All,
Can we stop and think before going mad with over-analysis.
Has anyone tried to provide a logic of those speed changes by Suffolk, especially between 05.20 and 05.42 ?
What navigation system exactly do you think is guaranteeing the precision of the tracks and the ticks at 10 or 12 minute intervals? GPS won't be invented for another half century. Primitive radio navigation (Oboe, Gee) over Germany is just being experimented with just to get bombs within 5 miles of a city.
There is no requirement for precise navigation out here several hundred miles from Greenland and we know Suffolk has already accumulated an absolute error of 20 miles plus. It may be that the original, now lost, tactical plots were created with the earliest plotter, an electromechanical "crab" which used gyro and shaft revs as its input, and walked about on a chart, drawing a track. Far more likely was a man with a pencil, drawing approximate radii for turns and a tick every ten minutes or so. Antonio has already identified timing errors of a minute or more in event logging in the Ship's Log, why should these ticks be any different?
Pinchin's plot says it is "traced" and this is either from the missing tactical plots of Norfolk and Suffolk, or less likely created from the Strategical Maps.
Marc has provided Suffolk's logged speed for the relevant period, and when dealing with a 10,000 ton heavy cruiser powered by steam generated in boilers heated by sprayed burning oil, it is unrealistic to imagine speed varying frequently and by significant amounts. If chart analysis indicates this, it is wrong.
For instance, having dissipated a huge chunk of speed doing a tight 360 degree turn at a high entry speed (check some of the videos of modern warships doing this on U-Tube) Suffolk somehow instantaneously accelerates to cover more distance in 05:50 - 06:00 (6cm on my screen, compared with 5cm in 12 minutes before the turn). It is quite likely the 06:00 was logged a little late, giving this longer distance, they were busy watching 1400 men die.
I have sent references explaining the basics of ship's hull hydrodynamics for Antonio's interest before. A full helm high speed turn through 360 degrees might well have dropped Suffolk's speed to half what it was before.
Besides, what are we discussing here?
(of course Ellis autobiography categorically denies this turn
Errr, I believe it only omitted to mention it, in a two page discussion of the Bismarck Chase.
The Prosecution are assigning an order of magnitude more accuracy than the Plot has, and deriving a Conspiracy Theory based on determination to discover corruption via a biased interpretation of its shortcomings.
The "D" lines. What are they? Antonio has showed a thumbnail of a section of the Norfolk Strategical Map with a cross for Suffolk's "position" and claimed this indicates d/fing. He has never explained how one bearing from a D/F would make such a cross, since there is nothing to intersect it, and there is apparently no annotation anywhere on maps or plots that it was a D/F measurement. He has confirmed it is not just a plotted position for Suffolk, based on her radio reports.
At the end, "The Plot" is simply wrong (even for the part concerning JUST the CS1 ships for which surely he had available ALL information, thus leaving just 2 options: 1) intentional modifications of the truth, 2) incompetence of Pinchin.....) and this is the only possible conclusion, that I hope everybody now share in this forum.
All information....All information
............Alberto, you are an ex-mariner. It is YOU should be ashamed to push these unjust alternatives based on distortion of the reality.
There are excuses for those with no sea-time, they know no better. No absolute positions for either ship, but a certainty of a huge navigational bust between them. One bearing only, based on gunflashes at 06:20. This was the best Pinchin could do with what he had, and did all the Enquiry required.
After all, David Mearns found Hood using it.
Antonio, please post the relevant bits of the Strategical maps you have in your possession but have refused up to now, to show.
All the best
wadinga