Who designed the Bismarck

Discussions about the history of the ship, technical details, etc.

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Karl Heidenreich
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Who designed the Bismarck

Post by Karl Heidenreich »

I know that Blom and Voss built Bismarck but I was wondering about her designers. Were they engineers working by contract to the KM or a civilian nautical firm or B&V associates?
Was there a chief designer or project manager? There someone´s name to be called Bismarck´s father as we know Dreadnought´s dad was Lord Fisher?
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ontheslipway
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Post by ontheslipway »

Actually I think the Dreadnought's father should be Cuniberti...
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Post by Dave Saxton »

By the time of WWII, battleships were so complex that entire teams of naval architects, marine engineers, ballistics experts, metalurgists, welding engineers, electrical engineers, and so forth..and so forth...were required. Sometimes the current head designer in the bureacracy, over sees the process, and puts his stamp on things, as was the case in Italy.

In Germany the Marine Arsenal was officially responsable for the design process particulars. However, a strong influance, was of course, the firm of Krupp. Krupp designed and built the guns and really developed the armour technology and metalurgy. B&V also had a lot of say in matters of construction and design. Ironicaly, the role played by private industry in Germany seems to have been among the greatest. Government/military bureacracy seems to have been more prominant among the other nations, at least in warship design.
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Post by Matthias »

foeth wrote:Actually I think the Dreadnought's father should be Cuniberti...
Thank God someone remembers him...;)
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Karl Heidenreich
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Post by Karl Heidenreich »

Matthias wrote:
foeth wrote:Actually I think the Dreadnought's father should be Cuniberti...
Thank God someone remembers him...;)
Please forgive my ignorance... Can someone be more explicit about him: was he dreadnought father? :think:

Wasn´t Dreadnought British?
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Post by marcelo_malara »

Cuniberti (who was an Italian designer) proposed an all-big-gun battleship in an article in Jane´s around 1900. Many consider him the original creator of the idea, but as I see it, it seems that many around the world were thinking the same.
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Post by Matthias »

Let's say he was the first to spread his ideas around.Expecially considering he called his article "La nave da guerra ideale per la Marina Britannica", the ideal battleship for British Royal Navy.
Without doubt he wasn't the only one in the world who was considering this idea of the monocaliber battleship, but being the first one to propose it clearly...;)
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Post by Karl Heidenreich »

On the issue about who designed Bismarck we can conclude, so, that it was the Marine Arsenal, a bureau of the German Goverment. An it did under the influence of the almighty Krupp and B&V. So it wasn´t like they do at the U.S. Armed Forces nowadays in which several companies offered their different designs and prices?
And about Cuniberti: so he was the man that stated his ideas about the all-big-gun-monocaliber warship that we refer as "battleship / battlecruiser" today?
But Cuniberti didn´t design (or built) such a vessel; it was Great Britain with the Dreadnought, isn´t it? :stubborn:
So he was some sort of warship Da Vinci.
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Post by Matthias »

No, in effect he designed a battleship armed with 305 mm guns, quite similar to the Dreadnought, and he proposed it to the Italian Royal Navy which refused because of economical problems, diffidence and so on...but they allow him to publish his idea on the Jane's in 1903.
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Post by ontheslipway »

The US South Carolina Class was armed with 8 12 inchs guns with superfiring turrets and construction started before HMS Dreadnought, but completed later. As you may know, HMS Dreadnought was completed rather fast (1 year I believe). So more navies played around with the all-big-gun concept. South Carolina was still fitted with tripple expansion engines, so not as modern as Dreadnought as far as propulsion is concerned.
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Post by marcelo_malara »

Sorry but Dreadnought was:
laid 2/10/05
launched 10/2/06
completed 12/06

South Carolina was:
laid 18/12/06
launched 11/7/08
completed 3/10

In fact, South Carlolina´s sister, Michigan, was built a little early:
laid 17/12/06
launched 26/5/08
completed 1/10

Don´t forget the Satsuma:
laid 1/5/05
launched 15/11/06
completed 1910
She was designed to carry a uniform battery of 12 12" guns, but due to unavailability of the barrels, the final design had 4 12" and 12 10".
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Re:

Post by RF »

Dave Saxton wrote:

In Germany the Marine Arsenal was officially responsable for the design process particulars. However, a strong influance, was of course, the firm of Krupp. Krupp designed and built the guns and really developed the armour technology and metalurgy. B&V also had a lot of say in matters of construction and design. Ironicaly, the role played by private industry in Germany seems to have been among the greatest. Government/military bureacracy seems to have been more prominant among the other nations, at least in warship design.
I have seen some time ago that specifications for the Bismarck classe were made by a staff officer by the name of Helmuth Heye, who was also involved in preparing outline plans for the Z Plan and was later captain of the heavy cruiser Hipper.
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Post by RNfanDan »

marcelo_malara wrote:Sorry but Dreadnought was:
laid 2/10/05
launched 10/2/06
completed 12/06
I know this is extremely late in relation to the original post, but Dreadnought was completed in 366 days, a record which, if it no longer stands, was at least held for many, many years. Laid down October 2, 1905, launched February 10, 1906 and completed October 3, 1906. I suppose a lot of translation and adjustments would be in order for the record to be compared today, as the building process and what nowdays means "complete" have each greatly changed since her time.

I'd bet that almost any sizeable modern warship even if smaller than Dreadnought would contain a tenfold greater number of internal systems, making what passes for "completion" a whole different story than it used to. It was a far different world in her day, but the feat is still an amazing one and I'm sure the men that built her had "bragging rights" right up to their deaths.
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Re: Who designed the Bismarck

Post by tommy303 »

While a good deal of military Research and Development in Germany was done by the private sector, by major concerns such as Krupp, Rheinmetall-Borsig, Henschel, Daimler-Benz, and a host of aircraft companies, to meet Army and Luftwaffe specifications, the majority of German warships were the product of the Naval Construction Office. Unlike in the days of the Kaiser, when naval constructors were civil servants specially selected and hired at great expense from the private sector, the Marinekonstruktionsamt, was staffed by serving officers with degrees in engineering. The Naval Construction Office oversaw and produced the designs as required in the specifications issued by the General Naval Office (later renamed the Naval War Directorate or SKL). In the case of the Bismarck and Tirpitz, the design team was headed by Ministerialrat Burkhardt in consultation with Krupps, Siemens, Blohm & Voss (Bismarck) and KM Wihelmshaven (Tirpitz), etc., and the Marinewaffenamt or Arsenal which oversaw specifications for and procurment of naval weaponry. Preiminary and final designs were subject to the approval of the Naval High Command and Grossadmiral Raeder.

RF mentioned Hellmuth Heye in connection with the Z-Plan. Heye's connection with the plan was as an opponent, and in 1938 he concluded a thesis in which he stated that Germany could not win a war with Britain by committing its battleships to a campaign against commerce. Also in opposition were Chief of Fleet Boehm, Admiral Densch (flag officer for Reconnaissance Forces), and naturally Kommodore Doenitz of BdU. They all felt the only proven weapon available to the KM for an anti-commerce war (in the event of hostilities with England) were submarines and particular emphisis should be placed on U-boat construction. War against a continental power such as France woud be decided on land, England was another matter and Heye and the others felt that a conventional surface fleet could not be built up fast enough to directly challenge the RN or reduce England's level of imports to a point where the British would have to sue for peace.

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Re: Who designed the Bismarck

Post by Dave Saxton »

Heye was a member of Raeder's staff and also a member of the committee that was fleshing out the Z-Plan. As Thomas has written, Heye made a draft that criticized the Z-Plan as unfeasable. He was also asked to come up with a set of general specifications for the planned warships. Heye sought the expert consultation of Marine Architect and Naval Oridnance Engineer Dr. Ing. Gunter Ludwig of the Naval Oridnance Office.

Adm Carl Witzell was the head of the Naval Oridnance Office at the time, and over ruled Ludwig's support of Heye in the unfeasability of building a large fleet centered around very large battleships. The German Navy had a Director of Naval Construction, but I don't know who it was during that time frame. Eventually Rudolf Kuhnholt (the inventer of operational radar as head of the NVA) became the DNC and oversaw the designs of the advanced late war U-boats, destroyers...ect..

Kuhnholt held PHD's in physics from Gottingen. Advanced technical degrees were usually required of a director of design teams on the technical level. Refer to Ulrich's post on the vastness and technical complexity of the USS New Jersey blueprints.
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