Naval History Forums

Mooring generally means either tied up to a dock, secured fore and aft to a paired set of concrete anchor bouys, or anchored with both bow anchors or one bow anchor and one stern anchor set at wide angles apart to prevent the ship from swinging at anchor. The amount of swing is controlled by the tau...

George R, Ahhhhhhhhhh, so they did jettison them afterall. That is good to know. This is the wonderful thing about these discussion forums--all the minutae which tends to come into the light for all to see instead of remaining lost in the dark. Knowledge shared is knowledge that will not be lost wit...

It is curious, particularly since video of the wreck show one length of anchor chain running from the capstan and chain pipe into a long shell hole in the forecastle deck. This seems to indicate that at least one of the bow anchors was retained up to final battle at which point it was apparently los...

If you are building a model with yellow turrets, the bow anchors and chains should be gone too by that time; they were slipped on 25.5.41 to help raise the bow. Ulrich, If I understand correctly, the centre sheet anchor was landed prior to the mission, while the two regular bow anchors remained on ...

SONAR and hydrophones are seperate technologies. The former is an active detection system using high frequency sound, the other is a passive listening device with directional capabilities. Hydrophones were developed in WW1 and SONAR came along in the interwar years. By the 1930s Germany had its own ...

Well, the actual number of radars put out of action during the firing at Norfolk does need some clarification. The most I have read is that the forward radar was put out of action preventing Bismarck from scanning forward in poor visibility. This would indicate to me that either both forward radars ...

An interesting aspect of the torpedo problem as experienced by the Germans in the first two years of the war is the failure not only of the magnetic detonators, but also the contact ones. In the latter case the firing trigger was incorporated in the blades of the arming impellor on the nose of the t...

yes. at least that is what i have been looking at, and i think Bill too.

thomas

Bill, I most certainly agree that these spaces would be difficult to reach and even more difficult to work in if you had to stop leaks. If I recall correctly the boilers took up so much compartment space that they went nearly to the torpedo bulkhead--which was the reason given for the wireway/passag...

Bill, I was looking over the drawings by G & D and they show that void area outboard of the torpedo bulkhead at the point in question as being the lower oil fuel bunk, there being one for water and one for oil immediately above it. It wasnt therefore completely an unprotected area in regards to ...

Bill, Oh yes! I see what you are talking about. I wonder what the reasoning was behind that, or if it was simply an oversight in the rush to build the ship. I wonder why the inner boundary of the outboard void was attached slightly above the double bottom on the torpedo bulkhead instead of curving d...

Bill,

The gap in the side protection system of which you speak: is it the one where the wireway-passage way was used as a holding bulkhead to contain any leaks in the main torpedo bulkhead. If so I have noticed that as well.

Bill, I have a question on topic, or at least an observation to put forth. If I recall correctly the 16in 50s and the 16in 45s were originally designed to fire the lighter shell were they not, and the adoption of the 2700-lb shell came after the guns themselves were already in production. That being...

My understanding is that one of the main problems was tactical control of the carriers air arm. The Navy and Luftwaffe could never get past that debate. I would imagine that other problems would have included designing catapults, and other specialized equipment, but I have not read up on the German ...

Erich Gröner's Die Deutschen Kriegschiffe states the cost of Bismarck as being RM 196,8 million; Tirpitz is listed as RM181,6 million. I would presume this is the cost of the completed ship with armour and weapons. Yard estimates would not normally inlude weapons, except for installaion costs acrued...