I've gamed this dozens of times, as well as studied the design aspects of both ships in some depth. In short,
Rodney is at a disadvantage if
Bismarck uses her greater speed to manouever into advantageous positions, although this is not always as easy as it sounds, since it is not that hard for
Rodney to keep as many guns as possible pointing at
Bismarck if she is fighting at long range.
Rodney is hardly likely to run from
Bismarck, so I agree with David that she won't be overtaken and overwhelmed.
As for
Bismarck, she is in trouble if hit by
Rodney's shells, not just because of the thickness of her armour, but because of her armour layout, whereas
Rodney's armour is reasonable for defeating
Bismarck's shells, although no ship is going to shrug off 15" hits, and they are going to cause all sorts of problems. The layout of armour on
Rodney is actually very good, despite being an older design.
Bismarck's armour scheme appears to be suspect in dealing with damage since a lot of the vital communcations equipment was above the armoured deck, and not below it. This was one of the factors that caused
Bismarck to be quickly silenced in her final battle. Her turrets were not well designed, and the armour was not as thick as other comparable ships. A 14" shell from
KGV penetrated the faceplate of one turret with comparative ease before blowing out the back of it. In addition, it would seem there was some sort of defect in German turret/magazine design, since both of
Bismarck's forward turrets appear to have been knocked out by a single 16" hit from Rodney.
Scharnhorst also appeared to suffer from a similar problem due to one of
Duke of York's hits. One other factor is the high rate of dud shells that
Bismarck suffered from. There is evidence that had one of the shells that penetrated
PoW's armour below the waterline exploded, it would have caused damage significant enough to cripple, or even sink the ship. Post-battle examination of the ship in drydock indicated a potentially fatal hit had been avoided by the shell being a dud. As for Rodney's guns being medicore, a more than 2000lbs shell is going to hurt no matter if it is fired from a mediocre gun or not.
Bismarck has excellent optics and can achieve early straddles and hits, however, her optics place a considerable strain upon the the staff manning them due to the design peculiarites of the system, meaning that after a while accuracy starts to fall off. If
Bismarck hits at long range, then Rodney is going to suffer. This is where
Bismarck's speed can be used to her advantage by keeping
Rodney far away. However, Rodney's shells, if they hit, are going to cause a world of pain against
Bismarck's comparatively weak deck armour at such a range.
Bismarck is actually better at fighting at close range due to the turtledeck armour layout behind her belt. However,
Bismarck is a more modern ship, and despite various deficiencies, should be able to defeat
Rodney. Of course, the same is true. If my gaming I have tried out all sorts of scenarios, and I have to say that on balance, the
Bismarck usually comes out worse off unless she scores early hits.
Rodney is built to slog it out.
Bismarck was designed with commerce raiding as her primary mission, and to be able to survive damage at close range as a result. However, being able to survive and get away is different from being able to maintain operationality of armament.
Bismarck's main armament was relatively easy to knock out of action, and that is what I found when gaming.
Let us not forget that
Bismarck was severely hampered in her final fight from having almost no manoueverability due to the results of the aerial torpedo hit aft. She still managed to straddle
Rodney at the beginning of the battle. With full manouevarability she would have put up a better fight, but against two powerful BBs, she'd be up against it, having to hope that the turret and gun troubles of
KGV and
Rodney evened things up a bit. Of course, if she had her manouverability, she would not have been anywhere near those ships in the first place.
I would dispute the comments about
Yamato losing 4 out of 5 times to
Iowa, and caution is advised here. I have also gamed this a lot. Even with
Iowa's radar,
Yamato usually wins, though not every time of course. It is easy to say
Yamato has no chance because of
Iowa's radar, but there is more to a battle than that, and one shouldn't write off
Yamato's chances so easily, she was after all built to slug it out, and
Iowa is not designed to slug it out with a
Yamato...
Montana was. Early hits by
Iowa are the key, and these are not guaranteed. Whilst it is true that
Iowa's excellent radar guided fire control gives her a great advantage, she still has to hit a lot.
Yamato may not be very efficent in terms of design, but she has lots of armour, and even with radar, hits are not guaranteed..you only have to look at the incident where one of the
Iowa class was firing on a Japanese ship (I forget which) at long range where nothing but straddles were obtained for evidence of that.
Iowa is actually not heavily armoured for her size, this was the trade off for the extra speed that she was designed for, and if any of
Yamato's shells hit, they are going to *hurt*. Suffice to say that her speed advantage would most probably soon be degraded. Any hits that damage or disable her radar are going to take that advantage away as well, but you could say the same about
Yamato's optics, which incidentally were the best quality ever put to sea in a BB. However, the Japanese optics, like the Germans' were also labour intensive, and could suffer from the same degradation as the German's did.
Yamato actually was able to range and spot targets at 42,000 yards at Samar, and opened fire not long afterwards. However, her poor performance there should not be indicative of her general perfomance since she had several things to contend with such as: 1. 3 days of constant air attacks, leading to a fatigued crew 2. Under air as well as surface attack and having to manouver accordingly, throwing off firing solutions 3. Kurita's 'General Chase' order meaning that the ships of the fleet were not working in co-ordination in fighting 4. Smokescreens obscuring the scene of battle making spotting hard 5. Being out of the battle for 20 minutes as a result of running from torpedoes aiming in from dead astern that were rather coincidentally set at the same speed as her maximum speed meaning she could not risk a turn, and was heading away from the action. I would challenge any other BB to do better in such circumstances.
Sargon
P.S,. I am one of the membership from over at warships1
