This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Morven: I removed the following paragraph which was added as a comment below an entry on the German battleships Bismark and Tirpitz.
- I'd say "terrorize" is a big word for pair of ships that 1. Were never completed. 2. Crippled beyond recovery after being hit by a single shot from a relatively tiny cannon(punctured fuel tank in enemy territory with a ship that would make a humvee blush = bad).
Why? It's not accurate. Both Bismark and Tirpitz were completed. Bismarck suffered damage to a fuel tank that made the fuel oil in it unusable due to seawater entering it, yes, but this was in a big-guns battle with a British battleship and battlecruiser, and it's believed that the damage was from the 15-inch guns of the HMS Hood, which the Bismarck sank with a direct hit to the magazines. The lost fuel tank contributed to the loss of the Bismarck since it required the ship to slow down to reduce its fuel consumption; this in turn allowed it to be caught by the carrier HMS Ark Royal and torpedoed in the steering gear, after which its loss was simply a matter of time.
The Bismarck certainly gave a good account of itself: in fact, despite being attacked in the final battle by a pair of battleships and a pair of heavy cruisers which used up pretty much their entire magazines, as well as a stock of torpedoes on the cruisers, it's still believed likely that the ship was actually scuttled by its German crew to prevent it from falling into enemy hands once it was unable to fight back.
The Tirpitz, yes, did essentially nothing during the war, largely because after the loss of the Bismarck the German naval and national leadership were too chicken to risk the propaganda hit of it being sunk. It did, however, tie up large amounts of British sea power out of fear of it possibly being used, and an absolutely inordinate amount of effort was expended to sink it.
Silent Hunter: Should we create a separate Real Life page for this, as for Cool Plane.
Morven: Might be an idea. There are certainly a lot of real-life examples to make (& argue over!)
