August 7, 2007
Bismarck and Tirpitz Posted by Fredric Smoler at 04:45 PM EST John Steele Gordon writes that “We will, of course, never know if the Germans could have won the Battle of the Atlantic by having concentrated on submarines before the outbreak of war instead of trying to build a surface fleet to take on the Royal Navy. But surely had the shipbuilding capacity and the design talent that went into building such ships as Bismarck and Tirpitz (quite possibly the finest battleships ever built) gone into submarines instead, the Battle of the Atlantic would have been an even nearer-run thing than it was.” It is almost certainly true that the Bismarck and Tirpitz were a waste of German resources, most crucially of steel, but it was not necessarily mad for the Germans to have built the ships. First of all, the Bismarck and Tirpitz, laid down in peacetime, were intended for a world war that was supposed to break out at a time of Hitler’s choosing, probably in 1942 or 1943. Battleships take years to build, so these ships had to be laid down well in advance of their expected use. What most obviously failed was less the projected force structure of the German Navy than Hitler’s diplomacy. The ships were intended to be part of a large German battle fleet, one that would include the even larger battleships of the Z Plan, and were expected to defeat first Britain and then the United States (the plans for ships that could fight on our side of the Atlantic is now considered an important clue about Hitler’s long-run intentions). But even in the war they actually fought, the Bismarck and Tirpitz made a significant contribution to the Battle of the Atlantic. What may have been the greatest German victory in the battle, the destruction of convoy PQ 17, occurred only because the Tirpitz put to sea, at which point the convoy scattered and was destroyed piecemeal by submarines and aircraft. The Tirpitz, which turned back before engaging, had done dreadful execution by putting to sea at all. She did the harm she did because any modern battleship could have swiftly and effortlessly destroyed any Allied convoy with normal escorts, i.e. corvettes and Destroyer Escorts and perhaps a few slightly heavier combatants, none of which had any chance against a capital ship. So the Bismarck and Tirpitz were a fleet in being, and tied down the scarce and precious British capital ships reserved to deal with them if they ever broke out. When they did break out, however briefly, they caused vast alarm. So I think Mr. Gordon goes too far when he writes that “The Bismarck and Tirpitz proved useless.” When Mr. Gordon states that had the steel that went into them been used for submarines, those subs “could have devastated British shipping before Britain could have acquired the escort vessels and long-range aircraft (properly armed to attack submarines) that finally proved the key to winning the battle,” I also disagree, because without any German capital ships, much more of the RN of 1939 would have been available for escort duties, and the RAF had fairly long-range bombers available from the beginning of the war (the Blenheims, the Whitleys, the Hampdens, etc.) but was generally very unwilling to use them to help keep the sea lanes open, instead insisting that they be used for strategic bombardment. So some of the vulnerability of Allied shipping was the result of bad doctrine, which aggravated shortages of escorts and aircraft. The planes available in 1939 did not have the range of the B-24s that would completely close the mid-Atlantic gap left by shorter-ranged land-based aircraft, but they would have helped immensely, and with no German surface fleet, some RN carriers would also have been freed up for duty in the mid-Atlantic. When Mr. Gordon writes that the Bismarck and Tirpitz were “quite possibly the finest battleships ever built,” my guess is that (to his credit) he has no idea what a minefield he is entering. Mr. Gordon seems, on the strength of his posts, a sane man with many interests, so he probably has no idea of the rhetorical savageries and monomanias that afflict the very passionate and extremely learned people who specialize in hypothetical match-ups of WWII battleships. I am not such a person, but I have met some and read others. These people tend to point out that the Bismarck and Tirpitz had smaller and fewer guns than did many of their rivals (by comparison, USN Iowa-class ships had 9 x 16” guns vs. 8 x 15”). The Iowa-class ships also had better armor, speed, range, and infinitely better AA and sensors. Having 16” vs. 15” main armament meant 10,000 lbs. of extra weight in the broadside, 24,000 lbs. vs. 14,000 lbs. Interestingly enough, the French Richelieu or Jean Bart also had deadlier fire than either German battleship, as well as better turret and deck armor, and came close to or matched the Bismarck on AA, speed, and armor belt. Had they been completed, Stalin’s Sovyetskiy Soyuz-class BBs might have handled the Bismarck and Tirpitz pretty roughly—they were better armed and armored. The RN’s HMS Vanguard, laid down in 1941 and finished in 1946, was also a deadlier ship than the Bismarck, and the great Japanese battleships (for example, the Yamato and Musashi) were vastly superior. I have read people who argue, I think persuasively, that while the Bismarck and Tirpitz had some brilliant qualities—for example, excellent optics—they had one very great strength, which is that they were hard to kill at short range by direct gun fire, but this was offset by the fact that they were not too hard to disable.
Mr. Gordon also writes that “I wish someone would write a new book on Mahan and how his theories affected twentieth century warfare. I have the perfect title for it: The Influence of The Influence of Sea Power Upon History Upon History.” There is indeed an essay on that theme, and if I remember correctly—I am up on the Cape, and cannot easily check—it has a comparable title: “The Influence of History Upon Sea Power”. [Perhaps “The Influence of History Upon Sea Power: The Navalist Reinterpretation of the War of 1812,” by Mark Russell Shulman, Journal of Military History, Vol. 56, No. 2 (April 1992). – Editor]
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