better happy time for the german navy

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Deleted member 1487

What happens if the bismark and later tirpitz break out into the atlantic for convoy raiding? What happens next?
 
Considering the industrial capacities of the US (and Great Britain) the main result would be more dead allied sailors and for several months (maybe up to a year) some supplies on the British isles are a bit more scarce.
And the allies have enough ships to put on escort duty anyways (since the Kriegsmarine was in no good shape after Norway they might even deploy cruisers to guard the convoys).
And in the long run, see Bill Garvin's answer.

The only way to change things drastically would be that the Bismarck (and Tirpitz) perform that well so that Hitler actually postpones Barbarossa in favor of focusing on Great Britain.
But since it's less than a month between the breakthrough of the Bismarck and the OTL start of Barbarossa it's extremely close to ASB for the ship to perform that well (two or three destroyed convoys won't cut it and more is unlikely in that time frame, because they'd simultaneously have to dodge the ships dedicated to hunt them)
 

CalBear

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I wrote a really long detailed response to this exact question a week ago.

I will summirize:

Battleship Tirpitz sunk by (your choice)

Royal Navy surface action group November 1941

U.S. Navy surface action group late December 1941

Combined RN/USN surface action group late December 1941

U.S. Navy aircraft flying off USS Ranger late December 1941

I assume you have detected a theme here.
 

Deleted member 1487

But what about the ability of those ships to run amoke in the convoy system before the Americans enter the war? The Brits would have to spread themselves thin trying to cover convoys and find the German raiders. Individual convoys would not be able to stand up to the German ships either. So you can honestly say that there would be no change at all to the war if convoys are being sunk in large amounts by the pride of the Kriegsmarine besides a few more dead allied sailors? Even the death of the Hood would not have been avenged and this would not sit well with the public.
 
But what about the ability of those ships to run amoke in the convoy system before the Americans enter the war? The Brits would have to spread themselves thin trying to cover convoys and find the German raiders. Individual convoys would not be able to stand up to the German ships either. So you can honestly say that there would be no change at all to the war if convoys are being sunk in large amounts by the pride of the Kriegsmarine besides a few more dead allied sailors? Even the death of the Hood would not have been avenged and this would not sit well with the public.

I agree. The real nightmare scenario would be that the Bismark, the Tirpitz, the Scharnhorst and the Gniesnau all go raiding together.

For added mayhem, we could also have a POD where the Graf Spee wins the Battle of the River Plate and is still in service in 1941.

Each of these ships was capable of sinking an entire convoy on their own. Losing one or two convoys is a major setback, but one that the Allies can probably recover from. Losing 4 or 5 at the same time, however, will seriously jeopordize the Allied war effort and may even be enough to force Britain to sue for peace.
 

CalBear

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I agree. The real nightmare scenario would be that the Bismark, the Tirpitz, the Scharnhorst and the Gniesnau all go raiding together.

For added mayhem, we could also have a POD where the Graf Spee wins the Battle of the River Plate and is still in service in 1941.

Each of these ships was capable of sinking an entire convoy on their own. Losing one or two convoys is a major setback, but one that the Allies can probably recover from. Losing 4 or 5 at the same time, however, will seriously jeopordize the Allied war effort and may even be enough to force Britain to sue for peace.


A few problems with this scenario

1. The British were never that close to total collapse. By the time Tirpitz is ready for operations it's April 1941 and the Brits are well on their way to recovery.

2. By April of 1941 the USN was escorting convoys half way across the Atlantic, and there were plenty of heavies available for the work (including, it should be noted the two ships of the North Carolina class which are both ready before July) as well as THREE carriers assigned to the Atlantic (Yorktown, Ranger, & Wasp). Even the Colorado class BBs with their 16"/45 guns would have been a gunfight match for the Germans ships. Screwing with the convoys west of Iceland would be a REALLY good way to get blown to Mars (it is a VERY bad thing to be without airpower when your opponent can toss up to 100 naval strike aircraft at you). East of Iceland, thanks to the U.S., the Brits can now focus the bulk of their battle force, including several of their carriers, which, while not quite the floating airports fielded by the Americans, can sting quite a bit.

3. The Kriegsmarine would have had to keep their force afloat until April of 1941 when Tirpitz becomes available. That puts the rest of the fleet at risk of bing sunk alongside the quay while waiting for her. The RAF had some success in this area throughout the war & there is no reason that more potential targets should reduce this effectiveness.

4. How to say this delicately... The German ships, outside of the two Bismarcks, were crap. The Panzerschiffs were meat for anything bigger than a cruiser, and they were in trouble if the ran into a couple of 8" cruisers, even the fairly light British ones. If one had run into an American heavy it would have chopped to bits. The 8"/55 on most U.S. heavies could penetrate the armor of the Deutchlands at ALL ranges, not to mention being mounted on a platform almost six knots faster than the German vessel. At long range, and for the sake of the cruiser's crew, it better be long range, the USN 8" AP could even penetrate the deck armor of the Scharnhorts while staying beyond the max range of the Geman BC 11.1" main battery. We all know what happened to the Bismarck when she took on modern British BBs (which were WAY undergunned compared to their USN counterparts), the same fate would have awaited the Tirpitz.

5. The Germans had absolutely no overal tactical plan for handling a major surface group at sea. They lacked the proper screening forces being short on both DD & CL hulls, and only had two real heavies, along with their big cruisers pretending to be battleships.

The Brits would have LOVED for the Germans to do things this way. No surface threat for the first two years of the war and more time to moderize their own ships (hell, they might have even installed flash curtains on the Hood).

The German surface fleet was a huge waste of effort. There was NO chance that it would ever catch up to the RN or the USN (much less both) and used massive resources that could have been far better utilized elsewhere.
 
The German ships were restricted by their terms operations e.g. avoid combat with enemy ships of equal status.
German capital ships had little luck against convoys, Scharnhorst had a problem with HMS Jervis Bay - whose actions allowed the convoy to scatter. Later, Scharnhorst & her sister ship had and encounter with a Battleship convoy escort. The Gneisenau had seen the BB and swung around to draw off the BB to give the Scharnhorst an advantage, but the Capitan was admonished for his 'foolhardiness' in the face of such a threat.
Hence, the RN would have run big convoys with an old Battleship as escort, with groups of Battleships able to cut off the Germans when they appeared. Meanwhile, where are the Germans going to re-fuel!?
 

burmafrd

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You are giving the German BBs short shrift. Bismark was indeed sunk by British BBs= while it was circling helplessly at 10 knots. Now it seemed to do pretty decent against a BC and BB when it faced the Hood and Prince Of wales. The British had a lot of problems with their turrets and guns.

Think about what the Brits had to do to take down the Bismark BY ITSELF.

You put the rest of the fleet spread out to each go after its own convoy and the brits are faced with partialling out their BBs and BCs one to a convoy. Considering how many convoys we are talking about. IF they could manage that. Its not like they had any warning that the Bismark was coming out. It would take weeks to get the big ships to the convoys, what with the time needed to get there and have them ready.
 
You are giving the German BBs short shrift. Bismark was indeed sunk by British BBs= while it was circling helplessly at 10 knots. Now it seemed to do pretty decent against a BC and BB when it faced the Hood and Prince Of wales. The British had a lot of problems with their turrets and guns.
I suspect your wanking over the Bismark... Let me guess, it'll be a matter of two or three posts before you bring out the old wallnut: "Oh, the Germans may have scuttled the Bismark, hence the fact she had been battered into a burning wreck by the poms doesn't matter"
:rolleyes:

As for performance against Hood and POW... a single mistake by the poms (misidentifying Prinz Eugen as Bis and resulting delays taken in shifting fire to the right target) and a one lucky hit meant the differance between a british victory (perhaps Bis sunk, perhaps Bis running like hell back to norway) and OTLs defeat.

Problem with guns & turrets? IIRC there was only the issue with POWs turrets (which could be fixed by lightly tapping the interlock system with a hammer)... given POW was rushed into combat while still working up, that hardly seems like a bad performance.
 

CalBear

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You are giving the German BBs short shrift. Bismark was indeed sunk by British BBs= while it was circling helplessly at 10 knots. Now it seemed to do pretty decent against a BC and BB when it faced the Hood and Prince Of wales. The British had a lot of problems with their turrets and guns.

Think about what the Brits had to do to take down the Bismark BY ITSELF.

You put the rest of the fleet spread out to each go after its own convoy and the brits are faced with partialling out their BBs and BCs one to a convoy. Considering how many convoys we are talking about. IF they could manage that. Its not like they had any warning that the Bismark was coming out. It would take weeks to get the big ships to the convoys, what with the time needed to get there and have them ready.

The Bismarck did indeed sink the Hood and handle the PoW. Hood was a major morale killer for the RN, but she was, in actuality still a BC, one of the less well thought out naval designs since the advent of steam, while the PoW was not even shaken down yet, still had contractors aboard during the engagement IIRC. Had PoW been fully worked up the results would likely have been somewhat different.

The Kreigsmarine BB class was a good, albeit not great, design. Armor protection was well below the contemporary standard of the South Dakota class, both in amount and in distribution. This was, in part, due to decisions made during the design process, in part due to the limitations of the power plant of the KM ship, but it created a flawed design that was vulnerable to a surprising degree (at max range, the deck armor was fractionally vulnerable to U.S. 8" guns). Their underwater protection, especially against near misses from plunging fire was, considering their design philosophy, unsurprisingly god awful (as illustrated by her engagement with the PoW). They were, overall, designed to fight Jutland, under Jutland conditions, not the longer range that was common in WW II.

Main battery guns were very good, if somewhat smaller than U.S. weapons, and with lighter shells than contemporary 15" guns. Good rate of fire and good optical direction. Unfortunately (although again not unexpectedly) long range radar direction was exceptionally poor, far worse that that available to the RN and USN. This was especially bad, since the design was constructed to fight at short range, as it made the ship vulnerable to destruction well before it could defend itself effectively. When you throw in a considerably less effective damage control process, this weakness bordered on the criminal.

You are also forgetting, when you discuss potential enemy actions, the rather significant, perhaps even dominant player in the convoy escort game, the United States Navy. As I noted earlier, by the time Tirpitz was ready for action, the USN was escorting convoys nearly halfway to the UK and the KM ships weren't up to handling American designs, not by a long shot (literally). Even the Colorado class ships out-gunned the Bismarcks, and in a convoy escort situation the German ships speed advantage was useless since it was necessary to close on the convoy to attack it, thereby sailing into engagement range of the USN heavy. Throw in a couple CA and ANY German raider, operating independently was in one hell of a fix. Even without a heavy present, a raider was facing a serious challenge. The U.S. didn't use corvettes to escort convoys, it used DD size and up warships. KM vessels were particularly vulnerable to underwater damage, and U.S. destroyers carried LOTS of torpedoes. The U.S. also operated three full sized (well, sorta full sized in the Ranger's case) carriers in the Atlantic. Carriers could ruin a BB's day in a real hurry and the KM ships were even less well prepared to fight off air attack than other immediate pre-war designs.

The Bismarck & Tirpitz have long been given a pass on their combat deficiencies, an understandable one in many ways given the romantic "lone ranger" way they were used, but a pass nonetheless. When the actual fact are examined the picture is somewhat different. They are then seen as what they were, good, not great, ships that had no chance of changing the war that used, collectively, over 100,000 pound of high quality steel that could have been used far more effectively in supporting the Reich's war effort.
 

burmafrd

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But then you are also keying on the USN being heavily involved. Against Subs yes- but if the German Surface ships come out to play just how likely is the US to really take that step at THAT time to face them?
Remember this is pre Pearl Harbor, and the isolationists were already making a lot of noise about our convoy escorting. Roosevelt had to weight things like that.

By the way I think, Cal, that you are not giving the Bismark and Tirpitz their due. I have seen some pretty good BB comparisons and the German BBs do not come off as bad as you claim. Now against the NC class yes they would be seriously outclassed- BUT against the RN, that is another story.
Cockroach= you need to do some remedial reading on the problems the RN had with their turrets and guns on the KGV Class.
 
Cockroach= you need to do some remedial reading on the problems the RN had with their turrets and guns on the KGV Class.
Yep, the poms did have trouble with the 14" quad mounting and the gun itself didn't have as much bang as many of it's contemparies... but that's quite a differance from your implied "useless".

Let's see:
POW vs Bis: In commision for a mere 4 weeks, fired only 5 rounds :)eek:) in target practise. In the major action managed to hit Bis with 3 shells out of 55 fired (http://www.hmshood.org.uk/reference/official/adm234/adm234-509guns.htm, see section F), in other words a little under a 3% hit rate which isn't bad for a ship with no time to work up (hell, if you exclude the 'target practice' phases of many battles it isn't bad all up). Later long ranged skirmishing resulted in no hits and a single straddle from 41 rounds (less impressive but given POW was firing at >30,000 yards it's far from unexpected as very few hits were acchieved beyond 30,000 yards). Y turret went out of action for a while and one gun was disabled for the majority of the action.

KGV vs Bis: Fired over 300 rounds; main armourment functions well from opening fire at 0848 until malfuction with training gear of A turret at 0920; malfuctioned turret back in action at 0954 (http://www.navweaps.com/index_inro/INRO_Bismarck_p2.htm). Not a perfect performance, but not bad considering a force 9 gale and high seas were present at the time.

DOY vs Scharnhorst: Hit with first salvo (http://www.scharnhorst-class.dk/scharnhorst/history/scharnostfront.html); fired ~440 rounds without a mishap. Again in high seas and strong winds.
 
Perhaps the most important thing about BB raiding is that convoys in the Atlantic were stopped or scattered due to the BB action or threat of action. A BB chase followed by a uboat surge could indeed make the happy time a bit happier, or sadder depending on your point of view. If combined with a proper naval air effort the results could be significantly better than OTL. Such a 'campaign' could continue, if intelligently handled, for several years.
 
But what about the ability of those ships to run amoke in the convoy system before the Americans enter the war? The Brits would have to spread themselves thin trying to cover convoys and find the German raiders. Individual convoys would not be able to stand up to the German ships either. So you can honestly say that there would be no change at all to the war if convoys are being sunk in large amounts by the pride of the Kriegsmarine besides a few more dead allied sailors? Even the death of the Hood would not have been avenged and this would not sit well with the public.
I have to agree. Before the USN comes in, there were only handfuls of RN DDs & RCN corvettes... German CCs/CBs would have given RN nightmares.:eek:
 
Ignoring the debate on the Battleships for a minute...

If the German battleships get out into the Atlantic, could it be a better time for the German subs? With the English Navy focusing on the surface ships, and the convoys paranoid to the threat, U-Boats could find they have an easier time raiding.
 
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