{"id":74828,"date":"2024-05-24T16:32:02","date_gmt":"2024-05-24T22:32:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/?p=74828"},"modified":"2024-05-24T16:32:02","modified_gmt":"2024-05-24T22:32:02","slug":"know-your-ww2-naval-history-hunting-the-bismarck-part-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/2024\/05\/24\/know-your-ww2-naval-history-hunting-the-bismarck-part-i\/","title":{"rendered":"Know Your WW2 Naval History: Hunting the Bismarck \u2013 Part I"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Hunting the\u00a0Bismarck\u00a0<\/em>\u2013 Part I<\/strong><\/a><\/h1>\n

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Without doubt, the\u00a0Bismarck<\/em>\u00a0is the single best-known German warship of\u00a0World War II.<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0Large, fast, hard to sink and equipped with the latest in German radar and optics technology, it quickly earned notoriety after it sank the HMS\u00a0Hood<\/em>, the pride of the Royal Navy. The panicked\u00a0British<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0response eventually brought low the\u00a0German monster,<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0but only after a chase involving every single ship they could mobilize.\u00a0<\/em><\/h2>\n

At least, that’s one side of the story. The other is that the\u00a0Bismarck<\/em>\u00a0was a ship built according to\u00a0World War I<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0design sensibilities, its intended purpose was to raid commercial shipping rather than hunt down enemy warships, it sank a single aging enemy ship during its short career, and it was destroyed on its first mission \u2013 a far less flattering picture. This article will try to give you an impartial description of the\u00a0Bismarck’s<\/em>\u00a0famous voyage.<\/h2>\n

German war planners knew that Britain’s Achilles’ heel was its far-flung colonial empire. Britain itself was reliant on a constant flow of supplies, and disrupting these would make it much easier to defeat the island nation.\u00a0(<\/em><\/strong>Read our earlier article<\/em><\/strong><\/a>)\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>Germany didn’t have nearly enough U-boats to accomplish this early in the war, so the job fell to heavy surface ships. In fact, since Germany could never match the Royal Navy (RN) in numbers, hitting Britain’s commerce was the best use of whatever ships they had.<\/h2>\n

The newly-built\u00a0Bismarck<\/em>\u00a0and her sister ship\u00a0Tirpitz<\/em>\u00a0seemed perfectly suited for the role. At a sustained speed of 30 knots, they were faster than any battleships the RN had (making them great commerce raiders), and their wise beam made them stable firing platforms.<\/h2>\n

RTWT<\/a><\/h2>\n

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Hunting the\u00a0Bismarck\u00a0\u2013 Part I   Without doubt, the\u00a0Bismarck\u00a0is the single best-known German warship of\u00a0World War II.\u00a0Large, fast, hard to sink and equipped with the latest in German radar and optics technology, it quickly earned notoriety after it sank the HMS\u00a0Hood, the pride of the Royal Navy. The panicked\u00a0British\u00a0response eventually brought low the\u00a0German monster,\u00a0but only after…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[475,476,477,5064,478,479,6096,1286,6899,6052,4827,6458,1899,1901],"tags":[17440,8160,763,17438,17439,1902],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74828"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74828"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74828\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":74831,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74828\/revisions\/74831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}