Naval History Forums

Having gone into a long discussion on shells we have digressed further from the wider picture outlined in my previous post - what is the purpose of the ships, what are the strategic requirements, who is the enemy etc.

I'm somewhat of the opinion, that if Rodney was disabled early on in the battle; Tovey might actually have broken off the attack as alone KGV might not have been enough. . This was not an option because of the KGV fuel situation, and with Churchill in the background wanting action. KGV would have t...

An interesting post as it does remind me of one point which does remain a mystery to me. Immediately prior to the final battle commencing Norfolk arrived on the scene and misidentified Bismarck as a British ship, approaching injudiciously close to Bismarck. But Bismarck held its fire, why??? Had Bis...

Bismarck was simply overwhelmed by the combined volume of fire, unable to maneuver, and greatly affected by the sea state, and I don't see any other likely outcome to the battle. Correct. However the key at the start was that Rodney provided the bulk of the volume of fire with the heaviest shells. ...

I did start a thread some years ago posing this question which at the time received little response. Potentially a major early hit on Rodney could have changed the course of the last battle but not the final result. The key is exactly how much damage could be caused and how that would impact on the ...

It was entirely Mussolini's decision to go to war when he must have known that Italy was unprepared for war. The reality of Italy being unprepared when it has to fight would no doubt be depressing to the dictator who made that decision. My main observation on the action itself is that the Italians a...

It is around 1936 and I have been appointed as Navy Minister by Freedonia. We are planning to build a battleship or class of battleships. As Freedonia has reasonably good relations with all the World's major naval powers, we are able to use technology from any country. We even have a few engineers ...

For such dumb insolence as per the last post produced by a supposed professional historian simply undermines his credibility and reduces any consideration of these issues to the level of a kindergarten playground.

Just grow up or shut up.

Yes, Rodney can steer to try to maintain the desired angle, but battles are fluid and I think it is unlikely that the desired angle will be exactly maintained for the whole action as the KGV moves and Rodney has to counter move to correct. There are many caveats to this, not least as you say Rodney'...

This really depends on the angle, which won't stay fixed as KGV is the faster ship. Also only six guns could fire straight ahead as the rear turret did not superfire over the two in front.

It is unfortunate that Captain Ellis is dead and cannot defend his reputation in court.

I understand how a warship's turrets are armored against Gunfire, but what about the actual barrels of the guns themselves? Are they armored too? What would it take to knock out the barrel of a large caliber naval gun? was this something that ever happened? As an example, at Denmark Strait, Prince ...

Another very interesting thing is that he had 2 times flight training at Flugzeugführerschule (Flight school) Parow and Warnemünde where he was trained as a flight observer. Sounds like training as an artillery spotter for the ship gunnery control. Whether as an artillery officer he would still hav...

There are official de-briefing documents from the interrogation of the Bismarck survivors by naval intelligence which may assist you. I do have some of these documents in PDF however this particular individual is not highlighted. Because no senior officers were captured there was little of practical...

Hi. I was a young 17 year old WEM who spent my action stations behind the stws tubes on Andromeda with an SLR fitted with match stick for repitition firing. I had to grow up very quickly over those few months in 1982 but had the honour of doing it with some wonderful people. I think 17 is very youn...