PoW's gunnery VS BSM's gunnery

[dunmunro]

However, here we speak of battle time 06:01 AM, when Captain Leach had no clue whether Bismarck had been hit or not and he took the decision to withdraw with a battleship still able to fight (and to inflict damages to a dangerous enemy it was his duty to stop), due to a shell passing through his bridge (IMHO) or due to his feeling that he was not able to stop her anymore without Hood (his report explanation).

The above is faulty logic.

If you know you are outnumbered and being hit hard but you see no evidence that your own gunfire is inflicting damage on the enemy, then that strengthens the case to open the range since it means, that your "guns are not OK", while the enemy's gunfire is obviously accurate, having previously blown up your flagship and is now are hitting your own ship at the rate of several hits/minute. Continuing a close range action where there is no evidence that your gunfire has inflicted damage on the enemy, and when your own rapid fire secondary armament has ceased fire altogether is simply suicidal.

OTOH, if you had visual confirmation that your guns had done damage to the enemy then that would strengthen the case for continuing a close range action in hopes of doing further damage, since there is then a reasonable expectation that in the near future you can inflict further damage in return.

You can only predict the future based upon past experience, and if your past experience is that your gunfire is ineffective, why would you think it is going to get better, when even the volume of your gunfire is declining rapidly?

[Alberto Virtuani]

Hello everybody,

we are speaking now about subjective judgements and not facts, like the geometrical reconstruction of the battle or the subsequent evident "embellishment" of the story or gunnery figures.

However, IMHO, if you have a mission to accomplish (prevent Bismarck from raiding in Atlantic) and, while engaged, you see that your action has not been effective yet, it's your duty to continue the action at least until you are reasonably sure that the enemy is crippled or at least damaged in a way that he could not reasonably escape to your remaining forces. Else, simply, you have not performed your duty.
McMullen "unconventional" reaction was clearly showing he was confident he could hit again: Leach was not.

In the above post logic, Beatty at Jutland could have easily gone away after the loss of 2 battlecruisers, claiming he had no chance to damage the enemy while Germans were hitting very, very hard, but his duty was to get in touch with the German Fleet and he performed it, despite the losses and several hits received on board by Lion (someone potentially catastrophic too).
Leach duty was to stop Bismarck, but at the very first shell(s) onboard, while his ship was still firing, he gave up (or, as he declared in his report, at Hood explosion he had already given up).

We are however going totally out of topic discussing the wisdom or the timidity of Leach decision. In order to judge his actions (if we can judge, of course, from an historical point of view), we should first agree on how the battle developed (courses timings, etc.) and how PoW was firing (the topic of this thread), but it seems to me that everybody here is voting for "indeterminateness" about the battle reconstruction, therefore any judgement on Leach's decision (also any good one) is based on feelings, not on established facts and discussion may never end.


Bye, Alberto

[HMSVF]

Hello everybody,

we are speaking now about subjective judgements and not facts, like the geometrical reconstruction of the battle or the subsequent evident "embellishment" of the story.

However, IMHO, if you have a mission (prevent Bismarck from raiding in Atlantic) and, while engaged, you see that your action has not been effective yet, it's your duty to continue the action at least until you are reasonably sure that the enemy is crippled or at least damaged in a way that he could not reasonably escape to the HF. Else, simply, you were not able to perform your duty.
McMullen "unconventional" reaction was clearly showing he was confident he could hit again: Leach was not.

In the above post logic, Beatty at Jutland could have gone away after the loss of 2 battlecruisers, claiming he had no chance to damage the enemy while Germans were hitting very hard, but his duty was to get in touch with the Hochseeflotte and he performed it, despite losses.
Leach duty was to stop Bismarck, but at the very first shell(s) onboard, he gave up (or, as he declared in his report, immediately at Hood explosion he had already given up).


Bye, Alberto

In the above post logic, Beatty at Jutland could have gone away after the loss of 2 battlecruisers, claiming he had no chance to damage the enemy while Germans were hitting very hard, but his duty was to get in touch with the Hochseeflotte and he performed it, despite losses.
Leach duty was to stop Bismarck, but at the very first shell(s) onboard, he gave up (or, as he declared in his report, immediately at Hood explosion he had already given up)

Beatty didn't know that Sheer was at sea though. Even after the loss of HMS Indefatigable and Queen Mary he had Evan Thomas and the 5th Battle Squadron, so he still had the upper hand. Where Beatty obtained redemption was when Goodenough signalled that the High Seas Fleet was bearing down on him and he acted accordingly (however his signalling was still abysmal and could have cost the 5th Battle Squadron).He was lucky.

Leach got pummelled, how on earth he survived the hit on the bridge is a mystery and down to pure luck of the gods. The range was relatively short and he had an enemy that had got his range. So he turns away. Now in a fleet engagement this would not have been considered unusual. Ships left the line when the opposition got the range. In Leach's case he has just seen Hood disintegrate before his eyes and been bowled over by a shell rearranging his bridge killing almost all of men around him. The battle plan has just gone completely up the spout, he has lost his flagship, he has just been pummelled and the enemy has got his range... I'm trying to think of a similar set of circumstances to the dilemma that Leach endured (where he was effectively outgunned)

I'd say the contenders are

HMS Monmouth - sunk with all her crew. Zero effect on later Battle of Falkland Island.
SMS Blucher - Sunk, no real objective end result. Hipper escaped due to "interesting" signalling from the BCF.
HMS Defence - Sunk. Achieved nothing apart from the death of 900 crew and obscuring the BCF/GF targets
HMS Warrior - eventually sunk - achieved nothing apart from drawing the fire of the HSF till Warspite turned up.


I think that you would have to look back to the days of sail (in terms of big ships) to find an equivalent situation where the tables would be turned.. The only other examples would be small ship actions(i.e destroyer) to find an example of Nelsons dictum of "no captain can do wrong in placing your ship against an enemy". But the world moved on as had the technology and to be frank, destroyers were disposable. Force Z's loss is a classic example of useless sacrifice in the presence of a superior enemy.Capital ships were capital assets and assets that Britain was short of.



However I accept that this is a subjective issue. The problem is that if a "new" account is put forth it has to be more than this.

[dunmunro]

Hello everybody,

we are speaking now about subjective judgements and not facts, like the geometrical reconstruction of the battle or the subsequent evident "embellishment" of the story or gunnery figures.

However, IMHO, if you have a mission (prevent Bismarck from raiding in Atlantic) and, while engaged, you see that your action has not been effective yet, it's your duty to continue the action at least until you are reasonably sure that the enemy is crippled or at least damaged in a way that he could not reasonably escape to the HF. Else, simply, you were not able to perform your duty.
McMullen "unconventional" reaction was clearly showing he was confident he could hit again: Leach was not.

In the above post logic, Beatty at Jutland could have easily gone away after the loss of 2 battlecruisers, claiming he had no chance to damage the enemy while Germans were hitting very hard, but his duty was to get in touch with the German Fleet and he performed it, despite the losses.
Leach duty was to stop Bismarck, but at the very first shell(s) onboard, while his ship was still firing, he gave up (or, as he declared in his report, at Hood explosion he had already given up).

We are however going totally out of topic discussing the wisdom or the timidity of Leach decision. In order to judge his actions (if we can judge, of course, from an historical point of view), we should first agree on how the battle developed (courses timings, etc.) and how PoW was firing (the topic of this thread), but it seems to me that everybody here is voting for "indeterminateness" about the battle reconstruction, therefore any judgement on Leach's decision (also any good one) is based on feelings, not on established facts.


Bye, Alberto

There are lots of facts to work with here.

Leach was aware of the strategic situation of the the UK and RN was in late May 1941 and that the RN did not have any margin of superiority over the Axis navies in terms of modern battleships and that RN carrier strength was only slowly recovering after the loss of Courageous, Glorious, and the damage to Illustrious.

Leach received no orders to stop Bismarck at all costs.

Leach did not observe hits on Bismarck.

McMullen did not claim any hits in his GAR:

"No hits were observed...'

Leach could see for himself that PoW's 14in volume of fire was far from satisfactory and that the 5.25in guns had ceased fire while PE and Bismarck's volume of fire from their main and secondary armament was unchanged, or even increasing.

Leach was aware that a senior officer in command of two 8in cruisers was nearby, but out of gun range, and unlikely to be in gun range if he did not move towards them, and that only Norfolk was in a favourable position for support.

Leach was aware that the CinC (Tovey) was at sea with a carrier TF with an air striking range well beyond it's gun range.

He probably knew that there were no convoys nearby that could be immediately threatened by Bismarck.

After Leach turned to open the range, the failure of Y turret precluded any hope of successfully reengaging even with the support of W-W's cruisers, although that was no longer Leach's decision to make.

[Byron Angel]

It would also be apropos to include the consequences of Beatty's conduct at Dogger Bank, where his rash impetuosity caused him to drive LION far ahead of the rest of his squadron and place it in an exposed position under concentrated German fire. His ship took seventeen hits in fairly short order, lost all power and communications and ended up being towed home. Beatty was saved only by the fact that a powerful supporting squadron was following up close behind - a luxury that Captain Leach most manifestly did NOT enjoy.

The "timid Leach" interpretation, in my opinion, rests upon manifestly shaky intellectual ground:
(a) it dismisses the uncertainty factor faced by Leach, after regaining his senses, regarding the current condition of his ship with respect to either engines, guns, or fire control.
(b) it dismisses the fact that PoW in actuality already had by then a third of her main battery inoperative due to various mechanical defects that were not repaired until several hours after her withdrawal from action.
(c) it assumes that PoW, with a partially disabled main battery, already under rapid straddling fire by Bismarck within decisive range and with no effective ranging solution of her own, was capable of effective counter-action -----or----- that, if not truly capable of effective counter-action, it was worth risking the loss of a second battleship (Great Britain's newest) in order to achieve some degree of <<<observable>>> damage upon Bismarck in order improve chances of her ultimate destruction.
(d) it ignores the fact that PoW did NOT flee the scene, but continued to shadow, threaten and exchange further gunfire with Bismarck until a dire shortage of fuel finally forced her to withdraw.

Whatever panic and fear did emerge in connection with the Bismarck episode, in my opinion, was really to be found on the phone connection between Churchill and Pound.

If any sort of similar accusation of command timidity were to be made with respect to Admiral Iachino's conduct at the Battle of Sirte, I personally would consider it to be a most unjust act.

B

[Alberto Virtuani]

Hello everybody,

HMSVF wrote: " I'm trying to think of a similar set of circumstances to the dilemma that Leach endured (where he was effectively outgunned)"

The problem here is that he was not really outgunned in terms of main guns. We have seen how PoW was delivering more shells per minute than Bismarck, and nothing (PoW GAR and Barben report) point to a reduction of the output in the final salvos. Only Leach's turn away jammed the "Y" turret. She was inferior, but still could seriously damage Bismarck.

Nobody intends to "crucify" Leach in a new publication. Facts will be presented as far as possible in an aseptic way, alternative opinions will be proposed and conclusions left to the reader (as I have my ones of course). The repetition of errors written for 75+ years in almost all books will be avoided tough.

Dunmunro wrote: "Leach received no orders to stop Bismarck at all costs."

He received orders to go out to sea under Holland command, and Holland received orders to fly his flag on Hood and to sail to "intercept" Bismarck. In the RN terms this means to prevent Bismarck from reaching her preys in Atlantic, doesn't it ? "At all costs" is always meant by the "Articles of War" of the RN.

and: "Leach could see for himself that PoW's 14in volume of fire was far from satisfactory "

If he saw that, he got simply a wrong impression, as PoW effective RoF was in line with Bismarck. This is proven by figures and data (viewtopic.php?f=1&t=8491&start=315#p82614) that cannot be denied. Whether this was satisfactory or not, it's another matter: surely it was satisfactory for McMullen. Leach only said that "the full output from the main armament was not to be expected" (future, not actual performance).

and "After Leach turned to open the range..."

Insisting on this interpretation (open range) is contrary to what Leach himself wrote in his report: at 6:01 he decided to "temporarily break off the action". Full Stop. No mention to any "open range" maneuver or any unfavorable range for PoW in his report.
We have to stay at what he said , not creating additional excuses for him (Tovey has already managed this point for him in his despatches).

Byron Angel wrote: "it dismisses the fact that PoW in actuality already had by then a third of her main battery inoperative"

Respectfully, this is incorrect: based on McMullen and Barben, the last salvos were fired with all guns operative except A1 (a serious problem partially fixed only for the second engagement) and Y2 (a minor problem similar to the one happened to Y3, that could have been solved in one or few more salvos.
Therefore the operative guns were 9 and the actually firing ones were 8.

The jam of Y turret that left PoW without 40% of her armament happened after the turn away (see Leach's report), due to the turn (as it happened to KGV as well on May 27) and this was clearly due to a "weakness" of the design of the turrets + the lack of specific, very strict, operative procedures while firing under turn.
Leach wrote: "Y turret's shell ring jammed during the turn away...", Tovey intentionally (see his very different previous message on May 30) wrote something more convenient and more acceptable for the Admiralty in his final despatches (point 19).


Bye, Alberto

[paul.mercer]

Gentlemen,
I wonder if we might look at this in a slightly different light as to the actual blame sometimes directed at Capt Leach and place it at a much higher authority - the RN and the senior officers who ordered Hood and PoW to intercept Bismarck.
Here we have an old battlecruiser with known weaknesses as regards armour and a new untried battleship with a novice crew whose Captain (and therefore the senior officers) were fully aware that there were still serious problems with her guns and still had Vickers engineers or board trying to fix them. The RN must have known (through spies etc) that Bismarck was a new and very powerful ship that had spent a considerable amount of time 'working up in the Baltic and that she was accompanied by a very powerful 8" cruiser, so why did they send out those two ships against them when KGV was available? I realise that Hood was regarded as the 'Pride of the Fleet' and was chosen for that reason, but PoW?

[Alberto Virtuani]

Hello everybody,

Paul Mercer wrote: "...fully aware that there were still serious problems with her guns..."

Hi Paul,
the "teething" problems of PoW for which the Vickers technician were still on board were surely present, nobody denies them.

However they caused a total loss of output of 26%, that is a quite high value, but not a dramatic one (especially considering that PoW had 10 guns vs the 8 of Bismarck). Bismarck, according to the most probable reconstruction of her salvos (27 semi-salvos, 108 "ordered shots") had an output loss of 14% (if less than that, e.g. 24 fired salvos only, her RoF would have been really too slow to match with what was her potential, with the accounts and with the images of salvos we have). PG had for sure an output loss of 15%, having had a problem to a gun that was out of action for most of the battle. PoW had A1 gun responsible for 8 lost shots out of the 19 total.
McMullen judged that "everything was ok" with guns, when he sent his "unconventional" message to his Captain.

The real serious flaws for the 14" turrets (prone to jam when turning hard while firing and while the shell ring was turning) were present also on KGV on May 27, where the same as PoW happened as soon as the ship was forced to turn 180° to follow Bismarck erratic course (no such problem was reported by Rodney in her 16" turrets, albeit the ship turned several times 180° in front of Bismarck) . This problem occurred however on PoW only after the disengagement decision was already taken and due to the emergency turn away.

Therefore I don't think that the choice to divide the HF in 2 divisions, one with Hood and PoW the other with KGV and Repulse was a bad one: this was what was available (2 modern, protected and fast battleships mounting unreliable main turrets + 2 fast but old battlecruisers, vulnerable to heavy fire, all the other battleships being too slow, when not unprotected too, to operate with the fast ones), wanting to cover the two possible Bismarck main ways out to Atlantic with a 2 to 1 superiority. Hood was far better protected than Repulse anyway.


Bye, Alberto

[HMSVF]

Gentlemen,
I wonder if we might look at this in a slightly different light as to the actual blame sometimes directed at Capt Leach and place it at a much higher authority - the RN and the senior officers who ordered Hood and PoW to intercept Bismarck.
Here we have an old battlecruiser with known weaknesses as regards armour and a new untried battleship with a novice crew whose Captain (and therefore the senior officers) were fully aware that there were still serious problems with her guns and still had Vickers engineers or board trying to fix them. The RN must have known (through spies etc) that Bismarck was a new and very powerful ship that had spent a considerable amount of time 'working up in the Baltic and that she was accompanied by a very powerful 8" cruiser, so why did they send out those two ships against them when KGV was available? I realise that Hood was regarded as the 'Pride of the Fleet' and was chosen for that reason, but PoW?

The problem was that we deployed all we had. The "Rs" were to slow, lacked sufficient deck armour for a longer ranged dual and had a main battery which could only elevate to 20 degrees. They could find themselves outranged and unable to fight back with added problem that their deck armour was insufficient to resist long range gunfire. At 18 knots they could neither close the range or runaway. The Queen Elizabeth class were a mixed bag, but still to slow to dictate the battle (or even bring Bismarck to battle) and split into 2 groups - rebuilt or modernised. The modernised QE's whilst better than the "Rs" were no match for the Bismarck.

Nelson and Rodney were tough old birds and well armed but again ..... Too slow. Now if they had been built as G3's it would have been a different story.

Repulse and Renown ? Fast? Yes. Well armed ? Yes. Well armoured ? Er no (but Renown at least had decent deck armour.



So that leaves Hood,KGV and a very new POW. Hood from reading Bruce Taylors book and Louis Le Bailly's autobiography should have been in refit rather than facing a ship 20 years her junior. Yes she had received a (fairly) large repair but otherwise she appears to have been pretty worn out. KGV is a given,POW? Well for the above reasons what else could they deploy?

[wadinga]

Fellow Contributors,

Merely repeating bad maths over and over (and over) again, does not change things.

We have seen how PoW was delivering more shells per minute than Bismarck,

We have seen nothing of the sort. The Baron, who was there saw Bismarck deliver 8 shells a minute at Hood. In every single minute apart from 06:00 PoW was delivering fewer shells than Bismarck. That is what we see.

What we also see, in the film, even if its absolute timing is disputed for specific purposes, is Bismarck firing at a rate never achieved by PoW.

Only those who choose to want to see Bismarck incapable of firing as fast as PoW, see what is claimed.

All the best

wadinga

[Alberto Virtuani]

Hello everybody,
merely refusing facts based on opinions "over and over (and over) again, does not change them".

Wadinga wrote: "We have seen nothing of the sort."

Simply someone has not yet accepted the figures clearly explained here (viewtopic.php?f=1&t=8491&start=300#p82596).
If anybody has still problems with these calculations, I'm available to explain once again how to normalize PoW output to get to an average RoF comparable to Bismarck's.

It's obviously irrelevant to measure the output of a ship within a specific minute or in a second (?), only average values over a relevant interval of some minutes are significant in terms of RoF and this is the way they are reported by all gunnery officers (see PoW and KGV GARs).


Bye, Alberto

[wadinga]

Fellow Contributors,

It has been said:

It's obviously irrelevant to measure the output of a ship within a specific minute or in a second (?), only average values over a relevant interval of some minutes are significant in terms

Perhaps someone with a mathematical bent would like to explain why adding up the shells in all the minutes and then dividing them by the number of minutes is not an arithmetic mean. It is only by choosing to use different "relevant" periods for the two ships, that one can achieve the kind of statistical sleight of hand being exhibited here.

I notice no continued attempt to disparage the eye witness Baron's 40 shells to sink Hood in 5 minutes, nor to explain away what is evident from the film.

Mr Virtuani kindly presented two versions of PoWfiring_Wilkinson_Barben some while ago (original work by Dunmunro) and I wonder if he would assist the current debate by reproducing his preferred version. Or since Dunmunro did all the work he could post his.

All the best

wadinga

[dunmunro]

Fellow Contributors,

It has been said:

It's obviously irrelevant to measure the output of a ship within a specific minute or in a second (?), only average values over a relevant interval of some minutes are significant in terms

Perhaps someone with a mathematical bent would like to explain why adding up the shells in all the minutes and then dividing them by the number of minutes is not an arithmetic mean. It is only by choosing to use different "relevant" periods for the two ships, that one can achieve the kind of statistical sleight of hand being exhibited here.

I notice no continued attempt to disparage the eye witness Baron's 40 shells to sink Hood in 5 minutes, nor to explain away what is evident from the film.

Mr Virtuani kindly presented two versions of PoWfiring_Wilkinson_Barben some while ago (original work by Dunmunro) and I wonder if he would assist the current debate by reproducing his preferred version. Or since Dunmunro did all the work he could post his.

All the best

wadinga

This was my original analysis of PoW's output by salvo whilst under director control:

[Byron Angel]

"Respectfully, this is incorrect: based on McMullen and Barben, the last salvos were fired with all guns operative except A1 (a serious problem partially fixed only for the second engagement) and Y2 (a minor problem similar to the one happened to Y3, that could have been solved in one or few more salvos."

- - -

Very respectfully disagree.

A review of the official record will prove fruitful -
> Gun A1 was out of action after Salvo 1.
> Gun Y2 had been out of action due to unknown mechanical fault from Salvo 14.
> Gun Y3 had been out of action due to unknown mechanical fault from Salvo 15.

That makes three (3) guns of a total of ten (10) out of action before the bridge hit on PoW. At that particular moment, there was no certainty whatsoever of when (or even perhaps whether) these disabled guns could easily be returned to firing order.

Strictly my opinion, but it is dangerous to mistake hindsight for reality as it was perceived at any given preceding moment in time.

B

[Alberto Virtuani]

Hello everybody,

Byron Angel wrote: "it dismisses the fact that PoW in actuality already had by then a third of her main battery inoperative......three (3) guns of a total of ten (10) out of action before the bridge hit on PoW"

I stand corrected here. I have read incorrectly Mr.Angel point.
I agree, when the PoW bridge was hit the guns not firing were 3 out of 10 (salvos 15 and 16). I had understood Mr.Angel was referring to the guns "operative" at the end of the action.
Only 7 guns out of 10 fired regularly in this double-salvo, at the time when PoW was hit on the bridge.


Bye, Alberto