'Bismarck' escapes into the Atlantic??

I am not a real keen fan of 'What ifs', but have been wondering for some time about the repercussions of a uncontested escape into the Atlantic for this ship.

I am no expert on this, but wonder about re-fueling and re-supply of the battleship, and also it actual capabilities once on her patrol.

Could she have been properly re-supplied and would she have been able to wander the Atlantic sinking ships she just happened to come across?

What was her maximum range at cruising speed, and how many ships would have been available to support her? Would she be able to return to germany without great danger?

Your views?



John.

 

During the time between Denmark straits and a week or two after the sinking of Bismarck the RN captured or sunk all most all the supply ships the Germans had deployed to support her.

 

It would be like the graf spee but with better results.

 

No and no. Pretty much every RN vessel in the Atlantic was turned out to locate and bag the Bismark, with plenty of planes assisting. That dragnet would also have swept up any support vessels that might be out there. Bismarck got lucky agains the Hood & KGV but still took enough damage in that one engagement that she had to dash for port. The Brits could afford to lose any three capital ships versus the Bismarck and still end up ahead of the game, so they were just going to keep coming.
If Bismarck got out without a shot being fired, then assuming it wasn't caught in the middle of the Atlantic and sunk, she would still have had to eventually head to Brest or back through the Denmark Strait in order to get patched up and probably been sunk in the process, maybe made it back to be penned in again.
If you look at the Scharnhorst/Gneisenau sortie (Operation Berlin) the results weren't exactly earth-shaking, and two battlecruisers is a stronger force than one cruiser and one battleship. The big problem is that whenever anything with a decent gun shows up a raider has to run, because a single unlucky hit can slow them up and leave them easy meat for a task force. The twins did for 21 ships between them, the Graf Spee scored 9. So assume the Bismarck manages to bag another dozen ships before going down or into hiding. Not exactly a war-winning effort, or even a very big deal compared to losses in the U-boat war.

 

Well said, single BBs with small escort ship numbers were NOT efficient convoy raiders.

 

Well during the encounter of the HMS Hood and HMS Prince of Wales, Bismarck was accompanied by a Hipper-class Heavy Cruiser (I believe the lead ship of her class). If you're not retarded, you'd know that Hood was lost with minimal damage to Bismarck and her escort. Then for some reason (I believe malfunctions in the engine and low fuel) the escorting Heavy Cruiser had to return to port in France, the Bismarck continuing it's journey to hunt down the Royal Navy.

Soon, obviously, Churchill had a massive battle group formed solely for the destruction of the Bismarck- carriers, battleships and all. The first encounter had little damage to the Bismarck- save the rudder being jammed. So instead of heading back to port, the Bismarck swung around and was now heading out to sea. With nowhere and nothing else to do, Bismarck met her end during the second engagement with the hunting task force.

 

The range and speed of the Bismarck with a full fuel load is listed as:

9,280 nautical miles at 16 knots
8,900 nautical miles at 17 knots
8,525 nautical miles at 19 knots
6,640 nautical miles at 24 knots
4,500 nautical miles at 28 knots


However when the Bismarck departed on its maiden sortie, it was NOT fully fueled!

…on the morning of 18 May 1941 in Gotenhafen, Admiral Lütjens inspected Prinz Eugen's crew. Afterwards, a conference was held on board the Bismarck, where the Admiral briefed the operative plan to the two ships' commanders, Captains Ernst Lindemann and Helmuth Brinkmann. It was decided that if the weather proved favourable, they would not stop in the Korsfjord (today Krossfjord). They would, instead, sail north to refuel from the Weissenburg before cruising into the Denmark Strait between Iceland and Greenland.

At noon, the Bismarck left the berth under the tunes of Muß i' denn played by the fleet band, and then she anchored in Gotenhafen's roadstead to take on supplies and fuel. Operation Rheinübung had begun. While refuelling in the roadstead, one of the fuel-oil hoses broke and Bismarck could not be refuelled to her full capacity. It was nothing significant, although the battleship was loaded with approximately 200 tons less of fuel.

From:

Operation Rheinübung: Bismarck's Atlantic Sortie

This 200 tons under capacity would have to be addressed in a "what if" when computing the Bismarck’s range at cruising speed, for an uncontested breakout into the Atlantic shipping lanes, not battle speeds needed if confronted.

 

Prinz Eugen was the first of the second group of the Hipper class that is sometimes considered a separate class. AFAIK you got the story the wrong way round, the damaged Bismark headed for Brest while the undamaged Prinz Eugen headed for the Atlantic alone but eventually had to turn back because of engine trouble a few days after Bismark was sunk. The German squadron's mission was commerce raiding not to look for a fight with the RN.

A source I have gives Bismark's bunker capacity is 7900 tonns so 200 tonns is not a very significant shortage, BTW Tirpitz is qouted as having 8780 tonns bunker capapacity which is quite a difference for a "sister ship".

 

Clint,


Off on a slight tangent for a moment, but I notice in your link the data for shells fired at 'Bismarck', and the 'estimated' hits,




[SIZE=-1] "Moreover, neither the main belt nor the armour deck were seen to be penetrated during the combat, and in the end it was her own crew who scuttled the ship. During this last engagement 2,876 shells were fired at the Bismarck. They are itemised as follows: [/SIZE]

• [SIZE=-1]380 of 40.6 cm from Rodney
  339 of 35.6 cm from King George V
  527 of 20.3 cm from Norfolk
  254 of 20.3 cm from Dorsetshire
  716 of 15.2 cm from Rodney
  660 of 13.3 cm from King George V [/SIZE]

[SIZE=-1]It will never be known how many of them did actually hit (400, 500, 600, maybe more), but taking into account the short distances in the last phase of the combat, it is assumed that many shells hit." [/SIZE]




This does not gel with my limited knowledge .

At Jutland, I believe the hit ratio was between 1 and 2%. In WW2 it was about 3 or 4%.

The estimate of 400 to 600 hits seems exagerated.



John.

 

Ya gotta remember that near the "end" the Bismarck was just sitting there getting pounded, unable to fight or flee, just a target. The Bismarck was tough, and it may well have been crew scuttling that sent her to the bottom.

The German crew and its fans would love to claim that, but it matters not. The Bismarck was sunk, end of story, end of threat. The only testimony that seem to contradict the scuttling is that it was reported to "roll" before sinking, and that wouldn't happen with a bottom blown out by scuttling charges, and Ballard's finding on the sea bed show the turrets to have "dropped out" of the hull, which also implies a rolling over to put it top down at one point.

Again, it matters not. Who "sank the Bismarck" is of little note.

 

If you goto:

Operation Rheinübung: Bismarck's Atlantic Sortie

And scroll about 2/3 of the way down you will find the place where Prinz Eugen is detached.

Early in the morning of 24 May, Admiral Lütjens had already decided to detach the Prinz Eugen, and at 1420 sent a semaphore signal to Captain Brinkmann:


«Intend to shake stalker as follows: During rain squall, the Bismarck will change course west. Prinz Eugen will maintain course and speed until he is forced to change position or three hours after the departure of Bismarck. Subsequently, is released to take on oil from "Belchen" or "Lothringen". Afterwards, pursue independent cruiser war. Implementation upon cue word, "Hood".»


Just a quick "in my head" calculation puts that missing 200 tons of fuel at a loss of range in the 2.5-3.5% range. Not a great deal, but still signifigant in the overall picture since the refueling ships had been "taken out" when Prinz Eugen went looking for a refuel (I think)

And while they were "sister ships", the Bismarck and the Tirpitz were very different in many respects, but fuel capacity isn't one of them and remember these are metric tons, The Bismarck carried 8,294, and the Tirpitz carried 8,297 (metric tons), not much difference. The difference you are seeing may be that one is listing metric tons and the other one isn't. This site shows the comparisons between the two.

http://www.kbismarck.com/

It is a very good site for the short "life-story" of the Bismarck.

 

What makes you think the Bismarck could expect any better results that the Graf Spee achieved?

 

Clint,

I can see your point about a stopped 'Bismarck' being clobbered with 15" shells, but looking at the Ballard pics of the ship on the bottom, I cannot imagine it taking perhaps 100x 12" and 15" hits.

I have nothing to compare it with of course!

John.

 

Bismarck took no hits from 15" shells or for that matter 12" shells. It did take a lot of hits from 8", 14", and 16" rounds as well as lesser ones.

 

The first encounter resulted in Bismarck taking 3 14" hits from POW. These effectivly mission killed Bismarck as they slowed her and caused a significant loss of fuel as well as rendering some of her on board fuel unreachable. The jammed rudder came later in an attack by Swordfish.

 

It was a bigger better ship,the graf spees captain was too much of a nice guy and this undoubtidly effected combat effectiveness.

The damage bismarck sustained against the hood only affected operational fitness,she was still very much combat ready.

 

Oh, is it time for playground insults already? Well, anyone with three functioning braincells would understand that the 'minimal damage' to the Bismarck's machinery rooms and fuel bunkers basically ended the entire operation right there and then.
With reduced speed and fuel state, a continuation of the cruise would have been a suicide mission. It would also make the necessary return to a friendly coast a very sticky proposition indeed, which in fact ended with the expected outcome - loss with almost all hands.

And in what way was the Graf Spee going to be more effective with someone else in command? Langsdorff sank or captured every merchant vessel he came across. He might have managed to battle his way past the three crusiers (and maybe even sink one or two of them) before either limping into Argentina and handing his ship over, or being hunted down like a dog. Big deal. Again, the RN would happily write off two or three equivalent ships to kill the Graf Spee and free up the much larger forces tied up in chasing it about.

There's a big difference between being ready and able to fight, and being in a state to survive. Against a force of multiple battleships, cruisers, destroyers and a carrier the Bismarck had absolutely zero chance of survival other than running away. Even if she managed to hide temporarily in the open ocean, sighting any merchant vessel big enough to carry a radio wouldn't be a raiding opportunity but more likely a death sentence.

 

Bigger yes, better .... for commerce raiding perhaps not. Spee had a much greater range and got out into the relativly sprasly patrolled Indian and South Atlantic Oceans. Bismark was never going to get out of the North Atlantic and once the Britts started using their old BB as convoy escorts didn't exactly have a free ride. The US escorts were in some ways even more problematic.

 

"Bigger" doesn't make the Bismarck a more effective commerce raider; it just means it's more expensive to operate and maintain, and thus less cost effective in certain roles, such as commerce raiding.

And the Bismarck was "better" than the Graf Spee in what way? She had more powerful guns, but that simply meant more expense; Graf Spee's guns were perfectly adequate to destroy merchant ships. Bismarck had much less range than the Graf Spee and required more oil to achieve that range.

In reality, the Graf Spee was a far better choice for the role of commerce raider than the Bismarck. Even so, had the Germans been really serious about commerce raiding, they would have constructed a class of relatively cheap, very long range light cruisers with a speed of 32 knots or better, and an armament of 6" guns and torpedoes.

As for Graf Spee's commander being a "nice guy" can you give a concrete example of how this prevented him from fulfilling his duties?

The Bismarck being "combat ready" meant nothing as far as effective commerce raiding was concerned. That would be expected of any naval ship.