Sinking the Bismarck
An evening pause: For Memorial Day, let’s have some history recounting one of the most important Atlantic naval battles of World War II, which took place 82 years ago this weekend. If the Bismarck had been successful in getting out into the Atlantic to attack convoys, Great Britain could very well have been starved into submission.
Hat tip Mike Nelson, who adds, “The ravages of WWII have faded from memory but we should never forget. Too many paid the price for the freedoms we so blithely take for granted.”
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Over 2400 dead between Bismarck and Hood, just another day in war.
John: Are you suggesting there was some moral equivalency between the motives of the two sides? Because if you are (and I can’t believe you are), you are exhibiting a woeful lack understanding about World War II.
The German goal was to kill and conquer. They started the war, with lies and threats, and genocide as part of their intentions. The British were simply trying to survive and avoid the fate the Germans planned for them.
There is a difference.
I’m not a military historian but I doubt the Bismarck could have ” starved Britain into submission “. The Brits had better radar, long range reconnaissance aircraft such as the Catalina and Enigma so they could read German communications.
Bismarck might have been able to slip out of France and do some damage but she would have been hunted down before she could seriously threaten GB. The u-boats were a bigger threat and the Brits survived them.
Mike–
Nice selection!
let me drop this in here….
TimeGhost
[Indy Neidell & Spartacus Olsson]
WW-2 In Real Time: Episode 092 “Sink the Bismark”
May 30, 1941
https://youtu.be/Eex7zBP7e0k
14:33
The problem Bismarck posed is that all the things being done to protect merchantmen was either ineffective (a typical convoy escort had no armor and just about enough firepower to scratch a battleship’s paint job) or downright counterproductive against a battleship acting as a raider (since the escorts couldn’t do much against a battleship, putting all the targets in one spot meant that if Bismarck found anything, it found everything, and she was two or three times faster than your average cargo tub,) and by extension, protecting the merchantmen from Bismarck left them vulnerable to the u-boats.
The most obvious example is the fate of PQ-17 when they believed Tirpitz had sortied. The convoy scattered, so Tirpitz couldn’t get all of them… and then the wolfpacks shredded the helpless merchantmen.
It’s like an American football team that could only pass getting a good running back; just the threat of the other approach changes how you defend.
Veterans get one day.
Gays get one month.
Why?
Boobah – As was proven during the Kaiser War, the likelihood of discovering a convoy was about the same as finding a single ship sailing independently. The Germans said that after the Allies began running convoys, “It was like sea emptied”. If a solitary sub encountered convoy, it might sink one or two ships out of a convoy of 30 or more merchantmen, but while it was overwhelmed, with targets, the other boats were not getting a single contact. And after the sub made its attack, the escorts would sit on it to prevent it from pursuing the convoy. Donitz tried to overcome this via Der Ruddle Taktik (What the Allies called “Wolfpacks”) with subs in patrol lines and the first sub to make contact, not attacking, but shadowing the convoy while calling its colleagues in until a mass attack could be made. The problem with this was that the extensive radio traffic needed between the U-boats and each other and with BdU (Befelshaber der U-Boote – Headquarters of Submarines) in France, plus the German propensity for “chatter” (unneeded traffic with skippers congratulating each other on birthdays, etc) was open to intercept and exploitation (Ultra, but also “Huff Duff” – High Frequency radio Direction Finding (HFDF) gear aboard the escorts and other measures) and messages and reports in canned formats from the U-Boats which enabled decoders to quickly figure out what that day’s code was for certain items. As far as the capital units went, the Allies put paid to them as well. HMS Ark Royal’s torpedo bombers wrecked the Bismarck’s steering and the next morning HMS King George V and HMS Rodney shattered the German, turning her into a flaming wreck roasting her crew within minutes of opening fire. The German’s didn’t score a single hit in that engagement with the last remaining gun a being a puny 20mm AA mount. One 16 inch shell alone from Rodney penetrated the face plate of Turret B, exploded in the working chamber, killing the gun crew, and blew the back of the turret off, killing the entire command party on the bridge. Two more shells destroyed the forward and after main battery directors within moments of each other, leaving the 15 inch guns in local control, which every navy regarded as less effective than centrally directed fire . Two and one half years later, HMS Duke of York and her escorting cruisers and destroyers repeated the process on the Scharnhorst in the Battle of the North Cape when it tried to intercept a convoy to North Russia. For most of the war, the German surface units cowered in port and Donitz was forced to pull his subs from the convoy routes in May, 1943 after suffering unbearable losses. During “Black May” the Allies killed a U-Boat a day – including the one commanded by Donitz’s son. The Battle of the Atlantic was won.
Of the approximately 40,900 officers and men in der U-bootewaffe, about 28,000 died. Germany built 1162 U-Boats, off which 785 were sunk. Proportionately, these were the highest loss figures of any arm of service of any nation.
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=Battle+of+the+Atlantic+Documentary&&view=detail&mid=171876B90ACB1FD0C69F171876B90ACB1FD0C69F&&FORM=VRDGAR&ru=%2Fvideos%2Fsearch%3Fq%3DBattle%2Bof%2Bthe%2BAtlantic%2BDocumentary%26FORM%3DVRMHRS
Mr Z: In no way was I posting anything about moral equivalency or motives, not sure where that would be inferred from the casualty count. The video showed cartoonish ships going here and there but nothing about the human cost of what war is.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6048922/
The movie Greyhound is pretty good.
But the only reason Germany lost the war was American lend lease to Russia and GB. Russia could NEVER have held out against Germany except for the materials the US sent them.
https://ru.usembassy.gov/world-war-ii-allies-u-s-lend-lease-to-the-soviet-union-1941-1945/
This short list is not even half of the food and materials the US sent Russia. We even sent them refined uranium which might have gone into their first nuclear weapons after the war. During the war Russia NEVER sent back the liberty ships we sent to them with supplies and after the war they formed the core of the Russian maritime fleet and ice breakers for 30 years.
pzatchok-
Ditto on the Greyhound movie.
War Factories | Episode 4: General Motors
https://youtu.be/vrclztGCg6M
43:03
“The head of US Steel understands raw-materials, the head of Sears & Roebuck understands logistics, and the head of GM understands mass-production…”
I still wonder what happened had Prince Eugen had stayed with Bismarck…Ghost and the Darkness style.
Still, Bismarck’s steel could have made how many Panzers?
Still—imagine if Bismarck went out with Scharnhorst and Gneisenau as an unholy trinity.