, what'd those two know anyway?
Donitz was dead wrong, as anyone who followed British shipbuilding in North America can tell you.
One, the Happy Time only lasted a few months before the Allies put the kibosh on it. Personally, I like to attribute it to the arrival of significant numbers of the Flower Class, which was churned out in Canadian shipyards to the degree that 294 were launched by wars and, and they put an end to over 40 Uboats, making up over half of Allied convoy escorts.
Two: While the uboats did have a significant psychological effect, the reality was that new freighters could be built in North America almost faster than the Germans could sink them. 2,710 were built in the time it took the German uboats to sink 2,779
MDSW wrote: Not entirely OT, but I am really looking forward to the Tom Hanks Greyhound movie, where a novice destroyer commander trying to protect a convoy is pitted against lots of subs in the early part of the war.
I just hope the release goes wider than the Apple channel...
I took out the 7-day free trial just to watch it (lord knows there doesn’t seem to be anything else on Apple TV); it’s pretty good, if a little short. On the one hand it’s very tightly edited, but on the other they could have really ratchet up the tension (a la Das Boot) if they’d had more time for the cat and mouse game. And there’s practically zero character development outside of what happens during the action scenes.
Kayback wrote: To put it bluntly the Bizmark didn't have enough AA guns to survive much longer than she did.
She had what, 16x 10.5cm Flak 38s, 16x 3.7cm SK C/30's and 12x 2cm FlaK 30 guns.
The Yamato has 162x 25mm guns and was bombed and torpedoed to pieces.
Now the FlaK 38 and SK C/30 vastly out performed the Type 96 25mm guns, and many of the Yamato gun positions were unarmoured and affected by strafing runs, but the simple fact that strafing runs can get through 162x25mm guns and a handful of 13mm guns too shows how vulnerable ships can be to aerial attacks.
If she wasn't sunk outright she'd have eventually suffered the same fate as the Tirpitz
Bismarck AAA suite was actually quite good for the time period. She carrier sixteen 105mm guns, and large number of heavy AA guns is really important, because when you are trying to repel the attack, instead of just causing losses for the attacking force, you need long range guns able to engage the planes before they drop their ordnance. Comparing her main AA battery to some other battleships of the era:
KGV: 16* 5.25inch.
-now this is arguably more powerful battery, though 5.25 incher was quite slow firing gun
Richelieu: 12* 100mm, 9*152mm
-six-inchers did not work very well as AA guns as intended, leaving twelve four-inchers as the main defence. In practice Bismarck's battery was better.
Nelson: 6* 120mm
-this is really weak battery, typical of the 1920's ship
Vittorio Veneto: 12* 90mm
-inferior number of small calibre guns, saving grace was supposed to be very advanced stabilized turrets, but they were unreliable
North Carolina: 20* 5 inch
-newer American battleships of course enjoyed superlative 5"/38 dual purpose gun, although muzzle velocity was bit lower than in equivalent European guns.
But overall, Bismarck's heavy AA battery was quite powerful. 3.7cm SK C30 was however the weak point, as it was a single-shot semiautomatic weapon with much inferior rate of fire.
Weren't Bismarcks 105s mounted in two different types of mounts, making them effectively impossible to control with a common fire control system?
Bismarck AAA suite was actually quite good for the time period. She carrier sixteen 105mm guns, and large number of heavy AA guns is really important, because when you are trying to repel the attack, instead of just causing losses for the attacking force, you need long range guns able to engage the planes before they drop their ordnance. Comparing her main AA battery to some other battleships of the era:
But overall, Bismarck's heavy AA battery was quite powerful. 3.7cm SK C30 was however the weak point, as it was a single-shot semiautomatic weapon with much inferior rate of fire.
I wasn't saying it wasn't formidable, I was saying in the big picture it wouldn't have meant very much. The Tirpitz was sunk/destroyed by aerial bombardment even though it had fighter protection, land batteries, AA ships, its own AA suite including the 380mm main guns and smoke generators.
It isn't a fair comparison because the Tirpitz was unable to move having suffered other damage that rendered it inoperable as a surface raider but that was also mostly due to air attacks. The development of things like the VB-3 Razon and even the VB-13 / ASM-A-1 Tarzon meant guided attacks were on their way. A maneuvering ship would be more vulnerable to guided attacks than previously. Also, the attackers might have caught the Bismarck in harbour.
Weren't Bismarcks 105s mounted in two different types of mounts, making them effectively impossible to control with a common fire control system?
Yes and no. The Dop. L. C/31 and Dop. L. C/37 mounts had different elevation and training characteristics, true, but both fed into the same secondary control centers. It's an idea that's been floated before, but more telling was the fact that the Swordfish were traveling below their depression and engaging gun crews who'd been on alert for four days under poor lighting conditions.
It isn't a fair comparison because the Tirpitz was unable to move having suffered other damage that rendered it inoperable as a surface raider but that was also mostly due to air attacks. The development of things like the VB-3 Razon and even the VB-13 / ASM-A-1 Tarzon meant guided attacks were on their way. A maneuvering ship would be more vulnerable to guided attacks than previously. Also, the attackers might have caught the Bismarck in harbour.
This is debatable. Tirpitz wasn't actually destroyed by the bombs that hit it. Her turrets actually deflected a one ton Tall Boy, so even your Tarzon was not actually a guaranteed kill. What sank Tirpitz was most likely, the explosion of Turret Caesar, who's causes are, effectively, unknown. US BuShips personnel examined the wreck postwar and could not determine the cause of the explosion. Without this mystery explosion, though, Operation Catechism, the final push to destroy Tirpitz by air, would have been a failure.
Early guided munitions like the VB-3 Razon were a very hit or miss affair (pun intended) in actual combat during WW2. On one side you have the hit from a Fritz X that blew up Roma, but on the other, a similar hit failed to sink Warspite, a battleship significantly older.
Matt Swain wrote: Winston Chruchill admitted after the war the Uboat was the one thing that had him scared during the war, not the defeat at dunkirk, not the blitch, not a possible invasion, it was the Uboat that made churchill worry about losing the war.
Karl Donitz said if he'd had significantly more Uboats early on before anti submarine warfare was better developed he could have knocked england out of the war.
But hey, what'd those two know anyway?
Of course, hyperbole couldn't be part of their statements either...
Fact is, yes, 50 more U-boats would have hurt England a lot. But the only way to knock England clean out of the war at that point is to eliminate Churchill as PM. Either assassination or by making his government fall, either way works. Is it possible that shortages in England for six months caused this? Yes. But not probable.
Weren't Bismarcks 105s mounted in two different types of mounts, making them effectively impossible to control with a common fire control system?
Yes and no. The Dop. L. C/31 and Dop. L. C/37 mounts had different elevation and training characteristics, true, but both fed into the same secondary control centers. It's an idea that's been floated before, but more telling was the fact that the Swordfish were traveling below their depression and engaging gun crews who'd been on alert for four days under poor lighting conditions.
It isn't a fair comparison because the Tirpitz was unable to move having suffered other damage that rendered it inoperable as a surface raider but that was also mostly due to air attacks. The development of things like the VB-3 Razon and even the VB-13 / ASM-A-1 Tarzon meant guided attacks were on their way. A maneuvering ship would be more vulnerable to guided attacks than previously. Also, the attackers might have caught the Bismarck in harbour.
This is debatable. Tirpitz wasn't actually destroyed by the bombs that hit it. Her turrets actually deflected a one ton Tall Boy, so even your Tarzon was not actually a guaranteed kill. What sank Tirpitz was most likely, the explosion of Turret Caesar, who's causes are, effectively, unknown. US BuShips personnel examined the wreck postwar and could not determine the cause of the explosion. Without this mystery explosion, though, Operation Catechism, the final push to destroy Tirpitz by air, would have been a failure.
Early guided munitions like the VB-3 Razon were a very hit or miss affair (pun intended) in actual combat during WW2. On one side you have the hit from a Fritz X that blew up Roma, but on the other, a similar hit failed to sink Warspite, a battleship significantly older.
The Grand Old Lady wasn't ever combat-viable again after that Fritz X hit though, being relegated to shore bombardment duty for the rest of the war.
Also, pretty sure Tirpitz was listing severely even before the turret explosion, no?
Also, pretty sure Tirpitz was listing severely even before the turret explosion, no?
Ship was already in process of being abandoned, but explosion prevented any chance of salvage and caused high losses for the crew.
Any way, Tirpitz was already unoperational before Catechism, at best Brits might have wasted their resources for some more attacks.
She was out for 7 months and repair bill was significant, which was of course very convenient for the British, but in retrospect the operation was not as big a success as was hoped.
It is debatable if all the effort spent on sinking Tirpitz was really worth it, especially after Scharnhorst was sank.
The Grand Old Lady wasn't ever combat-viable again after that Fritz X hit though, being relegated to shore bombardment duty for the rest of the war.
Also, pretty sure Tirpitz was listing severely even before the turret explosion, no?
Tirp was listing severely due to the hit along her catapult, but her list had stopped increasing and DCTs were starting to gain in incoming water, according to reports, before the turret explosion.
Warspite is a bit of a sore subject. While she was assigned to shore bombardment, the extremity of her damage was actually exaggerated to help justify sending her to the scrappers.
Backfire wrote: She was out for 7 months and repair bill was significant, which was of course very convenient for the British, but in retrospect the operation was not as big a success as was hoped.
It is debatable if all the effort spent on sinking Tirpitz was really worth it, especially after Scharnhorst was sank.
like you said, the repair was a notable drain on resources. Hell, damage it badly but leave it afloat so the germans have to repair it several times, each time it's out of action and eating resources.
Backfire wrote: She was out for 7 months and repair bill was significant, which was of course very convenient for the British, but in retrospect the operation was not as big a success as was hoped.
It is debatable if all the effort spent on sinking Tirpitz was really worth it, especially after Scharnhorst was sank.
like you said, the repair was a notable drain on resources. Hell, damage it badly but leave it afloat so the germans have to repair it several times, each time it's out of action and eating resources.
Propaganda value. That and it's simple existence made it a threat to arctic convoys.
BaronIveagh wrote: Propaganda value. That and it's simple existence made it a threat to arctic convoys.
There's also a lot of risk aversion involved. Sure the allies would likely sink the Tirpitz and any support vessels that took to sea to attack shipping convoys, but when you have several hundred thousand troops still in intensive fighting and dependent on daily supplies, you don't leave it up to 'we'll probably sink them before they disrupt convoys too much'. You just sink it and leave nothing to chance.
BaronIveagh wrote: Propaganda value. That and it's simple existence made it a threat to arctic convoys.
There's also a lot of risk aversion involved. Sure the allies would likely sink the Tirpitz and any support vessels that took to sea to attack shipping convoys, but when you have several hundred thousand troops still in intensive fighting and dependent on daily supplies, you don't leave it up to 'we'll probably sink them before they disrupt convoys too much'. You just sink it and leave nothing to chance.
This. Operational peace of mind is pretty useful. Just like you don't just assume someone is dead after falling off a cliff in a movie you don't leave a battleship mostly sunk. Even a sunk battleship can sometimes be put back into service (c.f. Dunkerque, some of the Pearl Harbor BBs) more easily than a new can be constructed.
This. Operational peace of mind is pretty useful. Just like you don't just assume someone is dead after falling off a cliff in a movie you don't leave a battleship mostly sunk. Even a sunk battleship can sometimes be put back into service (c.f. Dunkerque, some of the Pearl Harbor BBs) more easily than a new can be constructed.
If the guns are above water, sometimes you don't even have to raise them. See HMS Canopus.
