should have the prinz eugen stayed with the bismarck ?

[alecsandros]

Gentlemen,
with regard to the original question 'Should PE stayed with Bismarck' i think the answer is a definite 'NO', if she had she would have been sunk along with Bismarck. Once Bismarck was crippled it was only a matter of time before the RN caught up with her and PE would not be able to do much to help.

:)
Not at all - with Prinz Eugen there to help, it is unlikely the Swordfishes would have managed the crippling hit (PE had good AA defense + some of the torpedo bombers would have been unable to distinguish which ship was the Bismarck.)
So, with hindsight, the answer would be "YES".

In reality, the Prinz was detached due to her fuel situation - she was sent to the mid Atlantic to refuel, and then hopefully continue the raiding mission while Bismarck went to Brest.

[Paul L]

If Bismarck waits until it gives the British the slip after Denmark Straits battle and then chooses to head back to Norway, then the British groups are 1/2 way through their endurance and will not be able to catch up with Bismarck as she heads back the way she came. Lindemann actually requested this after the battle as the best course of action, but Lutjens overruled him.

As to Prince Eugen leaving- I'm of two minds. I read somewhere that Bismarck and Tirpitz were 'escort battleships' and I suspect that meant it was there job to help break out into the Atlantic to let the Cruisers do the surface raiding. On the other hand German warships always did better in battles when they were in groups . By themselves they were usually doomed.

One of the German shooting doctrines- I read about- was the need to engage as many enemy warships as possible...or to leave no enemy warship unengaged in a fight. Why this is so I'm not sure, but thinking of the shooting success at 'Denmark Straits' on the 24th and comparing to May 27th final battle it looks night and day. Are they the same ship? Shooting in the first battle was exceptionally good and in the second battle exceptionally bad. Young inexperience demoralised crew could be an explanation, but I thought of something else.

Against the Hood and POW The two German ships straddle the Hood quickly and can it barely can get a shot off in return, while the reverse is true on the 27th . The British quickly straddle Bismarck and she can barely respond. Maybe having a second shooter -in that case -would have balanced the terms of the engagement long enough to alter the out come. If a second AAA barrage had been present during the air attacks it could have reduced the effectiveness of the FAA attacks, further altering the outcome.

[alecsandros]

If Bismarck waits until it gives the British the slip after Denmark Straits battle and then chooses to head back to Norway, then the British groups are 1/2 way through their endurance and will not be able to catch up with Bismarck as she heads back the way she came. Lindemann actually requested this after the battle as the best course of action, but Lutjens overruled him.

KGV, Victorious and probably the 3 light cruisers most likely had enough fuel until the night of the 25/26th.

Bismarck and Tirpitz 'escort battleships'

It's interesting to name the largest European battleships as "escorts".

Against the Hood and POW The two German ships straddle the Hood quickly and can it barely can get a shot off in return

Hood fired 10 salvos while Bismarck fired 6.

The British quickly straddle Bismarck and she can barely respond.

No, Bismarck straddled the Rodney with her 3rd salvo. Rodney altered course. The Rodney straddled the Bismarck on her 18th salvo.

The reasons for Bismarck not hitting her enemies have been discussed numerous times. First of all, she was doing 7kts and could not steer. This meant only her 4 forward guns could be used against KGV and Rodney for the better part of the battle. Secondly, she had previously received 2x14" and 3xaerial torpedo hits, giving her a nice list. Thirdly, her crew was exhausted after 3 days of chase. Fourthly, because of the reasons previously mentioned, she was a rather easy target for enemy gunners , thus she was hit repeatedly , losing her command positions in 20 minutes.

[sineatimorar]

Some gunnery point maybe helpful in this debate. 1./ When you are on a moving gunnery platform the tightly held the course, the better the accuracy; excessive zig-zaging always affected that when it was directed, god knows what a random, uncontrolled zig-zag would do. 2./ I believe that a list can effectively render the main turrets inoperable. 3./ excessive pitching and roll can reduce accuracy and one way to reduce this, if tactically possible, is to steer a heading that minimizes theses movements is desirable. Iam going to back at what information I have on the level of RPC I do not recall the main directors having 3D control so stablization of platform is required. I will correct my assumption next post if I am in error. Add to that the fatigue of the crew and of course it would seem two different ships existed.
I maybe repeating what has already been posted, but maybe not everyone has had the time to read every post on this forum. God knows ( maybe not) I would probably need another 30 years to catalog and cross check everyone of them.
By and by one post stated on the 24 th May the KGV was to the Northeast of the Battle. Been effectively North of the German squadron and the rest of British navy somewhere to the south, would that not lead to possibility of a pincer like interception? I thought, going on my memory of the battle map, were not all major unit further south?

[tommy303]

I do not recall the main directors having 3D control so stablization of platform is required

The directors on German battleships, which could be used for both main and secondary armament, had gyro stabilization for laying the optics either from the main gyro system or from a built in local gyro. On the whole, gunnery officers preferred the local gyro since there was less lag time, allowing for quicker response. There was a bit higher percentage of error, but this could be quickly corrected by the director layer. Director training using the local gyro was normally manual, but when using the centralized main gyro, RPC was available.

[Dave Saxton]

Against the Hood and POW The two German ships straddle the Hood quickly and can it barely can get a shot off in return, while the reverse is true on the 27th . The British quickly straddle Bismarck and she can barely respond. ...

Bismarck started out shooting well.

At 0849 our forward turrets replied with a partial salvo at Rodney. at this time our after turrets could not be brought to bear on the target. Schneider observed his first three salvoes as successively "short" "straddling" and "over," an extremely promising start...and then they hit(the sea) our third salvo, a straddle, a perfect straddle, port and to starboard amid shipss throwing up great walls of dirty water over the Rodney but without scoring a direct hit....Campbell reported his director out of action put his guns under local control and then gave his attention to how the Rodney steamed through Bismarck's frightful near misses, ahead, astern, and along side without even taking a hit....

Just as good a start as on the 24th against the Hood. The British observed that some shells fell only 20 yards from the Rodney. Rodney was extremely lucky and the Bismarck was unlucky during the first minutes of that battle. On the other hand the British shooting was actually longer to get on.

I remebered wardroom conversations that I had with British naval officers regarding rangefinding techniques. They had high praise for their prismatic instruments while I praised our steroscopic ones. Did we have the better principle? The Rodney seemed to need a long time to find the range.

In fact 9 minutes. Once the British finally found the range, however, the combined volume of fire from four heavy warships completely overwhemed the Bismarck. Most significant were the early unlucky hits against Bismarck's firecontrol equipment, including radars, so that BS was soon forced to rely on only local firecontrol. This explains the performance on the 27th vs the 24th more than anything.

[Paul L]

Bismarck was lost to the British during the 25/26th , so she would have at least a day head start going the other way. After that they just don't have the endurance to catch her.


Why is Bismarck "BS" and Prince Eugen "PG" ???

[sineatimorar]

I am enjoying the many varied opinions been expressed here. The paths of furrther reseach will be interesting whether the researcher agrees with the opinion or not.

Investigating the what and how of a historical event is all ways a challenging experience. Eye witness accounts can vary so much you have to wonder if they have experienced the same event . One personal experience I have had is the investigation of the location of the grave of my Great Great uncle who was killed landing at fisherman's hut Gallipoli. Officialy listed as unknown at present, I belive in the end that after the war only the officially recognized cemeteries where looked into and for some reason the battlefield burial sites mentioned in eye witness accounts where ignored. Why I have no logical answer too, I can only think that they must have found the idea of researching every possible grave site beyond their resources at the time. Only further on the ground look will answer the question.

In 30 years of study into warfare in all forms of endeavour, the one quote I find holds true ( and it escapes me who was the author) went along the lines of "The best layed out plans last only to the first shot is fired" it goes on further but I am not that confident of my memory to recall it accurately.

Well back to gentlemen ( and maybe a lady or two ) lets not stop. Maybe together we can answer or at least a acceptable and hopefully logical possibilities as to some of the weirdest decisions made during this operation

[alecsandros]

Well back to gentlemen ( and maybe a lady or two ) lets not stop. Maybe together we can answer or at least a acceptable and hopefully logical possibilities as to some of the weirdest decisions made during this operation

... The Baron also considered detaching Prinz Eugen as a great mistake - splitting the force, splitting the AA capabilities and leaving each capital ship to survive on it's own.

[Byron Angel]

[quote="sineatimorar"]Some gunnery point maybe helpful in this debate. 1./ When you are on a moving gunnery platform the tightly held the course, the better the accuracy; excessive zig-zaging always affected that when it was directed, god knows what a random, uncontrolled zig-zag would do. 2./ I believe that a list can effectively render the main turrets inoperable. 3./ excessive pitching and roll can reduce accuracy and one way to reduce this, if tactically possible, is to steer a heading that minimizes theses movements is desirable. Iam going to back at what information I have on the level of RPC I do not recall the main directors having 3D control so stablization of platform is required. I will correct my assumption next post if I am in error. Add to that the fatigue of the crew and of course it would seem two different ships existed.


..... Elaborations on the above comments -

[ 1 ] Maintenance of a straight heading was important to good gunnery, certainly in the pre-RPC era. Good helmsmen were highly prized.

[ 2 ] I don't have time to ferret out my WW2 damage control manuals, but IIRC a list of 10+ deg or so would incapacitate heavy turrets and directors; a list of 15+ deg would disable propulsive machinery.

[ 3 ] D K Brown has written some good articles on the relationship between ship movements versus sea state versus ship heading. It's a complicated topic, but suffice it to say that in certain cases ship heading relative to the direction of the wave front would have a very material influence upon ship motion (pitch, roll, yaw and heave).

[ 4 ] Ship motion versus sea state was dependent upon the size of the ship and its stability characteristics. Once a certain sea state threshold had been reached for a given ship, further increases in sea state would dramatically reduce its fighting ability (again drawing from DKB's work).


Byron

[Thorsten Wahl]

Why is Bismarck "BS" and Prince Eugen "PG" ???

wireless call sign

[sineatimorar]

Yes RPC would have taken care of most random movements while in a undamaged state. Once the damage started there was a clear effect on accuracy after the three sighting positions were taken out. 10 degrees is not that large amount really. Reading other posts it makes me realise that detailed information on individual systems is rather scarce in the English language. I heard mentioning of fuel bunker heater, that the bulk of the TPS was made up of Ww/Wh armour plate.Is there a detailed technically on the various system components in English?

[Herr Nilsson]

No

[paul.mercer]

[quote="Paul L
Against the Hood and POW The two German ships straddle the Hood quickly and can it barely can get a shot off in return, while the reverse is true on the 27th . The British quickly straddle Bismarck and she can barely respond. Maybe having a second shooter -in that case -would have balanced the terms of the engagement long enough to alter the out come. If a second AAA barrage had been present during the air attacks it could have reduced the effectiveness of the FAA attacks, further altering the outcome.[/quote]
Agreed the extra AA might have made a difference at the start, but once Bismarck was crippled there is no way PE is going to be able to see off two battleships and a cruiser, The outcome would be that Messrs Ballard and Cameron would be investigating two wrecks instead of one.

[ede144]

It PG would be able to keep BS bow directed to France and both ships managed to escape Tovey, who tried to cache up until the last moment. Lack of fuel and the Luftwaffe prevented this.