According to the link I provided earlier the Bismarck probably was scuttled but it also probably didn’t matter. There is little doubt the order to scuttle the ship had been given and some of the work to scuttle the ship may have even been carried out. However, the Bismarck was a doomed ship and even if the Germans didn’t scuttle it the ship was destined for the bottom of the sea. Scuttling just hastened the inevitable.
I had also heard (but don’t remember where) that after the battle was well and truly over (Bismarck had essentially surrendered) that some British ships were ordered to torpedo the Bismarck to finish it off. Anyone know if that was what happened? (Sorry for the hijack)
No, no, no… Doesn’t anyone know anything? It takes five hits to sink a carrier, four for a battleship, three for a submarine or cruiser, and two for a destroyer. A typical battle group, of course, consists of one each of these ships.
Sinking a ship the size of a carrier, with its many redundant watertight compartments, would be a huge waste of effort.
Decapitating it by taking out the island instead, or blowing a few holes in the flight deck, would give you what you want and be much easier to accomplish.
No, one Harpoon missile wouldn’t sink an aircraft carrier. But one Harpoon missile would destroy the island.
Just so you know I wasn’t taking the Hood or its crew to task for anything. Mostly it was just dumb luck that got her so fast. The Bismarck outclassed the Hood by just about any measure (except maybe top speed) but from what I’ve seen even German sailors on the Bismarck were stunned at what happened to the Hood (not least because enemy or not every sailor knows that the next time something like that could happen to them…always a sobering thought). The German sailors had reason to believe they could win this particular battle but nowhere near as quickly or ‘easily’ as they did.
Basically the Hood should have been able to stay in the fight a heck of a lot longer than it did but as with anything if you find the Achille’s Heel things can end quick.
I’d carefully consider the source on that one… I’m not a biographer, but Rickover was basically the father of the modern U.S. submarine service. He’s probably not the most objective person to ask about carriers when he was in love with subs. Presumably every navy dollar spent on carriers was one less for his particular passion.
Actually, I just watched a program where they went and re-found the Bismarck. It was not, as previously suggested, scuttled, but instead took a big beating from the English fleet that caught up with it.
The Hood may have been scheduled for an upgrade, but it was no sister ship to the Warspite. The Warspite was a genuine battleship, built that way from the keel up. The Hood was a battle cruiser, designed to carry a battleship’s heavy weapons without the armor that would slow it down. As an idea, the battle cruiser was not extremely stupid (the concept being to send it out to run down and overwhelm heavy cruisers with its high speed and heavy armament), but in reality it was never used properly by the admirals who kept trying to use it as a battleship because of its large guns. Nearly all the horrible casualties suffered at the battle of Jutland, both British and German, were battlecruisers being stupidly used in line of battle.
After WWI, the Hood was fitted with additional armor, but it was never in a class with a battleship. The particular speed with which it blew up and sunk was terrible and surprising, but it probably had no chance against the Bismarck in any event.
Survivors of the Bismarck and the members of the British Navy carped at each other for years over the issue of the scuttling of the Bismarck, with each wanting to be able to claim that “only they” really sank it. At the end of the battle, as the British Navy fled the scene before a suspected assault by German U-boats (that never materialized), they did fire several torpedoes into the Bismarck, which then sank. When Ballard found and explored the Bismarck, he found a) enough holes to have caused it to sink at some point, regardless b) the entire fantail broken off in a structural failure similar to one suffered by the Prinz Eugen, suggesting that the Bismarck had a serious Achilles heel that might have contributed to the sinking, and c) he found the scuttle valves opened just as the German survivors had always maintained.
High seas can sink one? :eek: I’d be interested to read about that. I was on a friend’s boat in SF Bay one time during Fleet Week, and there was an Aircraft Carrier parked there that dwarfed Angel Island. I couldn’t believe the size of it - I can’t imagine the size of the wave that could topple it…
True, the Tirpitz was sunk by only a few bombs, but they were 12,000lb Tallboys. There were three direct hits plus several near misses. (Siegfried Breyer, Battleships & Battle Cruisers). I doubt even a 100,000 ton super carrier would be much use to anybody after three direct hits from 12,000lb bombs.
The fact that the Bismarck was beaten to a wreck long before sinking suggests that it was badly designed – too much hull protection, not enough weapons or propulsion systems protection. (To claim that the Bismarck was badly designed is considered heresy in some circles. ) Travelling alone she was extremely vulnerable to lucky hits, such as the torpedo hit on her steering that slowed it down enough for the British to catch up. Cruiser gunfire knocked out her centralised fire control (same thing happened to the Scharnhorst), which meant turrets were under local control and her shooting was far less accurate (Norman Friedman, Battleship Design & Development 1905-1945).
i agree with cisco and urban ranger. miscalculate a 4 or 5 hurricane and you could be in serious trouble. a rogue wave or being in the wrong place (the screaming 60’s ) during a good storm could sink a carrier.
a bit easier than using weapons i would think. water with wind behind it can be extremely damaging.
) Travelling alone she was extremely vulnerable to lucky hits, such as the torpedo hit on her steering that slowed it down enough for the British to catch up. Cruiser gunfire knocked out her centralised fire control (same thing happened to the Scharnhorst), which meant turrets were under local control and her shooting was far less accurate (Norman Friedman, Battleship Design & Development 1905-1945).
care to elaborate…never heard this term/reference