Don71 wrote:this is after the new found primary sources especially from GB nothing more then absolute wrong.
Given the 'new found primary sources' you list seem to be from books or articles written 1976 and 1977 I am not sure how you arrive at the conclusion that they are newly found?
Don71 wrote:After british post war tests on BS spaced array armour layout, the british naval engineers came to the conclusion, that her spaced deck armour (50mm weather deck and 80mm main armour deck), was equal to a 6 inch single plate of british WWII homogeneous steel.
I dont think you fully understand the subject matter at hand, as a single plate always offers greater resistance than two of the same thickness or less against AP shells, and this test is about 'High Obliquity Attack of Deck Targets' which means estimating the total thickness of armour (in terms of resistance) that the shell will have to penetrate. For example: A shell incoming to the deck is plunging and strikes the deck at an angle of 30 degrees (60 degrees to the perpendicular) has to penetrate twice the actual thickness of deck armour, so a 6" deck actually has the resistance of 12" in this example. Using the same shell details, but striking two identical 3" thicknesses of spaced armour, the result is slightly different, as the first thickness is still doubled, but after striking that plate, the shell will be deflected at an increased angle towards the next plate, so the second plate will be struck at a higher angle to the perpendicular (depending on distance between plates and shell velocity), but also at a slightly reduced velocity, meaning that the second plate offers slightly less resistance than the first despite them being of equal thickness. In the example I have given, the single deck would be 152mm x 2 = 304mm total resistance, whilst the 50mm + 80mm of Bismarck will offer 50mm x 2 = 100mm + 80mm x 1.5 = 120mm (or even x 1.8 = 144mm) for a total of 220mm (244mm). I hope this is clear, I may not do the best job of explaining it, but there is a moderator/contributor on the NavWeaps site called Nathan Okun who does this work professionally (for the US Defence Dept iirc) who is usually happy to explain things. The following is his article there explaining things in greater detail, including the variations caused by the shell itself;
http://www.navweaps.com/index_nathan/Hstfrmla.htm
Don71 wrote:Also after the german Lilienthal report from 1943, where german naval engineers did a very sophisticated comparison between the BS class and the Richelieu class, the design goals of the BS class were described at detail, after the freshest findings of gun and penetration performance of 1934/35.
I am not too sure what you mean by this? Were the German shells advanced? Yes. Was the armour layout? No.
Don71 wrote:After the development of the new german gun family from 1934 (40,6cm SK34, 38cm SK34, 28cm SK34 and 20,3cm SK34) with the new APC L 4.4 shell, the german naval engineers came to the conclusion to include parts of the deck armour (horizontal), to the vertical armour, because after their own shooting tests and calculations with the new guns and shells, was that a workable (thickness) main belt wasn't strong enough against the new guns and shells, without any backup (Slopes; horizontal armour).
Yes, this is why the armoured deck is carried so low in the structure in Bismarck, and why the armoured raft ended up being very hard to sink, but also very easy to disable. It is also a product of the Germans opting for high velocity guns and relatively light shells (they were the lightest of all the 15" shells from WWII) where the shells will strike belt armour at close to the perpendicular but strike decks at very high angles to the perpedicular there. In short, Bismarck was optimised for short to medium ranges usually common in the North Sea.
Don71 wrote:BS guns were able to punch through 430mm KC nA steel at 20000yards, same number for british face hardened WWII steel. Against US class A WWII steel, it was 460mm at 20000yards
This has little to do with how well armoured Bismarck was to face the challenges of WWII. The figures for the British 14", 15" and 16" are similarly impressive. Armour mattered little once ranges of between 18,000 and 20,000 yards had been reached. It is one of the reasons why Holland was trying to get to below these ranges so fast, the armour of both sides would be negated, Hood didnt actually have any real immune zone vs Bismarck, but Bismarck did have a narrow band against Hood.
Don71 wrote:So BS was designed after the freshest possible knowledge of shell design, penetration power and armour design and it's design has nothing to do with the Baden class, or any other WWI project.
Bismarck was designed with the most up to date knowledge the Germans possessed, I never said otherwise, it is just that the German naval architects were not as advanced as their Allied counterparts, having had no chance to conduct so many tests on surrendered enemy warships after WWI. I never mentioned the Baden class so really cannot say why you want to perpetuate the myth the Bismarck is a direct follow on to that design? The Saschen and L20 Alpha followed Baden in design terms, as did the Mackensen and Erzatz Yorck designs. In the 1930's the Germans took up from these last Imperial designs, and the result was the Scharnhorst design, which in turn was analysed to produce the Bismarck design (and why both had the inefficient straight bow as designed, only to be changed later for the 'Atlantic Bow' we know so well.
Don71 wrote:According to the Llienthal report, which is a primary source, the BS class was the direct german answer to the Richelieu class and was never designed as a raider.
I never said she was designed purely as a raider, just that she was a waste of tonnage, manpower, and resources as a raider as battleships do not make good raiders, the only real roles either Bismarck or Tirpitz were ever assigned. They were not designed as raiders, but it is exactly what Bismarck was used for, and such use had been intended from the design stage, hence the diesel cruising engines.
Don71 wrote:Also I would like to know where BS was very much overweight?
They were supposedly 35,000 tons, so a design that turned out over 7,000 tons above this was very much overweight. The same combat effectiveness, or even greater, was quite possible on a lower tonnage, so yes, they wasted a lot of weight. The only real advantage they had over other WWII battleships was speed, and that came at a high cost.
Don71 wrote:According to Norman Friedman, the South Dakota was at 38800ts standard at it's commissioning, but was 3 kn slower then BS and didn't had the range at cruising at 20kn and above. BS had 42300ts standard
So the better armoured, better armed, and longer ranged at standard cruising speed South Dakota, is 3kts slower than Bismarck at the very high cruising speeds only really useful to a ship used as a raider, which you say Bismarck was not, and all on 3,500 tons less standard displacement - itself hardly a universal measure as intended, as all nations found ways to cheat it by one method or another, from carrying fewer shells as 'standard' than the ships ever carried (Britain used this method) to just outright cheating and making no real attempt to fit into the limits imposed (Italian and Japanese notably). The full load tonnage is a far better measure of how effective all round a design will be, as even fuel does give its own advantages to war operations. South Dakota was also designed after the 'Escalator Clause' had come into effect, so still below the 40,000 ton limit that clause allowed for, whilst Bismarck was still 2,300 over that later limit!