All,
Antonio has said
The missed enemy interception by Hood at 02.00 being due to incorrect geographical positions and consequent enemy position information provided by both the heavy cruisers.
and worse
now that we have clearly understood WHO " screwed up " ViceAdm L. Holland enemy interception at 02.00 and why it happened,
Incorrect.
The missed interception was due solely to darkness and very bad weather conditions. They made accurate navigation impossible for all the ships which had passed north of Iceland. British or German. We have had a mealy-mouthed grudging acceptance that German navigation was three times as bad as British, but it is immediately forgotten so as to proceed with
blame allocation. Not
what screwed up the interception but
WHO. Cag’s latest information on Suffolk is very informative:
She continued West on the 30th her steering gyro was found to be wandering (possibly causing her positional problems?) which was corrected
The conditions made it impossible for either shadowing ship to keep visual contact at a range which allowed a reasonable chance of not being obliterated by Bismarck's guns. As been made clear in virtually every account it was only the superior radar outfit in Suffolk that made maintaining contact possible at all. Attempting to maintain visual contact in the prevailing conditions would have been suicidal for Norfolk.
As Cag observed there seems to here, as with other threads, a misguided belief that only by denigrating the professionalism, personal bravery and even honesty of several other decorated officers, can Vice Admiral Holland's reputation be vindicated. This is demonstrated by
If by bringing out the truth my goal was simply to fully restore ViceAdm L. Holland reputation thru it, on the other hand it is obvious that somebody else " light " was consequently going to be " darkened ", and that is the price for the truth.
Incorrect.
Virtually every critic of Holland has concerned themselves
not with the lost early hours interception but with the "closed” A arcs approach. These critics think he should have closed more slowly and kept his A arcs open. It is true that if conditions had been better and Suffolk's position more accurate, he might have arrived ahead of Lutjens to the SW for a classic cross the T, and yet how long would only a two ship formation take to escape such a trap, when Scheer had done it with an entire fleet (twice) at Jutland? Why Holland was not decorated posthumously no one can know. As I stated in my article, I suspect many RN men could not forgive him for losing Hood, no matter the extenuating circumstances.
When Suffolk lost contact Holland was forced to abandon his original interception plan of waiting for daylight and improved conditions. Given the potential for Bismarck to evade, he was forced to bring forward interception, but with the weather remaining poor, as an experienced and professional officer, he knew the chances of CS1 and BC1's navigation being precisely the same in these conditions was zero. Therefore there would have to be adjustment, probably east or west to accommodate this error. There would have to be sufficient visibility to do something about this. As Grenfell reports Holland signalled to PoW "If the enemy is not sighted by ten past two, he would probably steer parallel to him until the cruisers regained touch, so as to make sure the enemy did not get ahead of the British squadron unsighted. The weather had not improved.
I have answered the questions that were posed and shown the rendition of W-W's "runaway" at 03:00 as 10 miles SE is grossly exaggerrated. I lack the techno ability to show the relevant portion from the Norfolk strategic map. It can be viewed here:
Marc has provided the missing element
download/file.php?id=1311
Page 35 of the Plot
I'm sure parties with no axe to grind will agree in this rendition it is no more than a mile or two. A quick jink to increase the range before adopting a closing course still in poor and variable visibility.
Now to my questions: the navigational shift symbol for Suffolk's position on her strategic map is shown on the legend. Where, when and how much was applied? Antonio shows shifts on his interception map but not their provenence. Based on Bismarck's position averaged for the other ships Ellis reported:
17. 0542 (B). Received Norfolk's 0541 reporting sighting enemy, followed by Prince of Wales' 0537 and Hood's 0543. The mean of these placed the enemy some 280°, 14 miles from Suffolk's plot position, and sights obtained shortly afterwards confirmed this. As, however, the Battle Cruiser Squadron was now in touch with the enemy, no amending position report was made at this point.
[/quote]
14 miles on 280T!
Why is Suffolk's position consistently shifted on headings lower than 270 to a "real" position? Just to close her on Bismarck to prove the Polygon of Perfidy? Earlier Norfolk's required shift was described as west, but on the latest Interception map it is virtually SW. Is there a representation of what Norfolk's navigators thought she should be moved by, on her strategical map based on later sunsight?
All the best
wadinga
