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 ...
The quote you used wasn’t mine.
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I understand. It’s a popular myth that the Germans would have won the war if they took the Russian oil fields.
There came a point in the war (October 1943, IIRC) when the US was producing a Liberty ship for every torpedo produced for the Kriegsmarine; after that point, the gap between the two only grew. (Meaning, of course, that even if every German torpedo struck an American Liberty ship and sank it with just one shot, the Germans didn't have enough torpedoes in their arsenal to sink the American Liberty ship fleet.)
The armor of the Bismark class was over-rated. The Germans borrowed too much form World War 1 designs. The British had better steel and equivalent protection on the PRince of Wales. The problem with the Prince of Wales was the quand-gun 14 inch turrets. Also, the ship was still being fitted out, when she was pressed into service. There were still construction crews on her. Of course, the Germans had theire own teething problems. The first time the Birsmark fired her main guns, her radar stopped working.
The Germans had made overtures to the Allies to end the war (unbeknownst to Hitler); I thought that both FDR and Churchill had made it clear that negotiations were out of the question.
They simply didn't have enough at one time; that was the problem.
Doenitz had argued vociferously for three hundred U-Boats in his arsenal before war with England could be considered. (He would have one hundred boats on station, one hundred coming and going, and one hundred in port being refitted. He considered the total number sizeable enough to cover the losses.)
(By the way, no historian familiar with the subject doubts that this would have led to Britain's suing for peace shortly after hostilities began; ship losses at the onset of the war as well as in the spring of 1942 after the Germans switched to the 4-rotor Enigma had a calamitous effect on food supplies in England. The country was on its back.)
At the onset of the war, Germany had 54 U-Boats, 5 of which were training vessels and not fit for combat. The country simply never had a U-Boot force at one time that was sizeable enough to interrupt the shipping to England to the degree necessary to impel England to throw in the towel. It became an endurance race, which it was only going to lose when the US officially took sides in the war. (We had been "unofficially" helping the Royal Navy pursue U-Boats for some time in the North Atlantic in 1941, but that's a subject for a different thread.)
It wasn't the Type VII's that were tearing up the eastern seaboard (at least, not initially); it was the Type-IXs. (And if the USN was in the dark about their existence, add this one to the pile of evidence of how caught off guard this country was as the threat of war grew.)
Read Operation Drumbeat (Michael Gannon) about the U-Boats that sank ships up and down the East Coast in 1942, taking the lives of some 5,000 men in the process; that loss of life as well as the freedom with which these U-Boats were able to operate unmolested is still one of the best-kept secrets of the war.
The angels must have smiled at that configuration. I love that plane.
Not early in the war before America entered and before the Royal Navy had developed effective countermeasures. More U-Boats early on could have forced Britain out of the war.
True indeed but look at the thing. It’s a wonder it stayed in the air.
That was Salvador Dali’s opinion of Hitler, and his view got him expelled from the Surrealist Group. That was analogous to a mountain getting expelled from a group of barely noticeable hills.
True, although it was Hitler’s intent to conquer the USSR, and Stalin saw Hitler as a natural ally.
" ... Of course the best means of defense against air attack consists of fighter planes. Lack of an adequate number of this type of aircraft for the defense of the Island, is due to the diversion of this type before the outbreak of the war, to the British, the Chinese, the Dutch and the Russians. ...
Proceedings of Roberts Commission, 24PHA1753, commonly known as the "Knox Report".
For example, the AVG got P-40s, the Britain got PBY-4's, Russian got P-39s, ... all with maintenance personnel, spare parts, ...
Pearl Harbor was "short-changed" intentionally.
This thread makes me wish FreeRepublic had a counterfactual / history what-if ping list. If it ever happens I would jump to be on it. Great thread. Thanks.
Interesting. I heard of the Bismarck, but didn’t think its career was so short-lived.
Cause the world depends on us...
Love his tunes...
“Hitler had to detach a division and send it down to help the Italians subdue the Greeks.”
Hitler detached more than one division.
The invasion of Greece used 24 divisions of which 6 were armored. Most of these forces had been assigned to the invasion of the Soviet Union. At the end of the 5 week campaign, three divisions were left in Greece and the remainder returned to support Soviet operation. But these divisions had see five weeks of intense operations and were not completely ready for Barbarossa on June 22.
Thanks. I’ve been looking for that.
Yeah, but the British were already using the convoy system before Pearl Harbor - and long after PH, our navy knew better than to bother with it . . .The US built a lot of destroyers during WWII - but it was years before they even began to have “enough” of them.
Convoys weren’t a free lunch; you still needed some destroyers/sub chasers, and they were always in short supply.
I read that we tested two - one failed - so we went to war with a weapon that had a 50% failure rate.
Pre-WWII the military was starved for funds - I remember seeing war games with trucks having the word "TANK" painted on the sides.
[sidebar] 1950s sub service. We fired a torpedo that shot straight out - and straight down. The torpedomen forgot to remove the heavy bronze prop locks. A $10,000 contribution to Davy Jones Locker.
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