Bismarck Survey

General naval discussions that don't fit within any specific time period or cover several issues.
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BB56
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Bismarck Survey

Post by BB56 »

I am currently working on a 20 page essay on the Bismarck for a college writing class and must have 150 people take a survey as a requirement for the paper. It is only 17 questions and a couple of minutes long. If anybody could help me out on getting to the 150 mark it would be greatly appreciated. If you're interested, just click on the link below and it will take you to the survey.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/vie ... TlBQMmc6MQ

Thanks!
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Ersatz Yorck
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Re: Bismarck Survey

Post by Ersatz Yorck »

That was fun. I guess the answers you will get on this forum might not be representative of the general public though.

I think a couple of the questions were a bit too much of two extremes in the alternatives. For example:

What kind of threat did Bismarck pose to shipping lanes in the Atlantic? *

Massive danger to England's convoy system
It was of little concern

I would say the answer was somewhere in between, but now I had to chose between the two extremes, neither of which really fits my perception. The same with:

What effect did the sinking of the Bismarck have on German naval strategy? *

Completely eliminated the threat of surface raiders in the Atlantic
Very little, the German Navy had units to replace Bismarck


The last question is a bit hard:

If Germany had built a larger surface fleet, would it have changed the outcome of the war? *

Yes, the added strain of more surface raiders would have overwhelmed Britain
No, Germany's surface navy was ineffective and unable to pose much of a threat


It doesn't say how much larger. Answering b would imply that the Germans were so inept that even if they had a navy 4 times the size of Britains, it would still have made no difference.

Just some suggestions, I do not mean to criticize. It was fun to answer and good luck with your project!
lwd
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Re: Bismarck Survey

Post by lwd »

I tried to, however some of the questions didn't have a correct answer as far as I'm concerned. I note that you also seemed to ignore the IJN and carriers.
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RF
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Re: Bismarck Survey

Post by RF »

Without wishing to be rude or unduly negative I would comment that some of the survey questions are both ignorant and irritating.

As a Britisher born in England my nationality in law is British. There is no legally defined English nationality.

At the start of WW2 the RN and US Navy were supposed to be of equal size, as per the agreed Washington treaties.

As for who sank the most ships in the early WW2 - well the Germans and then Italians lost a lot of ships when their countries entered the war due to capture by the British and French. Indeed the first shipping loss on 3 September 1939 was German.

Asking if a larger surface fleet on the part of the Germans would have affected the outcome of the war is a conjectural issue that covers a vast area of discussion on this website. Such a vague and open ended question I think is rather shallow an approach for a survey such as this.

Surface raiders did not end with Rheinubung. Commerce raiding by regular KM warships continued in Arctic Russian waters until 1944, while the last of the hilfskreuzer remained on operations until October 1943.
''Give me a Ping and one Ping only'' - Sean Connery.
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