Posted on 01/17/2020 10:52:34 AM PST by ProtectOurFreedom
In May 1941, the new German battleship Bismarck was a huge, state-of-the-art warship, equipped with the latest long-range heavy cannon, new stereoscopic range-finders that promised unprecedented accuracy, new ship-based radar, and an intricate system of armor-plating and honey-combed water-tight compartments that rendered her virtually unsinkable. If Bismarck broke out into the vast, indefensible shipping lanes of the North Atlantic, it could wreak catastrophic havoc with the war-sustaining convoys coming across the ocean [from the U.S.]
In 1941 England, it was believed that this single weapon might determine the very course of the war in Europe. Where the entire Luftwaffe had been unable to cripple Britain’s warfighting capability with its aerial assault in the summer of 1940 and bring her to the negotiating table, now—in the spring of 1941—a single warship was threatening to do that very thing.
As the Bismarck and the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen headed towards the open waters of the Atlantic Ocean through the Denmark Strait, they were intercepted by the British battleships Hood and Prince of Wales. Those two ships were all that stood between Britain’s invaluable but vulnerable shipping lanes and what they thought was national survival. In the next few minutes, perhaps the most famous and consequential surface engagement of all time occurred. The big ships fired on each other, their 14- and 15-inch guns booming.
Hood — the pride of the British navy — was struck by a perfectly-aimed salvo from Bismarck and exploded violently, breaking in two and sinking with just three survivors out of a crew of more than 1,400. After 10 minutes of fighting, "The Mighty Hood" was gone. Prince of Wales, despite suffering significant damage herself from Bismarck’s guns, scored some telling blows of her own, such that Bismarck was forced to disengage and head to home for repair.
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearhistory.com ...
Of course!......................
Aside:
Folks have found and surveyed the Prince of Wales.
PoW was reckoned state of the art at the time but was sunk by only a few torpedoes.
It now seems that the first hit caused a warp in a drive shaft which resulted in flooding and a list.
That list caused the PoW to raise her armor belt so when the torpedoes hit her other side they went into the unprotected underbelly.
Had they hit the armor belt as they otherwise would have PoW would have bounced the torpedoes off.
For comparison, the USS Juneau took a larger Japanese 1,000 lb warhead torpedo to its armor belt and survived. The only reason she sank so quickly later was the second sub launched torpedo managed to hit the exact same spot where the armor was already weakened.
I agree - but Hitler didn’t.Hitler’s problem was that the US was logistically keeping Britain - and also the USSR - afloat. How FDR managed to “stay neutral” enough to satisfy US public opinion while he was supplying increasing war materiel to Hitler’s enemies is an interesting PR question.
We didn’t sink the Bismarck and we didn’t fight at all,
we spent the war in Norfolk and we really had a ball,
chasin’ after women while our ship was overhauled,
livin’ it up on grapefruit juice and sick bay alcohol!
Then next time give it to them instead of implying that they were nothing but bystanders to the event.
The Brits also had what we attribute to ourselves as “Yankee” ingenuity. Prominent examples are the Sherman Firefly: a Sherman tank fitted with the Tiger-busting British 17-pounder anti-tank gun, as well as the P-5 Mustang variants fitted with high-altitude Rolls-Royce Merlin engines.
It was integral to his character to attempt to destroy the world, and himself in the process.
This is a common mistake of historians.
If one side had chosen a different funding allocation, it would have impacted their opponents decisions on spending allocations as well. If Germany had built more U-Boats instead of the two battleships, the Allies would have switched more naval funding into destroyers and other anti-sub defenses. In addition, had Germany had more U-Boats at the start of the war, the convoy system would have been implemented earlier. Ditto, changing funding into tank or airplane construction.
As a side note, the Tirpitz, by itself, tied up a lot of British naval resources in the Baltic Sea. Many of these resources were out of date themselves, however.
Good point. It’s the same error about “static scoring” that the Democrats love to use. “If we raise the tax rate to 100%, we’ll really rake in the dough and achieve our socialist paradise.”
“The Brits were itching for a fight and the Bismark made that even worse. So a devastating war was started that Wilson disastrously got the USA involved with.” [Sam Gamgee, post 112]
Sounds like you have your world wars mixed up.
The British weren’t enthusiastic for any involvement, neither in 1914 nor 1939.
In 1914, British involvement was not even a factor in German planning nor leadership decisions: the Imperial Germans thought exclusively in terms of ground forces and land engagements; the entire BEF meant nothing compared to the initial size of the forces on the Continent. British involvement hinged on violation of Belgian neutrality, which wasn’t PR-fluffy window dressing, but a substantive question of treaty obligations. The UK, Imperial Germany, and the French Republic were co-signatories to the treaty guaranteeing Belgian neutrality. It’s arguable whether such treaties made strategic sense, but that is a different question.
President Wilson was not eager to go to war. He formulated numerous peace overtures, but the Allies and the Central Powers rebuffed American efforts or ignored them.
The entire question of US entry into the war hinged on unrestricted submarine warfare, which the Imperial Germans flirted with on and off, until formally declaring their intent to prosecute it at the end of January 1917. Wilson was not “sneaky:” he laid out the case, after which both the the House and the Senate voted to declare war - by substantial margins.
Whether the United States was being realistic in standing firm on the rights of neutrals is likewise a different question. It loomed large in the minds of leaders and diplomats in 1914-1917, and that is what counted then. Arguing today that “things should have been different” is ex post facto reasoning, thus less than honest. Submarines torpedoing merchant vessels with no warning was against international law and custom then and that is what mattered.
In 1939, Germans commenced unrestricted submarine warfare almost from Day One. If objections were raised, they did not amount to much in the total picture.
It was a good movie too.
That sounds right to me.
But the donut was great.
Hitler wasn’t willing to use production lines or unskilled workers to produce his war machines. Everything was designed and built by specialists. That’s why it took so much longer for them to produce their stuff. And because of that there weren’t spare parts readily available to repair them, and getting them to the field was difficult.
The larger point is that Bismark and Tirpitz were obsolete in a strategic sense in that they did not reflect Germany's actual naval requirements when war came early. Most of all, the German Navy in WW II needed more submarines and more rapid development and deployment of advanced models that had a better chance against Allied antisubmarine warfare.
Yet Germany's two super battleships were still formidable vessels that generated major worries for Britain's Royal Navy. After all, the Bismark smashing the Hood to bits with one salvo suggests just how hard put Britain's gunships might have been in an even fight against a German battle fleet built according to the intended plan.
...The Brits were itching for a fight and the Bismark made that even worse. So a devastating war was started that Wilson disastrously got the USA involved with.” [DesertRhino, post 98]
This assertion holds a certain superficial credibility among makers of documentary miniseries, conspiracy theorists, and other dilettantes. But it relies heavily on after-the-fact reasoning, and on facts about Imperial Japan which came to light only after the war.
And it leans heavily upon USMC’s public affairs office, plus a number of postwar John Wayne films: gave rise to the pop-culture notion that the only warfare of importance against Japan was waged by the Marines and the US Navy, on tiny central Pacific islands and on blue water.
A very incomplete strategic picture to say the least.
Imperial Japan began to move against Northeast China in 1931. During 1941-1942, it stepped up the pace of expansion, taking the Philippines, most of what is now Indonesia and Malaysia, French Indochina, Siam (Thailand), Burma, a number of smaller islands (including Attu and Kiska in the Aleutian chain), and yet more of the Chinese mainland. Air & sea encounters flared in the Indian Ocean; British bases on Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) were raided. Australia and British India came under quite real threat of invasion.
Euro colonial and American forces were defeated or in full retreat everywhere. The Allies were forced to confront the ugly truth that they did not know what the full capabilities of the Japanese might be, nor what might happen next.
In the face of such wholesale ignorance it could not come as a surprise that “politics” (a term held in scorn) would play a role. Was Douglas MacArthur an egotist? Of course. So were the other senior commanders: no one rose so high without being so.
Any claim that a push through the central Pacific was the only effort required isn’t supported by the facts. No one could be sure that Japanese forces would not surge out of the southwest Pacific, or south from Manchuria, to smash the American thrust. Simply spearing across the ocean north of the Philippines looked imprudent, in the length of lines of communication required, and the forces needed to guard them.
And securing islands like Saipan and Guam for bomber bases was not seen as a winning move. No bomber aircraft yet existed that could make the trip. The B-29 was still in development and its eventual success was looking more doubtful. Air power at that level was by no means a proven concept.
No one foresaw that the submarine campaign against Japanese merchant traffic would be as successful as it turned out to be. Same with the aerial mining effort.
So, bets were hedged.
Gen MacArthur did not spend lives to no purpose. Forces under his command sustained fewer casualties. He displayed an uncanny ability to “hit the Japanese where they weren’t,” throwing units onto shores where they did not have to fight like crazy just to gain a toehold.
The central Pacific, containing smaller landmasses much more widely dispersed, afforded fewer options to Allied planners. Made it easier for the Japanese to guess where the next blow would land. Heavier losses were not avoidable.
The Russians would have destroyed the oil fields before the Germans could have taken them. Even of the Germans got the oil fields producing, how were they going to transport it of refine it? They had no tankers or a surface fleet to protect them even if they did. Hitler should have used the forces he sent to capture the caucus’ to secure the Volga and drive to Moscow. In the end it probably didn't matter because eventually the Russians would have overwhelmed them.
The quote you used wasn’t mine. You’re probably right that Stalin would have destroyed the fields. Even Stalin didn’t have the necessary tankers to transport it. One thing he forgot with his war production was to produce trucks, etc. to move supplies. He even stopped production of farm machinery to focus on tanks, etc. It’s why so many people starved. The U.S. designed, and sent over building parts for Stalin to build factories for war his production. We even sent engineers there to help them put them together. When the Germans invaded Russia, Stalin ordered all those factories in HItler’s path, to be dismantled, placed on trains, and moved further east, to be reassembled so they could begin production again. I can’t remember how many hundreds of miles they moved them, laid all the parts out in fields, and worked from there to put them back together. We provided many train engines and flat cars, etc. to Russia.
If I were to summarize the problem I would say “Union Labor monopoly on torpedo manufacturing.”
They were highly specialized machinists and nobody was going to be allowed to tell them anything.
Any evidence that the “Union Labor monopoly” deviated from the technical specifications and drawings provide by BUORD to manufacture the torpedoes.
My mom was a 22 year old assistant in the Navy Dept in NY. Her job was certifying the newly commisioned ships were manned, fueled and supplied before her boss would certify them for shakedown cruises. One day she goes into the common room and sees the week’s losses posted. She finds four LSTs listed as sunk that she had not finished certifying for shakedown.
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