Large Battleships
 

Guys, what was the immediate Allied counterpart to the Bismark, was there a battleship on the allied side which was of similar or equal size to the bismark?

Hmmmmmm

Well, the Renown (otherwise known as the 'Refit' and 'Repair') class was about the same dimensions (within a few meters) but the Hood beat them...


Buuuut...I reckon the KGV class would probably have been the better comparison...even though the Prince of Wales didn't fare so well against the Bismarck (although to be fair, she was just out of dock and with a few technical hitches and civilian specialists still on board.) they certainly seem to be the premier warship of the era (despite Hoods status as the ship of the fleet).

So....I'm going for the King George V class.

Although, TBH, by the time the Bismarck reached her end, the era of the Carrier was well under way (as the Swordfish torpedo bomber crews from the Victorious and the Ark Royal that attacked the Bismarck would agree with....erm...well...primarily the ones from the Ark Royal...the ones from Victorious were too busy swimming back to the carrier after running out of fuel...) and the big gun battleship was under threat from the sky.

thanks Oberon, I did wonder about the King George V, but was not 100% certain, I do know the Yamoto was the largest ever that was in excess of 75,000 tons!

Yeah, she sure was a beast (Bigger than the proposed Montana class which the US never built)...but at the end of the day, ushered out by the aircraft.

the Aircraft carrier was to be the new chief weapon for sure! :)

Indeed the Japanese showed the world what they could do at Pearl Harbour and America showed the world there weakness as they hit back at Midway.

IIRC it was the British attack on Taranto which helped convince the Japanese Pearl could work

True enough that Yamato would have been bigger in total tonnage, but Montana would have had 12 16"/50 calibre guns with a heavier overall broadside than Yamato's 9 18.1"/45 calibre guns. However, certainly no argument about the aircraft.

The Japanese converted the last Yamato class battleship, the Shinano into a carrier while still in the stocks. In retrospect they probably wished they could have poured all that steel into carrier hulls.

True. However, if you'll remember, Shinano was sunk by a torpedo attack with four hits from USS Archer-Fish before she was even properly fitted out. Therefore, she offered no benefit to the Japanese, who put a lot of resources into her construction.

Yeah...she sank without even ever launching a plane. That must have stung. And she was the largest carrier ever built until the USN's Forrestal class of the 1950s.

As for Aircraft Carriers, I with the Yorktown Class was in SH4. Especially my Favorite. The CV 6, Enterprise.

or DE hulls. and tankers.

The interesting thing is that the Bismarck didn't really have a true allied counterpart. Bismarck was designed to operate independently as a commerce raider, unlike the Allied battlewagons which were meant to operate as part of a battle group or line with cruisers and escorts, engaging similar enemy groups. In that sense, Bismarck and Tirpitz have no true peers.

Actually the Germans had every intention in the 1930s of building a balanced battlefleet starting with the Bismarck. There were eventually to have been six. However submarine construction took priority and Bismarck and her sister ship Tirpitz had to be pressed into the only use available as they were so few. Commerce raiders.