Naval History Forums

Hi all. I rescaled by 4X the image of the supposed first salvo: and circled the shadows. The thing is that the sun would be low in the upper right hand corner of the image, assuming a course of 220d at ~0553 24 May 1941, and so the shadow should fall about 90d to the left of where it seems to be. I...

Hi all. I rescaled by 4X the image of the supposed first salvo: http://www.sfu.ca/~dmunro/images/Salvo1a?.jpg http://www.sfu.ca/~dmunro/images/Salvo1a?.jpg and circled the shadows. The thing is that the sun would be low in the upper right hand corner of the image, assuming a course of 220d at ~0553 ...

Gentlemen, Re the 'shell casings, were 8" shells complete with brass cases (like a bullet) or were they a shell plus cordite bags? If they are the latter, would the 'casings' be what I believe were sometimes referred to as 'Clarkson cases'? The KM used a brass case for the main propellant charge bu...

In my post above I stated that the sun was in the south-east but in fact it was in the north-east and at 0553GMT the sun was at azimuth 52.3d and altitude 5.4 degrees. At 0615 the sun was at az 57.1d and alt 7.4d. at 0635 the sun was at az 61.3d and alt 9.5d The shadows in the first photo appear to ...

Thanks for your replies Wadinga. Bill, here is a close up with the three shell casings. http://www.kbismarck.com/shell-casings01.jpg and here is another photo of how the afterdeck of the cruiser looked like AFTER the battle (lots of casings there!). http://www.kbismarck.com/shell-casings02.jpg At t...

Forgive me if I've been ill-informed but my understanding is that Rodney had one gun inoperable for much of the engagement owing to a shell jammed in the loading mechanism. I do not recall which turret was affected. Please correct me if anyone knows otherwise. Yes, the right gun of A turret (A3) fi...

******************************** Question #1. Do you agree that the Prinz Eugen opened fire at 0555 hours? Yes No Why? (Optional) First I have to preface my answer with statement that we don't have a reliable way of matching times taken by different observers, due to the lack of a universal time co...

Battle reconstructions should be based upon the preponderance of evidence. 0552 - Lutjens to Fleet - "Am engaging heavy units" 0553 - Multiple independent observers on both sides state that Bismarck opens fire 0555 - PE opens fire and Brinkman states and Jasper implies, in the PE War Diary, that Bis...

Hello everybody, Hunter-Terry timings are perfectly in synch with Antonio's reconstruction. Hood hit on the boat deck at 5:57 (5:57:30 in Antonio's reconstruction), Hood exploded at 6:00 (6:00:+ few seconds in Antonio reconstruction), Crane hit at minute 6:01 (6:01:20-6:01:30 in Antonio's reconstru...

Question - Why is 0602 deemed the official "cease fire" time of Prince of Wales for purposes of calculating "output"? B It seems as though certain parties want to pursue a buy low (Bismarck's RoF over 14 minutes) and sell high (PoW's RoF over 9 minutes) policy despite the fact that PoW's log states...

PoW's 3 hits on Bismarck translate to PE. Hit on the bow = further forward and less damage. Hit amidships = this shell struck the water short of the ship, dived below the armoured belt and detonated in the liquid layer of the SPS. Since PE has a narrower beam, this shell would have detonated in the ...

Salvo chasing. This is from the CO's report of Renown's action against S&G: During this and subsequent periods I took advantage of the agility of the modern fire control now fitted in RENOWN to alter course within small limits as necessary to prevent the enemy establishing hitting. The above was pr...

regarding target sizes, Dunmunro wrote: "Target size = Bismarck = 251 x 36 = 9036m2 and PE = 212 x 22 = 4664m2. These numbers overstate the actual target surface area but the proportions will remain much the same, and we can see that Bismarck is a much larger target. If Hood had engaged Bismarck sh...

German accounts state (the same accounts used by A&A for other evidence) that PE was straddled. Her War Diary states that some early salvos were close enough to wash down her decks. This points to accurate gunnery from Hood and a strong probability that she was using radar ranging. Target bearing is...

Hood's fire was accurate for range (and certainly for bearing) but she probably had problems determining target inclination (target course) and her initial estimates for speed were probably wrong. Additionally, Hood was probably firing two gun salvos which have an inherently low probability of hitti...