Naval History Forums

Matapan was a decisive battle. It determined the fate of the RM in the Med. This battle was brought about almost entirely through Ultra Intel. Following the rules of using Ultra, they had to set up a plausible explanation to enemy analysis as to how they obtained the necessary Intel beforehand. Ther...

FWIW, I have records, from USN target practices, of quite a few first salvo straddles on targets at ranges well over 20,000 yards, even before WWII. So such an occurrence, while unusual, was by no means unknown, especially if the first salvo pattern was fairly large. Bill Jurens I don't discount th...

Treaty limits are standard displacement not deep load or full load displacement. Standard Displacement as defined by the Washington Treaty was the ship fully stored and ammunitioned, but excluding fuels, boiler feed water, and lubricating oils. During wartime the KGVs would have gained displacement,...

Tirpitz was in Kaa Fjord during the Sept 15th attack when the bow was wrecked. It then was transferred to Tromso. Kaa Fjord is deep. About 40 meters deep. The Tromso anchorage was not deep. It was thought there would only be about 1.5 meters between the keel and the sea bed at the selected anchorage...

Gentlemen, Did any of the 'Tallboys that hit Tirpitz go right through the ship and out of the bottom? I looked up Brown: The hit scored on Sept 15 passed through the flare of the bow and out the side before bursting about 15 meters below the bottom of the bows as a gigantic mine. There were no hits...

When we consider the types of surface warfare actually fought by battleships during WW2 the Bismarck's armour scheme looks to be a pretty good design.

Dave, thanks for the answers. So it seems the Germans surmised that after the thicker deck armor claims its share main belt armor cannot be made thick enough to offer good enough protection. Correct? Did other navies arrive at different conclusion or did they arrive at same conclusion but did not t...

Thorsten has covered the important technical points, just some comments on some of the questions based on primary documents reading: The Papers of Kurt Assman: The OKM specifications issued demanded an Immunity Zone of at least of 20,000 meters to 30,000 meters battle range. The comments in the intr...

In my own head I think it would depend on the angle of fall of the shell,it’s velocity and weight. I assume that it harder for the shell than the bomb. In my own head - just as tanks have sloped armour to increase the thickness of plate a shell firing on a flat trajectory, an armoured deck means th...

Bismarck's (surface) fire control positions were as follows: Foretop: Battle station of 1st artillery officer. Forward computer room below the main armoured deck: Battle station of 2nd artillery officer. This was the "brain" of the central firecontrol system. It was not an exposed location...

Saw this on a thread about the EU and the current MPs, but it could apply to most anywhere; Oxford University researchers have discovered the densest element yet known to science. The new element, Governmentium (symbol=Gv), has one neutron, 25 assistant neutrons, 88 deputy neutrons and 198 assistant...

U of A has been fighting the freedom of information request for 7 years, but the courts ordered these sets of emails released. They became available earlier this month. Much duplication of the earlier climate gate revelations but among new are the extent of the cherry picking practiced by the alarmi...

Dave Saxton wrote: "This type of operation requires a long warm up time. Up to 45 minutes" Hi Dave, thanks as usual for all the info above. Therefore, even assuming that the Type 284 set was switched on exactly at 05:37 (PoW "enemy in sight") and that 20 minutes are an "ave...

Regarding the German radars and Jasper not mentioning them. The German radars were data linked directly to the fire control computers. Jasper would not monitor the radar data stream. Regarding If Type 284 was working or not. There are a few things to consider. The NT99 Micro Pup transmitting triodes...