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Wrong. Hood was a battleship (or "fully armoured battlecruiser" to use her official designation) going up against a battleship. Indeed,

A WW1 battleship and a runt next to the Bismarck.

Other than the fact before the fatal shell Hood had been hit several times, including one that started a severe fire on the shelter deck, and her combat efficiency was unimpared. Indeed at longer ranges, where the decks could be hit by plunging fire, Bismarck was more vulnerable than Hood, due to the arrangement of her armoured decks.

What kind of damage did the Hood do in return? Back to topic though, the Hood was just out matched.

A. Bismarck wasn't able to affect repairs at sea. Thats a problem.

The fact that a good lump of the stern collapsed onto the rudder was a bigger problem.

Read this again... not able to make repairs --- because huge section of hull is smashed. Thanks for the repeat.

So she was vulnerable to air attack, so what? So were all warships without air cover. The bigger problem in this case was that the poor design of the stern structure allowed the torpedo hit to utterly cripple the ship. If it hadn't collapsed then they'd have been able to steer her after a fashion using the starboard rudder and the props; as it was, the best that could be done was to stick her head-to-wind, straight towards the Home Fleet.

Dumbfuck, seeing how the rudder was hit by the TBs better AAA would have been helpful. That would be your so what. The AAA wasn't the worst problem but it was still a problem that ended up being a part of the ship being sunk.

If it hadn't been for the crippling damage the Swordfish did the fleet would never have caught her.

Again, AAA would have been helpful.

Bullshit. The nearest reported ice was several miles north of the ship's track - mainly because Smith had kept on his original course (roughly SW) far longer than usual before turning north towards New Yprk, specifically to give the ice a wide berth. If he was reckless, then so's every Captain who's ever crossed the Atlantic - maintaining full speed until ice was sighted was and remains standard practice in good weather.

Again, you're a worthless dumbfuck. "Nearest reported" being a very big key phrase for this. They had no information on what was ahead of them. Practice of the time was to slow down at night and or in bad weather. He maintained full speed when he shouldn't have. We have RADAR now, back then it was a guy with goggles in a crows next. It was a bad call. End of story.

As for the design, while I can't comment on the hull materials, I can tell you that the bulkheads extended well above the waterline - all the way to E deck. It's well known that Titanic would almost certainly have survived had the damage been only a few dozen feet shorter. Indeed, the damage would have been minor if it hadn't been for the angle she entered the pack ice - with the helm hard over the full force of the impact was taken by the starboard bow. It's hardly surprising she suffered such extensive damage.

The water tight sections were incomplete due to cost cuts. There was no way for the ship to close off any flooding sections of the hull. When the ship started taking on water, the water would flood one section and then flow free into the next. Had the bulkheads been completed and proper water tight seals been in place the ship would have lasted long enough for rescue or even survive to reach New York, though at lesser speeds. As it was, there was no seal running the midship nore a cap on the top ends of the bulkheads.

Deepcrush wrote:A WW1 battleship and a runt next to the Bismarck.

Bismarck was, fundamentally, a WW1 design herself, and her standard displacement was less than 7% greater than Hood's (45,200 tons compared to 42,500).

What kind of damage did the Hood do in return? Back to topic though, the Hood was just out matched.

Hood's armour scheme was the better of the two - as I've already pointed out her horizontal protection was superior, and given the end-on aspect Bismarck was showing during the battle a lucky hit could have done for her just as easilly as she did for Hood, as her armour was vulnerable to raking fire. As for damage done, Hood didn't score a hit. Prince of Wales, on the other hand (despite having a notoriously unreliable main battery, while Hood's comprised the most successful arrangement of any battleship ever), scored three hits - one went through Bismarck's bow forward of the belt, cut her off from a sizeable proportion of her fuel supply, and caused serious flooding, and another struck the belt amidships, causing damage that knocked out some of the machinery, slowing her down. This was possble because Hood, the greater threat, was drawing both German ships' fire, allowing PoW to engage without the distraction of nearby shell splashes.

Read this again... not able to make repairs --- because huge section of hull is smashed. Thanks for the repeat.

You're missing the point - that damage occured because of the poor design of the stern structure of big German ships. A better designed ship (such as a KGV or an Iowa) would almost certainly have lost a rudder (or had it disabled), but the crew would have been able to release the steering gear from inside the ship and control her by varying revolutions on the outer shafts. They would have still been able to make port.

Dumbfuck, seeing how the rudder was hit by the TBs better AAA would have been helpful. That would be your so what. The AAA wasn't the worst problem but it was still a problem that ended up being a part of the ship being sunk.

You're still ignoring the salient point, which was that in an allied ship the damage from that hit would have been serious, but not critcal. In Bismarck, because of the design, it was critical.

Practice of the time was to slow down at night and or in bad weather. He maintained full speed when he shouldn't have.

Wrong. You're either trying to blag what you know fuck-all about, or you're a liar. It has always been standard practice to maintain best speed in clear conditions until ice is sighted. Source: Captain L. M. Collins, a bloke with 50 years experience navigating the North Atlantic.

The water tight sections were incomplete due to cost cuts. There was no way for the ship to close off any flooding sections of the hull. When the ship started taking on water, the water would flood one section and then flow free into the next. Had the bulkheads been completed and proper water tight seals been in place the ship would have lasted long enough for rescue or even survive to reach New York, though at lesser speeds. As it was, there was no seal running the midship nore a cap on the top ends of the bulkheads.

So the design wasn't as good as the refitted Olympic class. So what? It was still better than any other passenger ship at the time. Incidentally, while there were a few problems with leaks, the biggest problem was that the Titanic had suffered damage far more severe than she was designed to survive, mainly because of her entry angle. If the damage had been limited to the first four compartments there wouldn't have been a problem. It was because the first five were ripped open and a sixth was damaged, causing the water to overflow the doors, that she went down. She was a passenger liner, not a warship - the idea was to keep out of trouble, not run into pack ice and hope to survive..

Mikey wrote:

Atekimogus wrote:

Atekimogus wrote:I am still not entirly convinced that the same would not have happened or could have happened with any other ship of that area.

No doubt it could have happened to any ship, given enough concentrated fire. However, the fact that this was more common among German ships of the period, then reduced in frequency when German engineers focused on the issue, lends credence to the idea that there was a specific problem with those earlier German designs, if not solely the Bismarck.

Please do not misunderstand me, I do tend to agree with you there. However when I say I am not entirely convinced it means exactly that. For instance you say "given enough concentrated fire" it could have happened to any ship. Imho a direct torpedo hit qualifies as enough fire. Maybe for you this means two torpedo hits followed by a volley of the main battery all in the same spot.

The second thing - to be far from an expert or historian - I find it strange that this one sole article is the only one making a short mention of it. There are so many ww2 designs and their known flaws for instance the later german tanks - feared as they were - were also known for beeing to heavy, underpowered, in need of gear or motor replacement every few hundred kilometres, the drive jammed if the mud frooze during the night etc. . Those things are almost common knowledge if you dabble a bit with those things and yet I never heard that the rudder of german ships was a major design flaw baring this one article.

I am not saying that the article does not have it right. I just think you are making more a deal out of it as it deserves. Since the main priority still was better AA cover etc and not a complete redesign of all sterns of the german "heavies" it was a problem to be sure but not the major fatal design flaw you are making it to be.

It all boils down to how far you think you must cover the event driven process chain. Having a sensible number of destroyer escorts your battleship does not need heavy AA herself. Lacking those escorts your ship needs AA turrets en masse. Lacking massive AA arrays those few you have should better be accurate. Lacking AA able to bring down a ww1 design torpedo-bomber you should start thinking about making the ship proof against torpedoes etc.... .

Captain Seafort wrote: You're missing the point - that damage occured because of the poor design of the stern structure of big German ships. A better designed ship (such as a KGV or an Iowa) would almost certainly have lost a rudder (or had it disabled), but the crew would have been able to release the steering gear from inside the ship and control her by varying revolutions on the outer shafts.

Please correct me if I am wrong but the Iowas were a much more recent design. As I said you are probably right that the rudder was more vulnerable than others but you are making it sound like the achilles vent on a death star

Captain Seafort wrote:You're still ignoring the salient point, which was that in an allied ship the damage from that hit would have been serious, but not critcal. In Bismarck, because of the design, it was critical.

First this is highly speculative as long as we have no reference to an almost identical hit to an allied ship. Second the damage to the Bismarck was not critical but the circumstances.


I do almost regret starting this comparision seeing how far we strayed from the topic and how emotional some are reacting to this .

Ok, so if one wants to say the Bismarck and other German vessels at that time had a design flaw because when hit in similar ways the same type of structural failure happened.

How does this then correlate to the Galaxy class?

Each ship of the class that we see destroyed was so due to different circumstances. The first, a computer virus that cause a loss of containment for the warp core. The second a failure of the warp core cooling system after repeated weapons hit to a basically unshielded engineering section. The third, being rammed by a smaller ship near the AM storage containers which most likely caused their failure. So where is the similarity which would indicate a design flaw?

You really can't say that "the similarity is the warp core blowing up" because the same could be said of the Hoods magazine. She was not the first, nor the last to be destroyed because of a magazine strike. So unless one wants to claim that the Hood loss was also a design flaw you can't use that argument.

Jesus, in the space of one page we've gone from debating the placement of AM pods to the Bismarck VS the Hood.

Each ship of the class that we see destroyed was so due to different circumstances. The first, a computer virus that cause a loss of containment for the warp core. The second a failure of the warp core cooling system after repeated weapons hit to a basically unshielded engineering section. The third, being rammed by a smaller ship near the AM storage containers which most likely caused their failure. So where is the similarity which would indicate a design flaw?

They're the same class of ship. Ergo, they'd respond similarly to different situations as they are, for all intents and purposes, identical. If you want to claim three ships of the same class would act differently when put in the same situation, you need to provide proof.

I think Deep has the right of it, in the point Rochey brings up. Placement of the AM pods, in particular, is very likely a necessary evil; but in general, I tend to agree that what we saw through most of TNG was the growing pains of a relatively untried design, and by the DW significant patches were made available.

Aketimogous - yes, the direct torpedo hit qualifies as "enough fire." The point is, as Seafort said, a design without that vulnerability in the stern structure would have been similarly damaged but still able to recover enough to make port.

Rochey wrote:Jesus, in the space of one page we've gone from debating the placement of AM pods to the Bismarck VS the Hood.

Each ship of the class that we see destroyed was so due to different circumstances. The first, a computer virus that cause a loss of containment for the warp core. The second a failure of the warp core cooling system after repeated weapons hit to a basically unshielded engineering section. The third, being rammed by a smaller ship near the AM storage containers which most likely caused their failure. So where is the similarity which would indicate a design flaw?

They're the same class of ship. Ergo, they'd respond similarly to different situations as they are, for all intents and purposes, identical. If you want to claim three ships of the same class would act differently when put in the same situation, you need to provide proof.

well i think the yamato should be ignored as it was a problem that most likely would have destroyed any ship (save for the Battlestar Galactica with its non networked computers ) and did almost destroy a romulan ship. the yamato did lose containment but it is entirely possible that the virus disabled any monitoring systems in place that either warn the crew or dump the pods leaving the crew unaware that they were all going ot die.

the odyssey the impact to explosion is only a few seconds, the crew was probably still laying on the ground from the impact when she blew and the damage could have either disabled the am pod ejection system or the computer didn't have time to eject them.

i just don't know what to say about the death of the E-D was it ever mentioned why they couldn't eject the core? i know they had to evacuate engineering because of the coolant leak, but there had to have been some kind of remote control. it does take a seriuos beating with no shield coverage and externaly shows only superficial damage. comparing that to a torpedo hit on an unshielded E-A blowing a hole in the saucer section.




as for the bismark, didn't her guns out range the british ships? igiven the circumstances i would say she fared pretty well considering she was out numbered and outgunned. Poor stratigic planning led to the destruction of the bismark, even though the royal navy had gone 1 for 1 with the bismark, they still came out on top. given the amount of fire the bismark took and was still floating compared the the fact that the hood had her back broken withing 2 minutes of a hit from the bismark. lack of armor seems like a design flaw to me. especially since battle ships usually engage at range meaing in the opening volleys at least, the shells will always have a steep angle of descent. although to be fair. this was not a design flaw when it was built, but advanves in munitions in WW2 put the hood at a fatal disadvantage

Rochey wrote:Jesus, in the space of one page we've gone from debating the placement of AM pods to the Bismarck VS the Hood.

Each ship of the class that we see destroyed was so due to different circumstances. The first, a computer virus that cause a loss of containment for the warp core. The second a failure of the warp core cooling system after repeated weapons hit to a basically unshielded engineering section. The third, being rammed by a smaller ship near the AM storage containers which most likely caused their failure. So where is the similarity which would indicate a design flaw?

They're the same class of ship. Ergo, they'd respond similarly to different situations as they are, for all intents and purposes, identical. If you want to claim three ships of the same class would act differently when put in the same situation, you need to provide proof.

I am not sure if I understand you correctly. You mean different as in "Cause and Effect" taking a glancing blow to the starbord warp nacelle and exploding shortly after that and taking blows to the starbord warp nacelle in "The Jem'Hadar" and not exploding and even beeing still warp capable?

There are tons of scenarios where the same class of ship (mostly even the same ship) handles differently under more or less the same circumstances. Or did you mean that and I misunderstood you?

Kevsha wrote:i just don't know what to say about the death of the E-D was it ever mentioned why they couldn't eject the core? i know they had to evacuate engineering because of the coolant leak, but there had to have been some kind of remote control. it does take a seriuos beating with no shield coverage and externaly shows only superficial damage. comparing that to a torpedo hit on an unshielded E-A blowing a hole in the saucer section.

The E-D took something like 20 hits unshielded, IIRC, including hits to the nav deflector, a nacelle, and who knows what the hell else (many were while we were in the bridge so we didn't see the impact). Of all the times a ship went down, this is the one I am most forgiving of. My only wish is that they'd had a Vor'Cha instead of a BoP.

Seconded. Going down to a cut-rate brigand ship was less than dignified.

GrahamKennedy wrote:

Kevsha wrote:i just don't know what to say about the death of the E-D was it ever mentioned why they couldn't eject the core? i know they had to evacuate engineering because of the coolant leak, but there had to have been some kind of remote control. it does take a seriuos beating with no shield coverage and externaly shows only superficial damage. comparing that to a torpedo hit on an unshielded E-A blowing a hole in the saucer section.

The E-D took something like 20 hits unshielded, IIRC, including hits to the nav deflector, a nacelle, and who knows what the hell else (many were while we were in the bridge so we didn't see the impact). Of all the times a ship went down, this is the one I am most forgiving of. My only wish is that they'd had a Vor'Cha instead of a BoP.

What bothers me most is they didn't really return fire. How many shots from E-D did we see. I think three but I can't promise.

"Our shields have no effect sir!"
"Ok Lt. Fire once and hope that kills them."
"Umm, sir? We can fire more then once."
"Ehh, it won't be needed"
"What a fucktard"
"What?"
"Want some custard???"
"Oh ok... sure."

Rochey wrote: They're the same class of ship. Ergo, they'd respond similarly to different situations as they are, for all intents and purposes, identical. If you want to claim three ships of the same class would act differently when put in the same situation, you need to provide proof.

If they were the exact situation, yes of course. If you put another Galaxy, or even the Enterprise D against another Bird of Pray that had the shield code it does not mean that a coolant leak will occur and destroy the ship. Also, just because the Odyssey was destroyed by a Bug Ship ramming it does not mean that another Galaxy hit in a similar spot, not exact, might fair better.

If someone it trying to claim that there are design flaws then it is up to them to provide proof. One incident does not prove a thing. That is why the destruction of the HMS Hood is not seen as due to a design flaw, but just a good, lucky, shot.

Deepcrush wrote:What bothers me most is they didn't really return fire. How many shots from E-D did we see. I think three but I can't promise.

One that we saw, but who knows how many while we were in the bridge or engineering.

Talk about redoing special effects, I'd love to see that movie redone with a Vor'Cha, or even a Negh'Var.

Maybe they fired more than once but then you end up with the best ship of the fleet not beeing able to disable one small 80 year old bird of prey.

If they did not bring their full offensive power to bear you end up with an highly incompetent crew. I think there just is no satisfiying answer....yes a vorcha would have been much more fitting.

Well that happens if the idea for an impressive special effect shot comes first and the actual story comes second......damn shame about that fine ship....damn shame!