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.

[Sailor Steve]

Bismarck's armor layout was indeed based on Bayern and Baden. It was designed for close in fighting, still retaining the WW1 concept of a sloping armored deck behind the belt armor. Her torpedo protection was also good, but nothing is perfect. After all that pounding, Bismarck was not only a floating wreck, but was also observed by Rodney to be listing heavily. It is likely she would have sunk within a few hours whether or not the cruisers fired extra torpedoes, and whether or not the Germans used the scuttling charges.

Originally Posted by Freiwillige

I"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"???

Three triple turrets means only one more gun, not four. And three triple turrets weigh less than four twins. I do agree with the last though, as a barbette doesn't go through the hull at all.

Once built, the best role for Germany's heavy surface units was:
A Fleet In Being.

As long as one has assets to threaten his/her/their enemy,
that enemy is forced to tie up a larger number of resources in defense.

Sometimes the threat of action is stronger than action itself.

[Freiwillige]

4 turrets with one gun added = 4 guns. That's how I was looking at it anyways.

On researching the the battle I found it amusing that once the Hood opened fire lutjens refused to return fire all the while English shells were landing perilously close. Capt. Lindemann finally fed up with lutjens failing to respond gave the order to return fire with this quote "I'm not just gonna sit here and wait for my ship to get shot out from under my ass!"

Lutjens had orders not to engage any capitol ships, but to sail blindly along while shells are landing all around you seems a bit unreal.

Lutjens also vetoed Lindemann's request to pursue and finish the Prince of Whales much to Lindemann's aggravation.

Another interesting fact is that Norway was allot closer than Brest France.
Why the Bismark chose France is beyond belief as the road back to Norway was open.

[Freiwillige]

Criticism of the Bismark



Preston claimed that the design was an enlarged reworking of the World War I Bayern class battleships and retained old-fashioned features particularly in respect of the Armour layout, regarded as outdated by the Royal Navy and United States Navy. Authors like Jack Brower or William H. Garzke and Robert O. Dulin have claimed this is not true in their books The Battleship Bismarck and Battleships: Axis and Neutral Battleships in World War II: "This...resulted in some speculation that the Bismarck-class battleships were mere copies of these older ships. This is false; the new ships had to be faster and have more protection, range and firepower; and the percentages allocated to Armour protection, firepower and propulsion were not the same as Bayern. The triple-shaft arrangement and the distribution and caliber of the main armament were the only major similarities."
The low location of the main Armour deck, in the same position as that in WWI ships, left the two decks above the Armour deck exposed to plunging fire and bombs, which the British and Americans reduced by positioning the main Armour decks one deck higher. The Bismarck class battleships were designed to fight in the North Sea and the North Atlantic. In these waters poor visibility, especially during the winter, meant relatively short ranges of engagement, typically 10-15,000 m, were expected; the emphasis was, therefore, on close-range protection. The dual armored decks were chosen by the Kriegsmarine to guarantee that shells and bombs burst upon contact with the upper armored deck, rather than penetrating deeper into the ship's vitals.
Some communication systems, including her main damage-control center and fire-control rooms, were beneath the main armored deck and the cables from bridge and rangefinders were routed through the three armored shafts between these stations and the rooms beneath the main armored deck.
The provision of both a secondary armament of twelve 5.9-inch (150 mm) guns and the inclusion of a separate battery of sixteen 4.1-inch (100 mm) high-angle (anti-aircraft) guns was also criticized on the grounds that fitting two types of weapons required more deck space than the dual-purpose secondary armaments of Allied ships. These weapons enabled both air and surface targets to be engaged, thereby saving on weight used elsewhere in their designs, eliminating the need to carry two sizes of secondary ammunition and facilitating simplified fire-control. The use of dual-purpose armament might possibly have increased the number of anti-aircraft guns but might have weakened the ship's defense against destroyer attacks, which German naval experts deemed more important.The sixteen 4.1-inch (100 mm) AA guns gave good performance early in the war, but against newer and better aircraft types it became necessary to convert the 5.9-inch (150 mm) guns for dual-purpose use against both surface and aerial threats.

[Danelov]

This point mencioned by Cohaagen that was really so; a great number of capital ships and others german ships have loss the stern in combat.Prinz Eugen by submarine torpedo, Deutschland by submarine torpedo, Bismarck(also his hull in the bottom of sea is complet minus stern)Graf Spee(the same complet hull without stern in the bottom of the River Plate).
About the Battle of Denmark Strait and the defeat of the force of Adm Holland must consider also: Prince of Wales was no really 100 % combat ready, there was multiple problems in the artillery and there was also civil specialized personnel working still in the ship this day. The combat dispositive utilised by Holland was far of be ideal and his priority was to put Hood the more near possible of the Lutjens force to evite high incoming artillery rounds. That mean heading direct to the Germans with only half of his main artillery in conditions of use.Sun was also in advantage for Lutjens.
That was a victory for Lutjens , but also must consider, this three hits of 356mm in Bismarck had aborted the complet Rheinübung operation.The worst was in the fuel bunkers and had decided Lutjens to take heading to Brest and the separation of Prinz Eugen.

[Pacific_Ace]

"Why the Bismark chose France is beyond belief as the road back to Norway was open."
This is not hard to understand at all. They wanted BIsmark out in the open oceans doing commerce (convoys) raiding and thats really hard to do from Norway. Their entire strategy from U-boats to Bismark was to strangle England.
Although it happened almost a year later, if you examine the PQ-17 disaster, you see how terrified the Admiralty was of having German Battleships and/or Battle cruisers roaming the open ocean in search of convoys.

Had Bismark made it into the North Atlantic in battle worthy condition the consequences would have been immense and cannot be underestimated. This was 7 months before Pearl Harbor, UK could conceivably have been forced to end the war.

Had Bismark made it into the North Atlantic in battle worthy condition the consequences would have been immense and cannot be underestimated. This was 7 months before Pearl Harbor, UK could conceivably have been forced to end the war.

This is one of the great fictions of the Bismarck mythology, cruiser warfare by regular surface warships could never be decisive so any battle squadron sortie into the North Atlantic could never 'win the war' unless Britain just decided to up and quit.

The KM's ability to refuel at sea was vestigal, although better than the RN at least as far as big ships was concerned. Therefore all sorties were supported from ports where submarines, mines and aircraft could concentrate when the raiders returned to refuel. What tankers support there was staged several days steaming from the convoy routes and with ULTRA support killing them was relatively easy.

The probable fate of the surface raider was always that of Emden or Graf Spee (both the Admiral in 1914 and the ship in 1939). Some success might be expected and exploited for propaganda but they could never loiter in the sea lanes, so any stoppage of convoys would be at best temporary. Even the successful sorties of Admiral Scheer and the Scharnhorst twins failed to disrupt convoy traffic for more than a few days.

The German surface raider experiance in WW1 and to May 1941 should have taught them this but instead wishful thinking drove poor planning which created a raider doctrine that could only end in defeat and that defeat came when the war was still less than 2-years on.

Submarines on the other hand, could potentially be decisive because they could hide on the shipping lanes and remain on station for weeks, something no surface warship could ever do successfully.

Far from being nearly crippled Prince of Wales had her fighting power intact (her damage was largely confined to her hanger and bridge) and the defects on all but one of her heavy guns was repaired before she was ordered home - due to a lack of fuel. Hood was lost fighting a tactically mismanaged but doctrinally sound sea control battle whereas Bismarck was destroyed chasing the fantasy of decisive cruiser warfare.

Bismarck (and Tirpitz) would have served the Nazi's far better had she been melted down and turned into U-Boats.