Redbeard
Banned
I know the Navweapons site - how shall I put it - it belongs to one of the "schools" interpreting battleship design and usually is very skeptical to anything not built in the USA (and US designs indeed were good from sometime in the 1930s and on and Navweapons is a great site to get technical data from). Anyway, when combining the way turtledecks worked, the range at which the gunnery took place, eyewitnesses and the findings of Cameron's expedition to the wreck - it IMHO appear probable that Bismarck was especially difficult to sink by gunfire. The fact that she was low in the water is no proof of her internals being reached, as the internals just had buoyancy to keep the ship afloat.
That doesn’t necessarily mean Bismarck was well protected. As critics of her design has said, it is of little comfort that the hull remains afloat a little longer if the fighting capacity is gone after a few hits. The design contrast to Bismarck was the “all or nothing” scheme first introduced in the USS Nevada around WWI. Until then ships had been optimized for short to medium range engagements (in the misty North Sea) where secondary and tertiary batteries also would count – i.e. light to medium armour covering large parts of the ship and the internals protected against flat trajectory main battery hits (ie turtle decks).
The expanding USN could in contrast expect combat in very clear Pacific weather and as firecontrol developed it was realistic to fire at targets at or beyond the horizon. This made the light to medium armour superfluous but the saved weight was needed to install heavy armoured decks to protect against heavy plunging shells fired at long range.
In a long range fight Bismarck would have been very vulnerable to plunging hits and her main armament had relatively high MV and thus flat trajectories. This was optimal for short to medium range but less so at long range.
When comparing designs the big problem is however our “empirical data”. No other big ship was ever exposed to gunnery like Bismarck was. IOW all the flaws in Bismarck’s design were revealed by “real life testing” whereas flaws in other designs not that exposed will remain undetected for ever.
IMHO the “all or nothing” scheme was the right for a modern battleship as it was the best chance to keep your vitals (machinery, magazines, main armament) intact for as long as possible. The price would however be paid if the enemy was let in close, as happened to USS South Dakota at Guadalcanal. She here took a few 14” hits and a lot of hits from 5 to 8”. All her vitals were intact, but she was effectively blind as the light hits cut the cabling in the unprotected superstructure and on top of that she also lost all electrical power as an onboard engineer misunderstood the purpose of safety switches. Had USS Washington not intervened USS South Dakota probably would have been sunk by torpedoes from IJN destroyers and cruisers.
Next, all designs have their weak spots, some are known beforehand, some are only detected in the battle. HMS Prince of Wales probably had one of the best torpedo defence systems (TDS) ever put afloat, and the torpedoes actually hitting the TDS only did minimal damage. But one torpedo hit the A-frame of one of the screw axles, which had the axle go wild and tear a big hole in the hull. If bad luck want you it will get you.
That doesn’t necessarily mean Bismarck was well protected. As critics of her design has said, it is of little comfort that the hull remains afloat a little longer if the fighting capacity is gone after a few hits. The design contrast to Bismarck was the “all or nothing” scheme first introduced in the USS Nevada around WWI. Until then ships had been optimized for short to medium range engagements (in the misty North Sea) where secondary and tertiary batteries also would count – i.e. light to medium armour covering large parts of the ship and the internals protected against flat trajectory main battery hits (ie turtle decks).
The expanding USN could in contrast expect combat in very clear Pacific weather and as firecontrol developed it was realistic to fire at targets at or beyond the horizon. This made the light to medium armour superfluous but the saved weight was needed to install heavy armoured decks to protect against heavy plunging shells fired at long range.
In a long range fight Bismarck would have been very vulnerable to plunging hits and her main armament had relatively high MV and thus flat trajectories. This was optimal for short to medium range but less so at long range.
When comparing designs the big problem is however our “empirical data”. No other big ship was ever exposed to gunnery like Bismarck was. IOW all the flaws in Bismarck’s design were revealed by “real life testing” whereas flaws in other designs not that exposed will remain undetected for ever.
IMHO the “all or nothing” scheme was the right for a modern battleship as it was the best chance to keep your vitals (machinery, magazines, main armament) intact for as long as possible. The price would however be paid if the enemy was let in close, as happened to USS South Dakota at Guadalcanal. She here took a few 14” hits and a lot of hits from 5 to 8”. All her vitals were intact, but she was effectively blind as the light hits cut the cabling in the unprotected superstructure and on top of that she also lost all electrical power as an onboard engineer misunderstood the purpose of safety switches. Had USS Washington not intervened USS South Dakota probably would have been sunk by torpedoes from IJN destroyers and cruisers.
Next, all designs have their weak spots, some are known beforehand, some are only detected in the battle. HMS Prince of Wales probably had one of the best torpedo defence systems (TDS) ever put afloat, and the torpedoes actually hitting the TDS only did minimal damage. But one torpedo hit the A-frame of one of the screw axles, which had the axle go wild and tear a big hole in the hull. If bad luck want you it will get you.