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Should these articles be merged to eliminate excessive duplication etc? (P.S. I am not volunteering but willing to contribute if someone else takes the lead!!) Boatman ( talk) 12:13, 3 June 2011 (UTC)
The paragraph that commences "British code-breakers were able to decrypt some of the German signals" states that a signal was read that Bismarck was ordered to Brest. Firstly, naval enigma signals to and from Bismarck were, at that time, taking days to decrypt and so decrypted naval messages contributed nothing to the location and destruction of Bismarck. Secondly, The French resistance is supposed to have sent a message advising that a berth was being prepared for a large ship but this advice could not arrive for days because it was sent via Paris. Thirdly, I have not read in any sources that Bismarck was in fact ordered to Brest.
Staff in the Admiralty and Admiral Sir John Tovey's staff concluded independently that Bismarck was heading for the France before a decrypted luftwaffe response to a senior officer in Athens revealed that Bismarck was heading for the west coast of France. Also on 25 May Harry Hinsley in Hut 4 at Bletchley advised that the undecipherable signals to Bismarck which had previously been sent from Wilhelmshaven were now being sent from Paris, adding further evidence that Bismarck was heading south (Enigma, the Battle for the Code. Hugh Sebag-Montifiore, Cassell, London, 2004, Pp 178-179) Michaelm52 ( talk) 02:43, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
After editing this article last year, and adding that it was a Catalina reconnaissance aircraft from RAF Castle Archdale on Lough Erne in Northern Ireland that used the Donegal Corridor, a small air-corridor secretly provided by the Éire government, [1]. Over time the point was expanded and some others added that the Bismarck was spotted via her oil slick and then her position to the Admiralty.
Well that material lasted until June this year when the aforementioned editor, the "Lord Protector" of this article decided to remove these clear statements of fact. Where the plane was from, what it was, what it was doing etc....
Now it says:
A squadron of Coastal Command PBY Catalinas based in Northern Ireland were committed to the search, covering areas where Bismarck might be headed in her attempt to reach occupied France. At 10:30 on 26 May, a Catalina piloted by a US Navy aircrew located Bismarck, some 690 nmi (1,280 km; 790 mi) northwest of Brest.
No recognition of the base from which the planes came, or that they used neutral Irish airspace, or that it was an oil slick they followed. NI is 5,345 sq miles. The statements are as dismissive as saying it was "soldier from the United States" who attacked Omaha and Utah beaches.
I hate Wikipedia now because there is too much self-righteous, self-importance masquerading as contributions. The removal of this linked material is a testimony to that!! Again there is no recognition in the Bismark article concerning the heroic pilots from RAF Castle Archdale, flying in atrocious weather conditions, who found the Bismark. Or that this was all made possible by the Irish Government agreement to the The Cranborne Report that allowed them to use the Donegal Corridor.
This article has become the work, by the looks of it, of just one person who seems to have their own agenda. It's not good enough and frankly an insult to the brave men who risked their lives in WWII. But that historical acknowledgement is just rubbed out by some wiki-fapper, 70 years later who gets on their high horse about everything because they read a couple of books on the subject!! 109.150.237.200 ( User talk:109.150.237.200)
I am lumping together a number of small point which can, I hope, be easily settled. If any of them needs a real debate, I suggest someone edits it out of here and uses it to start a separate thread.
1) Battle of Denmark Straight (par 1):- I think horizontal ranges are usually given in yards rather than feet, 26,000 meters are about 28,300 yards. There are other cases later on in the art.
2) idem (par 4):- Kennedy (p.83) gives THREE survivors on the bridge (Leach, Chief Yeoman of Signals + navigating officer who was wounded). Also the shell exploded after exiting.
3) idem (par 5):- Perhaps the point should be made that in refusing to continue the engagement with PoW, Lütjens was following his operational orders. (His predecessor, Marschall, had been dismissed for this very offense - see the wiki art. on M.)
4) The Chase (par 4):- Neither Churchill nor Kemp not Kennedy mentions any near attack on the Norfolk. Churchill states that the Swordfish were homed by radio onto the Norfolk which then passed them a course to find the Bismarck (a similar procedure to that applied for the last torpedo attack when Sheffield vectored Ark Royal`s planes onto the Bismarck). Kennedy (p.111) says that the Swordfish radar picked up the USCG Modoc which was then about 4 miles from the German battleship and broke cloud cover before realizing that she was not their target. There may be a conflict of sources here, but I am inclined to think that the reported near attack on the Norfolk is a garbled version of the above.
5) idem (par 10):- The phrase "a Catalina piloted by a US Navy aircrew" seems to me to imply that the plane was crewed by the US Navy. This may simply be that we don't speak exactly the same form of English on opposite sides of the Atlantic. Kennedy (pp. 141ff; 171 and notes) documents the fact that a number of US pilots who had ferried Catalinas across to the UK and were supposed to familiarize the RAF crews with the plane were unofficially used as copilots by the CO of 209 squadron.
6) idem (par 13):- Is it correct to say the Germans "repaired the starboard rudder"? To me "repair" implies that they got it to work again - if so, by setting it to 12º starboard helm they could have neutralized the effect of the port rudder and regained control of the course at the cost of a braking effect. Did they only manage to disconnect it from the steering motor, so it flapped loose?
7) Sinking (par 5.) The Nelsons only had two torpedo tubes and so the reference should be to the "port tube" (singular)--
Jpacobb (
talk)
01:34, 15 October 2011 (UTC)jpacobb
The "Discovery" section seems to heavily imply through omission of details that the British ships were incapable of penetrating the Bismarck's armour. I've added the fact that the barbettes of Bruno and Dora, protected by some of the thickest armour carried by Bismarck, were compromised at least once each. There is still the issue of the remaining text which, as it stands, gives the impression that the 14" and 16" shells of the British simply couldn't defeat the Bismarck's main belt - obviously not the case given that they had no problem with thicker armour. Paddyboot ( talk) 08:23, 6 September 2011 (UTC)
The title of this article goes against usual Wikipedia naming conventions. The article should be moved from German battleship Bismarck to Bismarck (battleship). Rreagan007 ( talk) 06:10, 7 January 2012 (UTC)
We have: the largest battleship ever built by Germany, and the heaviest built by any European power. Is this a deliberate distinction? Rumiton ( talk) 11:47, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
I am proposing the addition of a further reading section to this article. I have recently come across a book that I think would add more depth and breadth to the topic. It is titled, "The Discovery of the Bismarck" by Robert D. Ballard, who is an authoritative figure on the subject of the German battleship, Bismark, since he was part of the crew that rediscovered the sunken wreck in 1988 and has already written another book already referenced in this article. The book contains an in depth history of the ship Bismarck, from different historical perspectives from all the ships involved in it's sinking, as well as documentation on the methodology and events of the ship that discovered the wreck. Danfmurphy ( talk) 05:52, 3 February 2012 (UTC)
108.234.185.147 has a point here. What is the purpose of including huge blobs of propaganda-driven text that is erroneous anyway? How does this increase the user's understanding of the ship itself? Orange Suede Sofa ( talk) 18:13, 18 June 2012 (UTC)
It may have been considered important at the time, but thye were important for PR and proppganda, and the information is not relaible.
Also, how could you possibly object to including an English transliteration of that monstrosity of a German word "Wehrmachtbericht" which even an English speaker fluent in German would have to look up unless he was a real WW2 specialist.
English Wiki is supposed to be for the benefit of english speakers, and less than 99% of all English speakers know enough German to be able to read "Wehrmachtbericht" reports.
I would like to see consensus on this matter from English language speakers only, and let the Germans stay the hell out of the discussion, which does not really concern them. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.234.185.147 ( talk) 05:01, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
Even though I feel addressed by the request "to stay the hell out of the discussion" I want to add my opinion anyhow. Feel free to delete my comments here, I am not emotional over the matter. I disagree if we reduce the Wehrmachtbericht to pure Nazi propaganda, it was propaganda no doubt, but it was also much more. Unfortunately only author Erich Murawski (to my knowledge at least) has made a serious attempt at explaining the complexity of the Wehrmachtbericht and its implication on the war effort. The book was written in 1962 and not all of the archives had been accessible at that time to allow a fair comparison of the content with facts and/or what reflected the best knowledge the Germans had at the time in comparison to the truth. Is there even an English book on the topic? Secondly, the Wehrmachtbericht was an award to the individual, unit or vessel named in the report. I agree that it would be bad practice to derive factual content from these reports. Omitting the fact that Bismarck had been referenced in the Wehrmachtbericht would be like omitting the fact that USS Missouri had received a battle star or that USS Lexington received a presidential unit citation. Setting the right context of the Wehrmachtbericht gives the reader the chance to compare the facts around Bismarck, as written in the body of the article, with the words of the Wehrmachtbericht, which helped establish the myth surrounding Bismarck. Wiki, as an international multilingual, multi-cultural project, has the means to incorporate so many angels on a topic. But Wiki is also what its members and readers want it to be. So if the consensus is to remove value and content from the article for the sake of the English speakers, so be it. MisterBee1966 ( talk) 10:49, 21 June 2012 (UTC)
I notice from this edit that about 22 Kb of material from here have been duplicated to the Operation Rheinübung page. Is this a good idea? I’ve opened a discussion there and am inviting comments. Xyl 54 ( talk) 22:53, 6 October 2012 (UTC)
The Intro already contains a huge amount of detail - more so than is actually appropriate - how could it hurt the article to add a few more words to actually clarify the reality? You can't say that "the sentence" is about something else - its the Intro, its supposed to be a summary of everything. Lastly, you cannot try to pretend there were only two British ships in the action at the death, when a few lines later you want to include the propaganda claim that the Bismarck was sunk by a torpedo from a third ship. Either we do the detail properly, or we leave the detail out of the Intro, but we can't have an inaccurate Intro. Wdford ( talk) 17:55, 16 October 2012 (UTC)
According to Gaack and Carr, Kapitänleutnant (Ing.) Gerhard Junack executed the orders to scuttle Bismarck. MisterBee1966 ( talk) 09:25, 18 October 2012 (UTC)
The wording of this Introduction continues to be unacceptable, and one editor continues to resist all attempts to improve it, despite a fair amount of talk-page discussion.
The problems are as follows:
The Intro currently states that “At the Battle of Denmark Strait, Bismarck engaged and destroyed the battlecruiser HMS Hood, the pride of the Royal Navy, and forced the battleship HMS Prince of Wales to retreat.” A certain editor refuses to allow the clarification that the Prince of Wales suffered multiple hits in the process, (more than twice as many as the Bismarck suffered), and tries to make it look like "Prince of Wales" backed off solely because of “malfunctions”. If the “Prince of Wales” is important enough to be mentioned in the Intro, then this must be done fairly and accurately. The line should read “The battleship HMS Prince of Wales suffered multiple hits and was forced to retreat.”
I offered a perfectly good source for this, namely [4], which is an official Admiralty report. Although WP:PSTS does allow primary sources to be used “to make straightforward, descriptive statements of facts”, this actually qualifies as a secondary source, having been compiled from the primary reports of various technicians and carefully-reviewed and checked by naval experts (including the representative of the Director of Naval Construction at that shipyard). However a certain editor nonetheless continues to block this information from being added.
The same editor is determined to preserve the sentence “The following morning, Bismarck was destroyed by a pair of British battleships.” The reality is that Bismarck soaked up scores of hits and remained afloat, and sank only after being scuttled by her surviving crew. Bismarck was undoubtedly wrecked by the sustained gunfire, but was not sunk by the battleships as this sentence tries to portray. This is made worse by the sentence in the previous paragraph that states that "Bismarck engaged and destroyed the battlecruiser HMS Hood", thereby making it look like an equivalent action, which is not the case. Hood was sunk by Bismarck’s gunfire, but Bismarck was not sunk by British gunfire. The editor offers as support for his POV the claim that “destroyed” is a close enough nuance to describe the situation. The line should read “The following morning, a pair of British battleships engaged Bismarck and inflicted massive damage, but did not sink her”.
The same editor also includes the sentence “Several other expeditions surveyed the remains seeking to document the ship's condition and to determine what sank her.” However he refuses to allow the clarification that all save one of those expeditions determined that the Bismarck sank due to scuttling and not battle damage, with the excuse that it’s still under debate. WP:NPOV states that articles must "Indicate the relative prominence of opposing views. Ensure that the reporting of different views on a subject adequately reflects the relative levels of support for those views, and that it does not give a false impression of parity, or give undue weight to a particular view." See also WP:UNDUE. In the light of all the independent evidence, which supports the original reports of the surviving crew members and the known standard practice of the German Navy, allowing the Intro to reflect an “even” debate is a clear case of UNDUE. The line should read “Several expeditions have surveyed the wreck, and all save one have concluded that the Bismarck was not sunk by battle damage.”
Wdford ( talk) 13:40, 22 October 2012 (UTC)
You are going to an inexplicable amount of trouble to block certain details from being presented in the article, and I can’t see any valid reason for this.
Re the Prince of Wales, its common cause that the PoW sustained multiple hits in the confrontation with Bismarck, and this is also discussed in the relevant section of the article. Why are you making such huge efforts to avoid including the line “The battleship HMS Prince of Wales suffered multiple hits and was forced to retreat”?
You have offered a fine range of sources to support your POV, but actually, contrary to your "summaries":
All in all, apart from a very brief passing gloss from the Groves, your quoted sources heavily support my proposed amendments, do they not?
You cannot write Cameron off as merely “a movie director”. Firstly, Cameron is also a National Geographic explorer-in-residence and a member of the NASA Advisory Council. Second, he has extensive experience of surveying wrecks – more so than most people. Third, he was supported by a team of specialists, and fourth, he took actual film of the wreck, which gives him actual evidence on which to base his conclusions. If he says the armoured hull was intact, then so be it, and his opinion counts for a lot more than the opinions of those who drew conclusions based on reports of sailors who were miles away watching though smoke and heavy weather.
The scuttling is well attested. The eye-witness reports of the German survivors are detailed - Bismarck: The Final Days of Germany's Greatest Battleship, pgs 279 and 281 actually names Lieutenant Commander Gerhard Junack as the officer who gave the order to light the fuses which scuttled the ship, and notes that the survivors heard the charges detonate before they abandoned ship. The original accounts of the German witnesses have never been refuted by other eye-witnesses, the British even admitted that scuttling charges had been used (see above) and all the explorers who have actually seen the wreck have concurred that the damage to the armoured inner hull wasn’t enough to sink the ship. This is not a 50/50 debate, and pretending that it is so is a case of WP:UNDUE.
The comment on page 11 of the Jurens/Garzke/Dulin/et. al. article that says “No evidence to support (or refute) anecdotal reports regarding the employment of scuttling charges could be observed on the wreck" does not mean what you interpret it to mean. It simply means (as they themselves clearly state) that they were unable to survey the areas where the scuttling charges did their damage, because those areas of the wreck were inaccessible to them. They did however also admit that the observed battle damage was insufficient to sink the ship. Again, your interpretation of the source is blatantly biased and factually incorrect.
Re Mearns, whose alleged quotations clearly contradict the report of his own team, I took out the citations for the Mearns quotes because that source does not support the words you put in his mouth. I didn’t delete the quotes, but I cited the sources because they are clearly wrong. If you have sources that actually support what you claim he said, then by all means correct this.
Finally, I didn’t copy in text word for word, I did reword the sentences. However if a bit more rewording is required, that is easily accomplished.
I find it hard to accept in good faith your accusation that my amendments are “highly biased”, since my amendments are clearly supported by the sources. On the contrary, your preferred wording is clearly WP:UNDUE, your interpretations are not supported by the actual evidence or the up-to-date sources and are thus largely WP:OR, and your preferred wording clearly reflects a serious POV. Wikipedia should be comprehensive and reliable – therefore this article needs to be further improved.
Wdford ( talk) 10:27, 25 October 2012 (UTC)
As the person that did the first systematic rewrite of this article many moons ago, may I add my tupp'ence worth?
1. 'Bismarck engaged and destroyed the battlecruiser HMS Hood, the pride of the Royal Navy, and forced the battleship HMS Prince of Wales to retreat.' For an introduction, this is sufficient detail. I note that the text states: 'The two German ships continued to fire upon Prince of Wales, causing serious damage' - this makes the point about damage without any equivocation.
2. 'The following morning, Bismarck was destroyed by a pair of British battleships.' I have sympathy for both contributors here, as no one disputes that Rodney and KGV left Bismarck ablaze and impotent, a hell-hole for its crew - as the Baron recounts. Would this tweak work: "The following morning, a pair of British battleships destroyed Bismarck's fighting capability. The cause of her [insert: subsequent] sinking is disputed......."
3. 'Several other expeditions surveyed the remains seeking to document the ship's condition and to determine what sank her.' I don't see what the issue is here: the wording sets the scene perfectly for the much more detailed analysis the text provides and cleverly avoids getting into the arguments that do come up further down. All the best, bigpad ( talk) 16:41, 25 October 2012 (UTC)
I’m not the slightest bit confused. Prince of Wales is already mentioned in the lead section of this very article, and rightly so. All I propose is that the mention should be an accurate summary, and to do this, we need only add the single word “damaged” so as to avoid misleading readers about the true situation. Your attempts to prevent this are increasingly ridiculous, and clearly reveal your POV to “protect” the image of the Royal Navy and in particular that of British battleships. Why you feel this desperate need I don’t know.
We see your POV again in your next comment, where you accuse me of trying to “eviscerate the British claims to have sunk the ship”. The actual evidence shows that the ship was scuttled, and since this is a “Featured Article” as you keep reminding everyone, we should take care to record these matters accurately and in a neutral manner. It’s not a question of “whose hole was larger”, because according to the surveyors the British were not able to make holes in the armoured inner hull. The British claim has been "eviscerated" by the evidence of the independent surveyors, not by me.
We should certainly consider the views of all the “experts”, but we need to be a bit more careful in distinguishing a reliable opinion here. Historians need to stick to the evidence, and there are only two sources of reliable evidence re the scuttling issue – the German eye-witnesses to the scuttling activities, and the inputs from the handful of "the people who surveyed the wreck". The assumptions of the British participants are flawed by the obvious fact that they could not possibly have known whether or not the Germans had set off the scuttling charges. Any naval historian who merely repeats supposition and hearsay is thus not reliable on this issue. I am not suggesting that those inaccurate reports be deleted from the article; certainly they must be mentioned here. However they must be mentioned in their correct context, and without giving undue weight to sources which have been overtaken by later evidence.
BTW I am quite happy with Kennedy’s opinion as currently quoted in the article – Bismarck was on fire, could not manoeuvre and was being swamped by the very heavy seas, so could not escape and could not have survived forever. However the British could not sink her "all alone", and needed the Germans to do that for them. Fair enough. Wdford ( talk) 21:48, 27 October 2012 (UTC)
Please stop your WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT games, put aside your blatant POV, and focus on the facts. I intend to make a number of improvements to this article, but you jumped in and started reverting before I got past step 1. The article was then promptly protected, and now you accuse me of not doing much?
The fact that Bismarck hit PoW repeatedly and forced it to retreat is as much part of the Bismarck’s contribution as blowing Hood out of the water, although it’s obviously by far the lesser part. You accept that this detail is necessary in the Intro, except that you desperately attempt to exclude the objective fact of the damage that was inflicted by Bismarck. Yet despite your demand that the Intro stick only to the “critical facts” as you define them, you insist on having a “dependent clause’ about Otto von Bismarck in the Intro, even though he contributed nothing to the vessel save his name, and his name is already blue-linked? This is hypocrisy, as well as POV.
Your headless man analogy is patent nonsense and another blatant attempt to divert the discussion. Let me give you a more relevant analogy: There's a headless dead body inside a ship; his attacker said he shot him in the head, but a witness said the guy shot himself in the head. The witness was far away on a stormy day on the outside of the ship, and couldn’t actually see who shot him, and is thus not really a witness at all. Meanwhile the attacker was standing within touching distance, and nobody has denied this fact. You can't find the head, but Ballard, McLaren, Cameron and others have found the head, and they described it in detail, and took photographs. There is plenty of forensic evidence to use, but you keep denying it, in favour of the claims of the witness who never actually saw anything but was widely reported nonetheless. Does this analogy help you at all?
Jurens etc didn’t say there was no evidence of scuttling, merely that they couldn’t “observe” the relevant areas. They also found no evidence that any torpedoes played a major role in the sinking. Jurens etc do however state very clearly that the most serious of the nine torpedo hits was the hit that disabled the rudders (from an aircraft, not the Dorsetshire), and they make no mention of seeing any damage from the Dorsetshire’s torpedoes except for the hit on the superstructure, which they conclude must have occurred when the superstructure was already 4 meters under the surface and which thus indicates the ship was already turning over.
Nobody said the evidence of torpedo strikes was erased by the damage to the outer hull – on the contrary. Puncturing the outer hull couldn’t sink that ship, as the inner hull was designed to provide enough buoyancy to stay afloat – as was demonstrated in battle. The inner hull wasn’t erased by the slide, it is still there and it was inspected by numerous expeditions such as Ballard, Cameron, McLaren etc who clearly state there is no evidence of penetrations of the armoured hull, nor any evidence of pressure implosions. Again you avoid the plain words of the sources, and attempt instead yet another blatant distraction.
Wdford ( talk) 18:05, 29 October 2012 (UTC)
- Sediments covered most of the areas where other torpedoes are reported to have hit. Damage to the shell caused by the 1,200-meter post-impact slide of the main hull appears to have erased, obscured, or otherwise modified much of the damage that may have been caused by additional torpedo hits from Norfolk, Rodney and Ark Royal. Although these torpedoes certainly damaged Bismarck, they did not play a major role in her sinking.
- Sediments covered most of the areas where other torpedoes are reported to have hit. Damage to the shell caused by the 1,200-meter post-impact slide of the main hull appears to have erased, obscured, or otherwise modified much of the damage that may have been caused by additional torpedo hits from Norfolk, Rodney and Ark Royal.
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 | Archive 3 | Archive 4 | Archive 5 | Archive 6 | → | Archive 10 |
Should these articles be merged to eliminate excessive duplication etc? (P.S. I am not volunteering but willing to contribute if someone else takes the lead!!) Boatman ( talk) 12:13, 3 June 2011 (UTC)
The paragraph that commences "British code-breakers were able to decrypt some of the German signals" states that a signal was read that Bismarck was ordered to Brest. Firstly, naval enigma signals to and from Bismarck were, at that time, taking days to decrypt and so decrypted naval messages contributed nothing to the location and destruction of Bismarck. Secondly, The French resistance is supposed to have sent a message advising that a berth was being prepared for a large ship but this advice could not arrive for days because it was sent via Paris. Thirdly, I have not read in any sources that Bismarck was in fact ordered to Brest.
Staff in the Admiralty and Admiral Sir John Tovey's staff concluded independently that Bismarck was heading for the France before a decrypted luftwaffe response to a senior officer in Athens revealed that Bismarck was heading for the west coast of France. Also on 25 May Harry Hinsley in Hut 4 at Bletchley advised that the undecipherable signals to Bismarck which had previously been sent from Wilhelmshaven were now being sent from Paris, adding further evidence that Bismarck was heading south (Enigma, the Battle for the Code. Hugh Sebag-Montifiore, Cassell, London, 2004, Pp 178-179) Michaelm52 ( talk) 02:43, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
After editing this article last year, and adding that it was a Catalina reconnaissance aircraft from RAF Castle Archdale on Lough Erne in Northern Ireland that used the Donegal Corridor, a small air-corridor secretly provided by the Éire government, [1]. Over time the point was expanded and some others added that the Bismarck was spotted via her oil slick and then her position to the Admiralty.
Well that material lasted until June this year when the aforementioned editor, the "Lord Protector" of this article decided to remove these clear statements of fact. Where the plane was from, what it was, what it was doing etc....
Now it says:
A squadron of Coastal Command PBY Catalinas based in Northern Ireland were committed to the search, covering areas where Bismarck might be headed in her attempt to reach occupied France. At 10:30 on 26 May, a Catalina piloted by a US Navy aircrew located Bismarck, some 690 nmi (1,280 km; 790 mi) northwest of Brest.
No recognition of the base from which the planes came, or that they used neutral Irish airspace, or that it was an oil slick they followed. NI is 5,345 sq miles. The statements are as dismissive as saying it was "soldier from the United States" who attacked Omaha and Utah beaches.
I hate Wikipedia now because there is too much self-righteous, self-importance masquerading as contributions. The removal of this linked material is a testimony to that!! Again there is no recognition in the Bismark article concerning the heroic pilots from RAF Castle Archdale, flying in atrocious weather conditions, who found the Bismark. Or that this was all made possible by the Irish Government agreement to the The Cranborne Report that allowed them to use the Donegal Corridor.
This article has become the work, by the looks of it, of just one person who seems to have their own agenda. It's not good enough and frankly an insult to the brave men who risked their lives in WWII. But that historical acknowledgement is just rubbed out by some wiki-fapper, 70 years later who gets on their high horse about everything because they read a couple of books on the subject!! 109.150.237.200 ( User talk:109.150.237.200)
I am lumping together a number of small point which can, I hope, be easily settled. If any of them needs a real debate, I suggest someone edits it out of here and uses it to start a separate thread.
1) Battle of Denmark Straight (par 1):- I think horizontal ranges are usually given in yards rather than feet, 26,000 meters are about 28,300 yards. There are other cases later on in the art.
2) idem (par 4):- Kennedy (p.83) gives THREE survivors on the bridge (Leach, Chief Yeoman of Signals + navigating officer who was wounded). Also the shell exploded after exiting.
3) idem (par 5):- Perhaps the point should be made that in refusing to continue the engagement with PoW, Lütjens was following his operational orders. (His predecessor, Marschall, had been dismissed for this very offense - see the wiki art. on M.)
4) The Chase (par 4):- Neither Churchill nor Kemp not Kennedy mentions any near attack on the Norfolk. Churchill states that the Swordfish were homed by radio onto the Norfolk which then passed them a course to find the Bismarck (a similar procedure to that applied for the last torpedo attack when Sheffield vectored Ark Royal`s planes onto the Bismarck). Kennedy (p.111) says that the Swordfish radar picked up the USCG Modoc which was then about 4 miles from the German battleship and broke cloud cover before realizing that she was not their target. There may be a conflict of sources here, but I am inclined to think that the reported near attack on the Norfolk is a garbled version of the above.
5) idem (par 10):- The phrase "a Catalina piloted by a US Navy aircrew" seems to me to imply that the plane was crewed by the US Navy. This may simply be that we don't speak exactly the same form of English on opposite sides of the Atlantic. Kennedy (pp. 141ff; 171 and notes) documents the fact that a number of US pilots who had ferried Catalinas across to the UK and were supposed to familiarize the RAF crews with the plane were unofficially used as copilots by the CO of 209 squadron.
6) idem (par 13):- Is it correct to say the Germans "repaired the starboard rudder"? To me "repair" implies that they got it to work again - if so, by setting it to 12º starboard helm they could have neutralized the effect of the port rudder and regained control of the course at the cost of a braking effect. Did they only manage to disconnect it from the steering motor, so it flapped loose?
7) Sinking (par 5.) The Nelsons only had two torpedo tubes and so the reference should be to the "port tube" (singular)--
Jpacobb (
talk)
01:34, 15 October 2011 (UTC)jpacobb
The "Discovery" section seems to heavily imply through omission of details that the British ships were incapable of penetrating the Bismarck's armour. I've added the fact that the barbettes of Bruno and Dora, protected by some of the thickest armour carried by Bismarck, were compromised at least once each. There is still the issue of the remaining text which, as it stands, gives the impression that the 14" and 16" shells of the British simply couldn't defeat the Bismarck's main belt - obviously not the case given that they had no problem with thicker armour. Paddyboot ( talk) 08:23, 6 September 2011 (UTC)
The title of this article goes against usual Wikipedia naming conventions. The article should be moved from German battleship Bismarck to Bismarck (battleship). Rreagan007 ( talk) 06:10, 7 January 2012 (UTC)
We have: the largest battleship ever built by Germany, and the heaviest built by any European power. Is this a deliberate distinction? Rumiton ( talk) 11:47, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
I am proposing the addition of a further reading section to this article. I have recently come across a book that I think would add more depth and breadth to the topic. It is titled, "The Discovery of the Bismarck" by Robert D. Ballard, who is an authoritative figure on the subject of the German battleship, Bismark, since he was part of the crew that rediscovered the sunken wreck in 1988 and has already written another book already referenced in this article. The book contains an in depth history of the ship Bismarck, from different historical perspectives from all the ships involved in it's sinking, as well as documentation on the methodology and events of the ship that discovered the wreck. Danfmurphy ( talk) 05:52, 3 February 2012 (UTC)
108.234.185.147 has a point here. What is the purpose of including huge blobs of propaganda-driven text that is erroneous anyway? How does this increase the user's understanding of the ship itself? Orange Suede Sofa ( talk) 18:13, 18 June 2012 (UTC)
It may have been considered important at the time, but thye were important for PR and proppganda, and the information is not relaible.
Also, how could you possibly object to including an English transliteration of that monstrosity of a German word "Wehrmachtbericht" which even an English speaker fluent in German would have to look up unless he was a real WW2 specialist.
English Wiki is supposed to be for the benefit of english speakers, and less than 99% of all English speakers know enough German to be able to read "Wehrmachtbericht" reports.
I would like to see consensus on this matter from English language speakers only, and let the Germans stay the hell out of the discussion, which does not really concern them. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.234.185.147 ( talk) 05:01, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
Even though I feel addressed by the request "to stay the hell out of the discussion" I want to add my opinion anyhow. Feel free to delete my comments here, I am not emotional over the matter. I disagree if we reduce the Wehrmachtbericht to pure Nazi propaganda, it was propaganda no doubt, but it was also much more. Unfortunately only author Erich Murawski (to my knowledge at least) has made a serious attempt at explaining the complexity of the Wehrmachtbericht and its implication on the war effort. The book was written in 1962 and not all of the archives had been accessible at that time to allow a fair comparison of the content with facts and/or what reflected the best knowledge the Germans had at the time in comparison to the truth. Is there even an English book on the topic? Secondly, the Wehrmachtbericht was an award to the individual, unit or vessel named in the report. I agree that it would be bad practice to derive factual content from these reports. Omitting the fact that Bismarck had been referenced in the Wehrmachtbericht would be like omitting the fact that USS Missouri had received a battle star or that USS Lexington received a presidential unit citation. Setting the right context of the Wehrmachtbericht gives the reader the chance to compare the facts around Bismarck, as written in the body of the article, with the words of the Wehrmachtbericht, which helped establish the myth surrounding Bismarck. Wiki, as an international multilingual, multi-cultural project, has the means to incorporate so many angels on a topic. But Wiki is also what its members and readers want it to be. So if the consensus is to remove value and content from the article for the sake of the English speakers, so be it. MisterBee1966 ( talk) 10:49, 21 June 2012 (UTC)
I notice from this edit that about 22 Kb of material from here have been duplicated to the Operation Rheinübung page. Is this a good idea? I’ve opened a discussion there and am inviting comments. Xyl 54 ( talk) 22:53, 6 October 2012 (UTC)
The Intro already contains a huge amount of detail - more so than is actually appropriate - how could it hurt the article to add a few more words to actually clarify the reality? You can't say that "the sentence" is about something else - its the Intro, its supposed to be a summary of everything. Lastly, you cannot try to pretend there were only two British ships in the action at the death, when a few lines later you want to include the propaganda claim that the Bismarck was sunk by a torpedo from a third ship. Either we do the detail properly, or we leave the detail out of the Intro, but we can't have an inaccurate Intro. Wdford ( talk) 17:55, 16 October 2012 (UTC)
According to Gaack and Carr, Kapitänleutnant (Ing.) Gerhard Junack executed the orders to scuttle Bismarck. MisterBee1966 ( talk) 09:25, 18 October 2012 (UTC)
The wording of this Introduction continues to be unacceptable, and one editor continues to resist all attempts to improve it, despite a fair amount of talk-page discussion.
The problems are as follows:
The Intro currently states that “At the Battle of Denmark Strait, Bismarck engaged and destroyed the battlecruiser HMS Hood, the pride of the Royal Navy, and forced the battleship HMS Prince of Wales to retreat.” A certain editor refuses to allow the clarification that the Prince of Wales suffered multiple hits in the process, (more than twice as many as the Bismarck suffered), and tries to make it look like "Prince of Wales" backed off solely because of “malfunctions”. If the “Prince of Wales” is important enough to be mentioned in the Intro, then this must be done fairly and accurately. The line should read “The battleship HMS Prince of Wales suffered multiple hits and was forced to retreat.”
I offered a perfectly good source for this, namely [4], which is an official Admiralty report. Although WP:PSTS does allow primary sources to be used “to make straightforward, descriptive statements of facts”, this actually qualifies as a secondary source, having been compiled from the primary reports of various technicians and carefully-reviewed and checked by naval experts (including the representative of the Director of Naval Construction at that shipyard). However a certain editor nonetheless continues to block this information from being added.
The same editor is determined to preserve the sentence “The following morning, Bismarck was destroyed by a pair of British battleships.” The reality is that Bismarck soaked up scores of hits and remained afloat, and sank only after being scuttled by her surviving crew. Bismarck was undoubtedly wrecked by the sustained gunfire, but was not sunk by the battleships as this sentence tries to portray. This is made worse by the sentence in the previous paragraph that states that "Bismarck engaged and destroyed the battlecruiser HMS Hood", thereby making it look like an equivalent action, which is not the case. Hood was sunk by Bismarck’s gunfire, but Bismarck was not sunk by British gunfire. The editor offers as support for his POV the claim that “destroyed” is a close enough nuance to describe the situation. The line should read “The following morning, a pair of British battleships engaged Bismarck and inflicted massive damage, but did not sink her”.
The same editor also includes the sentence “Several other expeditions surveyed the remains seeking to document the ship's condition and to determine what sank her.” However he refuses to allow the clarification that all save one of those expeditions determined that the Bismarck sank due to scuttling and not battle damage, with the excuse that it’s still under debate. WP:NPOV states that articles must "Indicate the relative prominence of opposing views. Ensure that the reporting of different views on a subject adequately reflects the relative levels of support for those views, and that it does not give a false impression of parity, or give undue weight to a particular view." See also WP:UNDUE. In the light of all the independent evidence, which supports the original reports of the surviving crew members and the known standard practice of the German Navy, allowing the Intro to reflect an “even” debate is a clear case of UNDUE. The line should read “Several expeditions have surveyed the wreck, and all save one have concluded that the Bismarck was not sunk by battle damage.”
Wdford ( talk) 13:40, 22 October 2012 (UTC)
You are going to an inexplicable amount of trouble to block certain details from being presented in the article, and I can’t see any valid reason for this.
Re the Prince of Wales, its common cause that the PoW sustained multiple hits in the confrontation with Bismarck, and this is also discussed in the relevant section of the article. Why are you making such huge efforts to avoid including the line “The battleship HMS Prince of Wales suffered multiple hits and was forced to retreat”?
You have offered a fine range of sources to support your POV, but actually, contrary to your "summaries":
All in all, apart from a very brief passing gloss from the Groves, your quoted sources heavily support my proposed amendments, do they not?
You cannot write Cameron off as merely “a movie director”. Firstly, Cameron is also a National Geographic explorer-in-residence and a member of the NASA Advisory Council. Second, he has extensive experience of surveying wrecks – more so than most people. Third, he was supported by a team of specialists, and fourth, he took actual film of the wreck, which gives him actual evidence on which to base his conclusions. If he says the armoured hull was intact, then so be it, and his opinion counts for a lot more than the opinions of those who drew conclusions based on reports of sailors who were miles away watching though smoke and heavy weather.
The scuttling is well attested. The eye-witness reports of the German survivors are detailed - Bismarck: The Final Days of Germany's Greatest Battleship, pgs 279 and 281 actually names Lieutenant Commander Gerhard Junack as the officer who gave the order to light the fuses which scuttled the ship, and notes that the survivors heard the charges detonate before they abandoned ship. The original accounts of the German witnesses have never been refuted by other eye-witnesses, the British even admitted that scuttling charges had been used (see above) and all the explorers who have actually seen the wreck have concurred that the damage to the armoured inner hull wasn’t enough to sink the ship. This is not a 50/50 debate, and pretending that it is so is a case of WP:UNDUE.
The comment on page 11 of the Jurens/Garzke/Dulin/et. al. article that says “No evidence to support (or refute) anecdotal reports regarding the employment of scuttling charges could be observed on the wreck" does not mean what you interpret it to mean. It simply means (as they themselves clearly state) that they were unable to survey the areas where the scuttling charges did their damage, because those areas of the wreck were inaccessible to them. They did however also admit that the observed battle damage was insufficient to sink the ship. Again, your interpretation of the source is blatantly biased and factually incorrect.
Re Mearns, whose alleged quotations clearly contradict the report of his own team, I took out the citations for the Mearns quotes because that source does not support the words you put in his mouth. I didn’t delete the quotes, but I cited the sources because they are clearly wrong. If you have sources that actually support what you claim he said, then by all means correct this.
Finally, I didn’t copy in text word for word, I did reword the sentences. However if a bit more rewording is required, that is easily accomplished.
I find it hard to accept in good faith your accusation that my amendments are “highly biased”, since my amendments are clearly supported by the sources. On the contrary, your preferred wording is clearly WP:UNDUE, your interpretations are not supported by the actual evidence or the up-to-date sources and are thus largely WP:OR, and your preferred wording clearly reflects a serious POV. Wikipedia should be comprehensive and reliable – therefore this article needs to be further improved.
Wdford ( talk) 10:27, 25 October 2012 (UTC)
As the person that did the first systematic rewrite of this article many moons ago, may I add my tupp'ence worth?
1. 'Bismarck engaged and destroyed the battlecruiser HMS Hood, the pride of the Royal Navy, and forced the battleship HMS Prince of Wales to retreat.' For an introduction, this is sufficient detail. I note that the text states: 'The two German ships continued to fire upon Prince of Wales, causing serious damage' - this makes the point about damage without any equivocation.
2. 'The following morning, Bismarck was destroyed by a pair of British battleships.' I have sympathy for both contributors here, as no one disputes that Rodney and KGV left Bismarck ablaze and impotent, a hell-hole for its crew - as the Baron recounts. Would this tweak work: "The following morning, a pair of British battleships destroyed Bismarck's fighting capability. The cause of her [insert: subsequent] sinking is disputed......."
3. 'Several other expeditions surveyed the remains seeking to document the ship's condition and to determine what sank her.' I don't see what the issue is here: the wording sets the scene perfectly for the much more detailed analysis the text provides and cleverly avoids getting into the arguments that do come up further down. All the best, bigpad ( talk) 16:41, 25 October 2012 (UTC)
I’m not the slightest bit confused. Prince of Wales is already mentioned in the lead section of this very article, and rightly so. All I propose is that the mention should be an accurate summary, and to do this, we need only add the single word “damaged” so as to avoid misleading readers about the true situation. Your attempts to prevent this are increasingly ridiculous, and clearly reveal your POV to “protect” the image of the Royal Navy and in particular that of British battleships. Why you feel this desperate need I don’t know.
We see your POV again in your next comment, where you accuse me of trying to “eviscerate the British claims to have sunk the ship”. The actual evidence shows that the ship was scuttled, and since this is a “Featured Article” as you keep reminding everyone, we should take care to record these matters accurately and in a neutral manner. It’s not a question of “whose hole was larger”, because according to the surveyors the British were not able to make holes in the armoured inner hull. The British claim has been "eviscerated" by the evidence of the independent surveyors, not by me.
We should certainly consider the views of all the “experts”, but we need to be a bit more careful in distinguishing a reliable opinion here. Historians need to stick to the evidence, and there are only two sources of reliable evidence re the scuttling issue – the German eye-witnesses to the scuttling activities, and the inputs from the handful of "the people who surveyed the wreck". The assumptions of the British participants are flawed by the obvious fact that they could not possibly have known whether or not the Germans had set off the scuttling charges. Any naval historian who merely repeats supposition and hearsay is thus not reliable on this issue. I am not suggesting that those inaccurate reports be deleted from the article; certainly they must be mentioned here. However they must be mentioned in their correct context, and without giving undue weight to sources which have been overtaken by later evidence.
BTW I am quite happy with Kennedy’s opinion as currently quoted in the article – Bismarck was on fire, could not manoeuvre and was being swamped by the very heavy seas, so could not escape and could not have survived forever. However the British could not sink her "all alone", and needed the Germans to do that for them. Fair enough. Wdford ( talk) 21:48, 27 October 2012 (UTC)
Please stop your WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT games, put aside your blatant POV, and focus on the facts. I intend to make a number of improvements to this article, but you jumped in and started reverting before I got past step 1. The article was then promptly protected, and now you accuse me of not doing much?
The fact that Bismarck hit PoW repeatedly and forced it to retreat is as much part of the Bismarck’s contribution as blowing Hood out of the water, although it’s obviously by far the lesser part. You accept that this detail is necessary in the Intro, except that you desperately attempt to exclude the objective fact of the damage that was inflicted by Bismarck. Yet despite your demand that the Intro stick only to the “critical facts” as you define them, you insist on having a “dependent clause’ about Otto von Bismarck in the Intro, even though he contributed nothing to the vessel save his name, and his name is already blue-linked? This is hypocrisy, as well as POV.
Your headless man analogy is patent nonsense and another blatant attempt to divert the discussion. Let me give you a more relevant analogy: There's a headless dead body inside a ship; his attacker said he shot him in the head, but a witness said the guy shot himself in the head. The witness was far away on a stormy day on the outside of the ship, and couldn’t actually see who shot him, and is thus not really a witness at all. Meanwhile the attacker was standing within touching distance, and nobody has denied this fact. You can't find the head, but Ballard, McLaren, Cameron and others have found the head, and they described it in detail, and took photographs. There is plenty of forensic evidence to use, but you keep denying it, in favour of the claims of the witness who never actually saw anything but was widely reported nonetheless. Does this analogy help you at all?
Jurens etc didn’t say there was no evidence of scuttling, merely that they couldn’t “observe” the relevant areas. They also found no evidence that any torpedoes played a major role in the sinking. Jurens etc do however state very clearly that the most serious of the nine torpedo hits was the hit that disabled the rudders (from an aircraft, not the Dorsetshire), and they make no mention of seeing any damage from the Dorsetshire’s torpedoes except for the hit on the superstructure, which they conclude must have occurred when the superstructure was already 4 meters under the surface and which thus indicates the ship was already turning over.
Nobody said the evidence of torpedo strikes was erased by the damage to the outer hull – on the contrary. Puncturing the outer hull couldn’t sink that ship, as the inner hull was designed to provide enough buoyancy to stay afloat – as was demonstrated in battle. The inner hull wasn’t erased by the slide, it is still there and it was inspected by numerous expeditions such as Ballard, Cameron, McLaren etc who clearly state there is no evidence of penetrations of the armoured hull, nor any evidence of pressure implosions. Again you avoid the plain words of the sources, and attempt instead yet another blatant distraction.
Wdford ( talk) 18:05, 29 October 2012 (UTC)
- Sediments covered most of the areas where other torpedoes are reported to have hit. Damage to the shell caused by the 1,200-meter post-impact slide of the main hull appears to have erased, obscured, or otherwise modified much of the damage that may have been caused by additional torpedo hits from Norfolk, Rodney and Ark Royal. Although these torpedoes certainly damaged Bismarck, they did not play a major role in her sinking.
- Sediments covered most of the areas where other torpedoes are reported to have hit. Damage to the shell caused by the 1,200-meter post-impact slide of the main hull appears to have erased, obscured, or otherwise modified much of the damage that may have been caused by additional torpedo hits from Norfolk, Rodney and Ark Royal.