Bismarck firing procedures at DS

[northcape]

Hello everybody,

northcape wrote (my bold underlined): "* "informed" means having access to relevant information and being able to put that information in right context."

Exactly!

For the time being, only Antonio has been able to study all documents available in the British and German archives and to put them together in the right context (e.g. the tracks, the PG film and the PG photos correctly timed and associated + the ADM 205/10 and the Roskill books/papers interpreted as logical consequences) to reconstruct the battle and to explain the "regrettable aftermath" after the operation (without a Court Martial ONLY because Bismarck had been finally sunk).

Sometimes I think the misinterpretation is willful, but reading this makes it more likely that we are simply dealing with a combination of pathological fanaticism and die-hard foolishness.

Putting information in right context largely means to separate rubbish and irrelevant information from relevant information (relevant to the case). What A&A are doing, is accumulating everything, including tons of useless rubbish (shaky ship tracks, untimed film, untimed propaganda fotos with propganda captions, even artistic drawings(!!)), and other irrelevant information, stack it all together, and as such create a huge pile of rubbish. This is not what is meant by "putting information in context".

[Herr Nilsson]

@Alecsandros
But that are artificial created values from a standardized quality test. They have nothing to do with the real world.

Then the test has been useless ?

Are fuel economy standards useless? Certainly not. But no one of us is driving only 100 km/h and no other speed.

[alecsandros]

Are fuel economy standards useless? Certainly not. But no one of us is driving only 100 km/h and no other speed.

In that case, they have alot to do with the real world, don't you think ?

[Alberto Virtuani]

Hello everybody,

northcape wrote: "This is not what is meant by "putting information in context"."

A direct question: is there any battle reconstruction other than Antonio's that put in context all available info (official tracks, photos, film and official reports + reliable accounts) ? Yes or No.

If yes, of course, provide an example avoiding carefully Tovey false (point 17 and 19 in the) despatches, Pinchin's shameful "Plot" (with its "cut" bearings... ) and 1990 Baron proven wrong map.

As anyone can easily check, the most recent book on Bismarck (2018) is using a "colored copy" of Antonio's 2005 battlemap (http://www.kbismarck.org/forum/viewtopi ... 795#p80577).

Of course, preferring to live in Kennedy's novel, and refusing to accept a reconstruction that is a reference since 2005 and has been ameliorated on this very forumy (being unable to counter it) is a legitimate (albeit naive) choice and entirely someone else problem, not mine or Antonio's.


Bye, Alberto

[Bill Jurens]

We would probably make more progress -- less hardly seems possible -- if we would refrain from the insistence on binary, i.e. "Yes or No" responses.

Alberto: "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?"

Yes or no, please...

(see my point...)

Bill Jurens

[Alberto Virtuani]

@Bill Jurens:
I don't think I have understood what you mean with your question: could you please explain better ?

The binary question is very simple and can be answered of course by anybody, having been provoked by someone who said that we have put together "tons of useless rubbish (shaky ship tracks, untimed film, untimed propaganda fotos with propganda captions, even artistic drawings(!!)), and other irrelevant information" without having an alternative.

Having to choose a battlemap among the ones already published, which one would you choose ?


Bye, Alberto

[Herr Nilsson]

Are fuel economy standards useless? Certainly not. But no one of us is driving only 100 km/h and no other speed.

In that case, they have alot to do with the real world, don't you think ?

It‘s measured in the real world, it makes it possible to compare different cars, but driving a car is much more complex.

Rereading the report the AVKS doesn’t sound very much worried.

[Bill Jurens]

I will elaborate:

If you demand a binary "Yes or No" reply in response, the question can be phrased in such a way that either alternative, at least in some way, pushes forward a given presupposition.

If I ask a man "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?", a "Yes" answer implies that he at least WAS a wife-beater once, and "No" implies that he still is one. In actuality,of course, he may never have beaten his wife (or any other woman) at all. But the insistence on a binary response precludes an answer which in some way does not support the presupposition.

The existence of a complex or debatable question often, almost by definition, precludes the validity of a binary response, even if the topic appears focused on only a small part of the question.

I alluded to this problem earlier in response to some questions by Antonio.

Demanding binary answers is not often the way to move a complex debate forward to a successful conclusion. In fact, it's usually counterproductive.

Hope this helps...

Bill Jurens

[alecsandros]

Demanding binary answers is not often the way to move a complex debate forward to a successful conclusion. In fact, it's usually counterproductive.

Hope this helps...

Bill Jurens

It would have helped IF you wouldn't have passed over the obvious relevant passages from PoW's gunnery report, that explain both Capt. Leach's decision to disengage, taken before being hit by the enemy, and the jamming of turret Y after the disengagement process had begun.

The fact that you did not write anything in reply to the quotes from the original documents can produce the impression that you a) either did not see them , b) did not acknoledge them (in the sense that you do not concur with the validity of the text written in the sense discussed here), c) simply chose to ignore them , pursuing other agendas. I sincerely hope that the reality lies somewhere between option a) and b), or is directly centered upon one of these 2 initial variants.

This is essential to the discussion, because with the decision to disengage taken at ~6:00, and with turret Y jammed before 6:05, any attempt to justify an "engagement" out to 6:13 becomes a fools errand.

[alecsandros]

It‘s measured in the real world, it makes it possible to compare different cars, but driving a car is much more complex.

Yes, and real world gas consumption is almost always larger then the one measured in controlled conditions. Wouldn't you agree ?

[alecsandros]

This is not what is meant by "putting information in context".

It depends who reads the information and if the said information is really information for him or only data.

If somebody gives me a book in Chinese, I can't understand it, it's only data to me. If somebody gives the same book to me , translated into a language that I can understand, then it becomes information.

As you do not have the necessary vocabulary to translate the meaning, the photos/drawings/films (or parts of them) are only data for you.

[Bill Jurens]

Alberto also asked:

"Having to choose a battlemap among the ones already published, which one would you choose ?"

The presupposition here, unstated, is that one map, or one group of maps, is somehow superior to the others. Neglecting the fact that it is more-or-less impossible for anyone to have seen all of the maps 'already published', as there are probably about a thousand of them, there is nothing really to justify a presupposition that one is inherently superior insofar as all are based on some sort of reassembly of partial data, and small isolated 'snippets' of information, just like isolated words cut from a page of type might afterwards be reassembled into a variety of coherent sentences, which may -- or may not, reflect the context in which the words originally existed. In that regard, one is really constructing an anagram, using a few letters from the entire word or phrase, in the hopes of reconstructing the original phrase correctly.

I did do a lot of research into this many years ago for my well-known article on the loss of HMS Hood, and -- noting the often highly discrepant accounts, both in written and visual form -- concluded that anything other than an approximate reconstruction of the Denmark Strait action was probably impossible. I'll stand by that now. So, one is left with varying degrees of approximation, and while one might fell some particular affinity to one reconstruction over another, in reality and in practical terms, there is really little to choose between alternatives.

It's a bit like reading an historical novel. While one might like one writer's reconstruction more than another's, their actual resemblance to reality, if reality can be reconstructed at all, is usually highly problematical.

So, my brief answer to 'which one would you choose' is a bit like my answer to 'Which is the best painting of the Madonna?" Within broad limits, the answer to the latter question lies largely in the eyes of the beholder, and to what extent the presentation satisfies one's internal, and often inexplicable, inherent preferences.

It's worth noting that the amount of WORK one might put into a reconstruction bears no necessary relationship to the value of the reconstruction, in the same way that the amount of work I might put into building a garage attached to my house might be much much greater than that put in by a professional carpenter, but my results my not be better, or even equal. This is embodied in the old English aphorism "Work Smart, not Hard..."

End of (much longer than originally planned) rant...

Bill Jurens

[alecsandros]

Alberto asked a very simple question,
all of you have a simple answer to give: did you produce your own version of the battle map, that reconciliates the available FACTS ? Yes or No.

What you are trying to do is to answer "No, but neither has Antonio". Only that Antonio already did...

[Herr Nilsson]

It‘s measured in the real world, it makes it possible to compare different cars, but driving a car is much more complex.

Yes, and real world gas consumption is almost always larger then the one measured in controlled conditions. Wouldn't you agree ?

Yes.

[Herr Nilsson]

The question is does Antonio‘s battle reconstruction put in context all available info (official tracks, photos, film and official reports + reliable accounts) ? Yes or No.