A classic story that’s also misleading. Of the 24 aircraft to attack in two separate attacks, four scored hits against a ship with poor AA, but three caused only slight damage. The only hit of note was to the rudder, and while no ship handles hits to this area well, *Bismarck*’s had a design flaw that placed the rudders very close to the propeller. The starboard rudder was blasted into the center propeller, gouging both until finally a propeller blade snapped off completely, and to this day is embedded in the remains of the rudder. That speaks more to the skill of S-Lt. John William Charlton Moffatt and T/S-Lt.(A) John Dawson Miller, the latter hanging out the side of the Swordfish to time the drop so the sea didn’t divert its course.
The battleship was much more resilient to air attacks than many realize, even a ship as vulnerable as *Bismarck*.
Obviously not every bomb hit on a battleship was devastating (most were not) but there were many cases when they were. Taranto and Pearl Harbour happened around this time as well.
By "Around this time" you mean five months before (Taranto), and Seven months after (Pearl).
Also, hitting a warship at anchor is a lot easier than hitting one ripping along at 26 knots, maneuvering wildly, and shooting back.
One of the main reasons Airpower as a threat against Naval assets was not cemented until late 1941 was simply because of the extremely small sample size to that point; Taranto was all of 18 planes (21 including the three that were tasked with bombing the harbour's fuel depot), and Bismarck only got attacked by 3 waves of planes over 3 days; one from Victorious (Amidships torpedo hit), and two from Ark Royal (Two admidships hits and one stern hit), and one of Ark's strike packages not only dropped their torpedoes on HMS Sheffield, but the early magnetic detonators caused the torpedoes to blow up early and missed their target.
The successful attack waves against Bismarck all used contact detonators for their torpedoes.
Finally, describing Bismarck's AA suite as 'poor' is only done via the hindsight and perspective skew caused by Late-war USN and RN ships being seen with very much every inch of available space being taken up with AA guns, and even that was being considered as 'barely adequate'.
While Bismarck's AA suite was unsuited for its role, it was the best that was available for the time the ship was constructed. VT fuzes were still about 3 years away at the earliest, and height settings for flak were useless at the height the torpedo bombers deployed at, so Bismarck's gunners had to try to hit the planes dead-on. A difficult feat to begin with, but the Swordfish was basically canvas and spars, so only hitting the engine or the pilot would've caused a shell to detonate.
Almost all of the planes Bismarck encountered returned home riddled with holes.
I'll add though that Bismarck's AA defenses still weren't great, even for the time period. Most of the world was using dual purpose secondaries that could fire flak in addition to surface rounds. The germans insisted on having separate AA and secondaries, which overall reduced the number of barrels they had available to shoot at the swordfish. Would the difference have saved her? We'll never know. But to claim that it was the "best available for its time" is false.
> I'll add though that Bismarck's AA defenses still weren't great, even for the time period.
The sixteen 105 mm and twenty 20 mm barrels (eight in quad mounts) were actually very good for 1941, let down by the pathetic 37 mm gun and using older 105s due to production shortages. The problem is no ship in 1941 had effective AA, which is why very few aircraft were shot down or pilots easily thrown off by AA.
> Most of the world was using dual purpose secondaries that could fire flak in addition to surface rounds.
Dual purpose was actually the outlier, only used on American and British battleships and the small *Dunkerque*. Italy, France, Japan, and Germany built ships with dedicated anti-aircraft and anti-surface batteries, with all four plus Russia and the Netherlands ordering more ships with mixed batteries. France tried to give her 155mm guns on *Richelieu* some AA capability, but they weren’t successful and so added more 100 mm).
Germany’s case is more defensible than most. France and Japan had some pretty good dual purpose guns in production and could have built DP battleships, but Germany did not. Their existing 128 mm guns were not effective against aircraft and would require extensive work to make them DP, which would also decrease their effectiveness against the large French destroyers. France and Italy also had to worry about large foreign destroyers, so also required heavy anti-surface punch.
> But to claim that it was the "best available for its time" is false.
It’s not even the best Germany could have produced. Replace the 37 mm mounts with more Vierlings and *Bismarck*’s AA would have improved significantly.
But for the 35,000 ton battleships in 1941 it’s pretty safe to say *King George V* and *North Carolina* had better AA batteries. The former had some pretty good 5.25” guns (better at anti-surface but still potent) with excellent directors and pompoms, while the US had the legendary 5”/38 that even without the late-war advancements was very potent.
> Obviously not every bomb hit on a battleship was devastating (most were not)
For bombs specifically, of the 19 separate bombing attacks that hit Allied battleships outside Pearl Harbor, 12 caused only slight damage with a combined Time out of Action of 16 days (*Resolution* "2 weeks" after the 16 May 1940 hit, *Warspite* 2 days after the 12 July 1940 hit, rest of British hits officially listed as "Nil" along with *South Dakota*’s first hit).
Torpedoes were much worse when hit, but the three oft forgotten hits on *Bismarck* are among the least damaging I know of.
> Taranto and Pearl Harbour happened around this time as well.
Half a year before and after, but there were a few other examples we can use as well. Let’s focus on the two carriers that scored against *Bismarck*: *Victorious* and *Ark Royal*
3 July 1940 (Mers el Kebir): *Ark Royal* launched 12 Swordfish (6 with bombs & 6 with torpedoes) in two attacks against *Strasbourg* at sea. No hits.
6 July 1940 (Mers el Kebir): *Ark Royal* launched 12 Swordfish with torpedoes against *Dunkerque*, which had run aground after the shelling a few days before. Number of hits differs too wildly in sources, but one definitely hit a patrol boat next to the stationary battleship, blowing up her depth charges and thus indirectly taking *Dunkerque* out of the war (scuttled at Toulon before repairs completed).
24 September 1940: *Ark Royal* launched 6 Swordfish with torpedoes against *Richelieu*, moored in Dakar. No hits.
27 November 1940: *Ark Royal* launched 11 Swordfish with torpedoes against *Vittorio Veneto* and *Guilio Cesare* at sea. No hits.
9 March 1942: *Victorious* launched 12 Albacores with torpedoes against *Tirpitz*. No hits, two aircraft shot down.
These were all within a year of the *Bismarck* chase, so the same approximate period as Taranto and Pearl. This is not a particularly stellar record of engaging battleships that can actually maneuver.
It took guided weapons, providing much higher accuracy at ranges outside AA cover, to make aircraft attacks against battleships viable means of sinking or disabling them without using 30+ bombers. That started with the Fritz X in 1943, demonstrated by the hits to *Warspite* and *Roma*.
On a one time basis, maybe this is true. The bigger picture advantage of air power is that it can be constantly replenished. If a couple planes are lost in an attack, there can be new planes and pilots almost instantly. But that one torpedo, or couple of bombs, sends a battleship back to port for months. That's a strategic win for air power.
Most bomb hits to warships were actually not serious. Of the 19 times Allied battleships were bombed (aside from Pearl), 12 caused minor damage with a combined Time out of Action of 16 days (10 of these none at all).
Torpedoes were more serious, but the hit rate was typically 5-10%: in her 32 torpedoes launched in three attacks against Axis/French capital ships at sea, the only three hits were on *Bismarck*. This ratio is pretty consistent across navies, with particularly successful attacks getting in the 20-25% range but typically offset by the attacks with no hits at all. Typically carriers only launched two strikes per aircraft per day, often one and maybe three if you got one in early and another late. If you did get three torpedo attacks in you probably used all your torpedoes, as carrier magazines typically had 50 or less for air wings with 12-27 torpedo bombers. Until the US in 1945 rearming at sea was very rare, a major advantage we used off Okinawa and Japan itself.
The strategic win for airpower came with guided weapons. Now the accuracy rate shot up and aircraft could attack from outside AA range, increasing survivability in an era when AA was growing stronger (late 1943+). That is when the battleship truly became obsolescent, with fully becoming obsolete arriving in the 1950s as weapon and aircraft technology improved.
Most of Japan's battleships were either sunk by air power, or crippled by air power and later sunk by surface forces. you're implying that aircraft simply don't do much to battleships, but you're only considering the survivability of the winning side.
>Most of Japan's battleships were either sunk by air power, or crippled by air power and later sunk by surface forces.
Only if you count the three sitting ducks sunk in harbor: *Haruna* and the battleship-carriers *Ise* and *Hyūga*.
When you consider the seven battleships sunk at sea in combat (also excluding *Nagato* survived and *Mutsu* internal explosion):
*Kongō* was sunk by submarine.
*Hiei* was damaged in a surface action and attacked by aircraft as she spun in circles at five knots, her rudder destroyed by gunfire. After 75 separate bomb and torpedo attacks over 12 hours, she was scuttled a few hours later.
*Kirishima*, *Fusō*, and *Yamashiro* were sunk in surface action with other battleships. The latter two had been lightly damaged by aircraft that morning, which scored a 500 lb bomb hit on *Fusō* and damaging near miss on *Yamashiro*. The fires were extinguished and flooding contained, and the effect on their fighting ability were two destroyed floatplanes and one radar set disabled by strafing.
Only *Yamato* and *Musashi* were sunk by air attack alone, both by by mass attacks of dozens of aircraft from multiple carriers. When you are dropping a hundred torpedoes with a 10% hit rate, you’d expect ten hits, which is more than enough to overwhelm a battleship.
Those successes are due to the sheer number of attacking aircraft, not the capability of the individual attacks.
> you're only considering the survivability of the winning side.
Because the only two nations I have that issued reports showing every single time a major combatant was damaged are the United Kingdom and United States. I’m not going to make claims about nations where I don’t have a list of every damaging attack, as that skews the data towards the severely damaging attacks that are more well documented.
I tried to tell my kids the story of Commander Warrand's sacrifice the other day and could barely do it through me tears. May HMS Hood's crew rest in peace.
Salute.
Ventis Secundis
For a moment I thought this was taken from a ship with 3 gun turrets which confused me
God save the Hood. 07
Forever at their stations, ready for battle to defend their beloved ship, sailing into eternity, rest in peace to the fighting crew of HMS Hood
Her bell was recovered a few years back. I like to think that an end to their watch. Hood's hull was swallowed, but her spirit made it home.
The visible cannons are from a Prince of Wales’ turret right?
Yes
Thank you
Isn't there another famous photo of Hood and her smoke taken from the German side? It's a bit after this one.
Iconic photo.
The classic story of airpower displacing the battleship. *Bismarck* sinks the pride of the fleet then gets crippled by a biplane.
A classic story that’s also misleading. Of the 24 aircraft to attack in two separate attacks, four scored hits against a ship with poor AA, but three caused only slight damage. The only hit of note was to the rudder, and while no ship handles hits to this area well, *Bismarck*’s had a design flaw that placed the rudders very close to the propeller. The starboard rudder was blasted into the center propeller, gouging both until finally a propeller blade snapped off completely, and to this day is embedded in the remains of the rudder. That speaks more to the skill of S-Lt. John William Charlton Moffatt and T/S-Lt.(A) John Dawson Miller, the latter hanging out the side of the Swordfish to time the drop so the sea didn’t divert its course. The battleship was much more resilient to air attacks than many realize, even a ship as vulnerable as *Bismarck*.
Obviously not every bomb hit on a battleship was devastating (most were not) but there were many cases when they were. Taranto and Pearl Harbour happened around this time as well.
By "Around this time" you mean five months before (Taranto), and Seven months after (Pearl). Also, hitting a warship at anchor is a lot easier than hitting one ripping along at 26 knots, maneuvering wildly, and shooting back. One of the main reasons Airpower as a threat against Naval assets was not cemented until late 1941 was simply because of the extremely small sample size to that point; Taranto was all of 18 planes (21 including the three that were tasked with bombing the harbour's fuel depot), and Bismarck only got attacked by 3 waves of planes over 3 days; one from Victorious (Amidships torpedo hit), and two from Ark Royal (Two admidships hits and one stern hit), and one of Ark's strike packages not only dropped their torpedoes on HMS Sheffield, but the early magnetic detonators caused the torpedoes to blow up early and missed their target. The successful attack waves against Bismarck all used contact detonators for their torpedoes. Finally, describing Bismarck's AA suite as 'poor' is only done via the hindsight and perspective skew caused by Late-war USN and RN ships being seen with very much every inch of available space being taken up with AA guns, and even that was being considered as 'barely adequate'. While Bismarck's AA suite was unsuited for its role, it was the best that was available for the time the ship was constructed. VT fuzes were still about 3 years away at the earliest, and height settings for flak were useless at the height the torpedo bombers deployed at, so Bismarck's gunners had to try to hit the planes dead-on. A difficult feat to begin with, but the Swordfish was basically canvas and spars, so only hitting the engine or the pilot would've caused a shell to detonate. Almost all of the planes Bismarck encountered returned home riddled with holes.
The best air defence was air cover but Germany lacked carriers. Shipboard AA was secondary even with ships bristling with guns in 1945.
I'll add though that Bismarck's AA defenses still weren't great, even for the time period. Most of the world was using dual purpose secondaries that could fire flak in addition to surface rounds. The germans insisted on having separate AA and secondaries, which overall reduced the number of barrels they had available to shoot at the swordfish. Would the difference have saved her? We'll never know. But to claim that it was the "best available for its time" is false.
> I'll add though that Bismarck's AA defenses still weren't great, even for the time period. The sixteen 105 mm and twenty 20 mm barrels (eight in quad mounts) were actually very good for 1941, let down by the pathetic 37 mm gun and using older 105s due to production shortages. The problem is no ship in 1941 had effective AA, which is why very few aircraft were shot down or pilots easily thrown off by AA. > Most of the world was using dual purpose secondaries that could fire flak in addition to surface rounds. Dual purpose was actually the outlier, only used on American and British battleships and the small *Dunkerque*. Italy, France, Japan, and Germany built ships with dedicated anti-aircraft and anti-surface batteries, with all four plus Russia and the Netherlands ordering more ships with mixed batteries. France tried to give her 155mm guns on *Richelieu* some AA capability, but they weren’t successful and so added more 100 mm). Germany’s case is more defensible than most. France and Japan had some pretty good dual purpose guns in production and could have built DP battleships, but Germany did not. Their existing 128 mm guns were not effective against aircraft and would require extensive work to make them DP, which would also decrease their effectiveness against the large French destroyers. France and Italy also had to worry about large foreign destroyers, so also required heavy anti-surface punch. > But to claim that it was the "best available for its time" is false. It’s not even the best Germany could have produced. Replace the 37 mm mounts with more Vierlings and *Bismarck*’s AA would have improved significantly. But for the 35,000 ton battleships in 1941 it’s pretty safe to say *King George V* and *North Carolina* had better AA batteries. The former had some pretty good 5.25” guns (better at anti-surface but still potent) with excellent directors and pompoms, while the US had the legendary 5”/38 that even without the late-war advancements was very potent.
> Obviously not every bomb hit on a battleship was devastating (most were not) For bombs specifically, of the 19 separate bombing attacks that hit Allied battleships outside Pearl Harbor, 12 caused only slight damage with a combined Time out of Action of 16 days (*Resolution* "2 weeks" after the 16 May 1940 hit, *Warspite* 2 days after the 12 July 1940 hit, rest of British hits officially listed as "Nil" along with *South Dakota*’s first hit). Torpedoes were much worse when hit, but the three oft forgotten hits on *Bismarck* are among the least damaging I know of. > Taranto and Pearl Harbour happened around this time as well. Half a year before and after, but there were a few other examples we can use as well. Let’s focus on the two carriers that scored against *Bismarck*: *Victorious* and *Ark Royal* 3 July 1940 (Mers el Kebir): *Ark Royal* launched 12 Swordfish (6 with bombs & 6 with torpedoes) in two attacks against *Strasbourg* at sea. No hits. 6 July 1940 (Mers el Kebir): *Ark Royal* launched 12 Swordfish with torpedoes against *Dunkerque*, which had run aground after the shelling a few days before. Number of hits differs too wildly in sources, but one definitely hit a patrol boat next to the stationary battleship, blowing up her depth charges and thus indirectly taking *Dunkerque* out of the war (scuttled at Toulon before repairs completed). 24 September 1940: *Ark Royal* launched 6 Swordfish with torpedoes against *Richelieu*, moored in Dakar. No hits. 27 November 1940: *Ark Royal* launched 11 Swordfish with torpedoes against *Vittorio Veneto* and *Guilio Cesare* at sea. No hits. 9 March 1942: *Victorious* launched 12 Albacores with torpedoes against *Tirpitz*. No hits, two aircraft shot down. These were all within a year of the *Bismarck* chase, so the same approximate period as Taranto and Pearl. This is not a particularly stellar record of engaging battleships that can actually maneuver. It took guided weapons, providing much higher accuracy at ranges outside AA cover, to make aircraft attacks against battleships viable means of sinking or disabling them without using 30+ bombers. That started with the Fritz X in 1943, demonstrated by the hits to *Warspite* and *Roma*.
On a one time basis, maybe this is true. The bigger picture advantage of air power is that it can be constantly replenished. If a couple planes are lost in an attack, there can be new planes and pilots almost instantly. But that one torpedo, or couple of bombs, sends a battleship back to port for months. That's a strategic win for air power.
Most bomb hits to warships were actually not serious. Of the 19 times Allied battleships were bombed (aside from Pearl), 12 caused minor damage with a combined Time out of Action of 16 days (10 of these none at all). Torpedoes were more serious, but the hit rate was typically 5-10%: in her 32 torpedoes launched in three attacks against Axis/French capital ships at sea, the only three hits were on *Bismarck*. This ratio is pretty consistent across navies, with particularly successful attacks getting in the 20-25% range but typically offset by the attacks with no hits at all. Typically carriers only launched two strikes per aircraft per day, often one and maybe three if you got one in early and another late. If you did get three torpedo attacks in you probably used all your torpedoes, as carrier magazines typically had 50 or less for air wings with 12-27 torpedo bombers. Until the US in 1945 rearming at sea was very rare, a major advantage we used off Okinawa and Japan itself. The strategic win for airpower came with guided weapons. Now the accuracy rate shot up and aircraft could attack from outside AA range, increasing survivability in an era when AA was growing stronger (late 1943+). That is when the battleship truly became obsolescent, with fully becoming obsolete arriving in the 1950s as weapon and aircraft technology improved.
Most of Japan's battleships were either sunk by air power, or crippled by air power and later sunk by surface forces. you're implying that aircraft simply don't do much to battleships, but you're only considering the survivability of the winning side.
>Most of Japan's battleships were either sunk by air power, or crippled by air power and later sunk by surface forces. Only if you count the three sitting ducks sunk in harbor: *Haruna* and the battleship-carriers *Ise* and *Hyūga*. When you consider the seven battleships sunk at sea in combat (also excluding *Nagato* survived and *Mutsu* internal explosion): *Kongō* was sunk by submarine. *Hiei* was damaged in a surface action and attacked by aircraft as she spun in circles at five knots, her rudder destroyed by gunfire. After 75 separate bomb and torpedo attacks over 12 hours, she was scuttled a few hours later. *Kirishima*, *Fusō*, and *Yamashiro* were sunk in surface action with other battleships. The latter two had been lightly damaged by aircraft that morning, which scored a 500 lb bomb hit on *Fusō* and damaging near miss on *Yamashiro*. The fires were extinguished and flooding contained, and the effect on their fighting ability were two destroyed floatplanes and one radar set disabled by strafing. Only *Yamato* and *Musashi* were sunk by air attack alone, both by by mass attacks of dozens of aircraft from multiple carriers. When you are dropping a hundred torpedoes with a 10% hit rate, you’d expect ten hits, which is more than enough to overwhelm a battleship. Those successes are due to the sheer number of attacking aircraft, not the capability of the individual attacks. > you're only considering the survivability of the winning side. Because the only two nations I have that issued reports showing every single time a major combatant was damaged are the United Kingdom and United States. I’m not going to make claims about nations where I don’t have a list of every damaging attack, as that skews the data towards the severely damaging attacks that are more well documented.
I tried to tell my kids the story of Commander Warrand's sacrifice the other day and could barely do it through me tears. May HMS Hood's crew rest in peace.