For those familiar with WW2 Naval History

[Sunforged General]

A hypothetical scenario. What if in May 1941, when the Battleship Bismarck and Heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen were heading into the north Atlantic, instead of being intercepted by HMS Hood and Prince of Wales, Battlecruiser and Battleship respectively, they were intercepted by HMS Nelson and HMS Rodney. Both battleships, each arguably more powerful than either HMS Hood or Prince of Wales.

Who do you think wins, and why.

 

[Antediluvian Monster]

Who knows. The Germans would be in inferior position compared to the historical, but even against Hood and PoW they were outmatched and scored an unlikely victory. On the other hand, the Nelsons have very distinctive appearance making misidentification as cruisers less likely (at least some observing Hood and PoW made this mistake), and they are too slow to keep up if Germans decide to not play. For a raider, engagement with any heavy unit would be suboptimal.

So increased chance (and high probability) of victory for the Brits in case of battle, but increased chance of non engagement.

 

[Easy-Kill]

A hypothetical scenario. What if in May 1941, when the Battleship Bismarck and Heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen were heading into the north Atlantic, instead of being intercepted by HMS Hood and Prince of Wales, Battlecruiser and Battleship respectively, they were intercepted by HMS Nelson and HMS Rodney. Both battleships, each arguably more powerful than either HMS Hood or Prince of Wales.

Who do you think wins, and why.

The 16inch guns were slightly more powerful but had less accuracy and as a gun platform they simply weren't as stable as either Hood or POW.

The POW and hood would have been more than sufficient to decimate the Bismarck's superstructure and render it a floating mess. Had of course Hood not been sunk.

 

[olm]

Clearly outgunned but also significantly faster German ships will just run away.

 

[gagenater]

A hypothetical scenario. What if in May 1941, when the Battleship Bismarck and Heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen were heading into the north Atlantic, instead of being intercepted by HMS Hood and Prince of Wales, Battlecruiser and Battleship respectively, they were intercepted by HMS Nelson and HMS Rodney. Both battleships, each arguably more powerful than either HMS Hood or Prince of Wales.

Who do you think wins, and why.

There would not have been an engagement -the Nelson and Rodney were too slow to force the Bismarck and Prinz Eugen to fight, and to strong for the Germans to want to do it.

 

[Antediluvian Monster]

There would not have been an engagement -the Nelson and Rodney were too slow to force the Bismarck and Prinz Eugen to fight, and to strong for the Germans to want to do it.

Then again, they did let Hood and PoW engage too, and the British pair was slightly slower than the German one. Not a huge advantage in speed, but early dash at full speed into the opposite direction should have allowed opening of distance. I'm not entirely sure why they engaged, Lütjens seems to have kind of frozen and his captain had to take initiative and order fire. Eugen's gunnery officer thought he was watching couple of cruisers. Or perhaps the fuel consumption of high speed stern chase weighted on their minds. Nelsons would have been more trivial to run from fuel wise.

 

[Herbert West]

Just your luck, one of the best naval channels released a 2 hour video on the Bismarck.

Tl:dw: nothing happens, as the German orders were to raid shipping, not fight battleships. The UK assets cannot force the German ones to engage, the Germans do not want to (and are under orders not to) engage, so its a double miss unless some torpedo lands a lucky hit.

 

[gagenater]

Then again, they did let Hood and PoW engage too, and the British pair was slightly slower than the German one. Not a huge advantage in speed, but early dash at full speed into the opposite direction should have allowed opening of distance. I'm not entirely sure why they engaged, Lütjens seems to have kind of frozen and his captain had to take initiative and order fire. Eugen's gunnery officer thought he was watching couple of cruisers. Or perhaps the fuel consumption of high speed stern chase weighted on their minds. Nelsons would have been more trivial to run from fuel wise.

It's the combination of factors right? Much harder to disengage from, and initially thought to a much easier target.

The standard cruising speed of the Bismarck was already 19 knots versus the standard cruising speed of the Nelson and Rodney of 12 knots. These are speeds selected based on hull form and optimal fuel consumption. The Nelson and Rodney can make 23 knots in theory, but that's a tremendous struggle to achieve and maintain given their hull form, and they were notoriously difficult ships to steer as well. By contrast the Hood and Prince of Wales both had hull forms that were good for extended high speed operations (as did the Bismarck) The German ships can outrun the Nelson and Rodney without even having to consider fuel consumption. By contrast is the Bismarck faster than the Hood? That depends - what's the sea condition that day? A big ship outruns a small ship in heavy weather - can the Prinz Eugen keep up? Are they both fully loaded with fuel, or is one of them closer to empty? How many 'parting shots' are you subjecting yourself to as the distance gradually separates? Running away from an encounter against a force with a reasonably similar speed capacity is a very high risk sort of thing. Running away from a couple of armored tugboats when you have a speedboat isn't in the same class of decision.

 

[th3freakie]

As others have said, most likely scenario is Germans avoid a fight.

Consequence for the War is Germans at some point might have Bis and Trip ready to work together, which might be interesting.

 

[Graf Zeppelin]

Original engagement was a
Old semi modernized and overyped BC classified as a BB for reasons.
A modern BB but understaffed and shipyard personell onboard

Against a modern BB and CA

Two BBs against one and I doubt Bismark can score a similar quick lucky hit against those.
I doubt it would fo well for the Bismark and like many others said before, she can and would disengage early.

Or 18 Battleship calibre barrels against 8 if you want. Bismark is more accurate but we have seen how fast her guns can be knocked out.


Bismark and Tirpitz against Rodney and Nelson would surely make an interesting battle.

 

[Herbert West]

Again, why would the germans ever fight BB on BB, and how do the Rodney or the Nelson ever catch them?

 

[Sunforged General]

Again, why would the germans ever fight BB on BB, and how do the Rodney or the Nelson ever catch them?

They engaged with Prince of wales and there is no way you could mistake a King George V battleship for a cruiser.

 

[Easy-Kill]

Again, why would the germans ever fight BB on BB, and how do the Rodney or the Nelson ever catch them?

Spock: He is intelligent, but not experienced. His pattern indicates two dimensional thinking. We aren't talking a 2v2 team deathmatch in clean calm waters here, but a fight to the death in the

In poor visibility conditions, two lone capital ships were pretty vulnerable. Particularly if the attacker can use destroyer screens and the threat of torpedo attacks to CANALIZE the enemy ships into an ambush, and use its Radar to maintain detection. The whole attempt to sail into the Atlantic without any escort was bound to end in spectacular failure from the outset, it is only due to the sinking of the Hood that the whole affair is generally looked upon as not a total German failure.

 

[Director]

At Denmark Strait the Germans were not interested in fighting, but they could not turn away because of the ice limit and were unwilling to scrap the mission by turning back. 'Nelson' and 'Rodney' could only have forced an engagement if they were able to approach ahead of the Germans; even 'Hood' and 'Prince of Wales' would have had a limited time of engagement because of their speed and angle of approach.

What we can take away from the Battle of the Denmark Strait and the subsequent pursuit and destruction of 'Bismarck' is that the use of large vessels as commerce raiders had a short shelf life. Germany had gambled by raiding with pocket battleships and the 'Scharnhorst' class from war start and gotten by with only the loss of 'Admiral Graf Spee'. But the British were learning, intelligence collection and distribution was improving, and airpower was making it difficult for warships to flee and hide.

Admiral Raeder's pre-war commerce-raiding plan was reasonably well-conceived, using prepositioned supply-ships and making use of heavily-armed warships to drive off or defeat convoy escorts. He did not, however, allow for airpower (no-one else did any better). Basically, the German Navy did not recognize how close they came to taking crippling or fatal damage to their major warships in operations before 'Bismarck' set out. They bet heavily on imperfect information and kept betting until they lost the pot...

Even taking on an old 'R' class or a 'Queen Elizabeth' would be problematical for 'Bismarck' since, as we can see from her combat history with 'Hood' (and from the catastrophe suffered by 'Hood') even a few hits can mission-kill a warship if they hit in the right (wrong) places, and for all their age and fragility the old battleships escorting convoys were armed as well as 'Bismarck'. An old battleship would sacrifice itself to give a convoy time to scatter, and 'Bismarck' would not dare risk heavy damage or serious ammunition expenditure, meaning she would have to immediately kill the enemy or run away. Given British practice of escorting convoys with old battleships, this leaves 'Bismarck' with few options except wait for the Home Fleet to entrap her or risk taking damage to fuel, engines or rudders that will leave her open to destruction later. Not really good options.

The German Navy committed the first and most dangerous gambler's fallacy: they bet what they could not afford to lose instead of waiting for a better hand. A full sortie from all four heavy warships, with as many pocket-battleships and heavy cruisers as can be provided, would be an existential crisis for the Royal Navy whereas 'Bismarck' and 'Prinz Eugen' were not.

 

[Sunforged General]

A full sortie from all four heavy warships, with as many pocket-battleships and heavy cruisers as can be provided, would be an existential crisis for the Royal Navy whereas 'Bismarck' and 'Prinz Eugen' were not.

I disagree with this. The Germans grouping up all their battleships and sending them out on a sortie would be a terrible idea. The numerically superior Royal navy could then simply cut off the sortie, surround it, and eventually destroy them all. If you pit all four German battleships and their heavy cruisers, vs the entire British Home fleet, Germany loses badly. The British home fleet had 8 battleships, 3 battlecruisers, and several orders of magnitude more destroyers than Germany, which the destroyers would be essential in this battle.

Its worth mentioning that the Scharnhorst class battleships, 2 of Germany's battleships, were not properly armed as battleships, they had 11 inch guns, tiny for a battleship. Even the British Battlecruisers were better armed than the Scharnhorst class "battleships". Thats a huge handicap, 11 inch guns are something a heavy cruiser would use, im not sure if they would have much effect vs another battleship. On the British side we have 2 Nelson class battleships with 9, 16 inch guns. These heavy hitters tore Bismarck's thickest armor asunder, as HMS Rodney later showed. They pierced Bismarck's frontal turret armor and conning tower with ease.

 

[Director]

@Sunforged General - well, I didn't say I thought it would turn out well for the German Navy - just that it would create an existential crisis for the Royal Navy. I stand by that; with commitments in the Atlantic, the Mediterranean and in the Far East the Royal Navy would have had a hard time assembling sufficient surface combat power to match a massed sortie. Of course, with carrier-borne strikes, the job gets easier... but with all of your battle line except 4 (KGV class) limited to 23 knots or less, and with British capital ships notoriously short-ranged, the odds get better.

A German admiral who thought the Rheinubung sortie a good idea might have thought sending out 3 or 4 capital ships a better one. As I said, I do think it is unwise to risk what you cannot afford to lose, but with a little luck you could wreck some British capital ships before going down yourself. The Royal Navy could lose battleships - it wasn't going to need them in the Atlantic as long as the German capital ships were taken out, and Germany certainly didn't need capital ships except to force Britain to keep up hers.

No, heavy cruisers by treaty and custom used 8" guns. The 'Deutschland' class were able to use 11" guns because of the provisions of the Versailles Treaty. They were technically replacements for pre-Dreadnought battleships. No heavy cruiser ever carried 11" guns.

The 'Scharnhorst' class were fast battleships, well-protected and fast but somewhat lacking in punch. Those 11"-ers were good guns - very high velocity, but the shell-weight was light. They would have been better off if refitted with 6x15" guns (though the German 15" gun, like the British 16", was not a particularly good gun).

Bear in mind the British 16" shells were hitting 'Bismarck' at point-blank range. At that sort of range the German 11" is rated as penetrating 18" of armor...

 

[Sunforged General]

@Sunforged General
Bear in mind the British 16" shells were hitting 'Bismarck' at point-blank range. At that sort of range the German 11" is rated as penetrating 18" of armor...

Yeah the 11" has high penetration, but its shell is so light, the damage will be relatively light, the 16" shells used by Rodney weigh 3 times as much as the 11" shells used by Scharnhorst. Its also worth noting that shell weight also helps penetration, and the 16" guns muzzle velocity wasn't that much lower than the 11". In one instance one of Rodney's shells penetrated one of Bismarck's turret front then blew out the back armored wall.

All in all, in my personal opinion, Germany building battleships was a waste of time, since they were never ever going to out battleship the British, neither in numbers, nor in armor or firepower (Rodney outclassed Bismarck in both), and using Battleships for convoy raiding is inefficient. It would have been better to use those resources to build more U-boats.

 

[Antediluvian Monster]

They engaged with Prince of wales and there is no way you could mistake a King George V battleship for a cruiser.

Hardly. It's what Prinz Eugen's diary states. The 1st gunnery officer even reports the specific types under consideration: Exeter, Birmingham and Fiji.

In any case, if you want British to win all you need to do is to reroll the dice. They had the advantage even with Hood and PoW. I belive that has been as much as mathematically proven by an Italian gunnery officer few years back.

 

[Sunforged General]

Hardly. It's what Prinz Eugen's diary states. The 1st gunnery officer even reports the specific types under consideration: Exeter, Birmingham and Fiji.

I dont doubt your source, but...how do you confuse a ship with a quad turret on the front for a cruiser? I'm not sure how much of the ship was visible with optics of the time, but i'd imagine even at long range a battleship should seem bigger than a cruiser.

 

[Antediluvian Monster]

I dont doubt your source, but...how do you confuse a ship with a quad turret on the front for a cruiser? I'm not sure how much of the ship was visible with optics of the time, but i'd imagine even at long range a battleship should seem bigger than a cruiser.

I don't think you could spot detail like that, though perhaps as the three turreted ship they thought she was Exeter. The only detail really necessary was ability to spot whether shells were landing over (and obscured by the ship) or under (not obscured). German stereoscopic rangefinders worked by producing clear picture of a target whatever it was, so they did not need target length or mast height or anything. Size was notoriously unreliable and under and oversizing targets was common enough, see Battle off Samar where Japanese fought cruisers and fleet carriers.

And note the initial spotting was at well over 20km with the ships still partially obscured by horizon, though the 1st gunnery officer maintained his belief through the battle.