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Tree Bucket posted:A question that's been bugging me for ages, regarding the sinking of the Bismark. Germany builds this astonishingly prestigious warship, with much fanfare, and sends it into the maw of the entire Royal Navy, escorted by one other ship...? Why would they use a lone battleship as a commerce raider when the u-boats were doing such a good job? I may be missing something here. What else were they going to do, fight Jutland 2.0 with a whole three or so battleships?
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Feb 21, 2019 11:35
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feedmegin posted:What else were they going to do, fight Jutland 2.0 with a whole three or so battleships? Go put slightly more holes in Leningrad? 
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Feb 21, 2019 12:31
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Three things are important here: 1. In theory, a properly-handled surface raider could wreck a convoy far more thoroughly than even a wolfpack. Combined with the major advantage the Bismarck-class should have had over the obsolecent dreadoughts that made up much of the British fleet, this means that powerful surface raiders wpuld force Britain to devote much of their modern fleet to escort duty. 2. Raeder still believed that a fleet of capital ships was a crucial part of a nation's prestige. Those same ships were also massive resource hogs, and they were constantly under fire from Hitler because all that steel could have made a lot of tanks. Thus, Raeder needed big results to keep Hitler from taking his toys away. 3. Britain had more battleships than Germany had destroyers. Any naval fight would have been brief and one-sided.
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Feb 21, 2019 15:09
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Also if the Bismarck pulled it off, it would reinforce the power of the German fleet in being, requiring the allies to devote even more resources to handling the threat even if they never tried it again.
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Feb 21, 2019 15:32
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The chase for Bismarck was kind of a near-run thing. If the Swordfish from Ark Royal hadn't hit the rudder, there's a real chance she'd have made port. She'd have been bottled up by the RN, but the need to keep ships on hand to container her would have complicated things for them. The hit to British prestige would have been real, too. If Bismarck had been able to sortie, sink Hood, scare off Prince of Wales, and get into port before anyone did anything significant about it, it would have been a worse defeat for the RN than Coronel. Edit: Dang it Fangz.
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Feb 21, 2019 15:48
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Did Earl Ziemke ever complete his coverage of the Eastern Front? I can only find Moscow-to-Stalingrad and Stalingrad-to-Berlin (yes I know there are better histories)
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Feb 21, 2019 15:55
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Fangz posted:Also if the Bismarck pulled it off, it would reinforce the power of the German fleet in being, requiring the allies to devote even more resources to handling the threat even if they never tried it again. This was definitely the broader aim. If Bismarck could break out of the Baltic/North Sea and make it to a port on the Bay of Biscay like Brest, St. Nazaire or La Rochelle then the Kriegsmarine would have a battleship with virtually unimpeded access to the Atlantic. Even if she never actually left harbour the Allies would have to devote more of their hard-pressed resources in the North Atlantic and Western Approaches to cover her. And those forces would either have to sit ready in a distant friendly port, reducing their usefulness as a counter, or have a continuous at-sea presence, off a hostile coastline and right in the prime striking area for sallying U-boats and Fw200 patrol aircraft. The Atlantic convoy routes would have to be moved further north and you'd be looking at running fewer convoys with more escorts (and more powerful escort forces) per convoy, slowing the flow of materiel to the UK. Consider that you could have Bismarck in Brest and Tirpitz in Norway and you have the UK and its major convoy routes in a 'fleet in being pincer movement'. And in getting to a Biscay port it was hoped that Bismarck would have a week or so to charge around the Atlantic preying on convoys and weaker naval units while the RN struggled to locate, catch and neutralise her. A ship like the Bismarck could destroy a 1941 convoy, escorted by destroyers and corvettes, at virtually no risk to itself, and the wider chaos it would inflict on the convoy system and the RN ops system as it tried to cope with a German battleship loose in the Atlantic would have been even more devastating. Then there are the morale and political effects on both sides as well. The Kriegsmarine, in the event, underestimated the abilities of the RAF Coastal Command and the capabilities of the RN's on-ship radar, allowing Bismarck's movements to be tracked much more effectively than predicted. And even so, it was a judgement which nearly went in the Germans' favour - Bismarck managed to give both surface and air units the slip on more than one occasion and it was with no small amount of luck that she was found again so quickly. Also underestimated was the British willingness to pull other resources from supposedly tied-down elements elsewhere, such as letting long-range convoys sail without cruiser or battleship escort and pulling Force H from the Mediterranean, which brought an aircraft carrier into play. BalloonFish fucked around with this message at 17:08 on Feb 21, 2019 |
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Feb 21, 2019 16:04
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Tree Bucket posted:A question that's been bugging me for ages, regarding the sinking of the Bismark. Germany builds this astonishingly prestigious warship, with much fanfare, and sends it into the maw of the entire Royal Navy, escorted by one other ship...? Why would they use a lone battleship as a commerce raider when the u-boats were doing such a good job? I may be missing something here. There were actually a couple of different layers of incoherency at play with the Bismarck ships. Remember that their design and construction went all the way back to the early 30s, and there were some major differences in strategy and policy at that time that influenced how they were built and eventually used. Note: there are a lot of folks here waaaay smarter than me on this stuff so please correct me if anything I say here is wrong or oversimplified. The earliest Nazi military strategies envisioned some manner of war of conquest against Poland, and then some sort of war of retribution against France. The hope was that the UK would stay out of things. This was what the early Wehrmacht concepts were built around, and what the initial Bismarck plans were designed to support: blowing up the tiny Polish navy and then dueling with their coastal batteries in the Baltic, then either fighting or standing off the French navy in the North Sea, then attacking French shipping in the Atlantic in concert with the U-boats. This was actually probably an achievable set of objectives for the KM. At the same time, Hitler's policy towards the UK was "be nice". He wanted either peace or an alliance with the UK, and he believed that avoiding a naval arms race ala pre-WWI was a great way to ensure this. To that end, Germany and the UK signed an agreement that seriously limited the size of the KM relative to the RN. This was fine, as Germany had no intention of fighting the UK, and was happy to limit naval spending in order to try and buy some English favor. So far, this is pretty coherent, right? We'll build a couple of fast battleships that can blow up the Poles, then scare the French, then help us win a guerre de course against them in the Atlantic. This requires a battleship that is fast, has good endurance, can fight and win one on X versus a number of smaller vessels, and can at least scare an enemy battleship into thinking twice before attacking. We can do all of this in a smaller ship with a smaller main battery, one that won't scare the British. Then things started to get complicated. Italy went full fascist and started building battleships. This scared the French, who naturally started building more of their own battleships. Now, instead of having a couple of old French battlewagons to worry about, the KM had to contend with up to four new, big, fast, ships. This meant that the original concept for the new KM battleships was obsolete: they now needed to be able to fight and win an actual stand-up fight in the North Sea against a bunch of potentially angry Frenchmen. So, they needed to up the size of the main battery and up the armor protection. This cost range and speed, and required a much larger ship. So, the Bismarcks got bigger. And slower. And shorter-legged. They were no longer really ideal as commerce raiders...they were now proper battlewagons. Still, these were probably enough to at least give the French a second thought before some manner of battle in the North Sea...as long as the RN stayed out of things. Nazis being Nazis though, they couldn't be happy with this as the status quo. Right about the time Bismark was being laid down, Hitler (and Goering) went full retard with regard to England, and denounced their naval treaty, among other things. This series of events essentially locked in the UK as an opponent of Germany in the upcoming war, which meant that the RN was a future opponent. Since the KM could never hope to take on the RN force-on-force, the KM was back to pursuing an all-in guerre de course in the Atlantic just like they did in WWI. Now, instead of needing big gun battlewagons, they needed fast, long legged commerce raiders....but the Bismarck design was already locked in, and was being built. That's how they wound up with a battlewagon being pressed into a role it wasn't really designed for. All that said, in terms of tangible effects on the enemy, I'd argue that Tirpitz was the most effective battleship of the war. bewbies fucked around with this message at 16:29 on Feb 21, 2019 |
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Feb 21, 2019 16:11
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bewbies posted:All that said, in terms of tangible effects on the enemy, I'd argue that Tirpitz was the most effective battleship of the war. I see where you are going there and I think I agree Italy's battleships had a similar effect. The idea that Italy could break out a big stick against Allied Convoys made the British escort their Malta convoys with battleships and fleet carriers. Since we're on the subject of battleships, I finished reading Neptune's Inferno. The Guadalcanal naval battles are very interesting, not the least of which is the argument the author makes, that the US won that battle basically by showing that they had no fear in slugging it out and even being aggressive to the point that they were willing whole flotillas could be wiped out, if that's what it took.
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Feb 21, 2019 17:04
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bewbies posted:All that said, in terms of tangible effects on the enemy, I'd argue that Tirpitz was the most effective battleship of the war. As "fleet in being?" I can see it.
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Feb 21, 2019 18:16
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Nebakenezzer posted:Ju 86 The 86 is a kinda good-looking plane    Def cooler-looking than a 111 or 88. I'd rank them 86, 17, 111, 88 in descending order.
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Feb 21, 2019 18:30
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I like the all-glass nose of the He-111. I guess I watched too much Battle of Britain as a kid.
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Feb 21, 2019 18:38
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aphid_licker posted:The 86 is a kinda good-looking plane 
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Feb 21, 2019 18:43
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Cessna posted:I like... the He-111. I guess I watched too much Battle of Britain as a kid. same. It's a very bomber-looking bomber
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Feb 21, 2019 18:51
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The 88 is gorgeous and I always assume it’s much faster than it actually is in video games.
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Feb 21, 2019 18:51
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aphid_licker posted:The 86 is a kinda good-looking plane It is. Looks vaguely Italian in a way.
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Feb 21, 2019 18:51
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Nebakenezzer posted:I see where you are going there and I think I agree The naval battles around Guadalcanal were such a close run thing that it makes the Japanese decision to keep the two Yamato’s out of the theater disastrous because that was basically the only part of the war where they could have been a decisive factor.
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Feb 21, 2019 18:55
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88 and 111 are too generic-looking imo. The 17 has that weird dragonfly thing going on that works for me and the 86 has this brutish look.
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Feb 21, 2019 18:58
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Mazz posted:The 88 is gorgeous and I always assume it’s much faster than it actually is in video games. What do you mean? It was fast as gently caress, and many variants werent much behind the Mosquito.
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Feb 21, 2019 19:04
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aphid_licker posted:The 86 is a kinda good-looking plane It actually reminds me a bit of a Lancaster somehow.
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Feb 21, 2019 19:42
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Is the wire on top a control cable or an antenna?
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Feb 21, 2019 19:44
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Fangz posted:Is the wire on top a control cable or an antenna? Seems like a strange place to put a control cable but a natural place for an antenna?
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Feb 21, 2019 19:47
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Fangz posted:Is the wire on top a control cable or an antenna? Its for the antenna, lots of planes had that.  Note cable going into tail.  More visible on this mosquito  Same thing for this La-5 Edit: There's a caveat that some planes have that antenna cable more because of current radio requirements. The Mosquito is a bomber/pathfinder variant by the looks of it but I couldn't find a period photo with a visible cable. Low resolution and quick search may be the cause. And one shouldn't confuse it with reinforcing cables like those found on the  Peashooter The P-40 also had some, but they were limited to early models. Jobbo_Fett fucked around with this message at 20:16 on Feb 21, 2019 |
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Feb 21, 2019 19:52
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:The naval battles around Guadalcanal were such a close run thing that it makes the Japanese decision to keep the two Yamato’s out of the theater disastrous because that was basically the only part of the war where they could have been a decisive factor. This is along the lines of what I was thinking. I was thinking that the Japanese could have one 1) if they had known about the logistic difficulties of the Americans (not having the tankers to bring along battleships initially) and then 2) committed their big boys in force against the American beachhead. Had a flotilla of battleships rolled down the slot early, they could have mauled the American fleet and then blockaded the landed troops. The Japanese with their own shipping problems I don't think could have ever outnumbered the Americans, but with a long enough blockade they might have weakened them sufficiently to be defeated. Of course, the BIG COMMITMENT of battleships, and why the Japanese didn't do this goes back to how the Americans ultimately won. The land forces, even the green troops, fought tenaciously, because the Bataan Death March tends to stick in your mind if you're a Marine/soldier on a south Pacific Island fighting the Japanese in 1942. The Navy, similarly, had a similar willingness to fight it out. And that willingness (and the loss of two battleships) made the IJN leery at risking more in the fight, since they had that final battle of ultimate destiny thing in their doctrine, and they knew a battleship/carrier lost was very unlikely to be replaced.
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Feb 21, 2019 20:22
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Nebakenezzer posted:Had a flotilla of battleships rolled down the slot early, they could have mauled the American fleet and then blockaded the landed troops. Wasn't that already the de facto state of affairs after Savo Island?
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Feb 21, 2019 20:49
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Does anyone have any strong feelings about the "Age of Tanks" series on Netflix? Sounds like it might be French in origin? Seems p.deece?
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Feb 21, 2019 20:49
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Cessna posted:Wasn't that already the de facto state of affairs after Savo Island? Sorta. The US commander at the time, Ghormley, was really ineffective and impotent so the IJN was pretty much able to gain a few tactical victories. The problem was the IJA was kinda bad as well and had a real hard time taking the airfield. However then Nimitz replaced Ghormley with Halsey, who was probably a tad bit too aggressive and big dicked it and sent in two of the newest US battleships into the sound, where they luckily came out on top, but it could have very well ended in disaster, since theres very little room to maneuver there and long lances are scary. Anyways, once the IJN lost yet another BB, they pulled out, and then one thing led to another, and nuclear weapons were used. There was a window of a month where the US carriers were all out of commission after Santa Cruz, that the IJN could have sent in Yamato or Musashi to... possibly blockade. But then you have the problem of how the gently caress the Japanese are going to logistically support that. You need to blockade for a while AND land more troops. Yamato and Musashi suck down fuel oil like a fat man at a buffet, not to mention the support elements. I don't think the IJN could have logistically carried out a month long blockade operation with major fleet elements. Saint Celestine fucked around with this message at 21:04 on Feb 21, 2019 |
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Feb 21, 2019 20:59
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Nebakenezzer posted:I see where you are going there and I think I agree To be fair, the Brits didn't have much else to do with their navy. They weren't really set up for long-range carrier operations and so wouldn't have been much use against the Japanese.
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Feb 21, 2019 21:02
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:To be fair, the Brits didn't have much else to do with their navy. They weren't really set up for long-range carrier operations and so wouldn't have been much use against the Japanese. Counterpoint: Prince of Wales and Repulse would have been real useful at Guadalcanal.
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Feb 21, 2019 21:05
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Schadenboner posted:Does anyone have any strong feelings about the "Age of Tanks" series on Netflix? It was good. Well made diagrams, and cool footage. Nothing obviously struck me as wrong, but the history of tanks in col war was very western centric. Not much about tanks elsewhere. Worth a watch.
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Feb 21, 2019 21:22
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Saint Celestine posted:However then Nimitz replaced Ghormley with Halsey, who was probably a tad bit too aggressive and big dicked it and sent in two of the newest US battleships into the sound, where they luckily came out on top, but it could have very well ended in disaster, since theres very little room to maneuver there and long lances are scary. This was something I noticed as well; in the last battle the two newest battleships have their destroyer screen withdraw so they are using their radar-targeted guns to bash the Japanese, and the Japanese spam long lances at them, and through some intersession from God they all miss. Another thing I took away from Inferno: long lances are goddamn scary. I forget what cruiser it was (maybe Portland) that got hit by one and had the entire bottom half of its bow just gone, like it had taken a gigantic shark bite. Speaking of sharks, the loss of the Juneau and the subsequent fuckup in communications that delayed rescue ops, while the last destroyer standing decided it was a too great a risk to rescue the remaining crew themselves, very sad. Saint Celestine posted:Anyways, once the IJN lost yet another BB, they pulled out, and then one thing led to another, and nuclear weapons were used. There was a window of a month where the US carriers were all out of commission after Santa Cruz, that the IJN could have sent in Yamato or Musashi to... possibly blockade. I think you are right. I was thinking of airplanes, PT boats and submarines doing the actual blockade work, but the logistic problems are very difficult to avoid. Ironically I think if you assume that the Japanese can't have the super clear intel to dedicate themselves like that, the only way they ride heavy is if they assumed an almost magic confidence like the Japanese Army did.
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Feb 21, 2019 21:25
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The problem with that is that the Cactus air force at Henderson can protect the sound and cover/prevent landings. They used Betties and what not, but didn't do too well when chased by wildcats. You also don't want to operate subs in the sound. Its... not a great environment for subs. PT Boats sure, but with US air superiority, they get taken out fast. Realistically the only way the Japanese were going to take Guadalcanal was if they went balls out and committed everything. Then you have the problem of even if you do manage a blockade, you still have to depend on the IJA to actually take the island. Which... who fuckin' knows what those guys are doing. Probably charging an entire battalion straight into machine gun fire.
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Feb 21, 2019 21:30
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:To be fair, the Brits didn't have much else to do with their navy. They weren't really set up for long-range carrier operations and so wouldn't have been much use against the Japanese. Uhhh https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Pacific_Fleet It was a thing. Would have played quite a large part in invading Japan if that had actually gone down.
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Feb 21, 2019 22:09
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Decide you so have this that you don't even need food after the night of the attack, because obviously then you can just use whatever the cowardly Americans had
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Feb 21, 2019 22:10
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Hey I dunno if you guys heard about World War II but I have probably an unanswerable question and I'd be interested in what y'all think. While unsurpassed in the amount of human suffering it caused, the massive influx of resources and money into wartime R&D led to some technological quantum leaps. So in a world where the war didn't happen, where the Nazis never come to power, and Japan, I don't know, has plenty of oil?, do y'all think we would be significantly behind where we are now in terms of technological development or do you think that we'd have ended up in the same place but just at a slower pace? Like, for example, nuclear tech: would the immediate application have been to weaponize it or to turn it towards peaceful purposes? At what point, in your opinion, do we start working on nuclear fission experiments in the absence of billions of dollars in investment toward the goal of nuking the Axis? For a more quantifiable question, what are some more specific areas in which wartime spending and development greatly advanced technological development?
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Feb 21, 2019 22:16
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zoux posted:Hey I dunno if you guys heard about World War II but I have probably an unanswerable question and I'd be interested in what y'all think. While unsurpassed in the amount of human suffering it caused, the massive influx of resources and money into wartime R&D led to some technological quantum leaps. So in a world where the war didn't happen, where the Nazis never come to power, and Japan, I don't know, has plenty of oil?, do y'all think we would be significantly behind where we are now in terms of technological development or do you think that we'd have ended up in the same place but just at a slower pace? Like, for example, nuclear tech: would the immediate application have been to weaponize it or to turn it towards peaceful purposes? At what point, in your opinion, do we start working on nuclear fission experiments in the absence of billions of dollars in investment toward the goal of nuking the Axis? People were already looking into jet-powered aircraft before World War 2 started, so its safe to say that certain advancements would have continued as per usual, but there's no reason to think that radar wouldn't have been utilized in planes, or that submarines wouldn't have gotten better, albeit at a slower pace as you mention. As for stuff like nukes, they would've been a hard sell with less funding, but, again, hard to believe they'd never see nuclear power develop. As for utilization, that'll depend on if any wars start up at some point.
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Feb 21, 2019 22:24
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i think the greater impact was not the direct r&d during the war but the way that the united states came out of the war as a global economic superpower and quasi-socialist state which then propped up decades of intense MIC activity through unprecedented prosperity and public buy-in for new technology development
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Feb 21, 2019 22:33
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https://i.imgur.com/Ft36rJ2.mp4 When you're protecting the Atlantik Wall but they delayed the invasion.
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Feb 21, 2019 22:50
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Which is worse, being a German stationed in the West in the Spring of 44 constantly on the edge of sanity knowing that the moment of your execution was imminently approaching but not knowing the exact time or place or being a German stationed in the East engaged in a series of entirely expected executions.
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Feb 21, 2019 23:04
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feedmegin posted:Uhhh That was established in late 1944, at which point the Italians were out of the war and the Germans were down to Gneisenau, and the Japanese fleet was a non-factor itself. Also, it was serving alongside like 30+ American carriers, and 100 or so escort carriers. Not exactly a critical contribution. If you look at the situation in 1941, Fleet Air Arm isn't really equipped for carrier warfare. To my knowledge, the Brits don't have any practice with mass carrier operations and mostly use them as fighter platforms. The carriers themselves have small hangars and are operating questionably modern aircraft like Fulmars and Albacores. Ironically, the best chances for the RN would have been air radar-guided night attacks. Saint Celestine posted:Counterpoint: Prince of Wales and Repulse would have been real useful at Guadalcanal. Well, if they didn't get destroyed by the IJN, sure.
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Feb 21, 2019 23:06
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