Best Battleship of WW2

Originally posted by stumason

Originally posted by Heil Hitler,Eh?

Perhaps The British Would Not Have Risked So Much If Bismacrk
Engaged With Men o War Instead Of Civilian Ships Full Of VITAL Supplies.

Had the very limited number of German Battlecruisers/Battleships actually attempted to stand their ground against the Royal Navy they would have been creamed. The sheer numerical advantage alone would ensure the RN would win.

The Germans just did not have enough of them. They knew they couldn't compete with the RN without spending a decade building the fleet, so they built U-boats instead, which are far more cost effective.

You Are Absolutey Right By Sheer Numbers, But British Capital Ships Were Taxed To The Limit Escorting Convoys, Under Repair, Upgrading Or Bombarding All Over The World.
At The Time Bismarck Was Discovered Several Ships Were Called Out Of Convoy Duty To Assist In Her Sinking.
The RN Had To Pull Out All The Stops To Eliminate Her.
Where were The RN Battlships & Criusers In The North Sea? The Destroyers & Light Cruisers Had To Take On Scharnhortst (Sucsesfully, Luckily) & Gniesnenau All By Themselves.
Personally I Hate The Fact Bismarck Was Sunk, It Would Have Been A Great Memorial Ship To Visit Had She Survived The War, But Thankfully She Was Eliminated.
Supplies On Those Convoys Was One Good Reason To Stop Her, But From A Moral Perspective I Think It Absolutely Abhoring A Man O War Take On Merchant Ships.

Originally posted by junglelord
I definatly would have to choose the Yamato
What more can I say?

She was the biggest ever made....
I like big things

Ugh! More Emotional Fanfare. Friend Did You Even Read Some Of The Posts Or Just Simply & Ignorantly Answer The Thread Question?
Please State Your Opinion Based On At Least SOME Historical Fact.

Is It Really Necessary To Type Your Replies Like This? It's Really Hard To Read Them When You Do.

As to the question, there is no question that the Bismark, Tirpitz and Graf Spee were outstanding battleships, but with the numbers that were built they really couldn't make much difference in the war. The same with the Yamato and Musashi. Both were well armed, and huge for a BB, but there were only two. If you're going to build battleships, you need to build enough of them to make a difference.

Here is a listing of the Home Fleet in 1933. Granted, it may be slightly different from the Home Fleet in the 40's, but the blatant disparity in forces is apparent.

Sorry but I don't buy that.Yes the British fleet was huge but it was also thinly spread. A series of sally forths by Bismark and Tirpitz together, perhaps accompanied by Scharnhorst, Pinz Eugen and Gnisenau would have been a formidible task force.

Big though the British fleet was the large British Battleships lacked the speed to keep up with German capital ships. The problem is that German capital ships were used wrongly, on their own, and were often tied up in Fjords.

It was the tactics and not the quality which sabotaged the German ships.

A note about Rodney and her sister Nelson, These were actually monitors rather than true battleships. They were always intended for shore bombardments rather than high seas engagements.

With respect, HMS Nelson & HMS Rodney were never designed to be monitors or was their use to be restricted to shore bombardment. Both were designed & built as battleships.

These two ships might have been rather slow (23 knots) but that had more to do with the unusual machinery arrangements than anything else. Weight had to be saved in order that both ships met the 35,000 ton inter-war treaty limits. This led to the engine room being placed ahead of the boiler room and both ships only had two shafts/propellers. That saved weight at the expense of speed and maneuverability.

The mood in the Admiralty at the time these ships were designed (1921/1922) was very much against the failed battlecruiser concept that had proven disastrous at Jutland. Had the Rodney/Nelson design been re-worked you would have ended up with a ship less well gunned or with less armour - and these two options were unacceptable.

It was probably a false economy and not a well balanced design. Both ships were known as "tail end charlies" & were very poor in heavy weather. But I guess the designers did the best they could within the limits set.

But with minimum wartime maintenance they limped through WW2 and served with distinction. But monitors they weren't.

Hi All

Here is a link to a quite nice site on "Best Battleships of WWII" that has done some good work on this topic. It isn't definitive or anything but it is a fun read and I commend it to you all.

It isn't my work and I didn't want to paraphrase as half the fun is the explanation pages ...

Have a good visit.

Best Battelships

Originally posted by sy.gunson

Sorry but I don't buy that.Yes the British fleet was huge but it was also thinly spread. A series of sally forths by Bismark and Tirpitz together, perhaps accompanied by Scharnhorst, Pinz Eugen and Gnisenau would have been a formidible task force.

Er, no it wasn't "thinly spread" in the slightest.

The RN in the 1940's had many fleets. The Home Fleet's area of op's was the Home Islands and North Atlantic. The entire RN during the war fielded over 900 warships. The Home Fleet was but a small part of the entire navy.

Originally posted by stumason

Originally posted by sy.gunson

Sorry but I don't buy that.Yes the British fleet was huge but it was also thinly spread. A series of sally forths by Bismark and Tirpitz together, perhaps accompanied by Scharnhorst, Pinz Eugen and Gnisenau would have been a formidible task force.

Er, no it wasn't "thinly spread" in the slightest.

The RN in the 1940's had many fleets. The Home Fleet's area of op's was the Home Islands and North Atlantic. The entire RN during the war fielded over 900 warships. The Home Fleet was but a small part of the entire navy.

Those Are Some Pretty Big Numbers. 3 Quarters Of Those Must Have Been Patrol Boats Or Sloops.
The History I Have Read Clearly Suggests That The Royal Navy In Fact WERE Spread Thinly.
This According To Many Books & Documentaries Such As The Battle Of the Atlantic & Sink The Bismark, Battle Of The River Plate, Or How About the Mimimalized Pacific Fleet Where There Were Only 1 Cruser 1 Battleship & A Few Escorts? You Know What I'm Talking About? Prince Of Wales & Repulse.

I Should Mention (Je Repet) Again Almost Every RN Ship That Took Part In The Sinking Of The Bismarck Were Called From Desperately Needed Convoy Duty & Other Vital Missions.

Furthermore Part Of The Lend Lease At The Outset Of The War The British Acquired 50 EARLY WW1 Destroyers That Weren't Fit For Garbage Scows.
If The RN Was That Huge & Illustrious They Would Not Have Need For The US Destroyers, No Need For The Canadian Navy, The Prince Of Wales & Repulse Would Still Be Afloat With Perhaps Even A FEW More Capital Ships In The Force.

Originally posted by Zaphod58
Is It Really Necessary To Type Your Replies Like This? It's Really Hard To Read Them When You Do.

As to the question, there is no question that the Bismark, Tirpitz and Graf Spee were outstanding battleships, but with the numbers that were built they really couldn't make much difference in the war. The same with the Yamato and Musashi. Both were well armed, and huge for a BB, but there were only two. If you're going to build battleships, you need to build enough of them to make a difference.

Sorry... Long Story. Ain't Gonna Change Anytime Soon....

Another wrongly titled tread, should not the title of been battleships that have been in action against other battleships as against those such as the Iowa class that did not. Just for the record all Japanese major naval units were sunk by airpower alone, there were no battleship/battleship contests.

The Iowa class were untried, how they would perform against any other ship is mere speculation and has no merit here.

Originally posted by Heil Hitler,Eh?
Those Are Some Pretty Big Numbers. 3 Quarters Of Those Must Have Been Patrol Boats Or Sloops.

vast majority would have been Frigates and Destroyers, but the RN did have a large amount of light cruisers and above as well.

Originally posted by Heil Hitler,Eh?
The History I Have Read Clearly Suggests That The Royal Navy In Fact WERE Spread Thinly.

Depends on your definition. We had far to many Capital ships for the missions that were undertaken and conversely, the amount of adequate destroyers for convoy duty was limited.

Originally posted by Heil Hitler,Eh?
This According To Many Books & Documentaries Such As The Battle Of the Atlantic & Sink The Bismark, Battle Of The River Plate, Or How About the Mimimalized Pacific Fleet Where There Were Only 1 Cruser 1 Battleship & A Few Escorts? You Know What I'm Talking About? Prince Of Wales & Repulse.

At the beginning of the war, it was a very much ignored part of the Fleet. By the end of the War, the eastern fleet was considerable, with several battleships, Battlecrusiers, other cruisers and at least a dozen Escort Carriers and a couple of larger carriers.

Originally posted by Heil Hitler,Eh?
I Should Mention (Je Repet) Again Almost Every RN Ship That Took Part In The Sinking Of The Bismarck Were Called From Desperately Needed Convoy Duty & Other Vital Missions.

I doubt that. Why oh why would you have your best heavy cruisers, battlecruisers and battleships on convoy duty? Only the older warships were put doing that, such as HMS Ramilles or Malaya, both of which were obsolete WW1 ships. The ships that sunk the Bismark were up until that point chilling out in Scapa Flow.

Originally posted by Heil Hitler,Eh?
Furthermore Part Of The Lend Lease At The Outset Of The War The British Acquired 50 EARLY WW1 Destroyers That Weren't Fit For Garbage Scows

Indeed and originally, the USA wanted our Caribbean possesions in exchange! Those destroyers were purely so we could free up our more modern destroyers from convoy duty and put them to good use elsewhere.

Originally posted by Heil Hitler,Eh?
If The RN Was That Huge & Illustrious They Would Not Have Need For The US Destroyers, No Need For The Canadian Navy, The Prince Of Wales & Repulse Would Still Be Afloat With Perhaps Even A FEW More Capital Ships In The Force.

As stated, the US destroyers were to free up the more advanced destroyers that were otherwise stuck guarding the convoys.

The Prince of Wales and Repulse were sunk in surprise air attacks by Japanese planes just days into the War with japan. Also, this was time when the eastern Fleet was tiny.

The Royal Navy, though large, was not well suited to the situation that it found itself in. It was geared for large scale fleet on fleet action, but was a victim of it's own success in that almost anyone else with a fleet didn't want to scrap them. With this in mind, Germany pumped out U-boats and the Italians sat in port. The Japanese, whilst building Battleships, very much favoured carrier warfare.

It's all very well having hundreds of capital ships, but when your up against U-boats and carriers in a changing world, the fleet was ill-suited, especially at the beginning. Hence why I stated that the Kriegsmarine would have been pummeled by the Home Fleet. The Germans knew this, which is why they built their battleships to be fast commerce raiders and pumped out U-boats by the dozen. They did not build their fleet to contend directly with the RN because they didn't have the time or money to build so many huge ships that would be required and knew that decades of building capacity and money could be wiped out in 24 hours.

It harks back to the Battle of Jutland in WW1. On that day, had a few things happened differently, the war could have been won or lost by either side. The Germans learnt from this and decided to shift focus away from a battle fleet. The RN, however, needed a huge Fleet because of Imperial commitments, so didn't have this luxury.

the yammato could size up to any ship even tho it was destroyed quickly

A few points for Heil Hitler,Eh? to consider.

The 50 Town Class destroyers didn't all stay with the RN. Some went to the RCN, Soviet & Norwegian Navies.

And it's unfair to describe them as garbage scowls. After all it was one of these so called garbage scowls as HMS Campbelltown which destroyed the dock at St. Nazaire in one of the most audacious naval raids of the war. Those ships helped cover convoys until more modern corvettes had been constructed & new anti submarine weapons/tactics developed. In that sense they were particularly useful and helped keep the convoys protected during the early stages of the war & despite fairly intimidating odds.

And of course the Royal Navy received help from the Royal Canadian Navy. Both nations were at war with Germany. It would have been daft for them not to cooperate and rely on each other.

I don't understand your arguments about the RN being thinly spread. You describe the RN presence in the North & South Atlantics, Indian Ocean, Pacific Ocean & Mediterranean as being “thinly spread”. Others might describe that as being an enormous presence and one no other European power came anywhere near.

And you describe the Scharnhorst as never having left the North Sea. Presumably it's raids in the Atlantic, its docking in Brest & its notorious Channel Dash with Gneisenau & Prinz Eugen were just figments of a historians imagination. And , incidentally, Scharnhorst was sunk of the North Cape by the battleship HMS Duke Of York & accompanying cruisers after it was sent on a madcap trip up the North Sea in appalling weather by the German Admiralty and in defiance of advice from naval commanders. It wasn't sunk solely by cruisers.

You also contend that the torpedoes (presumably from British aircraft or destroyers) just bounced off the Bismarck's hull. Given that most of the Bismarck's hull is currently under mud I'd love to see you quote a definitive source for that. You also contend that the Bismarck's crew deliberately scuttled her. That may or may not be the case. Only a highly complicated (and near as dammit impossible) dive on the wreck will ever prove that. The plain fact is the Bismarck took a huge amount of punishment and was finished as a fighting ship by the time HMS Rodney & HMS King George V left the scene ... and the British had no intention of taking her as prize ... their capital ships left the scene before the Bismarck had even sunk so convinced were the British commanders that the Bismarck was no more than a burning wreck.

And I don't see how you can suggest that HMS Repulse & HMS Prince Of Wales wouldn't have been sunk if only there had been a few more British capital ships in the area. They were sunk by land based aircraft. More capital ships would have meant more targets for the Japanese.

[edit on 23-6-2007 by Niall197]

Originally posted by Niall197
You also contend that the torpedoes (presumably from British aircraft or destroyers) just bounced off the Bismarck's hull. Given that most of the Bismarck's hull is currently under mud I'd love to see you quote a definitive source for that. You also contend that the Bismarck's crew deliberately scuttled her. That may or may not be the case. Only a highly complicated (and near as dammit impossible) dive on the wreck will ever prove that.

Take your pick on those "definitive sources" right here:
www.google.com...


Iowa was the best BB of WWII followed closely by the North Carolina class BBs.

Originally posted by The_Clansman

Originally posted by Amur_Tiger
The Bismark wasn't that spectacular when it comes down to it, yes it worried the R.N. and destroyed the Hood but that was more due to mistakes on the R.N. part then abject supiriority on the part of the Bismark. Until the final battle the Bismark did not face one fully prepared battleship(the prince of whales was just out of port, civilians still on board working on fine turning the systems, the crew was very unfamiliar with the ship). The Royal Navy had ships that had better firepower and armour, the main weakness in their ships was speed, especially for the otherwise very potent Nelson class. For the best all around ship taking into consideration when it was built, I'd say Queen E class. Started contruction during WWI, armed with the excellent british 15" guns(very well made gun had better preformence then mere caliber would indicate) later upgrades gave it better AA defence, only one was lost with service of all 5 through the entire war.

So it only 'sunk' one ship but it badly dammaged HMS Prince of Wales and there was overwhelming force used against it.
There arent and will continue to be very few ships who can 'take on' and survive against 3 ships of similar size for the ammount of time the Bismark did

Lets not forget why Hood sunk in the first place. The navy was not willing to dry dock her to upgrade her deck armor

So it only 'sunk' one ship but it badly dammaged HMS Prince of Wales and there was overwhelming force used against it.
There arent and will continue to be very few ships who can 'take on' and survive against 3 ships of similar size for the ammount of time the Bismark did

Bismark only lasted so long because she ran.

As soon as her rudder and engines took a hit, she was caught and sunk.

Not much of a wonder ship, just quicker than anything else.

Glorified commerce raider as opposed to a Battleship.

[edit on 30/6/07 by stumason]

Best? Most effective? None. Thier day had come and gone. The carrier reigned surpreme in WWII.

battleships became for lack of a better work, giant shore bombardment and Flak wagons.

With this in mind I have to give the nod to the Iowa. Why? Speed, armour, radar and superior fire control. Yamato, impressive as it was, never made a differnece anywhere and I don't care how big the guns are if you never get to use them. The follow on to the Iowa had the war dragged on was to be the BB-67 class 82000 tons, 12 16" main guns, and a top speed of 33 knots (would have been to big for the panama canal.

The Bismark was really set up for commerce raiding and while it did score a lucky hit on the Hood, It was fast, accurate, but ultimetly fell prey to decades old biplanes dropping torpedos.

Wouldn't like the facts to get in the way would we ?

Originally posted by Heil Hitler,Eh?
I Should Mention (Je Repet) Again Almost Every RN Ship That Took Part In The Sinking Of The Bismarck Were Called From Desperately Needed Convoy Duty & Other Vital Missions.



I doubt that. Why oh why would you have your best heavy cruisers, battlecruisers and battleships on convoy duty? Only the older warships were put doing that, such as HMS Ramilles or Malaya, both of which were obsolete WW1 ships. The ships that sunk the Bismark were up until that point chilling out in Scapa Flow.

Apart from Batleships Hood and Prince of Wales the screening cruisers Suffolk, Dorsetshire and Norfolk.... the other capital ships which cornered Bismark had to be hauled from all over the place. Prince of Wales had to retire from the action in which Hood was lost after itself sustaining seven serious hits.

After Bismark's action with Hood and Prince of Wales, all British hopes fell on
Force H based on Gibraltar. This was not the Home Fleet which cornered Bismark. Force H dispatched the Battlecruiser Renown, cruiser Sheffield and the aircraft carrier Ark Royal.

HMS Rodney was in the western Atlantic escorting the RMS Britanic evacuating children to Canada. King George V was also on escort duties to my knowledge. This was the sum total of capital ships sent to engage Bismark. This was a scrap fleet put together in haste from a very thinly spread navy.

Bismark and Tirpitz been used in unison with Prinz Eugen, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, then they would have been formidable and probably have closed off the North Atlantic.







[edit on 30-6-2007 by sy.gunson]

Originally posted by Popeye
I am surprise at the ignorance display by some of the posts on this thread.

Me too.

en.wikipedia.org...

Analysis of the wreck showed extensive damage to the superstructure by shelling and some minor damage to the hull by torpedo hits, but also suggested that the Germans scuttled the ship to hasten its sinking. This has never been proven by marine investigators but is confirmed by survivors.

The American expedition's final conclusions were strikingly different from the findings of the Anglo-American team. They estimated that Bismarck could still float for at least a day when the British vessels ceased fire and could have been captured by the Royal Navy. They concluded the direct cause of sinking was due to self-scuttling, the sabotage of engine room valves by her crew, as claimed by German survivors. A detailed look at a modern computer analysis of the hull's eventual impact on the sea bottom explains some damage as a result of hydrodynamic impact shock inside the ship, which was still apparently girded by an uninterrupted curtain of armour.

Hey Comte you should be careful whom you quote:

Originally posted by Popeye
I am surprise at the ignorance display by some of the posts on this thread.

Originally posted by Popeye
The Germany WWII battleship that scuttled itself was the Scharnhorst after being forced to leave Montevideo where it took refuge after the Battle of the River Plate. The Captain believed she was facing overwhelming odds so he scuttled to save his crew.

Damn then it can't be the Graf Spee still sitting there in the mud of the River Plate ?

Originally posted by Popeye
As regards the Bismark it was the Home Fleet that was sent after the Bismark not the whole navy by any stretch.

Oh dear, then it wasn't Force H from Gibraltar which attacked Bismark. And I must have just imagined poor old HMS Rodney escorting RMS Britanic. How ignorant of me ?

Congratulations Comte. You just scored an own goal. Tell me please is this the first time you've shot yourself in the foot or do you do this often ?

[edit on 1-7-2007 by sy.gunson]