Bismarck v Warspite
Re: Bismarck v Warspite
Bismarck wins, but returns to a yard for months' worth of repairs. Where that yard is, determines the ship's future activities. It seems hard to come up with two better gunnery teams to square-off, that's for sure.
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Re: Bismarck v Warspite
Warspites sister Barham was a lucky ship until she took three torpedoes in the Med...Nonniey wrote:As earlier poster pointed out Warspite was an extremely lucky ship, lucky enough, I'd say to knock out the weakly protected fire control system on the Bismark, which would have doomed the Bismark.
Re: Bismarck v Warspite
Heh - good point.
You could also say the same about ole' Bis: quick Hood kill, pounds PoW, dodging her stalkers and the entire home fleet, "little brother" U-boat pops up for a peek and sees a perfectly lined up shot at Ark Royal but has no torpedoes, leading to at the last minute taking a hit from a small aerial torpedo from an Ark Royal Swordfish in the ONE place it could soft-kill her (him?) - after the fortuitous discovery from a FUBAR'd attack on a Brit ship that the Brit magnetic detonators were faulty, allowing a return and re-arm with contact detonators just in time for a single attack at dusk.
But, then, I suspect (!) most of you knew this.
Only God could write that scenario.
You could also say the same about ole' Bis: quick Hood kill, pounds PoW, dodging her stalkers and the entire home fleet, "little brother" U-boat pops up for a peek and sees a perfectly lined up shot at Ark Royal but has no torpedoes, leading to at the last minute taking a hit from a small aerial torpedo from an Ark Royal Swordfish in the ONE place it could soft-kill her (him?) - after the fortuitous discovery from a FUBAR'd attack on a Brit ship that the Brit magnetic detonators were faulty, allowing a return and re-arm with contact detonators just in time for a single attack at dusk.
But, then, I suspect (!) most of you knew this.
Only God could write that scenario.
Re: Bismarck v Warspite
Ha well put!Dresden wrote:
Only God could write that scenario.
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Re: Bismarck v Warspite
Slightly off topic:
I have repeatedly wondered why the British Government did not keep Warspite, with her unrivaled storied history, as a museum ship. She certainly was more historically relevant than the Belfast was, North Cape notwithstanding.
(Similarly - with five WW2-era carriers and ten WW2-era battleships serving as museum ships all around the USA, none of them save perhaps the Arizona and Missouri carrying even a quarter of the historical significance of the CV6 Enterprise, I am baffled why the Big E was not saved from the breakers in 1958)
I have repeatedly wondered why the British Government did not keep Warspite, with her unrivaled storied history, as a museum ship. She certainly was more historically relevant than the Belfast was, North Cape notwithstanding.
(Similarly - with five WW2-era carriers and ten WW2-era battleships serving as museum ships all around the USA, none of them save perhaps the Arizona and Missouri carrying even a quarter of the historical significance of the CV6 Enterprise, I am baffled why the Big E was not saved from the breakers in 1958)
Re: Bismarck v Warspite
In the case of Warspite, the answer was money--which was woefully tight in the immediate post war years.
Their shoulders held the sky suspended;
They stood and Earth's foundations stay;
What God abandoned these defended;
And saved the sum of things for pay.