Quote:
Originally Posted by FlameOn
I remember reading the book "Hunting the Bismark" I took out from my elementary school library. The cat and mouse chase between the Bismark and the entire British Atlantic fleet was fantastic and it seemed like just dumb luck the Bismark got hit where it did.
Fantastic read about the whole thing though the British really should have fixed the poor magazine armor problem earlier at the onset of hostilities with Germany instead of pushing things through to 1942.
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Both sinkings were dumb luck really.
The hit on the Hood was about as lucky as it gets. Most battleships were designed with the thought that they would be hit with straight on shots into the armor belt. Being hit with a large gun run on the thinkly armored deck wasn't really thought of as likely, plus putting too much armor on the top would make the boat hard to navigate in poor weather.
The torpedo drop on the Bizmark was an incredible fluke as Naval Torpedo planes and the torpedo's that they fired were still primitive by the standards developed by the Japanese and Americans. So a direct hit on a rudder was considered to be unlikely. Usually if you're firing from the rear, you hope that you hit the screws and unbalance the shafts which would fill the engineering spaces with water when the seals break at the very best. At the worst you strip the boat of its top speed.
I remember reading that the Admiral of the Bismark when hearing about the damage to the rudder was told that the only way to fix it would be to blow off the port rudder, but the Admiral was overly cautious about doing that and causing propeller damage, instead he called for air support help and decided to wait for rescue.