[pyro-manic]

Originally posted by Nico


Nope: the ammunitions were stored in the turrets, and those things were practically intact when the Bismark sunk, the resistance of those is crazy. You should watch cameron's documentary about the Bismark, it was really pretty interesting

Er, like every other big-gun ship did. You have the quick-use magazine inside the turret or the barbette, and then the main magazine decks below that.

The Hood had notoriously weak deck armour - the navy planned to upgrade it all through the 20s and 30s, but never got round to it because the Hood was the perfect ship to tour the Empire with to say "look, we've got ****ing huge ships, so don't mess with us!"

She was beautiful, though. One of the best-looking warships ever built.

My favourites:

HMS Rodney - 1920s battleship, unusual design. Awesome superstructure shape. Blew the **** out of the Bismarck, along with the King George V and others.


The Richeleau - French SWW-era battleship. Cool aft turret layout.


Kiev - huge Soviet nuclear carrier. God knows if she still works, but mighty impressive nonetheless.

There's a load of others, but I can't find decent pictures:

HMS Iron Duke - dreadnought-era battleship. One of the best warship names ever!
HMS Barham - went pop rather spectacularly in the Mediterranean. Google and you should find the videos

[Shrike]

Originally posted by Kalfireth
I do have to wonder how the Bismark hit the Hoods ammunition stores... one would've thought they'd think

"where shall we put the stuff we know is going to blow up if hit?"

"Well, nowhere near where it could get hit - that's for sure!"

The Hood was a battlecruiser, plus it was designed in WWI when the effectiveness of plunging fire was not part of the naval combat paradigm.  When the Hood was designed, guns were designed for (relatively) flat arc horizontal fire and ships were not desiged to counter plunging fire.

Had the Hood gone up against a SoDak, for example, and assuming there was no lucky hits very early on, the battle would have gone poorly from the outset.  Superior armor scheme, superior guns, superior fire control...

[Knight Templar]

Why does the Royal Navy website kick so much ass?

[Petrarch of the VBB]

Because Royal Navy > j00?

[Liberator]

Typically, that's the case.  They did own the ocean for quite a while after Trafalgar.

[mikhael]

Yes, they did, and now its ours.

I've got a US Navy shirt that says "74% of the world is covered in water--and it belongs to the US Navy". Arrogant and prideful but fun.

[vyper]

[q]Yes, they did, and now its ours. [/q]

The UK is still the world's largest sea faring trader.
This is not a debate btw gentlemen - Britannia Rules the waves. Still.



Carry on ppl.

[Admiral Nelson]

Originally posted by Nico


Nope: the ammunitions were stored in the turrets, and those things were practically intact when the Bismark sunk, the resistance of those is crazy. You should watch cameron's documentary about the Bismark, it was really pretty interesting

I wish I could have found a bigger version of this image (no scanner) but the Bismarck's turrets were anything but intact!!




They were as thoroughly smashed as the rest of the ship -- torn off the barbette in one case, hydraulics completely wrecked in two more, barrels smashed....

Another painting of the dying vessel:



Bismarck's ammo, as in all battleships, was stored in magazines next to the turrets in the depths of the hull. No turret could house enough ammunition by itself to be useful in battle.

[Shrike]

Originally posted by vyper
[q]Yes, they did, and now its ours. [/q]

The UK is still the world's largest sea faring trader.
This is not a debate btw gentlemen - Britannia Rules the waves. Still.

Source?

[Geezer]

Santisima Trindad.  The most powerful ship of her day.  She had 140 guns at Tragfalgar as compared to the Victory's 100.

[Gloriano]

[redmenace]

w00t, mighty USS Missouri, may she RIP.


Icon of history.

[Xelion]

none of these ships can compare to the Enterprise and her crew

A step through history

Sailing the seas, exploring the unknown, well not quite



Defending... Keeping the peace


Protecting Earth, flagship of the Federation fleet

[Nico]

Originally posted by Admiral Nelson


I wish I could have found a bigger version of this image (no scanner) but the Bismarck's turrets were anything but intact!!




They were as thoroughly smashed as the rest of the ship -- torn off the barbette in one case, hydraulics completely wrecked in two more, barrels smashed....

Coz you consider drawings an historical proof? then at least, find two that show the same damages, coz on pic 2, your missing turret is still there, obviously
See, they've been filmed, these turrets, we KNOW how they were, and their armor was NOT pierced. You do are aware that the Bismarck did not die in a fiery explosion coz her amunition stoarge was never hit? You're gonna tell me that out of the 2,876 that were shot at her, NONE hit the ammo storages?
Ah well, I guess that ship did hurt somewhere, people trying to sink her down again 50 years later

[Killfrenzy]

As one of the local Kriegsmarine fans, I would just like to point out a few things about Bismarck.

The hit on HMS Hood on May 24th, 1941 was 100% pure luck. Being a battlecruiser of WWI design, Hood posessed little in the way of deck armour. This left her extremely vulnerable to plunging fire, which killed around three battlecruisers at Jutland in exactly the same way - shell in the magazines.

As for putting Bismarck down, most of the shells fired by King George V and Rodney smacked her superstructure, causing numerous fires and a lot of devastation. They made the mistake of closing the range, not allowing long range plunging fire to do the vital damage that was required to sink her. The end result was that they were pouring shells in horizontally into her, and Bismarck, along with many BBs of the time, was very well protected against horizontal fire.

She was a very well protected warship, easily the superior of any one battleship in the Royal Navy. Our heavy units consisted of two classes of WWI era battleships (Queen Elizabeth and 'R' classes), along with early 1920s designs (Rodney and Nelson), some newer designs with smaller calibre guns (King George V class) and three WWI era battlecruisers (Repulse, Renown and Hood). By comparison, the Kriegsmarine had fewer, but superior ships: faster, better armoured and in the case of the Bismarck and Tirpitz, easily capable of taking on any one of our BB/BCs and sink them. Okay, two of them would have been a problem, but then two against one always is.

Besides, if the Bismarck was an 'inferior WWI design' then why the hell did the Royal Navy go mad over trying to sink her? She was as fast as Hood and as well armed and armoured as any comparable battleship of the time you care to name. Leave the Iowa class out of that equation as they were post-1941 designs.

However, I present for your viewing pleasure the greatest pain in the arse that ever sailed the North Atlantic, the German battlecruiser Scharnhorst:



With a speed of 32 knots and posessing 9 11" guns as well as enough armour to possibly class as a battleship, the Scharnhorst was a real problem!

[an0n]

Yup.

As a battlecruiser the Hood was built with less armour and more speed, primarily so it could run down the Bismark with its slight speed advantage when they got a report on its position. Least, that's what the History Channel tells me.

I know it shouldn't be funny, but on the documentary they had one of the crewmen from one of the other ships in the Hoods group. He was talking about how horrific the destruction was and how:

"We couldn't go after the Bismark because we'd taken damage and wouldn't have been able to do much but scratch her. So all we were doing was retrieving seamen from the water."

Oh, and:

[Killfrenzy]

An0n, the Hood was dispatched by the admiralty along with Prince of Wales simply because she was fast enough to catch Bismarck and still match her firepower as they both had 15" guns. Denmark Straight would have been a lot different were it not for a piece of extremely lucky shooting by a German gunnery officer early in the battle.

Hood has often been referred to as a 'next generation Repulse,' largely because of the increased speed and improved armament. The design of the two is quite similar, apart from the length and one twin turret. The Hood was the symbol of British naval power throughout the twenties and thirties, and thus her own legend clouded the obvious disadvantage she had against a modern battleship. She was due for a refit around the end of May 1941 which would have resulted in her appearing a lot more like a King George V class battleship, but obvious events prevented this.

The other mistake that was made on May 24th was not ordering the Suffolk and Norfolk to join in. Sure, they only had 8" guns, but they could have kept Prinz Eugen busy.

[Nico]

Originally posted by Xelion

Protecting Earth, flagship of the Federation fleet

... the Glowy L33t Space Hoover of Impending Doom!!!! Proof that ridicule can kill, the enemies at least, as they die from laughter
Heh, remove the nacelles and you have the flying saucer from V

[Sandwich]

Originally posted by mikhael
I've got a US Navy shirt that says "74% of the world is covered in water--and it belongs to the US Navy".

...and the other 96% is wheat. That's just not enough. Think about it.



...No, YOU think about it!

[Turnsky]

actually, the bismarck's main turret's(all FOUR of them) fell off when she sunk, she's largely intact now, minus a small part of the stern section...

get the book "looking for the Bismarck" by Robert Ballard.
oh, and
both of these were based off video recordings of the wreck.