Yes and the 1982 Falklands war between Argentina 🇦🇷 and United Kingdom 🇬🇧 British that fought with Fighter jets against Enemy Naval warships with Anti ship Exocet Missile attacks that Sank the British Destroyer HMS Sheffield.
Certainly a few Exocets would have dealt with the Bismarck. Aimed to remove the infrastructure might of had some trouble with the hull plating. How about a good old fashioned F111 or F4 with a small nuclear bomb
The story of these Exotet missiles is also very interesting. The missiles weren't ready by the moment the war started and the french said the Argentinian that since UK was an ally they can't give them some of the programs the missiles needed to make them work with the planes. The argentinian tried everything they could to obtain said programs by third parties, and were scammed at least once in the process, until a formed worker of the company (very very very discontent former worker) came with them anf gave them to the argentinians. Lets say that UK looked very angry to the french after knowing that these Exocets that "can't fly" could actually fly and kill one of their ships.
So Cap, I spent 20 years in the US Navy as an Aviation Aircrew Survival Equupmentman, or Parachute Rigger. To simplify, everything the pilot wears during flight was my job in the squadron, and I worked with pilots daily at the squadron level. While in an A-6 squadron, we had a B/N who was given the call sign Gator. He received it for doing exactly what another pilot had done years before. Simply, he dropped a 25 pound smoke bomb down the stack of a target ship, and sank it. So, could 4 harpoon missiles sink the Bismarck, probably. They would simply have to hit it exactly right, and have a bit of luck. It's hard to say what can and can't happen when you get smart weapons in the mix. I watched 2 Sea Sparrow missiles take out a frigate as well, so I'd be hesitant to state what modern weapons can't do. Anyway, I enjoy the war games the Reapers post, so thank you, and take care.
The 16" armor piercing shells of the Iowa class battleships had a mere 41 lbs of explosives in them. The high explosive shells had 154 lbs. The shells had to be thick to be armor piercing and to withstand the shock of acceleration from being blasted out of the gun at up to 2690 feet/second. Having a little bit of room left over for explosives was a bonus.
In both cases, it wasn't the explosives that were intended to do the damage, but the shrapnel that was introduced to men and machinery at high velocity. The explosives in both types of shell are called a bursting charge, and as the name suggests, are designed to burst the shell case. The harpoon relies on the explosive shockwave and secondary fires caused by the explosive to inflict damage. Therefore it needs a larger explosive charge than the battleship shell. Some versions of the harpoon have a dual warhead where the first warhead explodes on impact damaging the hull or superstructure of the target in such a way to allow the second warhead can explode inside the target.
@@slowhornet4802 You mean proton torpedoes? The exhaust port is only 2 meters wide and would require a direct hit! That's impossible, even for a computer.
So, I finally had a chance to go back and consult the deck and armor plans for BISMARCK, and I can tell you for sure and certain, that 4 Harpoons hitting in that location wouldn't have even been a mission kill. I'm not sure how the Germans name their decks, so I'll go by USN nomenclature below- Main Deck is the uppermost fore-and-aft deck that runs the whole length of the ship, and is called the 01 level. Above that are 02 / 03 / 04 / etc. Below the main deck are the 1st / 2nd / 3rd deck, etc, with higher numbers for lower decks. 1. BISMARCK was divided into 22 main watertight compartments, starting with section I at the stern and ending with XXII at the bow. The missiles in this video hit her roughly at Section 12, at about the 02-03 level. 2. Direct impact site: Underneath the impact site are the uptakes for the forward boiler rooms. Damage to the uptakes will cause a reduction in efficiency of the boilers and may be enough to blow out the fire (temporarily), but is unlikely to cause any major impact on combat effectiveness. (The idea behind having a tall exhaust stack for a boiler is that heat rises, and you can get natural draft through your boiler by allowing the hot exhaust gases to rise on their own, creating a suction on the boiler to pull in more air, reducing the need to use the forced- and induced-draft boilers. Damaged uptakes simply means you work the blowers harder.) 3. Within the blast radius, unarmored areas: Forward of the impact site on the superstructure are officer staterooms. On the 01 level, directly below / outboard of the impact site are workshops and food storerooms. On the far side of the stack, the ship's medical bay and more workshops. Not particularly armored, but depending on the precise angle of the hit and delay on the missile's fusing, they could survive okay. Medical bay on the starboard side is more likely to take damage than the portside compartments, due to debris from the missile itself, which--again, depending on the angle of the hit--may pass through the stack and continue to the next compartment... or it might just exit into the open air and do nothing. 4. Within the blast area, armored areas, decks 1-2: On the first deck, you've got berthing areas outboard, directly under the weather deck. On the centerline, below the stack, the ship's laundry. The armor over the berthing areas is probably 80mm, and under the stack and superstructure may have been reduced to 50mm. The 80mm armor is certainly not going to be penetrated: the explosion was inside the stack, and isn't going to magically come back out and change directions. The 50mm armor would likely have a worse time of it. First hit, no problem. Minor damage from shock and vibration. Second and third would likely break some welds and warp some plates. Fourth missile would (and possibly even the third) would likely cause wider damage, but the second deck in that area appears to be mostly voids and ventilation spaces. The ship's hot water supply and battery workshop might suffer a bit. 5. Within the blast area, armored areas, decks 3-4-5: Third deck, we're getting down into the machinery spaces, but we've also gone through another 80-100mm of armor plate. By this level, compartmentalization is really going to cut back on damage. Every time you have an air gap between layers of steel, that helps to mitigate damage from explosions, and we've gone through 2 armored decks and multiple bulkheads by this point. Forward of the impact, we've got boiler rooms to port, starboard, and on the centerline. Port and starboard are almost certainly clear of any damage beyond issues with the uptakes. Even if they get the fire blown out, they'll be back online within 5 minutes, easily. Centerline has a 50-50 chance that it may see *some* damage, but likely not enough to take it offline for good. Probably some tube leaks from shock. Located between the fore and aft boiler rooms are magazines for the secondary battery, taking up a narrow slice of decks 3-4-5 below and slightly aft of the middle 15cm turret on the main deck. In order for the explosion to reach them, it's going to pass through 4-5 decks, ranging from 20mm steel to 100mm steel. Plus, they have blowouts, flash guard, flooding systems, and significant internal compartmentalization *beyond* what the ship itself has. And protective containers for each shell and / or powder charge. 6. There will be fires, but there is absolutely zero percent chance that 4 Harpoons hitting BISMARCK at that location will cause any flooding whatsoever, and even the fires aren't going to be in any critical areas. That's not even going to be a mission kill, let alone a hard kill. tl;dr: DCS needs to work on the damage modeling for ships.
Thank you, that was interesting. With this scenario there would be repeated shock-waves going down the smoke-stack. Was wondering how much energy gets to the fire-box and if it would be enough to rupture a boiler. Plus with Harpoons, as opposed to bombs, you will also get some leftover fuel to deal with.
@@DreadX10 Water tube boilers are interesting things. They're designed to be very forgiving when it comes to being shaken about, particularly shipboard boilers. Part of it is by design; part of it is a side effect of designing a system to handle thermal expansion. Making everything rigid would make it tear itself apart by the time it reached operating temperature. What this boils down to is that it really takes a *lot* to actually make a boiler "rupture" in the sense you're thinking of.
I have to agree i seen a documentry on how the bismark was biult. Along with her researched info you did hard kill considering she was scuttled not only to protect the tech advancement but the ignima codes common for german naval and military at time. Her outer hull plating was heavy duty.made to take a good hit
There was actually a Lieutenant who was missing from the Hoods fated fight...LT Jon Pertwee...whom later became the 3rd Doctor in Doctor Who. He was off ship for officer training when the ship set sail. He later was in Naval Intelligence where he met Ian Fleming....the author of James Bond
At least three Harpoons, and possibly all 4, struck the midship deck armor, not the belt. The combined warheads would have been enough to penetrate the turleback armor and destroy the machinery spaces rendering the Bismark dead in the water if not flooding and actively sinking. All three stirkes occuring within such a close area most likely could mean there was no actual armor (from earlier impact damage) to prevent the third, and possibly fourth Harpoon from delivering their warhead payload directly into the strucutre and engine/machinery spaces of the vessel. Destruction of the engine rooms and or death of the engineering crew would mean the ship would lose all power and propultion, with no means of repair. Without power she can not fight, nor use pumps or fire supression equipment with any real effect.
+{UCQM9WsYnIOssNEoXUvxV4pg} *That means a definite mission-kill.* One of those four AGM-84's penetrating to a magazine before detonation would start a chain reaction similar to the death of HMS Hood (51), guaranteeing a sunk - according to the latest evidence, Hood (51) took the fatal shell in a magazine for the secondary battery, and a domino series of magazine explosions gutted her in three seconds.
No it is unrealistic. The Bismarck machines were defended by two armored decks upper 50mm and lower 80mm. I think harpoons have not enough power to pass trhough second. They will detonate on upper deck, cause some damage, but only direct hit into the same place will have some chances to reach second armoured deck and damage it. All heavy amunitions were stored under even stronger armour so, no chances to explode them. This is what i Think but I am not an expert in this area. Maybe Drachnifel (Yputube author, specialized in naval warfare) can add some more reliable informations about modern antiship rockets vs battleship like Bismarck
I disagree - the missiles would certainly cause significant damage to non-armored areas, however would not immediately affect watertight integrity. Fires would be present, but little to no immediate flooding.
I distinctly remember a TV interview with the USS Wisconsin's commander as the first Gulf War was unfolding. He was asked if he was concerned about damage Iraqi Exocet missiles might cause. He said, "Well, we might need some fresh paint."
Spot on. People just don't understand that harpoon missile is grossly not prepared to deal with BB. it would simply explode on the outside of the armor, removing paint, AA etc. maybe secondary guns & cause some fire.
A pop-up attack profile by multiple missiles is still nothing to scoff at, however, and certainly capable of inflicting a mission kill on any BB. But yes, Harpoons are optimized for softer targets by far.
AGM-84 has a penetrating warhead, not just a HE case. Would not Pentwater the belt armor, but should go thru deck armor no problem. Explosion within the hull would be devastating, likely igniting the fuel.
I highly doubt, even with radar, any ship would see an ASCM with the radar frequencies and screen resolution of the time. Bismarck would have been completely visual against the Harpoons.
and think on that your tring to see an object under 14 inches across and under 13 feet long skimming along at 237 Meters per secound. that's fast and small. I don't think they could have got it with what they had. I think a CWIS or even a RIM-7 might have issues with it.
"No radar in a swordfish" Actually, they did have radar - the Mk II ASV. That's exactly how they found her in the overcast skies of the Atlantic. So there you go - radar equipped biplanes are a thing!
people seam to give a lot of crap to Swordfish for being bi-planes but they were actually quite modern biplanes (for that time, considering that they were introduced in 1934)... Were they good planes by 1934 standard, probably not, but they were not the worst either...
Wasn't shaped charge warhead supposed to only able to make very tiny deep hole, thus not very useful against ship? The only western anti ship weapon that have shaped warhead is the Jsow-c1 with Broach warhead
How much penetration though? Bismarck belt was 12.6 in max. With 5.7 to 10.6 in for the deck above the belt. Could a Harpoon penetrate the cement faced Krupp Armour plate? Bismarck had 2in top deck with 3.2 in on the armored deck 2 decks below. Magazine had 4.75 in above. This wasn't cement faced armor plate but hardened steel. Tirpitz took a couple of "Tallboy" hits which penetrated the deck armor but didn't hit the magazines and was repaired. Only to be finally sunk by 617 Sqd after crippled by the X-craft attack.
@@flyingcactus1953 No sir. Check out Harpoon hit videos. The shaped charge gets the warhead inside. When it goes off, you'll see the explosion exit where it came from, and out the opposite side. If it did a pop up, it blows a hole through the bottom. My squadron always selected the pop up mode.
A couple of things... In 1946, the US did a test with a 1000-lb shaped charge dropped from an aerial bomb against an armor layout that simulated a modern battleship citadel plus it's turret armor. The explosion went clean through the armor and detonated the simulated turret magazine and out the other side. In short, there is a reason why no navy post-WWII continued to design heavily armored warships. Modern explosives technology completely eclipses static armor defenses. I'm an army guy and I've seen 1 pound AT4 rounds go clean through 6 inches of composite armor. I can imagine what a 500 pound Harpoon warhead can do to 12 in of Krupp steel. And to confirm, yes, the Harpoon warhead is a shaped charge. I think the other think to keep in mind is how much "luck" and circumstance plays in combat. One shell from Bismark managed to hit a sweet spot and detonate Hood in seconds while Yamato's sister ship Musashi took 19 aerial torpedoes, 17 bombs and18 near-misses yet still took almost half a day to finally sink. Could a few Harpoons sink Bismark? Absolutely. But under different circumstances and hit placements, you could hit her with a few dozen and she might be able to survive.
Shaped.... *what?* It's a blast-frag warhead, not a shaped charge. It's got a delay fuse so that it penetrates a bit before detonation, but the stuff you see coming out the back side of targets is just the leftover bits of missile that didn't hit anything hard enough to stop it inside the ship. It's still going several hundred miles per hour.
It looked like the missiles plunge down through what would have been the main deck. Bismarck had a “turtle back” armor scheme. Very effective against shorter range gunfire on a flatter trajectory, but not all that great against plunging fire coming from high above and at high speed.
Afaik the Harpoon does not have a penetrating head (at least not like they had on AP bombs back in ww2), and the weather-deck would have been enough to cause the missile to detonate on impact, all missiles hitting the same spot could potentially allow the M.A.D to get hit, but again the damage would be localized.
Incorrect, the plunge fire was standard tactics of BBs back in the day. You had two different ideas - either up close flat attack or far away plunge fire. Armor had to deal with both in some shape and form. Certainly one was designed to be better against the other but in no shape and form was armor useless against plunging fire. If it was Bismarck would easily succumb to such fire from another BB! A Harpoon missile has contact fuse and mostly is fitted with HE charge. It would just do "splash damage" and kill AA crew etc. No real internal damage. It would cause a lot of fire damage etc. May take out secondary guns. Etc. I recon at least 100 harpoons to take out a BB. Maybe more. Mode of take out would be massive fire storm that could spread to main magazines - if not flooded.
For all y'all who think 4 harpoons couldn't sink the Bismarck, you underestimate the power of shaped charge warheads (which Harpoons have) that give them 600mm of armor penetration in addition to the subsequent 500lb explosive warhead.
So…? You poked four holes in the battleship. And then what? That doesnt sink a battleship. They wouldn’t even have had to wake up the damage controll teams. The local battle station complement would’ve been able to handle that.
@ that entirely depends on whats on the other side of the point thats hit. A single shell from Bismarck sunk the hood after all! But in the case of Bismarck I'm inclined to say that she wouldn't have sunk from this. She took massive amounts of fire in reality.
I think you're right. And the armor piercing naval gun shells, 14" & 16", did not have shaped-charge explosives, just a shell-bursting charge, right? 600mm would be about 23.5 inches of armor. That would make for one hell of a heavy battleship, wouldn't it? I think 18" of armor was the greatest any battleships ever had...I think at the main belt along the waterline, amidships, and maybe the main battery magazines. It's just amazing that a shaped charge could burn through that much steel armor in just a split second.
Where did you get that data on the warhead? The Harpoon is designed to penetrate a modern ship's super-structure (in pop-up mode) or hull (in level mode) and detonate within. Doing damage with the HE blast.
I don't think the Harpoons would penetrate the citadel enough to sink the Bismarck ie holes in the hull to let the water overcome the compartments. The Royal Navy had enough trouble doing that hurling 14 and 16 (and 8 inch) shells at it. Bunker busters to blast holes through the single bottom hull.
The issue is that Harpoons can hit a target les than a metre wide. The ship may not be sunk but it can easily gut the ship and render it unuseable and irrecoverable.
@@grahamo22 Battleships were highly compartmentalized so difficult to sink which was the aim of the exercise. Bismarck, Scharnhorst were shattered hulks but difficult to sink. With post WWI ships there was a focus on torpedo defense USN had some of the best in their ships. Germans did suffered from lack of testing during the inter War period and just evolved the SMS Baden designs. Western Anti- ship missiles would be effective in "mission killing " a warship but the Soviet derived ASM had massive warheads to sink ships. Back to battleships post-treaty ships had void spaces and blast bulkheads behind the armour so even if a harpoon got through the armor the blast would expend itself in void not the vitals within the citadel.
They will take out of combat the bismar they have a SAP warhead and the missile size is of 500kg 5 meters long and 340mm wide flying at 850km/h join to the warhead it would be enough to penetrate and explore in the citadel apart, it received 4 impacts is enough
Indeed so. Modern technical analysis and deep ROVs shows that Bismarck suffered no RN hits that would sink it as far as could be seen, the RN closed to a too short range and did not make any underwater hits, certainly the superstructure was devastated, as often intimated, plunging fire is needed. The actual footage is out there of the Bismarck dives. From survivor debrief and subsequent analysis it's more than very likely Bismarck was actually scuttled.
battleship new jerseys curator said that it would extremely difficult to sink a battleship with modern high explosive missiles carried by most nato warships including anti ship missiles
Shells from HMS Rodney which hit Bismarck multiple times were 2,048 lbs (929kg) and traveled at Mach 2.3. The harpoon shaped charge or not lacks the power to do significant damage through multiple decks of Bismarck even if the missile hits the compartmentalized superstructure.
Best answer here. Modern missiles are designed to hit thinly armoured modern warships. All they need to do is take out radar or electrical to render a ship combat ineffective. The British hit the Bismarck with over 400 shells ranging from 8" to 16". And in the end, the crew scuttled the ship, it was not going to sink. There is no way 4 harpoons will sink that ship.
Rodney's rounds are hitting the 320mm or so armored belt. The Harpoons are hitting around 120mm of deck armor. A 40mm and 80mm IIRC. 40mm is about what an M5 Stuart tank had, and 80mm is what a Panther had. I think a 690kg missile with 220kg of explosive wouldn't have that much issue. Especially with multiple hits. That said, I think it would have taken more than four. I suspect the simulation is having the missiles all hit in the EXACT same spot, which in real life probably would sink her. All sixteen hitting in almost the same spot would probably do it, especially with whatever leftover fuel there was. I also think the simulation erred in having the Bismarck's AAA firing. I doubt that they could see a 13" diameter missile until it was way too late.
@@steved5495 You missed the point. At close range *all* hits from Rodney went through. And they cause massively more damage then a harpoon. So we know Bismarck took more punishment then getting hit by over 100 harpoons & 11 torpedos and did not sink.
@@tomk3732 Rodney's 16" armor piercing projectiles have a bursting charge of 23.2kg, a bit more than 10% of a harpoon. Since the Harpoons are hitting nearly straight down all in about the same place, they would be through both armored decks with the first missiles and into the heart of the ship with the remainder, eventually coming out the bottom. Each missile explodes with nearly 10 times the explosives by weight and more when considering modern explosives. While the shells did horrendous damage, it was spread out through the superstructure and the exposed part of the hull. Something like 400 shells hit Bismarck without sinking her. Had the shell hits from Rodney all hit in the same place, they would have cut Bismarck in two. Now in real life, the Harpoons would have a distribution about the ship, too, and would only penetrate both armored decks on the rare occurrence of overlapping hits. They'd have about zero chance of taking out a turret like the 16" shells did.
🎼From the mist, a shape, a ship, is taking form And the silence of the sea is about to drift into a storm Sign of power, show of force Raise the anchor, battleship's plotting its course
Pride of a nation, a beast made of steel Bismarck in motion, king of the ocean He was made to rule the waves across the seven seas To lead the war machine To rule the waves and lead the Kriegsmarine The terror of the seas The Bismarck and the Kriegsmarine
Big fan of your videos guys. Harpoon’s warhead is nearly 500lbs and it’s a shaped charge so I believe it punches above its weight. Those 4 hits may not have sunk it but would’ve caused fires which may have sunk her, and they would’ve injured many of the crew and officers. But, had Bismarck stayed afloat, how many more of your harpoons would’ve hit her? I think at the end of the day she was going down. Keep up the great work.
Through it is a HE designed as HEAT in some warheads a HEAT is far less effective then an AP round here as HEAT would just loose all its energy in the next compartment. Ships are massive - plenty of space.
Just reading up on Operation Tungsten. Tirpitz took 15 hits from 500lb and 1600lb bombs, but none of them penetrated the deck armor. The implication is that this was because they were dropped at low altitude. A harpoon is about 500lbs of explosive, also flying at low altitude, so I'm not thinking harpoon penetration of the armor is likely. This is just from a few minutes of casual reading, so I'm interested in hearing what veterans and historians have to say.
From a side aspect, I absolutely agree. Even with a shaped charge, a Harpoon isn't penetrating the hull armor. Because the harpoon is programmed to fly at sea level, and pop up for its terminal phase, I think multiple diving shots on the deck (not the armored main guns) as well as the bridge, would sink or disable anything from that time period.
Modern shaped explosive charges mean comparing WWII ordinance to current is comparing apples to oranges. The effectiveness of the German Panzerfaust was because it was possibly the first shaped charge AT weapon. giving it far better penetration and killing power than weapons with larger warheads. The modern Light AT weapons have warhead weights equal to the WWII "bazooka" while possessing many times it's penetration and knockout power. Additionally, the 1000+lbs 'big boy' bombs used on Tripitz were actually high explosive and not armor piercing, yet still did significant damage to the hull plating without direct hits. After those air attacks the Tripitz was out of action and in need of repairs for quite some time. Please have a wonderful evening and a joyous new year.
Harpoons are 1500lb missiles that fly at about 500mph with the nearly 500lb shaped penetration warhead. They would have ripped into that ship like it was a tin can. Check the damage that a single harpoon did to this destroyers bow during rimpac 2000 sinkex. Skip ahead to 3 mins (sorry bout the annoying music.. it’s loud so be warned). ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-9M2SmUT5z-I.html
@@colehovis9175 how big is a harpoon warhead? If it's 12 inches, then it can pen 120 Inches with shaped charge (shaped charges can pen over 10 times their diameter with modern tech).
you gotta understand one thing battleship are armored for torp and shell attack missles does not follow the same trejectory negating alot of the battleship armour advantage and 4 asm to any ship regardless is dead ship in the water weather she sinks or she floats she pretty much killed at that point with none of her system operational even a torpedo boat would be able to finish her off after 4 harpoon hits.
@@patthonsirilim5739 Not really, You have to bare in mind that these ships where designed with Armour piercing dive-bombs in mind as well and the fact that they would have been dealing with plunging fire impacting from around 40-55 degrees drop angles The turret roofs and deck had decapping layers designed to act as super scaled up spaced armour to arm fuses and you could not simply aim for funnels as some suggest as again the dive bomber risk meant that there where S-bends and several inch think grates designed to catch bombs You need to remember that these are modern weapons designed for modern thin skinned ships - their Warheads are not even capped and primarily blast fragmentation charges which may mission kill radar and firecontrol systems but will not hard kill the ship as a whole unless they can cause a fire that Damcon fail to deal with
Harpoons would definitely sink a light carrier and fleet carriers of ww2. Early fleet carrier most of them were well under 25,000 tons. The amount of explosives on one Harpoon is more than any Japanese carrier at midway could withstand.
The P-3 orion on Maratime patrol would likely find it very quickly, and if its carrying harpoons it would be able to harass and damage the cruiser. The harpoons warhead isn't a shaped charge its just a "500 pound" (ok 488 pound) HE blast. so it will star fires at best.. but honestly if it hit the armored side of the bizmark its not going to do a ton. For the F-18's the Paveway would be the choice to go, using the GBU-10 Paveway II from altitude with the BLU-109 would likely be able to penetrate the deck armor or turret tops of the Biz, and the large warhead detonating inside could do catastrophic damage.
you make 1 mistake with the bunker busters. Tag team. one drops from altitude, 20,000 feet, while a second dips below the clouds, and designates the target... remember the plane drooping does NOT have to be the same plane designating in reality. plane 1 would drop from altitude, plane 2 would stay down at 3000 feet but 10 miles out, out of AA range and spot for the bomb. then they would trade places.
@@samueladiwinata3440 and thats the thing ships like this would take lots of hits from 1000 pound HE bombs and generally it just caused fires and casualties. without penetrating the armor, first, most of the force of the blast is directed away from the ship. Then very little on deck is usually flamabable other then the sea plane... but you are going to kill any deck crew in open mounts. But this is why the big guns rarely threw HE rounds at each other, because a big 2000 lb HE round, from a 15-16" gun, still doesn't do alot. and it would often take 100's of them to "burn a ship" down.
@@jenniferstewarts4851 I don't think that would work any better. The seeker head on the bomb must be able to see the laser reflection on the target. That's not going to happen from 20k ft altitude and several miles away through the two layers of cloud. IF the bomb breaks out of the clouds directly over the target and sees the laser designator in time to maneuver, then maybe it will hit, but the pilot dropping the bomb would have to be essentially perfect with a dead-reckoning prediction of his drop point against a moving, possibly maneuvering target in high, unpredictably gusting and swirling winds. Even with radar- assisted CCIP bombing, I don't see an iron bomb getting within 1000 yards of the target, and a dumb iron bomb is exactly what a Paveway or equivalent is until the seeker head sees the designator spot.
@@douglasthompson201 well not in a heavy storm or such, but in typical north sea weather... you will often have low cloud cover down to about 5000 feet. When the swordfish engaged for example cloud they could spot the ship at low level out to about 15 miles. The paveways can be dropped without laser lock and can acquire once they break through the cloud cover. since the ships unlikely to be maneuvering even with a "spotter/designation aircraft" it would be possible to get a paveway "close enough" on drop to allow it to acquire the laser once it comes through the low cloud cover.
So the Bismark was accurately (based on the water splashes) targeting fast moving missiles from10 miles out, where, from the missiles location, you couldn't even SEE something the size of a battleship?
The radar, under ideal conditions, could pick out a ship sized target at 13.7 miles (wiki says half that in sea conditions) so the radar would be utterly useless against Harpoons. Optics no better in those conditions.
@@rnash999 i thought WW2 ship anti-aircraft defence was to basically aim a curtain of fire in the general direction of an incoming attack and hope to God that you hit something?
@@zenmollusc6128 That was half the idea, yes. However the introduction of radar allowed AAA fire to be directly with some degree of accuracy, especially towards the end of the war, where ships were built with this new kind of air-defence in mind.
Fun video! Vastly increased my admiration for the WW2 Swordfish pilots. Their bravery and navigation skills were incredible. I’m skeptical 4 harpoons could immediately sink Bismarck. I’m sure they could nearly immediately cripple her and sink her fairly quickly.
What isn't realistic, is any WW2 ship firing at 10 miles on unseen somethings with a radar cross-section the size of a loaf of bread. (Skimming above sea state) And them being able to traverse guns to account for all those near misses at targets going .85 mach.
The USN tested how many Exocet's it would take to kill an Iowa in the 1980's....they tested without CIWS and they came to a number of 16. Bismarck should be able to take about that many too. Harpoon can get through about 100mm of armour at most with its semi armour piercing warhead...top attacks will only mission kill the Bismarck by destroying her Radars, gun directors, AA guns etc...to actually sink her you would need Russian P700 Granit missiles
The Exocet has a significantly smaller warhead than the Harpoon, and both travel at high subsonic speeds, so the Harpoon is probably a bit better ship-killer than the Exocet. So if 16 Exocets can kill an Iowa, 14 Harpoons probably could do the same. The Iowa class ships also had significantly better armor than the Bismarck, which brings the number of Harpoons it would take to kill the Bismarck down further. Plus, the attack pattern of the Harpoon, with it's popup and top attack would have been particularly effective against the Bismarck, which was rather vulnerable to plunging fire. The deck armor was only about 100mm. The penetrator warhead of the Harpoon could punch through that and do a ton of damage inside the ship.
@@djzoodude You are failing to take into account that the armored deck on any WW2 era ship was actually several decks below the main deck and not at the top of the ship and the Missiles lack the delay on the fuse so would be set off by the impact with the upper deck and while it would do a lot of cosmetic damage the explosion would be well above the citadel above the armoured deck and almost no major damage would happen.
@@djzoodude Doesn't really matter, in this case. The angle of the hit, the missiles would play hell with the uptakes for the forward boiler rooms, and would shred the officer's staterooms and perhaps the medical bay and shoemaker's shop. They weren't going anywhere near anything vital. They'd have to have come in nearly vertical for that, and they'd still have gone through 4-5 decks (1 50-80mm armor, 1 100mm armor, the remainder 20mm steel) in order to reach the machinery spaces or the midships 15cm magazine spaces. Those 4 rounds weren't going to do shit.
221Kg warhead against the superstructure (thickness unknown) and the deck armour of up to 120mm Is there any reason the warhead could NOT punch through the deck armour? It was not RHA, but Krupp Cemented Armour (unable to find the specs atm).
Depends on warhead construction. A Shaped Charge could but would do minimal damage. The shells fired against Bismark were designed to penetrate the armor and then detonate. But 120mm+ steel armor is a far cry from the light armor of a modern warship that a Harpoon is designed against.
You can make as many holes in the deck of a battleship as you want and it won't sink. A ship is sunk by water going in, not by air being able to go out. That being said, a harpoon strike could easily cripple a battleship by damaging and destroying systems within the superstructure.
@@vat8367 Do you have a link to some info regarding the properties of each? I did have a look, but could find no modern comparison between RHA and Krupp Cemented Armour.
You don't need Hornets. Just look up Barnes Wallace's tallboys and the RAF Dambuster units and see what happened to Bismarcks larger sister ship Turpitz in a Norwegian fiord in 1944.
Unless you get a golden BB shot like the one that doomed HMS Hood, I doubt 4 harpoons get through the armor and sink the ship. But they definitely could smash the shit out of the superstructure and render the Bismark combat ineffective.
I have a feeling it's not modeled based on the comments below and the fact the US navy brought back the Iowas to deal with Russian missle spawm... So if battleships were not efactive against missles why bother? Also it took the largest covenal Bunker buster bombd of WW2 to finnally sink Tirpipz and that was the grand slam 2000 pound straight down the her center... The harpoons seemed to have been going after the super structher nothing really important. Oh and a video on the Cold War US navy Battleship battle group an Iowa Battleships lead career formation would be nice against the Soviet carier lead one please.
Yes 100% all these comments about it being a shaped charge, but the explosive mass and kinetic energy exerted after penetration isn't any where near enough to make the ship sink, especially if its only being hit in the superstructure
Absolutely the Bismarck was tough on the sides but through the top was her weakest point. Heavies down the pipes and boom. I knew it before a missile was launched. You apparently have no idea of a boiler room explosion.
220 Kg of a modern high explosive like tritonal is about 9MJ/Kg vs WW2 era RDX/TNT mixtures of about 5MJ/Kg. Modern explosive are considerably more powerful than equivalent weights of WW2 era explosives.
Dont see this. The Bismarck was scuttled. British ships damaged the Bismarck but did not sink her. 15 shells couldn't do a lot of damage, I'd doubt 4 300 lb warheads could
How would the ship know missiles were incoming let alone shoot em without a radar? One would think the whole thing would be over before the ship would even know what was going on.
The Bismark did have radar, but it was only anti-shipping radar (the Tirpitz had AA-radar, but it didn't help them much in a fjord), so yes, the DCS modelling is a little off. Mind you, even if they did have anti-air radar, what a 1940's German radar technician would have made of four contacts heading towards him at over 400knts is a whole other question.
1 shell took out Hood. 1 well placed bomb took out Arizona. In the big fight at the end of the Bismark chase the British battleships were all so close they were firing point blank range with flat trajectories at Bismark, hitting the heavy armor belt instead of the much weaker deck. Had you fired the Harpoons without doing the pop up maneuver the ship would likely have survived for a few more missiles.
The shells hitting Bismark during her final engagement were regularly punching strait through her. Belt armor at those ranges is almost irrelevant, hell turret face armor wasn't actually stopping anything at that point. The armor on battleships is meant to protect them at reasonable engagement ranges, not "Royal Navy is on an unholy I'm gonna f*ck your face crusade" point blank kinda ordeal.
Hey somehow RU-vid unsubscribed me luckily you put out that message so I got you again. Maybe someday when I get a computer we could fly together. I've been flying sim since I was 9 or 10 so I have some time. Im currently learning the calls and air combat tactics but either way looking forward to more videos.👌
The reason the swordfish Aircraft who disabled the Bismarck managed was because the Germans could not believe the British would send such out of date/slow aircraft against them and the Bismarck anti aircraft ammunition was exploding in front of the Swordfish.
No this isn't realistic. Battleships are too heavily armored to be sunk by harpoons alone. Bismarck took hits from the Battle Cruiser Hood. Battleships Prince of Whales, King George V, and Rodney. Plus hits from torpedoed by swordfish aircraft. After taking a pounding from the battleships. It took a concentrated torpedo spread from the Sheffield to finally sink the Bismarck. Battleships we're built to take a punishment. The Japanese dropped modified 16" battleship shells a Pearl Harbor. Yes if a bomb, shell, or torpedo hits in just right spot. You get something like that happen with the Arizona, Hood, or Barham. I've stood next to the 16" shells on the North Carolina. They are massive and impressive up close.
@@brandonclark435 with nuke warhead yes..... HE i dont think so.. battleships e.g. USS Iowa carried AP shells because their 1900 lbs HE shells could not penetrate a battleships armor
@@vat8367 Exactly. The AP shells only had a few hundred pounds of filler. Most anti-ship missiles would simply explode against the armor. But the AS-4 is carrying a crap ton of kinetic energy. The warhead would not survive impact to penetrate the armor. But you would have armor penetration.
@@brandonclark435 more kinetic energy than an HE shell yes about 4x, i dont know if that would be sufficient because the mass is only made up of squishy explosive and the light outer shell at that point.... roughly an HE shell is 365 Kilojoules and the KH22 1.2 Megajoules
@@brandonclark435 The explosive filler of the AP shell was not intended to do damage directly. It was a bursting charge designed to shatter the shell into shrapnel. The large chunks of shrapnel being introduced to men and machinery at high velocity did the damage. Using the British 15 inxh guns from the Queen Elizabeth class battleships as an example, the AP shells had a bursting charge of about 22kg of shellite explosive as a bursting charge and a total weight was around 879kg. The HE shells had a bursting charge of 59kg of TNT with the same total weight.
I don't think just four Harpoons would have actually sunk the Bismarck, but I think all 16 would have. Mostly because of the difference in explosive power and precision. The armor piercing shells on the Iowa class ships only had about 41 pounds of explosives, and the Iowa class ships had much bigger guns than any of the ships attacking Bismarck. A Harpoon carries a roughly 500 pound warhead. The missile is an order of magnitude more powerful than the shell from the gun. They have penetrator warheads for the missiles as well. They were designed to be ship killers. 4 of them hitting the Bismarck amidships would be like it taking 40 to 50 large caliber armor piercing shells in the same spot. That probably would have at least put the Bismarck out of action. If all 16 Harpoons had hit, that would have been the equivalent of 160 to 200 hits with large caliber guns in the same spot. It only took about 400 total hits, from large and small caliber guns, to sink the Bismarck. 16 Harpoons, all hitting in nearly the same spot, would have almost certainly sunk the Bismarck. Or any battleship really. This is basically why no one builds heavily armored ships anymore. Yamato is a prime example of this. It took only 6 bombs and 11 torpedoes to sink the largest, most heavily armed and armored battleship ever built. The cost to build such a ship so heavily outweighs the cost of the weapons it takes to sink it that it's just not worth it. That money is much better spent on the incredible defensive capabilities of something like the Aegis Combat System.
Best video you guys have made in a long time. Good stuff Cap, Simba, Damp :) Unsure if only 4 Harpoons would have sunk it but I think it almost definitely would have made her go back to port. Now try the Musashi and the Yamato :)
Totally unrealistic battle damage. Those ships are designed to withstand well over 1500 lbs shells hitting them at blazing speeds since they were fired out of massive guns. To sink that ship you would have needed the MK84 LGBs dropped from a high altitude to gain penetration speed upon impact. I am not certain how many MK84s it would have taken but I would think it would be at least 4 of them depending on where they hit. I would have aimed for the general area of the engine room as well as ammunition magazines. I don’t know if we have any air dropped torpedoes that can be dropped from the F/A-18, but the helicopters do carry them when doing ASW. You would need to launch a nighttime attack with at least one Growler to negate the enemy radar, and you would of course have my plane, the E-2C Hawkeye, already airborne and keeping an eye on the Bismarck so that the helicopters can be vectored in for a perfect angle of attack on the ship. A couple of hits MK48s should break the keel of the ship and send it to the bottom of the ocean.
hey cap do you think a couple of Modern Bombers could successfully preform the raid that sunk the Tirpitz with her defenses in place as best as possible
Sinking this ship doesn't matter. If four harpoon missiles can render it useless, well....mission accomplished! It would be stuck out there. Germany would have no way to tow it back or retrieve it. Its finished regardless. When you think about it, once the swordfish torpedo hit the rudder and the ship was spinning in circles, it was done. The British could have basically left it to rot out there. It was no longer a threat and there was no way the germans could have retrieved it. What this video really puts into perspective is just how insanely brave those swordfish pilots were! My God!!!
I’d be pretty surprised if 80 year newer weapons wouldn’t win every time. It’s almost the same time frame as asking, would the Bismarck win at the battle of trafalger? Yes. Yes it would.
This is actually a pretty realistic scenario. When the USN re-activated their battleships in the 1980s to fight the cold war, they would have been up against Soviet anti-ship missiles. Expectation was they would have been well protected, even given the faster speed and larger warhead of those weapons.
I don't think the WW2 era ships could hit a harpoon missile. they fly around 581 mph or 852 FPS, and is only about 12.5 feet long for the aircraft verision. it would be hard to see not to mention has a small radar cross section.
Interesting. Given that the Bismarck was beaten to death by a 5 capital ship task force, and still (according to the crew) had to be scuttled, I think the damage model might need a tweak. Also, armour belts - there’s a great photo of HMS Suffolk with the smudged outline of a kamikaze Zero on her side, so in reality, I think 4 harpoons is a stretch. Far more likely would that Bismarck would be crippled but not sunk by 14-16 harpoons coming down on her deck. Also I very much doubt that Bismarck’s Radar could pick up or track missiles coming in at that speed. Give it another go.
A sink on 4 harpoons is not likely. A mission kill is an entire other matter. The only way the Bismark would sink is a lucky shot to the boilers, or powder storage. It took a massive pummeling to sink the real ship. Though the impact angles involved are quite different.
@@WigSplitters big enough internal explosions from the multiple precise hits from harpoons could crack the keel, then the armor is irrelevant and the ship sinks
@@WigSplitters structural integrity from its 120mm deck armor is not saving a ship with a cracked keel, not saying it would sink as quick as it did in the sim but it would’ve sunk not just burned
Ultimately my lack of surprise is from modern smart weapons being able to strike the same area causing the maximum damage against a ship which let’s face it cannot defend itself
With the harpoon popping up and then coming down on the deck of the battle ship the missile is hitting a wooden deck. A 200 lbs shaped HE warhead hitting a magazine would be sufficient to sink the ship. The shops armor is completely irrelevant in this situation.
Harpoons are not torpedoes. Bismark is not a IOWA class battle ship either. She was a commerce raider. They hit above the belt armor. Deck armor was 4-6".
Interesting thing about modern weapons and explosives is they are designed. Aka shape charges etc designed to penetrate, not to mention hitting amidship, boilers etc could easily added to her demise.
The amount of damaged caused by shaped charged weapons, can be reduced by having a properly spaced armor layout (like the Panzer III and IV (though this was done initially to defeat another threat).
They all hit the same spot. Went in through the thinner deck armor into the boilers and possibly secondary magazines. Probably killed the power, blew through the bottom, and flooded faster than damage control could deal with.
You also have to consider that modern explosive warheads are more efficient then old ones. I.e 100kg of explosive in the ww2 would have done some damage and been effective but 100kg now would take down entire skyscrapers cause we've refined the technology to do the most damage
The North Sea is most Deadly I hatter’s operating in it as it was so frigid and cold. I can’t even tell you how cold it was to repair aircraft on the deck not only during the daytime but at night time was unbelievably cold.
I think one of the reasons the Iowa's were finally retired was that the modern missiles were too easy to configure to take out a ship like that. The armor on those ships was good for the weapons of the time. IDK, but I suspect that modern naval missiles are programmed to hit the target in the most vulnerable places like the Tomahawks are.
4 harpoons would struggle to sink a Kirov class BCGN, let alone an actually armored WW2 battleship, short of an extremely lucky hit, i doubt theyd do significant enough damage to do more than marginally reduce combat power. Torpedo's are what sank most battleships and nearly sank several more.
You'd think with all this guff that the yanks would have been champin at the bit to get into the fight, as it was Brits had to wait for Germany to stupidly declare war on the US.
Given the pounding that that battleship took from the surface fleet at the end, I seriously doubt that 4 harpoons would have made a dent in anything but the superstructure. The captain's bridge was heavily armored on Bismark. I don't know if you would have even taken out of operational mission status outside of trashing the AA capability.
I would hope they could with modern electronics, as the planes in ww2 mainly had to sight targets with there eyes, not radar. =another pointless video.
In 1987, Marshal stack starts at Angels five, and five miles, with each successive bird, add one angel & one mile, one-minute intervals upon commencing, in the USN.
I would guess that modern 'penetration' warheads would be better for the task, WW2 ended during the development of the Disney funded bunker penetration bombs made for the submarine pens. Were the bombs of the day using shaped or delayed charges? I don't know the velocities involved, but a 200kg (440lb ) warhead would not have been considered a large navel shell. A serious hit to be sure, but not a knockout. Bismark was not a 'heavy' Battleship rather a fast ship with heavy hitter guns. Their radar would likely be able to see the jets and harpoons when range was close, but fire control was human analog so, essentially useless. But could give a definite bearing to blind fire at. I actually wonder if Bismarks radar would have some limited in-close jamming effects just by being noisy low tech with high power. RWR would have to be set for garage door frequency. But they would definitely be 'lighting themselves up' over the horizon. The Germans did have fast aircraft, and did employ the main and secondary guns against torpedo planes, if those columns of water were to be hit by an aircraft or missile it would crash. ( something I don't think exists in DCS ) I'm guessing Bismark would be all kinds of hurt, but no-where near sunk.
The question is, would GR be hunting before or after the sinking of HMS _Hood?_ The reason is simple: After Bismarck fired his guns (and yes, KMS Bismarck is referred to as a 'he' and not a 'she') against _Hood,_ the first salvo knocked out Bismarck's radar, as Bismarck had not been given a proper shakedown cruise. Therefore, in this scenario, if Bismarck was attacked after sinking Hood, then Bismarck has no radar -- and has to find the missiles and fighter jets visually. In other words, it would be a turkey shoot with modern jets.
I don't think the Harpoons would have sunk the Bismarck. They are not made to penetrate thick armor and the battleships had multiple layers to set off incoming projectiles before they got to the thick armor. Is it possible the ship model is not right?
i would think its where it hit cause the harpon has a shaped primairy charge followed by a HE second charge that would blow a hole at least half way if not all the way through the ship
Have to say, being a U.S. Navy vet this stuff is extremely fun to witness! The details you have to go through, the technical stuff. Can't thank you enough. Yeah, I played cheap PC simulators in the 90s but they were like nintendo compared to this, no offense to Nintendo. My fav bird was Tomcat. Phoenix! Your simulations are fun to watch and I check in daily to see what's new. Not sure if I had any sims I'd want to see but I leave that up to you professionals. Thanks for what you do.
The Prinz Eugen was the only capital ship of the Kriegsmarine to survive the war, and is still in existence (although a capsized wreck at surface level that can be dived on). It was used in the Bikini Atoll atomic weapons tests and even survived that. One of it's propellers was removed and is a memorial in Germany to sailors lost in the war.
The type of explosive matters too like what they were using inside the shell and what you are using inside that missile are two different types of the explosives one made way less but have a bigger yield
After WWII, specific munitions were so effective that massive armor belts around future warships was useless. The best armor today is the double hull feature found on USN Super Carriers. A void where an explosion can dissipate somewhat and hopefully not leave a massive hole in the inner hull. Modern anti ship missiles and bunker busters would definitely make short work of WWII armored battleships.
Well... yeah? Is it even a question at all? The Hornets could easily fly at altitudes that any intercepting BF-109s wouldn't be able to fly at not to mention they would be able to fly safely above any reach of enemy AA guns on the ships along with weaponry they could launch and strike the ship from over 100 km away. If a F/A-18 Super Hornet were to go back in time all it would take is 1 to decimate all on the battlefield. That's like saying would a 1950s NASCAR driver be able to beat a 2020s NASCAR driver with a top of the line 1950s NASCAR it just wouldn't happen.
" If a F/A-18 Super Hornet were to go back in time all it would take is 1 to decimate all on the battlefield." Not all on the battlefield. The Hornet is an amazing aircraft, capable of carrying some impressive weaponry, but there is only so much it can do at one time.