80 years ago, to the minute, 1000km off the french coast

[Deesse23]

...the "Bismarck" slips beneath the waves, after an epic hunt comes to an end.

In memory of all sailors on board of HMS Hood and Bismarck

[Gawdzilla Sama]

"With guns as big as steers
And shells a big as tree."

"Sink the Bismarck", by Johnny Horton.

[Thumpalumpacus]

They could have gotten away with it if it weren't for those pesky Swordfish!

[Minimalist]

U-boats were far more effective commerce raiders.

[Thumpalumpacus]

U-boats were far more effective commerce raiders.

And to think that one Bismarck gives you 30 U-boats ...

[Gawdzilla Sama]

U-boats were far more effective commerce raiders.

You use up more crews with the Unterseebooten.

[Minimalist]

And you sink far more merchant ships.

[Deesse23]

U-boats were far more effective commerce raiders.

In the long run and with indsight, yes.

But previous missions of Hipper, Scheer, Lützow, the "Ugly Sisters" have shown (aside from problems with machinery)* that in the mid ´41 timeframe commerce raiding could have added substantially to direct losses of tonnage, or indirect loss by causing delays, by enforcing large, protected convoys, which were time consuming to build up.
These ships didnt have to be built, they already existed and commerce raiding was a potential way of using them efficiently, at least more efficinet than hopeless naval battles with the numerically far superior RN.

*the Hilfskreuzers as well

[adey67]

Churchill said that one of the few things that kept him awake at night was the menace of the U boats.

[Minimalist]

Bismarck was disabled by a single torpedo from an obsolete bi-plane.  Even by 1941 surface ships without air cover were merely large, slow, targets....as the British were to find out off Malaya later that year.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

And you sink far more merchant ships.

I've only ever sunk the one.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

U-boats were far more effective commerce raiders.

In the long run and with indsight, yes.

But previous missions of Hipper, Scheer, Lützow, the "Ugly Sisters" have shown (aside from problems with machinery)* that in the mid ´41 timeframe commerce raiding could have added substantially to direct losses of tonnage, or indirect loss by causing delays, by enforcing large, protected convoys, which were time consuming to build up.
These ships didnt have to be built, they already existed and commerce raiding was a potential way of using them efficiently, at least more efficinet than hopeless naval battles with the numerically far superior RN.

*the Hilfskreuzers as well

"hindsight"

[Thumpalumpacus]

U-boats were far more effective commerce raiders.

In the long run and with indsight, yes.

But previous missions of Hipper, Scheer, Lützow, the "Ugly Sisters" have shown (aside from problems with machinery)* that in the mid ´41 timeframe commerce raiding could have added substantially to direct losses of tonnage, or indirect loss by causing delays, by enforcing large, protected convoys, which were time consuming to build up.
These ships didnt have to be built, they already existed and commerce raiding was a potential way of using them efficiently, at least more efficinet than hopeless naval battles with the numerically far superior RN.

*the Hilfskreuzers as well

The problem with surface raiding is that surface-raiders are more easily spotted, tracked and bombed/torpedoed -- and that they carry many more seamen to be lost.

Another issue is that berthing them under 15 feet of concrete is going to be tough.

The only reason the Ugly Sisters and Prinz Eugen weren't holed up in France for the war after 1941 was that Hitler was mad enough to approve Cerberus, and the KMS and Jagdwaffe were good enough to pull it off against the odds. And as it was, Gneisenau played no further role in the war.

I agree with Min, I'd rather have those thousands of sailors aboard U-boats -- or in the factories and shipyards.

[jerry mcmasters]

In war you want to have multiple ways of doing something so as to disrupt the enemies ability to stop whatever that something is (in this case sinking shipping). With a washing machine, you can tinker forever to produce the world's greatest washing machine, the resistance (dirty clothes) will always be the same, and nothing will ever try to stop the process. But to put all your commerce-destroying eggs in one basket, you are inviting the enemy to focus all their energies into that one target, whereas if you have several ways of destroying commerce, it will be more difficult for the enemy to effectively counter all your methods.

[Thumpalumpacus]

In war you want to have multiple ways of doing something so as to disrupt the enemies ability to stop whatever that something is (in this case sinking shipping).  With a washing machine, you can tinker forever to produce the world's greatest washing machine, the resistance (dirty clothes) will always be the same, and nothing will ever try to stop the process.  But to put all your commerce-destroying eggs in one basket, you are inviting the enemy to focus all their energies into that one target, whereas if you have several ways of destroying commerce, it will be more difficult for the enemy to effectively counter all your methods.

The problem with that approach is that nations have constrained resources or industry, and must thus often pick and choose between approaches to a problem.

You put your eggs into the most useful basket. That changes from war to war, combatant to combatant, and even from theater to theater.

Geographically, Germany is blocked from the Atlantic by the British island. That means that any German surface ships trying to mount a trade-war are channeled either through the English Channel (holy crap!) or sent between Scotland and Norway -- outbound or inbound. It's pretty hard to hide an 800' battleship, and the Brits duly found it on aerial recon, setting in motion the actions that saw the Bismarck sunk.

That highlights the need for submarines, in the case of the German navy. They built 42,000 tons of battleship that got killed on its maiden voyage because their geographic position ain't friendly to sneaking surface ships out to the Atlantic. Spotted, isolated, damaged, and killed. Its sister ship Tirpitz got locked up in a Norwegian fjord because it was easy to track, and the Germans couldn't keep air-raids away. After a couple of years doing nothing, it too was sunk. To be fair, they'd gotten the Ugly Sisters out on a rather successful raid, once, but even the kills from that paled in comparison to what U-boats did.

Other navies obviously have other circumstances, and no one size fits all. But the Germans locked up 84,000 tons and perhaps 5,000 personnel into two ships that accomplished very little. The average U-boat displaces 1200 tons or so, with an average of sixty men per U-boat. Back-of-the-envelope calculation, that looks like 60 U-boats, fully staffed, with reserves in both men and resources. That represents about a 25% addition to peak U-boat strength, and might have tipped the scales against Britain.

The Bismarck sank one ship; the Tirpitz, none. Many individual U-boats had far more successful records, and taken as a type were far more useful to the Germans than their surface raiders.

[jerry mcmasters]

In war you want to have multiple ways of doing something so as to disrupt the enemies ability to stop whatever that something is (in this case sinking shipping).  With a washing machine, you can tinker forever to produce the world's greatest washing machine, the resistance (dirty clothes) will always be the same, and nothing will ever try to stop the process.  But to put all your commerce-destroying eggs in one basket, you are inviting the enemy to focus all their energies into that one target, whereas if you have several ways of destroying commerce, it will be more difficult for the enemy to effectively counter all your methods.

The problem with that approach is that nations have constrained resources or industry, and must thus often pick and choose between approaches to a problem.

You put your eggs into the most useful basket. That changes from war to war, combatant to combatant, and even from theater to theater.

Geographically, Germany is blocked from the Atlantic by the British island. That means that any surface ships trying to mount a trade-war are channeled either through the English Channel (holy crap!) or sent between Scotland and Norway. It's pretty hard to hide an 800' battleship, and the Brits duly found it on aerial recon, setting  in motion the actions that saw the Bismarck sunk.

That highlights the need for submarines, in the case of the German navy. They built 42,000 tons of battleship that got killed on its maiden voyage because their geographic position ain't friendly to sneaking surface ships out to the Atlantic. Spotted, isolated, damaged, and killed.

Other navies obviously have other circumstances, and no one size fits all.

I was speaking more generally; sometimes, no historically realistic approach would have worked (in this case given US intervention on the seas, Russian intervention on land), but one approach (multiple methods of disrupting commerce, subs plus battleships plus smaller surface commerce raiders), would probably have been better than a focus on any one method as the single "best" method.

[Minimalist]

The Bismarck sank one ship; the Tirpitz, none. Many individual U-boats had far more successful records.

Gunther Prien and U-47 matched that record on Oct. 13, 1939!  And he went on to do a lot more damage before he was killed.

[Thumpalumpacus]

I was speaking more generally; sometimes, no historically realistic approach would have worked (in this case given US intervention on the seas, Russian intervention on land), but one approach (multiple methods of disrupting commerce, subs plus battleships plus smaller surface commerce raiders), would probably have been better than a focus on any one method as the single "best" method.

I'm not speaking generally. I'm speaking specifically about conditions in play in 1939 when the two battleships were being built, and war was clearly on the horizon.

The Germans already knew, from 1917, that the submarine arm was a bigger threat to Britain than the surface fleet. The battleships were built as much for prestige as for war-fighting, which is exactly why Hitler didn't like risking them.

Those 84,000 tons would have been much more useful carrying ten torpedoes 300' below the surface in sixty U-boats.

[Inkubus]

Pursuit: The Sinking of the Bismarck. Ludovic Kennedy.

Is another good un.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Here's Drach's episode on the Bismarck's only combat mission:

[Minimalist]

Considering the utter ineffectiveness of Tirpitz, Bismark was an all-star.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Considering the utter ineffectiveness of Tirpitz, Bismark was an all-star.

Hood for Bismarck was a pretty crummy trade from the German angle. Bis and Tir both were wasted resources and efforts. I'll take 60 more U-boats any month of the war.