Naval History Forums

From the report alone it appears to me that Suffolk reports the Germans ships are making 28 kts. They disappear into a snowstorm. Suffolk increases speed to 29.5 kts to close so she can gain contact on her radar. We don't know when or if she gained contact again, and no indication of the range to e...

OK, Vic. Noone here has backed me up on this, so I have to assume others don't believe directors are necessary either. I will just but out and stop making a fool of myself. This is a complex topic, and it requires some thought and study to formulate a reply. The RN typically allowed for at least on...

Within usual RN practice, Hood would fire 4 gun salvoes using all four turrets, alternating the left and right guns of each. Therefore with her fwd guns only, it would have been 2-gun salvoes. Thanks for this info. However, I do think that Hood did not necessarily use the usual practice. DoY didn't...

PoW's Gunnery aspects report records 3 straddles, and they match the timing of Bismarck's hits. PoW did not observe any straddles or salvos falling near Bismarck, that did not match the expected ToF of PoW's own shells. This makes it extremely unlikely that any of Hood's salvos fell close to Bismarc...

Bgile wrote: . The IJN woujld sometimes fire 50 torpedoes and get one or two hits if they were lucky. They fired a large number of them against Washington and SoDak and not one hit either.

Something wrong with that picture.

Well, they did hit 3 of the 4 escorting DDs, IIRC.

When the pattern was on it's way, PG could have made a quick turn to deliver another pattern set to turn in towards the enemy once sufficient bearing had been achieved to "Box" the enemy squadron. That such an attack might not be guaranteed success does not detract from the fact that it i...

If PG could have launched a pattern which was not observed the British might very well have steamed into it. For the expense of six topedoes, the chance of taking out a battleship at 1,000 times their total cost was an entirely worthwhile undertaking and who knows, if Lt Reimann had managed to sort...

The only navy that scored torpedo hits at 14000yds or greater was the IJN, and then only when launching dozens of torpedoes at multiple targets, plus the IJN torpedoes have a much longer range and much higher speeds. The odds of 4 KM torpedoes running at 30knots, hitting a 28knot target at a range o...

The other factor was that the Tribals were given a very heavy gun armament at the expense of torpedoes, and only carried 4 each, when a typical RN DD might carry 8 to 10.

There may have also been concerns about blast from the 15" guns causing casualties amongst the after 4" gun crews, and maybe amongst the after HADCT.

RNfanDan wrote:
From Battleship Bismarck, Baron Burkhard von Mullenheim-Rechberg, ©1980, p.103:

That's interesting. It makes the 30 knot claim somewhat less likely.

I haven't seen such information but I would guess that with Bismarck's twin rudders it would be similar to a USN BB, such as Iowa.

I ran the parameters for Scharnhorst versus Bismarck through the Holtrop ship simulator here: http://www.sva-potsdam.de/eping/free/holtrop/holtrop.php and got these results: http://www.sfu.ca/~dmunro/S_B_Thrust.jpg which, not surprisingly, pretty much match my speed versus power estimate for Bismarc...

This just isn't reasonable, especially given the inefficiencies involved in a 3 shaft layout where the centre shaft is always less efficient due to water flow issues. This is a statement most likely based on the work by Stuart Slade on the navweaps site, but unfortunately he is wrong on this issue....

Now an example for everybody to compare directly from my written article on Op. Juno (HMS Glorious sinking battle) : Time 17.26 Scharnhorst at 26 knots increasing speed and Gneisenau on her wake on port side ready to pass Scharnhorst due to better working engines than Scharnhorst. Time 17.29 Scharn...