Quote:
Originally Posted by PavelKirilovich
KMS Bismarck and similar warships getting in amongst any of the PQs would have raised merry Hell with this. Combined with a solid offensive the East, the USSR might have collapsed. The Germans were very, very good as this sort of strategic-operational coordination and without that flood of supplies through the back door Hitler's idiocy and the fawning retardation of the General Staff would have made up for a large number of deficiencies.
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Don't forget that the PQ convoys weren't the only supply route to Russia. About 50% of the Lend-Lease aid to the Soviet Union was via the Pacific Ocean through Vladivostok and the Alaska-Siberia air corridor. In addition, there was the overland route through Persia which accounted for another 25%. Plus, aside from the PQ-17 debacle, the German surface fleet didn't exactly have a enviable wartime record even on those rare occasions when they came to grips with an arctic convoy. The best example being the unsuccessful attack on convoy JW-51B, the so-called
Battle of the Barents Sea where a superior German surface fleet was bamboozled and chased off by a smaller British force. This embarrassing defeat led to Hitler demanding the big surface ships be scrapped and Admiral Raeder tending his resignation. It was at this point that Admiral Doenitz got the job as C-in-C of the German Navy. The defeat pointed out that were some serious deficiencies in the German navy that weren't just material.
My guess in this scenario is that the
Bismarck and her sisters at some point in the war would have eventuality met their actual WW2 nemesis in the form of lots of planes. I've always been of the opinion that had she survived her first sortie and made it safely to Brest she not only would have received a hero's welcome by Hitler but also the loving attention of RAF Bomber Command while anchored there even if they had to forgo bombing German cities to do it. That's ultimately why the
Scharnhorst and the
Gneisenau were pulled out of there. They were just slowly getting battered by aerial nuisance raids and you can't fit a battleship in a U-Boat bunker.