Quote:
Originally Posted by Torplexed
It's fun and interesting to speculate.  After a British naval disaster like this my guess is that Uncle Sam may have come to the rescue. During the actual war the US fleet carrier Ranger was loaned to the Royal Navy for a time. With US still neutral I wouldn't have surprised if she would have been offered under Lend-Lease given a full-blown British naval emergency. I can also imagine US battleships starting to escort convoys earlier and more aggressively than they did previously under the terms of the Neutrality Patrol. Who knows? We could have an interesting battle pitting the Bismarck versus the North Carolina.
Tirpitz had a lot of teething problems and was still on sea trials in the Baltic well into 1941. As a consequence she wasn't deployed to Norway until early 1942. The Germans could have rushed her into action, but may have run into the same problems the British did with the Prince of Wales. |
I think the Prince of Wales was only sent out with the hood to intimidate the Bismarck...even though that didn't work at all....most of her armament wasn't even in working condition and was still being worked on by the contractors....As for Bismarck vs North Carolina....I think it would go in favor of the Bismarck...but Bismarck vs Iowa class would be very close and very interesting!!
As for the Tirpitz I meant a little later on in the war I knew she was only ready in the spring of 1942, she was actually in the Baltic doing her sea trials in the summer of 41....It was the loss of the Bismarck that ended North Atlantic runs for the KM with surface ships.