The Tirpitz

[eddieballgame]

New to this impressive looking game & much to learn.
Question for the experts; can the German battleship The Tirpitz (or something close to it) be built in this sim?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_battleship_Tirpitz

Also, here is an excellent documentary.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Exst44CyG0&t=6s

[Squarehead]

There's always a bit of interpretation involved recreating IRL ships in game (RtW mercifully does not try and capture the true complexity of armour and machinery layouts), but you can get pretty close.
This is a possible Tirpitz with 1935 tech. (note game displacement ~ full load displacement for a ship like this)

Tirpitz.png (86.86 KiB) Viewed 1534 times

Looking at it again I should have unselected unit machinery, but close enough for government work.
The superstructure is the game's template for the Bismark class - I didn't edit the visuals at all.

[eddieballgame]

Very nice & thank you for this.

[Searry]

That kind of ship is terrible in RTW3 though as was of course the Bismarck class in real life so that is simulated as well.

[asday9]

That kind of ship is terrible in RTW3 though as was of course the Bismarck class in real life so that is simulated as well.

May I ask why? I'm new to the game, this looks like a normal Battleship to me

[Searry]

That kind of ship is terrible in RTW3 though as was of course the Bismarck class in real life so that is simulated as well.

May I ask why? I'm new to the game, this looks like a normal Battleship to me

Low deck armor and the turrets only have 2 guns which is really bad.

[cwemyss]

Specifically...

- Twin turrets are weight-inefficient, you could probably have 9 guns (3x3) for very little more weight than an 8-gun 4x2 layout.

- Thin deck armor means high vulnerability to long range plunging fire (very much the norm by the 1940s) and even more so to bombs.

And, to paraphrase Drachinifel... "How many AA guns do we need? ALL the AA guns." However many it has, it's not enough.

[EwaldvonKleist]

That kind of ship is terrible in RTW3 though as was of course the Bismarck class in real life so that is simulated as well.

May I ask why? I'm new to the game, this looks like a normal Battleship to me

1) It does not have DP secondary guns. Granted, this is somewhat cutting edge and 6in DP guns may not be researched in 1940 ingame.
2) It has somewhat thin deck armour.
3) Turret layout is weight inefficient, triple or quadruple turrets better.
4) Calibre is ok but not good for displacement.

So as the IRL Bismarck, the ship is good for close range brawling in bad weather, as you will often see in the North Sea, but not optimised for clear weather fighting at larger distances.

[hossjww30]

The Bismarck class designers chose the 4x2 turret main gun layout for two reasons:
- it simplified fire control (not sure this is relevant in the game)
- if a luck shot were to take out a turret you only lose 25% of main firepower vs. 33% in a 3x3 layout

[EwaldvonKleist]

The Bismarck design gets a lot of criticism.
I think if you consider the ship as a big North Atlantic commerce raider usually operating alone or with only cruiser escort rather than a classical battleship for long range gunfights in the battle line, the design makes more sense.

Battleship for fight in line of battle: Losing one of two quadruple turrets is not a big loss, since the battleline has 12 of them.

Battleship operating alone in raiding: Losing one of two quadruple turrets is very bad, since there are only two of them and one direction is now completely uncovered-->even heavy cruisers can attack from this direction in pursuit.

But imho the Bismarck is not a good design for the "RtW meta".

[hossjww30]

The Bismarck sunk the Hood in less than 10 minutes and could have taken out Prince of Wales too if Lutjens wanted to. Two British battleships against one and she kicked both their asses and you are saying it's not a good design?

[Searry]

The Bismarck sunk the Hood in less than 10 minutes and could have taken out Prince of Wales too if Lutjens wanted to. Two British battleships against one and she kicked both their asses and you are saying it's not a good design?

This is a common misunderstanding. In the grand scheme of things this isn't a huge achievment.

[EwaldvonKleist]

The Bismarck was brand new and had a high displacement, so in a one on one ship on ship role she had to be at least decent at this point. The question is not if she was a good battleship compared to other battleships existing at the time (she absolutely was), but if she was an efficient design utilising the 50k of loaded displacement well.

Don't forget Hood was 20 years old with outdated armour scheme, the destroying hit was a bit lucky and Prince of Wales was working up with shipyard personnel still on board.
(I am from Germany, so this is not RN copium )

[varsovie]

If I am not mistaken PoW still had engineers on board because its electronic fire control was basically untested and did fail during battle, she couldn't "aim" properly. She was rushed out of shakdown to answers a very urgent threat, if my memory serves well she was 2 months early on planned active duty.

She was 100% operational when she was sent to Singapore with a decent captain but an oldgard admiral that didn't believe in long ranged torpedo bombers...

[brucesim2003]

1) It does not have DP secondary guns. Granted, this is somewhat cutting edge and 6in DP guns may not be researched in 1940 ingame.
2) It has somewhat thin deck armour.
3) Turret layout is weight inefficient, triple or quadruple turrets better.
4) Calibre is ok but not good for displacement.

So as the IRL Bismarck, the ship is good for close range brawling in bad weather, as you will often see in the North Sea, but not optimised for clear weather fighting at larger distances.

1) This is a complaint I see often. However, only 2 navies used DP secondaries in significant numbers, the USN, and the RN. The Dunkerque class did as well. However, the vast bulk of navies in WW2 didn't use DP secondaries. Why is the Bismarck class criticised for this, but not the Yamato class? Or the Littorio class? The Richelieu class? You get my drift? It sounds to me like this issue is reserved for 'bash the evil nazis'.

2) Yes, it is a bit thin, but it is adequate for the type of battle it was designed to fight, I.E. close range 'in your face' brawling.

3) the Germans almost never used triples. The Scharnhorst class and the various light cruisers were an aberration. And other navies had lots of troubles with triples and quads. The Nelson class took years to get theirs working properly, as did the KGV's.

4) The Bismarck class were a political symbol that could not be delayed. Hence, you use the guns you have. The Scharnhorst class had 11" guns for the same reason. And if you watch this the difference between the German 15" vs the USA 16" was a lot smaller than people realise.

[EwaldvonKleist]

Fair points. I think much of the Bismarck criticism is a reply to the "pop culture Bismarck hype/mythos".

[WLRoo]

4) The Bismarck class were a political symbol that could not be delayed. Hence, you use the guns you have. The Scharnhorst class had 11" guns for the same reason. And if you watch this the difference between the German 15" vs the USA 16" was a lot smaller than people realise.

If you ignore the fact that the Germans used lightweight shells. The British 14" Mk VII fired a shell only slightly lighter than the 800kg shell of the SK 38cm gun. The US 16" gun on the other hand fired a shell weighing over 1,200kg - some 50% heavier.

British experience from the 16" Mk I was that lightweight shells simply weren't all that good.

Note that the Scharnhorst class were intended to be up-gunned to 38cm SKs but that became a casualty of war.