alecsandros wrote:... From AVKS-700, we know that Bismarck battle training lasted only 11 days.
But there is more to training than just "battle training is there not? How much such training did PoW get?
That's because there were many problems in Oct-Nov 1940 with the main battery, which brought the ship back to port.
Yet you seem to discount similar problems experianced by PoW.
Later, bad weather kept the ship at Kiel. Only in March 1941 did the ship restart training, scheduled until late April. But, as Rheinubung was hastily put into action, the ship was back in port by April 2nd, with most of the AA training not executed, and only with some parts of main battery training performed.
Still in comparison to PoW she had considerably more time. Indeed as is well known PoW still had a significant number of civilian workers on board working on her main armament when she left port.
The 3/55 and 6/93 statistics are not sufficient to draw a conclusion.
Correct.
Very important is that the 6 x 38cm hits were obtained on 2 different ships, and while under enemy fire, while the 3x35.6cm hits were obtained unchallengend, against one single target.
Not really, indeed one could go so far as to say not at all considering the tactical situation. PoW only had a slight offset in azimuth to Hood and I believe actually moved through the zone where Bismarck's last salvo at Hood landed.
Also, PoW lost target while maneuvreing, while Bismarck mantained it's FC solution for the entire battle, maneuvreing throughout, except the 3 minutes interval when in performed the 50* turn to starboard, to avoid the imaginary torpedoes that PE signalled.
Indeed but Bismarck didn't have to make radical maneuvers to avoid hitting another ship did she? Nor did she have to contend with smoke from a sinking ship close aboard.
And yes, as Duncan mentioned above, Bismarck used integrated-radar-directed FC, while PoW's radars were out of action for the entire battle.
Eaxctly and PoW was having probmems with her optical systems as well due to the weather and direction of travel yet the statistis still donot allow the conclusion that Bismarck was shooting better.
And, of course, perhaps more important is to see how many straddles were obtained by either ship against the enemy... And Bismarck consistently straddled both British ships, while PoW obtained 4 or 5 straddles...
In the past when I've brought up that straddles may be a better indicator of shooting quality than hits others have argued against it. We could indeed run the statistics on straddles but the analysis to insure a good comparison would be a bit trickeir.