After the battle, the sailors calculated that they needed to fire 2,876 rounds of main, medium and universal caliber before the Bismarck turned into flaming ruins and completely lost its combat effectiveness. Seeing his condition, the British cruisers approached and fired a torpedo salvo. From that moment on, the German battleship was no longer a tenant. The crew opened the Kingstones, and the wounded Bismarck sank to the bottom without lowering the flag in front of the enemy.
“It whistles and rattles and rumbles around. The thunder of cannons, the hiss of shells …"
Fortunately, naval battles involving large warships, the exchange of powerful blows and colossal destruction were very rare. Midway, the Battle of Leyte Gulf or the aforementioned pursuit of the Bismarck, which was preceded by a fleeting but bloody battle in the Danish Strait … In the history of World War II, there are only a few dozen such "episodes".
As for large effective battles with the participation of battleships, such cases are not so few as is commonly believed. But not so much on the scale of the entire Second World War.
Battles in Atlantic waters (battleships and their trophies):
- aircraft carrier "Glories" (sunk by the fire of the battle cruisers "Scharnhorst" and "Gneisenau", 08.06.40);
- French battleship "Brittany" - sunk, battleships "Dunkirk", "Provence" and the leader of the destroyers "Mogador" - damaged (attack on the French fleet in Mars-el-Kebir in order to prevent its transfer into the hands of the Third Reich. British battle cruiser Hood, battleships Barham and Resolution, 03.07.40);
- Italian heavy cruisers "Zara" and "Fiume" (sunk by the fire of the LC "Barham", "Valiant" and "Worspite" in the battle near Cape Matapan, 28.03.41);
- battle cruiser "Hood" (sunk by the fire of the LK "Bismarck", 24.05.41);
- battleship "Bismarck" (sunk by the fire of the British battleships "Rodney" and "King George V", with the participation of cruisers and carrier-based aircraft on 05/27/41);
- battle cruiser "Scharnhorst" (heavily damaged by the fire of the LC "Duke of York", finished off by torpedoes from British destroyers, 26.12.43);
"Scharnhorst"
This also includes the skirmish near Calabria and the battle between the British battle cruiser Rhinaun and the German Gneisenau - both times without serious consequences.
There were a couple more cases of firing from the main battery: the American battleship Massachusetts shot the unfinished Jean Bar in Casablanca, another French battleship, the Richelieu, was damaged by the fire of the British battleships Barham and Resolution during the attack on Dakar.
It is possible to count 24 transports and tankers that were captured or sunk during the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau raids in the North Atlantic. These are, perhaps, all the trophies of battleships in the Old World.
French Jean Bart outlived all his peers, was expelled from the fleet only in 1961
Battles in the Pacific:
- battle cruiser "Kirishima" (destroyed by the fire of the LC "South Dakota" and "Washington" in the night battle at Guadalcanal, 11/14/42);
- battleship "Yamashiro" (sunk by the fire of the LC "West Virginia", "California", "Maryland", "Tennessee" and "Mississippi" with the participation of destroyers in the Surigao Strait, 25.10.44);
Also in the battle with Fr. Samar was sunk by the escort aircraft carrier "Gambier Bay" and three destroyers, several more escort aircraft carriers were damaged by the fire of the Japanese squadron. On that day, the battleship Yamato opened fire on the enemy for the first time. The specific results of his shooting remained unknown.
Agree, the number of victories is small.
Italians are in battle! "Littorio" and "Vittorio"
Are battleships obsolete? Let's admit.
But how can one explain that only six aircraft carrier duels were recorded in the entire huge Pacific theater of operations (Coral Sea, Midway, Solomon Islands, Santa Cruz, the Battle of the Mariana Islands and Cape Engagno). And that's it! For the remaining four years, aircraft carriers smashed bases, attacked single ships and struck the coast.
The American Marines, supported by thousands of ships, stormed the Japanese defensive perimeter in the Pacific Islands. Submarines "cut" enemy communications. The destroyers intercepted the Tokyo Express and covered the convoys. Battleships used to fight each other, but most of the time they were engaged in problems far from naval combat. "North Caroline", "South Dakota" and other monsters provided air defense squadrons and fired at coastal fortifications, while their small Japanese rivals stood in the bases, "licking" the wounds received.
The war turned into an endless chain of short battles, in which the decisive role was played by aviation, submarines and anti-submarine / escort ships (destroyers, frigates, boats). Large warships - aircraft carriers and battleships - were responsible for the general situation in the theater of operations, by their very presence did not allow the enemy to use similar means to disrupt amphibious operations and disperse "small" ships.
The Great Stand of Battleships
A similar situation was observed in European waters since 1942: the heavy artillery ships of the Allies were regularly involved in fire support of the landing forces, while the few remaining battleships and heavy cruisers of Germany and Italy were idle in the bases, having neither adequate tasks nor chances on success if they go to sea. Going anywhere in the conditions of enemy domination at sea and in the air meant certain death. Hungry for fame and orders, British admirals will throw dozens of ships and combat aircraft to intercept such a "tasty" target. With obvious consequences.
British battle cruiser "Ripals" on the campaign
The Germans played the best in these conditions, turning the Tirpitz parking lot into a powerful bait, which for three years attracted the attention of the metropolitan fleet. Unsuccessful attacks by squadrons on the Alta Fjord, 700 air sorties, an abandoned PQ-17 convoy, attacks by special operations forces with the use of mini-submarines … "Tirpitz" pretty much shook our nerves and our allies, and, in the end, was scored 5- ton bombs "Tallboy". Other, less shocking drugs were ineffective against him.
However, the "Tirpitz" had a "protégé" in the form of its dead brother - the meeting with the "Bismarck" so shocked the British Admiralty that for the rest of the war the British suffered from battleship phobia and shook with the thought: "What if Tirpitz" goes to sea "?
There was another reason for the "standing of battleships", of an economic nature. The fuel consumption for raising the vapors in the Tirpitz boilers was equivalent to the voyage of the "wolf pack" of submarines! An unaffordable luxury for resource-limited Germany.
Battleships against the shore
On December 26, 1943, the last battle of battleships died down in European waters: a British squadron led by the battleship Duke of York sank the German Scharhorst in the battle at Cape Norkap.
From that moment on, the Axis battleships were inactive. The battleships of the Royal Navy switched to performing routine tasks - covering the landing forces and shelling enemy fortifications on the coast.
The landing in Sicily (summer 1943) was largely without the support of heavy naval guns: five British battleships had to open fire on the coast only twice. But all subsequent landings and coastal operations were carried out with the direct participation of ships of the line.
The landing in Normandy was covered by 7 British and American battleships - Wospite, Rammills, Rodney, Nelson and their overseas counterparts - Texas, Arkansas and Nevada, with the support of heavy cruisers and British monitors with 15-inch guns!
Here are brief excerpts from their combat work:
Both battleships and the monitor focused their fire on the fortified batteries of Villerville, Benerville, and Houlgate. By 9.30 a.m. the batteries fell silent and did not open fire in the following days, although they were in very strong concrete fortifications. On June 6, Worspeight fired at the Villeville battery six times, fired 73 shells and achieved 9 direct hits.
On June 7, "Rodney" came into operation. Worspeight fired at various targets, including the Benerville battery. Since the beginning of the landing, he fired three hundred and fourteen 381-mm shells (133 armor-piercing and 181 high-explosive), and in the evening of the same day he went to Portsmouth to replenish ammunition. Rodney and Nelson continued to fire at enemy targets, and Ramilles was sent to support the Allied landings in southern France.
Worspight returned on June 10 and was ordered to support the American foothold in the west of the landing area. The battleship fired 96 381-mm shells at four targets and received gratitude from the American command.
Worspight came to the British sector at Arromanches. Here he used artillery to repel the enemy's counterattack in the zone of action of the 50th British division. In the evening of the same day, the battleship returned to Portsmouth, and from there left for Rosyth to change the worn out gun barrels.
And here is a story from the series "Yankees against the coastal batteries of Cherbourg":
The battleship "Nevada" in 12 hours 12 minutes opened fire from a 356 mm gun at a target located 5 km south-west of Kerkeville. Shooting was corrected from the shore, and the shells fell exactly on the target. At 1229 hours a message came from the shore: "You are hitting the target." After another 5 minutes, when the Nevada fired 18 shots, they reported from the shore: “Good fire. Your shells smoke them. " 25 minutes after the start of the shelling, at 12:37 pm, a new message arrived: "They show a white shield, but we have learned not to pay any attention to it, keep firing.".
The battleships' large-caliber guns proved to be the only effective means against well-fortified coastal forts, armored bunkers and batteries. It was unreasonably difficult, expensive, and often impossible to call bomber aircraft with concrete-piercing bombs and "Tallboys" every time.
40 years have passed, but the "New Jersey" continues to hit the guns and start up "Tomahawks"
The ship's artillery was distinguished by its mobility and short reaction time: within a few minutes after receiving the request, the point with the indicated coordinates was covered by a volley of heavy shells. The battleships' gunshots gave confidence to the landing forces and demoralized the personnel of the German units.
In the absence of an enemy equal in strength at sea, the battleships of Great Britain and the United States have established themselves as excellent assault equipment. Their guns "smeared" any target in the range of their fire, moreover, the thick-skinned monsters themselves were hardly susceptible to the return fire of coastal batteries. They leveled enemy positions to the ground, smashed bunkers and bunkers, covered troops and mine-sweeping ships working near the coast.
Bathroom in the admiral's cabin of the battleship museum USS Iowa (BB-61)
In memory of the journey of F. D. Roosevelt aboard a battleship across the Atlantic
On the high seas, they were used in the form of powerful air defense platforms to cover squadrons and aircraft carrier formations, they were used as VIP transport for the highest officials of the state (Roosevelt's journey on board the battleship Iowa to the Tehran-43 conference) and similar tasks where they were required excellent security, lethal artillery and a monumental appearance.
Battleship - the weapon of the victors
Battleships are ineffective against an opponent of equal strength. Farewell volleys at Cape North Cape and in the Surigao Strait became the "swan song" of the battleship fleet. Together with the Scharnhorst and Yamashiro, all the outdated concepts of naval battles developed in the first half of the twentieth century disappeared into oblivion.
The situational awareness of a battleship is too low compared to an aircraft. And any submarine will many times surpass the battleship in stealth and overall rationality of warfare at sea. By the end of World War II, the battleship survived only as a means of fire support. A highly offensive weapon for devastating coastal shelling.
It is this that largely explains the failures of the Italian, German and Japanese battleships. In the current conditions, they could not reveal their potential and turned out to be of little use.
There is no story sadder than the story of Yamato and Musashi
The largest non-aircraft-carrying ships in history were unable to inflict significant harm on the enemy and were ineptly lost under the attacks of enemy aircraft.
“These ships are reminiscent of the calligraphic religious scrolls that old people hang in their homes. They have not proven their worth. This is only a matter of faith, not reality … battleships will be useful to Japan in a future war as well as a samurai sword."
Admiral Yamamoto was well aware that in a future war, Japan would have no time for entertainment with shelling of coastal forts. The Imperial Navy will have to stealthily send "Tokyo Express" trains at night and flee during the day under the blows of superior enemy forces.
The age of battleships has come to a close, and the money spent on the construction of the Yamato and Musashi was worth spending in a different, more rational way.
Of course, from the position of our days it is obvious: regardless of the prophetic phrases and brilliant strategic moves of Isoroku Yamamoto, the war was lost already at the moment when the first bomb fell on Pearl Harbor. Reflections on building new aircraft carriers to replace super battleships are far from reality. Let's imagine for a moment that the Japanese built instead of the Yamato a couple of ships like the Soryu … And what would it give?
Aircraft carriers need modern aircraft and experienced pilots - which were nowhere to be found in sufficient numbers. Let's remember how the campaign on the Mariana Islands went (summer 1944): the ratio of air losses was 1:10, one of the Yankee pilots dropped the sacramental phrase about this: "Damn, this is like hunting for turkeys!"
The campaign in the Philippines ended even brighter and more tragically - the Japanese managed to "scrape together" a total of 116 aircraft for 4 aircraft carriers (moreover, the Japanese pilots did not have the proper experience, and their aircraft was inferior to American aircraft in all performance characteristics). The once proud Kido Butai was given a humiliating role … as a decoy for US aircraft carrier groups. The main blow was to be delivered by the cruising forces and battleships.
In addition, aircraft carrier ships had extremely low survivability and sometimes died from being hit by just one bomb or torpedo - a critical drawback in the conditions of the enemy's numerical superiority. Unlike protected cruisers and battleships, which could go for hours under the attacks of the Americans (for example, Takeo Kurita's squadron).
Either way, the Japanese super battleships were built. Participated in the battle. Demonstrated excellent survivability. The battleships and their crews held out to the last drop of blood, fulfilling their duty to the end.
The Japanese leadership is deservedly reproached for the incorrect use of these ships - they should have been thrown into battle earlier. For example, under Midway. But who knew that everything would turn out so sadly for the Japanese … pure coincidence.
Yamato and Musashi could have played an important role under Guadalcanal. But human frugality intervened: the leadership of all fleets had a tendency to keep their most powerful, secret weapon for the "general battle" (which, of course, would never happen).
It was not necessary to classify unique ships like this, but it was necessary, on the contrary, to turn them into a powerful PR project to intimidate the enemy. Shocked by the Yamato's main caliber (460 mm), the Americans would have rushed to build their super battleships with 508 mm guns - in general, it would be fun.
Alas, the battleships were thrown into battle too late, when there were no more tricks and tactical moves left. And yet, the moral aspect of the Yamato and Musashi's combat careers surpassed all others, turning the ships into legends.
The Japanese still cherish the memory of their Varyag, the battleship Yamato, which, in fact, went out alone against eight aircraft carriers and six battleships of the 58th US Navy Task Force. The spirit and pride of a nation is built on such stories.
Museum of Military Glory "Yamato" in Kure
