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The Hood (EDITED: from the Prince of Wales) (which the Bismark sunk) had torpedo tubes I'm virutally positive of that, as that was what they eventually said was the cause of it's sinking with that one shot. It hit a poorly armored part next to a torpedo compartment on the starboard (IIRC) side. I remember seeing that on TV several times over the years. I checked and the Yamato had no torpedo tubes, most battleships didn't as they were slowly just becoming gunnery platforms instead of performing the role of a heavy cruiser (which was pretty much what the Hood had become by the time she was sunk by the Bismark - she was fast, but her hull armor was thin and she was antiquated). The Iowa class battleships had no torpedo tubes. Unfortunately I couldn't access the site I wanted to access to get the info I needed, so I can't confirm for certain if the Bismark had torpedo tubes, but something in the back of my mind says yes. Though since it's been awhile since I've read up on it, and I can't access a 100% credible site at the moment, I can't verify that claim. But the fact that the battleship sacrificed firepower for accuracy leads me to believe the Bismark had torpedo tubes, thus the battleship was provided covering fire to keep the hatches sealed if it did such have them - also just to keep any remaining guns that were operational under constant pressure to make aiming a real nightmare with the rocking of the blast along with the fire and smoke which obscures aiming in and of itself. A cruiser could easily have been sunk by even one shell from the Bismark's main battery's had it hit any number of places, and any other place it would have done extreme damage. It had the largest bore of any ship in the Atlantic fleets, and was the largest ship in all the Atlantic fleets with the heaviest armor of all atlantic ships.
No ship that I know of that carried torpedoes as standard armament on the bow at that time. Torpedoes were woefully slow at that time and a ship launching one at that time could catch up with it (as the speed of the ship, and the speed of the torpedo aren't combined), the torpedo loses it's energy from the launcher and speed of the ship soon after it hits the water. They traveled only about the speed of a cruiser at the time at best, some were even slower. Also bow mounted designs never were really fleshed out due to hall constraints and the technical limitations of the time period. Anything that was fielded was strickly experimental if they were truly fielded in battle at all, which is highly unlikely.
I'll try accessing the sites later, unfortunately when one of those sites goes down, I generally can't access the other one most of the time (though one is crash happy - that leads to it beign down while the other is down mostly), and they are on two different continents altogether - so it's a server issue.
Last edited by Someone Stupid; 12-11-2002 at 07:05 PM.
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Re: Benchmarking a 486
Maan how rich are u
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Ah, The Bismark, The Hood, 486s, 16mb EDO RAM
Dont they just sound lovely together?
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Gone Forever.......
All the same 
Nothing in life is as certain as death, but death is not a wall but a doorway to a new adventure
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Someone Stupid, what about destroyers? Do they have torpedo tubes or they just have them mounted on the starboard or port side just above the water line?
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Omega 31, I still have a EGA monitor and it works, so that's no excuse not to benchmark that 286. I think most of the 286's that I had are now Boat anchors.
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All vessels of that time period if they had torpedo tubes (launchers then), they were mounted well above the water line. This was due to the technical constraints of sealing tubes. The technology was available, just it was more expensive and offered a slower rate of fire. Also having to fill the tubes with water meant the torpedo had to launch itself, which meant a ship couldn't fire it while moving at any decent speed, probably 5 knots plus I'd imagine, without the back end of the torpedo getting caught and thus deflecting from the edge of the launcher. Also keeping them above the water line made for far easier repairs as destroyers and cruisers have a much greater displacement than a U-Boat, which is much smaller, thus virtually all dry docks of the time could accomodate them. Not many could handle a cruiser, destroyer, or battleship, as they were busy building one of the above or aircraft carriers - so having to bring a ship with that type of displacement in would be a logistical nightmare.
They were (at the time) fired into the water about (I'm assuming from pictures here) 25 yards away or so with compressed air, as an explosive charge would destroy the drive on the torpedo. The only ships at the time which had bow mounted torpedos and had them mounted below the water line were submarines. American torpedo's were some of the worst in the war until late into the European campaign before the US discovered it's torpedoes dove deep resulting in many more missing that what should have occured - this problem was quickly fixed. This is easily shown if one goes back and looks and the tonnage sank by American subs in the pacific, along with their given numbers at any one time. They also covered that bit about the Americans torps in a history channel program I saw LONG ago. German torpedos were the fastest in the water and used a primitive shaped charged (if my memory serves me correct on this - it may not in this one, I'm not sure about the shaped charged part, but they were considered some of the most accurate of torps at the time - which would be attributed to speed, as torps of the time were very slow compared to modern torps, though modern ones aren't blazing fast other than a US prototype which creates an air chamber to reach speeds of several hundred miles an hour, the Soviets already have these, coincidently, that was the torpedo which malfuntioned and sunk the Kiev - as they said it was their newest torpedo, and their newest torp was capable of creating an air pocket - thus drastically reducing drag and knocking the speed up from around 50 to 70 knots up to 200+ knots) as the Germans whole method of attack on Europe was to isolate England as Hitler predicted beforehand that America would eventually be pulled into the war, and he knew it wouldn't be on his side. So Germany spent tons of money on research for them. It's been awhile, and I still can't access the site (I don't even know if that info would be on there, as it's antiquated, but most stuff is dating back to WWI, with a few entries going a bit further) so I can't speak for Japan's torps, only the torps used for dive bombing that the Japs used, as they had a tilted fin mechanism which made sure they didn't dive deep and would hit below or at the water line if dropped even remotely properly (which was why pearl harbor was such a huge disaster in the loss of ships - though it paved the way for the aircraft carrier era which was what decimated Japan's fleet. In Yamato's own words, they "woke the sleeping giant").
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Oh, and no Japanese battleship carried torps. This I was able to find out, just getting many other technical specs is hard to do when having to access a dozen poor data bases of info and not the couple of good ones out there (would be real nice if I had one of those 3000 dollar a year subscriptions to Jane's site - but I'm not shelling that type of money out for casual information
). Most of the Yamato's armament was removed due to it contricting the movement of the main batteries, creating a weak spot, or causing ammo shortages for the main batteries on long trips. They also dropped quite a bit of short range AA guns. They took off 4 to 6 smaller batteries of cannons, and 12 AA guns IIRC - I read the sites earlier today, so it is in that ballpark somewhere.
EDIT: cV, I believe you could be right, though the Germans did throw practically every toy on that ship, that might have been one they left off, hopefully tomorrow I can verify that - though if you checked several sites, and they all had the same info, it's verified. I've done the several site check before when I couldn't get to the site's I wanted and sometimes pulled up very conflicting data. So if your data matches, then it was just like every other battleship, an artillery platform.
Last edited by Someone Stupid; 12-11-2002 at 05:32 AM.
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Originally posted by G Ray88
Omega 31, I still have a EGA monitor and it works, so that's no excuse not to benchmark that 286. I think most of the 286's that I had are now Boat anchors.
So where are your benchmark results? 
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Good research, Someone not-so Stupid.
ß.Q.
"all animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others".
George Orwell
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Thanks, but a good bit was from memory (so it could be slightly off), though some of it was done at the moment - the parts on the battleships in particular.
The problem with trying to sink the Bismark was that you HAD to sink it with torpedoes (or carpet bomb it, which really was out of the question for the most part), the Allies didn't have a Battleship in their entire arsenal that could penetrate it's armor. It was also fast for it's size. In any small engagement of a couple of the allies heaviest battleships, the battleships would inflict minimal damage (mainly to things like AA guns and other things which can't be armored heavily). So the Bismark could take the pounding and with the sheer bore (18+ inches IIRC) of it's cannons, even the most heavily armored allied battleships would find themselves in for a tough fight and either be forced to retreat or eventually be sunk - as allied battleships had too thin of deck armor to take those types of hits (which the bismark had the exact opposite). Battleships generally relied on blowing through the top so to speak to sink a ship with secondary explosions from the inside, not blowing holes into it's side at the water line. Torpedoes were the only weapons with enough explosive power to penetrate the Bismark's hull below the waterline. Even then she took quite a few hits as due to her sheer size, she could take on a considerable amount of water if a breached compartment was sealed timely, and they were.
Battleships many times lasted only a few pitched battles before being sunk in WW1 or having to go in for extensive upper hull and mast repairs. They could deliver a pounding, but in the process, they took quite a bit, so while there is a good bit that can be patched up at sea, eventually it needed to be reserviced, all the temporary patches removed, repaired properly, and be rearmed for the smaller calliber gunnery mounts which tended to sheer off if directly hit from a main battery shell (which was why they were removed from the Yamato in WWII eventually, they were deemed a weakness and their plusses didn't outweigh the minuses). They had cruisers to handle the smaller craft so it didn't have to. Destroyers were mainly used in submarine hunting and AA screening, though had "small" vessel combat capability. They couldn't touch a battleship, and a heavy cruiser would easily outclass them, but anything their size and below they could possibly sink.
Now it's time to see if I can pull up some links today.
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Ultimate Member
http://warships1.com/GERbb08_Bismarck_history.htm
Seems the Bismark's weaker battery armor was what sunk her - as she wasn't able to fight back, though she was going to be eventually doomed anyways with a jamed rudder. She lost two batteries, had a jammed rudder (thus could not alter course - she was too big to control with props only). The article made no mention of the battleship making a line attck on her, but was actually firing all it's batteries (though it's vague) there, and was engaged by by two other heavy vessels before they broke off. After the Bismark was sitting heavily into the water but showed no signs of sinking, the fleet admiral ordered all ships with torpedoes to make runs. The Doershire fired three torpedoes, two into her starboad side, which did not sink her, and finally a third into her port side. This suggest the Bismark was out of commision on all of it's batteries, not just two of them, for a cruiser to circle around to sink her. She also took several hits from British destroyers with torpedoes (as that was their primary armament when called in for that type of duty), firing guns of it's calliber at the bismark would be like trying to blow a M1A1 tank up with a firecracker.
Odd facts - after the Bismark's first engagement, she was leaking oil. The Admiral decided not to top off his tanks even though he had used 1000 tons of oil beforehand, and he had the opportunity to do so (he didn't live to regret this). The carier Ark Royal was in the sites of a German U-Boat before she launched her aircraft for the first wave (which all but three wound up attacking, and forunately missing a British ship, the Sheffield). The U-Boat used up all her torpedoes on a convoy and the carrier was not Zig Zagging, thus presenting herself as a perfect target, but he had no weapons to sink her with. The second attack on the Bismark (after they changed to contact bombs and learned the Sheffield was in pursuit) was what jammed her rudder. Only two torpedoes hit, one of which locked her rudder in at a direction that steered the Bismark straight into the British fleet.
EDIT: I told you all I could be wrong on some things ,  well I was on the Hood's sinking. She was also commisioned in 1893 - so she was old. She did have torpedoes (at least they weren't involved in her sinking from mentioning on the reference and it's references given - though a history channel documentary claimed otherwise - in reality it's still guesswork). Here's a link which explains all possible theories other than the History Channel's one which involves the torpedo magazine: http://warships1.com/BRbc15_Hood_loss.htm
EDIT (again): The Hood had 2 torpedo tubes below the waterline, where this were located is not revealed by the site. My best guess would be in the bow or aft sections, as at the time of her commision she could only travel at 18 knots at best speed, cruising at 17 knots, at the time of her sinking she was able to cruise at 20+ knots as she did go through a heavy refitting, which included engines, armament, improved armor (though the quality of the armor work was said to be spotty) and, exact speed I haven't found. If she was travelling at 17 knots, then bow mounted torpedos would be safe to launch.
For Tojo, a line drawing taken in 1981 of the Yamato as she lays now. http://warships1.com/JAPbb08_Yamato_sunkLD.jpg
Also Tojo: You are partially correct on the Bismark having torpedos. She didn't, but the one other ship in her class, the Tirpitz was refitted with two quad banked torpedo tubes, port and starboard (21" 533mm design)
Last edited by Someone Stupid; 12-11-2002 at 07:16 PM.
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b/c of no CPUID, perhaps? 
)
Must have hindered the headroom to have more I guess