Naval History Forums

I cant remember which author wrote it but their is a great line that "The Japanese were disciples of the British, and in their eyes their successors". It cant have helped having the likes of Semple,Rutland and Heenan helping the Japanese either. It was a doomed mission. Churchill supposedl...

I suppose the one thing that could have made a difference would have been an operational Graf Zeppelin... (If they could see the target) I suppose, but do you realize how many years it took the US, UK, and IJN to evolve working naval aviation? You really need a training CV, for one thing, but in an...

I suppose the one thing that could have made a difference would have been an operational Graf Zeppelin...


(If they could see the target)

Gentlemen, Another point that might be worth considering, had Bismarck turned and tried to chase Suffolk with the intention of sinking her rather than just chasing her off he would be using up his time that was going to allow him to get out into the Atlantic, which may have allowed Hood and PoW mor...

Using Prinz Eugen to attack the Suffolk on its own I think is risky, better to use the longer and heavier reach of Bismarck's guns? If close ship contact is an issue then keep Bismarck and Prinz Eugen together in joint attack, indeed Bismarck's fairly powerful secondary battery also comes into play...

Victorious had a serious drawback, that was hangar height, refitting involved dismounting all ship from hangar deck up, that was why it took 8 years to refit her. This and cost increases beyond initial estimates make her the only one of her sisters and half sisters to undergo modification. This is ...

Knowing that Rheinubung was subject to the Fuhrer inspired directive of ''no unnecessary risks'' and the dangers of torpedo attack in poor visibility one can initially understand the failure of Lutjens to order an all out attack on Wake-Walkers cruisers. However thinking rationally (and aggressivel...

Evening. Isn't this a case "we will never know one way or the other definitively"? The bridge crew were killed so we will never really know what was what. I was listening to the recollections of HMS Repulse survivors during her sinking. Because a fair amount of bridge crew survived we have...

Isnt AGS stuffed either way? HMS Cumberland becomes hors d combat or worse. AGS is still off Montevideo, may well have taken some more damage and fired off a load more ammunition. Not that dissimilar to what her namesake ended up in. Once you've been cornered/identified/exposed its pretty much game ...

Isn't a better question "what was Bismarck's effective gunnery range"? I mean hell yeah, you can elevate up to maximum elevation and fire 40000 yards or so but are you going to hit anything? Seeing as the guns are part of a system doesn't it come down to how far the whole system could trac...

I've always assumed that Seydlitz was altered for better seakeeping. Having said that I've never read anywhere that Moltke had a problem. Or was it just a "one off" experiment? Luitzow,Derflingger and Hindenburg which followed were never blessed with a large freeboard so I wonder why Seydl...

So Moltke was a single storey forecastle?

Gentlemen, Watched a documentary which mentioned the 'Maus' tank and having looked up the specifications on 'Google' it seems to me that it was almost a battleship on tracks weighing in at around 180 tons with massive armour and mounting a 125mm cannon, but dreadfully slow and far too heavy for mos...

Gentlemen, Re the speeds of the various ships mentioned, surely whether a ship reaches 29.6 or 29.8 or even 30 knots is pretty irrelevant in practical terms. In battle, it seems to me that a ship going at say 30 knots has little advantage over one doing 28 or 29 knots. I know we have discussed the ...

Cordite appears to have possessed some peculiar characteristics. Once ignited, it would continue to combust even underwater in the complete absence of air. That combustion would in turn produce an array of volatile unstable gases which, if confined, would spontaneously deflagrate when a certain pre...