Bismark vs. Yamato

I believe it's all about the placing of the shell as they say 1 bullet can change the course of history... Forsay 1 perfectly placed shell on the turret blow up the ammo and down you go.... Was the s.s. arizona of pearl harbor not a good example. I will give a edge though to the the yamoto for 1 reason... The yamoto had 18 in guns with heavy armor it was slow but withits range and the bismarks slightly weaker armor... The bismarks speed won't help it a good shell and bye bye bismark
 
I believe it's all about the placing of the shell as they say 1 bullet can change the course of history... Forsay 1 perfectly placed shell on the turret blow up the ammo and down you go.... Was the s.s. arizona of pearl harbor not a good example. I will give a edge though to the the yamoto for 1 reason... The yamoto had 18 in guns with heavy armor it was slow but withits range and the bismarks slightly weaker armor... The bismarks speed won't help it a good shell and bye bye bismark

The problem here is that while the Bismarck may have been a smaller ship it had a better crew, better fire control, better firing rate and better damage control.

My personal belief is being hit by a 15 inch shell is probably not all that different to being hit by an 18 inch shell, no matter what you are riding in it will still hurt.

I will still go with the Bismarck.
 
The problem here is that while the Bismarck may have been a smaller ship it had a better crew, better fire control, better firing rate and better damage control.

My personal belief is being hit by a 15 inch shell is probably not all that different to being hit by an 18 inch shell, no matter what you are riding in it will still hurt.

I will still go with the Bismarck.


Yamato and Musashi's designers actually had planned a new solution to the problem of long range accuracy.

The solution involed launching a special spotter float planes from either of these Battleships hanger to fly ahead and spot for the enemy vessel.





The Yamato for example, with her 18 inch guns could fire literally over the horizon beyond visual range, which would be limited by the curviture of the Earth.

The duty of the float plane and her crew were to act as forward artillery spotters and relay target information and battle damage assesments to the gunnery and spotter towers onboard the Yamato/ Musashi.

This method of targeting would have in theory negated any direct surface threats to the Yamato/ Musashi by allowing them to use said curivture of the Earth to protect them from return fire.

However as stated, this system did not make up for lack of advanced fire control computers (for the time) that their American and German counter parts had.

And the float plane spotter method quickly broke down in combat due to the U.S. Navy acknowledging the importance of air superiority. The U.S. would and did make short work of any Japense spotter planes with combat air patrols launched from carriers miles away, once the eyes of the Yamato/ Musashi were out, the U.S. would and did on both occassions move air forces in for the killing blow.

As for the Yamato class's armor, yes the Bismark's guns were more accurant and still very deadly, but U.S. Navy testing of Yamato class armor after the war concluded that her turrets even on a direct hit from a American 16 inch gun, would not have effectivly penetrated thus creating the deadly "cartwheel" effect.

Although the latest type of U.S. 16 inch Mod 8 AP shells did do this at a flat trajectory in tests conducted in the Washington Naval Yard in 1946, but the "penetration" of the shell was along the lines of severe cracking of the plat, at a almost point blank flat angle, not a higher angle as what would occur in a gun battle at sea.

Also, like the armor of a Tiger Tank for instace, once you invert the armor plate to 45 degrees, any shell would have to travel further to penetrate.

Japanese steel even without the qaulity provided STS steel enjoyed only by the U.S., would have held up.

The Bismark in terms of armor, excelled at one thing, and history proves this. Her desingers took operation experaince and cues from operations during the battle of Jutland in the North Sea decades earlier.

The Bismark's armor was laid out to be a vertical wall surrounding her vitals. This was to hold with not only stresses of operating in dangerous North Sea weather , but if the British , who's navy was centered around large captial surface warships should engage her with naval gunnery, then shells would not be able to pass through her internals easily at flatter trajectories.

This made her vulnerable to air attack, but the British navy did not delpoy large carrier fleets in the North Sea, as the weather would have made difficult operating there. Unlike the Japense who faced U.S. carrier threats in almost every major naval engagment after Midway.

In all, it all comes down to terms of shot placement that the Allies delivered to the Bismark, and Tirpiz, what it took, where is was delivered, and upon how they sank.

Do the same for the Yamato and Musashi.

Then we start to get a clear idea of what each ship could have taken. Also their wrecks are also indicators of where major structual weaknesses could be found on each ship.







Except for Musashi...As she has yet to be documented on the ocean floor.

And the Tirpitz, as she was broken up and salvaged.
 
Last edited:
As for the Yamato class's armor, yes the Bismark's guns were more accurant and still very deadly, but U.S. Navy testing of Yamato class armor after the war concluded that her turrets even on a direct hit from a American 16 inch gun, would not have effectivly penetrated thus creating the deadly "cartwheel" effect.

Although the latest type of U.S. 16 inch Mod 8 AP shells did do this at a flat trajectory in tests conducted in the Washington Naval Yard in 1946, but the "penetration" of the shell was along the lines of severe cracking of the plat, at a almost point blank flat angle, not a higher angle as what would occur in a gun battle at sea.

Also, like the armor of a Tiger Tank for instace, once you invert the armor plate to 45 degrees, any shell would have to travel further to penetrate.

Japanese steel even without the qaulity provided STS steel enjoyed only by the U.S., would have held up.

Sorry this one does not hold water for me because even had the shell failed to penetrate the gun turret I am prepared to be bet that the crew within the turret would at the very least have the worst case of ringing in the ears in history and at worst be dead from the concussion.

The other factors in this are that the Yamato was a pig of a ship to perform damage control as I pointed out in several areas of the ship you have to descend 3 decks in order to go to the next room.

I am sorry but in my opinion the Japanese focused too much on the size of the ship and its armament and not enough on making it a viable integrated fighting platform.
 
Sorry this one does not hold water for me because even had the shell failed to penetrate the gun turret I am prepared to be bet that the crew within the turret would at the very least have the worst case of ringing in the ears in history and at worst be dead from the concussion.

The other factors in this are that the Yamato was a pig of a ship to perform damage control as I pointed out in several areas of the ship you have to descend 3 decks in order to go to the next room.

I am sorry but in my opinion the Japanese focused too much on the size of the ship and its armament and not enough on making it a viable integrated fighting platform.


I agree to the full, I was not trying to disprove German engineering in creating the Bismark and Tirpitz.

They are in my honest felt opinion better in terms of managment, damage control and ability for the crew to have access to the means to do their jobs under the stresses of incoming fire.

However, the Yamato did not have the best armor in terms of design implementation. They just had allot of it.

Germany approached the armor question differently based off German experiance in WW I. There armor layout focused on protection from heavy gunfire from the British Battleships and heavy cruisers at flatter trajectories, this was proven to be largely successful during her final battles. And till this day it's still wildly disputed if it was the British who actually sank the Bismark, and not a German scuttle attempt.

The Yamato class on the other hand, did have allot of armor, although compared to a South Dakota class, the armor layout and focus points were not as effecient in terms of armor bulkheads and vital areas of the ship.

The South Dakota and later Iowa's for example, had two advantages, one of these even over the Bismark. The American ship designers strove to do more with less, although numbers and weight are outclassed by other ships, the later American battlships focused on armor boxes within the hulls that would transfer weight of impact across to other strong armor sections.

Plus the U.S. enjoyed as mentioned before, massive outputs of higher quality steel, Japan the U.K. and Germany could also make this, but nowhere near as fast and effeincetly as U.S. indsustry could and did.

In terms this equalled lighter stronger metal.

Now back on topic.

Yes the the crews would have faced a hellish experiance getting hit in one of Yamato's turrents, the round most likely would not have pentrated.

But any Battleship to date under could easily be expected to go through such experiances.

I would not aim for the turret with the assumption that even without penetration that the crew would be to busy holding their ears and would stop firing.

I would not bet my life on it. The same circumstance would not stop the Bismark, I don't see this happening on an even bigger armored gun platform.

Unfortantly there is only so much we can do, unlike Bismark, and even though Yamato has been mapped on the sea floor, her design documents and orginal blue prints were lost with history, and the wreck has not been penetrated and documented to show us how she was really built.

But one thing neither you or I can argue against, is both vessels weakness to attacks below the water lines, as illistrated by the torpedo attacks on both Warships.

Although in the Yamato/ Musashi's case, these weaknesses were exploited to the maximum effect.

And these superships's size and armor and weapons that gave them such an potential edge over certain adversaries proved their undoing.
 
Last edited:
Maybe you can help me here, I have read from various sources one of the "weaknesses" of the Bismarck was that it was designed with low trajectory guns which meant plunging fire was impossible but gave it the advantage of faster firing and gun laying because the shell reached its target sooner and as such the results were relayed back quicker.

The reason I ask this is that my favourite ship of WW2 was the Prinz Eugen which was capable of plunging fire and there are "stories/rumours" that it may well have been a round from it which sunk the hood.
 
Maybe you can help me here, I have read from various sources one of the "weaknesses" of the Bismarck was that it was designed with low trajectory guns which meant plunging fire was impossible but gave it the advantage of faster firing and gun laying because the shell reached its target sooner and as such the results were relayed back quicker.

The reason I ask this is that my favourite ship of WW2 was the Prinz Eugen which was capable of plunging fire and there are "stories/rumours" that it may well have been a round from it which sunk the hood.


A little pointed out fact is , Bismark's guns were not unique to her and Tirpitz. Her 38cm SK C/ 34 naval guns fired I believe four types of rounds each range from 2,700 fps to around 3,450 fps.

Each gun had an elevation of 30 degrees and down to -5 degrees.

These guns effectivly clocked a reload time of around roughly one round every minute under stress. Such as Bismark's engagment with the Hood.

So plunging fire would not have been her specialty. Although her type of gun mounted on bunkers in Normandy did routinely fire shells upwards of 20 miles during training, however these were highly innacurant shots being without Bismarks (for the time) sophisticated fire control radar.


As for what sank the hood, Prinz Eugen's 20.3cm SK C/34 naval guns had roughly 37 or 38 degrees elevation, I believe these guns mounted on other German battlecruisers had slightly different elevation provided to them.

But 37 degrees would have to some respect gave the Prize Eugen a higher trajectory to which she could fire. So it may be entirely possible one of her shells pentrated the Hood creating such a massive explosion.

Records have been researched over the years and the general conclusion is that the HMS Hood, although with a different armor layout like the Bismark, was intended for large gun battles with the enemy out at sea, and this made her vulerable to plunging fire.

Once again, compared to other designs at the time, I have even found bits and pieces of information about Hood's armored decks, being a WW I era refit she may have had only one seriously armored deck in the ship, meaning penetration of that would make her iternals vulnerable to plunging shells, or Dive Bombers and verticle launched bombs, such as was illustrated in the the sinking the Tirpitz and in the Pacific war time and time again against with other Battleships.

This was a normal practise during this time period, especially for refitted WW I battleships, only newer ships like the South Dakota's and the Iowa's worried about having mulitple Armored decks, espicially how they implemented armored bulkheads below the water line. (I visited the U.S.S. Alabama a few years ago and got to observe these first hand).

Unfortuntaly, there is no real way to answer this, because of the Hood's condition on the Sea floor, she literally like the Yamato, blew herself apart, and her long descent to the ocean bottom left her shattered in tens of thousands of pieces. Her section of hull where the shell hit is just gone, and so is any evidence confirming which German warship sank her.

If you are curious about deciding for yourself, here is a link to a cutaway of Hood's armor belt and decks. Maybe you can see something my eyes miss?

http://www.warship.org/images/no21987-Midship.jpg

Lastly it is a real shame what happened to the Eugen after the war, her radar removed and she left to capsize, unable to be dived due to the radoactive condition of her hull. Such waste in my honest opinion.
 
Last edited:
This may seem odd because I think the yamoto would win but that spoting seaplane mentioned erlier could be shot down and Monty B has a few points. Noticing some other important details I realized there actually both the same really TBM avengers sunk the yamoto with 10 torpedoes as the ship was to far for American guns the bismark was sunk by 3 torpedoes including shells from the British ships therefor both required the same amount of explosive power to sink bringing me back to the theory of the most precise shell
I say it's a draw
 
Last edited:
I think the argument for the hoods initial explosion was that for the shell to have gone through the top deck and reached that magazine it would have to have been from a plunging shell which therefore could not have come from the Bismarck.

As it is now known that the Hood was turning to port (I think it was port) when the round hit the angle of the shell would have to have been much greater than what the Bismarck could have achieved.

The "excuse" for this was that while Britain did not want her top ship sunk at all if it had to be sunk it was going to be by the biggest thing the Germans had rather than a Heavy Cruiser.

Oh and you can dive the Prinz Eugen now.

This may seem odd because I think the yamoto would win but that spoting seaplane mentioned erlier could be shot down and Monty B has a few points. Noticing some other important details I realized there actually both the same really TBM avengers sunk the yamoto with 10 torpedoes as the ship was to far for American guns the bismark was sunk by 3 torpedoes including shells from the British ships therefor both required the same amount of explosive power to sink bringing me back to the theory of the most precise shell
I say it's a draw �������� ��������.

Hehe I am slowly convincing people.

:)
 
Last edited:
This may seem odd because I think the yamoto would win but that spoting seaplane mentioned erlier could be shot down and Monty B has a few points.


If you read a little bit further you will see,

That I also posted that this was the case, that the U.S. Navy always sercured air superioty during almost every major Pacific battle, hence why this little mentioned method of targeting has ever been mentioned.

But the Naval war of WW ll is full of double Ironies.

Looke at carrier aviation, the concept was developed with U.S. "Fleet Problem" excersises during the 30s but never fully utilized by the U.S. until 1942, the Japenese proved it would work by sinking mulitple U.S. Battleships in a single attack.

Look at the HMS Prince of Wales for instance, survived the deadly battles to sink the Bismark which was damaged by naval air power, leading to her demise. Only for the Prince of Wales to meet the same fate in the Pacific against Japenese airforces.

And the Yamato and Musashi themselves, built by the country that showed the world the capabilities of naval aviations, showed the world the vulnerabilities of the Battleship.

Both sunk by American Carrier Forces.

My trend here is stating is that in terms of these two warships, as powerful as they are.

The simple Presence of a single submarine or Carrier Strike Group will spell their undoing.

Im am not trying to get off topic, just point out in agreance with you, these ships, Bismark class and Yamato class are much more fragile than we think in terms of surviability (meaning staying afloat, which is the only way there are effective).

But structally, especially the Bismark, she is very very sound, even after plunging almost 3 miles to the ocean floor her hull minus the aft portion of the stern, after being withered by gunfire and torpedoes is remarkably intact, a testimate to her construction.

Prinz Eugen even, nuked twice, capsized and hit with ocassional Pacific storms, and her superstructure is still supporting her upturned weight.

The filing cabinets still have the German Labels clearly readible on them.

The Yamato cannot been seen the same as her ammuniton exploded leaving her like the Hood. To understand the strucual soundess of a ship who's blue prints are completly lost, I feel it is at the upmost archaeological importance we find the Musashi, as she was only attacked on one side, and is most likely still in one piece.

Maybe then we can know how either ship would hold up against each other. We already have our image of Bismark and Tirpitz.
 
Last edited:
Prinz Eugen even, nuked twice, capsized and hit with ocassional Pacific storms, and her superstructure is still supporting her upturned weight.

Yep here is a picture of her taken from the air in 2006.

Prinz-Eugen2006.jpg


The front third of the ship is hanging off an underwater cliff but it is still supported by the stern with the screws and rudder out of the water, the port propellor was salvaged in 1979 and now resides at the Laboe Naval Memorial in Germany.
 
I gotta say, Hitler was a little nuts on making Battlships like the Scharnhorst have tiny (for a battleship) 11 inch guns.

But as for heavy cruisers the Germans really knew how to build em!

And that's without STS steel and armies of shipyard workers the U.S. had.

The only battlewagon I think to compare to these warships in terms of value per size is the South Dakota's , amazing warships built UNDER the Washington treaty, their armor belts are very ingenuitive (we need a little more American Innovation like that these days.) in terms of staying within legal treaty parameters.

In in the same oceans of Heavy weights outside treaty standards they did very well.

Luckliy, unlike Germany's heavy hitters we still have a perfect example of the South Dakota around today, as well as the Iowa's.

It's a shame that little effort has gone into exploring the Axis warships in this era, as they are equally important in terms of archaeological signifigance in my opinion.

As well as for forum debates.;-)
 
Yossarian I seen ur post good info and Monty B with lopping shell coming from the bismark another good point but.... 3 things 1 the bismark and yamoto could have struck the radio tower and bridge instead of the the ammo storage 2 have we failed to realize these two ships have an entire navy and the air force watching there back 3 we would have to compare the other ships and aircraft too 🇩🇪🇬🇧 🇯🇵🇺🇸
 
It's a shame that little effort has gone into exploring the Axis warships in this era, as they are equally important in terms of archaeological signifigance in my opinion.

As well as for forum debates.;-)

Indeed I notice that they have also located the Graf Zeppelin in fairly shallow water as well...

Hitler's Showpiece Aircraft Carrier Found

Divers working for the Polish oil firm Petrobaltic on Monday discovered the rusting hulk of Nazi Germany's only aircraft carrier, the Graf Zeppelin, sunk in mysterious circumstances by the Soviets after World War II. Its exact location had been a riddle for almost 60 years.
Experts in the Polish Navy, using robots and sonar, confirmed on Thursday that the wreckage really was the Graf Zeppelin. The 260-meter (850-foot) ship had been a showpiece of Hitler's navy, but it never went into battle. Intended to carry 42 planes, the vessel was begun in 1936, launched in 1938, but never finished before German troops had to scuttle it in 1945. It was "a grandiose technical achievement," military historian Ulrich Israel told SPIEGEL ONLINE, "mainly when you consider that the Germans had no examples to work from to build such a carrier."
Hitler started the war before the German navy finished building its prestige ship. His planners gave priority to building U-Boats, and the Graf Zeppelin had to be towed to Gdansk, where it was used for storage. The Germans finally anchored it in a shallow stream feeding the Oder, where troops blew holes in its hull before they fled the invading Red Army. The Soviets renovated the ship, and moved it -- but how it met its final end is still the subject of controversy.
One story says the carrier hit a mine on its way to Russia. Another says the Soviets overloaded it with war booty, causing it to sink in a storm on the Baltic. But Ulrich Israel -- who's written a book about the ship -- claims the still-unfinished Graf Zeppelin was towed from its final harbor in the German town of Swinemünde in August 1947 and destroyed by Soviet bombs and torpedoes. The Russians, evidently with an eye on the American navy, wanted to practice sinking a foreign aircraft carrier.
On Monday, while sounding for oil deposits in the Baltic Sea, Polish workers discovered the wreck about 55 kilometers (34 miles) outside the Polish harbor town of Wladyslawowo, near Gdansk. According to international maritime law the remains belong to the Federal Republic of Germany, but the German Defense Ministry told news agency ddp that jurisdiction is still under discussion. In the meantime, the ship's mysteries are far from fully solved.
"It's difficult to say why the Russians have always been so stubbornly reluctant to talk about the location of the wreck," Lukasz Orlicki, a Polish maritime historian, told the Times of London. "Perhaps it was the usual obsession with secrecy, or perhaps there was some kind of suspect cargo."

http://www.spiegel.de/international/0%2C1518%2C428857%2C00.html


So there is one Heavy Cruiser more or less sitting on the surface and an Aircraft Carrier sitting in around 250 meters of water.

A website with a lot more pictures of people diving the Prinz Eugen in 1997...

http://www.jlunderwater.co.uk/old_site/photoix/prinzeugen/index.htm
 
Last edited:
My understanding is that they know exactly where it is and have done a survey of it already.
 
Indeed I notice that they have also located the Graf Zeppelin in fairly shallow water as well...

Hitler's Showpiece Aircraft Carrier Found

Divers working for the Polish oil firm Petrobaltic on Monday discovered the rusting hulk of Nazi Germany's only aircraft carrier, the Graf Zeppelin, sunk in mysterious circumstances by the Soviets after World War II. Its exact location had been a riddle for almost 60 years.
Experts in the Polish Navy, using robots and sonar, confirmed on Thursday that the wreckage really was the Graf Zeppelin. The 260-meter (850-foot) ship had been a showpiece of Hitler's navy, but it never went into battle. Intended to carry 42 planes, the vessel was begun in 1936, launched in 1938, but never finished before German troops had to scuttle it in 1945. It was "a grandiose technical achievement," military historian Ulrich Israel told SPIEGEL ONLINE, "mainly when you consider that the Germans had no examples to work from to build such a carrier."
Hitler started the war before the German navy finished building its prestige ship. His planners gave priority to building U-Boats, and the Graf Zeppelin had to be towed to Gdansk, where it was used for storage. The Germans finally anchored it in a shallow stream feeding the Oder, where troops blew holes in its hull before they fled the invading Red Army. The Soviets renovated the ship, and moved it -- but how it met its final end is still the subject of controversy.
One story says the carrier hit a mine on its way to Russia. Another says the Soviets overloaded it with war booty, causing it to sink in a storm on the Baltic. But Ulrich Israel -- who's written a book about the ship -- claims the still-unfinished Graf Zeppelin was towed from its final harbor in the German town of Swinemünde in August 1947 and destroyed by Soviet bombs and torpedoes. The Russians, evidently with an eye on the American navy, wanted to practice sinking a foreign aircraft carrier.
On Monday, while sounding for oil deposits in the Baltic Sea, Polish workers discovered the wreck about 55 kilometers (34 miles) outside the Polish harbor town of Wladyslawowo, near Gdansk. According to international maritime law the remains belong to the Federal Republic of Germany, but the German Defense Ministry told news agency ddp that jurisdiction is still under discussion. In the meantime, the ship's mysteries are far from fully solved.
"It's difficult to say why the Russians have always been so stubbornly reluctant to talk about the location of the wreck," Lukasz Orlicki, a Polish maritime historian, told the Times of London. "Perhaps it was the usual obsession with secrecy, or perhaps there was some kind of suspect cargo."

http://www.spiegel.de/international/0%2C1518%2C428857%2C00.html


So there is one Heavy Cruiser more or less sitting on the surface and an Aircraft Carrier sitting in around 250 meters of water.

A website with a lot more pictures of people diving the Prinz Eugen in 1997...

http://www.jlunderwater.co.uk/old_site/photoix/prinzeugen/index.htm


Explorer's have noted that diving the Graf Zeppelin is compelety empty in terms of internal furnishings and crews articles. Being as she was mainly used for storage and never really had a full compliment of crew and operational supplies.

Which is unusual to say the least, unlike many other war wrecks this one in particular doesn't have the "soul" of it's counterparts.

Unlike the Yorktown for example, the Zeppelin does not have that human presence, no human articles, just a big empty ship sitting in the mud.

There is no sense of loss, so it makes it ripe for internal exploration of the wreck since the only disrespect that can be done is against the designers.

And I'll admit I am curious to see the truth behind this mystery as well.
 
Last edited:
Explorer's have noted that diving the Graf Zeppelin is compelety empty in terms of internal furnishings and crews articles. Being as she was mainly used for storage and never really had a full compliment of crew and operational supplies.

Which is unusual to say the least, unlike many other war wrecks this one in particular doesn't have the "soul" of it's counterparts.

Like the Yorktown for example, the Zeppelin does not have that human presence, no human articles, just a big empty ship sitting in the mud.

There is no sense of loss, so it makes it ripe for interal exporation of the wreck sense the only disrespect that can be done is against the designers.

And I'll admit I am curious to see the truth behind this mystery as well.

I don't see that as odd given that the ship was never finished but that just makes it easier to see the construction of the ship which is important.
 
I don't see that as odd given that the ship was never finished but that just makes it easier to see the construction of the ship which is important.


Very true, I was just pointing out that an devoid empty ship doesn't really have a human touch to it.

Like a big empty house so to speak.

But yes, this can be a blessing, without worry of distrurbing human remains you could much more consciously explore the ship's internal construction.
 
Back
Top