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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?

Probably the only two ships within intercept range of the Bismarck and Prinz Eugen, as resources were always stretched thin during the war.

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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Denmark_Strait#British_plans

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.

I'm guessing it's a case of "A decent plan now is better than a perfect plan later."

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.

 creeping-deth87 wrote:
It may also have been a matter of not wanting them to slip by.

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.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

chaos0xomega wrote:


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.

 Grey Templar wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:


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.

 Grey Templar wrote:

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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Denmark_Strait#British_plans

There were multiple flotillas. They were at different potential intercept points. This flotilla was the closest and intercepted first.

Now just imagine if ROB replaces the crappy aircraft the RN had with aircraft it bought from the USN shortly thereafter...

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.

Yes, Korea was the turbo diesel prop Hawker Sea Fury. Not biplanes but prop driven.

 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.

Deleted.

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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_submarine_U-47_(1938)

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.