Hi Alberto,Alberto Virtuani wrote: ↑Thu May 30, 2019 10:32 amHi Alec,Alecsandros wrote: "a better option would have been steadiyng at 20km from the enemy and pounding away with his 5 working heavy guns"
I fully agree on the tactic you suggest.
Re. the number of available guns what you say is correct in case we accept that the shell ring would have jammed even in case of a "smooth" turn to port to open range instead of as a result of the hard turn to disengage....
In case the smooth turn would not have caused the problem (generated by the heavy roll of the ship), PoW would have had 8 or 9 working guns (depending on the time needed to recover Y2) to engage Bismarck from a more convenient distance.
Bye, Alberto
Much as I dislike disagreeing with you and Alecsandros as I consider your knowledge far greater than mine, I cannot help but to think that this would have been a very dangerous tactic for PoW. If she was capable of 'pounding away' with her remaining 5 heavy guns at 20,000M then surely Bismarck would be able to do the same with her 8 guns, plus PE with her 8 (if she could shoot that far) and while there has been debate about the accuracy of PoW's fire, there have been no questions about the accuracy of Bismarck's which was very good. There also seems to be some doubt as to how long it took Y turret to have its problems solved and would quite likely to have been made more difficult while the ship was under heavy fire.
I realise this is probably going to go back (as many other threads have done) to Capt Leach's decision to disengage, but with the reliability of his guns in question I think he had no choice but to act to in order to save his ship. Although I admit that I am an RN fan,I do recognize the excellence of the German ships and still hold the opinion that had PoW continued to fight, sooner or later she would have received a vital or even crippling hit which could have slowed her down so PE could eventually use her torpedoes, resulting in the loss of two RN capital ships and an enormous boost for Nazi propaganda. Whether or not Churchill ordered a Court Martial had been debated, but as he was(I believe) sometimes prone to making decisions in haste, it would not be surprising if he did and was 'warned off' by wiser council!