WI: Bismarck enters the Atlantic?

elkarlo

Banned
From the point of view of winning the tonnage war, battleships were not very effective. Early in '41, Scharnhorst and Gneisnau sank about 22 ships. A few U-boats and AMCs could've done that, at far less cost in construction materials, fuel and manpower.
True. Very true. But the Bismark on the loose might force the British to heavily escorts convoys near the UK . Which adds costs to the British war machine and economy. How much and would it be worth it? I don't know, some here would probably be able to throw out real numbers though
 
Same thing happened with the Bismark (Most overrated ship in history IMO) so how is the Bismark better?

She is not - I would take a SoDak or NoCal or a KGV over a Bismarck any day of the week and twice on Sunday and I agree with your statement.

My comment was only to show that both ships were made deaf dumb and bllind relatively quickly (and to be fair to BB 'X' this was largely down to a self inflicted engineering mistake that cut electircal power at a critical point during the battle - had this not happened then I am quite sure that 2nd Guadalcanal would have been far far more of an unpleassent experiance than it already was OTL for the IJN) - and Bismarck lamed relatively quickly in her last fight.
 
Looking at the RN's response to Bismarck one needs to remember. The RN was not looking for a fair fight. The closest thing to a fair fight they were willing to give got them Hood sunk. Once Bismarck sailed she was headed for only one place. And as Johnny Horton said it was "to the bottom of the sea" if the RN had anything to do with it.

Quite true. The largest navy in the world is under no obligation to fight fair.

And to digress for a moment, another reason Duquerque and Strasbourg were a great response to the panzarshiffe and the Italian CAs (as Rene Greger points out in his book).

Regards,
 
Last edited:
Top