Naval History Forums

A turret or gun missing one or more or even several salvoes due to mechanical breakdowns or battle damage is very common, they are very frequently mentioned in eywitness accounts from Jutland, where far more havy rounds were fired than in all the rest of the worlds naval battles together.

Actually, the Maginot line did it's job in a roundabout way! The Germans didn't want to attack through it, so they go through Belgium, everyone gets pissed and Germany eventually finds itself at war with the rest of the world and loses. Who did you say didn't learn from WW1?

Some of the cruisers of the Bogatyr-class were rearmed during WW1 from 12 152mm guns to 10 or 16 130mm guns (accounts vary). Does anyone have more info on this? How many guns and how were they arranged? Which ships were rearmed and when?

Maybe we are nitpicking. Certainly the British would have targeted Bismarck before either the S & G, had all three been in Brest. And if they managed to damage Gneisenau pretty badly, they could have done the same to Bismarck. Even if the Bismarck would have been a little tougher to damage perh...

British bombing kept the S & G out of commission for the entire year prior to May '41? I don't think so. I was not talking about '42 to '45, I was talking about the period of time before the Bismarck's sortie. Though granted the effectiveness of air attacks did increase afterward, the S & G...

The British attempts to bomb major German naval units--even sitting still in port--prior to the Bismarck operation were pretty much a waste of aircraft and trained crews. I disagree. British bombing kept Scharnhorst and Gneisenau out of commission for almost a year, and made the French Atlantic bas...

Actually the Czech Army and its fortifications were strong enough (in my opinion) to hold off and beat the Germans on their own, without any help from Beck....after all the Czechs had enough tanks to equip three completely new panzer divisions in 1939, doubling the number of panzer units. It is unf...

I don't think it is over hyped - it really was very important to the British and indeed for the Germans. The British remember lost their premier prestige ship, HMS Hood, so it was a fairly open victory. Rheinubung had major strategic implications - and results, which perhaps neither side expected. ...

I was thinking of East Africa and South West Africa rather than Tsingtao, which was in an exposed position such that von Spee abandoned it as soon as war was declared. Had the Germans posted several Army divisions permanently in southern Africa, together with a force of battle cruisers, airships an...

What was the decisive “event” that allowed the Royal Navy to sink Bismarck? And what if the Royal Navy failed to sink her on that fateful maiden voyage? The sinking of the Bismarck was a series of strange quirks, mishaps, misjudgments that all needed to happen for the British to be successful. Ther...

But that was only because Germany - with the world's second biggest navy - was hemmed in by a British blockade that was easily facilitated by geography. The British forsaw that, the Germans didn't. Otherwise the Germans would have kept substantial forces in their colonial possessions instead of a h...

Actually if five improved panzerschiffe had been built instead of the five Hippers I think that they could make a heck of a difference - especially if they had worked in pairs, like the twins..... Agreed. But the days of surface raiding would still have come to an end in 1941 or 1942 at the latest,...

ede144 wrote: A Navy which got with only two realy powerful battleships the RN at the brink of defeat is not really bad.

I wouldn't say Bismarck and Tirpitz brought Britain to "the brink of defeat", far from it. Not even the submarines did that.

Interesting discussion! The Panzerschiffe were very advanced for their time. However, they were a typical case of fighting the last war in a better way. In WW1 the Germans suffered from a lack of long range ships suitable for raiding, despite having a large navy, much larger in comparison to the RN ...

@Byron Angel: Very interesting post about BCF gunnery.