This presumes that the primary damage control teams had not been severely decimated by the shelling or trapped below by fires and shell damage to companionways.If Tovey had had to turn for home and had no ships capable of sinking the ship, the DC teams would have kept her in good enough shape to salvage.
How important was sinking in final battle?
Moderator: Bill Jurens
Re: How important was sinking in final battle?
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.
Re: How important was sinking in final battle?
Oh, cursed after-thought that won't go away....
If Tovey had sailed off with Bismarck afloat, then I've seen no convincing argument that
Bismarck and it's crew would have avoided the same fate of HMAS Sydney (II)
and her crew (ok, no decades-long mystery and there likely would be a few survivors).
Maybe yes, maybe no. But DC doesn't always succeed.
I doubt a Uboat could provide any meaningful support other than saving a few souls. Fewer than the British actually saved I would think. And the British would certainly attempt to pounce on any surface rescue attempt setting out from French ports.
back to lurking...
If Tovey had sailed off with Bismarck afloat, then I've seen no convincing argument that
Bismarck and it's crew would have avoided the same fate of HMAS Sydney (II)
and her crew (ok, no decades-long mystery and there likely would be a few survivors).
Maybe yes, maybe no. But DC doesn't always succeed.
I doubt a Uboat could provide any meaningful support other than saving a few souls. Fewer than the British actually saved I would think. And the British would certainly attempt to pounce on any surface rescue attempt setting out from French ports.
back to lurking...
Re: How important was sinking in final battle?
No it's not. Bismarck was sinking. The Germans would have tried to keep her afloat as long as it looked possible to save her but once the end was obvious they would have abandoned ship most likely under orders.Vic Dale wrote:The point is; German sailors would not give up their ship until ordered to do so.
Sorry that just wasn't in the cardsIf Tovey had had to turn for home and had no ships capable of sinking the ship, the DC teams would have kept her in good enough shape to salvage.
Not when they are in the shape Bismarck's were. They contain important communications stations as well as most of the navigational stations. And then there's the problem that all the holes represent when you start getting progressive flooding.Upper works are superficial if the guns are shot.
That's on the nature of if cows could fly. She was sinking. She was also unable to steer a consistent course in the desired direction even before the final battle began. What salvage vessels could they have gotten to her before she took even more damage. What kind of air cover could they provide out that far.... if salvage vessels could be got round her and kept safe under air protection she could have been saved.
Certainly their was. Bismarck was a wreck and a sinking one at that.Certainly there was nothing about the condition of the ship herself to say this was impossible.
Re: How important was sinking in final battle?
I figure the loss of the funnel would have had a severe impact on the boilers. And one has to wonder where the list and the added draft came from if there was no water in the citadel. And if the boilers are down, where would the power for the pumps come from?
And, though I hate to repeat myself, Seydlitz was sinking. If that was the pinnacle of German damage control, it can be taken for granted that Bismarck was on her way down, too.
And, though I hate to repeat myself, Seydlitz was sinking. If that was the pinnacle of German damage control, it can be taken for granted that Bismarck was on her way down, too.
Re: How important was sinking in final battle?
The FAA had 15 Swordfish circling the final action, who were just waiting to deliver the coup de grace, and Tovey could have ordered Sheffield and Renown to have closed in and finished Bismarck as well.
Re: How important was sinking in final battle?
Quite so, although one gets the perception that Tovey wanted the honour of the kill to go to the Home Fleet rather than Force H. Nevertheless, he had adequate resources at his disposal should Bismarck fail to sink before his last ships had to turn homeward.The FAA had 15 Swordfish circling the final action, who were just waiting to deliver the coup de grace, and Tovey could have ordered Sheffield and Renown to have closed in and finished Bismarck as well.
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.
Re: How important was sinking in final battle?
With regard to DC. Anyone who has served in warships will tell you that there is a good measure of self preservsation involved in keeping a ship afloat. The ship is your home and your support against the dangers of the sea and all the while there is the possibility of her remaining afloat she will keep you safe. That may sound a bit romantic, but I have experience of it myself.
Years ago I was at sea in a frigate and there was a bad fire in the tiller flat, which looked like it would spread. I can remember the feeling that everything I knew was about to go up in smoke and with fire at sea, if it cannot be brought under control, all there is is the sea. If you go over the side especially in cold or heavy weather you will likely die and even in the calm you will not last more than few hours. Not a nice prospect.
If you read Ted Briggs' account in "Flagship Hood" there is the moment when he realises that what had been his home and comfort for so long had now turned hostile and would likely kill him if he did not get off. The men of the Bismarck felt no such thing and having received the order to abandon ship where really taken aback when they saw the devastation of the upperworks. Apparently there was no indication that that sort of damage had been incurred below decks.
I can tell you that the prospect of going into the sea in a force 9 Atlantic gale holds no attraction at all, so if there was any chance that the ship could be saved, Bismarck's crew would have taken that option. Even if the situation had become hopeless they would still have carried on desperately trying to save her. Seaman usually have to be burned off their ship, unless she is clearly sinking - then there is the danger of getting carried down with her if she goes fast. Once the scuttling charges had been blown there was no alternative. She would go down and they had to get off.
German ships had some very advanced DC measures. In additiong to the massive subdivision of the ships into watertight compartments using transverse bulkheads, these were further sub divided by watertight longitudinals. Their firefighting capacity was great and Ardexine gas was used to stifle fires by exclusion of oxygen. There were examples of men becoming asphixiated due to seepage of Ardexine gas, but this was due to the gas getting through cable glands and into adjacent compartments. There was also massive pumping capacity and by comparison, a German cruiser had more capacity that a much larger and more modern British carrier. This means that even though absolute watertight integrity may not be possible, due to shell or torpedo damage, reduction of ingress through plugging and shoring would make it more than possible for the pumps to cope and prevent uncontrolled flooding.
Any man in the ship's company can be given a 2lb hammer, plus a bag of bungs and wedges and told to go into a compartment and stop all the holes. Large holes can even be stuffed with bedding. If a 3 foot hole is discovered and with white water rushing through it, wooden beams can be shoved in against the stream end-on. If one beam can be inserted then two can and eventually when there is room for no more beams the ingress will have been reduced by 80 to 90%. It takes little imagination to realise that wedges can now be banged in around the edges thus reducing ingress to a mere trickle. Once the wood is secure in the hole, excess wood can be sawn off and the remaning lengths used again.
With the ship stopped and after shelling has stopped heavy collission mats can be lowered over the side in the vicinity of large holes and they will be held in place by sheer water pressure. These will so reduce ingress that pumping will practically dry the ship. Compartments immediately behind these mats can be entered and more secure forms of sealing and shoring can be investigated.
A small measure of what is possible came when on the 26th, Bismarck a was able to slow and make good repairs to the bow, thus achieving proper trim. A photo showing the ship under aerial attack on the 27th bears visual testimony to her newly acheived trim.
More than 1000 men went into the water that day, so given adequate time they would been easily able to stop the holes and bring the flooding under control.
Vic Dale
Years ago I was at sea in a frigate and there was a bad fire in the tiller flat, which looked like it would spread. I can remember the feeling that everything I knew was about to go up in smoke and with fire at sea, if it cannot be brought under control, all there is is the sea. If you go over the side especially in cold or heavy weather you will likely die and even in the calm you will not last more than few hours. Not a nice prospect.
If you read Ted Briggs' account in "Flagship Hood" there is the moment when he realises that what had been his home and comfort for so long had now turned hostile and would likely kill him if he did not get off. The men of the Bismarck felt no such thing and having received the order to abandon ship where really taken aback when they saw the devastation of the upperworks. Apparently there was no indication that that sort of damage had been incurred below decks.
I can tell you that the prospect of going into the sea in a force 9 Atlantic gale holds no attraction at all, so if there was any chance that the ship could be saved, Bismarck's crew would have taken that option. Even if the situation had become hopeless they would still have carried on desperately trying to save her. Seaman usually have to be burned off their ship, unless she is clearly sinking - then there is the danger of getting carried down with her if she goes fast. Once the scuttling charges had been blown there was no alternative. She would go down and they had to get off.
German ships had some very advanced DC measures. In additiong to the massive subdivision of the ships into watertight compartments using transverse bulkheads, these were further sub divided by watertight longitudinals. Their firefighting capacity was great and Ardexine gas was used to stifle fires by exclusion of oxygen. There were examples of men becoming asphixiated due to seepage of Ardexine gas, but this was due to the gas getting through cable glands and into adjacent compartments. There was also massive pumping capacity and by comparison, a German cruiser had more capacity that a much larger and more modern British carrier. This means that even though absolute watertight integrity may not be possible, due to shell or torpedo damage, reduction of ingress through plugging and shoring would make it more than possible for the pumps to cope and prevent uncontrolled flooding.
Any man in the ship's company can be given a 2lb hammer, plus a bag of bungs and wedges and told to go into a compartment and stop all the holes. Large holes can even be stuffed with bedding. If a 3 foot hole is discovered and with white water rushing through it, wooden beams can be shoved in against the stream end-on. If one beam can be inserted then two can and eventually when there is room for no more beams the ingress will have been reduced by 80 to 90%. It takes little imagination to realise that wedges can now be banged in around the edges thus reducing ingress to a mere trickle. Once the wood is secure in the hole, excess wood can be sawn off and the remaning lengths used again.
With the ship stopped and after shelling has stopped heavy collission mats can be lowered over the side in the vicinity of large holes and they will be held in place by sheer water pressure. These will so reduce ingress that pumping will practically dry the ship. Compartments immediately behind these mats can be entered and more secure forms of sealing and shoring can be investigated.
A small measure of what is possible came when on the 26th, Bismarck a was able to slow and make good repairs to the bow, thus achieving proper trim. A photo showing the ship under aerial attack on the 27th bears visual testimony to her newly acheived trim.
More than 1000 men went into the water that day, so given adequate time they would been easily able to stop the holes and bring the flooding under control.
Vic Dale
Re: How important was sinking in final battle?
Vic,
Thank you for the nice explanation of how damage control is supposed to work. I'm sure there are people here who can benefit from such an explanation and it was well done. I don't happen to believe that a ship that has been shot full of holes can be made good again by damage control alone.
You have pointed out a grainy photo that you think shows Bismarck was no longer down by the bow. I don't agree that photo shows anything one way or the other, and I see no reason to believe Bismarck was not down by the bow immediately prior to the final engagement.
I suspect the longitudinal bulkhead was not invented by the German navy. I know it was in use elsewhere. There were even debates about whether they were always appropriate in some locations.
With respect to using a gas to starve a fire of oxygen, that has been tried and eventually rejected by many navies over the years since WWII, except for specific isolated cases. The US uses such a gas in it's M1 tank. It generally only works for a short period of time and the fire starts again when oxygen is restored. To permanently douse a fire you have to cool the source. In addition, the gas is very dangerous to the crew of a ship. It can be released by damage or accident when you don't want it to be.
I don't have any reason to believe German damage control was better or worse than anyone else's. We know their ships were more difficult to sink by gunfire than those of other navies because they devoted more displacement to that. Whether that was a good choice is open to debate.
You seem to believe that Bismarck was unsinkable by means available to the British on the day of her loss, I feel she was in fact sinking and was beyond the capacity of her crew's damage control efforts before she was scuttled. That is my opinion and you are obviously entitled to a different one. As someone else has pointed out, they had other means available if she hadn't sunk when she did. As someone has said in the past, the object of the exercise was achieved.
Thank you for the nice explanation of how damage control is supposed to work. I'm sure there are people here who can benefit from such an explanation and it was well done. I don't happen to believe that a ship that has been shot full of holes can be made good again by damage control alone.
You have pointed out a grainy photo that you think shows Bismarck was no longer down by the bow. I don't agree that photo shows anything one way or the other, and I see no reason to believe Bismarck was not down by the bow immediately prior to the final engagement.
I suspect the longitudinal bulkhead was not invented by the German navy. I know it was in use elsewhere. There were even debates about whether they were always appropriate in some locations.
With respect to using a gas to starve a fire of oxygen, that has been tried and eventually rejected by many navies over the years since WWII, except for specific isolated cases. The US uses such a gas in it's M1 tank. It generally only works for a short period of time and the fire starts again when oxygen is restored. To permanently douse a fire you have to cool the source. In addition, the gas is very dangerous to the crew of a ship. It can be released by damage or accident when you don't want it to be.
I don't have any reason to believe German damage control was better or worse than anyone else's. We know their ships were more difficult to sink by gunfire than those of other navies because they devoted more displacement to that. Whether that was a good choice is open to debate.
You seem to believe that Bismarck was unsinkable by means available to the British on the day of her loss, I feel she was in fact sinking and was beyond the capacity of her crew's damage control efforts before she was scuttled. That is my opinion and you are obviously entitled to a different one. As someone else has pointed out, they had other means available if she hadn't sunk when she did. As someone has said in the past, the object of the exercise was achieved.
Re: How important was sinking in final battle?
But how well you do it depends a lot on training. You haven't supplied any information about how they were trained so we simply cannot assume that they were trained like US, British, or Japanese crews.Vic Dale wrote:With regard to DC. Anyone who has served in warships will tell you that there is a good measure of self preservsation involved in keeping a ship afloat.
And this has implications for her water tightness. Especially after fires and shocks which tend to loosen up seals.... There were examples of men becoming asphixiated due to seepage of Ardexine gas, but this was due to the gas getting through cable glands and into adjacent compartments.
The pumps were not coping. Bismarck was settling. The lower she got the greater the internal water pressures and the more holes were open to the sea. As for plugging. That represents it's own hazards. If you do it from the inside you open more parts of the ship to flooding. Doing it from the outside in the gale you mentioned is not going to be trivial especially with all the damage incurred.There was also massive pumping capacity and by comparison, a German cruiser had more capacity that a much larger and more modern British carrier. This means that even though absolute watertight integrity may not be possible, due to shell or torpedo damage, reduction of ingress through plugging and shoring would make it more than possible for the pumps to cope and prevent uncontrolled flooding.
If you can get to the right spot. Her upper works were a mess there were fires and debris all over the place. Also if you are stopped the ship is going wallowing in the swells and shipping even more water. A lot of this will be on one side further decreasing stability.With the ship stopped and after shelling has stopped heavy collission mats can be lowered over the side in the vicinity of large holes and they will be held in place by sheer water pressure.
She was in a lot better shape then and only had one hole to patch. There is little relevance.A small measure of what is possible came when on the 26th, Bismarck a was able to slow and make good repairs to the bow, thus achieving proper trim. A photo showing the ship under aerial attack on the 27th bears visual testimony to her newly acheived trim.
But how many of them could you have gotten where they were needed and was adequate time available. It's also not clear that it would have been easy in any case.More than 1000 men went into the water that day, so given adequate time they would been easily able to stop the holes and bring the flooding under control.
Re: How important was sinking in final battle?
Indeed one of the problems with longitudinal bulkheads is they restrict water to only one side of the ship. If most of the water starts coming in one side then in order to equalize you have to counter flood to preserve stability which means you are taking in even more water and lowering your free board even more. When you have as many holes above the waterline as Bismarck had lowering the water line is not a good thing.Bgile wrote:....
I suspect the longitudinal bulkhead was not invented by the German navy. I know it was in use elsewhere. There were even debates about whether they were always appropriate in some locations.
....
Re: How important was sinking in final battle?
If Bismarck was already sinking, then why bother to fire scuttling charges?
Vic Dale
Vic Dale
Re: How important was sinking in final battle?
Some reasons were given earlier in this thread. To make sure is another.Vic Dale wrote:If Bismarck was already sinking, then why bother to fire scuttling charges?
Vic Dale
Re: How important was sinking in final battle?
There is also the matter of letting the ship sink and the crew abandon ship in a timely enough fashion that the enemy is still on the scene to pick up survivors as opposed to sailing off and letting the crew fend for themselves when the ship finally goes down hours later.
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.
Re: How important was sinking in final battle?
To hasten the sinking, so more of the crew survive the brutal cannonade and can be picked up.Vic Dale wrote:If Bismarck was already sinking, then why bother to fire scuttling charges?
Vic Dale
Re: How important was sinking in final battle?
I fail to see how scuttling the ship could make it safer for her crew.
If due to scuttling, the ship could be seen going down sufficiently fast by the enemy to cause them to realise she was done and cease fire, the danger to the crew would be exacerbated, not lessened. Apart from that Lt Junack says he was ordered to scuttle to prevent boarding and this was the sole reason for having the charges anyway.
The sea conditions were such that no ship could come alongside without risking severe damage to herself and possibly foundering with or before the German ship. The only way boarding could be effected would be by boat and given the way the sea was crashing aboard Bismarck, the boats would likely be destroyed before many men could get aboard. The ship's own DC teams would cope far better than meager British resources.
No salvage operation from the British side would have worked under the conditions which prevailed that morning, so there was no danger of the enemy taking the ship as a prize. Scuttling has to mean that the flooding had been contained and that the ship would remain afloat for a number of days - as the engineers told other members of the crew she would.
If the Bismarck was sinking at the time the charges were blown, all that scuttling would acheive would be to hasten her end and make it certain that far fewer of her crew would get out than actually did. Scuttling then has to mean that the realisation had dawned on the ship's command that as she could fight no more, it was time for the men to get off. The order to abandon-ship could not be given until it was certain that she would sink and that certainlty had to have been a long way off for the charges to be fired.
Scuttling was not an automatic response to the order to abandon ship, it had to be a concious decision made with full regard to the actual condition of the ship. Notably it was the engineers and not explosive experts or members of the boarding crews designated for the anti commerce work, who held responsibility for scuttling. The engineers would have the best and clearest understanding of the watertight integrity of the ship, so they could judge whether or not it was necessary. It is they who would inform the ship's command of the state of the ship and no one else.
Bismarck was fully functional below decks as per testimony from her crew and as she sank stern first instead of bow first, it has to mean that although damage to the fore-parts of the ship was greater than to those aft, that damage was largely confined to the hull above water.
Any strikes below water would likely have occurred in the early minutes of the battle and as the ranges came down the flatter trajectory of incoming fire would mean that shells which lined up for a strike on the hull below water would have too much water to travel through to penetrate, or at least would have had their power to penetrate severely diminished, if they had not burst on impact as they were designed to do.
Vic Dale
If due to scuttling, the ship could be seen going down sufficiently fast by the enemy to cause them to realise she was done and cease fire, the danger to the crew would be exacerbated, not lessened. Apart from that Lt Junack says he was ordered to scuttle to prevent boarding and this was the sole reason for having the charges anyway.
The sea conditions were such that no ship could come alongside without risking severe damage to herself and possibly foundering with or before the German ship. The only way boarding could be effected would be by boat and given the way the sea was crashing aboard Bismarck, the boats would likely be destroyed before many men could get aboard. The ship's own DC teams would cope far better than meager British resources.
No salvage operation from the British side would have worked under the conditions which prevailed that morning, so there was no danger of the enemy taking the ship as a prize. Scuttling has to mean that the flooding had been contained and that the ship would remain afloat for a number of days - as the engineers told other members of the crew she would.
If the Bismarck was sinking at the time the charges were blown, all that scuttling would acheive would be to hasten her end and make it certain that far fewer of her crew would get out than actually did. Scuttling then has to mean that the realisation had dawned on the ship's command that as she could fight no more, it was time for the men to get off. The order to abandon-ship could not be given until it was certain that she would sink and that certainlty had to have been a long way off for the charges to be fired.
Scuttling was not an automatic response to the order to abandon ship, it had to be a concious decision made with full regard to the actual condition of the ship. Notably it was the engineers and not explosive experts or members of the boarding crews designated for the anti commerce work, who held responsibility for scuttling. The engineers would have the best and clearest understanding of the watertight integrity of the ship, so they could judge whether or not it was necessary. It is they who would inform the ship's command of the state of the ship and no one else.
Bismarck was fully functional below decks as per testimony from her crew and as she sank stern first instead of bow first, it has to mean that although damage to the fore-parts of the ship was greater than to those aft, that damage was largely confined to the hull above water.
Any strikes below water would likely have occurred in the early minutes of the battle and as the ranges came down the flatter trajectory of incoming fire would mean that shells which lined up for a strike on the hull below water would have too much water to travel through to penetrate, or at least would have had their power to penetrate severely diminished, if they had not burst on impact as they were designed to do.
Vic Dale