Cover up synopsis

[Alberto Virtuani]

What ? Please explain your doubts (I'm a simple person).....
Bye

[Herr Nilsson]

I mean to say how do you evaluate the ranges. Are they right or wrong and and if they are wrong, is it on purpose or an innocent error?

[Alberto Virtuani]

Hi Marc,
facts are listed in my previous post. I have my own opinion regarding the (too many) "innocent errors" and regarding the credibility of these ranges given at a suspiciously wrong timing......but it's a personal opinion.

A fact is that all following official reports (W-W and Tovey) and the "Plot" are inconsistent EVEN with these ranges because (even correcting the timings) these ranges don't match at all with the track of Norfolk as officially presented and with the "out of range" reason for not opening fire......

Bye, Alberto

[Herr Nilsson]

Thank you for your thoughts. The ranges can't be part of the "cover up", because they are from May 28th. That means someone on Norfolk took the ranges at a particular time and he had no reason to forge them. Do you agree?

[Alberto Virtuani]

@Herr Nilsson,
Hi Marc, I just can say that someone reported ranges taken at an uncertain timing and reported them: if this was done just with "innocent errors" on timing or on purpose, to diplomatically use an ambiguous statement that could not be accused to be an evident lie regarding the real distances, I guess it's a a personal subjective opinion, and you know my one.

Bye, Alberto

[Herr Nilsson]

That means the poor Captain Phillips was part of a cover up that hasn't started at all?

[Alberto Virtuani]

Hi Marc,
that would just mean that being within almost effective firing range (11 sm) and not opening fire, could have been embarrassing even before the high levels started to "officially embellish" the story (you know that I don't personally like the term "cover up.....) and therefore the "ambiguous" statement used in the GAR.....

Other examples ? We have Capt. Leach starting the "embellishment" just 2 hours after the battle, with the "story" of the 3 guns in action, to justify the disengagement.....and Adm.Wake-Walker writing a nice "poem" to justify his decision not to re-engage after being solicited by the Admiralty, on the very May 24 day...... Everybody was already trying to justify themselves.....

Luckily for them, Bismarck was successfully sunk 3 days later (my personal opinion, again).

Bye, Alberto

[Herr Nilsson]

11 sm?

Edit:
I'm just talking about the poor Captain Phillips.

[Alberto Virtuani]

Hi Marc,
re. 11 sm, I supposed you were referring to my personal opinion regarding the reported ranges (304-272) being "not very reliable" and to the first board triangulation conclusions (11 sm) being much more close to reality....

Re. Perimeter of discussion, I just gave you examples of other people "embellishing" their stories BEFORE the start of the "official and coordinated" action......

Bye, Alberto

[Herr Nilsson]

I understand. Thank you for your opinion. It's always a pleasure. Anyway, I'm desperately trying to understand these particular ranges and your general opinion doesn't help me. I think they are unsuspicious even if someone believes in a conspiracy/cover up/officially embellished story (please delete what does not apply). The ranges got me thinking. Aside from the fact Antonio's analysis of the battle has some major errors I've the unpleasant feeling all of us are overlooking something.

[Alberto Virtuani]

@Herr Nilssson:
Hi Marc,
be sure, it's a pleasure also for me of course !

Me too, however, I have difficulties to understand how you can trust ranges reported with totally wrong timings and not matching at all with the course kept by the ship. They just look to me a way of saying something without saying much in a diplomatic way.....but I think we can agree to disagree here.

Bye, Alberto

[Steve Crandell]

When people are in battle they make all kinds of mistakes in spotting, reporting, and noting times of events. If you ask several people what happened, you will get several different versions. Then when they have a chance to talk to other people after the event, of course they often change things because they think they got it wrong in the first place. Sometimes they did and sometimes they didn't and the revised report is worse than the original. Now, 65 years after the event, you guys are using all the detailed information you have accumulated from many different sources and attacking the guys who were there living through this horrible trauma and doing the best they could under the circumstances.

If one reads some of the combat reports from USN actions in the South Pacific, I'm sure you could find all kinds of inconsistencies and could come up with all sorts of conspiracies. My gosh, they reported more planes shot down than there were; there were descriptions of IJN ships blowing up which didn't, entire salvos hitting the target (not a single shell touched the water) and all kinds of similar things. Maybe you can start in on them when you are finished here. You can probably find inconsistencies in almost every report of every battle in the war.

[Alberto Virtuani]

@Steve Crandell:
Hi Steve,
you are absolutely right. However, in this situation, we don't have a guy in the heat of the action taking a wrong timing.
We have a Captain who, on May 28, writes an official report, having in front of him all the other ship documents stating different things.
Don't you think he should have reconciled the evident mistakes (such as Hood open fire timing) amending a possible innocent error done during the action to align his report to the well known timings, already available from Norfolk documents ?

E.g.:
1) he is submitting an official report that says Hood blew up at 6:14 (open fire 6:06 + 8 minutes) while he had in front of him the Norfolk War Diary stating that Hood blew up at 6:02........
2) he is submitting it with the estimated ranges decreasing slightly from 304 to 272 while he had in front of him Norfolk own navigation plot showing a different situation (range decreasing for 8 minutes and then increasing)........
I would have expected him to call his GO (who probably had given him these info) to clarify what he meant before submitting the report, don't you ?
My personal opinion is that he submitted it like this just because it was the only data he could write in an official report without being accused to submit an evident lie (in case, it would have been just an "innocent error") and at the same time not accusing his commanding officer. We have seen too many of these innocent errors, all in the same direction, in this story, to be able to still trust them.

Bye, Alberto

[Herr Nilsson]

@Herr Nilssson:
Hi Marc,
be sure, it's a pleasure also for me of course !

Me too, however, I have difficulties to understand how you can trust ranges reported with totally wrong timings and not matching at all with the course kept by the ship. They just look to me a way of saying something without saying much in a diplomatic way.....but I think we can agree to disagree here.

Bye, Alberto

Alberto,

I could say I have difficulties to understand how one can trust bearings reported by Busch who states the battle began at 04:45. That's why I say Antonio's theory is cherry-picking and biased...despite his mantra-like affirmation to be unbiased...or actually because of it.

[alecsandros]

@Herr Nilson

Do you have an ordered sequence of events ? [unique set to reconcile the different observations]