What was the high value cargo of he pq17?
You should look up PQ-18, that was the missed price of the surface raiders
What was the high value cargo of he pq17?
The posted pictures show the effects of a torpedo hit forward of the turrets, close to the stem, but the sonar images seem to show that a considerably greater chunk of bow has detached, with the split in the area of the turrets, and the bridge structure immediately behind the break. Do you not have a better picture?
The events related to her magazines are interesting though. "A" turret was penetrated very early in the battle, resulting in fire and flooding of the forward magazines. B magazine seems to have been drained, but A is unspecified. You say that B magazine had expended all its ammo and hence could not have exploded, but B turret was disabled via the ventilation trunk hit and therefore this seems unlikely. There are also references to ammo being transferred from the forward magazines to C turret, which would indicate the presence of propellant in B.
I've also never seen Gneisenau's bow fire ascribed to fuel before, and it seems improbable that a bomb on the armour deck could ignite such a fierce fire without the aid of propellant. For example, "Battleships of the Scharnhorst Class: Warships of the Kriegsmarine"
by Gerard Koop and Klaus-Peter Schmolke talks of igniting the ready charges in A magazine and an explosion that killed everyone in the turret and displaced the turret structure, with a greater explosion only being prevented by prompt flooding.
You should look up PQ-18, that was the missed price of the surface raiders
Aggression comes from orders, doctrine, leadership and training.
For example, here's HMS Glowworm attacking the German heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper. Given this level of risk taking, Scharnhorst would have closed with Renown with only her secondaries if need be. But German doctrine would never have gone for it, so you've got to run.
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