The KGM Bismarck

interesting thought lwd in what way(s) ? for the German good or.... ?

Martin my father in law was on a Tin Can destroyer Tender in the Pacific in 41 onward and the discussion continued as a what if the KM starting getting their capital ships in with the Japanese what this would make of the US Pacific fleet ............ more ships to sink of course ! In seriousness there was some apprehension amongst some crews

 

Re: the Bismark and Tirpitz
IMHO: both = LST
LST = LARGE STATIONARY TARGET

The lesson of WW2 is that modern war is won by TECHNOLOGY.
(This months news is re a prototype Brit full metal-jacketed Carbon Fibre core tank, light enough to be air dropped into combat zones. Armoured to the max - actually a step up and wicked guns etc...) (See "Favorite Modern Tank" thread in "Military History")

It was astonishing advances in tank design & funnies, aircraft, radar, sonar, bomb sights, shell penetration, proximity fuses in shells, airborne fused shell explosion, aircraft mounted rockets, cannon shells, mines, Napalm, Phosphorus incenduries, torpedos, gun design, ABomb and on and on and on that won WW2 everywhere ouside of jungle "guerilla" warfare that is - which the poor Yanks and Soviets (in part) had to face.

The Bismark and Tirpitz were a final salute to an era long, long gone. Hitler knew it - they were a complete waste of time, energy and resources. The last thing he was was stupid. (I agree with Skunk Works (above) - Don't forget the HUGE lead time required for research and development for mega projects like this. By the time they were finished time had passed them by.)

Its too bad someone does not copy lostbombers.co.uk with databases of the Naval, Mediterranean and Asian theater losses, not to mention USAAF. (thinking of those brave, brave Swordfish pilots here.)
Mind you - just think of the crushing work load. I for one am sure not volunteering~

 

..and put out of action by antiquated biplanes barely capable of 130 mph...our Swordfish pilots showed fantastic daring as they pressed home their attacks against the Bismarck taking out the battleship's rudder and steering gear, effectively slowing her and making it easy for the Rodney and King George V to home in on her for the kill ....on what was effectively her first voyage...

 

Well while the German economy wasn't quite a 0 sum game it was pretty close. If a tank ways 40 tons then Bismark represents about 1,000 tanks. Add 4 of them and take away ~4,000 tanks or the equivalant.....

 

so true Niel and those oldies but goodies were used to good effect later in war against more KM shipping. the Task force for the almighty Bismark was almost basically nothing with the Prinz trying to keep herself alive but yet inclusive of trying to be an aide to the Bismark

still think that the Prinz sunk the Hood and not the Bismark as of course this would of made less of a propaganda story for both sides

 

I remeber when the Eugen sunk the Hood theory came out (or at least surfaced again). Seamed like a pretty plausible case was made for it at the time. However I've seen enough discussions on it in the last decade to believe the probability was very low at this point.

 

By far the best article I have ever read on what caused the loss of HMS Hood is on this web-site
International Naval Research Organization (INRO) Pages

It also has an equally good article on the damage suffered by the Bismarck.

 

I just picked up a cheap copy of Bercuson & Herwig's book 'Bismarck' , dipped into it and now I'm hooked - it's a gripping story.

OK, I very much doubt that this is a great book on the subject but I suddenly realised that, like everyone, I reckoned I was 'familiar' with the story ( I've read articles, seen the movie, watched documentaries, etc ) but I've never read a book on the subject !

Hitler just wasn't 'into' Naval stuff, was he....?

 

This is a blurb from a photo in a book with hitler inspecting the Battleship Bismarck.
'The Worlds Great Battleships'


"Adolf Hitler inspecting Bismarck in Danzig. Hitler once confessed that although warships fascinated him, he was "a coward at sea"



[SIZE=-2]Copyright © 1998-2008 KBismarck.com[/SIZE]
Photo form KBismarck.com - Adolf Hitler Inspecting the Bismarck

So who knows judging by that.

 

I think you are right, the Germans just didn't know how to use capital ships like the "Bismarck" and the "Tirpitz".

Look at the "Bismarck"s erratic odyssé across the Atlantic, breaking radio silence for long periods of time, allowing the british to track her.

The best of German engineering and craftmanship wasted for nothing, exept for one more or less obsolete british battleship, the HMS "Hood".

The same thing happened with the "Tirpitz", lying idle in a Norwegian fjord for months and years until she was sunk. The germans just didn't know what to do with this formidable battleship.

And the "Scharnhorst", leaving her escorts behind and heading right into the jaws of an allied task force!

Regards
RAM

 

^Not to mention the heavy cruiser Blücher being sunk by antiquated (And German-made) gun batteries and torpedoes from the Norwegian Oscarsborg Fortress in 1940. That was one hell of a black eye IMO.

Right now I'm reading "Robert Ballard's Bismarck" (AKA "The discovery of the Bismarck"). I'm skipping through the chapters regarding the search for the wreck, and focusing mainly on the RN's hunt for it in 1941. After that, I might take a look at some of the other "Bismarck" books my local library has.

 

Here's something else to ponder. The Hood was, in the strictest sense, a Battlecruiser, not a Battleship. The British should have learned their lesson on the vulnerability of relatively lightly armoured Battlecruisers at Jutland. The Battlecruisers on both sides were hammered by the true battleships.

 

Quite right and this has been argued ever since - it goes back to Beatty's famous remark 'There seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today' at Jutland. Battlecruisers were supposed to sacrifice armour for speed but advances in naval gunnery nullified any speed advantage.

Although on paper the Hood was an outdated ship, one shouldn't underestimate the enormous blow to National pride and the Royal Navy's prestige at the loss of the ship in such a dramatic fashion. Everyone in the country knew that the Hood was the 'pride of the Fleet' ; my Dad, who was a boy at the time, still remembers the sense of total disbelief when the news came through......

 

Theres a thread starter. How would you propose to use those ships?

 

I wouldn't have built them. The Germans as underdogs as naval powers go had two realistic choices on building a navy:

1. Build a coastal defense fleet and use commerce raiding as their offensive strategy.

2. Build a fleet around a core of ships that changes the current paradigim of what constitutes naval strength.

In WW 1 the Germans did the second by accident. With the advent of technologies that came together to change the nature of battleships... that is the construction of Dreadnought type battleships ..... earlier slow battleships were rendered obsolesent overnight. This allowed the Germans to start an arms race as a naval power against Britain from a position of essentially equality.
During the war the Germans failed to appreciably use their fleet against the British enmasse. With the exception of Jutland they never really fully challenged British control of the seas. At the time Germany could afford to lose their fleet; Britain couldn't.

By WW 2 the available choice in this area is that Germany opts for a carrier centered navy. This would have taken some really forward thinking admirals on the German's part. But, the ones they had were generally very conservative and hidebound in their views of naval operations. Hence they opted for battleships that proved very nearly useless.

 

I think part of the reason they built them is Hitler viewed Britain as a natural ally. If Britain is an ally then the KM only needs to be able to take on the French or the Soviets. They certainly are up to the latter and could make a good show of the former. Especially before the new French BBs are commisioned.

 

Well Hitler did say "biggest is best" maybe that is the reason for the Bismarck and Tirpitz.

Commerce raiding I feel did very little. The Starving of Britain would require many ships and boats, and how would they get all these ships out to the Atlantic time and time again? Now even if they did, the British had the ships to spare to assign larger ships to escort duties to protect the convoys, not to mention to the Commerce raid hunter squadrons used to hunt down ships like the Graf Spee.

 

Getting back to what was, rather than what might or shouldn't have been, I've just finished the Bercuson/Herwig Bismarck book.

All in all, not a bad 'starter' read on the subject, with only two irritating points ; the author constantly starts sentences with 'As well,...' and also tries to make much of a case that the USA was heavily involved in the chase (but then, it was originally published in the USA and obviously needed selling to the publishers...).

But it is a very dramatic story, truly fascinating, and could indeed be the starting point for dozens of 'what ifs'. The book has a good bibliography, and I'm fairly certain to be doing a bit more in-depth reading.

And I'm still wondering how Bismarck failed to shoot down a single Swordfish.....

 

The existence of the German Navy in WW II was not the result of a rational analysis of national strategic objectives. The questions of what the German navy was supposed to accomplish and the best way it could contribute to the achievement of national goals were apparently never explored. The statement that, "With the exception of Jutland they never really fully challenged British control of the seas. At the time Germany could afford to lose their fleet; Britain couldn't.", while essentially true, reveals a deeper fundamental truth; Germany was a "continental" or land-based power to which a blue-water navy was an expensive luxury, not a vital tool for furthering strategic objectives.

This remained true in WW II, as well. While the RN could control the seas, it was powerless to affect Germany on the continent, just so long as Germany could secure the crucial raw materials which fed German industries and enabled her war machine to function. If Britain could not challenge Germany on the Continent, it was equally true that Germany could not challenge Britain at sea, nor did it have any real reason to do so. Since Germany had no vital strategic objectives which required a navy (except coastal defense), there was no logical reason to build the Bismarck or the Graf Zeppelin. The resources expended on these ships could have been more usefully employed elsewhere. Commerce-raiding is traditionally the strategy of weak navies and could have been very effectively carried out by armed merchant cruisers and/or long ranged cruisers. Germany's cruisers were, however, built for other duties and, with the exception of the panzerschiffs did not have the requisite range for such a role.

Aircraft carriers would have done Germany no good as the projection of airpower beyond coastal ranges had absolutely no application in Germany's strategic aims. Moreover, the successful operation of aircraft carriers proved to be a matter of developing proper doctrine and design which required decades to accomplish. The Graf Zeppelin design, while ambitious, drew the wrong lessons from other navies' carrier design and doctrine and would have represented an abject failure for the Germany Navy.

The one exception to the above was the U-boat. Because of the unique geography of Britain, and Britain's inter-war neglect of underwater defense technology and doctrine, the U-boat represented the one naval weapon which Germany might have developed that could have defeated the RN. But Germany failed to produce the U-boat in the numbers needed in the time frame that might have secured them victory in the Atlantic war.

 

Actually, the U-boat campaign was very effective given its numbers. It tied up huge amounts of resources for the Allies.