Rescue the Bismarck!

I calculated the maximum distance Bismarck can be away from Rodney while always staying behind her. Assume Rodney travels in a 350m radius circle at 23knots. Then Bismarck (30 knots) can be at most in a 557m radius circle to be able to lock onto her stern.

OK, so that's pretty far fetched since no BB captain would be foolish enough to charge with 4 guns while the enemy can fire 9 gun broadsides. Well, nice try anyways. Maybe it could work by laying a smoke screen when the wind is blowing towards the enemy.

Looks like you guys changed the discussion to torpedo planes. No problem. I was wondering if the Arados could've been used to fight off the Swordfishes from Ark Royal? Or harass any other ships until the slow u-boats could come to the rescue. This guy http://www.kbismarck.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3737 had the same idea, but the general thought is that recovering planes out of the water isn't something you want to do while being pursued.

Interesting. I'm a semi jet ace in Battlefield 4 and I watch my speed religiously in a dog fight since the farther you're away from 300km/h, the slower you can turn. I've been trying to figure out how close this is to reality. Qualitatively, this makes sense because lift seems to increase slowly compared to increases in velocity, thus for uniform circular motion,

radius = velocity2 / acceleration

velocity2 increases much faster than the centripetal acceleration (lift).

Likewise, if you go too slow you'll barely generate any lift and stall. But I still don't know what the sweet spot for real fighter aircraft is.

A bi-plane's prodigious maneuverability won't do much good in a dog fight if the enemy can fly 3 times faster and run circles around him or her.

 

It means quite a bit...just ask the me262 pilots...

Or a cheetah about a gazelle...

 

I calculated the maximum distance Bismarck can be away from Rodney while always staying behind her. Assume Rodney travels in a 350m radius circle at 23knots. Then Bismarck (30 knots) can be at most in a 557m radius circle to be able to lock onto her stern.

Rodney would merely have to shift her rudder and engage on the opposite side. There would be a brief interruption in fire, but she wouldn't have to worry about finding the range.

Speaking of range, one or the other would have crippled her opponent before they got close enough for Bismarck to play pin the tail on Rodney

I was wondering if the Arados could've been used to fight off the Swordfishes from Ark Royal?

As it happens, Bismarck's catapult had been disabled by a hit from Prince of Wales; they discovered this later in the day when they tried to fly off the Fleet War Diary. Apparently they did not try to launch Arados against the Swordfish, perhaps because of the weather, or maybe there just wasn't time before the ship had to start dodging torpedos. The weather would likely make it difficult to recover the aircraft, but if one was ready to launch when the Swordfish were sighted, it might have been able to fly to Brest after a brief engagement.

 

I would imagine that it would take a bit of time to get into a position to engage the Swordfish after launch. In the historical attack was their time for it to do so? I suspect not but haven't looked closely at the time line.