Between WWI and WWII treaties were put in place to limit the size of military ships to no more than 35,000 tons (battleships basically although it gets fuzzy with some heavy cruisers and battlecruisers). Various nations developed new designs to stay under that limit. Germany just lied. Bismarck, as an example, came in around 41,000 tons. (If you think another 6,000 tons is not a big deal consider that is the weight of three Fletcher class destroyers tacked on.)
Did we know Bismarck was treaty breaking? Can you tell by looking at it (assuming you are expert at ship design)? If not just looking at it weren’t there spies?
I know the Japanese battleship Yamato was built in extreme secrecy to the point of hiding the dry dock she was built in but I do not think the Germans went to such lengths.
Put another way, when did the Allies know that the Bismarck kind of out classed anything they had?
I don’t know if it would have been so apparent especially considering that the Bismarck and its sister ship the Tirpitz were both not fully completed until the war had already begun.
Although considered cutting edge, there were more advanced allied ships coming online at that time. The Missouri Class battleships would have had little problem with the Bismarck in a one-on-one engagement.
They were fine ships, and the Kriegsmarine were capable, but they were no match for the entire Royal Navy.
As I understand it, the 35000-ton limit for individual ships came out of the Washington Naval Conference relatively soon after WW1. Over the years, the focus shifted towards the overall balance of sizes of navies, and not just because of German resentment at the punitive nature of the WW1 settlement. There wasn’t much of an enforcement mechanism, after all, so it must have been seen as a dead letter in general anyway. In any case, one of the first things the Hitler regime did was to walk out of the League of Nations, which was the closest anyone came then to an international legal enforcement mechanism; and the regime likewise denounced the Anglo-German Naval Agreement of 1935shortly after Bismarck was launched, leaving itself free of any international agreements on the matter. In any case, the last shred of any hope that they would stick to international agreements had disappeared when the Munich Agreement was broken a few weeks earlier.
IIRC by the late 30’s only the United States was following the terms of the earlier naval tonnage treaties, everyone else was either claiming empty weight was its full combat weight thus getting several thousand tons of additional weight (Italy) claiming outright false weights for their ships (Germany), or outright ignoring them (Japan). Britain and France had already caught on by 1937 that the new German battleships were being made over the agreed limits and were enlarging their own ships as a result but the United States soldiered on until 1940 as even the Iowa-class Battleships still stuck to the rules of the London Naval Treaty of 1936.
When the Italian cruiser * Gorizia* dry-docked at Gibraltar in 1936 for urgent repairs after an internal explosion British naval constructors were able to observe the hull form and it was clear that the Italians has cheated on declaring her displacement.
I doubt the British knew the details, but by the time the Bismarcks were under construction, the previous class was out. The Scharnhorsts were also well above their stated tonnage, so the UK probably expected the Bismarck to be so as well.
As others have stated, it probably didn’t cause any hand-wringing in Britain. The ~36,000 ton King George V class was a pretty good match for a Bismarck, and there were 5 of them. Also plenty of carriers, older BBs, and cruisers. Note that Bismarck was mission-killed days into her first mission, and destroyed 3 days later. The RN was huge, and everywhere.
If firing at short range (guns at near zero elevation) the upper superstructure and funnels of a normal DD could be hit. But our outrigger DDs don’t need a tall superstructure. And we can run the funnels low and out the side.
Other countries absolutely did know how big Bismarck was; the ship was purpose built as a battleship. It’s just that at that time Germany was openly disregarding the treaty anyway.
Bismarck was slightly more capable that the best British battleship, the King George V class, having longer range with its slightly larger main armament. The encounter between Bismarck and Prinz Eugen versus Hood and Prince of Wales demonstrates was a huge threat Bismarck was in a fair fight. Bismarck was a true monster, the largest surface naval warship ever constructed by a European nation at the time (arguably surpassed,if just barely, later on by HMS Vanguard.) But as has been said, the Royal Navy wasn’t going to give you a fair fight, that were coming with all their friends.
The German surface warfare force was, honestly, a giant waste of time and money.
The Second London Naval Treaty was only signed by Britain, France and the US, and not by Germany or Japan. It restricted capital ships to 35,000 tons, but included an escalator clause.
The US invoked this escalator clause when designing the Iowa class BB.
The Iowa class BB were designed for the following displacement.
45,000 long tons (46,000 t) (Standard)
54,890 long tons (55,770 t) (mean war service)
57,540 long tons (58,460 t) (pre 1980s full load)
This makes the Iowa class the second largest class in the world, only following the Yamamoto class giants.
In WWI the allied naval blockade of Germany really started to hurt them. Hitler was in WWI and was well aware of that.
Further, Hitler planned to invade Great Britain and would need a navy to make it happen. Britain’s huge navy would not be much help scattered around the world. By the time other ships could come to help Germany would have already landed and have been well on its way to conquering GB (in theory).
Of course the British won the Battle of Britain which scotched any notion of a German invasion but prior to that there was no way to predict that is how it would work out so Germany would have to build a credible surface navy.
No match even for the antiquated Swordfish biplane that crippled it with one torpedo so the Germans had to scuttle it hours later.
Note that the Bismark cost 196.8 million Reich-marks to build (in 1936-38) and in its’ single war mission, was at sea for less than 155 hours. Thus a cost of 127,000 Rm per hour (not including supplies, fuel, or salaries).
The Swordfish would have given any modern battleship of that era trouble. The plane’s weaknesses turned out to be virtues in this case. Its slow speed screwed up the gun directors which were built assuming faster planes would be attacking. Also, things like the cloth covering of the biplanes meant explosive shells just passed right through them instead of exploding.
Here is a great rundown of how it all worked. Apparently the Bismarck hit more than you’d think but as mentioned those planes were unusually durable to these weapons.
As for getting hamstrung that was a lucky shot. Apart from that the Bismarck sucked up 2-3 other torpedo hits and wasn’t terribly affected by them (not saying it wasn’t damaged but it was damage it could fairly easily handle and keep going).
For comparison, using today’s dollars, the Titanic cost about $1,500,000/hour to operate over its lifetime (not including salaries and fuel and food and whatnot).
But the Titanic had income expected, which the Bismarck didn’t. On the first (partial) voyage, Titanic passengers paid £35,316 in 1912 (about $90 million today). So a profitable ship. (Especially as I don’t see that any refunds were given after it sank.)