Inspired by Yamato vs. the Bismark - In My Humble Opinion - Straight Dope Message Board
In the battle, Hood was engaged by both the Bismarck and the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen. The Prinz Eugen hit Hood with at least three salvos and started a major fire. The Bismarck finished Hood off.
Take the Prinz Eugen out of the picture. Who would have won in a showdown between Hood and Bismarck?
Probably Bismarck. Hood was a battlecruiser, not a proper battleship. Fast, pretty, and certainly not a thing you want to be on the wrong end of - but she had relatively thin armor, which gave her a glass jaw. Battlecruisers were meant to chew up smaller ships and outrun anything they couldn’t smash, not slug it out with battleships.
The Hood was also escorted by the Prince of Wales. Which was a full scale state of the art battleship and was badly enough damaged in the battle to have to be extensively repaired in drydock. Did some damage to the Bismarck and, crucially, survived the battle.
Armor wise, the Hood stacks up reasonably well to the Bismarck:
Belt, barbettes: (H)12inch (B) 13inch
Turrets (H) 15inch (B) 14inch
The critical difference was the deck armor: (H) 3inch (B) 4.7inch
Deriding the Hood as a “battlecruiser”, and therefore unarmored, is not accurate, it seems to me, in the case of the Hood. She was almost a “fast” battleship. (As well, if not better, protected than the HMS Dreadnought.)
All WW1 designs were a little thin in the deck armor department. Underwater protection was always an evolving tug of war with growing torpedo warhead, too.
While the two ships have comparable armor, the Bismark was marginally faster (30.1-31.1kts vs. Hood’s 28kts in her WWII configuration) and had significantly longer range on her main guns (38,900yd vs 32,500yd). Bismark could have easily sat out of range and pounded Hood flat.
Well, the longest ranged hits were something around 25k yards, or so (and were considered exceptional at the time). I don’t think even the Bismarck could hit a wriggling target at 34k yards.
If Bismarck “could easily” have sat outside range, why didn’t she?
Range being relative–having a longer max range, combined with Bismark’s rather exceptional fire control party, means a longer effective range as well.
She pretty much killed Hood while they were both maneuvering for ideal range in the actual engagement, I see no reason to believe Hood would have had much of a chance even with Prinz Eugen out of the picture.
Wiki says it was intended to be a surprise attack with an advantage in visibility, which came undone.
So it was more a case of pushing something that had gone wrong from the outset. They knew Hood was pretty old and needed upgrades to be really competitive.
Otara
Bismarck. It took the battleships Rodney and George V and two heavy cruisers to sink her even after she was crippled- and their ordnance was virtually exhausted afterwards.
Fire was opened by the British at 26000 yards. The Germans did not open fire until three minutes later (22000 yards). Doesn’t sound like the Germans were trying to take advantage of whatever range advantage they may have had.
The hit(s) that sank Hood were made at 14500 yards, well within action range by even WW1 standards.
The hits that did significant damage to Hood and Bismarck both struck (relatively) unarmored areas, it seems.
at that range, it wouldn’t have penetrated even a battle cruiser’s main belt. also for long-range shooting, you can imagine the accuracy required. two ships broadsiding each other past 20,000 yards will have to cruise at even keel at less than 16 knots. any faster than that and your accuracy would like be inadequate. the exception would be when you are charging at each other at a combined speed of 60 knots. than by all means fire because distance is rapidly shortening and your fire becomes more accurate as seconds go by.
also, you can’t stand off two battleships coming at you.
scharhorst hit the carrier glorius from a range of 26,000 yards and the glorious was running away with the scharnhorst in hot pursuit. now that’s really accurate shooting.
the warspite exchanged with the guilio cesar on a broadside basis also past 26,000 yards. it hit the guilio cesar near the stern, setting fire to secondary and AA ammunition and threatening the engines (another example of a battleship being nearly killed by fire.) pity warspite cannot close to finish her off. that’s pretty good shooting for a veteran of jutland.
It seems to me that the Germans were using their weather advantage to close range for reasons not entirely clear to me–perhaps they were more concerned with their ability to damage HMS Prince of Wales at longer ranges than they were with attempting to damage/destroy HMS Hood?
I think the tactics would be different in a one vs. one.
The wiki article on the Battle of Denmark Strait mentions that the Germans held the wind gauge. This meant that gun-smoke and sea-spray blew back into the British spotter gear. It may have lead to their poorer shooting, I dunno for sure. I think probably a little.
I think they were closing range for the exact same reason the Hood was, Bismark was much more vulnerable to the type of high plunging shots characteristic of long range gunnery. Much better to get into a close fight where most of the shells are hitting the belt rather than the thin deck. Both Holland and Lindemann seemed to be very aware of their deck vulnerability.
At some point, you’d expect that with Bismark vs. Hood (as opposed to the actual 2v2), Bismark would be able to use her range to score plunging shots more reliably.
I wonder how much of the closing in the actual battle was driven by the fact that the 14" guns on HMS Prince of Wales were near parity with Bismark’s guns for range. Charging into belt-to-belt slugging matches is a much sounder tactic when you don’t have a range advantage to play with.
One thing to remember is that neither side really knew what the other was capable of. The Germans had some sort of reports on the capabilities of both the Hood and Prince of Wales. But who knows how reliable those were, or even more importantly how reliable the Germans thought they were. Especially given that Hood had just spent a number of months in dock for “complete” refit. The Germans knew Bismark’s specs… they did not know the specs for either of the British ships. So Lindemann did what was reasonable at the time, react according to what he know about his own ship and close to cover for Bismark’s weakness rather than try to exploit any purported weakness of Hood.
We have the advantage in knowing the ships specs. The commanders at the time didn’t have that luxury.
as with most BB actions, long-range is a luxury. battleships invariable close to less than 10,000 meters of each other and and hope the other guy’s cumulative damage piles up more and faster. they invariably switch to visual sighting instead of radar. it’s more a contest of accuracy, fire control, and damage control. and guns are guns. 14-inchers or 18.1, light armor or thick armor, you fight with what you have.
I think if you are considering just the Hood vs. the Bismarck you have to consider the Hood was designed virtually 20 years before the Bismarck. Hood was an older design that had not incorporated lessons learnt from the battle of Jutland about plunging shots. In particular the weak deck armour was its major flaw in comparison to the Bismarck.
So I think a direct comparison purely on specifcation not taking into account crew skill or just outright luck gives it to the Bismarck.
Of the overal engaugement I think the important thing to remember is on its first engaugement the Bismarck was damaged enough that its first mission was over and it then was going to try and return to a safe port. This makes it a little bit of a Pyrrhic victory to me. Of course if it had made safe return to port and been repaired it would have been a big success overal but of course that never happend and in part that was due to the damage it received in its very first battle.
This isn’t an easy question to answer, both ships had serious design flaws.
Hood was originally designed before Jutland as a weakly armoured battlecruiser. After the battle showed how vulnerable they were, the design was revised to add more armour, but this was done without the full benefit of war experience and was limited by the contraints of the original design and construction that had already been carried out. The royal navy gave serious consideration to scrapping the Hood before she was completed, but in the end decided to complete her as a counter to German battlecruisers under construction. It was always known that Hood’s protection against 15 inch shells was marginal. There are sketches made in 1920 showing how the magazines could be reached by the same shell passing through both the weaker upper belt and the deck armour. Modifications were planned but never carried out.
Bismarck has an inflated reputation, due to a lucky hit on Hood and the difficulty the British warships had in sinking her. Bear in mind, Hood’s magazines were a relatively small target compared to the size of the ship, and hits to magazines were not guaranteed to set them off. Of the numerous British ships to be hit in the magazines during WW2, only Hood exploded. Bismarck’s shooting wasn’t that exceptional, PoW hit Bismarck 3 times before Bismarck hit Hood, despite being forced to use the smaller secondary rangefinder due to spray. Bismarck was very difficult to sink, but was quickly disabled in her final action. The reason for this may be because her armoured deck was mounted low in the ship, leaving important electrical and communications systems unprotected.
The are too many unknowns to determine if either ship had a real advantage, it’s not a complete mismatch like Bismarck vs Yamato. Bismarck had a better chance of inflicting fatal damage on Hood, but Hood may have been less vulnerable to hits outside the citadel. Hood’s shooting may have been less accurate than Bismarck’s, she had an older fire control system than PoW, and it’s not clear how much of a penalty this was. If I had to place a bet I’d put it on Bismarck, but I think luck might play a large part.