What was the most powerful battleship in a straight duel, May 1941?

What was the most powerful battleship in a straight-out duel, May 1941?

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IMHO also is that Bismarck was the best but one must remember that Germans cheated and Bismarck was some 6.000 tons heavier than Allied treaty BBs. Speaking on standard displacement. And that is appr 1/6 of total displacement of treaty BB, one could use that extra for all kinds of useful additions. In fact displacement wise nearest equivalent for Bismarck/Tirpitz were the Iowas.

Juha
 
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I am convinced that this is a misconception, altough large, te BISMARCK class is not 6000t heavier in standart displacement than it´s nearest allied or axis counterpart. The nearest aequivalent of BISMARCK (41.673 ts standart) wrt tonnage is the italian LITTORIO (41.380 ts standart) and the french RICHELIEU. We don´t know her actual standart displacement (only the officila figure) but judging from a full load of 47.550 ts and allowing a substraction for the fuel load of ca. 8000ts we again experience a figure of 40.000ts standart. the KING GEORGE V class came out lightest with 36.900 ts standart in 1940 but this figure was eased to 39.000 ts standart for the whole class in 1941. It is amazing how close the key combat parameters of the french, italian and german 41.000 ts standart class bb´s were.
So the difference is not exactly 1/6 of the tonnage, it´s probably closer to 4.500ts to KGV, 1000ts to RICHELIEU and 300 ts to LITTORIO. IOWA turned out to weight 48.782ts standart, altough this was later increased due to wartime modifications to an unknown number (likely around 50.000ts). In it´s original condition, IOWA is more than 7.000ts larger than BISMARCK in standart weight.
 
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Hello Delcyros
Yes You are right, I should have checked first, KGV standard displ. was in 1940 36.727tons (Raven and Roberts) or 38.031tons (Garzke and Dulin)
Washington in 1941 38.005 tons (Dulin and Garzke)
So Bismarck was appr 3500tons heavier ie 10%.

Merry Christmas to all!
Juha.
 
USS North Carolina commissioned on April 09 1941, but here is a shot of her in on 23rd April 1941:

http://www.battleshipnc.com/history/bb55/napics/images/RG181NCB_002.jpg

USS Washington commissioned on May 15 1941, and here is a shot of her on May 29 1941:

http://www.navsource.org/archives/01/015644.jpg

Note the lack of Main Armament FC Directors!

The poll unfortunately, does not list the two ships that were the most powerful in the world, IMHO, in May 1941, namely HMS KGV and Prince of Wales. On paper PoW was more powerful because she had a better set of FC radars, but she was handicapped by not being fully worked up. KGV was fully worked up and her speed, modern FC suite, powerful guns and thick armour made her a match for any battleship afloat. Only Bismarck could have tacked her successfully, IMHO, but I think that KGV's FC would give her the edge.
 
After the commission the BB go to train so neither the North Carolina were ready for fight.
 
I went for the Rodney / Nelson class because - as stated by several other s - they had good armour and were able to engage from the head on position with her full firepower.A a lot of other Battleships at the time needed to show most of their length to do so - presenting a larger target.

If I remember the Priz Eugen was incorrectly identified as the Bismark - and consequently HMS HOOD engaged the wrong target!
I believe she straddled her quite quickly - before engaging Bismark - but too late!
Prince of Wales was no where near ready for the fight and it showed - but needs must and she did acquit herself well considering!
The tactics used by HMS Hood have been questioned previously - she was crossing the T. That was a decision made to try to protect the Hood from plunging fire at long range onto her known to be weak deck armour. So it was not a mistake in my book - just good gunnery by Bismark - and a little good / bad luck depending on your view point!

An early post also pointed out that Bismark had her forward fire control knocked out early on in her fight wilth KGV and Rodney. I believe this was from one of the RN cruiser and it was an 8 inch shell that did this. In which case you have to say that it was good gunnery (and fire control) that achieved this success and Bismark's bad luck - just as she had had good luck in the Hood encounter.
Rodney would have been straddled early on if she had not began shell chasing manouevres! Well what was she supposed to do - stop engines and let Bismark have a free shot? That was common practice since before Jutland?

Just checked and found a piece that confirms the the RN was quite good at firecontrol HMS Warspite scored hits at very long range in the Med.
http://www.royalnavy.mod.uk/history/ships/hms-warspite-1915/
Warspite will be best remembered for her service with the Mediterranean Fleet as flagship of Admiral Andrew Cunningham . At the Battle of Calabria on 9 July 1940 she hit the Italian flagship, Guilio Cesare, at the amazing range of 21 kilometres. Accompanied by sister ships Barham and Valiant at the Battle of Cape Matapan on 28 March 1941, they sank two Italian heavy cruisers in a notable night time engagement.

Not too shabby for some old Battlewaggons that saw service in WW1 never mind WW2. The guns were the 15 inch type - and were preferred by many over both the later 16 inch (Rodney / Nelson) and 14 inch (KGV).
 
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I was reading Garzke and Dulins "Axis and Neutral Battleships in World War II" and "Allied battle ships in World War II".

I read about the German armor layouts compared to the "all or nothing" armor schemes of the rest and seriously wonder why the German armor schemes get such a bad rep? The German armor schemes consistantly feature "spaced armor" arrangements, that in the right conditions can offer nearly twice as much protection as the LOS thickness suggests. This even applies to the deck armor if you anaylsis the projectile trajectories and expected deflection angles etc. Is it because of the usual bias against Germans in the 'anglo-america' internet world?
 
Dr. Geogre Elder wrote these lines, which may be related to Your question:

I find this notion that the Bismarck was an "antiquated design" rather parochial and simplistic. As near as I can tell, this is one of Tony Preston's ideational children… which goes hand-and-hand with his strange belief that the Germans did no real testing or R &D to speak of in matters pertaining to naval armor, gunnery, etc., between the wars. Well, this view is incorrect, and even a cursory review of the history of the times will show this to be the fact. I will address what follows in generalities, and invite interested parties to pick up on the clues and sources and see where they lead.
The Germans began cheating on the treaty of Versailles relatively early on, which is no surprise considering the dearth of active enforcement that was in place after the mid-1920s period when the IACC was being dissolved. Indeed, even before the monitors were sent home, they reported many suspected breaches of both the letter and intent of the treaty agreements by concerns such as Krupps. Of course, no one pressed the issue, and so we find continuing "special projects" being funded in German budgets – often being buried in departments which bore little semblance to anything military (see Paloczi-Horvath, 1998, for a general overview). It seems the socialist in the German government did more to expose these clandestine practices than anything done by the Allied powers. In fact, by 1930 the Reichstag became the center of a heated debate when it was noted that money was being diverted to these special projects, which was something that almost killed the panzerschiffe projects (several good reviews of naval policies in the W. era are available on this).
Well, the US was certainly aware that the Germans were still doing good R&D in armor, and thus the USN purchased some rather modestly thick plates in the early 1930s to figure out if examining the products could help improve quality control and related issues in US armor manufacture. It was also during this time frame that we find the Germans developing Wh, and other armor products – which had considerably different characteristics than did their WWI counterparts. We also see work in radar, high-pressure steam plants, infrared technology, shaped-charge weapons, and a host of other areas. These developments are just a few of the many things that confuse me about this silly claim the Germans were merely sitting on their hands between the wars.
But not only were they developing new materials, they were also experimenting with novel ways of laying out this armor to best meet a given need. Any review of the Panzerschiffe designs makes this abundantly clear, but one also sees this in documents such as ADM281/951. This text reviews the development of German APC shells, but also notes some of the many experiments that were done – such as the examination of using spaced array armor aboard warships. It is also in these documents that we get a glimpse of why the new armor's were developed, with the manipulation of shell yaw being but one example of a very intensive research program. For example, it was found that a very hard and fine-grained armor can enhance initial shell yaw effects, which makes the subsequent penetration of the shell through a subsequent plate problematic.
We know of a document that examined how this principle was applied to German warships, but, even after the passage of 55 years, this text remains classified. Why would we ever keep "antiquated" and dubious notions classified? Well, we only get incomplete tidbits of what may have been going on. For example, Gkdos 100 reports that the Germans expected long-range gunnery under suitable conditions – with the full understanding that deck protection could never be made proof at the ranges they envisioned taking place. However, we also hear of the Germans actually testing a reduced version of their multi-layered deck protection system as fitted aboard an old preDreadnought. The ranges extended beyond 25K meters, and the deck protection system resisted the 15" shells that hit the ship. We need shot by shot details of these tests, and we are hoping that some of you German readers have access to these. We have the general results, but no specifics – which are critical.
It seems to me that the Germans were onto the same general finding as the Italians, this being that single layer armor systems were not effective against modern shells. Both countries opted to take a multi-layer approach, one wherein the outer armor layers decap shells, induce yaw, slow shells, activate fusing that leads to detonations before critical areas are reached, and otherwise impede the ability of shells to do damage to an inner sanctorum that houses the engines, ammunition, etc.. Interestingly, modern bunkers are based on many of these same principles, which is one reason we see bomb sizes in the several ton ranges.
Now, I would much rather see the R D that went into evolving the multi-layered armor system than listen to the potted Polly-want-a-cracker repetition of Preston's et al.'s antiquated folly. We learn relatively little from such general statements, and rather more from the detailed research done by the designers. And I have had the good fortune to stumble across some related information in the writings of Pugliese. And believe me, this R D was years ahead of anything I've seen in the US archives relating to armor material properties and disposition. But that is a subject for a book, which is where my efforts must now turn.
But should you hear the familiar refrain, "That was an obsolete design," smile gently, and ask, "Why?" As you repeat the question, there will come a stage wherein someone appeals to authority, as in, "Preston says so." And when pressed as to why Preston would say such a thing, I don't think you'll see many references to some of the things that are presented here. Well, I hate to leave this partial case dangling, but I truly do have much work ahead. I must submerge, as it were, and pop us again in about eight months.
Click to expand...
 
I'm glad to see that Dr Elder is still hard at it. I remember helping scan some material he sent me years ago.

At the risk of being "shot, drawn and quartered", I will put down my theory/understanding as to how this works.

Spaced armors effectiveness in defeating AP shells is controlled by the T/D ratio of the outer spaced plate to the attacking projectile. A Norwegian study a few years ago showed quite clearly that Hard Steel AP shot will lose the sharpness in their point progressively even after penetrating a very thin plate.

Since the primary vehicle for achieving deep penetration into armor is from this point , that can have an serious impact. However a more serious side effect from perforating a spaced plate, is the yaw imparted to this projectile upon exiting the rear of the plate.

All projectiles attempt to 'rotate' to the normal after exiting the rear face of a plate, which in anything other than a perfect perpendicular impact is going to induce yaw. Give enough gap between spaced plates, this yaw will translate into a tumbling projectile, which results in an impact on the follow on plate in anything other than ideal.

Not only could the projectile strike the plate sideways, but the lateral forced acting on this projectile can and will shatter it under the right conditions.Some times the degree of yaw does not even have to be great to have significant impact. In Capped projectiles the smallest of yaw can disconnect or weaken the connection of this cap , greatly reducing its ability to perforate follow on plates.

In the case of the Bismarck's side belt armor , the 320mm face hardened plate can yaw 14-16" projectiles sufficiently to increase the over all effectiveness of a spaced plate arrangement by 45-50%. In the Bismarck case the outer 320mm belt is followed by an inner 30mm longitudinal armored splinter bulk head above the main deck, and a 45mm armored torpedo bulk head below the main armor deck which is connected to this main side belt armor by the outboard sloping armor [~ 4" @ 22°].

If either of these cases apply, the expected resistance is going to be on the order of 20". However most such projectile plate interactions are going to include a 'Decent' angle of the attacking projectile at range. This is any where from 5-20° over most engagement ranges, however it can also be effected by shell deflection from penetrating the outer main belt armor. If the resultant shell trajectory has to cross the slopes or the main deck armor to reach the vitals , then the relative resistance is going to have to include this deck/slope armor, at a very severe angle of impact.

However calculating the impact of that component is difficult to say the lest, since the deck armors are mostly always homogenous plate which has less ballistic resistance compared to Face hardened armors, and the effectiveness of projectiles slanted plates is most often more than the simple 'COS of the plate angle' calculation.

Even if an attacking 14-16" shell initially penetrates the upper 145mm belt armor and plunges through the longitudinal armored bulk head , striking the main deck armor , the effective resistance could exceed 29-30". Which may in part explain why repeated Shell impacts from the KGV and Rodney, still had difficulty penetrating into the Bismarck's vitals even at striking ranges of 2-6km, where the expected perforation of these guns was 30" or more.

Looking at the Bismarck through western eyes [always a risky venture], the Bismarck's armor arrangement can be criticized for placing far too much emphasis on protecting the vitals of 'engine and magazine' to ensure the ship was relatively unsinkable....and place a lower level of protection on the combat elements of the main battery and Command tower and directors. Since it appears German naval doctrine emphasized aggressive fighting , protecting the combat element would seem to be just as important. If you adjust the armor mass applied to the belt CT and main battery so the outer belt is only 145mm thick a hugh amount of armor mass can be applied to these other areas [~ 2000tons] . To do such a mass transfer to 'normalize' the main battery and CT to the side 'belt' protection, then the relative resistance should be on the order of 22-24", for the belt, the main battery and command tower.
 
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Psteel. Great post. Even if there are problems with it, the paragraph about the KGV and Rodney shells being defeated is enlightening.
 
Hello Psteel
to me it is difficult to see how a 14-16" shell fired from somewhere what can be descript as short distance could after penetrating 145mm upper belt of Bismarck hit the its main armour deck if the ship had not a heavy list. After all at short distance the trajectories of main armaments of WWII capital ships were rather flat. IMHO any short distance hit that hit the main armoured deck of Bismarck had to first go through 300-320mm (depending on source) main belt.

There was the limit to which to type of Bismarck's armour could be thinned. That was shown when Dunkerque was hit by 15" shells from Hood from appr. 14km distance. Dunkerque was only armoured against German 11" shells, was that from 16,5 km. One 15" shell went through the 225mm inclined belt, equivalent at least 283mm vertical, 2 bulkheads, the 50mm to 54 degree sloped down part (as in Bismarck, but in it 100mm or 110mm thick, depending on the source) of lower armoured deck, through upper part of fuel oil tank, through 30mm torpedo bulkhead and through some machinery before ending to a turbine casting.

Juha
 
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psteel said:
Looking at the Bismarck through western eyes [always a risky venture], the Bismarck's armor arrangement can be criticized for placing far too much emphasis on protecting the vitals of 'engine and magazine' to ensure the ship was relatively unsinkable....
Click to expand...

Emphasis on protecting the SHIP as a whole was an old Tirpitzian maxim (damaged ships are easier to repair than building new ships in place of sunken ones, so I don't care if all the guns point down while the ship is still afloat). This worked rather well for them in World War I (see even the BC Lutzow at Skagerrak - eventually it sunk, but so slowly that the crew could be saved by escorts, and all the others survived) and made sense from the German Navy's operational enviroment: in all likelyhood they would operate relatively close to their bases, so damaged ships could limp back the harbour and fight another day.

and place a lower level of protection on the combat elements of the main battery and Command tower and directors. Since it appears German naval doctrine emphasized aggressive fighting , protecting the combat element would seem to be just as important.
Click to expand...

I don't think it was the case - the protection offered for the main battery turrets, CT and directors were pretty average compared to contemporaries - worser than some, better than others. Its just that there is a stark contrast between the massive protection offered for the hull compared to the pretty average protection offered for the offensive tools.

There was a limit of what could be done at 42 000 tons, but there is one crucial difference, there was lot of built-in redundancy built in the system: four main battery turrets had to be knocked out instead of the usual three, and there were three fire control directors instead of the usual two.

This appears to have been attractive to German designers, who made this step in full awareness from the 3x3 setup of the Scharnhorst, and favored it over the other extreme end favored by the archival French navy. I can certainly see why - it is not neccessary to completely defeat the armor of turrets, CTs and fire directors to put them out of action, if the turret jams, looses hydraulics, or if optics are wrecked...

Another interesting feature of the Bismarcks was their increased 145 mm upper side belt - quite a few wrote down this feature as obsolate and a remnant of WW1, but here again the Germans did this step from the Scharnhorst which had only 50mm as opposed to their WW1 vessels!

The upper side belt had many functions in the protection scheme, but I find it easy to justify it, since apart from all the pluses, it allowed decreasing barbette thickness by 120 mm between the top and main armored deck, a weight saving that alone equaled the weight of the increase in thickness of the USB, not to mention that below the deck the barbettes were now actually offering better protection - it was near impossible for any (decapped) shell to penetrate them until extreme low ranges when going through even the thinner 145mm upper belt, as opposed to the Scharnhorst's full-thickeness barbettes/low-thickness USH.

The other pluses - immunity of the entire citadel to all but the largest naval battleship sized guns guns, decapping/yaw effects was an extra. Its a great example of how armor re-distribution alone can improve overall protection.
 
Juha said:
Hello Psteel
to me it is difficult to see how a 14-16" shell fired from somewhere what can be descript as short distance could after penetrating 145mm upper belt of Bismarck hit the its main armour deck if the ship had not a heavy list. After all at short distance the trajectories of main armaments of WWII capital ships were rather flat. IMHO any short distance hit that hit the main armoured deck of Bismarck had to first go through 300-320mm (depending on source) main belt.

There was the limit to which to type of Bismarck's armour could be thinned. That was shown when Dunkerque was hit by 15" shells from Hood from appr. 14km distance. Dunkerque was only armoured against German 11" shells, was that from 16,5 km. One 15" shell went through the 225mm inclined belt, equivalent at least 283mm vertical, 2 bulkheads, the 50mm to 54 degree sloped down part (as in Bismarck, but in it 100mm or 110mm thick, depending on the source) of lower armoured deck, through upper part of fuel oil tank, through 30mm torpedo bulkhead and through some machinery before ending to a turbine casting.

Juha
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Hi Juha,
From reading "Allied Battleships in World War II", I'm think you might be confusing shots and hits. There were 4 x 15" shell hits on the Dunkerque. One hit the aircraft hanger area which had little or no armor. Another appeared to ricochet off the second quadruple 13" gun turret. Part of the shell landed in the town 2km away while the rest deflected down into the hull. The third shell struck the main deck armor right at the joint with the main belt armor, so it penetrated the deck not the main belt.


How a 15" shell at 17,500 yards range was supposed to penetrate 4.4" RHA at 14-17° descent angle, when the listed deck penetration for these guns,by most accounts is only ~3".....has yet to be adequately explained. The difference between Face hardened and RHA armor can as much as 30% depending how much the shell ballistic cap survived . It could be that French homogenous armor used was 'sub par', as a similar thing happened to the Jean Bart? Further all ballistic figures quoted are a calculation or at best an average of a number of hit results. To that end, there is a considerable error bar implied in all such results. I read as much as +/- 20% for these types of shells .

The last shell penetrated underwater below the main belt and hit the void/absorbent material, before piercing the torpedo bulk head and entering the engine area.

You should know the Dunkerque lower deck was STS steel not strictly armored steel , in fact not that much better than German STS 52 steel which is standard for most non armored warships of that period. Additionally the slopes on the Dunkerque, were near vertical, like those on the HMS Hood. So at longer range, any impact would be almost perpendicular. This is nothing like the Bismarck or Scharnhorst slope armor which was ~4" RHA at 22-25° below the vertical.
 
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Hello Psteel
I recommended, that you reread the page 61 in "Allied Battleships in World War II" and especially the Table 2-7. The STS was backing of the main (upper) armoured deck.

For 15" hits info and trajectories, please refer the new monograph on French battleships by Jordan and Dumas, my info is from it. It's newer and specialized to French BBs so odds are that it is more reliable on this. According to it both 3rd and 4th hits penetrated the belt.

Juha
 
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Kurfürst I agree with most of what you say. The logic behind the 145mm upper belt armor is not sound if you believe in the "all or nothing protection" as the allies did. But German surface raiders were built to a different standard and doctrine. They were not designed primarily to fight allied battleships, that's a fools errand. They were designed to attack and break up enemy convoys, so the U-Boat pacts could pick off the merchant ships with ease. Given that role covering as much of the ship as possible with protection levels against allied cruisers and destroyers was more valuable than being able to counter the latest allied battleship gun.

Historically the Bismarck and Scharnhorst classes would never have been built had they been allowed to followed their doctrine to conclusion, since Panzerschiff were far more usable than battleships or heavy cruisers like the Hipper. In fact the KM strategy envisaged a dozen Panzerschiff built. But Hitler was not interested in naval matters. He deferred and spurned all Admiral Raeders efforts to build up an anti RN fleet, arguing there was not going to be any war with the UK until late in the following decade, so Germany still had plenty of time to build a fleet.

Raeder to his credit was able to nudge Hitler's decrees slightly by arguing the German fleet was in fact designed to counter the French fleet, to which Hitler agreed. So German warships were to be built in numbers to match 1/2 of the French fleet and warship types mimicked French designs. So German Torpedoboot morphed into super fast TB to counter French designs, while destroyers morphed into counters to French high speed 'super destroyers' and the Panzerschiff design morphed into battleships to counter French Dunkerque etc. However all this also created confusion in the warship designs with problematic consequences...like super fast Torpedoboot Destroyers with poor reliability ,endurance and range.
 
Juha said:
Hello Psteel
I recommended, that you reread the page 61 in "Allied Battleships in World War II" and especially the Table 2-7. The STS was backing of the main (upper) armoured deck.

For 15" hits info and trajectories, please refer the new monograph on French battleships by Jordan and Dumas, my info is from it. It's newer and specialized to French BBs so odds are that it is more reliable on this. According to it both 3rd and 4th hits penetrated the belt.

Juha
Click to expand...

Hi Juha, since the main armored deck joined at the top of the main belt, any shell can only penetrate one or the other, not both.

yes I have read pp 61, but what a ship is designed to do and achieve and what it does in actuality are completely different.
 
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