Scharnhorst vs Alaska

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In the early part of the war both the Germans and Japanese had night vision training/goggles/binoculars and I don't think the allies were aware of this. They were able to exploited the allied lack of night vision and won a number of naval encounters due to this superiority. I don't think the Japanese were well versed in Radar prewar and the Germans due to their strategic situation preferred avoiding active radar to preserve their limited numbers and enhance the advantage of surprise in naval clashes mid war. The Germans also had long range passive sonar that allowed warships to detect enemy convoys and battle groups at significant distances. The trouble is it takes good training to be able to rely on such passive technology. As I pointed out what radar they developed , was to be used for fire control after battle is joined.

One can scoff at this doctrinal approach but 'emcon' or naval radar silence was religion during the cold war. It was the only way to survive.

If you are the allies with lots of warships and already have aircraft carriers with lots of search planes, you already have the remote standoff searching you need to press an offensive naval warfare, leaving your warships to use radar as defensive screens. without much risk of counter attack. That's obvious!

Germany lacked these assets even though their 1928 defense plans envisaged the development of an aircraft carrier in the early 1930s. They could never afford to match the allies in numbers, so they had to choose another doctrinal path.
 
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The general problem to USN radars in Salomons was the ground returns from nearby islands. USN had visualized open sea encounters not fighting in archipelago before the war. And the specific problem IMHO was personilized to Adm. Callaghan, I might be too harsh but IMHO to put ex- Presidental aide to command a naval TF over an admiral with resent battle experience and a victorious one, wasn't a good policy. OK Callanghan had spent some times as a staff officer, was he Gromley's COS, after his aide duty but still lacked recent command and combat experience. And there was no experience as battle experience.

Juha
 
In fa c t USN obtained more advanced warning of japanese approaches in the night battles around Guadacanal, than the Japanese received advance warning of them. The breakdown in US performance in the Night battles was mostly about their poor tactical co-ordination of their gunlines and torpedo groups.


The Japanese, generally were the last to realiuze the presence of enemy forces, but their tactical co-rination and team work was so good, combined with the abilities of their Long Lance torpedoes that they were generqally able to more than compensate for any advantages that radar might give the USN.

Japanese night vision was good, and USN radar did suffer from reflections off land masses, however Japanese night vision was not so good as to outrange or out perform radar, and radar was not so downgraded in its performance as to be outperformed by the nonradar equipped Japanese scouts. But this advance warningt was usually not enough to compensate for the USN lack of night training and poor teamwork in these battles.

There were exceptions, to this, obviously, but as a general rule, radar performance was not the problem in the Guadacanal battles. It was training....
 
There were ground returns, there always are with land around, and it seemed it was always Savo Island. Enemy ships kept sailing behind it. The only accounts I am aware of where radar failed was in spotting I-26 on the surface just off a Guadalcanal beach and the fact that the Washington could not see over her stern – there was a blind spot there due to the radar installation. This latter problem, since South Dakota was following Washington, caused Washington some hesitation on which vessel to fire upon.
 
Both sources report that after this incident the Scharnhorst could not manage more than 22 knots , when she was able to manage 26-28knots earlier in the sea battle depending on the seas.
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To the official Royal Navy after action report, SH was first back to 22kn and 5 minutes later back to 26kn in a force 9.
This was plotted from Duke of York.

Im also very very skeptical, that it is possible to repair an impact or shrappnell impacts from a 14" shell at machinery spaces in 20 minutes.
 
I really dont know if SHs drop in speed was due to enamy action or a machinery failure. I would much prefer to think it was due to British action. The alternative is rather shabby really. If the loss of the ship and 1900 lives was due to machinery failure with no influence on that failure due to Allied fire, that casts a very poor light on German machinery and/or maintenance standards. That is a far worse outcome for the honour of the German Navy and/or the quality of its engineering than a mere defeat at sea. If the claim is true, that is, that the SH simply stopped for no obvious reason and not due to any allied action it means that a number of accusations can be levelled at the German Navy. At least some, or all of them must be true if this theory is correct:

The options to consider seem to be

1) German ships could not maintain their maximum design speed for long periods. In this regard they were demonstably inferrior to British ships, since the RN ships in this battle were all able to maintain high speed pursuits on the German, but the German could not maintain her high speed withdrawal

2) This was due to either poor engineering in the machinery of the ship, and/or poor maintenance standards by her crew. SH had just completed a refit just weeks before her last sortie, so time since last refit is not a valid reason for her machinery break down.

Either way, a breakdown of the SH machinery is a very serious indictment against KM competency in either basic maintenance and/or machinery design.

I would much prefer to believe the germans lost this ship due to superior firepower being brought to bear on the ship, and superior tactics being employed by the RN during the engagement. I say this mostly to protect KM reputations rather than any desire to bask in the allied victory.
 
At least in the Destroyers and Admiral Hipper cruisers the high pressure steam systems were known for multiple problems. Don't know how their reputation from Scharnhorst though.
 

Sorry but all is not black or white!

First nobody had said that the sudden speed lost of SH could not be through enemy firepower!
The whole issue is, if DoW had punched a 14" through the main armor deck of SH, that exploded in a boiler room!
For this version I'm and other people are very sceptical, through our explanations.
But it is more then possible that a 14" shell cut pipe tubes or a shock impact through a 14" snapped all pipe tubes shut! The same was happening at operation cebereus through a mine.
Also it could be a simple break down through the massive overpowering from 16:50 to 18:20!
SH had increased the range from 11920yards to 22000yards in 1 and half hour and was plotted from DoY constant 2.5 to 4.5kn faster as DoY in a force9!
She was running for life nothing else.
Also it is well known that the high pressure turbines of SH weren't reliable, she had problems with her machinery (boiler room 1) in every single mission of her life!

Next I don't know of any refit at 1943 please can you give a source for this claim?

And I think for a dead Soldier it is more then equal of what reason he has to die!
 
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For what it is worth,I was reading in the "see more" section of Alf Jacobsen's book, SCHARNHORST, on Amazon, and encountered the chapter 'Death off of North Cape'. Here he states that a 14 inch projectile burst in a boiler room, instantly killing all in the compartment save one. Maybe the problem was just the death of the black gang.
 
Sorry but all is not black or white!
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I agree

First nobody had said that the sudden speed lost of SH could not be through enemy firepower!
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Del suggested that one possibility was loss of power through simple engine room breakdown. He also suggested that it might be damage from near misses, but then says that DoY was not consistently styraddling the SH.....a necessary precondition for a near miss, or a hit.

The whole issue is, if DoW had punched a 14" through the main armor deck of SH, that exploded in a boiler room!
For this version I'm and other people are very sceptical, through our explanations.
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I agree, but that is not the sole claim that I was commenting on. One claim was that the SH had simply had a breakdown in her machinery, independant of enemy action. If so, that would bae a telling indictment of either the reliability and or state of maintenance of the ship.

But it is more then possible that a 14" shell cut pipe tubes or a shock impact through a 14" snapped all pipe tubes shut! The same was happening at operation cebereus through a mine.
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If the SH was being consistently straddled shock impacts as a theory becomes a very real possibility and a very reasonable explanation for her failure. But apparently she was not being straddled (though that is in direct odds to English versions of the battle), and had been hit just four times up to the time of the alleged engine room hit (and less if this was not a hit at all). So, either the ship was a very fragile piece of technology, or she was being hit and stradlled more times than is being admitted to.

You guys cannot have it both ways. Either the Scharnhorst and her crew were first class (which is what I believe to be the case), and was hit or near missed multiple times before being immobilised, with each hit having a substantial long term effect on her, or she was a dud ship hit only a few times, and immobilised because of her fragility and unreliability. I dont believe that to be the case for the SH.


All plausible and reasonable, but only serves to underline that just when her speed was most needed, her machinery failed her. One conclusion to draw from that is that her machinery was somewhat unreliable, either due to the design of the ship, or the level of maintenance being lavished on the ship.

There were no similar breakdowns of RN ships in this battle that I am aware of, and there were many more RN ships involved in the battle. The probability of an RN ship breaking down should be much higher......even the Destroyers were in the fight, wheras one of the reasons the german DDs were not was because of their poor seakeeping ability.

Also it is well known that the high pressure turbines of SH weren't reliable, she had problems with her machinery (boiler room 1) in every single mission of her life!
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Which confirms that she had a predisposition for machinery unrelaibility. It stands to reason that if the machinery is pushed, and the machinery is unreliable, the chances of a failure under conditions of forcing the machinery, in rough weather, are much higher. But what this also means, sadly, is that the ship was only capable of max power sea speeds for a limited time. This means also that her max sustained sea speed has to be re-evaluated. at what speed could she travel with minimal risk of machinery failure?

Next I don't know of any refit at 1943 please can you give a source for this claim?
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I have several, some offline, and a couple online. You can find them failry easily if you look.... She was fitted with her new aft radar on the 26th October and had undergone gunnery excercises to test the new radar in the Fjords with her Destroyers around that time. These are called work up excercises and are standard to any ship that has been through a refit period. What did surpise me is the speed that these work up drills were completed....about three days....which is very quick. Was her work up rushed and incomplete???

And I think for a dead Soldier it is more then equal of what reason he has to die!
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Not sure what you are getting at here. There were brave men on both sides in this battle, but I would prefer, from a German perspective that the ship was lost with all her capacities applied to the battle, rather than be lost due to some shabby mechanical failure that was not initially or directly the result of enemy action.
 

Hi I was just reading a similar discussion on another board about this very subject. While some claim the above reports, others report that the official speed noted was 22 knots.

http://warships1discussionboards.yuku.com/topic/18634/Renown-vs-S-G?page=28

Look at posts 270 and 274 and compare the time lines. Apparently no where do the RN reports claim 26knots after the major hit.

Also the Chief engineer in the "Scharnhorst" reported he could only manage 22 knots after this reported hit.

Also the weather reports in the sources suggest `moderate gale` with force 6-7 winds and `heavy swell`. This was the main explanation of the slow speeds of most warships. Initially the British Cruisers and destroyers could only make 24 knots due to the heavy seas, while the Germans DD could only do 25 knots.
 
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Much is possible, but what do we really know?

I have traced down eight machinery breakdowns in boiler room one on SCHARNHORST throughout her career. In fact, this single boiler room gave trouble sooner or later in each and every action: 1.) Northern patrol sortie, 2.) 3.)off Norway twice once in the RENOWN engagement then in the GOLRIOUS engagement -the latter despite the fact that the torpedo hit was astern of C turret nowhere close to boiler room 1 and in the aforementioned action no damage was induced to machinery)
4.) and 5.) During operation Berlin twice boiler room one had temporary loss of all power, 6.) in France it gave once trouble, this time through bomb damage of a near miss, 7.) in the channel dash boiler room one quite working after a mine hit and finally off North Cape 8.).

That´s not counting the problems faced in non-action services. Not sure why this happened to SCHARNHORST always, while her sistership GNEISENAU was free of these troubles, not sure why none of the other boiler rooms of SCHARNHOSRT was that trouble plagued. It may be just bad luck but that´s stretching the probability a bit.

A penetration at the acute angle is unlikely, projectiles regularely get deflected away from an even lightly armoured surface impacting at more than 74 deg and regularely get deflected off water impacting at more than 78 deg.
Friend Antonio Bonomi wrote to this problem:

"But at 18.00 the angle of the shell falling were around 20-21 degrees from back starboard side ( in absolute measurement versus azimut it would be 69-70 degrees which is 90-20= 70 degrees). Very interesting is to notice how this acute angle changed during the last part of the evaluation at 18.15-18.20. From Scharnhorst track on the official map you can see that HMS Duke of York was following every Scharnhorst course change as obvious too keep a good track record and gunnery solution.
With this logic in mind you can see that the course change to north Scharnhorst made at 18.21 on his track was followed by HMS DoY by a same course change made before her track point at 18.24 and Scharnhorst was still at 20 (or 70 degrees) angle at that point, as the distances were stable and increasing between teh 2 ships so as logic tell us the angle was becoming more acute, as Scharnhorst was sailing away faster than HMS Duke of York.
But suddendly as you can see the angle start increasing at 18.21 and Scharnhorst turned north, slowing down consistently as the angle between 18.21 and 18.24 becomes wider 28 or 62 degrees and immediately after as Harold correctly saw 90 or 0 so the Scharnhosrt now was receiving the shells directly from the stern as I have depicted down below on my example.
Now the point is, are those 20 degrees very acute angle at that distance that was surely more than 18.000 meters ( 180 hectometers ) increasing up to 19.500 meters ( 195 hectometers ) enough to have that falling 356 mm shell penetration were it has been reported ?
Remember that at 18.19 Adm Bey sent a radio message to SKL telling them it was under precise radar fire from more than 18.000 meters ( so the distance is proven ) and Scharnhorst was still sailinng at 26 knots on the rough sea, so her engines were OK at 18.19, apparently.
It seems to me that whatever has happened, it as immediately suddendly stopped Scharnhorst engines, as she broke down the speed very evidently as we can see, .... and again ... it seems no big explosions reported,..... no evident fire on board Scharnhorst noticed from that shells from British ships,... while about many other hits seen landing on board there was visible explosions and fire effects."

and further from his personal communication with Garzke:

"I have spoken personally a lot with Bill Garzke Junior about his book and this reported hit, a very interesting discussion.

The scheme I have created above is an elaboartion in line of concept from the official British Royal Navy battle map I have posted before.

All maps available on printed books are taken out of that Official colour map from Royal Navy I have posted a piece above.
The only ones I know that as published those in low quality on B/W was Winton on his book and Philippe Caresse.
Recently Grove published a book with those high quality coloured ones, much better.
Good information on witnesses reports are on Grove ( prisoner interrogations ) and Jacobsen recent book on 2003.

I will read them again tonight to see what I come out with, I was supposed to do this during my vacation on seaside next 2 weeks writing my new text, but I will anticipate this reading now due to this very interesting discussion going on here with you my friends.

If you check the angles and the relative course thacks of Scharnhorst and HMS Duke of York you will find those relative angles between the 2 ships that of course in reality were never parallel on course 90 of course, I have plotted that just to make it easier to everybody to understand how the shells were landing from the back on Scharnhorst, so with what type of angles.

What you wrote about the German survivors is very interesting and I know some statements already from translated documentaries I have on TV, so I knew their opinions about it.

So if you read carefully :

Matrosenobergefreiter Hubert Witte saw the speed recorder dropping from 29 to 22 knots at 18.20, "just after a shell hit amidships or aft".

Very interesting is the speed felt only from 29 to 22 knots and the fact that the hit was aft or amidships, so no center ship with a penetration, no big visible explosion.
Very important is that the reported time is exact with the KEY moment at 18.20.

than :

Oberbootsmannsmaat Willi Gödde felt a big shock in the ship which at once lost but later regained speed. He gives the time 17.00.

Very important correlation with a hit causing ship shock vibrations and consequently reducing Scharnhorst speed at ONCE ! ( guess why ?? ) and of course later Scharnhorst was going to regain speed, just as Chief Eng. Konig was saying to Hintze, ... '' 'The third turbine ceased to function because of a failure on the steam supply. The engine room staff worked desperately to repair the damage. The chief engineer reported that he hoped the breack would be repaired within 20 or 30 minutes. I heard Kpt Hintze say : Well done engine room. Officers and men, thank you for what you are doing. ''.'',.... so it seems same cause and effect on Scharnhorst machinery, .. and not a permanent damage like a shell penetration on a boiler room ( in fact some British reports talk about a shell cutting a steam pipe and not exploding into a boiler room ( ? ) , as nobody saw a big explosion that was going to be the logic consequence with permanent and very big damages ).

Matrosengefreiter Günter Sträter also felt a big shock and just afterwards he heard the message "torpedo hit boiler room No. one, spee 8 knots." the problem with that statement is that different authors give different times....

Thsi is another KEY report, as this Matrose Strater correlates the reduction from 22 down to 8 knots with a BIG SCHOCK that somebody thought it was a torpedo hit aside the hull, so NOT a shell into a boiler room and this caused he speed to go down to 8 knots.

As you can read yourself NO German survivor clearly talks about a direct shell hit into a boiler room with explosion reported on command bridge.

Now the British did not see that either although they noticed and wrote about many hit with flames and visible explosions before and after this ' potential one ', I think a hit like that would have caused a very visible result in terms of explosion and consequent fire onboard Scharnhorst, but nothing was seen and many were just carefully observing Scharnhorst thru binocular and rangefinders.

More, Adm Fraser was just ordering a turn south when somebody told him that the radar ( so no visible confirmation as I wrote as the hit was NOT observed by British ) was telling them that Scharnhorst was loosing speed."

Therefore I would guess that a shell hit is the cause of the drop in speed. But not a penetration through the hump but secondary effects, a splinter cutting a steam pipe or severed pipes over the armoured boiler gratings. These things, albeit not penetrating into the machinery spaces, can be really nasty events. It may also be a case of coincidence but I don´t believe in coincidence here. Boiler room one runs out of luck...
F.e. A shell explosion in the uptakes would cause severe, though non-permanent speed loss. When Yorktown had a 250kg bomb detonate in her funnel uptakes, Boiler rooms 2-6 had their fires extinguished and were filled with smoke, rooms 2 and 3 were completely disabled and room 1 had to be secured. Rooms 4, 5 and 6 were brought back online about a hour and twenty minutes after the hit. rooms 7, 8 and 9 were undamaged. Speed initially fell to six knots then she stopped 26 minutes later before eventually working up to 20 knots.
Sounds familar doesn´t it? No penetration was necessary to cause this effect in YORKTOWN and I guess an funnel uptake /base hit may be considered a possibility with more justification than a weird theory about impossible -for the event trajectories...
 
Hello Delcyros
I have difficulties to understand the logic, that because of RN didn't see the hit visually, after all it was the hit achieved at max distance during that battle, it must be happened on/over the armoured deck not under it. Personally I think it is easier to see an explosition on/over an armoured shell than inside it if the explosition isn't big enought to shatter the armoured shell.

Juha
 
For that to understand You have to know the results of the trials conducted on target ship HESSEN with regard to major calibre hits detonating inside a boilerroom which is operated with 75% load.

Superheated high pressure plants like those employed in ww2 are under constant pressure.
An 8 in APC detonating inside would wreck the boilers but the damage maybe repaired by means of the ships DC.
11in APC regularely destroyed the plants, lots of fuel fires -the plant may be repaired in a yard but not at sea.
15in APC regularely destroyed the plant irreperably, fuel fires, systemic damage and a new plant needs to be erected to replace the wreckage.

the british 14 AP shell has more HE than the german 15in, that's not repairable.

Bonomi doesn't say that not seeing the effect means there was no hit. But he lists all observations up together. Most important for this question are the testimonies of the survivors:
One spoke of a hit associated with shock amidships or aft
one spoke of schock through a torpedohit
two reported that boilerroom one was off and required 20-30 minutes to return to full power.
one speculated that splinters cut some piping.
none of them said, implied or indicated a penetration into one of the boiler rooms!
That's pure phantasie which is not backed by primary sources. Even the british interrogators believed that the damage was shock and / or splinter induced and represents a temporary loss of power instead of a penetration which would have permanently wrecked the machinery spaces.
 
Hello Delcyros
still I think that Bonomi's logic is off. Argumenting that because of RN didn't notice a hit so there was no hit penetrating inside the armoured shell but there was a hit that exploded outside the armoured shell sounds frankly very unconvincting to me.
IMHO more relevant than the Hessen test is the 15" hit into the Boiler Room 2 of Dunkerque, it wrecked the boiler which it hit and killed (explosion and the steam) all in the room but the other boiler in the room and all auxiliarities remained in full working order. Both Garzki Dulin and Winton write that speed dropped first but soon Sch. again picked up speed and achieved 22 knots because of good damage control work and crossconnecting. That is IMHO possible after a hit knocked out one BR out of 3. Now what really happened I don't know, IMHO hit into a BR, hit bursting above BRs, hit bursting near BRs and disabling temporary some overworking boilers etc are all possible scenarios.

Juha
 
Would You mind going into the trouble to explain the problem You have with it?
Had it been so- the disagreement beeing because of observation then I could agree but You miss the multiple, independent lines of sensibg the problem, or so I understand You.

Remember, what Garzke and Dulin wrote about the trajectory is fiction, it's not based on primary sources but on a thinking how a projectile at that distance could penetrate into this boilerroom.
This level of reasoning is called 'speculation'.
Someone turned that into a probable hit later and successive authors made a certain penetration out of the case without ever questioning the thesis until the norwegian and german military conducted a simulation based on radar positions of the ships (the very simulation that helped to finally find the wreckage).
Garzke and Dulin didn't analysed the target angle to death but were concerned about how such a penetration could have been possible at this range. Obviously the hump was id'ed as a possibility.the problem is that at 18.00 already the TA was 70 deg and it increased in the following 20 minutes further.
You don't hit the hump with 75 deg cause You cannot penetrate deep enough to hit it.
 
I don't have a problem with Delcyros explanation. Shrapnel cutting the steam hoses through the boiler hump works for me anyway.

Delcyros I don't understand the post 152. It looks lengthy and refers to other people [Harold?]. Are these passages from another forum or thread?

Also I noted from Garzke and Durlin, that the boilers built for the Scharnhorst where by a different manufacture than those on Gneisenau . Also the Gneisenau output was less than Scharnhorst [154,000hp compared to 163,400hp] and the top speed is lower [30.7 vs. 31.65knots]. Since the tremendous increase in power and speed was are result of the new super heated steam plants, a similar plant built to less demanding level, ought to be more reliable?
 
@ psteel



All 4 german BB's had Wagner boilers

Gneisenau had 3 turbines from Krupp- Germania, Scharnhorst had 3 turbines from Dschimag-Bremen and Bismarck and Tirpitz had 3 turbines from Blohm Voss. All had Wagner boilers.

Bismarck, Tirpitz and Gneisenau had curtis wheels at the turbines, Scharnhorst didn't have curtis wheels.

The strange thing is, that all classes of ships after 1934 had different boiler-types.
All BB's had the type Wagner boilers.
The Hipper-Class had type Wagner-La Mont boilers.
And Destroyers had Wagner types and Benson types boilers, the Benson type boilers were only at the first class Typ 34 und 34 A.

http://books.google.de/books?id=PsT...wBw#v=onepage&q=Wagner-La-Mont-Kessel&f=false
 
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Hello Delcyros
To me the following is illogical:
Very interesting is the speed felt only from 29 to 22 knots and the fact that the hit was aft or amidships, so no center ship with a penetration, no big visible explosion….Now the British did not see that either although they noticed and wrote about many hit with flames and visible explosions before and after this ' potential one ', I think a hit like that would have caused a very visible result in terms of explosion and consequent fire onboard Scharnhorst, but nothing was seen and many were just carefully observing Scharnhorst thru binocular and rangefinders…More, Adm Fraser was just ordering a turn south when somebody told him that the radar ( so no visible confirmation as I wrote as the hit was NOT observed by British ) was telling them that Scharnhorst was loosing speed…Therefore I would guess that a shell hit is the cause of the drop in speed. But not a penetration through the hump but secondary effects, a splinter cutting a steam pipe or severed pipes over the armoured boiler gratings…

Because the writer seems to believe that it is much easier to observe far away an explosion inside armoured shell of a big ship than outside of it. Also in heavy seas ships heave constantly so the exact angle of the incoming shell relative to ships structures is difficult to estimate afterwards if the target is lost with very few survivors. So we all speculate and it is very difficult to say anything definite. That if the examination of the wreck didn't relieve anything definite proofs,

Juha
 

Thanks Don.
Yes thats right . I meant the turbines. I gather that Germany didn't have the metalurgy to handle these high temperature/high pressure engine types.

According to Groner , the Benson boilers were particulary bad and those early DD that had them , got replacements built in 1940?
 
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