Denmark Strait and RN Articles of War

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paulcadogan
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Re: Denmark Strait and RN Articles of War

Post by paulcadogan »

Tom17 wrote:All,
Is it correct to say that POW's salvo nos. 19, 20 and 21 were fired using the shells loaded in the guns in the turret (4 shells fired in total and not full turret salvoes, 12 shells fired) as I see the timings for the firing are only 20 seconds apart and therefore not of a long enough interval to reload. So why didn't 'Y' turret fire all it's guns in one salvo? Why 2, 1 and 1?
Tom
Hi Tom,

Based on McMullen's report, guns 2 and 3 were out of action - gun 2 had been out from salvo 14 to the end, gun 3 missed salvos 15 to 20. ( So with 1 gun out of action in A-turret, PoW had 7 guns functional when she started her turnaway.)

So, it follows that salvo 19 was fired using guns 1 and 4, salvo 20 was a reload of either 1 or 4. Salvo 21 was from gun 3 - the problem being a shell having been hoisted without cordite charges to fire it - so once they got the charges they could fire.
The following defects occurred in "Y" turret:-

Salvo 11 - No. 3 central ammunition hoist was raised with shell but no cordite; No. 25 interlock having failed to prevent this. The interlock was functioning correctly before the engagement. There has been no opportunity to investigate this. It is also reported that the reason no cordite had been rammed was that the indicator in the cordite handling room did not show that the cage had been raised after the previous ramming stroke. This caused the gun to miss salvoes 15 to 20.

Salvo 12 - Front flashdoors of No. 2 gun loading cage failed to open and cage could not be loaded. Flashdoors on transfer tubes were working correctly and investigation showed that adjustment was required on the vertical rod operating the palm levers which open the gun loading cage doors. To make this adjustment, three-quarter inch thread had to be cut on the rod. This defect was put in hand after the engagement had been broken off and was completed by 1300. It would appear that the operating gear had been strained, possibly by the foreign matter in the flashdoor casing making the doors tight. The doors were free when tried in the course of making the repair. This caused the gun to miss salvo 14 onwards.

Salvo 20 - Owing to the motion of the ship, a shell slid out of the port shell room and fouled the revolving shell ring while the latter was locked to the trunk and the turret was training. The hinge tray was severely buckled, putting the revolving shell ring out of action. The tray was removed, but on testing the ring it was found that No. 3 and 4 hinge trays of the starboard shell room had also been buckled and were fouling the ring. The cause of this is not yet known. The trays were removed and as the action had stopped by this time, No. 4 tray was dressed up and replaced. The ring was out of action until 0825.
Qui invidet minor est - He who envies is the lesser man
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Re: Denmark Strait and RN Articles of War

Post by Antonio Bonomi »

Hello everybody,

@ Paul Cadogan,

here for you the HMS Prince of Wales re-constructed war diary for May 24th, 1941 and the battle of the Denmark strait.

The war diary was re-written on board HMS King George V on June 1941.
Reconstructed war diary : PoW May 24th, 1941 - Remarks

05.05 - Hood resumed guide. Full speed.
05.53 - Opened fire 14 inches on Bismarck
06.05 - Hood hit and sunk. Enemy hits on bridge, boat deck, stb side aft. Ince and Dreyer killed on bridge, casualties elsewhere.
06.11 - Ceased fire 14 inches
06.23 - Formed astern of Norfolk Co 340°
PoW_war_diary_May24_DS_battle.jpg
PoW_war_diary_May24_DS_battle.jpg (37.91 KiB) Viewed 1071 times
No comments.

Bye Antonio :D
In order to honor a soldier, we have to tell the truth about what happened over there. The whole, hard, cold truth. And until we do that, we dishonor her and every soldier who died, who gave their life for their country. ( Courage Under Fire )
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Re: Denmark Strait and RN Articles of War

Post by dunmunro »

Antonio Bonomi wrote:Hello everybody,

@ Paul Cadogan,

here for you the HMS Prince of Wales re-constructed war diary for May 24th, 1941 and the battle of the Denmark strait.

The war diary was re-written on board HMS King George V on June 1941.
Reconstructed war diary : PoW May 24th, 1941 - Remarks

05.05 - Hood resumed guide. Full speed.
05.53 - Opened fire 14 inches on Bismarck
06.05 - Hood hit and sunk. Enemy hits on bridge, boat deck, stb side aft. Ince and Dreyer killed on bridge, casualties elsewhere.
06.11 - Ceased fire 14 inches
06.23 - Formed astern of Norfolk Co 340°
PoW_war_diary_May24_DS_battle.jpg
No comments.

Bye Antonio :D
We can now appreciate Tovey's difficulties regarding the timing of the events.

If the move back the timing of events for 0605 and 0611 by 5 minutes it supports disengagement timing of 0605-0606, just as I've been stating all along.
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Re: Denmark Strait and RN Articles of War

Post by dunmunro »

paulcadogan wrote:
dunmunro wrote:The thing that is puzzling is why A and B turrets did not fire after 0603 when they clearly could have. My guess is that Mcmullen assumed that PoW was going to continue turning to ~060d and so the forward director along with A and B turret were trained round to port when control was passed over to the after director. When PoW turned back to starboard to ~220d at ~0603 the forward turrets were unable to fire before Leach decided to turn away. The jammed Y turret and zero output from the forward turrets could not have encouraged him to continue the action.
Is it stated in the log that she turned back to 220 or is the course on the maps just a meandering line? It seems to vary in the sharpness of the turn from map to map. If you notice the course up to 0600 tends to be straight lines connecting specific times for course changes, but after that they become curvy and therefore less precise...

Besides, Duncan, Leach stated that the local control salvos were fired during the turn not before and by 0605 they had all been fired so I'm afraid the 'S'- shaped maneuver may have been just that - an evasive maneuver while retreating under fire. the only thing to say for sure might be the ship's log.

Antonio...were you able to examine PoW's log?

And one more thing....McMullen mentions nothing about regaining sight of the enemy in either his report or in his interview - probably because he was masked by smoke.
I think it quite possible that Leach got the exact timing of the local control salvos wrong, but IMHO it seems clear that Leach made the turns at ~0601:30 and ~0603 to manoeuvre around the sinking Hood, before withdrawing at ~0605 because of main armament difficulties.

It seems to me that there is a gap in the PoW gunnery report. Alarm starboard! seems to be our best source of info regarding what happened after ~0601:30.
Last edited by dunmunro on Sat Feb 22, 2014 5:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Denmark Strait and RN Articles of War

Post by Antonio Bonomi »

Hello everybody,
dunmunro wrote:
Antonio Bonomi wrote:Hello everybody,

@ Paul Cadogan,

here for you the HMS Prince of Wales re-constructed war diary for May 24th, 1941 and the battle of the Denmark strait.

The war diary was re-written on board HMS King George V on June 1941.
Reconstructed war diary : PoW May 24th, 1941 - Remarks

05.05 - Hood resumed guide. Full speed.
05.53 - Opened fire 14 inches on Bismarck
06.05 - Hood hit and sunk. Enemy hits on bridge, boat deck, stb side aft. Ince and Dreyer killed on bridge, casualties elsewhere.
06.11 - Ceased fire 14 inches
06.23 - Formed astern of Norfolk Co 340°
PoW_war_diary_May24_DS_battle.jpg
No comments.

Bye Antonio :D
We can now appreciate Tovey's difficulties regarding the timing of the events.

If the move back the timing of events for 0605 and 0611 by 5 minutes it supports disengagement timing of 0605-0606, just as I've been stating all along.
... and what about moving back the 06.11 wrong cease fire by the due 8/9 minutes back, ... but the open fire time is correct ... :shock: ... so ... were they drunk ... :?:

The only thing to say about it is that is a shame ... given what they had as correct data and maps, ... Adm Tovey included.

@ Dunmunro,

Duncan just to make it clear, Admiral John Tovey had ALL the documents and precise data available if he wanted to read and use them.
They were all in his hands written and reported into official Royal Navy reports.
He decided to use to write his dispatches RearAdm W.F. Wake-Walker summary, were he wrote 15 sea miles ( Norfolk and Suffolk distance ) and 06.13 ( PoW retreat).
Adm Tovey used that to write his points 17 and 19.


Bye Antonio :D
In order to honor a soldier, we have to tell the truth about what happened over there. The whole, hard, cold truth. And until we do that, we dishonor her and every soldier who died, who gave their life for their country. ( Courage Under Fire )
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Re: Denmark Strait and RN Articles of War

Post by dunmunro »

Antonio Bonomi wrote:Hello everybody,



Duncan just to make it clear, Admiral John Tovey had ALL the documents and precise data available if he wanted to read and use them.
They were all in his hands written and reported into official Royal Navy reports.
He decided to use to write his dispatches RearAdm W.F. Wake-Walker summary, were he wrote 15 sea miles ( Norfolk and Suffolk distance ) and 06.13 ( PoW retreat).
Adm Tovey used that to write his points 17 and 19.

Bye Antonio :D
Antonio, you present us with PoW's war diary with it's timings of events that vary in some respects from other data and then in the same breath you tell us that Tovey had "precise data available"! It seems completely obvious that Tovey had lots of conflicting and unclear data from which he tried to create a correct sequence and timing of events but Tovey wasn't a historian who could leisurely assemble the data and sift through it to create a report - he was a very busy man with a war to fight and inevitably, honest mistakes were made.
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Re: Denmark Strait and RN Articles of War

Post by Antonio Bonomi »

Hello everybody,

@ Dunmunro,

Duncan believe me, ... Adm Tovey, as well as everybody into the Admiralty having worked on the operation knew perfectly ALL the truth in every detail.

The decision was to use ( for Denmark Strait details ) the summary RearAdm W.F. Wake-Walker submitted with associated main events timing.
Captain J.C. Leach in fact provided a narrative report from his side, but avoided to put in there some exact timing details.

From a military chain of command report line stand point that is exactly what was supposed to be done and they did it respecting the RN rules in place.

I do not know if the mistakes were done honestly, but lets stay out of this useless discussion, and underline that in the case they were done intentionally there was surely a very important strategical and propaganda reason on war time to do that.

The reality was that PoW turned 160 degrees to port at 06.01 and 30 seconds disengaging, and the 3 local control salvoes were all fired between 06.03 and 06.04, than PoW ceased fire.

The battle time 06.13 was only a time close to the battle time cease fire ( only German side ) reported on some other war diaries ( 06.12 for Suffolk or 06.14 for Norfolk ) that do correspond only to the Prinz Eugen ceasing the anti-aircraft 105 mm fire to the Sunderland while the Germans had ceased main guns fire at 06.09 already.

Bye Antonio :D
In order to honor a soldier, we have to tell the truth about what happened over there. The whole, hard, cold truth. And until we do that, we dishonor her and every soldier who died, who gave their life for their country. ( Courage Under Fire )
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Re: Denmark Strait and RN Articles of War

Post by dunmunro »

Antonio Bonomi wrote:Hello everybody,

@ Dunmunro,

Duncan believe me, ... Adm Tovey, as well as everybody into the Admiralty having worked on the operation knew perfectly ALL the truth in every detail.

The decision was to use ( for Denmark Strait details ) the summary RearAdm W.F. Wake-Walker submitted with associated main events timing.
Captain J.C. Leach in fact provided a narrative report from his side, but avoided to put in there some exact timing details.

From a military chain of command report line stand point that is exactly what was supposed to be done and they did it respecting the RN rules in place.

I do not know if the mistakes were done honestly, but lets stay out of this useless discussion, and underline that in the case they were done intentionally there was surely a very important strategical and propaganda reason on war time to do that.

The reality was that PoW turned 160 degrees to port at 06.01 and 30 seconds disengaging, and the 3 local control salvoes were all fired between 06.03 and 06.04, than PoW ceased fire.

The battle time 06.13 was only a time close to the battle time cease fire ( only German side ) reported on some other war diaries ( 06.12 for Suffolk or 06.14 for Norfolk ) that do correspond only to the Prinz Eugen ceasing the anti-aircraft 105 mm fire to the Sunderland while the Germans had ceased main guns fire at 06.09 already.

Bye Antonio :D
Despatches were not published until after the war (Oct 14 1947 for Tovey's Bismarck despatch) - so no reason for Tovey to buck up morale by falsifying data. The various inquires into Hood's loss were also highly classified.

PoW gives a cease fire time of 0611, Suffolk 0612 and Norfolk 0614...is it any wonder that Tovey states 0613 in his despatch?

Tovey published 4 despatches for naval operations in 1941 and a 5th for operations in 1941 and 1942 - he was extremely busy during this time frame and not an arm chair historian.
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Re: Denmark Strait and RN Articles of War

Post by Antonio Bonomi »

Hello everybody,

@ Dunmunro,

you wrote :
Dispatches were not published until after the war (Oct 14th, 1947 for Tovey's Bismarck dispatch) - so no reason for Tovey to buck up morale by falsifying data. The various inquires into Hood's loss were also highly classified.

PoW gives a cease fire time of 0611, Suffolk 0612 and Norfolk 0614 ... is it any wonder that Tovey states 0613 in his dispatch?
Duncan, let me try to explain you what I think happened in summary and with the military, political and propaganda logic of July 1941.

There was a defeat in Denmark Strait with Hood loss, but at the end Bismarck was sunk, so a Royal Navy success story to be written.
During the defeat in DS something went wrong but it was NOT the case to proceed with an inquiry and an eventual court martial.
It was decided NOT to proceed in that direction and differently to include the ships and officers involved into the celebration and rewarding.
Into the Admiralty in London everything was clearly understood and properly evaluated, official documents were secreted following procedures.
All official reports mandatorily to be submitted from every ship Captain to unit Commander, C in C Home Fleet, First Sea Lord, Prime Minister and than above for the recognitions mandatorily had to reflect a very clean story.
That is the reason why starting from the Flag Officer commanding the First Cruiser Squadron, so RearAdm W.F. Wake-Walker, the summary was removing all critical data and providing only data that can be used to sustain a clean and very positive story all the way thru.
Adm Tovey had the data on a silver plate served by Wake-Walker, and it was easy for him to submit above him very clean documents that enabled the recognitions to be delivered for all Officers involved.
The dispatches were published after war, but the documents were mandatorily required to submit the recognitions request for October 1941 and must have been signed by all the superiors of the Officers involved.
This is the reason why everything was aligned according to those official needs and signed during July-August 1941 timeframe.

That is how it went, for propaganda and war needs, fully respecting the military Royal Navy procedures.

In the other hand you can imagine in Berlin what Goebbels could have done if in London Leach and Wake-Walker were going to a Court Martial.
Churchill decided wisely, Pound agreed, Tovey was satisfied and Wake-Walker had to write the report accordingly, even providing a time (06.13) for PoW since Leach probably refused to change his written reports.
Than Wake-Walker had to go to the second board of Inquiry with "The Plot" and correct a critical input previously provided : the Diagram B !

After 1972, the majority of the documents have been de-secreted, so now all can be realized the way it went, it is enough to be able to put together the various pieces and spend some time to understand the logic I have explained you here above.

Bye Antonio :D
Last edited by Antonio Bonomi on Sat Feb 22, 2014 8:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.
In order to honor a soldier, we have to tell the truth about what happened over there. The whole, hard, cold truth. And until we do that, we dishonor her and every soldier who died, who gave their life for their country. ( Courage Under Fire )
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Re: Denmark Strait and RN Articles of War

Post by Tom17 »

Thanks Paul,
In your reply you posted:
...So, it follows that salvo 19 was fired using guns 1 and 4, salvo 20 was a reload of either 1 or 4. Salvo 21 was from gun 3 - the problem being a shell having been hoisted without cordite charges to fire it...
Could salvo 20 be from (a cleared) gun 3 and salvo 21 from either gun 1 or 4? Otherwise the 14"/45 MkVII would have a ROF of 3 rounds per minute.
Tom
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Re: Denmark Strait and RN Articles of War

Post by paulcadogan »

Tom17 wrote:In your reply you posted:
...So, it follows that salvo 19 was fired using guns 1 and 4, salvo 20 was a reload of either 1 or 4. Salvo 21 was from gun 3 - the problem being a shell having been hoisted without cordite charges to fire it...
Could salvo 20 be from (a cleared) gun 3 and salvo 21 from either gun 1 or 4? Otherwise the 14"/45 MkVII would have a ROF of 3 rounds per minute.
Tom
Problem is McMullen says the No. 3 gun missed salvos 15 to 20, suggesting it was the one that fired the single shell salvo 21. We don't know the time gap between salvos 19 and 20. We do know that the turret officer made a huge correction to bring the fall of shot from the terribly distant splashes seen in photo NH69731, to the first splash seen between Bismarck and PG in the PG film and the stills posted above by Antonio.

In the PG film, 18 seconds elapse between the fall of salvo 20 and 21. It is quite likely that the gap between 19 and 20 was longer, allowing for significant range correction and giving time for reloading of one of the functional guns.
Antonio Bonomi wrote:Duncan, let me try to explain you what I think happened in summary and with the military, political and propaganda logic of July 1941.

There was a defeat in Denmark Strait with Hood loss, but at the end Bismarck was sunk, so a Royal Navy success story to be written.
During the defeat in DS something went wrong but it was NOT the case to proceed with an inquiry and an eventual court martial.
It was decided NOT to proceed in that direction and differently to include the ships and officers involved into the celebration and rewarding.
Into the Admiralty in London everything was clearly understood and properly evaluated, official documents were secreted following procedures.
All official reports mandatorily to be submitted from every ship Captain to unit Commander, C in C Home Fleet, First Sea Lord, Prime Minister and than above for the recognitions mandatorily had to reflect a very clean story.
That is the reason why starting from the Flag Officer commanding the First Cruiser Squadron, so RearAdm W.F. Wake-Walker, the summary was removing all critical data and providing only data that can be used to sustain a clean and very positive story all the way thru.
Adm Tovey had the data on a silver plate served by Wake-Walker, and it was easy for him to submit above him very clean documents that enabled the recognitions to be delivered for all Officers involved.
The dispatches were published after war, but the documents were mandatorily required to submit the recognitions request for October 1941 and must have been signed by all the superiors of the Officers involved.
This is the reason why everything was aligned according to those official needs and signed during July-August 1941 timeframe.

That is how it went, for propaganda and war needs, fully respecting the military Royal Navy procedures.

In the other hand you can imagine in Berlin what Goebbels could have done if in London Leach and Wake-Walker were going to a Court Martial.
Churchill decided wisely, Pound agreed, Tovey was satisfied and Wake-Walker had to write the report accordingly, even providing a time (06.13) for PoW since Leach probably refused to change his written reports.
Than Wake-Walker had to go to the second board of Inquiry with "The Plot" and correct a critical input previously provided : the Diagram B !
Well Antonio, I must say that your scenario is not impossible, moreso since learning what I have learned about what happened after Jutland with the battlecruiser disasters, terrible shooting on the part of Beatty's BC's, as opposed to the 5th BS and Hood's ships, and the revelation that specifically instructed cordite handling practices played a major role in the disasters. The need to portray the battle as a unequivocal British victory - especially with the Germans also claiming victory as well - made it necessary for that information to be suppressed, so First Sea Lord Jellicoe nixed the report, and Beatty, instead of being censured for his poor handling of his ships and, as a result, losing his command, rose to C-in-C of the Grand Fleet.

Food for thought! :think:
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Re: Denmark Strait and RN Articles of War

Post by RF »

dunmunro wrote: Just as an aside, it seems to me that some people feel that Lutjens should have pursued PoW and attempted to sink her, but now turn their frustrations over this failure onto Leach for failing to play his part in ensuring PoW's destruction.
I think I have consistently followed the belief that Lutjens should have pursued POW and that Leach was right to disengage, for the very reason you give.
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Re: Denmark Strait and RN Articles of War

Post by RF »

Antonio Bonomi wrote: effect.
Just like happened on May 27th, 1941 for Norfolk ( what a destiny ) and Dorsetshire, ... Bismarck was not going to fire at heavy cruisers having to deal with 2 enemy battleships.
Had I been Lutjens I would have opened fire on that morning when Norfolk approached Bismarck and flashed its signal lamp thinking Bismarck was a British ship - at least sinking Norfolk would have been better than anything Bismarck did against Rodney and KGV.
In a situation where you clearly cannot win it should be the duty to do the maximum damage possible - in those circumstances clobbering a heavy cruiser would be more damaging to an enemy than simply scratching a couple of battleships.....
Last edited by RF on Sun Feb 23, 2014 6:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Denmark Strait and RN Articles of War

Post by dunmunro »

Antonio Bonomi wrote:Hello everybody,

@ Dunmunro,

you wrote :
Dispatches were not published until after the war (Oct 14th, 1947 for Tovey's Bismarck dispatch) - so no reason for Tovey to buck up morale by falsifying data. The various inquires into Hood's loss were also highly classified.

PoW gives a cease fire time of 0611, Suffolk 0612 and Norfolk 0614 ... is it any wonder that Tovey states 0613 in his dispatch?
Duncan, let me try to explain you what I think happened in summary and with the military, political and propaganda logic of July 1941.

There was a defeat in Denmark Strait with Hood loss, but at the end Bismarck was sunk, so a Royal Navy success story to be written.
During the defeat in DS something went wrong but it was NOT the case to proceed with an inquiry and an eventual court martial.
It was decided NOT to proceed in that direction and differently to include the ships and officers involved into the celebration and rewarding.
Into the Admiralty in London everything was clearly understood and properly evaluated, official documents were secreted following procedures.
All official reports mandatorily to be submitted from every ship Captain to unit Commander, C in C Home Fleet, First Sea Lord, Prime Minister and than above for the recognitions mandatorily had to reflect a very clean story.
That is the reason why starting from the Flag Officer commanding the First Cruiser Squadron, so RearAdm W.F. Wake-Walker, the summary was removing all critical data and providing only data that can be used to sustain a clean and very positive story all the way thru.
Adm Tovey had the data on a silver plate served by Wake-Walker, and it was easy for him to submit above him very clean documents that enabled the recognitions to be delivered for all Officers involved.
The dispatches were published after war, but the documents were mandatorily required to submit the recognitions request for October 1941 and must have been signed by all the superiors of the Officers involved.
This is the reason why everything was aligned according to those official needs and signed during July-August 1941 timeframe.

That is how it went, for propaganda and war needs, fully respecting the military Royal Navy procedures.

In the other hand you can imagine in Berlin what Goebbels could have done if in London Leach and Wake-Walker were going to a Court Martial.
Churchill decided wisely, Pound agreed, Tovey was satisfied and Wake-Walker had to write the report accordingly, even providing a time (06.13) for PoW since Leach probably refused to change his written reports.
Than Wake-Walker had to go to the second board of Inquiry with "The Plot" and correct a critical input previously provided : the Diagram B !

After 1972, the majority of the documents have been de-secreted, so now all can be realized the way it went, it is enough to be able to put together the various pieces and spend some time to understand the logic I have explained you here above.

Bye Antonio :D
"During the defeat in DS something went wrong but it was NOT the case to proceed with an inquiry and an eventual court martial."

So what went wrong:
W-W lost touch with Bismarck in the early hours of May 24
Holland detached his destroyers
PoW's radars systems failed; symptomatic of a brand new ship with only a partially worked up crew
An elderly unmodernized battlecruiser blew up with a magazine hit.
W-W's cruisers were positioned to shadow Bismarck and didn't have time to join the battle.

None of these things were court-martial offences.

You might think that Tovey tried to cover something up, but the reality is that he could only work with the reports submitted to him, and those reports were contradictory. To prove a case against Tovey you would need to go through his personal files and/or those of his subordinates and superiors and find a "smoking gun" that confirms that he falsified his reports.
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Re: Denmark Strait and RN Articles of War

Post by RF »

Alberto Virtuani wrote:
3) If you loose your ship in the RN, you are always Court Martialled (to justify the lost) but do you really think he could have been condemned for doing his duty and showing heroism ? :negative: He would have got a "well deserved" medal for the action.
This is a new one on me. A lot of RN ships were lost in WW2, including Leach's own ship the POW. I haven't heard of automatic Court Martials following dramatic losses, even where commanders survive.

In my opinion, the one case where a Court Martial hearing would have been justified would have been into the loss of HMAS Sydney. There was an inquiry, not a Court Martial, in which the Court refused to criticise Captain Burnett. This was for the perfectly justifiable reason that he wasn't alive to give evidence and explain himself. But the circumstances of the loss of HMASSydney should have caused a more rigorous investigation of why a suspicous ship was closed to such short range - with the guns trained off target...
5) I'm not one that thinks Lutjens should have followed PoW because of his orders (see above). British should stop BS, BS should just sink....convoys, not battleships.
I think Marschall would have taken a different view, being a commander not constrained to the generality of orders.... that is why I think Marschall should have been Fleet Commander for Rheinubung.
Last edited by RF on Sun Feb 23, 2014 7:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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