Bismarck

[Director]

With all due respect, what exactly do you think a single mid tier battleship was going to do, win the war on its own? The Royal Navy Alone had 15+ battleships, some of them, like HMS Rodney and Nelson, arguably superior to Bismarck in armor and firepower.

I don't think any realistic, rational person believes that. The Germans and British surely did not. Bismarck's cruise was just a continuation of the cruises of Scharnhorst and Gneisenau with a bigger ship - one more try at doing damage with a raiding strategy while forcing the Royal Navy to disperse its assets covering convoys. No war-winner here... the real aim was to prove to the Nazi inner circle that the Navy was accomplishing something. The loss of Hood proved that; the subsequent loss of Bismarck reversed those gains.

I would never subscribe to the idea that Bismarck was a super-ship; however, she was not 'mid-tier'. Nelson and Rodney would only be able to engage Bismarck for a few minutes unless Bismarck chose to continue the engagement: this is the advantage of her approximately 6-7 knot speed advantage. What they could do is lie off a port and engage her as she attempted to run past. That extends the engagement envelope significantly and reduces her chance of getting out unhurt to nearly zero.

 

[bz249]

I don't think any realistic, rational person believes that. The Germans and British surely did not. Bismarck's cruise was just a continuation of the cruises of Scharnhorst and Gneisenau with a bigger ship - one more try at doing damage with a raiding strategy while forcing the Royal Navy to disperse its assets covering convoys. No war-winner here... the real aim was to prove to the Nazi inner circle that the Navy was accomplishing something. The loss of Hood proved that; the subsequent loss of Bismarck reversed those gains.

I would never subscribe to the idea that Bismarck was a super-ship; however, she was not 'mid-tier'. Nelson and Rodney would only be able to engage Bismarck for a few minutes unless Bismarck chose to continue the engagement: this is the advantage of her approximately 6-7 knot speed advantage. What they could do is lie off a port and engage her as she attempted to run past. That extends the engagement envelope significantly and reduces her chance of getting out unhurt to nearly zero.

That 6-7 knots is more likely to be 10. They were designed for 23 and their machinery was far from being new.

 

[Antediluvian Monster]

I'm not sure what we are even arguing @Easy-Kill. My argumet was that in eventuality that Bismarck continues to be an operational unit Britain will feel it's fast capital ships are insufficient. It's not exactly revolutionary argument since even with just Tirpitz around USS Washington joined to reinforce Home Fleet as Tirpitz' watchdog until mid July '42 (when Anson started to work up).

The corollary argument was that slow battleships were very suboptimal units for engaging with fast battleship that does not want to. Sure they might be able to do so, but it's not something so reliable you can plan around it.

Do you disagree with these?

This is all very well ... But a 1vs1 battleship engagement is highly unlikely. The hunt for Bismarck is probably the only example I can think of which comes close. And yes, in a 1v1 engagement, Bismarck can probably out run most other ships.

I wasn't talking about 1-on-1. Even a small course change could throw such intercept awry.

But naval battles rarely existed in isolation and 'being able to run away really good' is not a useful trait in a battleship (hence the name battleship, not surrendership). And as the Battle of Denmark straights and the subsequent hunt for the Bismarck showed, ships aren't actually very good at running away. The attached destroyers and cruisers boxed and pursued the German boats, the fleet carriers crippled her and the slower battleship closed her down and pounded her to an armoured hull.

The British did not exactly box in Bismarck (or have destroyers shadow her: Hood's and PoW's DD escort was detached after Denmark Strait) until after Ark Royal crippled her. They shadowed her comfortably from aft even after PoW joined and lost contact of her on couple of occasions, all while the shadowing ships themselves ran low on fuel.

 

[Sunforged General]

I don't think any realistic, rational person believes that. The Germans and British surely did not. Bismarck's cruise was just a continuation of the cruises of Scharnhorst and Gneisenau with a bigger ship - one more try at doing damage with a raiding strategy while forcing the Royal Navy to disperse its assets covering convoys. No war-winner here... the real aim was to prove to the Nazi inner circle that the Navy was accomplishing something. The loss of Hood proved that; the subsequent loss of Bismarck reversed those gains.

I would never subscribe to the idea that Bismarck was a super-ship; however, she was not 'mid-tier'. Nelson and Rodney would only be able to engage Bismarck for a few minutes unless Bismarck chose to continue the engagement: this is the advantage of her approximately 6-7 knot speed advantage. What they could do is lie off a port and engage her as she attempted to run past. That extends the engagement envelope significantly and reduces her chance of getting out unhurt to nearly zero.

Top tier would be monsters like the Yamato class battleships, or modern battleships with all the bells and whistles like the Iowa class. Bismarck would be mid tier at best, her design was obsolescent and if I'm not mistaken, did not use the more modern, all or nothing armor scheme.

 

[bz249]

Top tier would be monsters like the Yamato class battleships, or modern battleships with all the bells and whistles like the Iowa class. Bismarck would be mid tier at best, her design was obsolescent and if I'm not mistaken, did not use the more modern, all or nothing armor scheme.

All or nothing armor scheme was based on the assumption that two lines of battleships start pounding each other from 30+ km until the loser lost all of their ships. Since this was not what the Germans planned all or nothing armor would have been a suboptimal choice for them.

 

[Antediluvian Monster]

That 6-7 knots is more likely to be 10. They were designed for 23 and their machinery was far from being new.

I had to go and verify this since it was my claim, and I think it's slightly off. Burt still reports 22 knots though in practise Rodney could not quite maintain it during the Bismarck operation ("your 22 knots is faster than ours"). Revange class could barely make 20 by 1939 and by end of war it was barely 19. Hood and Repulse were down to 28-29, Renown as modernized could at least nearly make 30. Queen Elizabeth is reported as none above 22 in 1944.

 

[bz249]

I had to go and verify this since it was my claim, and I think it's slightly off. Burt still reports 22 knots though in practise Rodney could not quite maintain it during the Bismarck operation ("your 22 knots is faster than ours"). Revange class could barely make 20 by 1939 and by end of war it was barely 19. Hood and Repulse were down to 28-29, Renown as modernized could at least nearly make 30. Queen Elizabeth is reported as none above 22 in 1944.

Let's make it 8

 

[Graf Zeppelin]

In 1941 the Bismark would have defeated all 5 ships of the Iowa class at once with ease

 

[bz249]

In 1941 the Bismark would have defeated all 5 ships of the Iowa class at once with ease

No way that Bismarck could defeat let alone sink BB-65 USS Illinois. You need the Tirpitz for that job.

 

[Graf Zeppelin]

No way that Bismarck could defeat let alone sink BB-65 USS Illinois. You need the Tirpitz for that job.

True.

 

[Jopa79]

Also makes me wonder - if Peter Strasser and Graf Zeppelin were to be finished and added in a task force with Bismarck and dozens of u-boats...how serious threat this would be for the British for instance?

 

[Henry IX]

Also makes me wonder - if Peter Strasser and Graf Zeppelin were to be finished and added in a task force with Bismarck and dozens of u-boats...how serious threat this would be for the British for instance?

Oddly enough, less than the Bismarck alone. Such a task force would actually be much easier to force into a fleet engagement with the main British battleline as the fleet would be:
1. far easier to spot and
2. moving at the speed of the slowest ship in the fleet.

The British could then mass their entire home fleet against the Germans and most likely smash them.

The dominance of the aircraft carrier in the Pacific would not carry over into the North Atlantic in 1940-41 because the Germans did not have the specialised carrier aircraft or doctrines to make them effective. In addition, the British would likely be able to support with ground based aircraft, neutralising any significant advantage the Germans would possess from their fleet air arm. In addition, the Graf Zeppelin was only designed to carry 42 aircraft, or around half of the aircraft of an American or Japanese carrier of comparable vintage and still 50% less than the Ark Royal.

 

[Sunforged General]

No way that Bismarck could defeat let alone sink BB-65 USS Illinois. You need the Tirpitz for that job.

Neither tirpitz nor Bismarck were capable of beating BB-65, the Iowa class is simply more modern.

 

[Mder1]

USS Illinois was literally unsinkable.

 

[Jopa79]

USS Illinois was literally unsinkable.

They said the same about Titanic...

 

[bz249]

They said the same about Titanic...

Well they made a mistake when they launched the ship ;-)

 

[Director]

The problem with Germany deploying an aircraft carrier is, simply, the same problem that Russia, China and to a lesser degree India have run into: operating an air wing is hard, tricky and requires constant practice. The ship you build, thinking you have air operations covered, turns out not to work very well at all... Britain, the US and Japan took decades to work out carrier ops, only to see much of that invalidated when war broke out. The way they operated aircraft in 1945 resembled air ops op 1936, but all the details were worked out, changed or mutated.

If Germany had deployed Graf Zeppelin it would have taken them 8 years to catch up to the Royal Navy.

A far better 'What If' is, what if the German Navy had co-operated/had the co-operation of the Luftwaffe in developing and using naval strike aircraft.

@Sunforged General -

Top tier would be monsters like the Yamato class battleships, or modern battleships with all the bells and whistles like the Iowa class. Bismarck would be mid tier at best, her design was obsolescent and if I'm not mistaken, did not use the more modern, all or nothing armor scheme.

In other words, every modern warship built after the expiration of the building holiday - except Bismarck. Nope, don't buy it.

Bismarck's design was wasteful with tonnage and the Germans spent too much effort on fancy things that didn't work quite right (super-high pressure engines, super-high velocity guns, AA fire control) but there wasn't anything wrong with Bismarck that a year or two of peace and a refit or two wouldn't have solved. I can't say that she had more problems thatn, for example, British AA fire control or a US stern/prop design that limited the North Carolina class to 22 knots. A better, more-experienced design team could have trimmed her down to 38-40k without loss of combat power, but she still ranks comfortably with King George V, North Carolina, Littorio and Richelieu. Pretty much every battleship built after the expiration of the building holiday deserves to be classed as a modern fast battleship and Bismarck falls into that group as do the others you mention.

Btw, no point in saying the Iowas were "modern battleships with all the bells and whistles like the Iowa class". They were equipped the same as the North Carolina and South Dakota classes - same electronics, main and secondary batteries - but if anything were a bit weaker due to their longer, thinner hull; those extra 4-6 knots of speed came at a price. We romanticize the Iowa class because they were the last and largest, not necessarily the best.

 

[Andre Bolkonsky]

Neither tirpitz nor Bismarck were capable of beating BB-65, the Illinois class is simply more modern.

The Montana Class was obsolete before it ever left drydock and Illinois was left unfinished for a reason.

Bismarck could not engage an Iowa class battleship and hope to win, it would simply be no contest. Her peers would be North Carolina / South Dakota class BB which would consume Bismarck in a matchup possibly without ever even coming into visual range by using Pollard's 'MIT Rad-Lab' built state of the art 10cm SG search radar such as USS Washington used to obliterate IJN Kirishima. When you can track the splashes of your shell by radar even at night and computer correct your error instantaneously to create a new firing solution executed by well trained crews feeding superb naval rifles - the enemy needs all the luck they can get because the battle will be over rather quickly and at range. Oh, and if the battle is in the daylight in visual range, US ships have heavier armor and heavier guns and better crews. Good luck.

The Iowa Class were the core of the Fast CV groups because of the Combat Room and state of the art communications gear gave the alternating commanders of the Big Blue Fleet the ability to command and track large numbers of ships and planes continuously, not because of the barrels of those gorgeous 16"/ 50 caliber Mark VII naval rifles which were secondary to her vast AA array in practice. The overwhelming victory of the U.S. Fleet belongs to those 24 commissioned Essex class carriers and the Fleet That Stayed that kept it in the fight across the Pacific.

 

[bz249]

The overwhelming victory of the U.S. Fleet belongs to those 24 commissioned Essex class carriers and the Fleet That Stayed that kept it in the fight across the Pacific.

Sure they made it overwhelming... however by the time they reached the battlefield the show was effectively over. All was left is a long mop up.

Coral Sea, Midway, Guadalcanal all the real battles were fough with the old carriers and partly modern but not as modern as Iowa battleships. Which indeed shows that it was not overwhelming production capacity, but competent and agressive usage of the pre-war stock was the decisive factor.

 

[Andre Bolkonsky]

Sure they made it overwhelming... however by the time they reached the battlefield the show was effectively over. All was left is a long mop up.

Coral Sea, Midway, Guadalcanal all the real battles were fough with the old carriers and partly modern but not as modern as Iowa battleships. Which indeed shows that it was not overwhelming production capacity, but competent and agressive usage of the pre-war stock was the decisive factor.

USS Texas - commissioned in 1914 and currently undergoing plans for a year long dry-dock to keep her alive as a museum ship for generations to come - bombarded both Normandy's and Iwo Jima's beaches. The Big E, USS Enterprise, was the most efficient air craft carrier in the US navy during WWII until her decommission not because the Yorktown hull was more efficient than Essex or Midway, but the elite crew who manned her had an elan which carried them above other more modern vessels. I have no problem with this.

But the point on the table is ship design versus fleet design. Iowa is not designed to fire her rifles except in great need or to divert Saddam Hussein's attention away from the desert and fix it on the beaches of Kuwait. Iowa is built to run with the carriers, guard the Combat Room which provides Command and Control for the Big Blue Fleet, and forms the core of the Fast CV Task Force AA umbrella. The AIr Wing outranges the naval rifle by a huge margin.

Even so, one on one versus Bismarck, Iowa is two generations more advanced with phenomenal radar controlled guns which would pound it beneath the waves.