Bismarck radar and radio

[E.Ludwig]

Hello Wadinga; Sorry am rather late, was completely living in the Middle Ages writing a note book about the castle of our village.

Thanks for your posting. Of course Krancke could give his radar experience to BS but the Scheer had no R600 on board and therefore no t the latest VHF radio ranges obtainable.

Yes i have the date when R600 were available as stated by the METOX development engineer, I think I mentioned the date already in an early posting. Beginning 1942 Merox began to receive the first assembly kits and in August the lirst batch of I think 20 R600 were delivered to the U-boat center in France.
Losing your prototype is always an inormous set back, in any undustry.

I hope you got your two volumes alright. Wishing you good reading, au revoir, erik

[Tiornu]

Darn, why did you say that? Now I want to hear all about the castle.

[E.Ludwig]

Hello Tiornu, thanks for calling. Yes castle, a mediaval one, not one on a ship hi. Built 1360, not far from where Ilive. By the way a roman route passss about 100 meters from my house. Is this what interests you? Au revoir erik

[RF]

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Thanks for your posting. Of course Krancke could give his radar experience to BS but the Scheer had no R600 on board and therefore no t the latest VHF radio ranges obtainable.

Surely the Germans would have specialist officers to deal with this rather than rely on commanding officers.
Krancke was trained as a torpedo specialist and presumably would not have been given as great a grounding in the field of radio technology.

[E.Ludwig]

Hallo RF thanks for your interest. Even without reading the Scheer-book I think you will agree that officers destined to command the big ships must have received understanding of the the tactical use of radar and be aware of its pitfalls. The Captain of Prinz Eugen in his report warns against the dangers of letting the radar switched on during long periods.
Moreover, the big ships, during their contacts with RN ships, should try to check wether the RN also had radar. It seems that already the Graf Spee had such orders. Anyway Krancke did his best to find to find this information during his raid. He came to the conclusion that the RN ships he encountered did not have radar. And he was right. He could transmit to his colleages the tactics he used. That is all.

Doyou have information about th Graf Spee's orders. I read it somewhere but forgot to make a note. Au revoir, Erik

[E.Ludwig]

Sorry RF, forgot the R600. Indeed, Krancke had no R600 knwledge. But lots of tactical knowledge. He also showed that one could determine the presence of enemy radar also without having an R600.

Bismarck R600 experience was lost except in case B-Dienst could report by radio some details back to B-Dienst Paris or Germeny.

Further R600 experience must have reached the archives since the Prinz Eugen and other ships could have used it during the Norway and Baltic operations.
An interesting point for further research. Erik

[RF]

Hallo RF thanks for your interest. Even without reading the Scheer-book I think you will agree that officers destined to command the big ships must have received understanding of the the tactical use of radar and be aware of its pitfalls. The Captain of Prinz Eugen in his report warns against the dangers of letting the radar switched on during long periods.

I think that Brinckmann did this particulary as he was a great believer in radio silence, he believed that any radio transmission could give away the position of his ship to radio direction finders.

Remember what the initials ''radar'' stand for-radio direction and ranging. Senior officers in that day won't draw a distinction between radio messages and radio wave echo ranging.

After parting with Bismarck Brinckmann absolutely forbade use of PE's radio. I think he also suspected that the German enigma codes had been compromised (he was right, but not in the way he suspected).

[RF]

Do you have information about the Graf Spee's orders. I read it somewhere but forgot to make a note. Au revoir, Erik

I'm not aware that radar featured much with Graf Spee, Rasenack for example seemed only to consider the Seetakt to be relevant for gunnery ranging.
Of course Harwood didn't have radar and given the excellent visibility on the day of the battle radar wouldn't have been needed anyway.

Matters might be very different if Graf Spee had tried to break out from Montevideo at night and if the British ships did have radar.

[wadinga]

Erik, RF and all,

I just discovered I have the Brennecke book "Pocket Battleship" on my own shelves, but a cursory run through reveals little specific on radar useage. There are examples of using the Seetakt to track merchant ship prey at night, and an intriguing example of confused ID, in thinking an iceberg was a Nelson class during the run for home. I haven't found anything yet in this English translation about detecting/not detecting British radar.

It mentions "quartz" spares being delivered by u-boat in early 1941 prior to the run for home.

It seems to me that Krancke would have valuable general knowledge of use and reliability of the Seetakt/EM II/FuMo system under operational conditions, which could be added to that from Operation Berlin. However I am still hazy about how much could be detected at sea from British radar transmissions using ordinary general purpose receivers, even against the comparatively low frequency systems like 279, 79 & 281. So Erik can you explain more on "He also showed that one could determine the presence of enemy radar also without having an R600. " His conclusion was apparently that there was no British radar at sea, but how can you say that because you detected no transmissions there were none?

As far as I can make out Brennecke's book on Bismarck has not been translated into English! Does anyone know otherwise? Amazes me that some of the contentious, poorly researched stuff we have seen written lately gets into print and yet a book on Bismarck, written relatively soon after the war, by a German officer who researched with witnesses doesn't get printed in English to reach a world readership.

Brinckmann goes on about an imaginary British long range passive sonar even better (apparently) than his GHG in his War Diary. He imagines and speculates about a dedicated device to pick up radar transmissions, although we now know only Bismarck had the one and only prototype R600, and this suggests it was so secret even Brinckmann didn't know it even existed. His comments on radio/radar silence were surely written after consultation with Henning von Schultz, his B-Dienst officer who expressed himself so appalled when they heard Lutjens' long transmission, knowing Bismarck was in the clear.

Langsdorff would undoubtedly have valued Seetakt if he was groping his way home through snowstorms and British patrols in the Denmark Strait, but he never got the chance.

All the best
wadinga

[Tiornu]

I won't divert the discussion into a castle topic, but I do love castles. I am a writer, and I often use fantasy medieval settings.
There are no medieval castles in Missouri! And Claudius never sent his men quite this far west....

[E.Ludwig]

Hallo Sean, yes I know RDF, used it prewar.

Only introduced Brinkmann to show to RF there wer ongoing discussions about radar.

The main point in my answer to RF is that in May 1941 Krancke was the only captain in the GN who had first hand real time experience of using radar during an encounter with an RN ship. Of course he could not give any info about how to use the R600. That was the domain of B-Dienst who should advise Admiral Bismarck. Erik

[E.Ludwig]

dar Bonjour Wadinga, If yoy send me an e-mail I'll answer by e-mail on the dope about your question. erik ( ludwig.f9lt@wanadoo.fr )

[RF]

I won't divert the discussion into a castle topic, but I do love castles. I am a writer, and I often use fantasy medieval settings.
There are no medieval castles in Missouri! And Claudius never sent his men quite this far west....

Have you been to Britain?

We have lots of castles here.

[RF]

Erik, RF and all,

I
It mentions "quartz" spares being delivered by u-boat in early 1941 prior to the run for home.


All the best
wadinga

I believe this piece of equipment was specifically requested by Scheer's officer responsible for the radar, as the funkmaat transmitting the request had a problem with the encoding letters for quartz so it was some time before the receiving station could make sense of the message.

[RF]

Erik, RF and all,

I just discovered I have the Brennecke book "Pocket Battleship" on my own shelves, but a cursory run through reveals little specific on radar useage. There are examples of using the Seetakt to track merchant ship prey at night, and an intriguing example of confused ID, in thinking an iceberg was a Nelson class during the run for home. I haven't found anything yet in this English translation about detecting/not detecting British radar.


As far as I can make out Brennecke's book on Bismarck has not been translated into English! Does anyone know otherwise? Amazes me that some of the contentious, poorly researched stuff we have seen written lately gets into print and yet a book on Bismarck, written relatively soon after the war, by a German officer who researched with witnesses doesn't get printed in English to reach a world readership.

All the best
wadinga

This is a common problem with books written in Germany before around 1960, they are out of print, cannot be obtained, aroused no outside interest and so remained largely unknown.

I do know that some transcripts were provided for the US Naval Institute Proceedings in the 1950's which might include this book, have you tried looking in this area?