Re: May 23/24 night shadowing and interception approach CS1/BC1
Posted: Mon Dec 26, 2016 12:59 am
Hello Antonio,
Thank you for another rendition of your preferred scenario, again showing Suffolk closing to a little more than 10 miles from Norfolk which several contributors consider is unlkely since the two ships remained invisble to one another.
Interestingly the rendered course for Suffolk in your diagram, based on the spurious and unexplained positions recorded on the Norfolk Strat map and transposed here, show a course between the two positions of 215 degrees. Since nowhere in her own course reports or on her own strat map does Suffolk ever steer south of 220 degrees, we can safely disregard these positions as inaccurate guesswork made in Norfolk at the time. Whatever may have been divined from M/F D/F bearings these positions
could not be.
How inaccurate PoW's position was in absolute terms is largely irrelevant since the charge against Ellis and Wake-Walker summarised in the DoD is that they were close to PoW based around the clearly guesstimated relative positions of the southern end of Plan 13 and the action plot. Since their starting positions on the action plot/plan 13 are based solely on their reported earlier positions plotted onto PoW's chart, and their subsequent end positions derived on their own or estimated courses to match Bismarck's reported course, we can discount the positions shown at 05:41 and 05:37 as incorrect and therefore the DoD and any Polygon of Perfidy is incorrect. If we had the gridded version of the southern end of Plan 13 we would know whether Norfolk was depicted where she reported she was, or where PoW's plotter had guessed she would be. Norfolk radioed 63deg 39min N 31 10W, where does Plan 13 show her?
All the best
wadinga
Thank you for another rendition of your preferred scenario, again showing Suffolk closing to a little more than 10 miles from Norfolk which several contributors consider is unlkely since the two ships remained invisble to one another.
Interestingly the rendered course for Suffolk in your diagram, based on the spurious and unexplained positions recorded on the Norfolk Strat map and transposed here, show a course between the two positions of 215 degrees. Since nowhere in her own course reports or on her own strat map does Suffolk ever steer south of 220 degrees, we can safely disregard these positions as inaccurate guesswork made in Norfolk at the time. Whatever may have been divined from M/F D/F bearings these positions
could not be.
How inaccurate PoW's position was in absolute terms is largely irrelevant since the charge against Ellis and Wake-Walker summarised in the DoD is that they were close to PoW based around the clearly guesstimated relative positions of the southern end of Plan 13 and the action plot. Since their starting positions on the action plot/plan 13 are based solely on their reported earlier positions plotted onto PoW's chart, and their subsequent end positions derived on their own or estimated courses to match Bismarck's reported course, we can discount the positions shown at 05:41 and 05:37 as incorrect and therefore the DoD and any Polygon of Perfidy is incorrect. If we had the gridded version of the southern end of Plan 13 we would know whether Norfolk was depicted where she reported she was, or where PoW's plotter had guessed she would be. Norfolk radioed 63deg 39min N 31 10W, where does Plan 13 show her?
All the best
wadinga