hypotetical senario

Even better: Tirpitz setting sail towards iceland, making it look like a breakout. Let the homefleet notice that one, they go after the Tirpitz. Tirpitz then goes back to norway and at the same time, bismark breaks free with bearly any capital ship in range to stop her.

 

The RN effort surrounding Bismarck's breakout was not for one ship only. Yes, the British dogged Bismarck, caught her, and killed her, but they also gobbled up about half a dozen other German ships, supply vessels that were intended to service Bismarck and PE. Because so many were eliminated, PE came close to running out of fuel. Throwing more German warships into the mix will increase the dependence on supply ships. Note that the Germans never sent another warship on a high-seas raiding cruiser after the Bismarck sortie. They planned to send one--a diesel-powered pocket battleship--but when the ship suffered damage in a submarine attack, even the diesel plan was shelved.

 

WW1 was really the last hurra for the surface raider, since they could sort of resupply themselves from their victims. But even by that stage sooner rather than later a raider had to have access to dockyards.

 

It's a bit of a shame. I Love to see the WW1 naval fighting in WW2.

 

There's also the factor of ammunition supply. Eventually, the raider's magazines will be emptied.

 

Last Hurra...what about the 9 hilfkreuzers of WWII (last one, Michel, being sunk in 1943) they surely were surface raiders and were months at sea.

 

Given the size of the world's oceans, that's not terribly surprising. However, advances in communications ensured that their careers were eventually ended by the Allies.

 

For the naval-inept amongst us, can you describe the role of Hilfkreuzers, from my very limited German I can translate that roughly as "Help-Cruisers" so I would guess that these were some kind of oceanic resupply vessels, or am I well wide of the mark on this one?

 

They were auxiliary cruisers. Like British AMCs, they were merchant vessels converted for combat. Unlike British AMCs, they were meant for offensive operations, and their conversions were quite elaborate to allow sophisticated weapons systems aboard seemingly harmless ships.
They were generally successful, giving a lot of bang for the buck in raiding Allied sealanes. Their most famous success was probably Kormoran's surprise attack on HMAS Sydney; Kormoran was sunk, but so was the cruiser. The least successful encounter belonged to Stier; she stumbled upon the freighter Stephen Hopkins and sank her, but the Stephen Hopkins crew put up a fight with their single 4in gun and wrecked Steir as well.

 

Which says a lot about both the fortunes of war and the captains and crews of all four ships mentioned.