Originally posted by Sturm:
Why were the Swordfish able to relatively attack the Bismarck with ease? Answer later today.
1-because the Swordfish was a very slow plane, and the Bismarck's gunnery was reported to fire too ahead of the planes (their firing rangers could not track such a slow target).
Originally posted by Sorrow[S=A]:
Sturm if your referring to the mechanical tracker the AAA emplacements on the Bismark employed that is a pure fictional reason. The lead adjustor did not go low enough to aim at a plane like the swordfish but the gunners were easily capable of adjusting for this. The success was probably more due to surprise, low angle approach and mostly because they attacked on angles the bismark could bring few AAA guns to bear and released well out of the high effectivness range of those guns.
The Germans did notice this on the first attack by the Swordfishes, when the Battleship was stuck by one torpedo on the midships. On that engagement the ship was firing constantly too far ahead of the planes because the low speed.
On the second attack, the one wich jammed its rudder, the AA fire control tried to compensate for the Swordfish's low speed. But there was yet another problem....read below.
2-because the Swordfishes's fabric cover let most of the projectiles pass thru the airframe without causing fatal damage.
3-because terrible weather
4-because the Germans messed it up while building the ship and had badly calibrated optic tracking systems, IIRC 40% of the AA battery had a given tracking system and was calibrated to fire coordinated with it, and the 60% restant had a more modern, different tracking system, and its fire calibrated to fire on this system's lectures.
When the Swordfishes attacked, the Germans fired using only ONE firing solution, using the later mark rangefinders and tracking systems. In other words, 40% of Bismarck's AA gunnery won't have ever hit a toejam because it was firing at a wrong spot.
This was aknowledged even before the Bismarck started its sortie; the KM Tirpitz had only one tracking system for all the AA gunnery.
What do I win?
[This message has been edited by R4M (edited 03-27-2001).]
