Text 14188, 76 rader
Skriven 2005-10-04 14:52:31 av Roy Witt (1:1/22)
     Kommentar till en text av Ward Dossche
Ärende: Morality & Otherwise
============================
04 Oct 05 17:31, Ward Dossche wrote to Roy Witt:

 >> WD> Incidentally, there also was an American naval gunnery-officer
 >> WD> aboard the British battleship HMS Rodney in the same final battle.

 >> It wasn't unusual for Americans to join the Canadians or Brits before
 >> the USA got into the fray...

 WD> In this particular case it was the US Naval Attache at the US Embassy
 WD> in London returning home on HMS Rodney which was supposed to protect
 WD> a convoy destined to either Boston or Halifax. At first the captain
 WD> of HMS Rodney ordered him below decks, eventually he helped direct
 WD> fire.

She was escorting the Britannic, a hospital/troop ship in the same class
as the Titanic, but slightly larger. Sunk later while transporting some
North Africa campaign troops by hitting a mine about 4 miles west of Kea
Island (37ø38N,24ø30E).

 WD> One has to know HMS Rodney a little bit to understand why it took
 WD> many gunnery officers to aim and fire. When the keel was laid down
 WD> she was intended to be an aircraft carrier but plans were changed and
 WD> she became a battleship with an odd structure ... three
 WD> tripple-barreled forward-facing turrets where the third-one sat after
 WD> and below the second-one and thus could never fire forward. A very
 WD> small ridiculous looking after-castle as well, but she had the
 WD> biggest guns of the Royal Navy firing the heaviest shells.

Yes, I've seen pictures of that. Weird looking. However, there is a 'range
finder' somewhere on top of the forecastle which Fire Control uses to
determine when and where each turret fires.

 WD> Eventually HMS Rodney left the battle, with Bismarck heavily damaged
 WD> and listing,

http://www.kbismarck.com/operheini.html

Almost two hours had elapsed since the battle had begun, and the Bismarck
had shown a formidable capacity of resistance. The British first struck
Bismarck at 0902, and ceased fire around 1016. For 74 minutes, the
Bismarck received a continuous hammering that no other warship could have
taken. We need not forget that the Hood sank six minutes after the first
German shells were fired only three days earlier. Moreover, neither the
main belt nor the armour deck were seen to be penetrated during the
combat, and in the end it was her own crew who scuttled the ship. During
this last engagement 2,876 shells were fired at the Bismarck.

 WD>  because her heavy guns when firing broadsides shook the
 WD> vessel so violently it damaged some plating and she started making
 WD> water. [German capital ships never had this problem as they never
 WD> fired full broadsides but did it in two waves Anton/Bruno and
 WD> Ceasar/Dora]

Surprisingly, Anton/Bruno were put out of service by those salvos the
Brits hit her with, taking out the forward fire control room. The Bismark
then switched to Cesar/Dora until they were put out service by the Brits
hitting the aft fire control room. At last, only Dora was capable of
firing under local control until she was hit by direct fire. Then,
Anton/Bruno managed to fire one more salvo.

 WD> Nice detail, the other British battleship HMS Duke of York also had
 WD> to leave because it ran low on fuel and made Scapa Flow on fumes.

Following the sinking of the Bismarck, German aircraft had been sent to
look for Admiral Tovey's force that had run low on fuel and was on its way
back home. On 28 May, the destroyers Tartar and Mashona were attacked by
German bombers. Mashona was hit by a bomb on her port side and sank with
the loss of 46 men. The Tartar rescued about 170 men, including Mashona's
commander William H. Selby. The rest of the British fleet arrived safely
in port.


Roy

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