Karl Heidenreich wrote:
...
And it is not what Combined Fleet say...
But neither it is what the Bismarck mythology sustain.
For Combined Fleet you must accept that he falls into a very common trap.
In comparing vessels within a certain class you have to apply some sort of filter to judge. By doing so you assume a certain tactical situation and look if or if not a ship lives up to it.
The set-up in the Combined Fleet comparison is the Pacific war in 1944. You want long range, fast BBs with massive heavy and light AA and considerable firepower for supporting landings.
Well – are we surprised that two BBs from the Pacific theatre win the trophy?
On a Battleship standing up and down between Iceland and Spitzbergen waiting for a German raider to venture out you would not have wanted all the light AA clutter your decks for fear of shrapnel and secondary fires by light AA ammunition in case you are hit.
In the Pacific it was life insurance!
Range is a question in the Pacific … it is not an issue for a Mediterranean design.
The same is true for the lifetime of barrels. The Italians bought the massive punch of their main artillery by short lived barrels. Good for a ship that is back at base in three days time. A nightmare in the vastness of the Pacific!
Now to say the Italian rifles were better is wrong! They were better suited for the Mediterranean but they were not a possible solution for the requirements in Pacific warfare!
Planes? Good for a lone raider! Useless for a carrier escort! Now the question if having planes makes a better or a worse battleship is meaningless! It depends on the job!
All or nothing versus gradual … we had that one already – it depends on the job!
Speed? Better the economical speed of a convoy escort or the fast speed of a fleet carrier escort? Which one is better? Again – depends on the job!
Machinery …
All I want to say is: do not do battleship rankings.
They do not mean very much! (I mind to remember seeing one where Scharnhorst outdid Yamato!
)
I think if you really want to compare ships of one class you have mainly two options:
You can go along and judge on the possible outcome of tactical situations that might have been possible. That leaves you with a classic one on one. Like: would USS Texas have been able to stand up even to a Tirpitz long enough for a convoy of fast liners to disperse? Yes or no? If ‘yes’ she was a very good design proving her value well into old (for a BB) age leaving Tirpitz a bit of an underachiever.
Or – the approach I do like better – you look at the tactical situation a ship was designed for. And judge by percentage of achievement.
USS Iowa: a fast Carrier Escort, a landing operations sledgehammer and a long, long lasting multi purpose weapons platform. Yes! Worked very, very well!
Scharnhorst: a dual role: either home water defence or long range raid unit. Did not work out! Undergunned and unreliability problems with the machinery.
Bismarck: … hahaha
– you did not really think I would dare to judge without carefully, carefully thinking this through. I think there is a tarred and feathered smily out somewhere.
So I think one has to say that on Combined Fleet there are most wonderful and well thought through articles about the war. The BB ranking though is … ahm … well … surplus to requirements. But it keeps the community amused since years and it never fails in heating up the blood.
For the Bismarck mythology … did you know that when she went astern very fast and then did half a turn in the longitudinal to get her screws out of the water, that she could get airborne and fly using her bilge keels as wings. That was why her hull had these striking resemblances of a zeppelin!
So she could bear down on Portsmouth like a hawk!
Hang on … her turrets would have fallen out, would they not? Hm … I did not think this through …
Ufo