Did the allies had an answer to these to ships?
Well they sank both so I suppose the answer is yes. Both were killed by air power ( one directly and one indirectly) and Germany’s inability to produce an operational Carrier was the problem.
Is this fact-Bismarck was damage by an ww1 British fighter.The plane was too slow for the Bismarck mordern fast powerful guns, got through there deffence and manage to hit Bismarcks rudder, and the Bismarck was a sitting duck- maybe it was a fluke that it was distroyed Bismarck.
But i dont know nothing about Tirpitz.
The Swordfish was a dedicated naval attack/recon aircraft not a fighter, yes it was slow and this made it vulnerable to enemy triple A but the Fleet Air Arm was created with very limited objectives and it was the lack of surface ships after Hitler had over-run much of Europe and the French Fleet was lost to the Allied cause which forced it in to a much more prominent role.
Best and Warm Regards
Adrian Wainer
Didn’t the German Kreigsmarine lack smaller caliber, close in air defense weapons on those capital ships?
It’s also worth pointing out that Bismarck may have been mobility-killed by a Swordfish, but it was sunk by King George V and Rodney in short order - and neither suffered significant damage in the process. Both ships did more damage to themselves than Bismarck did to them - Rodney due to blast from it’s own guns, King George V due to problems with the shell handling mechanism breaking down.
One would think two 2cm-quadruplets, 12 single 2cm-guns, 8 3,7cm-twins, 8 10,5cm-twins of the Bismarck should have been enough as air protection…
Hardly - compare it to the numbers for an Iowa class, which was still insufficient to totally protect against Kamikazes, and then remember that the US battleship had vastly superior fire-control systems along with proximity fused 5" shells.
20 5-inch/38 caliber DP Guns (Mark 12) (127mm)
80 40mm/56 Anti-Aircraft
49 20mm/70 Anti-Aircraft
The comparable numbers for Bismarck are
16 Twin DP guns (105mm)
16 37mm Anti-Aircraft
20 20mm Anti-Aircraft
Convinced. Sounded sufficient though on the first read, especially against 15 Swordfish, hardly going beyond the 200km/h IIRC, during that crucial attack.
Flame,
I had also read this about the KM’s lack of AA, especially as most Battleships of this era could use their secondary guns as AA, I don’t think Bismark could. Compare this with Prince of Wales 16x 5.25, 48 x 2pdr, 1 x 40mm (?) and 8 x 20mm. (didn’t help her) Later it was to increase massively, USS New Jersey had 80 x 40mm and 49 x 20mm. But the best protection was fighters from a carrier.
PDF,
Agreed but it was a significant mobility loss, at only 7 or 8 knots and her fire affected by the list, she was a sitting duck. It only took 30 minutes to put all her guns out of action.
Agreed that Bismarck was at a very significant disadvantage, but nonetheless if it was equally as good as either of the attacking ships it should at least have done some damage to them. It would have been a less stable gun platform, and had slightly less chance of dodging incoming salvos, but the relative movement between the two is identical and the Bismarck’s main armament was initially undamaged. Instead it did virtually no damage and was reduced to a burning wreck in minutes.
First, the Swordfish was NOT a WW1 aircraft, it was designed in the early 1930s. As a torpedo bomber, it had to be able to fly slow. Drop a torpedo too fast or from too high, it will break apart (torpedoes are very sensitive machines).
The frame and fabric design had another advantage: Similar to the Hurricane, the aircraft could take a huge amount of punishment and could be repaired quite fast.
Low take off and landing speeds also make good carrier aircraft, where the length of the “runway”" is limited.
Jan
The Swordfish was responsible for sinking more enemy ships than any other allied aircraft of WW2. Obsolete she may have been, deadly she most certainly was…
i think you’re wrong gunner, i read in a book that the Aichi Val is responsible for sinking the most ships during ww2.
I heard the same thing SS, though, it is kind of similar to the Dauntless(I think) in design ways.
the aichi had eliptical wings and the dauntless didn’t. the dauntless was armored and the aichi wasn’t. The aichi could dogfight cause it was light. they both had radials and catapults though.
The Aichi is the Japanese equivalent of the Dauntless in the BF1942 demo. I was wondering if there was any correlation.
SS Ouche-Vittes
Please read my thread again and you will see that I mention the word ALLIED. I think you should go read up a bit more on Naval/Air engagements.
Paul
At the start of the war the Luftwaffe wanted to make the HE 115 floatplane its main torpedo bomber, unfortunately for the Luftwaffe, the He 115 couldn’t fly slow enough (without falling out of the sky) to successfully launch the standard German airbourne torpedo. The top speed of the He 115 was 217mph !!!
It wasn’t until May 1940 that the Germans managed to improve the speed at which their air-bourne torpedoes could be dropped, enough for the HE 115 to be equipped with it
One obsolete swordfish can disable or destroy the biggest war ship of her time.
Maybe the British did have and answer for those too ships.
How embrassining for the Germans. cheers.