Sea Passage

[athkatla]

Is there any reason I cannot take my allied ships through the Denmark Straits? I have moved some to north of Denmark, but on my next turn I can't move them into the Baltic Sea, even though I can move them to other vacant tiles!

[n0kn0k]

The germans own Denmark then probably, so they are blocking access It works the other way around also.

Just imagine a bunch of coastal batteries waiting there for you

[Liam]

Not Just Coastal Batteries, some of those Canals I'm sure have locks of some type to prevent larger ships, if the German High Command heard of an attempt to get through, how fast are they going to move? 2 MPH less? Sitting ducks

[Stendhal]

That's the Danish Straits. The Denmark Strait lies between Iceland and Greenland.

[Kuniworth]

Originally posted by Stendhal:

That's the Danish Straits. The Denmark Strait lies between Iceland and Greenland.

Exactly. We all know the Bismarck vs Hood encounter don't we?

[Rocko1]

That was because the Hood used the same steel that the Titanic did. It was from a faulty production run at the steel mill and was weak.

[Liam]

actually from what I heard you're wrong... In WW1 when the Hood was designed our understanding of physics didn't take into account precisely how a salvo might land on a BattleShip.. I believe it has something to do with the gravity and the Deck Armor itself, which was I believe highly inadaquete by WW2 standards, so when 1 salvo hit the Deck of the Hood, "Bam!" went right through it like butter... It really shouldn't have been in frontline surface, it should've been a support ship hunting U-Boats!

You'd of course have to research this better than myself but had the Hood been properly armored it would have survived the battle I'm sure and not much to do with side armor... The bismark itself was way too high tech and it's AA guns couldn't keep up with the slowflying Swordfish, making them able to knockout it's rudder destroying it dead in the water. So I guess High Tech killed one and Low Tech killed the other. Oversights and blunders on both ends the opposing sides

Originally posted by Rocko1:

That was because the Hood used the same steel that the Titanic did. It was from a faulty production run at the steel mill and was weak.

[ChrisND]

Exactly Liam I believe the term for what you mention is called plunging fire.. or something like that.

[Lars]

Originally posted by Rocko1:

That was because the Hood used the same steel that the Titanic did. It was from a faulty production run at the steel mill and was weak.

Pretty neat trick that, considering they were laid down seven years apart...

[Canuck_TAR]

Hood was a Battle Cruiser, sacrificed armour for speed.

No match for the Bismark.

Prince of Wales was just outta dry dock brand new with work crew still doing repairs and fitting out enroute. Would have been more of a match even with her 14" guns if she would have been battle ready.

[Rocko1]

Actually Lars, both were supplied the same kind of steel by the same company D. Colville and Co. of Motherwell in Lanarkshire. It has been noted that there were issues during construction of both ships in dry dock involving the steel. Its only a nice trick if you do not look up your facts.

[ April 13, 2007, 04:16 PM: Message edited by: Rocko1 ]

[Lars]

Well, must have been one hell of a production overage down at the old steel mill if they still had enough left over to build a battleship seven years later. No wonder the steel was rotten with piss poor management like that.

btw, Google is your friend. Look up the dates yourself. I did.

[Bromley]

Just did some Googling on the Hood/Titanic thing and I couldn't find the source research/article. It seems to be a fringe theory. There seems to have been an ABC article on it, but the link is down:

http://204.202.137.113/sections/science/DailyNews/hmshood981208.html

That is to say that both may well have been made from steel from the same source and that steel may well have been brittle when exposed to sudden shock, but I wasn't able to find anything to suggest that another source of steel would have saved either ship. It seems unlikely that both were from the same "production run" given the dates supplied by Lars.

EDIT: The only quotable reference to that article that I could find is the following:

Did you see the article from ABC News, posted at the above site, that suggests "Titanic-type" steel was used in the Hood's construction --which contributed to the Hood's sinking?

According to the article, the HMS Hood was about the same size as the Titanic (860 feet long, 46,000 tons). It's steel came from D. Colville & Co. in Motherwell, Scotland, as did Titanic's.

Further, according to the article:

"Timothy Foecke, a metallurgist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Md., said the ships’ steel—although state-of-the-art at the time—was “very strain-rate sensitive.” In other words, he said, like Silly Putty, it will stretch if pulled apart slowly but it will snap if it is pulled quickly. “If the Hood’s hull was disassembled very quickly by an explosion, then the steel may have indeed behaved very brittlely,” said Foecke, who conducted extensive tests on metal fragments from Titanic. William Garzke of the U.S. Society of Naval Architects in Arlington, Va., said tests on recovered segments of the Titanic showed the rivets and plates were liable to crack easily under pressure, in contrast to the much more flexible steel used today. “It is possible this was a factor in the sinking of the Hood,” Garzke said."

I had heard this before, i.e., that the Hood was not armoured nearly as well as it should have been.

The sinking of the HMS Hood was a monumental loss for the British, and particularly devastating given the manner of the loss.

". . . The battlecruiser’s bow and stern sank separately in two minutes even as her 15-inch guns blasted a final salvo at the enemy."

http://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/discus/messages/6937/6702.html?994989192

[ April 14, 2007, 09:02 AM: Message edited by: Bromley ]

[Konigs]

Read about the sinking of the Bismark several times. Hood was a fast ship with powerful guns. The simple fact is the speed was attained at some expense in armor. The dooming salvo from Bismark hit just aft of fore guns coming down and penetrating the weak deck armor piercing the forward magazine. The resluting explosion doomed the hood. Poor design, not brittle metal lead to the dismal failure of this ship. See entire Italian navy, fast powerful ships, no good armor, lack of radar and no coordnation with air forces, led to their all too easy defeat.

[Liam]

I think that all these sources may be valid, to some degree, but Come on Folks!!! The Bismark was top of the line and all it takes is 1 hit on a lightly armoured ship to kill it, it just has to hit the right place!

Those Monster Salvos would do in ships of today if they hit right on the BullsEye...

1 little torpedo did in the Mighty Bismark and it didn't even kill anyone did it? The Bismark would've better served the German Navy in a 20-30 U-Boat version conversion... Surface Fleets were for Fear Factor alone, not practical to send out a huge floating turd for the British Navy and Air, which was superior at that point.

Oh, and on the point of the Italian Lack of coordination with their Navy and Air, Germans had a particular issue with the same... Perhaps the Bismark would've been better served with Air Coverage? I heard Goering didn't really cooperate well with the Kriegsmarine, selfish little infights...

[Konigs]

Actually the bismark was only hours away from Me109 air coverage when the crappy Swordfish dropped it's equally crappy torpedo and jammed rudder of Bismark causing it to run in circles. You are right, Goering did not allow for proper development of an air arm to help the Kreigsmarine, better than Italians but not near as good as it could have been.

Totally agree on the other part though Herr Liam, all that man power and metal wasted on a ship that was totally out matched by the Might of Her Majesty's Royal Navy....