I follow with my answer, seems that the message was too long to be contained in just one answer
The work on the Bismark was started in 1939 and finished in 1940. It had a top speed of 29-30 knots (in comparison, the Iowa class of battleships, were the same speed). The Bismark was better designed than the H.M.S Hood and most of the other British main ships of the line. It had superior armor and fire control. The H.M.S. Hood on the other hand, had all the defects inherent with World War I battle cruisers and was unmodernized and over twenty years old. The Prince of Wales was a new ship but hadn't had a shake down cruise and wasn't really considered battle worthy, it still had Vickers engineers working on the guns. The Hood also had very weak deck armor, which probably led to the decision of Admiral Holland to charge the German ships head on. -You might want to re-check your sources. Bismarck was started in 1936, IIRC.
-Iowa Battleships are listed at 33knots. There are instances of Iowas steaming at 35 knots under certain favorable conditions.
-the HMS Hood was unmodernized from 1920, yes, but didn't share the same problems as the Jutland battlecruisers. The ship had weak deck armor and needed a refit, true, but its belt ,turret, CT, etc protection ranged all from good to excellent. The magazine protection was extensively revised while still in construction, and, other than the weak deck armor, the Hood was an, if not well-protected ship, at least a decently protected one.
The Washington Treaty stated that battleships weren't to exceed 35,000 tons but as we all know, the Germand didn't pay heed. Being 50,000 tons, allowed the engineers to give the Bismark incredibly thick armor and therefore making it a very resilient ship. Over 40% of the ship's weight was from the armor plating and he was still able to make 30 knots. I would say the Bismark was hardly obsolete by any stretch of the word.
You might want to re-check again your sources.
first of all, the Bismarck when lauched was listed at 35000 tons not to alarm the british. Hitler promised to stay within the treaty limits in his particular naval agreement with Britain in 1935.
Second of all, the Bismarcks were designed to be around 45000 tons at full load. The ship as finished weighed an incredible 50000 tons in full load condition, 52000 on overload condition (KM Bismarck sailed in overload condition in May'41). Those 5000 tons of overwheight were caused from bad design features, redundant and overcomplex equipment, etc.
Third of all, the Bismarck was, by a wide margin, worse protected than a British King George V class battleship, or an american North Carolina or South Dakota.
is true that most of the weight of the Bismarck was devoted to protection, the problem was the way the protection was PLACED. Since the end of WWI, the naval designers around the world were designing ships with all-or-nothing armor schemes. That is, the vital places were protected with big ammounts of armor, while non-vital places were left with no armor at all. That helped both in giving a better ship protection (because its vital parts were greatly protected) and a lower weight penalty (because the only part protected were the vitals, saving weight on not-needed armor elsewhere)
Germany was forbidden to design ships over 10000 tons, so their design teams fell behind in the big-ships naval tech race; so when in 1934 Hitler created the Kriegsmarine, the ships designed for that fleet were without all-or nothing armor scheme. How strange that all german big ships of WW2 shared a common denominator: they all suffered an enormous overweight
In other words, EVERY part of the bismarck had an AVERAGE ammount of armor...even if it was not needed. And the VITALS were left with a way less-than-appropiate ammount of armor to protect them.
Next to know is that the german ships were designed without knowledge of the inter-war lessons, which pointed at a higher danger to the horizontal decks of the ship. The german designers, basing their work in WW1 lessons, never gave any of their ships a decent deck protection (in fact is well known the fact that the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau had a small "window" over the machinery wich had NO deck armor protection -AT ALL- against plunging fire).
Finally, the weapon arrangement was obsolete. Each of the turrets aboard Bismarck weighted thousands of tons, and it had four. For those four turrets, Bismarck had 8 guns.
I don't need to say that you can pack 9 guns in three turrets in a much more efficient arrangement, and the weight saved could go to a proper armor scheme. (or 8 guns in three turrets, or even 10 in three or four turrets, etc)
there were other inexplicable blunders:
-the ship, thanks to its extreme overloaded design was very wet and nose heavy, causing bad sea-keeping conditions.
Moreover, the 5000ton overweight at full-load caused the main armored belt to be completely UNDER THE WATER, where it could offer no real protection at all.
-Literally MILES of VITAL electrical wiring were left UNPROTECTED because their lines ran over very weakly armored section of the ships, instead of being well protected inside the main armored citadel. Thus, a simple 5' hit on the superstructure near some of those lines could render vital equipment lost.
-the turrets were operated via an interdependant motion (spelling? don't know how to say it) system. In the final engagement, ONE 16' hit BETWEEN Anton and Bruno turrets disabled BOTH turrets at the same time because they were left without motive power. A properly designed ship would've lost none, or, at the most one turret with such a hit.
-the ship had its heavy 4.1 AA battery calibrated for two different rangefinders, but they all fired following the orders of the modern one. net result: 40% of the heavy AA battery of the KM Bismarck was shooting to the air because it wasn't calibrated to the appropiate fire control rangefinder.
-the 3 screw propeller design was highly inneficient and caused structural weakness (there are several accounts of german ships losing their "tails" when hit by a torpedo. Bismarck almost lost its own when hit by the swordfish). There were no 3-screw battleships used by any main contender fleet around the world, except on the german Kriegsmarine.
-etc etc etc etc etc. I could go for ages.
I stand on what I said: the German Bismarck was a ship based on a WWI concept. It was obsolete, it was ridden with design fautls, it had deficient and badly placed protection...
in short, it was a floating fault waiting to be sunk.
