Bismarck/Tirpitz = most powerfull European battleships

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alecsandros
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Re: Bismarck/Tirpitz = most powerfull European battleships

Post by alecsandros »

lwd wrote: Also note that it becomes vulnerable to penetration once you get to say 25km indeed http://www.navweaps.com/index_nathan/Pe ... France.htm shows an effective penetration out to 26k yards and partial pentration beyond that. That's with the original shell and powder. With the US shell and powder it's penetrating at 30 k yards and partial penetrations are occuring at even longer ranges.
My comment regarded Vanguard vs Tirpitz...
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Re: Bismarck/Tirpitz = most powerfull European battleships

Post by RF »

JtD wrote:
Bismarck lost 50% of her artillery to a single shell hit as well.
This isn't 100% certain. Bruno turret was knocked out by the shell you refer to, but the cause of the failure of Anton turret isn't completely clear, as the final position of the barrels was indicative of power failure.
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Re: Bismarck/Tirpitz = most powerfull European battleships

Post by RF »

alecsandros wrote:
Exactly the point. The same hit from Rodney would have taken out 100% of Richelieu's main battery.
With respect, this can only be conjecture.
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Re: Bismarck/Tirpitz = most powerfull European battleships

Post by phil gollin »

alecsandros wrote:
[1] I do not accept this as a counter-argument to what I have written.
I said the con tower was not able to withstand BB caliber shells. Wether this was a design trait or not is not the point here. The point is that a 380mm shell hiting Vanguard's con at 27km away will kill everyone inside, while a 381mm shell hiting Bismarck's con at the same distance would break or glance off..............

[2] ...........This is not the picture G&D paint about it. ..................

[3] ........... They may have had this impression during the war. Post-war firing trials against live heavy GErman plating and against a model of Tirpitz's citadel changed their perspective.



Re [1] - You are arguing with yourself

Re [2] - that merely demonstrates one of the many faults with G & D's book. The facts are in the Ship's Cover - if G & D cannot read and intrepret them properly that is their problem.

Re [3] - Where did you get that (and why do you think it). The post-war tests didn't materially change their opinion of German plate as they, basically, regarded it as equivalent to British armour.

.
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Re: Bismarck/Tirpitz = most powerfull European battleships

Post by alecsandros »

phil gollin wrote: You are arguing with yourself
phil gollin wrote:
alecsandros wrote: ...........Vanguard .......... It's con tower was not armored against battleship fire,
No.

Vanguard's conning tower was deliberately designed on the all-or nothing protection (the actual conning position had haevy splinter protection.
Interesting. Arguing with myself, heh ? How do you explain then the "NO" appearing in your comment. Isn't it a synonym for "I do not agree" ?
And, if you do not agree, that doesn't put your comment on a disjunctive path with mine... ?
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Re: Bismarck/Tirpitz = most powerfull European battleships

Post by alecsandros »

phil gollin wrote: Re [2] - that merely demonstrates one of the many faults with G & D's book. The facts are in the Ship's Cover - if G & D cannot read and intrepret them properly that is their problem.
What's the Ship's Cover ?
phil gollin wrote: Re [3] - Where did you get that (and why do you think it). The post-war tests didn't materially change their opinion of German plate as they, basically, regarded it as equivalent to British armour.
I "got it" from several debates with members of the forum who have access to much more primary documents than I have.
One of those documents depicts the re-construction of Tirpitz in 1945-1946, in order to test the effects of heavy shell fire (14", 15" and 16") against the German turtle-deck design. (the point being to understand how and why Bismarck resisted for so long under point-blank battleship fire)

During the tests, the German design proved extremely strong, causing the British scientists and engineers to re-evaluate the influence of yaw, double-decking and different hardening for the decks.

Another document, available from Jose's site, presents the content of a conference held in 1943 by Hoyer, German armor specialist. During the conference, Hoyer explains the importance of multi-layer armor and claissifies the AoN system as "primitive".
It's up to each and every one to think about these aspects, and judge them in his own way. Maybe Hoyer was wrong ? Maybe the 1945-1946 British tests included a fatal flaw which contaminated teh end results ? MAYBE. But until we have arguments to support the "maybe"'s, we should give these problems more thought.
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Re: Bismarck/Tirpitz = most powerfull European battleships

Post by Lutscha »

alecsandros wrote:
Lutscha wrote:
Do you base that on what delcyros wrote on navweaps (which is only his opinion)? It was some time ago I looked into Jordan/Dumas but Richard Worth came to the same conclusion.
Who is Delycros ?

The problems of the French armor are documented. I only know about:
- the testimony of a German engineer, describing the slightly poorer quality of the French FHA.
- an analysis of the sulphur and phosphorus impurities present in French FHA, showing them to be higher than average
- the miro-crystaline structure of the French armor was unusualy large. German and British micro-crystals averaged a "5" (I don't remember the scale), while French armor averaged a "9". Larger micro-crystals lead to higher brittleness of the material.

This is what I know. There are probably other evidence available that I don't know about.
What is the source of your argument, that the striking angle was not 33°? Besides it is not the only angle given at over 30°.
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Re: Bismarck/Tirpitz = most powerfull European battleships

Post by Lutscha »

alecsandros wrote:
I "got it" from several debates with members of the forum who have access to much more primary documents than I have.
One of those documents depicts the re-construction of Tirpitz in 1945-1946, in order to test the effects of heavy shell fire (14", 15" and 16") against the German turtle-deck design. (the point being to understand how and why Bismarck resisted for so long under point-blank battleship fire)

During the tests, the German design proved extremely strong, causing the British scientists and engineers to re-evaluate the influence of yaw, double-decking and different hardening for the decks.

Another document, available from Jose's site, presents the content of a conference held in 1943 by Hoyer, German armor specialist. During the conference, Hoyer explains the importance of multi-layer armor and claissifies the AoN system as "primitive".
It's up to each and every one to think about these aspects, and judge them in his own way. Maybe Hoyer was wrong ? Maybe the 1945-1946 British tests included a fatal flaw which contaminated teh end results ? MAYBE. But until we have arguments to support the "maybe"'s, we should give these problems more thought.
The problem I have with these arguments is, that we are never presented with the documents to support these arguments. It is very easy attach these as images since they normally are jpeg documents already. All we have received a rather vague references to some tests or admirality documents.
It should be very easy to support ones arguments in such a way.

So if a spaced array is superiour and if the superheavies were especially prone to fail against such a design I would like to se the relevant documents to back up these theories which should be very easy to provide for someone who has them on his computer.

Since Hoyer is online as well it shouldn't be problematic to copy paste his relevant passages as well.
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Re: Bismarck/Tirpitz = most powerfull European battleships

Post by Dave Saxton »

The interesting thing about the French designs is how much they are influenced by Rodney and Nelson. I'm not talking about the all forward turret arrangement, but rather the armour scheme concept of internal sloped belt, and constricted citadal length to pay for a relatively heavy main armoured deck on the armoured weights budget. The British did not repeat this specific design with KGV and Vanguard, but had progressed beyond it. Indeed the KG5s and Vanguard are more similar to Bismarck and Tirpitz than they are to Rodney in several ways. I don't see Rich as more advanced than KGV or B&T in terms of protection.

Concerning the deck protection scheme of the French designs; they are not that weight efficient other than in their limited protected length, which buys little protection for almost 50% of the hulls length. Placing a 40mm splinter deck inside the main armour does little in terms of effective thickness. Had it been placed outside the main armour it at least could have done something in terms of energy consumption, and yaw. It was probably not quite thick enough to effect de-capping. It calculates out to about 155mm effective but the weight cost is 190mm+ worth. Factor in the fairly well accepted factor of questionable armour quality and it's not too difficult to account for the JB penetrations.

At a ~25* AoF the 16"/45 with superheavy has about 124mm deck penetration of single plate (no account taken of the penetrability degradation from de-capping and so forth) according to the deMarre based forumlas. However, the De-Marre based formulas overstate oblique penetration -see Thorstens post 7 here:

viewtopic.php?f=36&t=3163&start=0

Even at ~30 Aof, with a reduction in striking V to less than 1500F/s BTW, the penetration will not be much more than 1300-150mm of quality single plate armour. Questionable armour quality seems the most plausible explaination for the JB penetrations.

The Krupp engineers used both deMarre based models and other penetration models. Like the USN they realized the error inherrent in deMarre. Gercke's models took into account the typical behavior of the armour and scaling by utilizing a constant for both types of armour with the shell in question. His methodology could also accurately caluculate the effective thickness of a well engineered two plate system. B&T had comparable effective deck thickness to KGV and Iowa.

German Wh performed slightly better or nominally equal to British deck armour in post war British tests with capped 15" APC. Against uncapped shells Wh was noticably superior to NCA. This matches Krupp findings that it requires more penetration energy for uncapped shells to penetrate homogenous armour with tensile strength greater than 80kg/mm2.
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Re: Bismarck/Tirpitz = most powerfull European battleships

Post by Dave Saxton »

lwd wrote:It may or may not have done so. It almost assuredly would not have detonated in the "con". On the otherhand a hit on Bismarck's at that range may also have taken out the crew inside due to spalling. And that's only for the for con. Also note that it becomes vulnerable to penetration once you get to say 25km indeed http://www.navweaps.com/index_nathan/Pe ... France.htm shows an effective penetration out to 26k yards and partial pentration beyond that. That's with the original shell and powder. With the US shell and powder it's penetrating at 30 k yards and partial penetrations are occuring at even longer ranges.
Are you taking into account the compound striking obliquity due to the shape?
Entering a night sea battle is an awesome business.The enveloping darkness, hiding the enemy's.. seems a living thing, malignant and oppressive.Swishing water at the bow and stern mark an inexorable advance toward an unknown destiny.
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Re: Bismarck/Tirpitz = most powerfull European battleships

Post by alecsandros »

Lutscha wrote: [
What is the source of your argument, that the striking angle was not 33°? Besides it is not the only angle given at over 30°.
a) Absence of evidence of a 8* list by the bow
b) The probable distance Massachussets was firing from (20-22km), corresponding to an angle of fall of 24-25*.
c) the drawings in G&D showing a 25* angle made by the trajectory of the shell as it passes through the 2 armor decks
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Re: Bismarck/Tirpitz = most powerfull European battleships

Post by alecsandros »

Lutscha wrote:
So if a spaced array is superiour and if the superheavies were especially prone to fail against such a design I would like to se the relevant documents to back up these theories which should be very easy to provide for someone who has them on his computer.
Such categoric statements can not be supported by the evidence I've seen so far. The properties of AoN and space array are very different, and, what further complicates things, is that within each "type" of armor, there were several sub-types, with significantly different properties (Littorio and Bismarck were both space-arrayed designs, but the way the weight and thickness was distributed varied very much. Hence, resistance to certain types of shells under certain conditions was very different)
IMO, space array was good only if the execution (the building process) was very good. Faults in a space-array system are much more dangerous than in a AoN system. Only provided top-quality can be mantained throughout the building process, is such a system more effective than a more simpler AoN one.

What you can look for are as much primary documents as possible.
Hoyer shouldn't be read in "cut's and paste's", but alltogether, as a single coherent presentation. The file is available here:

https://www.kbismarck.com/hoyer-warship-armor.html

IF time is an issue, you can read pages 9 and 10 for direct reference to the topic we are pursuing right now (where Hoyer compares Nelson, KGV and Bismarck).

Cheers,
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Re: Bismarck/Tirpitz = most powerfull European battleships

Post by Lutscha »

alecsandros wrote:
Lutscha wrote: [
What is the source of your argument, that the striking angle was not 33°? Besides it is not the only angle given at over 30°.
a) Absence of evidence of a 8* list by the bow
b) The probable distance Massachussets was firing from (20-22km), corresponding to an angle of fall of 24-25*.
c) the drawings in G&D showing a 25* angle made by the trajectory of the shell as it passes through the 2 armor decks
But why have we three hits with an angle of fall between 31-35°?
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Re: Bismarck/Tirpitz = most powerfull European battleships

Post by phil gollin »

alecsandros wrote:
[A] What's the Ship's Cover ? .............

.........During the tests, the German design proved extremely strong, causing the British scientists and engineers to re-evaluate the influence of yaw, double-decking and different hardening for the decks. ...........

[C] .......... Maybe the 1945-1946 British tests included a fatal flaw which contaminated teh end results ? ........



Re "A" - The Ships Cover is the main design reference document - various volumes are held at the NMM's Brass Foundry site. The one for Vanguard is particularly detailed and "D & G" completely misinterpreted various aspects of it.

Re. "B" - I do not know (and do not believe that) - the British yaw tests started during WW2.

Re "C" - Any idea what you are talking about ? (You are aware I hope that the main penetration formula used from the 50's until fluid dynamics became practicable was based on this post-war testing.

-------------------------

As a general note, the US formula that keeps being quoted here was a USN Empirical formula which was revealed as a great secret to the British in WW2. They took one look at it and dismissed it as it is only applicable to particular "families" of armour/shell designs. Different "families would give different results. It is a crude approximation, suitable for general ideas, NOT some sort of wonder formula.

Oh, and remember, not all guns are "new" and have "new gun" velocities (in fact strictly speaking none will have except by great chance) and ships move in a seaway changing the angles a small amount. Don't get hooked on fighting war-games, remember "real life".

.
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Re: Bismarck/Tirpitz = most powerfull European battleships

Post by Lutscha »

alecsandros wrote:
Lutscha wrote:
So if a spaced array is superiour and if the superheavies were especially prone to fail against such a design I would like to se the relevant documents to back up these theories which should be very easy to provide for someone who has them on his computer.
Such categoric statements can not be supported by the evidence I've seen so far.
Same for me here but still thats what I have seen in the lasts months here and no direct sources were provided. And I do think it is possible to provide the relevant passages one uses for a line of argument. Especially if it completely contradicts what has been written until know (BS' deck armour being much more resilent and American shells being decapped easily by it). I don't think that is much to ask especially if you have the documents ready to be posted/attached.

I don't want to see vague references to some test results I want to see them myself.
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