Bismarck sinks Hood and PoW and makes it back to port.

No, it's not the question here.
It's the POD :
ITTL Lütjens finds his balls after sinking the 'pride' of the RN just in notim and stand up against Hitlers order to preserve the ship at all costs, but to take on a fight with an atm at least slightly favorable outlook.
Which is both stupid and disloyal, his mission was to sink merchantmen, not endanger his ship trying to beat the RN.
 
There is a very, very big difference in shooting holes in a ship's belt and sinking it. In order to sink a ship, it must take progrerssive flooding and this can only happen with serious damage below the waterline, something that is exremely rare by shelling, but is common with torpedoes and mines. Bismarck has neither, so NO SINKING, unless a weakly armored part adjacent to a magazine is pennetrated and blown up as a result, like on HMS Hood. In the whole of WW 2 the only active battleship vs battleship kill is HMS Hood. No other BB encounter had the dreamed result fo a BB killing another BB alone. (Even Kirishima was finally scuttled by her crew, rather than direclty sunk by USS Washington.)

That means a simple thing: BB's shells can hurt a modern battleship, but fail in destroying it by sinking. Only a catastrophic anount of underwaterdamage can kill a BB by sinking, which is either a very large explosive device, or a ship's hull desintegrating and loosing bouancy. Shells and especially AP shells have only a marginal explosive power comared to more effective weapons, such as torpedoes and mines.

Sir to make my position clear I see no fundamental difference if Prince of Wales is destroyed by crew scuttling or by magazine explosion or by torpedo from PE or by torpedo from a U-Boat while being towed home at less than 5 knots by a CA or abandoned as a hulk or name your series of events that ends with Prince of Wales on the bottom of the North Atlantic. The net end of all of these is the same. Please insert one the above as needed whenever I say Bismarck was capable of sinking Prince of Wales.

To me Kirishima going to the bottom because the crew scuttled her means very little she was scuttled because she was shot to bits and was incapable of escape or combat and that was the result of USN gunnery action. Bismarck was capable of reducing HMS Prince of Wales to the exact same state. SHRUG

I think we are reached the end here in terms of reasonable debate.

Regards
 
Sir to make my position clear I see no fundamental difference if Prince of Wales is destroyed by crew scuttling or by magazine explosion or by torpedo from PE or by torpedo from a U-Boat while being towed home at less than 5 knots by a CA or abandoned as a hulk or name your series of events that ends with Prince of Wales on the bottom of the North Atlantic. The net end of all of these is the same. Please insert one the above as needed whenever I say Bismarck was capable of sinking Prince of Wales.
No the net end result is not the same. If she's sunk in combat, most of the crew are casualties, whereas if she sinks under tow, most of the crew survive. Training crew is expensive, so the more who survive, the better.
 
No the net end result is not the same. If she's sunk in combat, most of the crew are casualties, whereas if she sinks under tow, most of the crew survive. Training crew is expensive, so the more who survive, the better.

Sir we agree to disagree on the importance on the level of hair splitting.
 
Sir we agree to disagree on the importance on the level of hair splitting.
Well your are saving the training costs on the best part of 1400 or so sailors, and training is expensive, so that's a significant financial saving, plus the time and effort that goes into training.
 
She certainly did iirc one of her A turret guns only fired one shell before jamming permanently. Most of the problems were from ammo supply failures often caused by safety interlocks not functioning properly, the sort of thing a shakedown cruise would have disovered but she almost went from the builders yard straight into action. Vickers dock workers were on board and they and the crew did wonders to keep the guns firing.

I really don't understand why Prince of Wales had so much trouble at Denmark Strait. HMS Royal Oak had only a month to warm up before heading to Jutland, and she performed just fine.
 
I really don't understand why Prince of Wales had so much trouble at Denmark Strait. HMS Royal Oak had only a month to warm up before heading to Jutland, and she performed just fine.
I suppose that in 1916 the RN had a lot of experience commissioning battleships and could do it rapidly. In 1941, PoW was only the second for a decade and a half.
 
I suppose that in 1916 the RN had a lot of experience commissioning battleships and could do it rapidly. In 1941, PoW was only the second for a decade and a half.

Between HMS Dreadnought in 1906 and HMS Royal Oak 1916 the Royal Navy had commisioned 31 battleships 29 Dreadnought Type and 2 pre Dreadnought type.
 
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