Naval History Forums

On further reflection to explain the damage in the double bottom, could the shell from Prince of Wales have hit the bottom of Bismarck’s belt, possibly aided by a wave trough, and deflected downwards?

There is a frequently quoted article “The Battle of the Denmark Strait” by José M. Rico http://www.kbismarck.com/denmark-strait-battle.html which states “The first shell hit Bismarck amidships below the waterline in section XIV, passed through the outer hull just below the main belt, and exploded ag...

If Der Fuhrer escapes from the RN in May 1941, we could imagine that he flees to the Southern Oceans, either immediately or after being driven from Brest by British bombing. Thus we can imagine that Germay’s most powerful battleship ends up joining the Japanese fleet. Naturally, shortages of all sor...

Snip.... Even if the quality was up to German standards, it protected much less of the ship's hull than the German protection scheme . It not only provided a shorter citadel in terms of protected length but it was also shorter in terms of depth and height. The French main armoured deck, which cappe...

At the time when both ships were afloat, it is easy to predict a victory for Bismarck. The critical advantage is that Bismarck’s guns had much less dispersion and Bismarck had radar for ranging and a good fire control system as judged by comparison with that of contemporary RN battleships. We can ad...

John Moffat, who may have been the last survivor of the Swordfish crews who attacked Bismarck and who was often credited with dropping the decisive torpedo, has died. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Moffat_(Royal_Navy_officer) or http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/12/13/veteran-pilot-helped...

Steve - Re tactical employment of the Type 93 at 2nd Guadalcanal: DD WALKE - sunk DD PRESTON - sunk DD BENHAM - sunk BB SODAK - sailed right through a mass launch of approximately Type 93s, which miraculously missed her despite the fact the she was totally unaware of the attack. BB WASHINGTON - nev...

One problem in assessing the Type 91 diving shell is that it was rarely used under optimal conditions. Kaigun by Evans & Peattie has on page 263 that the optimal angle for entry into the water was 17 degrees, which allowed hits from up to 80 metres short of the target (I assume for Nagato's 41 cm sh...

Hi, I am an engineer by education and used to enjoy reading a great deal of technical literature and stats about WW2, both planes and ships. Firstly welcome to the board!! I recall reading a book titled Axis & Neutral Battleships of WW2 back in my school days. The author was not very flattering to ...

There was a general problem in the KM that radar was regarded as too secret for officers to be told about its capabilities. There is an amusing story in Louis Brown's “A Radar History of WW2” https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=uYgsr3exvS4C&pg=PA122&lpg=PA122&dq=brown+radar+hipper&source=bl&ots=AnMx...

We can imagine that everything goes as OTL up to the 8th May but there are other possibilities. The most likely divergence may be on the 6th May. OTL the two strongest forces were refuelling on the morning of the 6th with Takagi according to Wikipedia “180 nmi (210 mi; 330 km) west of Tulagi”, when ...

Everyone was short of ships in 1942, except perhaps for the Italians who were short of oil. The IJN ships that I added to Operation MO were the ships that were relatively free and did not need immediate refits. All the old battleships except the Kongo Class had had a quiet war, so I could have chose...

Just for a change, I would like to propose something that might easily have happened. All it would have taken is slightly more urgency in getting Kaga home to be repaired and Yamamoto trying to confuse his USN opponents. OTL, Yamamoto had offered Kaga as support for Operation MO, which was aimed at ...

I suspect that Franklin was only hit by one bomb. Some of the arguments can be found at http://www.j-aircraft.org/smf/index.php?topic=5878.15. There is an interesting similarity and contrast between Franklin and Hiryu. In both cases, power was lost because the engine rooms had to be evacuated despit...

Good shooting gets straddles, good luck brings hits. However, note that the RM had obviously not practised two ships firing at the same target as demonstrated by Hood and Prince of Wales at Denmark Straits (OK, even such superb skill cannot always win). If Giulio Cesare and Conte di Cavour had been ...