Found a little info on the Corvette name today
completely by mistake...I was roaming the Bismark
site... Germany's greatest WWII Battleship and
stumbled upon this German Ship which had also
worn the name Bismark... it also happened to
be classified as a Corvette class German Warship.
Enjoy..

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

 

That's BismarCk with a "C".

And while this is wildly off topic, the WW2 Bismarck was one of the weakest designs of the war. Weak sterns, poor turret and topside protection, weak secondary armament, primary armament more geared for North Seas engagements instead of the Atlantic, poor communication and operational redundancy, 3 screws instead of 4, poor rudder design, only adequate reserve bouyancy, main armor of little use above the waterline, non-"all or nothing" armor scheme. Should I go on???

In any engagement with the South Dakota, North Carolina, or even rebuilt West Virginia Class battleships, Bismarck had best turn tail and run. And if its the Iowas she comes across, she wouldn't even be able to do that. While any modern battleship can put a world of hurt on any other modern battleship, overall, the Bismarck was one of the weaker modern battleship designs.

 

Not as weak as the HMS Hood.

 

Sounds like you could go on..studied this have you??

From your description the Bismarck was more Pomp than Circumstance
... of course I doubt the men of the Hood would think so... since
the Bismarck's first volley sent them to the bottom.
When our Army Air Corps fighter pilots played strictly to the strengths of their planes when engaging enemy fighters they won with poorer performing planes... Flying Tigers P40 Warhawk vs. Japanese..
So superior tactics can sometimes trump superior equipment... not as
relevant, perhaps, in slower paced naval engagements but a factor nonetheless.

 

You have to look at when the Bismarck was designed compared to ships like the Iowas, though, and what it was built for. It wasn't designed for fighting other battleships, it was a freakin' huge commerce raider - and it kicked the crap out of most everything the British threw at it. The Brits got lucky (in a very weird way) in that the torpedo bombers aboard Ark Royal were so outdated - they were so slow that the German AA guns couldn't be set to properly track them. It let the planes get close enough to disable the rudder so that the British cruisers could get in close enough to beat up on the Bismarck - and it still didn't sink until the Germans scuttled it.

 

Corvettes (in the naval context) were light escorts/Uboat hunters used by the British & Canadian Navy during WWII. My dad served on K101 - HMCS Naniamo, a Corvette, doing convoy escort between Halifax and Britan during the war.
http://www.uboat.net/allies/warships/class.html?ID=42

 

1. The problem with Hood as a battleship (and it was clearly the first “fast battleship” in a modern sense and not as the popular press insists a “battlecruiser”) was that the armor scheme was a WW1 armor scheme (very similar to the QE class battleships). Hood was scheduled to be updated in the same way that Warspite and QE were updated but the war intruded.
2. All modern battleships were highly dangerous and Bismarck was no exception. Hood was a very unlucky ship to be hit at the exact point where the most damage would be exacted, but the German gunnery was impressive none-the-less. And note that Hood was sunk on the fifth (not first) salvo (not volley)..



3. Bismarck was definitely built to fight other battleships. Otherwise it would not have needed the heavy armor or 15” guns it did carry. The Scharnhorst class was more than capable as a commerce raider with its 11” main armament, 15” guns were not necessary unless you would plan to counter other similar sized ships. Further, the Germans did want to expand their battleship fleet but time ran out due to the early start of WW2.
4. Actually it didn’t kick the crap out of everything the British threw at it. Prince of Wales got hit by a few shells from Bismarck (including one that killed most of the bridge crew) but it was the POW that “mission killed” Bismarck by damaging her forward oil bunkers. Bismarck sailed out of trim for the rest of her sorte. Rodney killed both of the forward turrets on Bismarck with one shell. Certainly Rodney and KGV got the best of Bismarck.
5. “they were so slow that the German AA guns couldn't be set to properly track them.” – This is an urban myth. Their AA directors could definitely track the Swordfish. Part of the problem for the Bismarck gunners was the radical maneuvering that made gunlaying very difficult. US doctrine was typically to stay on a constant course and depend on the AA and the director system to deal with aerial threats (which worked much better than either the Germans or Japanese who focused on avoiding the planes and their ordnance).
6. While Iowa was definitely a newer design than Bismarck, North Carolina was roughly contemporary and was still a superior ship with far superior ordnance. US doctrine of keeping within the immune zone would have allowed the super heavy US shells the plunging fire that would have devastated the Bismarck even faster than the historical British effort. What the British didn’t know was how strong the Bismarck was in countering nearly horizontal fire (a feature that would have worked very well in the North Sea close to home, but was awful for an engagement on the high seas). But that’s in part due to the German design bureau that was working off their WW1 experience rather than the US and British designers who had moved on. The Bismarck in a close range knife fight in the North Sea would have been very difficult to counter. The problem was that modern doctrine of long range fire control using radar negated any advantages that Bismarck had.

 

Thanks for the link... and the update on a little more Modern
Naval Corvette than I posted.