>be Scharnhorst-class battleship of 38k tons
>armed with 11" pop-guns
what was the point of these things? They couldn't go toe-to-toe with a proper battleship with any hope of success.
>be Scharnhorst-class battleship of 38k tons. >armed with 11" pop-guns
You could makea funny movie aboout their development history. It'd be like that Bradley story, but way more convoluted and with way more meddling from the higher ups.
I guess the onlys good thing about them was that they would have had three twin 15" turrets and a unified 12.8 cm dual purpose secondary suite if tehy'D ever received their rebuild/upgrade.
Pic vaguely related, another Scharnhorst that was hopelessly outclassed.
>naval development moronic by Treaty of Versailles and other shit, had to catch up with other countries
>misguided dickwaving attempt
>mistaken assumptions about Germany's actual naval/strategic needs
Same goes for the Bismarck class, but at least those were better than older British battleships, killed the Hood, and forced the Allies to sink in a decent amount of resources to kill them.
The most useful ships aside from u-boats were the Deutschland-class.
>Pic vaguely related, another Scharnhorst that was hopelessly outclassed.
She gave us some kino at Coronel and the Falklands
Even worse, it was literally a British ploy to shift development away from u-boats and cruisers and waste resources trying to copy the Royal Navy with her battleships and aircraft carriers.
>Same goes for the Bismarck class, but at least those were better than older British battleships, killed the Hood, and forced the Allies to sink in a decent amount of resources to kill them.
Also crippled the Prince of Wales, which the newest British battleship at the time. The Wales might very well have sunk too if it weren't for the fact one of the shells that penetrated her failed to explode due to a faulty fuze.
>crippled the Prince of Wales
the Prince of Wales was never crippled, she regained contact with Bismarck later on.
>The Wales might very well have sunk too
not at all, Bismarck landed a hit on the after boiler rooms; in comparison Prince of Wales landed multiple hits to Bismarck’s boiler rooms shutting down two of them and flooding it’s auxiliary boiler room.
>regained contact with Bismarck
After fleeing the battlefield.
fleeing was something Bismarck tried too, but couldn’t owing to it’s battle damage.
No, Bismarck was ordered to avoid contact with all but merchant ships. The RN ships attacked and one was destroyed and the other fled the battlefield, while Bismarck returned to original course.
Bismarck returned to port on her own power.
>fleeing the battlefield
b***h it's a boat
thing I never understand is PoW is 'fleeing' the battlefield when it turns to open the distance while it fixes its guns, but the wehraboos always try and pretend that Bismarck wasnt fleeing despite having enough speed to chase PoW if it wanted to, and despite the fact that the 'fleeing' PoW turned around and spent more than a day chasing after Bismarck
do the wehraboos think PoW should have done something different? or that Bismarck wasnt desperately trying to avoid action at that point.
facts, simple and proveable facts, I am sorry that the historical record doesnt agree with your kraut worshipping power fantasies but it is ultimately not my problem
cope
try an actual refutation just poting 'cope' does nothing but highlight the weakness of your position
forget it, it's a routine he's been doing for years
>I never understand is PoW is 'fleeing' the battlefield
It's on video and stills. Maybe you should start there.
>PoW should have done something different?
Yes, not flee.
>The Wales might very well have sunk too if it weren't for the fact one of the shells that penetrated her failed to explode due to a faulty fuze.
The shell you're talking about only got to where it ended up because it had a faulty fuse, had the shell been functioning correctly it would have exploded before it even came into contact with Prince of Wales' hull.
PoW was so crippled she spent the next 24 hours chasing the fleeing bismarck
>The Wales might very well have sunk too if it weren't for the fact one of the shells that penetrated her failed to explode due to a faulty fuze.
Nope, if the fuse had worked given its angle it would have detonated outside the hull set off by the impact with the water, the Japanese developed diving shells that might have managed to hit KGV that deeply but her armour belt was deep enough that the bismarcks shells could not.
Bismarck on the other hand had a far shallower belt and was penetrated below the water line by one of PoWs 14 inch shells which cause flooding and shut down several boiler rooms. Bismarck in fact suffered significantly more damage from PoWs guns than PoW suffered from hers as well as showing poorer accuracy than PoW.
Fled the battlefield is a little much, PoW turned when her turrets malfunctioned and turned to reengage when they were fixed, she never intended to terminate the engagement, just to buy a little time to fix the guns.
www.amazon.co.uk/British-Battleship-Norman-Friedman/dp/1848322259
www.amazon.co.uk/British-Cruisers-World-Wars-After-ebook/dp/B019EJVJS4
www.amazon.co.uk/British-Destroyers-Frigates-Second-World/dp/1526702827
www.amazon.co.uk/Last-British-Battleship-Vanguard-1946-1960/dp/1526752263
www.amazon.co.uk/British-Aircraft-Carriers-Development-Histories/dp/1848321384
https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1939/mar/16/navy-estimates-1939
https://www.naval-history.net/WW2CampaignRoyalNavy.htm
its especially worth noting that the RN built more carriers than anyone but the americans during the war, while also putting significantly more battleship tonnage out than the germans managed 37-45.
cope
bongoloid carriers were awful though. zuikaku could carry 84 planes. illustrious only had 33. I'd like to see a ranking that counted number of aircraft carried instead of hulls built.
that number would still favour the RN.
and RAF carriers had to deal with operatin in the med here they almost always have been in range of shore based aircraft and were designed to survive far more battle damage than a USN or IJN carrier
what does it matter if you are in range of land based aircraft? the us deployed carriers in range of airfields in the philippines and okinawa.
soryu was even smaller than illustrious but carried twice as many planes.
land based aircraft can typically carry a heavier bombload and appear in greater numbers, the RNs carriers shrugged off hits that would have killed the IJNs carriers and crippled the USNs boats because of the armoured decks
No, they went down even more often, much due to poor handling, but inferior design, too.
Pacific carriers have a completely different operating environment to Atlantic/Mediterranean carriers. It would be facetious to compare designs.
No, that would be false. Failures everywhere confirm this. It's just poor naval aviation personified.
RN Swordfish biplanes were more successful maritime strike aircraft than anything the USN had to offer, LMFAO.
Source?
Why are Teaboos like this? The SBD Dauntless sank more Axis tonnage than any other allied strike aircraft as well as having the lowest loss rate of any type in theater, and likely double-digit air-to-air kills (official-but-overclaimed figures are 138 shootdowns to 63 lost to fighter interception).
t. SBD Dauntless Vs A6M Zero-sen, Pacific Theater 1941-44
>The SBD Dauntless sank more Axis tonnage than any other allied strike aircraft
the Dauntless is an excellent aircraft but let's be fair, the Pacific was a more target-rich environment compared to the Atlantic and Mediterranean
just ignore the moron, he's been running the same firehose of bullshit for years
the pacific is where the real naval battles of ww2 were fought. the atlantic was where a dumb moron kicked around even dumber morons and then gave themselves medals for it.
wrong
seethe and cope
>seethe and c... ACK!
Every country lost capital ships in the war, child
Most countries didn't lose a battleship underway to aerial attack.
>I really don't understand this autism about the kido batai being some magical force where the fricking Luftwaffe's strike wings of Condors and fast bombers somehow are a 2nd rate force compared with the Kates and Vals
Apples and multi-carrier coordinated oranges with long range escorts. Beyond that you're comparing a force famous for convoy raiding and another for focus on sinking their enemy's fleet. One makes more sense and the other is more relevant to sinking a carrier.
>Most countries didn't lose a battleship underway to aerial attack
Every major country lost battleships to aerial attack; those countries that didn't, lost their battleships in harbor
Underway was there for a reason. Using battleships in harbor and underway weren't mutually exclusive.
Meant losing not using.
>Underway was there for a reason.
Yes; a pointless delimitation
>pointless
losing ships at dock to a sneak attack is way less embarrassing than losing them in a battle in open water. the only thing more shameful is losing a fleet carrier to gun fire.
those aren't embarrassing at all. it's well-known that the most shameful incident ever is your mom failing to swallow you that one time.
The Indian ocean was the real deal.
This. Most successful naval strike aircraft in history.
>a fricking biplane that never had to worry about enemy fighters and barely even about enemy aa
>No, they went down even more often, much due to poor handling, but inferior design, too.
No Illustrious or Implacable class as lost during the war, of the pre war fleet carriers Eagle and Ark Royal and Courageous were lost to submarine torpedos, Hermes to air attack against the japanese and Glorious got caught by Scharnhorst and Gneisenau.
no ships of the Colossus, Majestic or Centaur classes were lost to any cause.
the only carriers the RN lost were older prewar designs and of those the newest was Ark Royal laid down in the mid 30s
the fact that they didn't lose any fleet carriers to air attack when they never fought in a single major carrier battle is actually less impressive than the fact that they did lose a carrier to gunfire.
a old small carrier caught in bad weather
and while they didnt face carriers they did face concerted attacks from significant portions of the luftwaffe and italian airforces and thus a large number of air attacks which they did weather successfully
>the fact that they didn't lose any fleet carriers to air attack when they never fought in a single major carrier battle
You might unironically have an IQ of 80. RN carriers were operating within range of land based strike aircraft like Condors, Ju-88s, Ju-87s, He-111s etc. along with land based fighters from both the German and Italian airforces/naval aviation.
My Black person in christ that's like saying that in a US-Soviet war the US 2nd fleet not losing a carrier off Norway wouldn't be impressive because they were ONLY fighting against 5 regiments of Tu-22M Backfires escorted by MiG-25s instead of having a proper carrier battle against soviet carriers like the US 7th fleet (the mighty Kiev class were stationed in the Pacific)
>it's not impressive because they weren't sunk by second rate enemies is like not being sunk by second rate enemies
yes
I really don't understand this autism about the kido batai being some magical force where the fricking Luftwaffe's strike wings of Condors and fast bombers somehow are a 2nd rate force compared with the Kates and Vals and "the Atlantic and Mediterranean theatres didn't matter anyway"
Are you just allergic to anyone but the US getting mentioned or are you one of the 2nd generation immigrants who hold a burning autistic hatred for Britain?
he's some kind of autistic anti-bong troll whose trademark is "they fled", see >60899531
They barely participated in the war, to little effect, and were far inferior to other nations.
the yamato and musashi showed that no amount of armor will stop airplanes from sinking you if you let them drop torpedoes on your ass. the best defense against enemy aircraft is shooting them down before they get close. even if an illustrious could survive a hit that would take out another carrier, it would still be better to have 4 independences with as many planes each for less money.
And if every bomb that hit the Japanese carriers during Midway instead hit one Illustrious class carrier it probably would survive.
1000lb bombs had a chance of penetrating the deck armor and several of the ships took hits from 1000lb bombs or crippling near misses with an 1000lb bomb. The Japanese also painted a big red dot on there ships around where an elevator would be. If it had a hangar full of haphazardly rearmed aircraft its difficult to say it would likely survive. If it was something closer to how it was operating in 1941 I wouldn't be that surprised if it survived with serious damage.
>The only bomb that hit the armour went right through it and exploded on the floor of the hangar. Now had there been no armour that bomb would probably have exploded in the engine room and this could well have been disastrous. All the other bombs struck outside the area which had been armoured. Three in the after lift well, one right forward, which was touched off by striking something solid. It exploded outside the ship and blew about two hundred holes in our side creating quite a fire.
>soryu was even smaller than illustrious but carried twice as many planes.
And Soryu achieved this by being so underbuilt that only a couple bombs doomed her.
It wasn't the battle damage, it was the rapidly increasing size of new aircraft coupled with the Illustrious class being worked hard during the war. Japanese carriers wouldn't have handled the post-war aircraft size any better, given that they were designed with enclosed double-level hangars which were cramped even by mid-war. Neither did the Illustrious' US counterparts, the Yorktown or Lexington class, stay on for long after the war. Really only the post-treaty US designs with their absolutely cavernous unarmored and open hangars (Essex class) were able to stay relevant in the late prop and early jet age, and then only the least damaged ones.
Last I checked no RN carrier suffered a collapsed flight deck from a typhoon in the Pacific. See USS Hornet (CV-12).
>Last I checked no RN carrier suffered a collapsed flight deck from a typhoon in the Pacific. See USS Hornet (CV-12).
Or HMS Illustrious continuing to operate aircraft after being hit by two 1000kg (2200lb) SAP bombs.
>It wasn't the battle damage,
Yes, it was. They'd have made use of them, but they were poor designs from day 1, and not worth repair.
I guess Enterprise and Saratoga were also poor designs by that metric.
Objectively, yes
Ok smart guy. I'll let you come up with something better than the Yorktown or Illustrious on a 23k ton displacement limit. You know, the treaty limit the designers had to deal with when coming up with the designs.
Not an impressive claim since German and Italian land-based aircraft carried much heavier payloads than Japanese ground and land-based aircraft.
yorktown and hiryu were both way better than anything the bongoloids built though even with treaty limitations
>Not an impressive claim since German and Italian land-based aircraft carried much heavier payloads than Japanese ground and land-based aircraft.
so does that make it even more embarrassing that task force z was sunk by them?
They were in actual naval combat involving naval aviation.
>designed to survive far more battle damage
No, they weren't. Minor damage took them down. And they were far more difficult to repair, most scrapped after the war accordingly. Superior designs lasted long after.
The answer is deck parks. You can't use deck parks in the North Sea, so figures given for RN carriers are generally for hangar parking only, whereas USN and IJN figures include deck parks.
Illustrious operated 50+ aircraft in the Pacific. Indefatigable operated 70 to 80.
>operated 70 to 80.
Far more on others' designs, with far more intense operational intensity, too.
Zuikaku was like 30% heavier than Illustrious, of course she could carry more aircraft purely in the hangar. Despite carrying less aircraft, UK carriers matched and sometimes exceeded US carriers for number of sorties they could put up in a day, even though they carried less total aircraft. Different doctrines and design decisions because different navies value different things. There is no one solution, only tradeoffs.
>matched and sometimes exceeded US carriers for number of sorties
Source?
>turned to reengage
No, they fled, and never reengaged. Never.
unequivocally false, PoW turned away to fix her guns at 6:13 on the morning of 24th of may, at 18:41 having turned to pursue Bismarck at 18:14 that day PoW got into extreme range of Bismarck and fired 12 long range salvos at Bismarck while bismarck responded with nine salvos in return.
your narrative of the PoWs turn being anything more than an temporary measure to buy time to fix her guns rather falls apart at this point doesnt it my wehraboo friend.
they only turned back b/c Bismarck was continuing on course.
but they turned back as soon as her guns were fixed and pursued bismarck, and although to slow to bring bismarck to decisive action did in fact reengage briefly before bismarck managed to pull out of range
you have gone from sayin they fled and never turned back to saying they only turned back because bismarck was running.
PoW no more 'fled' than a soldier who ducks behind cover while he clears a jam has 'fled'
I'm not that other poster. But PoW only turned back because it was clear that Bismarck was continuing onwards, so it moved to shadow.
and got into gun range and opened fire. it didnt flee.
It fled.
so did Bismarck at least by the measure you seem to be using, only one of the two tried to restart the fight, and that wasnt the Bismarck
Bismarck maintained original course. The other fled. You can watch it on film.
>they only turned back b/c Bismarck was continuing on course.
Correct, they stopped fleeing and skulked about, having fled the battlefield.
>Bismarck in fact suffered significantly more damage
Then why did the RN ship flee?
More clicks? More waste of time. Got any data?
>built more carriers
Their naval aviation was horrible. Completely outclassed.
It is the opposite of the Bradley story
>we need a new battleship, because
>but we can never defeat the British navy anyway
>so spend as little as possible without it being too obvious
>also do this even though you're part of a navy clique that wants excuses for funding for the navy
The irony is it did turn out to be useful and would have been more so if it were a lighter convoy raider somewhere between a heavy cruiser and a battlecruiser. The same with the Bismarck. If they had a little more flexibility and reach they could have stalled convoys for weeks during the battle of the Atlantic, which was the only time Churchill was scared. The same if they had diverted more resources toward submarines. Unfortunately die Führer was too low IQ and delusional to figure this out.
>we need a new battleship, because
That is not how it started.
It started as
>we want a 2nd generation Panzerschiff
And then tehy went through a comedy of 'but let's add X , and in the end hitler sigend that naval agreement with Britain and thus he wanted the new ships to be battleships.
Whcih is how a 2nd generation of commerce raiding supercruiser ended up as a 11" battleship.
Should have stopped at the P class IMO.
even a very low-tier escort would make the Scharnhorst-class take too much time to disable it while the convoy sped up and escaped.
Convoy raiders were a stupid idea when the better mousetrap (U-boot) had been invented
>11" pop guns
so it was a Battlecruiser
A battlecruiser is literally a battleship which trades protection for speed. It still has battleship guns.
Sort of. It wasn't particularly fast.
31 knots is absolutely BC speed
It was in 1916.
Black person, 24-28 knots was BC speed in 1916.
>HMS Renown
>Commissioned 1916
>32 knots
> They couldn't go toe-to-toe with a proper battleship with any hope of success.
It wasn’t supposed to.
Then why sink the resources of a battleship's construction and upkeep into a ship which cannot compete with a real battleship? Twice the two Scharnhorst-class were in a two-onto-one situation with a British bb and both times they were chased off.
> Then why sink the resources of a battleship's construction and upkeep into a ship which cannot compete with a real battleship?
Because Hitler was moronic. And more importantly, because the German surface navy was never supposed to go toe-to-toe, fleet-to-fleet with the Royal Navy. It was supposed to break out into the Atlantic and frick over convoys, because the belief was that even the Royal Navy was not big or powerful enough to give every convoy a battleship escort.
Because it wasn't intended to compete with battleships. When the design was conceived it was as a result of the Dunkuerqe and still intended to protect shipping in a limited war against france.
Getting them into the water quickly. A 28 cm gun was available. A 38 cm one wasn't.
Getting a ship faster than anything the British had, barring the Renowns. Thisy too, worked. The Scharnhorsts alsi went up against the Renowns and tied, so good enough. Plus the carrier kill they got.
All in all a better investment than the Bismarcks for the war Germany could fight, delivered on time and producing results.
>The Scharnhorsts alsi went up against the Renowns and tied, so good enough
but they didnt tie, they ran despite outnumbering the british 2 to one and still came of the worse in terms of damage sustained.
and got curbstomped the one time they ran into a KGV
>they had a grand Plan Z that called for an eventual fleet of 14 battleships, 3 battlecruisers, 4 aircraft carriers, 67 heavy and light cruisers, and 98 destroyers in order to take on the Royal Navy
And the British would build double that even if it meant doubling the income tax.
>British would build double that
No, they couldn't do this. They were strapped and the navy had mutinied in the early 30's.
they werent that strapped, they manged to build the 5 KGVs pretty comfortably and were planning on more BBs until they concluded they wouldnt really be needed. they could build more and better than the kriegsmarines actual building capability if not more than some of the more outlandish incarnations of plan Z envisaged.
They were begging not to have to build, thus the 1920 London NA, which they begged for, and its follow up, the WNA. They were well short of medium and small vessels, and the money they spent on KGV's was better spent on their naval aviation, which was atrocious. Doubling the nazis plan Z was impossible, particularly with their Inefficient spendout.
idiot
No, clicks are a waste of time. Got any data?
strapped? sure maybe. Germany was just as strapped if not more. they just put more money into their military. the British could do the same if pressed, which they did. just like when the imperial German fleet tried to do the same in the 1910s
I feel like this would be way too ambitious and probably backfire if it was done instead of focusing on subs which actually did way more damage to the UK than any surface raider.
The UK laid down 10 heavy fleet carriers, 18 light carriers, 6 escort carriers and 24 CAM ships not to mention RAF coastal command. Obviously most British carriers were busy pimp slapping the Italians in the med but it shows the disparity in shipbuilding and what kind of shit Britain could be pumping out if the allies didn't have to sink over 800 U-boats.
Still would be pretty cool guncam footage of a Coastal Command Beaufighter dropping a 2x 500lb bombs down the elevator of a German carrier like a game of crazy golf.
Bradley story?
A bunch of reformer nonsense about the Bradley's development
Even Hood was more of a fast battleship in practice. She did not sacrifice armor for speed, having learned the lessons from Jutland and being completed post-WW1.
Literally the same ship
Man, both the Scharns and the KGVs are so cool in their own ways.
There was no point to a German surface fleet except to force the Bongs to keep theirs and waste money, but the Krauts should have bought more submarines instead.
Hilarious that US submarine warfare against the Japs was a roaring success but the Germans got all the publicity.
>overweight
>undergunned
>unreliable
This is why some people refer to the Scharnhorst as "the warrior IFV of the seas"
Warrior tard somehow shows up in a thread completely unrelated to it.
I kneel, actually I don't you are poor and fat lol
thing is none of those criticisms really apply to the Warrior its lighter than the bradley with a better power to weight ratio, and no significant reports of unreliability, nor is it particularly undergunned, the 30mm it has is slow firing relative to the 25mm bushmaster but does have considerably more power per round.
They were supposed to get the same guns as the Bismarck class but at the time of construction the guns weren’t ready. Gneisenau was to undergo an upgrade when she got rekt in port by RAF bombers.
Meds take them.
Ultimately everyone blamed everything on Hitler after the war, because why wouldn't you pin it all on the dead guy?
That too.
Because that's the downside of dictatorships. If you can claim all the glory, you can be pinned with the defeats.
They were originally intended to be armed with 15 inch guns, but were fitted with 11 inch guns as a stop gap measure since Germany had plenty of 11 inchers available and no 15 inchers at the time.
Plan Z was never meant to counter the RN. It was pretty much 'let's really piss off the French by 1945: Ze plan'
It also failed to look at where aviation was gooign in the 1930s. But that was true for all navies exvept the IJN, some parts of the USN, plus a portion of the RN.
if Plan Z had been meant to counter the French, it would have been smaller and more affordable
the French had a pretty small fleet
what about the 1047s
Superior secondaries.
>what was the point of these things? They couldn't go toe-to-toe with a proper battleship
be faster than battleships, hit the merchant ships and run away
You don't need such a big ship with 11" guns to sink merchantmen.
You need those 11" guns to kill the cruisers escorting the merchantmen
ignore him, it's some seething Black person, he always pulls this kind of horseshit
She supposed to have 6 15''. Ironically substitute 11'' were better for all engagements they've been.
all ww2 surface ships that didn't launch airplanes or service or defend ships that launched airplanes were basically useless. the american ice cream ship was more useful than anything the germs built that wasn't a submarine or a submarine tender.
Battleships and cruisers had floatplanes.
I remember reading a great post...page...document or something on USN vs RN vs IJN carrier designs, with a focus on how IJN was a mix of the two and the failings of that mix
but God damn it I can't remember where I saw it
The IJN did follow RN inferior build doctrine, multiple decks and other foolishness. They had to reject that and rebuild everything, and newer designs employed superior build doctrine.
>proper battleship
without shells useless
Aside from the krauts who didn't have enough time to build decent ships, why were the Italians such a crappy navy that they got their asses kicked by the Swordfish?
At least the Japanese humiliated bongs off the Malay coast and in the Indian Ocean.
German historian here:
The whole German capital ship design was moronic in hindsight.
>three shaft arrangement
>single rudder
>armor scheme
>AA and secondary layout
>fire control cables above citadel
What you can say was exceptionally good about Scharnhorst or Bismarck for that matter is, that they were really stable artillery platforms and performed very good despite lacking behind in fire control compared to contemporary British or American designs.
>The whole German capital ship design was moronic
to be expected, with the interruption in design practice post-WW1
>armor scheme
what was moronic about that?
Exactly, Germany was in principle following WW1 designs in a more streamlined hull.
Concerning the armor scheme: Germans employed a very wasteful variant of the all or nothing armor scheme, mostly referred to as turtleback today. Behind the thick belt you have a sloped portion of again very thick armor, providing very good protection in close range, but which is basically irrelevant to plunging fire that became more relevant as FCS became more advanced in the decades following WW1. Pair that with a sub par armored main deck and you waste much weight on insufficient protection.
Literally every other nation went for designs with simpler and heavier belt, main deck (and splinter deck) combinations, which were proven to be much more adequate. Here for example a comparison of Bismarck and a KGV, which also resembles the scheme employed on an Iowa class for example. Also a thing to consider: German turrett and barbette armor was lacking for the contemporary threat, in Bismarcks engagement all turetts were literally knocked out, while still remaining afloat.
The only thing that held up Bismarck for thst long, was it was very well built and heavily compartmentalized.
thanks
still trying to wrap my head around the idea that a box is more efficient than turtleback
it encompasses a higher volume of the ship within the armoured volume, Bismarcks armour didnt cover quite a lot of important systems, and its deck protection as particularly poor.
why was turtleback less efficient in protecting against plunging fire however?
was it because straight sides present more slant against plunging fire?
it placed the armored deck too low in the hull meaning many important systems had to be left outside of the 'citadel'
there are other issues with Bismacks armour layout beyond the fact that the armoured deck as too low in the hull.
the armour deck was also too thin, the belt too shallow, failing to extend deeply enough below the waterline to stop hits below the belt penetrating and knocking out the boiler rooms. and the belt in general was neither thick enough nor was the actual armour of particularly good quality.
not only did a KGV have a better chance against Bismarcks guns than Bismarck would have had but the KGVs guns had a better chance of penetrating the Bismarcks hull than vice versa due to differences in quality and layout of the armour.
Like
pointed out, more armored volume wasted for nothing in return. Concerning the plunging fire... bad pic coming in, but it explains it. Most plunging fire (of sufficient caliber) will just go straight through the armored deck. Or it will go through the weaker part of the main belt and then the deck.
Germany was building ships oversized and to WW1 specs and pretending aircraft didn't exist.
Germany was allowed no bigger than 11" guns on ships even before Nazis, so less provocative to British/French public, so German autists just made really banging 11" guns that could fire as far as 15".
gun calibre wasn't allowed, the 11" was self-imposed
calibre as in ratio of bore to length???
Heard Graf Spee was not just displacement limited but gun size limited.
Anyway, I heard it was partly political even after Nazis started re-arming. Two real 15" battleships was (but ONLY two) was one thing, and could be considered token by Royal and other navies, but FOUR would've been "a fleet", and demands someone "do something" like maybe sanctions.
like if they limit you to 38sp thinking its a snub nose but you get a 357 lever action with 10shot tube and scope.
The Deutschland class was limited by the treaty of Versailles
>Germany is forbidden to construct or acquire any warships other than those intended to replace the units in commission provided for in Article 181 of the present Treaty.
>The warships intended for replacement purposes as above shall not exceed the following displacement:
>Armoured ships 10,000 tons,
>Light cruisers 6,000 tons,
>Destroyers 800 tons,
>Torpedo boats 200 tons.
>Except where a ship has been lost, units of the different classes shall only be replaced at the end of a period of twenty years in the case of battleships and cruisers, and fifteen years in the case of destroyers and torpedo boats, counting from the launching of the ship.
There was no explicit limit on guns exceeding 11" but there are practical limits on how big you can make guns on a ship of that size. Most WW2 heavy cruisers had 8" guns.
Wasn't *disallowed*, sorry