BISMARCK armor scheme = BADEN?

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lwd
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Re: BISMARCK armor scheme = BADEN?

Post by lwd »

Karl Heidenreich wrote:Alex:
Consequently, and especialy considering the behavior of several British shells during several battles, my opinion is that the American ones were more deadly against battleships...
Indeed they are: the number of battleships sunk by the USN's superheavy shells outnumber whatever achievements of the RN. :think:
Your ability to invent strawmen is incredible.
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Re: BISMARCK armor scheme = BADEN?

Post by Karl Heidenreich »

Your ability to invent strawmen is incredible.
You must be thankful: mine are the only posts you seem able to answer...
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Re: BISMARCK armor scheme = BADEN?

Post by alecsandros »

Karl Heidenreich wrote: Indeed they are: the number of battleships sunk by the USN's superheavy shells outnumber whatever achievements of the RN. :think:
:D
Hello my friend,

The superheavies performed well against Kirishima and Jean Bart, isn't it correct ?
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Re: BISMARCK armor scheme = BADEN?

Post by Karl Heidenreich »

Alex:

Kirishima was an aging modified battlecruiser that didn't sunk under USS Washington 16" barrage (whilst it an utter wreck after it) mainly because she exposed herself to , it, in the first place by a misjudgement of her skipper.
Jean Bart was, well, Jean Bart and it was a sitting duck.
Neither of them blew up or sunk straight away due to the shelling.
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Re: BISMARCK armor scheme = BADEN?

Post by alecsandros »

Kirishima's armor was to thin to stop the 2700pds shells. My impression is that at least some shells simply cut through her like a knife through hot butter, and either exited on the other side, or exploded very close to the starboard side, thus flooding both sides of the ship at once and, ironicaly, counter-flooding it for a while.

Jean Bart's horizontal armor was only hit by 2 shells. The damage delivered by those shells was nevertheless significant.

The point is the 16" - 2700 shells functioned as they were supposed to... While British shells had a tendency to go off sooner than designed...
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Re: BISMARCK armor scheme = BADEN?

Post by dunmunro »

alecsandros wrote:

The point is the 16" - 2700 shells functioned as they were supposed to... While British shells had a tendency to go off sooner than designed...
I don't think there is much, if any, evidence that RN BB calibre shells tended to prematurely detonate.
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Re: BISMARCK armor scheme = BADEN?

Post by RF »

I haven't seen any evidence for this either, certainly not during the Rodney firing on Bismarck....
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Re: BISMARCK armor scheme = BADEN?

Post by lwd »

Karl Heidenreich wrote: Kirishima was an aging modified battlecruiser that didn't sunk under USS Washington 16" barrage (whilst it an utter wreck after it)
Then why do you think she sunk?
... Neither of them blew up or sunk straight away due to the shelling.
Jean Bart had a 16" round go high order in her secondary magazine. Isn't this exactly what some suspect lead to the loss of Hood. As for Kirishima she sunk less that 2.5 hours after Washington ceased fire.
alecsandros wrote:Kirishima's armor was to thin to stop the 2700pds shells. ...
At the ranges we're talking about Yamato's face plates are about the only armor any battleship carried that will stop them.
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Re: BISMARCK armor scheme = BADEN?

Post by tnemelckram »

Hi All!

Karl, Dave and Djoser have all ably noted in light of my post of the Raeder Trail Testimony that even if the Bismarck designers started with old plans for Baden, Mackensons or Ersatz Yorcks, they certainly would not have ignored 20 years of advancements in armor technology and made only minor changes to those plans. Such changes would have been wholesale, and mostly swallowed the earlier designs by in effect replacing most or all of what was in them. I said that only a fool would not resume something at the point where they had left off before, and likewise, they add that only a fool would be content with only that and ignore developments in the meantime.

But I think that the discussion of the stopping power of the armor schemes and hitting power of the guns and shells of various intervening ship designs misses the point. Despite all of that, the German Bismarck designers still faced the same paradigms that they faced before with Baden:
1. Armor traded off against speed and gun power.
2. AON versus total hull protection.
3. Relative merits and drawbacks of various anti flooding schemes such as more compartments.
They decided to again resolve all of these in favor of having an "unsinkable hull". All of the differences in relative stopping and hitting power of various intervening ships simply reflect different resolutions of these three balancing paradigms. These technical details of the various ships were just sub issues which were taken into account by the Germans in balancing of the above three paradigms where they did.




.
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Re: BISMARCK armor scheme = BADEN?

Post by RF »

To be precise, the armour was traded off against firepower as the Bismarck was about the fastest battleship afloat at the time.

As for 'unsinkable hull'' - now we are back to the Titanic and not just Baden.
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Re: BISMARCK armor scheme = BADEN?

Post by lwd »

dunmunro wrote:
alecsandros wrote:
The point is the 16" - 2700 shells functioned as they were supposed to... While British shells had a tendency to go off sooner than designed...
I don't think there is much, if any, evidence that RN BB calibre shells tended to prematurely detonate.
Early in the war I believe the US also had a bit of problem with corrosin in their fuses as well.
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Re: BISMARCK armor scheme = BADEN?

Post by madmike »

Just a thought here on the Bismarck being a upgraded baden class ship.If this is true,then WHY was Bismarcks plans classified for so long after war.Just a thought
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Re: BISMARCK armor scheme = BADEN?

Post by lwd »

madmike wrote:Just a thought here on the Bismarck being a upgraded baden class ship.If this is true,then WHY was Bismarcks plans classified for so long after war.Just a thought
How long after the war were they classified? By Whom? Beuorcratic inertia is a strong possibility?

By the way the convention in English is to have two spaces after the period that ends a sentence. This is for readablity's sake and is often shortened in recent years to one which is still quite readable. No spaces after the period is less so.
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Re: BISMARCK armor scheme = BADEN?

Post by paul.mercer »

Gentlemen,
Much has been made in these forums on the size,weight & capabilities of Bismarcks armour, I have just finished Ballantynes book in which he stresses the distructiion caused by Rodneys 16". He also says that several of the shells were seen passing straight through Bismarck, would this have been just through the superstructure? I cannot imagine that even at point blank range the sheels would go through the hull - would they?
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Re: BISMARCK armor scheme = BADEN?

Post by Bgile »

paul.mercer wrote:Gentlemen,
Much has been made in these forums on the size,weight & capabilities of Bismarcks armour, I have just finished Ballantynes book in which he stresses the distructiion caused by Rodneys 16". He also says that several of the shells were seen passing straight through Bismarck, would this have been just through the superstructure? I cannot imagine that even at point blank range the sheels would go through the hull - would they?
No, they wouldn't.
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