So waht happens if the Bismark's rudder doen't jam

Betcha Admiral Tovey (the commander of the Royal Navy's Home Fleet) would be extremely pissed off by this turn of events. I'd expect heads to roll in the Fleet Air Arm.
 
I tend to agree the Bismarck would make it to Brest, and that damage to her would be fairly minimal. There is really not a big difference between alternatives 2 and 3 from the overall strategic perspective, but I might imagine the Germans would want to keep her (as well as Scharnhorst and Gneisnau) in Brest as the pretty powerful nucleus of a forward positioned "fleet in being" and perpetual bomber magnet. Either way the ships are pretty much lost to the war effort, but the British would probably spend a lot more effort bombing them over and over in Brest than in Norway or Germany.

Of course the only other (un mentioned) viable option for the Bismarck would be to run and head back thru the Denmark Straits. All of this points to the fact that a large German surface fleet stomping around in the Atlantic ripping into convoys never made much sense. Maybe they succeed once (like S and G did) but capital ships simply attract too much attention, and once they are trapped in a port they become just so much rusting steel that needs to me maintained and get bombed. But from the German perspective, better they get bombed in France than Germany, right?
 

Graehame

Banned
CATSPOKE
I've gotta go with Warspite on this one. Why would the work-up & crew training be impossible in French Atlantic ports? The Scharnhorst & Gneisenau did it, along with half the U-boat fleet.
Also gotta agree with Warspite that the Renown was 'way too thin-skinned to have stood up to a Bismarck-class BB. Not for more than 20 minutes, anyway.
...and Warspite is right again about the ability of the Bismarck to absorb damage, as documented in my post regarding the Tirpitz earlier this morning.
(What the hell's going on here, Warspite? You & I agree on 3 things in a single post? Come on...)
 
I am thinking to do training and working up you have to leave harbour and the protection of flak batteries and smoke generators. Not sure if Sharnhorst + company had to do that much before going up the channel but maybe you would want to do more before an Atlantic raid. I don't know. Certainly its easier in the Baltic.

In any case Bismark in port would be pretty valuable as a strategic threat without the risk, oil consumption and what not of actually raiding.
 

Graehame

Banned
Some raiding, mainly by the hilfkreuzern, was done not only because it hurt the enemy more than the expenditure of fuel & ammo hurt Germany, but because it was profitable to send prizes home to French ports. Other raiding, mainly by the U-boats & surface warships, was done very simply because it hurt the enemy more than the expenditure of fuel & ammo hurt Germany, because there were rarely prizes.
 
The primary reasons for surfaceships raiding the oceans for Germany was to force the Allies to allocate mresources to counter this threat, making these same resources not available for other uses, such as in the Mediteranean Sea and ASW as well. (Cruisers and battleships at sea also need escorts against the ever present Submarine threat.)

The U-Boote naturally were the main item against the Allied Supply convoy's at sea, but the eight in all HSK's and the occasional cruiser too forced the British to formulate answers to this, by distributing enough navalpower all over the oceans (Whole Atlantic and Indian Ocean and partly the Pacific). These forces therefore were badly missed in the European theater of war, especially in the Med. The absense of especially aircraft carriers, which were hold back mostly in the UK to counter any German large warship breakout, was felt most, since there always were too few of these.
 
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