Bismarck was a mid battleship

Why the battleship Bismarck was only ok (and that’s ok) #battleship #bismarck #ww2 #history #navy #royalnavy #ww2history #ww2memes #worldofwarships #warthunder #warship #militaryhistory #worldwar2

[tscream]

I love how, when people compare the Bismarck to American battleships, it's always the Iowas they compare them to. As if the North Carolinas and South Dakotas didn't exist.

[DistortedHaze]

A few British Biplanes meant to conduct recon: “let’s test those anti-AA measure, boys!”
*disables rudder*

[arcanegojira]

Bismarck wasn't famous for its specs but for its act of causing shock and fear to the largest navy of that time.

[Joseph_Ryan]

If I remember correctly the Bismarck was considered a massive threat because of how much damage the ship could do to allied supply convoys keeping Britain in the war.

[Olipakerranoiva]

Sachen and Sleswig-Hostein were tecnically battleships but I understand why you wouldnt count them since they were Pre-Dreadnouhgts

[dutchthespitfire]

Bismarck was a good battleship. It had good speed, powerfull armament and actually pretty good AA.
But, the problem with Bismarck was it’s design flaws, she was built on ww1 doctrine and the armour layout was pretty outdated, she had triple propellors and her fire control system tended to break down due to the blast of the forward guns.

Many of these issues were fixed on the sister ship Tirpitz which never really saw combat but withstood around 26 aerial attacks

[aaronpaul]

USS Iowa was laid down in June 1940, Bismark was comissioned in August 1940. Sorry they arent close. British admit that they were gonna struggle against that armor and her guns were larger than the King Goerge Class but had one less 8 guns vs 9 on the king george. Plus the king georges had enormous teething issues. While therr werent enough bismarks to challege the royal navy, there was enormous fear as to her raiding potential.

I think its stilly to call the bismark a world beating wunderwaffle. But she was very solidly anobe "mid" when launched.

[Boatguy-ip]

The main threat from German surface ships which the British found out after river plate was the targeting systems and range finders which is why they raised one off Graf spee apart from that there is little difference between it and other 14-15 inch gun battleships

[Agrippa]

And just like that the internet exploded with Bismarck fanboys

[filipbatim]

I think youre a damn good ship if your enemy makes a song about you

[seanbaines]

What made Bismarck really dangerous to the British at the time was she was one of the few big Fast Battleships involved in the war in the spring of 1941. She could outrun or outgun most of the ships the Brits had at that point. The 3 battlecruisers could catch her, but of the 3, only Hood was thought to stand much of a chance in a one on one fight. Renown and Repulse had too few guns and too little armour. The two new battleships they had yet out of five coming, King George V and Prince of Wales, were a knot or two slower, but otherwise stacked up not too badly on paper. They were arguably better armoured and armed, although it wasn't known until real combat how problematic that 14 inch turret design was. But Prince of Wales was still working up. Using her was a risk. And getting KGV into an engagement with Bismarck was going to be a challenge, given that latter's slightly greater speed, and the logistical difficulty of getting any particular ship to intercept her in the vastness of the Atlantic Ocean. The Americans weren't openly in a shooting war yet, and their new North Carolina and South Dakota classes, which would have been a handful for the Bismarck if they could catch her with 2 knots inferior speed, weren't ready yet anyway. The few that were built by then were still working up, I believe. The French Richelieus would also have been interesting had they been brought up to operational readiness, but the French had been knocked out of the war a year earlier. So in the spring of 1941, the ships that were fast enough to chase or engage Bismarck at speed and strong and well armed enough to take her on singly were few and far between. The Bismarck's own flaws, like those of the KGV class, had not yet been revealed in the heat of real combat. Based on what the British knew at the time, it appeared she could face off against any one of their Capital ships with at least a 50/50 chance of winning if not better in most cases, and could go faster than all but a few. In that sense she was, if not exactly a super-ship, certainly a very major handful for the British in mid 1941.

The key for the British was to corner the Bismarck with superior numbers, and with their forces stretched between home waters and the Mediterranean, (where they had to deal with the Italian Fast battleships, the Littorios, which were arguably just as dangerous), and with no effective help yet from the Americans apart from reconnaissance, that was difficult to do. That's why Scharnhorst and Gneisneau gave them fits earlier in 1941. They didn't want a repeat, especially with something that could likely beat many of the elderly battleships they were using to escort convoys. But they did eventually manage to corner her with superior force, including air power, which the Germans had no answer for.

[Hesopod-wb]

The Bismarck was a good ship caught in a bad situation

[mikedearing]

The pictures I saw of the sunken Bismarck betrayed no hull penetration, hundreds of impact markd, but no holes, Bismarck was beaten by the shell shocking the entire hull, breaking fuel lines and electrical connections throughout the ship, Bismarck was a blazing wreck from stem to stearn, it was arguably skuttled before it could be captured.

[Doncroft]

It's famous because it sank HMS Hood, pride of the Royal Navy, in one incredibly lucky shot.

[strawpie]

All these dudes yapping while never having spoken with a bismarck survivor 1 on 1 is truly delightful ❤

[HaydenLau.]

Sch and Gne were absolutely, positively, fast battleships. Not battlecruisers. The key defining feature of a battlecruiser is a big gun ship that sacrificed armor for speed. The Sch and Gne did not sacrifice armor in any way and is actually better armored than Bismarck.

[PeterKennedy-bh]

Atleast the Bismark and the Yamamoto have the quality of being submarines... such engineering

[gabs-]

I think the main reason it was feared was because the Kriegsmarine was able to sneak it into the Atlantic where America was sending supplies over to Britian

[CarolusRx]

Speaking from a Swedish perspective,

When the Bismarck was under trials in the Baltic, the Swedish navy monitored the day by day progress of the ship.
What was found was a ship that was faster than anything comparable at the time and with a heavier broadside coupled with a fair degree of accuracy.

The Bismarck class back then was assessed to be a ship that was dangerous not because it had all the things. It was dangerous because it was a ship that specifically built for a certain purpose and to do that purpose well.
The Germans were very good at making ships hide in the ocean. Bismarck being what he was, was going to be very well suited for this task.

I think the saving grace for the royal navy was the swedish navy passing on as much technical information as they could, it helped build a picture of what the British were up against and they rightly assessed the threat level posed by the Bismarck.

[misterfister]

Ship is just a tones of steel, until crew gets in.