Bismarck what if

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Andy H
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Re: Bismarck what if

#151

Post by Andy H » 02 Jul 2012, 18:14

Von Schadewald wrote:WI Bismarck is kept in the Baltic. Instead of being lost in June 1941, she is used to hammer Soviet forces around Leningrad. Although at risk from Russian submarines, her bombardment firepower could have broken the siege before the end of 1941.

With Leningrad captured, Bismarck & PE could then be sent skipping round North Cape to ensure that not one Allied Arctic convoy dared be sent to Murmansk and Archangel.

This could have knocked the Soviets out of the war by autumn 1942.
Hi v.S

Though the loss of Leningrad would have helped free up valuable German/Finnish forces, and any resulting actions off the North Cape would have hampered the Russians. There is no possibility that unless these efforts were made in tandem with other larger and far reaching changes on the E.Front, that your prognosis would ever come to pass. In fact the 'other' changes would have been of such a magnitude that they would succeed or fail with or without your proposed changes

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Andy H

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LWD
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Re: Bismarck what if

#152

Post by LWD » 02 Jul 2012, 20:24

Von Schadewald wrote:WI Bismarck is kept in the Baltic. Instead of being lost in June 1941, she is used to hammer Soviet forces around Leningrad. Although at risk from Russian submarines, ....
The real threat wouldn't be so much Soviet subs as mines. The Baltic was thick with them and if she's as active as you suggest in shore bombardmeant the odds on hitting one or more a very high. Then there's the matter of getting her barrels relined as well.


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Re: Bismarck what if

#153

Post by Von Schadewald » 28 Sep 2015, 20:32

Could the Bismarck have pulled in to a neutral Irish port, like the Graf Spee in Montevideo?

Under the rules, how long could she have stayed?

The RN would have amassed a fleet outside the port, but so too would the KM have amassed all its submarine + some air cover - leading to a battle royal off Bantry Bay?!

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Kingfish
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Re: Bismarck what if

#154

Post by Kingfish » 30 Sep 2015, 18:47

Von Schadewald wrote:Could the Bismarck have pulled in to a neutral Irish port, like the Graf Spee in Montevideo?

Under the rules, how long could she have stayed?

The RN would have amassed a fleet outside the port, but so too would the KM have amassed all its submarine + some air cover - leading to a battle royal off Bantry Bay?!
The RN could just as easily deploy its own subs outside the port as a trip wire, with continuous RAF recon flights to keep watch, while the RN waits in Scapa Flow or Cardiff
The gods do not deduct from a man's allotted span the hours spent in fishing.
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Re: Bismarck what if

#155

Post by Paul Lakowski » 05 Oct 2015, 07:33

Grand Admiral Raeder's plan for surface warships was to use small long range surface raiders to drag RN cruiser forces away from the N Atlantic along with fast battleships & battle cruisers. Then the KM BB would surge against some nearby allied troop convoys with slow BB ; in the knowledge they could attack these at will.

While the PBS of the Deutschland class were too slow ,they had sufficient firepower to force RN/Allied Battle Cruisers to be dispatched. The Hipper cruiser were clearly a failure with such limited endurance and only 8" guns.

Perhaps they should have built some kind of hybrid of Hipper with PBS 11" guns & diesel/turbine propulsion .

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Re: Bismarck what if

#156

Post by DocHawkeye » 10 Oct 2015, 03:04

They should've have built none, and saved the metal, gas, and personnel for Panzer Divisions fighting a far more important battle in the East.

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Re: Bismarck what if

#157

Post by Paul Lakowski » 10 Oct 2015, 22:23

DocHawkeye wrote:They should've have built none, and saved the metal, gas, and personnel for Panzer Divisions fighting a far more important battle in the East.

Rubbish. If they wanted to do that all they had to do was to not mount any armored steel on the West Wall or Atlantic Wall. That amount of armored steel was massive [Est ~1/4 million tons] . With that amount of steel they could have doubled the tonnage of AFV used for the Panzerwaffe through out the war.

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T. A. Gardner
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Re: Bismarck what if

#158

Post by T. A. Gardner » 11 Oct 2015, 23:54

Paul Lakowski wrote:Grand Admiral Raeder's plan for surface warships was to use small long range surface raiders to drag RN cruiser forces away from the N Atlantic along with fast battleships & battle cruisers. Then the KM BB would surge against some nearby allied troop convoys with slow BB ; in the knowledge they could attack these at will.
If that was the KM strategy, and I've never seen anything that it was, it wouldn't have worked. RN strategy was to place groups of cruisers on stations far from Britain encompassing the globe for all intents. Any single KM raider (and they would have to operate alone to accomplish the mission... any concentration would draw the RN to them in larger number and end the whole raiding mission so that would be self defeating) as demonstrated by the Graf Spee, or any of the merchant conversions versus several cruisers was finished. No need to send battlecruisers or battleships to do anything.
Older BB could be stationed at critical choke points to support such an RN strategy like at Capetown, or Trincomalee. These would prevent a raider from operating near high shipping concentrations.
The British could build cheap, so-so cruisers faster than the Germans could build something like the Graf Spee.
While the PBS of the Deutschland class were too slow ,they had sufficient firepower to force RN/Allied Battle Cruisers to be dispatched. The Hipper cruiser were clearly a failure with such limited endurance and only 8" guns.

Perhaps they should have built some kind of hybrid of Hipper with PBS 11" guns & diesel/turbine propulsion .
Anything faster would have required support ships due to the fuel consumption involved. Any surface merchant raider needed to be pretty self sufficient in operation to succeed. If anything the German merchant raider needed better and more aircraft aboard than anything not bigger guns.

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Re: Bismarck what if

#159

Post by Paul Lakowski » 13 Oct 2015, 05:57

Well it was Raeder's view of strategy not the KM. There was much disagreement within their admiralty as to best course of action.

We all know Captain Donitz pushed the U-boat agenda but German naval industry was incapable of reaching his demands of 300 U-boats and its likely the RN would not sit idly by and just let them build such a fleet -ASDIC or No ASDIC.

Captain Furbringer [a U-boat developer] criticized such a strategy as doomed the moment allies built enough ASW assets as it would force the fleet underwater and loose its surveillance capability and therefore its offensive edge. It needed other threat dimensions to work -if and when that happened- and he proposed a tight integration of LW and KM to allow Uboats to operate independently of each other with long range bombers to locate and direct U-Boats to the convoys. Captain Heye proposed a fleet of at least a dozen surface raiders to break up convoy escorts and allow Uboats to attack these Convoy more easily.

Raeder always believed in the Tirpitz fleet strategy of engaging the RN fleet, but he believed the surface raiders could be better used to draw capital ships away from the Home Fleet thus diluting their numbers and allowing a smaller German fleet to overwhelm them in battle . If the British were already dispatching large numbers of cruisers and old BB- overseas, Raeder was already 1/2 way to achieving his strategy. What he needed was fast Battleships. That is why he tried to hijack the Naval Plan 1932 and convert the Panzerschiffe into Battle cruisers and battleships....but then Raeder always believed in Hitler when he assured him that a naval war with the UK would not happen until the mid to late 1940s...IE he still had time to build his battle fleet.

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