Secrets of the Bismark

[Brag]

Heraing I was interested in history and did espionage research, a fellow I've met recently told me an interesting story.

The Bismark was the most advanced engineering project of its time. The hull construction techniques were way superior to anything any other nation has built to date.

Toward the end of WWII, to prevent the Bismark secrets from falling into Allied hands, the engineering drawings were spirited out of Germany to South America.

This fellow said he will show me the drawings sometime in the near future.

True or not, I don't know, but it makes an interesting story.

[Freiwillige]

The Deutschland class pocket battleships (Lutzow, Admiral Scheer and Graf Spee) were the first to have an all welded hull construction. Bismark followed.

Nothing other than that sets it apart. In fact as great of a ship as she was, the compartmentalization was terrible and overly spacious. Space without bulkheads fill with water, Water is heavy, too heavy and it wont float!

Still she was better than anything the British had available in Battleships and only The Yamato and some late war American class Battleships could match her.

So in essence I'm calling foul. Could be wrong though, Its happened before!

I found this last night and its cool as all hell.

[Cohaagen]

The welding on large German warships was actually defective. Several of them suffered catastrophic failures which led to the loss of their stern (including Bismarck). Lutzow, Prinz Eugen and Scharnhorst all suffered similar failures. Bismarck's armour scheme was also antiquated, and several inches thinner than contemporary British battleships.

There is still a strong belief, especially in the UK, that German engineering is superior to anything else - the British Army called this "BMW Syndrome" when trialling successors to the Challenger 1. After they found flaws in the turret armour of the Leopard 2, its supporters in the army still refused to accept that a German product could be anything less than materially perfect.

This feeds into assertion that Bismarck was scuttled, therefore clawing back a "victory" for the Kriegsmarine. I wonder if the supporters of that particular theory would then accept that the Royal Navy could equally claim that HMS York, Exeter, Sheffield, Sir Galahad, Ivanhoe, Encounter, etc. were not sunk by enemy action

[Freiwillige]

How could the Bismark scuttling herself be considered "Clawing out a victory"?

She was a floating wreck reduced to hull only as all of her superstructure had been blown away.

There is no doubt that the Bismark was beaten. Although one must contend that with the rudder jammed and her steaming in circles and unable to maneuver it was like fighting with one hand tied behind her back.

One can also contend that even know she was pummeled beyond recognition
she was still afloat.
No less than 6 torpedo's had been fired into her at the end of the battle not counting the two from the swordfish attacks that jammed her rudder.

This from the Net...


Almost two hours had elapsed since the battle had begun, and the Bismarck had shown a formidable capacity of resistance. The British first struck Bismarck at 0902, and ceased fire around 1016. For 74 minutes, the Bismarck received a continuous hammering that no other warship could have taken. We need not forget that the Hood sank six minutes after the first German shells were fired only three days earlier. Moreover, neither the main belt nor the armour deck were seen to be penetrated during the combat, and in the end it was her own crew who scuttled the ship. During this last engagement 2,876 shells were fired at the Bismarck. They are itemised as follows:

• 380 of 40.6 cm from Rodney
  339 of 35.6 cm from King George V
  527 of 20.3 cm from Norfolk
  254 of 20.3 cm from Dorsetshire
  716 of 15.2 cm from Rodney
  660 of 13.3 cm from King George V

It will never be known how many of them did actually hit (400, 500, 600, maybe more), but taking into account the short distances in the last phase of the combat, it is assumed that many shells hit.
At 1100, only 20 minutes after the sinking, Winston Churchill informed the House of Commons gathered at Church House about the operations against Bismarck: "This morning shortly after day-break, the Bismarck virtually immobilized, without help, was attacked by British battleships that pursued her. I don't know the result of this action. It seems however, that Bismarck was not sunk by gunfire, and now will be sunk by torpedoes. It is believed that this is happening right now. Great as is our loss in the Hood, the Bismarck must be regarded as the most powerful enemy battleship, as she is the newest enemy battleship and the striking of her from the German Navy is a very definite simplification of the task of maintaining effective mastery of the Northern sea and maintenance of the Northern blockade." Mr. Churchill had just sat down when he was given a note, the Prime Minister rose again and said: "I have just received news that the Bismarck is sunk." The cheers were loud and long.

And as for the 35 feet of stern breaking off. I doubt that was poor construction as a 55 ton ship hitting the seabed would easily explain the stern breaking off.

[Iranon]

Comparing the Bismarck to other capital ships does not really work.

Germany was trying hard to appear as nonthreatening as possible on paper (despite a blatant disregard for the restrictions placed on them in the treaty of Versailles).
Making heavy use of welding to save as much weight as possible made sense in that context, as did choosing relatively small-calibre but higher-velocity guns (the British tried the latter and weren't impressed; not sure if the Germans did have a technological edge or whether they simply saw no alternative for diplomatic reasons).

Nations who didn't have equally strong reasons to deviate from proven technologies didn't.


*

The claim that the Bismarck's armour scheme was obsolete comes up quite frequently but I'm not convinced. The British and Americans sacrificed superstructure armour for more protection over critical parts of the ship for more survivability. This makes perfect sense if you expect your battleships to slug it out with their equals.

Germany had no illusions about rivaling the great naval powers. Her battleships were supposed to avoid direct confrontation with their equals and to focus on sinking merchants. Their secondary use was to keep several times their worth of capital ships busy, who would be trying to force such a confrontation.
As such, a more balanced armour scheme made sense: The main concern wasn't to stay afloat at all, but to not be hurt by inferior opponents to the point of requiring extensive repairs.

*

The following applies less to shipbuilding but the attitude towards German engineering of the time period: It's easy to overestimate it. Germany faced serious shortages of material and industrial power (especially the capacity to produce precisely machined parts in sufficient numbers). At the same time, ambitious projects were approved and engineers had a lot of leeway - arguably too much, because a lack of standardisation was a big problem.

So on one side there are brilliant (or at least deliciously overengineered) feats of technology, on the other it's tempting to explain away the failures by adverse conditions.
They were, however, a natural consequence of pushing known technology to its limits.

The Bismarck design is included in Anthony Preston's book "The World's Worst Warships" and she had a number of inherent design flaws including but not limited to:

Triple screw propulsion - an undesirable feature of her direct design ancestor, the 1914 Bayern Class battleships;

Twin main gun turrets - three triple turrets would have been about the same weight allowing fewer hull openings while providing an extra tube. the Bismarck's were the only capital ships designed post WW1 where the main battery was exclusively located in twin mounts;

Single purpose secondary guns - The 15cm twin batteries were exclusively surface weapons whereas all Bismarck's counterparts (except the equally flawed Yamato's) had dual purpose secondary guns and so could dispense with the weight-wasting tertiary 10.5cm twin mounts;

Poor AA gun control and arrangement - the 10.5 cm batteries had seperate forward/aft controls rather than port/starboard fire control. Although her only air targets were slow flying Swordfish and a Catalina and despite much shooting, she failed to shoot down a single plane. The tired canard that the targets were too slow for the director settings lives on in myth but since the directors were actually dual purpose this excuse seems entirely bogus;

Although Bismarck proved difficult to sink she was very easy to knock out and she had stopped firing within 20-minutes in her last battle. There is evidence that the design was too rigid and prone to internal shock damage and the given her own guns knocked out her forward radar with the opening salvo against Norfolk and Suffolk and the loss of a couple of boilers from one of the non-penetrating torpedo hits from the first air attack this is certainly possible.

Of course posting anything negative about Bismarck, darling battleship of the Internet Forums is likely to result in accusations of trolling and flaming but it's a chance to take. The objective evidence indicates that Bismarck was an inferior design sailing on a doctrinally flawed and poorly executed mission while being badly handled in action to boot. The myth of Bismarck makes her a super-ship in some sort of Wagnarian drama that came within a hair's breadth of winning the war at sea. Readers choice...

[Freiwillige]

I can agree with some of what your saying and disagree with other parts.

Like this example....

Contrary to what some authors have suggested, the origin of the design of the Bismarck Class battleships had nothing to do with the Bayern Class of World War I except for the fact that they were also equipped with eight 38cm guns in four twin turrets and a three-shaft propulsion plant. The battleships of the Bismarck Class were the product of a warship development that had begun with the construction of the pocket battleships (Panzerschiffe) of the Deutschland Class in the late 20's and early 30's under the restrictions of the Treaty of Versailles.

"Twin main gun turrets - three triple turrets would have been about the same weight allowing fewer hull openings while providing an extra tube. the Bismarck's were the only capital ships designed post WW1 where the main battery was exclusively located in twin mounts"

4 more 15" guns seems like allot more weight to me. And the "Fewer hull openings"???

Love it or hate it the Bismark and Prince Eugen sunk the Hood and damaged the Prince of Whales so badly it had to retreat. Only Lütjens insistence that the
Bismark and Eugen stay their coarse and not pursue the Prince Of Whales saved the damaged ship.

The Bismark class was more than capable of holding her own toe to toe with any vessel the British fielded.

[Torplexed]

Originally Posted by Randomizer

Of course posting anything negative about Bismarck, darling battleship of the Internet Forums is likely to result in accusations of trolling and flaming but it's a chance to take. The objective evidence indicates that Bismarck was an inferior design sailing on a doctrinally flawed and poorly executed mission while being badly handled in action to boot. The myth of Bismarck makes her a super-ship in some sort of Wagnarian drama that came within a hair's breadth of winning the war at sea. Readers choice...

Yup. I agree. The old Japanese battleship Hiei (1914) took a hit to the steering gear during the confused night battle off Guadalcanal in 1942 and spent a full day circling helplessly northwest of Savo Island, enduring up to 70 aerial attacks by US torpedo and dive bombers before sinking during the night. It's still not know whether she sank from scuttling or torpedoes or the prior night's surface gunfire. But you never see her mythologized for stubbornly staying afloat the way the Bismarck is.