Often times, I hear people (Probably fans of the ship) praise it so much for its reputation of sinking the Hood and taking a lot of punishment during its final battle.
Some people even go as far as to say it was *the* best battleship of its time. But is the Bismarck really that good? Was it deserving of its reputation? How did it compare to other similar ships and what were its major flaws?
No, the Bismarck was a fairly poor design. Adapted from an earlier answer:
I mean yes, those 3 things are exactly the reason the Bismarck sunk. but I think that can be more attributed to luck (or rather the lack of it).
Have you ever heard the parable "for want of a nail, the kingdom was lost?" It's been passed down through generations in a whole bunch of forms. I would argue that "defense and staying afloat" are at least as important as guns. But let's consider the pieces of this individually:
Its three-shaft, two-rudder design was based on WWI designs that dated back to the fast liners before WWI (the Titanic had a similar three-shaft arrangement, though with only one rudder, which was probably more maneuverable than Bismarck.) On sea trials Bismarck proved to be difficult to handle with the rudders locked amidships; even with both outside screws running in different directions, she couldn't be reliably maneuvered. A torpedo hit in the area which jammed the rudders to port made the ship utterly unmanageable and doomed it and its men. To quote a bit from that link:
The second torpedo attack, this time on Bismarck herself, was made at sunset in unbearable weather conditions, Force 9, with heavy cloud cover and waves 25-40 feet high. Fifteen Swordfish planes took part and two torpedo hits were made. One struck abreast of the aft superstructure adjacent to Compartments VII and VIII. Slow flooding followed, caused by tears in welded joints and longitudinals and structural failures in transverse bulkheads. This damage was inconsequential compared to the effects of the second torpedo, which effectively doomed the ship.
The fatal torpedo hit the steering area of Bismarck. The full fury of the detonation was vented into the ship and against the shell and rudders. The steering capability of the ship was destroyed. The transient whipping response caused by this torpedo hit was stunning. The hull, according to survivors, acted like a springboard, and severe structural damage was sustained in the stern structure. The steering gear complex, encased in 150mm thick armor, was rather rigid in comparison to the 10 meter long canoe-shaped stern. The unarmored stern structure vibrated at a different frequency than the main hull just ahead of it. Tears were opened in the side shell and bulkheads adjacent to the damaged area. The two decks in the stern were wrecked by the force of the explosion, and equipment in the fantail area was seriously damaged as the gasjet expanded upward. Seaman Helmut Behnke, who was sent to check on the fog-making machinery and its piping found it completely destroyed. Evidence of the severity of damage can be seen in the videotapes of the stern area of the wreck. The remaining platform decks are badly twisted and the upper portions of the damage can be barely seen just above the sediments.
Not to harp on this, but contemporary battleship designs placed a great deal of thought into dealing with torpedo damage, and several US battleships were hit by torpedoes during the war and suffered only minor damage. To be fair, they weren't hit in the shaft/rudder area, but US naval architects did think about protecting shafts and rudders -- you can read more about the theory of skeg design here. (The North Carolina class had skegs on its inboard shafts for torpedo protection, while the South Dakota class had outboard skegs for hydrodynamic reasons; all design is a compromise, but still, this is something designers thought and argued about.)
Separate from skeg design, though, is the issue of the number of shafts you want to put into a ship. In general terms, two shafts are better than one, and four are better than two, although not all ships have the width aft to carry four, and some due to cost considerations only carry one. Three shafts, though, is kind of the worst possible compromise. To quote from this thread:
Heading the other way, if, on a given power output, four screws is efficient but space and weight consuming and two screws uses weight more effectively but shows less propulsive efficiency, would a triple screw layout offer a good compromise? A preliminary examination of the figures suggests that it might; a comparison of machinery weight per SHP output between ships using triple and quadruple shaft layouts does show an appreciable advantage to the former. However, as we have seen, this is not the whole story.
Firstly, we are comparing numbers between two ships from two different countries. This is always dangerous since no two countries measure such statistics the same way. There is a strong probability that one set of figures contains components that the others do not. Even if this is not the case, weight economy is only one part of the equation. Propulsive efficiency and vibration are of greater significance as is the effect of the arrangement on the ship as a whole.
Here, triple shafts combine all the worst problems of a single-shaft layout and a twin shaft system. About the only advantage of the triple shaft layout is that it eliminates the vulnerability of the single shaft layout to mechanical damage or accident. The design hydrodynamics is such that the effects of the centerline screw actual degrade the efficiency of the wing propellers. In his memoirs, Admiral Scheer made the following comments on his (triple shaft) battleships.
"The advantage of having three engines, as had each of these ships, was proved by the fact that two engines alone were able to keep up steam almost at full speed; at the same time, very faulty construction in the position of the engines was apparent, which unfortunately could not be rectified owing to limited space' Thus it happened that when a condenser went wrong it was impossible to conduct the steam from the engine with which it was connected to one of the other two condensers, and thus keep the engine itself working. It was an uncomfortable feeling to know that this weakness existed in the strongest unit at the disposal of the Fleet, and how easily a bad accident might result in leakages in two different condensers and thus incapacitate one vessel in the group."
This excerpt has two valuable insights. One is the confirmation that the German ships could maintain speed using their wing shafts only; an indication of the inefficiency and redundancy of the center shaft. The other is the suggestion that the center shaft itself was seen as being a reserve against mechanical failure and/or battle damage. The comments about condenser problems are also interesting but by no means unique. "Condenseritis" was a well-known and pervasive problem with all ships in WW1 and its prevalence in the German fleet should not be seen as unusual.
Triple shafts come into their own where there is a requirement for high output power in a hull with extremely fine lines aft. This was the motivation behind the use of the configuration on the Ark Royal and Illustrious class carriers (the combination of treaty limits restricting the length of the armored box, the need for beam and high installed power all conspired to give the designers heart failure). When the treaty limits were lifted, the British redesigned their carriers (Indefatigable and Implacable) with a conventional four shaft layout.
So I think it's safe to say that Bismarck was designed with inadequate shafting and rudder arrangements, and a weak stern overall.
Moving to
Radar as a means of not only detection but also of fire control was crucial to the success of battleships in WWII -- though the Japanese, for example, had trained for night fighting, the American ability to use radar to find and target ships well out of visual range at night. At the Battle of the Surigao Strait in Oct. 1944, six American battleships fired at night on a Japanese force that had already been badly damaged by torpedo attacks from US destroyers, using radar to find firing solutions.
Unfortunately, we don't know very much about the radars installed on the Bismarck, but German radar seems not to have been used for fire control except in AA fire control, about which more later (I'm running out of characters here). The radar set on Bismarck was disabled when it fired on Norfolk on May 23, which meant that Prinz Eugen had to lead the detachment so it could use its search radars. This worked out well for the Germans in the sense that it allowed Bismarck to engage and sink Hood, but of course in that scrap Bismarck also sustained three hits from Prince of Wales, two of which caused damage (flooding at the bow and an oil leak, and penetrating and damaging the watertight integrity between two boiler rooms such that two boilers had to be shut down). This effectively mission-killed Bismarck without any further damage (remember, this is still before the torpedo hit damaged its rudders); and, this also meant that Bismarck was effectively blind to threats from beyond visual range.
