The British Admartly made this famous order on 24 May, 1941 when the pride of England's the HMS Hood was destroyed in nine minutes of battle by the cream of the Kriegsmarine, the brand new KM Bismarck.
The Bismarck gained a ledgenary reputation over the last sixty years and rightly so. This battleship has one of the shortest combat cariers of any ship in history and was hunted down and sunk by the heavy rifles and torpedoes tubes of the British Royal Navy
Many of the current historical documentrys that air on the History Channel, Discovery and TLC may say that Bismarck was the most powerful battleship the world had ever seen. This is a bit exaggeration of the facts. Bismarck was with out a doubt the most powerful capitol ship that Germany fielded during the war, but at best its a even match for the British King George V class or the two French battleships, Richelieu and Jean Bart. "His" design is an evolution of WWI class dreadnought the Bayern and Baden dreadnoughts. To study more information about Bismarck's armor click here.
One simplistic way to measure a ships combat power is by the weight of its broadside. This is the weight of all the shells that can be fire from the main battery of heavy rifles in one salvo.
Bismarck's eight 15 inch 47 caliber guns ( 380 mm) could fire a broadside every half minute. Each 15 inch shell weighed 1764 lbs and had a muzzle velocity of 2690 f/s ( feet per second ) or for the engineers in the audience that prefer metric system its ( 820 m/s ) , whose total broadside weighing 14,112 pounds which is quite effective in ruining crew moral on the targeted ship.
The Battlecruiser HMS Hood's eight Mk1 15 inch guns ( 381 mm ) fires a projectile weighting 1938 lbs at a velocity of 2458 f/s ( 749 m/s ) for a total broadside weight of 15,504 lbs. HMS Rodney and HMS Nelson carried the only 16 inch guns( 406 mm) in the Royal Navy, which could fire a projectal weight 2048 lbs at muzzle velocity of 2614 f/s ( 797 m /s ) for a total weight of 18,432 lbs.
The newest French Battleships that would never really get to show their potental during the war mounted eight 14.96 inch rifles (380 mm,) which could fire a projectile of 1949 lb at a muzzle velocity 2723 fps ( 830 m/s) for a broadside of 15,592 lbs.
On the western side of the Atlantic , all of the modern American Battleships of the North Carolina, South Dakota and Iowa classes could fire either the lighter 2200 lbs projectal or the super heavy 2700 lbs shell when it became avaible for total broadside weight of 19,800 lbs or 24,300 lbs respectively.
Now all of this high I/Q stuff is fine and dandy on paper but it doesn't tell you the full story either. If guns can't target accuracy the all the firepower in the world is useless and your crew isn't able to do their jobs. Fire control is key to battle. With out fire control, your deaf, dumb and blind and only a libality to your allies.
Bismarck carried outstanding steropic optical range finders high in the ships top side. Germany has always produced excellent optical directors and Bismarck was far suprioir to HMS Hood's own ageing optical directors. Dependence to one type of fire control system is a big libality to a ship when that system is destoryed in combat, then that ship is unable to carry out its mission. This is called a "soft kill." Operation RheinubŸng was to attack and destroy shipping in the North Atlantic, not to engage the Brtish Royal Navy. Combat damage scored on Bismarck by HMS Prince of Wales effectively ended Bismarck's sorie from damage to the fuel tanks in the bow. Bismarck became a soft kill when it can no longer carry out its primay mission. The distruction of Hood, was a death sentances for the German ship by the British.
For a compete comparison of the quality of both ships click here.
Bismarck and "his" heavy cruiser consort, KM Prinz Eugen when to sea on May 18, 1941 under the command of Admiral Gunther Lütjens, for Operation Rheinubüng Lütjens is a veteran of the Atlantic and carried out a simular misson with the battle cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau sinking considerable tonnage in the Atlantic. With the much more powerful Bismarck trying to breakout from the Baltic entire North Atlantic Ocean was vulnerabal to attack. The British had no choise but to respond to this threat for the very life line of survival of convoys of food, fuel and war materials coming from America was threatened.
This is arguable the most famous sea chase in history to destroy a single Battleship, first to protect the North Atlantic convoys from America to Great Britain from annihilation, then from the destruction of HMS Hood on May 24, to avenge the death of 1416 seamen including Vice Admiral Lancelot Holland who command the squadron consisting of HMS Hood and the brand new Battleship HMS Prince Of Wales.
On paper Holland had the advantage of 18 heavy guns vs eight, but this isn't accurate of the tactical situation the British faced. Prince of Wales was so new she still had yard contractors trying to get the 14 inch guns working and Hood's fire control and light armor protection was 20 years out of date compared to the jewel of the Kriegsmarine.
Holland tried to close the range as quickly as possible to flatten the trojectoires as quickly since Hood's light deck armor wasn't up dealing the plunging shots from Bismarck. The Heavy Cruiser Prinz Eugen struck first blood where an 8 inch salvo started a fire on Hood's boat deck and on Bismarck fifth salvo a shell penetrated exactly where Hood was the most vanurable and set off a major detonation of the ships ammunition which vented forward thought the engineering spaces and touched off the forward magazines. The recent exploration of HMS Hood by David Mearns and Rob White during the summer of 2000 located the wreck in 9,200 feet down in the Denmark Strait. The survey concluded that Hood was blown in three pieces. Order from www.pbs.org the video "The Battle of Hood and Bismarck" which covers this outstanding expedition. The Hood was lost in two minutes under a 600 foot high plasma jet of fire and molten steel as 200 tons of ammunition exploded at once. For more information click here.
The hunt for Bismarck that presiued shows the Brisish Admirality at it best to cordinate the movement of the Fleet to find and destroy Bismarck. American built PBY Catalina's would find Bismarck on the high seas and The Aircraft Carriers HMS Victorious from the home fleet and HMS Ark Royal sent up from Gibraltar under the command of Vice Admiral Sir James, F. Somerville would launch air strikes. The battle cruiser HMS Renown under the command of Captian Rhoderick R. McGiggor was in a good position to attack but after the loss of Hood two days earler, the Admiralty didn't allow Renown to engage Bismarck. Much has been published about the Swordfish bi-planes's sucessful attack which crippled the rudder, which is truly Bismarck weakspot and allowed the heavy units of the home fleet to come and engage their prey.
Revenge took place on 28 May 1941 consisted of two battleships from the home fleet, HMS King George V, flagship to Admiral John Tovey and the HMS Rodney who turned around on enroute for refit in America when the order for all British ships that could respond to join the hunt to destroy Bismarck.
The Heavy Cruisers HMS Norfolk and HMS Dorsetshire's brought to battle their eight inch guns and torpedoes to the battle. The fight open at dawn as Tovey steamed in from the west and opened fire at 08:47 at a range of 16000 yards. Tovey ordered Rodney to close to point blank range at 3,000 yards where her 16 inch guns should be devastatingly effective.
At this close range the 16 inch shells would have nearly flat trojecirs which has about six second flight time to target with a striking velocity of greater then 2248 ( f/s. ) Rodney would knock out 75% of Bismarck turrets, including one hit took out both forward turrets with in the open stages of the battle, and another hit penetrated the heavy armor of Turret Ceasur and knocked out the third turret.
King George V stayed at medimun range around 14,000 yards where her lighter 14 inch rifles would be more effective in plunging shots some where around 11¼33 degrees into Bismarck deck armor. The striking velocity would be around 1726 (f/s )
Bismarck targeted Rodeny since she was the most dangerous oppented in the battle and clearly the most powerful on either side. Rodney made shambles of the upper works including blowing off the range finders blinding Bismarck. In the later stages of the fight, Rodney fired the only known torpedo salvo from one battleship to another. In total, Rodney fired 380 rounds of 16 inch ammo and King George V fired 339 14 inch rounds. All told the British fired a total of 2876 shells of all caliburs, 719 of them major calibur. HMS Dorsetshire fired 3 torpedos of her own into the sinking wreck. In the recient James Cameron, Expedition: Bismarck now avaible from Discovery Channel, they perfomed a through examaition of the hull damage only to find 4 hits that pentrated the side armor. Much of the major damage was on the starbord side, from which Rodney blasted away on. The four British men of war swept enfilade of eight, fourteen, and sixteen inch gun fire and finally torpedoes into the pride of the Kriegsmarine on May 27, 1940.
The results would have been similar for any battleship class if it was unable to maneuver or disengage when attacked by two battleship and two heavy cruisers in a classic gunnery action. Even a Iowa or Yamato class battleship would have been hard pressed to survive in face of such a massive tactical disadvantage even thought their main batteries out range all the ships ( including Bismarck ) that fought to the death on 27 May 1940. In the end, more then 1421 British sailors and more then 2,200 German sailors died encluding two fleet admirals. To Learn more about the ships involved and for the order of Battle Click here. Order of Battle Operation RheinŸbung 19 May - 15 June 1941