Naval History Forums

Hello Paul, If you go to the Bismarck General Discussion page and put Wellings in the Search box you can find 56 references to Lieutenant-Commander Joseph Wellings USN. If you put Coppinger in for Captain Coppinger RN who was also aboard you will find one- from yourself dated 2017! All the best wad...

Gentlemen, I believe that there was another RN Captain and taking passage' to the US on Rodney (I can't remember his name) when she got caught up in the pursuit of Bismarck. As he was one of the senior officers on board I would imagine he had some input during the battle, are there any records or pe...

Gentlemen, Thanks for all your info, I suppose the Germans might have been better off to build more 'Pocket' battleships instead of the heavy cruisers as they certainly appear to have has more success in commerce raiding and would have required more RN ships and more firepower to tackle them. it wou...

Hi Steve,
Thanks for that.
I think my money would be on Graf Spee, although she would probably be heavily damaged in the exchange.

Thanks Thorsten and Steve, It seems that it was mainly the 8" shells from Exeter that damaged Graf Spee but did not Exeter only have 6 x 8*" as opposed to PE 8 x 8" which surely would have made a difference, also was not PE also much larger and heavily armoured than Exeter, even more so than an 8 X ...

Bill, Steve,
Thanks very much to you both.

Gentlemen, Forgive me if we have discussed this before but I could not find it if we have. What would be the outcome if Prince Eugen went up against admiral Graf Spee? PE was longer and heavier(almost 19000 tons full load and 212 m long and carried 8x8" guns, whereas Graf Spee was about 16000 tons a...

Hi Steve and Bill, Thanks for your replies,I'm going a bit off topic here, but perhaps you could help me understand a bit more about reduced charges and super charges. Am I right in thinking that, like most guns a large naval gun would have a chamber and once the shell had been rammed home that cham...

Thanks for that reply Steve, A quick question, if one reduces this to revolver calibres it seemed to me (when we were allowed t own them!) that a short barreled pistol ofen left a small amount of unburned powder on the firing point particularly when using magnum loads whereas a 6 ot 7" barrel burned...

Gentlemen,
How did the heavy cruisers like PE stack up against a comparatively armed (8x8") RN Cruiser?
Could either Norfolk or Suffolk have taken her on had they met after she had left Bismarck?

Fellow Contributors, Do you know by any chance how many ships were torpedoed at night by Swordfish? Well, three battleships at Taranto is quite a good start. And then there is Bismarck of course, although poor visibility and the weird zone time used for the operation slew this a little. It seems li...

Gentlemen, At the end of his post HMSVF quoted a point made elseware: On the flip side I read a post on a different site that summed up a lot of the criticism about Bismarck and the RN along the lines of "she was mission killed by the worst treaty battleship and crippled by the worst TBD". Now that ...

Gentlemen, A most interesting discussion, far beyond my understanding when it comes to ballistics I'm afraid! A question, both Scharnhorst and Warspite hit their targets at roughly the same range so am i correct in assuming that the 15" shell from Warspite would penetrate more than the 11" from Scha...

Bill, Steve,Wadinga, many thanks indeed for all your info, it was very kind of you all to take so much trouble. I am surprised that the shooting of the Iowas in the Vietnam and Gulf wars may not have been declassified yet, particularly as it is very unlikely they will ever put to sea again or fire t...

Gentlemen, A fascinating subject although a bit too complex for my limited (very!) knowledge on the subject. Are we saying that with the improvements to radar and range finding in the latter years of WW2 that it was possible to fire out t a range of 35000 yards with a reasonable chance of hitting th...