Yet Bismarck's final undoing came at the hands of an embarrassingly obsolete weapon, one that no one could have predicted in advance would play the telling role that it did: the carrier-based Fairey Swordfish torpedo bomber. This was a biplane aircraft that looked more like Snoopy’s Sopwith Camel WWI fighter plane than a sleek modern attack aircraft. Wobbling unsteadily towards the Bismarck at barely 100 MPH, the Swordfish flew so slowly that the Bismarck’s modern, sophisticated anti-aircraft weapons could not track their motion slowly enough to get an accurate bead on them and shoot them down. The Swordfish was too slow for the Bismarck to hit them accurately. Amazing.
And like Achilles and his vulnerable heel, so too was the Bismarck critically unprotected: Its rudder, which controlled its steering—was exposed and easy to damage. A Swordfish-launched torpedo struck the Bismarck in the rudder, leaving her impossible to steer. So ended her dash for safety and the British fleet caught her the next day and finished her off.
Neither the Bismarck nor the Tirpitz ever sank even a single merchant ship, which was their primary mission. The Bismarck’s ocean-going fighting career lasted eight days. The Tirpitz’ career was effectively zero days.
For the same amount of raw materials and factory bandwidth that went into making these seven large ships (all of which were manufactured in the 1930s, either before the war or just shortly after its commencement), hundreds of additional U-boats and thousands of additional tanks and aircraft could have been produced. These kinds of weapons were much more in keeping with the style of warfare with which Germany had the most success.
But battleships like Bismarck — quite possibly the most beautiful large warship ever built, with its dramatically swept bow and elegantly angled single stack — held an undeniable emotional appeal to maniacally-egotistical, ambitious heads of state with dreams of worldwide domination, and the visceral appeal of wielding one’s battle fleet in grand surface combat obviously overcame the more measured approach of leveraging the country’s industrial/military capabilities for maximum advantage.
In the end, the civilized world should be thankful for the Bismarck’s existence. A WW II Germany with thousands more Focke-Wulf fighters, and Tiger tanks, and hundreds more U-boats would have been that much more deadly and difficult to defeat. The combined industrial capability and manpower reserves of Britain, America and the Soviet Union would have defeated Germany eventually in any case, but victory was achieved sooner and at less cost to the Allies because of the Bismarck.
A good case made here concerning these ‘pocket battleships’ but over in the Pacific, the same calculus would apply IN SPADES to the IJN’s (Japanese Imperial Navy) giants, Yamato & Musashi. Both ships cost Imperial Japan resources that, in 20/20 hindsight, should have gone into aircraft carriers and/or defending cruisers.
Ironically, Japan PROVED the case against these powerful ships when operating away from friendly air cover. The same UK Battleship that had the first fight with the Bismark [May 1941], HMS Prince of Wales, was now stationed at besieged Singapore on 08 December of the same year. It was the major unit of a six ship force to move against the Japanese Imperial Navy (Task Force Z). The force commander declined RAF support, thinking his advanced ack-ack would be sufficient. On the 10th of December, a single torpedo made a lucky hit that doomed this ship and its battlecruiser companion, HMS Repulse, when they were slowed and succumbed to an increased air attack.
Billy Mitchell, already 4 years dead, had his proof, air power had sunk the battleships!
Even though the Tirpiz did not directly sink ships, the vast amounts of recources that the Brits used to try to kill it off and of course the scattering of a Russia bound convoy were a lot of ships were lost still count.
The Germans are what I like to call Smart morons. The V2 program is a perfect example. They spent the money of the Manhattan Project on it roughly, and inaccurately delivered a tonnage of explosives on target roughly equal to less than two 1000 plane Eighth Air Force bombing raids. We could better their V2 sum total once a week, and even more during the later stage the war.
And it has the unusual honor of actually killing more people building it than in its use.
The Blockheads either do things two ways amazingly beautiful and perfect, or they screw it up in ways a sane man can’t imagine
The Kriegsmarine would have been much better served investing all that money and steel in building several more U-boats.
Wouldn't that be true of any warship?
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.
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.
But the donut was great.
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 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.
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.