About the Bismarck vs Hood

Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you:

No adverts like this in the forums anymore.
Times and dates in your local timezone.
Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance.
Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely.
Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net.

If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

**Vulcan**

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.

**Vulcan**

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.

**Vulcan**

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...

**Vulcan**

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.

https://www.historynet.com/why-didnt-germany-have-any-aircraft-carriers.htm

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.

**Vulcan**

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.

Bismark was defending.... what, exactly?

**Vulcan**

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.

**Vulcan**

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.

**Vulcan**

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.

**Vulcan**

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.