Bismarck tried to surrender?

[Luckylegs]

''Whats so Civil about War anyway''....Axl Rose.

Sorry, that needed to be fixed (for the good of all things rock... And spandex, teased hair and jack daniels)

[jaffaonajappa]

Sheffield (among a long list) was lost because of a fuckwit called Sandy Woodward who pretended to be an admiral.

Damn, thats pretty harsh.
I remember the first few Janes fighting Ships books I saw - this guy always had an editorial position and cool stories.
Didnt he get promoted wayyy up there after the war? Ended up being a NATO boss? Which implies, to me, that his superiors considered him to have proven his abilities.

His biography '100 days' makes an interesting read into what a tactical commander must do, balanced with what his higher commanders want. Guess that why them guys earn the big dollars...

[Swoop]

Damn, thats pretty harsh.
I remember the first few Janes fighting Ships books I saw - this guy always had an editorial position and cool stories.

No. He was a complete inbred retard who had too much of an opinion of himself (most uncommon for a fish head who should have just sat in the wardroom). His actions jepardised the lives of many and the outcome of the entire war.
Tactics? The man should have been left to play with toy boats. As a flag officer...

[jaffaonajappa]

No. He was a complete inbred retard who had too much of an opinion of himself (most uncommon for a fish head who should have just sat in the wardroom). His actions jepardised the lives of many and the outcome of the entire war.
Tactics? The man should have been left to play with toy boats. As a flag officer...

Hmmm. Ur Ex pommie navy? Or serving in the kiwi one?

[RDJ]

Holy crap - I hadn't realised that before - Stalin made Hitler look like an amateur. Very true that not much gets said about the soviets in the WW2 movies.

I was posted in Moscow for a few years. One of the saddest sights I have ever seen - along with World War II cemeteries in Normandy and Cambridge, and one for Indonesian / Australian / English war dead in Ambon that I visited one Anzac Day morning - was a long, dimly lit hall underground in a war museum on the outskirts of Moscow. Every few metres there was a wooden plinth with a large encyclopaedia-sized hardback small-print red-leather-bound book... containing nothing else but the Russian names of Russian war dead in what they call the "Great Patriotic War", World War II. There were 30, maybe 40 of these books of names... opened at a different page every day. (And then to know that the number of those dead was eclipsed by the number of Russians killed by their own people before and after WWII...).

(The week I left Moscow, I had the opportunity to tour the Lubyanka when it had only just been 'opened'. On the one hand, to visit as a tourist that hellhole with the blood in its walls and the screams in its ceilings? on the other hand, never having the opportunity again? Well, I went. There was the Russian version of history, including parts of the Gary-Powers-piloted US spy plane, and various 007 type spy gadgets - but there was also a photo montage of partisans and alleged saboteurs being shot and hung by the Nazis, most of them heartbreakingly young, teenagers... what humanity can do to ourselves, dammit).

Sorry, I digress.

[Swoop]

Hmmm.

For a good read on both the SHAR development and combat in the Falklands, have a read of this.

[Kickaha]

up until recently the British always maintained they sunk the Bismarck, when found by Bob Ballard, engineers agreed she was in fact scuttled as the Germans maintained.

so again very unlikely the torpedo's finished her off. The damage was substantial on the 'outer hull and void spaces'. As she was in fact sinking from the scuttle charges when the torpedos hit, they hit above the armoured belt on the hull.

There is a documentary on the History channel on June 6th concerning the Hood/Bismarck saga.... should be interesting viewing.

Robert Ballard's discovery no doubt shed new light on the matter. I see no reason to argue the fact the Huns scuttled her,

I've just been watching bit's of pt2 and they said regardless of whether the Germans intended to or were scuttling it they were only hastening the inevitable as she would have sunk from torpedo damage anyway

Unfortunately I missed most of it

[Paul in NZ]

Unfortunately I missed most of it

So did the Hood.....