Early End for Bismarck (BB)

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.
 

Saphroneth

Banned
The main reason I cite NavWeaps is that it's the place I remembered that actually broke down the hit locations - that's all.

I certainly wildly disagree with NavWeaps on the value of armoured-deck carriers, the contributors there have done just about everything they could by fair means or foul to minimize the actual effectiveness of armoured decks.


The only way in which one could say that Bismarck was "unsinkable" by gunfire would be if the shellfire had not penetrated her internals or if there was otherwise no way to allow water in. I am of the opinion that there was at least one water-ingress path to the internals and that as such the ship would have eventually sunk on her own sans torpedoes. (That is, she was in a sinking condition to the same extent that Billy Mitchell's demonstration "sank" a battleship... very, very slowly.)

Of course that's impossible to tell from the outside, and frankly if a ship's so badly damaged that she can be torpedoed with impunity by a cruiser then that's good as sunk.
 

Redbeard

Banned
The main reason I cite NavWeaps is that it's the place I remembered that actually broke down the hit locations - that's all.

I certainly wildly disagree with NavWeaps on the value of armoured-deck carriers, the contributors there have done just about everything they could by fair means or foul to minimize the actual effectiveness of armoured decks.


The only way in which one could say that Bismarck was "unsinkable" by gunfire would be if the shellfire had not penetrated her internals or if there was otherwise no way to allow water in. I am of the opinion that there was at least one water-ingress path to the internals and that as such the ship would have eventually sunk on her own sans torpedoes. (That is, she was in a sinking condition to the same extent that Billy Mitchell's demonstration "sank" a battleship... very, very slowly.)

Of course that's impossible to tell from the outside, and frankly if a ship's so badly damaged that she can be torpedoed with impunity by a cruiser then that's good as sunk.

I basically agree in all you post here, and there might well be a case of a shell getting to the internals, but still - under such battleconditions Bismarck's protection system probably would keep out more shells than a usual all-or-nothing system.

Actually, at ranges as at the final battle vs. Bismarck all "all-or-nothing" ships afloat would be quite vulnerable to guns like those of Bismarck, with very good penetration at short to medium range, even KGV with her 15" main belt. In most battles however, Bismarck would never get that close before being overwhelmed by radar directed gunnery sending heavy plunging shells piercing her decks.
 
I basically agree in all you post here, and there might well be a case of a shell getting to the internals, but still - under such battleconditions Bismarck's protection system probably would keep out more shells than a usual all-or-nothing system.

Actually, at ranges as at the final battle vs. Bismarck all "all-or-nothing" ships afloat would be quite vulnerable to guns like those of Bismarck, with very good penetration at short to medium range, even KGV with her 15" main belt. In most battles however, Bismarck would never get that close before being overwhelmed by radar directed gunnery sending heavy plunging shells piercing her decks.

German Designers did not have the legacy of an almost unbroken sequence of ship design that the British DNC and the Americans had

Also while they would have leaned much from their WW1 experiance they had not had the opportunity to destruction test their own and foriegn designs that the British and Americans had.

Basically Bismarck was the result of a dusted off WW1 design

If you look at her armour layout - it is not dissimular to a Bayern or a Revenge class BB with internal Angled armour - that is - the ships armour was configured for a close range slugging fest - basically a refight of Jutland - a 10K yard or less clash in the North Sea.

The British where ever possible (Renown, Warspite QE and Valient) when refitting their older ships swapped the turret arrangement of the Mk1 Twin 15" that is switching the 'powder magazine' to sit below the shell magazine (as built the Powder magazine was above the shell magazine - and in theory protected by the heavier belt armor) - this to minimise the possility of flash and plunging fire detonating the magazine.

The British had no intention of closing in for a close range slugging match if they could possibly help it.
 
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