[Sailor Steve]

All true, to a point.

Originally Posted by Aktungbby

Original! but they didn't go aft far enough to prevent the Swordfish hit to the steering and they didn't work against an underwater trajectory fluke 14 inch shell from King George to armor sections XIII and XIV at the beam weld under the main side-armor belt to the inner 45 mm inner armor.

True, but it's impossible to armor any ship completely. To do so would require more weight than any hull could carry. Armor is constructed to protect the ship from its own shells (as it's impossible to test it against enemy shells until it's far too late) at certain distances. Too far out and no deck armor will stop incoming falling shells. Too close and no belt armor will keep shells out.

Subsequent torpedoes from Dorsetshire had little effect and the evidence is clear from a Ballard expedition, much to British chagrin, that the Germans scuttled their vessel as rumored.

The problem there is that nobody is sure exactly what effect British torpedoes had. The ship was described by observers on the spot to already be listing to port (the engaged side).1

Any hits at that point would be above the armored belt. What usually goes unmentioned is that most of the hull is buried in sand and mud, and they still haven't been able to count shell holes below that level.

Director James Cameron, who filmed the Ballard expidetion, made the following statement:

Would the wounded Bismarck have sunk without the scuttling? "Sure," Mr. Cameron said in an interview. "But it might have taken half a day."2

That has long paralleled my own opinion, which is that the British torpedoed Bismarck to keep the Germans from towing the wreck home and the Germans scuttled her to prevent the British from having a war prize. The simple fact is that Bismarck was a flaming wreck by that time and would have sunk anyway. That is entirely due to British shellfire.

Moreover Bismark bulge defenses were tested against 500 kg torpedo war heads not 14 in. main battery shells which were expected to land top side ie. cracking fire as opposed to direct fire.

That is always true. You don't test armor against torpedoes and you don't test torpedo protection against shells, mainly because you already assume the protection is useless against anything it wasn't designed for.

1 "The Final Action", John Roberts, Conway's Warship, Issue 28, collected Volume 7, October 1983.

2 http://www.fpp.co.uk/History/General.../scuttled.html