Armor-piercing shots are nearly impossible to "spot" when actually hitting the enemy. What was usually done was counting shell splashes (ex - 4 shots ordered, 2 splashes seen, means something happened with the other 2 ordered shots - either misfired, obtained hits, a mix between them, etc).Alberto Virtuani wrote: ↑Tue May 14, 2019 1:38 pm
In any case all reconstructions done after this, accepted it was a HE shell causing the fire, as logic, because a BS 15" shell would not have exploded at contact with the deck and would have most probably caused more serious damages.
Bye, Alberto
A note of mine woudl be that Bismarck probably "hit" HMS Hood on salvo3 , with a hit that passed through the foretop, hit that was only mentioned by British survivors , IIRC (I don't remember seeing mention of this on German accounts).
In this context, my opinion is that the "fire near the aft part of HMS Hood" (fire described by numerous eye wittnesses, including the pilot of the Short Sunderland aircraft which was survelling the area) , was most probably caused by a 203mm HE shell.
Other possibilities present themselves as well, but, as usual, the best approach is to use the phenomenon with the highest density of probability of occurence.