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the salvo that sank HMS Hood was a 1 in a million shot which had anything been different it likely wouldn't have hit were it did I'd recommend this video by Drachinfel which goes into more detail of how HMS Hood sank th-cam.com/video/CLPeC7LRqIY/w-d-xo.html
Tirpitz and Bismarck were arguably the only Super Heavy Battlecruisers built, though due to their weight, they were mostly referred to as battleships. The only British ships with comparable firepower had much lower speed and armour. The only British ships with comparable armour had less firepower and lower speed. The only British ships with comparable speed had less firepower and armour. Basically meant Bismarck could defeat any single opponent it faced and his first, and only, kill was the flagship of the British Home Fleet. Unfortunately, he also sank the flagship of the Home Fleet. Bismarck was hounded by the Home Fleet until his rudder was disabled by a Fairey Swordfish (underappreciated but stable anti ship platforms) launched by a RN aircraft carrier. He was bombarded by the guns of the persuing RN battleships. Ultimately though, he was scuttled by his crew after his armour began to fail. Tirpitz fares even worse; it had to hide in a Norwegian fjord until it was ultimately split in half by the largest and most powerful conventional weapon ever built, bigger even than the current US MOAB. Bismarck and Tirpitz were extremely capable, very expensive and in the end, they contributed more to the German defeat than anything they did to help them succeed.
The Kreigsmarine was massively outclassed by the RN. The entire German navy combined was about half as powerful as a single British fleet. The ONLY navy the Germans could compete with was the French. It was pointless challenging the Royal Navy.
i'll try to answer a couple of your questions as best i can: the RAF and the royal navy while separate entities, were always pretty much tied together when it came to sea based engagements, the royal navy has its own air force called the fleet air arm, they now consist mainly of helicopters and other support vehicles, they do have 1 type of attack jet vehicle the F-35, but the FAA as a whole is significantly diminished compared to what it used to be way back when. in terms of the size, an aircraft carrier back then was very small (relatively speaking) in comparison to say a battle cruiser or battleship, because back then you would have a flagship in the formation flanked by supporting cruisers and aircraft carriers as well as other ships if the convoy was big enough, whereas today the scales have tipped to where you have 1 gargantuan aircraft carrier as the flagship vessel surrounded and supported by multiple battleships and cruiser etc, because of precisely the thing you identified, the aerial superiority of planes, which is where most warfare occurs these days. likely part of the reason they never test fired the guns of the Bismarck is due to the severe shortage of materials for making munitions and so they were to only use them in actual combat situations, even during training and test operations, most of the time there was never any actual munitions used it was all just decoy items and using callouts etc. in terms of the actual battle of the Atlantic, there's 2 schools of thought on the significance of the battle, there's one side that believes it was one of the most pivotal battles of the war and there's others who believe that even if the Bismarck had succeeded in its mission it wouldn't have changed the overall outcome of the war, i'm personally in the camp that believes it to have been a pivotal battle that shaped the war and the overall outcome but there's arguements for both sides. the band member featured in this video was Pär, the bassist for the band, in terms of the music video there's several keys things to be aware of, the actual fighting between the different ships is almost 100% historically accurate both in terms of how it is portrayed, but also the overall outcome of the battle, also, the man who was at the helm of the little boat the band were playing on is the son of the surviving crewman of the Bismarck who was given the compass pocketwatch by the commanding officer and it is a family heirloom, the one used in the video is a fake and just a prop but the real thing does exist. as a little bit of general trivia, the resting place of both the Bismarck and the Tirpitz are considered war graves and protected under law, only a small handful of people actually know the true location of the Bismarck, and the man who found it initially is the same person who also first found the wreck of the Titanic, Robert Ballard.
And that's why my lady, you should react to the greatest raid of all by Jeremy Clarkson.... The raid has to do with the bismarcks sister ship, the Tirpitz...
Originally the army and the navy had their own air arm, the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Service. In 1918 they were amalgamated and became the Royal Air Force. The Fleet Air Arm was formed in 1924, but remained under RAF control until 1939. That is why Britain, which led the world in aircraft carrier innovation, had the poorest carrier-borne aircraft of all the major powers. While the FAA was under RAF control, research and development on naval aviation took second place to land-based fighters and bombers.
Also back then, battleships were seen as the main naval killer, aircraft carrier were not seen as anything, but support. Only when the Japanese woke up the world at Pearl did people start looking at carriers differently.
The Royal Navy was responsible for a number of breakthroughs in naval aviation, including the first full length fight deck (HMS Argus 1918), the angled flight deck, steam catapults, optical landing systems and ski-jump ramp. With the demise of the Sea Harrier in 2006 the Royal Navy no longer operates its own fixed wing aircraft owing to cost, but the RAF now fly the F-35B from the two RN aircraft carriers although some of the pilots are still RN aviators.
The Germans had incredibly bad luck running into the Swedish cruiser Gotland when they passed the Swedish west coast. She was possibly the only ship in the Swedish navy at the time with ultra low frequency communications radios fitted (the radio waves don't travel very far so very good for ship to ship communications without being detected) this meant that the Swedish ship could pick up the Zig-Zag instructions from the German flagship to the squadron and follow them more easily.
Unlucky? New analysis has shown that if the Hood hadn't been in a turn she would have survived the hit. In fact they think the shell actually missed and she was hit below the normal water line. See here for an explanation th-cam.com/video/CLPeC7LRqIY/w-d-xo.html& . An explosion would have been impossible had she not turned into the plunging shell and with a speed of 26 knots creating a trough in the waves two thirds down the port side and a list to port where the shell hit just below the 4inch armour and just above the torpedo blisters. We know she was in a tight turn because of the rudder position on the wreck and the flag signal 2 RED sent to the Prince of Wales. Meaning Turning 20 degrees to port. Further bad luck on Vice Admiral Holland's part was the intention to engage the Bismarck at dawn, so that Bismarck fired into darkness whilst Hood fired into the lightening sky. It failed because Suffolk lost contact during the night and Bismarck wasn't in the position she was thought to be. The situation was reversed and Hood was firing into darkness (effectively North North West 0600hrs) with only the two foreword turrets able to engage. She was trying to turn to enable the two aft turrets to engage when the explosion occurred. They never fired a shot. The lead ship was Prinz Eugen and misidentified as the Bismarck. The Hood's crew was unable to identify her because of the darkness and Hood fired on her first.
@@bastik.3011 If you are talking about the poor sods (excluding the maniac Nazi captain and his Japanese equivalent) I agree ... but the Bismarck was sent out by a Nazi tyrant to defeat Britain before the USA could be persuaded to join in the war ... if that had happened the world, your world wherever you are, woulkd have been a nastier place than it is now
@@JohnGrayOnline i totally agree even for me the world would be worse. And i am German. I am just saying that most soldiers during ww2 were just fighting for their country even some in the Nazi Party were in it out of fear or peer pressure. Was the Wehrmacht clean? No not at all but neither was any big army in the war
Its important to understand the despair of the British people and the need for positive news early in the war. Things did not go well in France - Dunkirk was a salvation from disaster, but marked failure nevertheless. People had little faith left in the strength of the British Army. The Royal Air Force fought on after the defensive Battle of Britain - struggling to keep the enemy from the door at huge losses of aircrew, planes and after massive damage to British cities and morale. The public still trusted that the Royal Navy was strong and could protect against invasion and keep supply lines open. The "Mighty Hood" had been the RN flagship - largest warship in the world for 20 years, well known to the public. When Bismark sunk Hood so quickly with only 3 survivors - protecting convoys was the clear practical reason to command: "Sink the Bismark", but beyond that - restoring some of the public's faith in the Navy was also massively important for morale - dark days indeed.
From what I recall, wasn't the Hood also consdered to be completely unsinkable and the Bismarck literally sank it in a couple of volleys? I remember there was a huge part of it that they had no choice but to actually hunt it down while they knew where it was, because if they didn't at that point and it had time to regroup with the main German fleet, it was so powerful that it's believed it would have potentially brought an end to the war as it would have crippled supply lines across the Allied front.
@@Grigeral No - I don’t think Hood was ever considered unsinkable in term of armor - it was more lightly armored than typical battleships. When built it was faster and had bigger guns than any other ship - which made it practically dominant. But in time other ships got faster and better armed and due to maintenance issues Hood got slower and therefore more vulnerable. Lax magazine anti-flash procedures may have been the biggest cause ultimately. Hood was at the end of its life and Bismarck brand new - that usually doesn't go well for the old ship. Bismarck was good but it was not "war winningly" good as you seem to think. In the grand scheme of things: Hood was the flagship of the biggest navy in the world for 20 years and Bismarck was sunk on its first outing - sounds like a quite different story...
@@alanmoore2197 It's less that I think it war winning in the sense of it being so far beyond anything else. I just recall a number of different views stating that it was lucky to have been caught 'when' it was. The issue was that the only ship the Bismarck had with it was the Prince Eugen. If the German navy had played things out differently and actually pulled back more of the fleet to support it on its maiden voyage, then it would have been a very different story. Considering that it took almost 2 hours to sink it once it was finally cornered and the only ship being fired on, I'd say it could have certainly had a big impact if it had managed to join the main fleet.
@@Grigeral It was a good large modern ship with excellent armor, guns and with a well trained crew. I don’t think it was particularly remarkable beyond that. The Royal Navy would have hunted it down either way - they had the advantage of massive scale - that scale rather than individual capability doomed the Bismarck either way. Yes if it broke out it could have rampaged for a bit - but that would not have altered the war’s outcome.
Also there was really not much of an effective capital fleet available to sail with... Tirpitz (bigger than Bismarck) was busy in the Baltic, Gneisenau and Scharnhorst were under repair after battle damage, Blücher had been sunk, Admiral Hipper was in overhaul, Admiral Graf Spee had been scuttled.
Guns. Naval guns are huge and powerful. The shells weigh a ton each and the guns fling them twenty miles. The recoil and blast frequently causes strain and damage to the ship when it fires them. The gun barrel's also have a limited life before wear reduces accuracy, 150 rounds or so. That being so, I'm not surprised Bismark didn't spend time lobbing shells to see how they worked.
Richtig. Also you can't fire them for testing purposes as long as the ship is not launched into water; the recoil could not be absorbed and would damage the turrets after just one salvo.
An interesting note is that Bismarck failed to hit any of the Swordfish torpedo bombers that attacked it. It was discovered that, because Bismarck's anti-aircraft systems had been designed with modern aircraft speeds in mind, the Swordfish flew so slowly that Bismarck's AA guns couldn't aim slowly enough to hit them.
imagine the most modern class of ship gets defeated by ww1 bi-planes just because they were so inferior that it surprised the ship crew and they weren't able to hit them 💀
Fun fact, British Aircraft carrier during WW2 had armored deck, while US carriers had wooden deck. HMS Indefatigable was once hit by a kamikaze on the flight deck with it's bomb detonating as well, a USN Liaison Officers on HMS Indefatigable commented: (When a kamikaze hits a US carrier, it’s six months repair at Pearl. In a Limey (British) carrier it’s a case of “sweepers, man your brooms”.”) 37 (45) minutes after being hit by a Kamikaze, HMS Indefatigable started flight operation again.
Disabled by Fairey Swordfish, biplanes. We also took out St.Nazaire dry Dock as it was the only Dock large enough to accommodate her. The raid on St.Nazaire is worth a look. They are roundels, the Royal Navy have the fleet Air arm. The Bismark was 11 metres bigger than Ark Royal, so not a lot of difference in size.
Don`t laugh about the Swordfishs...They are string bags...but those planes hit the Italian Fleet at Taranto in a night action...which inspires the Japanese Navy to try that trick...at Pearl Harbor. I can not emphasise this enough go watch Drachinifel`s channel...he has an entire episode dedicated to Carrier development up to the end of WW2
Even the designers of the Bismarck didn’t expect swordfish plans to attack. The targeting equipment on the Bismarck could be set for the low speed of Swordfish plans.
@@johnsimmons5951 Like many other aircraft that had a canvas skin, the ammo from small and medium AA guns didn't get enough resistance to trigger the fuse when they hit. That was also a contributing factor as the small and medium guns was more suited to target the slow flying aircraft.
The Japanese apparently learnt from the destruction of the Italian fleet at Taranto by the Royal Navy. The Japanese would sink H.M.S Repulse and the Prince of Wales within an hour of each other steaming on their way to Singapore.
@@chrisholland7367 Yeah the IJN used the experience from Taranto... Not at Singapore, but the attack on Pearl Harbor! The americans luck was that a few days earlier the Carriers went out, while the fleet of WWI era battleships still were in place. If the carriers had been present there too, the war might have looked a little different.
@@andreaspedersen3952 I suggested that the IJN used those tactics on the British battle ships HMS Prince of Wales and Repulse not directly at Singapore itself ensuring their would be no support for the garrison.
Battleships had been the biggest ships and main force of navies since the advent of the ironclad, in the late 19th century. It had been a constant development, with better armor, bigger guns, more powerful engines. Aircraft carriers had only begun their career, when the battleships were at the absolute height of their power. The change in size demonstrates the shift in importance. The first series of US carriers - the Yorktown class - massed about 20,000 tons. The next class, the mainstay of the carrier fleet in WW2, the Essex-class, came in at 27,000 tons. The following class, the Midway-class, was designed during the war. Up to that point, the USA had always limited her capital ships to the maximum size that could pass the Panama canal. The Iowa-class battleships were about the top of that limit. During the war, this limit was dropped, and the next class of battleships - designated Montana-class - were to have been at about 55,000 tons or more. They were never build. The plan was dropped, and in their stead were build the Midway carriers, at about the same mass. The aircraft carrier had surpassed the battleship for good.
germany did try to build an aircraft carrier called the "Graf Zeppelin" (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_aircraft_carrier_Graf_Zeppelin ) but resources went short so the project was never finished.
Another great video. The Royal Navy does have its own aircraft wing, (Fleet Air Arm) which operates from aircraft carriers (and other ships and bases), there is also the Army Air Corps. The Swordfish planes actually attacked HMS Sheffield by mistake first.
19:52 Fun fact about HMS Rodney. Rodney was one of the Nelson-class battleships. This class was unique for having all three main turrets in front of the superstructure. This layout was very similar to Royal Navy oil tankers, another similarity being the use of a single funnel. Such ships always had names that ended in "-ol". As a result, the Nelson-class ships quickly recveived the nicknames "Nelsol" and "Rodnol".
I may be misremembering, but I believe both the Dunkerque-class and Richelieu-class battleship s also had all forward main armaments, although they were distributed in 2 quad turrets rather than 3 triples.
My mum used to work with a guy who was on the Rodney. He said that when the Bismark had stopped firing, as many men as could be spared were allowed topsides to see her. He recalled that there was no cheering and the mood was sombre. Somebody said "poor bastards" quietly and everyone was thinking things along the lines of "there but for the grace of God go I..." Sailors have a common bond, whatever their flag. The Bismark definitely wasn't the biggest or most powerful battleship ever (the commentary is a little overblown in places) and she had some questionable design features that can cause an argument even today. She was certainly top-tier though, capable of doing plently of damage and worth treating with a healthy respect. To give you an idea of where she stood: Main gun batteries: Bismark: 8 x 15 inch guns Hood: 8 x 15 inch guns (this was the standard British battleship armament until the naval treaties of the '20s and '30s started screwing around with things). Prince of Wales and King George V: 10 x 14 inch guns (they went down to 14" in anticipation of a naval treaty that never got signed) Rodney: 9 x 16 inch guns USS New Jersey: 9 x 16 inch guns (standard US battleship armament by the end of WWII) IJN Yamoto (Japanese): 9 x 18 inch guns (that's the heaviest gun battery ever put to sea)
@@rcrawford42 It was far from being the biggest ship of any kind or even the biggest warship. It was the biggest _battleship_ ever bult in terms of displacement and gun calibre, but the US Iowa class were 20 feet longer due to a different hull design. Taffy 3 didn't win by being more powerful than the IJN fleet they faced. What happened was that the ferocity of Taffy 3's defence, combined with some inaccurate intelligence reports, conviced the Japanese admiral that he was facing a much more powerful US fleet than he was, hence his decision to disengage. If he'd known the true position and decided to press on, Taffy 3 would have been annihilated, however bravely they fought.
Since you're from Memphis, the next Sabaton song you should do is called "82nd All The Way." It's about Tennessee native Sergeant York, and Tennessee is mentioned a lot in the song.
Thank you for a really great reaction to both the Sabaton History and the music video on Bismarck. I really enjoyed the format you had that you started with the history lesson and after that watched the official music video. It helped a lot (even though I seen both before) to understand the music video and seeing all the small details explained in the history lesson. The band member in the history channel is Pär, the bassist. He is the main song/lyric writer besides Joakim, who sings. Seeing forward to more reactions on Sabatons rich history lessons.
Since 1870 the french and germans were fighting over border territories so war with France was most likely because of revanchism about WW1 and losing that bit of territory in the Treaty of Versailles.
19:46...Before you fall about laughing too much HMS Rodney was named after one of our greatest naval heroes, Admiral Rodney. Rodney was his surname and only became a first name after he became famous. Another great reaction though. Keep up the good work. 😊
It's really interesting because during ww2 in the war of the pacific there was the Battle of the Coral Sea, like 8 or 9 days long and it was the first naval battle where the ships never directly saw each other. So much happened during ww2 that changed the world
@@SoGal_YT Yes. This may be more info than you need but in the BBC comedy series ‘Only Fools and Horses’ the unremittingly dim character Trigger insisted on calling Rodney ‘Dave’ despite all evidence to the contrary.
The airforce circle logos are called roundles and most nations have them, they were needed in the old days to indicate friend from fow by eye sight but now are more of a tradition. You've probably seen the US one that is the state with blue and white bars on the sides of a circle or the Japanese which is just a full red dot (this is were the term Zeros come from as the dot was a O)
The planes that disabled the Bismarck had the same roundel as RAF aircraft, but were actually part of the Fleet Air Arm, which was responsible for several other famous operations such as the attack on the Italian harbour of Taranto, which inspired the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour.
In WW1, Germany had a massive fleet of modern battleships. In a way, Germany _having_ such a massive fleet of modern battleships was one of the reasons why WW1 happened. After WW1, Germany didn't have this massive fleet anymore. The fleet had been, in a way, a big factor in ending the war as it had been in causing it, when the sailors rather rebelled than set on into One Last Glorious Battle. Most of that fleet was handed over to the victorious allies, sank itself (look up Scapa Flow - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scuttling_of_the_German_fleet_at_Scapa_Flow) or was used for bombing tests. The new German Republic wasn't allowed a major fleet. It was left with some old, obsolete battleships (The "Schleswig-Holstein", build in 1906, before the " HMS Dreadnaught" revolutionized battleship construction, fired the first shots of WW2). The Third Reich rebuild the navy as it did the rest of the military. The "Bismarck" was one of these newly build ships.
In terms of relative power compared to other Navies the Kriegsmarine was just a far cry from the Imperial Navy, but one needs to be reminded how Plan Z was supposed to last until 1945 and sought after the procurement of successively larger units towards its end. The Kriegsmarine was assured they won't find themselves at war with Britain until the mid-1940s.
The French have been Germany's primary enemy in a historic sense. Also the region between France and Germany has always been a contested region. It used to be inhabited in a bilingual sense. Kinda like the Sudetenland. So, where Great Britain was a possible enemy, France was a certain enemy.
1. The Swordfish bombers were an older design, and almost obsolete. But the Navy had problems with the designed successor (also a biplane and from the same company), so the old model was kept in service. It's success in the hunt for the Bismarck was in equal parts luck and suicidal bravery. 2. The rondel marking only shows the nationality. The Royal Navy had their own planes, seperate from the Royal Air Force.
@@HingerlAlois Not a slight on the Swordfish, which was quite a good plane. Just a sign of the speed of development during that time. The Swordfish wasn't an _old_ design in years... but it was already almost obsolute at the time it was commissioned.
5:39 The main reason they were more worried about fighting France than Britain was because they had a chance of winning against France. The Royal Navy was absolutely gigantic so the Kriegsmarine's strategy in the planning stage was to look the other way and pretend they didn't exist. Also, 10:44 the most decorated ship in US Naval History was the carrier USS Enterprise
(19:30) The name HMS Rodney goes back to the mid 18th century, originally named after Admiral George Rodney, the 1st Baron Rodney a naval commander who made his name during the American revolutionary war where he defeated the French fleet at the Battle of Saintes in the Caribbean which halted French plans to invade Jamaica. A hero of Lord Nelson he is reputed to have invented the naval tactic of 'Breaking The Line' used so effectively by Nelson at the battle of Trafalgar. There have been six Royal navy ships named HMS Rodney, the last being the one mentioned here. Launched in 1925, she survived the war and was broken up for scrap in 1948.
my brother flew the navy museum swordfish when he was still in the Fleet Air Arm and noted that the bi-plane had tremendous lift, and this means you could land it in a very short space, great for carrier ops.. do try to see the historic demise of its sister ship Tirpitz
You need to watch Sabaton's and Yarn Hub's colab for "No Bullets Fly" and "Night Witches." For those two, watch the music video first, then Sabaton History. The info that you want for context is already in the music video.
HMS Rodney was a pretty powerful ship. She was older and slower than Bismarck (or the brand new King George V-class just rolling out for the Royal Navy), but her armour belt was thicker and her guns were bigger and she had more of them (3 turrets with three 16-inch guns compared to 4 turrets with twin 15s for the Bismark-class). This was the highlight of her career imo. The Nelson's (made up of Nelson and Rodney) are really interesting looking ships, kinda funky. Blast damage from battleship main guns isn't all that strange, with some ships having more issues than others. Big guns have big shocks. Rodney and Nelson had issues with it too, with the blast of the guns shattering windows. It was to the point they had to fit blast deflectors under windows to protect them. And you probably wouldn't want to be out on deck in an open anti-air mount when the main guns are firing. Both because you're probably being shelled too, and the blast of your own ship's guns going off won't be fun.
If you're interested in naval history I recommend Drachinfel, IDK if it's worth making reactions to anything but he does have a lot of videos of INSANE depth and manages to somehow be entertaining on quite dry topics.
OK, making notes as I go here... In Europe of that period, there were still continental rivalries which are inconceivable today. But back then there were two main 800 pound gorillas sitting around in Europe, indeed as they are today: France and Germany. The UK itself had identified France as the most likely source of the next war in Europe as a matter of fact, not Germany. In Hitler's case, he intended on striking West to conquer western Europe so as to keep it from interfering in his vision of lebensaum (totally misspelled!) on the Eastern front in Russia. This was the concept of destroying the Slavs he hated so much in order to take their extremely fertile lands for pure Aryan German farmers to exploit (using Slavs as slaves - the word slave comes from Slav). As for the Bismarck, this particular battle demonstrates the reason why large "all eggs in one basket" type ships were obsolete with the development of the aircraft carrier (and submarine). Not only do you place a lot of firepower on one platform which is susceptible to destruction, but the nation's pride and morale goes down with it.
lebensraum, literally living room or living space. For those wondering, it's the idea of what a country needs to expand and thrive. So Hitler viewed Europe not only as racially pure but as Germany's lebensraum, vital space to conquer to grow.
@@Glisern Thanks for expanding on that. Since learning of that concept many years ago I've observed how it applies to the way countries behave before and since. The great empires of history are basically this very idea. And lets not forget.. the good ol' USA...
Hi SoGal, A lot of people have recommended the 1960 film "Sink The Bismark". One fact about it, the actor playing the Captain of HMS Prince of Wales was actually a gunnery officer on Prince of Wales during the battle with Bismark. As for naval aviation, you should look at the career of Captain Eric Brown of the Fleet Air Arm. He did more to advance naval aviation than anyone else in history. Some of his achievements, most types of aircraft ever flown, 487, most carrier take offs and landings, 2,407 and 2,271 respectively. First carrier landing of a twin engine bomber, a jet aircraft, tricycle undercarriage aircraft and helicopter. He singlehandedly accepted the surrender of 2,000 german troops at the end of the war. As he spoke fluent German he interviewed Herman Goring, Willy Messerschmitt, Wernher Von Braun, Ernst Heinkel and Kurt Tank. He survived the sinking of the carrier HMS Audacity, he spent a night adrift in the North Atlantic in December. Of the 24 men in his life-raft 22 died of hypothermia. You,ll be hard pressed to find a documentary about him that is less than an hour long, he was just that interesting a character.
Great reaction video. There are so many good Sabaton songs you could check out and to each there is a Sabaton History video. From WW1 there are "Fields of Verdun", "The Red Baron" (Official Lyric video), "Cliffs of Gallipoli", "The Great War" and "Seven pillars of Wisdom". From WW2 you could check out "40-1" (live from Woodstock festival 2012), "Ghost Division" (live Woodstock festival 2012), "Uprising" (live Woodstock festval 2012), "Night Witches" (Animated STORY video) or "No Bullets Fly" (Animated STORY video) or "82nd all the Way". Then they have a couple of songs that have nothing to do with the World Wars like "En Livstid i Krig" (Live - The Great Tour - Gothenburg), "Livgardet" and "Swedish Pagans" (live at Wacken 2019). So much history to learn. And if someone asks "Who told you all that?" your answer would be "A Swedish metal band". Enjoy all the history lessons :-)
Saw them live for the first time last year just before everything went down and oh man...That's something you can't describe but have to experience. Looking forward to you reacting to more of their stuff! Definetely check 40-1 :)
Hi SoGal, there is a British film from 1960 called (Sink The Bismark), it is just over 1.5 hrs long & is available free on TH-cam. As well as combat scenes, it shows the work involved in the search to locate it. It also features the U.S. Radio broadcaster (Edward R. Murrow) who was reporting from here in 1941.
there's a brief scene in the film after HMS Sheffield has mistakenly been attacked by British planes. The camera zooms close into the face of the captain who is clearly saying 'stupid f**king bastards' but you can't actually hear his voice as the music volume is increasing for the start of the next scene. When the film was shown recently that scene had been cut.
@@albrussell7184 I saw that movie recently on British TV and it hadn't been cut. I mean, why on earth would they when swearing is accepted now on TV, especially given the context. On another subject, they do sometimes cut out the name of Wing Commander Guy Gibson's dog in the Dambusters movie!
@@jimjess6864 I had to rewind in case I only imagined it, but yes it had been cut. There was still some swearing though - me saying "what the fu...!". Can't remember the channel (not a major one) and it was very recently.
My great uncle served aboard HMS Hood in the 1930's. He transferred to another ship in the late 1930's. He served on Mediterranean convoys before joining HMS Belfast (which is moored in the Thames) and serving on Russian convoys, participating in the Battle of the North Cape against the Scharnhorst and D-Day. Two very interesting naval operations to consider looking at are the RN attack on the Italian fleet at Taranto (the first ever all air ship to ship attack in history I believe) and Operation Pedestal, an attempt to deliver much needed supplies to Malta, A very good channel with information on WW2 aircraft carriers is Armoured Decks. Cheers!
There is quite a lot of difference between early aircraft carriers and later ones, even the carriers build at the end of WW2. A lot of the early ones were converted from battleship hulls they could no longer use because of the Washington Naval Treaty. But the carriers build near the end of WW2 were from the very start designed to be aircraft carriers once their value had become clear.
The USS Ranger (CV-4) was America's first purpose-built aircraft carrier. Granted, she was a light carrier and not a fleet carrier. She was also one of the first American ships in combat in WW2 since she was on loan to the RN in the Mediterranean before Pearl.
The part I hate the most is they scrapped most of the ww2 ships that survived, either that or used it in Operation Crossroads which is kinda dumb imo. They scrapped USS Enterprise
@@erichvondonitz5325 Makes sense though. Those ships are expensive to maintain and eventually are outclassed by more modern vessels. You can only retrofit them so much and at some point that is going to be more expensive than just building a new ship. And sometimes you have to get new ones anyway because they are simply incompatible with new technology, like ww2 aircraft carriers and fighter jets.
Sabaton also made a song about the battle of Greece, which was important at the time because Greece was the only European country left, fighting alongside Britain and the country that gave the first land allied victory in WW2. Later the Germans attacked and eventually won the battle of Greece, but Greek forces that fled to Egypt kept fighting till the end of WW2. Hitler himself acknowledged that the Greeks were the toughest fighters from every other army they faced to that point. Germany suffered more casualties in Greece than all the other military operations combined up to this point in WW2. The Germans considering the Greeks to be equal fighters to them, did not take the Greek troops as prisoners and allowed the officers to keep their side arms. It is said that when the Italians demanded to take the Greek soldiers as POWs, The German Waffen SS general Sepp Dietrich, commanding the Liebstandarte SS "Adolf Hitler" regiment, told the Italian general that he would have to do so over his SS troops, because the losers could not take their victors as POWs. th-cam.com/video/VPXxWT0-Tis/w-d-xo.html and some links with more historical details: th-cam.com/video/_jDBQijICTo/w-d-xo.html th-cam.com/video/XBZpBAKliWE/w-d-xo.html th-cam.com/video/K3JlZ9vfYnU/w-d-xo.html
Those old Swordfish torpedo planes wrecked the Italian fleet at Taranto in an action that inspired the attack on Pearl Harbour. Until then it was thought that it was impossible to use aerial torpedoes in a shallow anchorage. On the subject of the symbol on the sides of the Swordfish, all UK planes carried the same Roundel whether RAF, Navy or Army Air Corps, like all US military planes display a Star on stripes
There is a video called” Evolution of American Aircraft Carriers”, by Not What You Think, and It covers the history of Us carriers, from the Langley to the Gerald R. Ford.
When it comes to testing large ships like Battleships it's extremely difficult to know what will and won't work on paper alone. In peacetime, ships spend years going through trials gradually gearing up to combat effectiveness. In wartime, this is a luxury none can afford. Potential issues are just that until you can prove they have a major effect and they can only be done in a fight.
The French fleet was considered a threat to the German s. However the French as they are gave up therefore the French fleet became a threat to Britain which had to be dealt with. The second world war began with air forces on all sides (apart from the late arrivals) started by flying bi planes and finished with jet engined fighters. The Royal Navy has a tradition of no surrender and engages and fights an enemy to the end. Air superiority is a majure factor in war but sloging matches between Navy forces and troops on the ground are still a requirement in "total war"
You should react net to Sabaton - The Final Solution. It's about Holocaust. I highly encourage you to watch ShadowRider's version "Sabaton - The Final Solution (polskie napisy) HD" because of addition of scenes from movies about Holocaust - they are dramatic and terrifying but they really adding "the feeling" to this song.
Hood actually had two final salvos, the first was her A turret fired one last time as she sank the second was a pair of torpedos that she fired just before she was hit that caused Bismarck and Prinz Eugen to turn away and open the range letting Prince Of Wales to disengage when her guns stopped working.
A tragicomic piece of naval history you should definately look into is the story of the Russian 2nd pacific squadron. Drachinifel has a great two part video about their journey.
The Rhine River valley and the Alsace-Lorraine region has been disputed territory between France and Germany since forever and have changed hands a number of times.
HMS Rodney was named after Admiral Lord George Rodney, who fought - victoriously - in the American Revolutionary War. The Royal Navy have a long tradition of naming ships after famous admirals. The sunk "Hood" was named after Admital Samual Hood, a contemporary of Rodney, and one of Rodney's sister-ships was the HMS Nelson. The USA follows a similar tradition... just look at the majority of the modern aircraft carriers. Luckily, it's not a requirement to name these ships after Presidents, and so in spite of the "Gerald R. Ford", "Ronald Reagan" and "George H.W. Bush", there won't be a USS Donald Trump. The latest ship of the new aircraft-carrier class will be called - funny name that - "USS Doris Miller". Doris Miller was a black cook, who was awarded the Navy Cross for his heroic actions at Pearl Harbor. The first black American to get that medal, and worthy of being remembered. Naming a major warship in the US Navy after him wasn't uncontroversial... but no less than he deserved. Don't judge a book by its cover, or a ship by its name.
There is another branch of the armed force in the UK which is the Fleet Air Arm. They are the air contingent of the Royal Navy although they are separate. In WW2 my father was conscripted into the Royal Navy but was moved to Fleet Air Arm and trained to be a radio operator/gunner on the Fairey Swordfish aka 'the Stringbag'. He didn't like his chances as the survivability rate of the aircraft was not very high. I think it was then that he met one of the survivors of the Hood. When the opportunity arose he was able to move to REME (Royal Electrical & Mechanical Engineers) as an electrician working on radios and other equipment. He landed on D-Day +2 to work on damaged Sherman tanks. I know he ended up in Berlin. What I find amazing is that he managed to serve in three branches of the armed forces!
They weren't less worried about the British navy, they were more focused on the french navy as it was weak enough to contend with whereas the British navy was too strong to directly challenge
@@damienmaynard8892 by saying their navy is weak enough to contend with im saying that its more comparable, it was weaker than Britain's, and would be completely unable to contend with the other great naval powers. You seem to be making a fuss over the world "weak" which is completely valid when comparing it to the royal navy and other than that you completely agree with my point.
The British Navy was also majorly occupied in East Asia with Japan and the mediterranian with Italy so they were less of a concern. The British atlantic fleet was (in the beginning) mostly supposed to protect Atlantic shipping rather than making attacks. The French in comparison really were a wild card.
I recommend you watch the 2012 Woodstock Poland performance they performed in front of over half a million Polish fans they got the Polish fans to sing about the Ghost Division which is about Rommel and the German Panzer Tank Division which is pretty significant in and of itself considering Poland history with Germany. The follow-up song Uprising the crowd went nuts because of the Uprising is about the citizens of Warsaw rebelling against the nazi oppressors and then they played 40 to 1 which is about 700 polish soldiers fighting to the bitter end against 40,000 German infantrymen. The show was so fantastic that the crowd started singing the Poland National Anthem and I believe The members of Sabaton left the country as newly citizens of Poland P.S that Par he's the bassist for Sabaton him and Joakim Broden are the only OG band members
There were actually 40 British warships that took part in the sinking of the Bismarck, the Bismarck was first sighted by an RAF Catalina by an Ensign in the US navy (Leonard Smith) who was a Catalina flying instructor. At this stage of the war the USA hadn't joined the war until December 7th 1941 (Pearl Harbour), so poor old Leonard wasn't allowed to be mentioned under the 'secrets act' for 30 years. So Sogal as an American you can take pride knowing it was a fellow countryman who discovered the Bismarck rudderless and doomed to the Royal Navy.
James Cameron, of Titanic fame, visited the site of the Bismarck and stated that there is a good case that the crew scuttled the ship. Cameron could find no damage to the internal hull of the ship caused by the torpedo's. That and the fact that it went down so quickly makes a strong case that the crew scuttled it possibly to be picked up. The ship was so tough that it would have taken more punishment before actually sinking. So, in order to save further lives it was scuttled. Cameron does admit that with the Royal Navy pounding it, it would have eventually sunk with its plates opening at the seams.
Regarding the ships sizes: Nowadays ships (same class/type) are bigger than in WW2 and then the Battlecruiser were the biggest and most importants ships of every Navy. Carriers were the newbie/newcomers... it was during the war that they become bigger and the most important ships of every Navy as they are today....
Aircraft carriers were not larger than battleships. When Aircraft Carriers became larger than battleships, those were no longer being built. And it should be noted, that if battleships weren't made obselete by more and more powerfull aircraft on carriers, than they might also grown larger and larger. Germans had plans of constructing battleships (so called H-Class) that in their most ambitous incarnation were up to 345 meters in lenght, before the outbreak of the war. Longer and with more displacement than even Nimitz Class carriers.
battlecarrier conversions... then antiship misiles, could be bolted to just about anything and sink battleships for pocket change comparatively. lots of other tech changes. speed. radar. comms etc...
The British where the first to have an aircraft carrier and recognise the importance aircraft can play in war. In the action the aircraft attack slowed the Bismarck down allowing the British ships to close and sink the German ship.
France and Germany were more hostile, they had been to war with each other twice in recent memory Prussia had invaded France in the creation of Germany or the German empire.
The thing about battleships is they became a big symbol of firepower even when they stopped being as effective as they once were (due to submarines, aircraft, etc. being able to sink them while costing much less) and governments paradoxically got scared of using them in case they got sunk! Even as Japan was showing that aircraft could sink battleships easily at Pearl Harbour and their attacks on HMS Prince of Wales and Repulse, their pilots also obsessed over sinking battleships first - the US Navy wasn't hurt as badly at Pearl Harbour as it might have been because Japanese gloryhound pilots ignored submarine and repair facilities over sinking battleships that could then be raised and repaired. Then they lost the Battle of Midway in part because they obsessed over their battleship force which never even made it to the battle, while the aircraft carriers decided it. They spent zillions on the world's biggest battleship, the Yamato, and then it fired its guns exactly ONCE in the war before being sunk by American aircraft! Nowadays some people argue that we have the same attitude towards aircraft carriers - former British Foreign Secretary David Owen thought spending millions on them was pointless when he said they'd all be sunk by submarines in the first hour of World War III. (But, of course, not every war is that big!)
Battleships were essentially obsolete by WW2. That’s one of the reasons the attack on Pearl Harbour wasn’t as devastating as it could have been as the US aircraft carriers were out at sea.which meant it didn’t take long for America to strike back at Midway. It would have been a different story in the war in the Pacific otherwise, at least for a short time.
Not true at all. They were not obsolete until after the war, and not truly until the invention of the anti-ship missile (which pretty much rendered cruisers obsolete as well). It Is true that their importance was significantly reduced though, and there was no longer any reason to build them in sch massive numbers... And thus, having built so many during the war, no need to build new ones at all until they became obsolete in truth. The fact is, at the start of the war (and remember, pearl harbour was Not the start of the war), while most were aware that aircraft carriers would be significant, the technology was still unproven and in significant need of refinement. No one yet knew what was and wasn't good doctrine regarding their use. Many were hasty conversions from other ship types: small, cramped, and badly laid out as a result. In many theaters, land based airfields rendered carriers an utterly unnecessary risk and expense, even as battleships were still very well protected and provided the necessary space for fleet command and control capabilities, which was limited or non-existant on smaller ships. American battleships rapidly became essentially super-destroyers, being able to mount frankly Absurd amounts of anti-aircraft weaponry, massively improving the ability of the whole fleet (particularly the carriers, which could barely mount any AA due to flight deck operations) to survive air-attacks that got past the fighter screen. Even reduced to only being useful for costal bombardment in their last days, they still weren't Entirely obsolete until the anti-ship missile, which combined all the advantages of the torpedo and the dive bomber and then some with few, if any, of the disadvantages, brought about the situation where Any ship, even a random fishing trawler someone had bolted a launcher and maybe a decent radar to, (or, for that matter, sometimes even a relatively small Infantry Unit) could destroy a battleship with impunity from outside of its range. Until that point, what they were was Expensive, and no longer the biggest deciding factor in a battle. Far from the same thing as being obsolete.
22:13 Bismarck was the heaviest Warship ever put to sea UNTIL THAT POINT in time. This includes Aircraft Carriers - but again only those commissioned up to that point. In terms of Battleships She would later be surpassed by her own sister Tirpitz (who got a little heavier due to design improvements and additional armament in form of more AA guns and Torpedoes) as well as the American Iowa-class (USS Iowa, USS New Jersey, USS Missouri, USS Wisconsin) and of course the Japanese Yamato-class (Yamato, Musashi) while the British HMS Vanguard would also come close to her. To their lack of armor Aircraft carriers were always large but pretty light ships when compared to heavily armored Battleships. As mentioned in the video: some 40% of Bismarck's displacement were dedicated to defensive measures, mostly armor. The first carriers coming close to a modern Battleship's displacement were the American USS Midway and the Japanese Shinano - which were both built on the hull of incomplete battleships: Midway on the hull of uncompleted USS Montana and Shinano was supposed to become the third Yamato-class battleship before she was redesigned into a carrier. Post-war warships generally became much lighter as the invention of Cruise Missiles rendered armor redundant and Missile Launchers also didn't need large Barbettes and Arsenals, thus were much lighter and didn't consume much space. A modern Destroyer or Missile cruiser comes in at about 10-15% of a Battleship's displacement but could easily defeat it in combat. Aircraft Carriers were the sole exception from that trend as they became even larger. A modern US Supercarrier has twice the displacement of Bismarck.
Ouch! Indy is a good source for narrative history, but he starts of with a mistake already. The Bismarck wasn't the largest battleship ever build. It was 251m long and massed not quite 42,000 metric tons. The American "Iowa" class of battleships, the last build by the USA, came in at 270m and almost 46,000 tons. Biggest battleship(s) ever build were the Japanese "Yamato" and her sistership "Musashi" at 263m length and 65,000 tons. To compare: the latest class of US aircraft carriers is about 100,000 tons. And I should have watched on before posting... so ETA: He's also wrong that "the world had never seen anything like this". The Royal Navy had several ships of a comparable or bigger size. The "HMS Hood" - sunk by the "Bismarck" - was of almost exactly the same mass, even a bit longer, and had an equal armament. Some British battleships sported even bigger guns. Indy, Indy, Indy...
@@HingerlAlois Ok, that's fair. It should be noted though that the Hood was bigger than the Bismarck... but it was "only" a battlecruiser, not a battleship. But still... the Hood had been build twenty years before the Bismarck.
The Bismarck was not the largest Battleship ever built, it was, along with her sister ship Tirpitz, the largest built by Germany with a maximum overload weight around 50,000 tons. The largest ever were the Japanese Yamato class by some margin. The Bismarck's were not as groundbreaking as is often claimed. They were an enlarged updated WW1era Bayern class design and their armour layout was outdated. HMS Hood was also a WW1 designed ship and by the outbreak of WW2 was over due for a major refit and she was over weight. It was not true that she had not seen action in WW 2, she took part in the action against the French Fleet at Oran in July 1940. Recent thinking on her loss in the action with Bismarck is that the Germans scored a lucky hit aft where her below waterline hull was exposed by the bow wave due to her high speed at the time. This penetrated a magazine for 4" ammunition which caught fire, in turn setting fire to the adjacent 15" magazine resulting in the explosion that destroyed her. There is a good recent video on TH-cam by Drachinifel. HMS Prince of Wales was a new ship that was still in the process of 'Working Up'. She still had Dockyard workers aboard and was suffering many 'Teething Problems' with her systems and guns. What is not mentioned in this video is that prior to their attack on the Bismarck the Swordfish had mistakenly attacked one of the shadowing British Cruisers, scoring a hit, but, the torpedoes were fitted with magnetic detonators, a new technology, and they failed to detonate. The Torpedoes used in the follow up attack were fitted with the older contact detonators and they did work. The aircraft on British aircraft carriers are flown by the Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm. They use the same roundel marking as the Royal Air Force. Between the wars the RAF had been responsible for providing the aeroplanes and the flight crews, but this had been a very unsatisfactory arraignment, and control of carrier aircraft was returned to the Navy a couple of years prior to the outbreak of war. Sadly not in time to undo the neglect by the RAF between the wars. The Bismarck had been spotted by a Spitfire photo reconnaissance aircraft whilst still in Norwegian waters. After the action with Hood and Prince of Wales Bismarck's where about's was not known for a while until she was re located by a RAF Catalina flying boat. HMS Rodney was named for a 18th century British Admiral. She was built between the wars and was armed with 9 16" guns in 3 triple turrets all forward of the superstructure. Her sister ship was HMS Nelson. HMS King George V, name ship for her class, was a sister ship of HMS Prince of Wales, a new ship with 10 14" guns in 2 quad and 1 twin turrets. There are many mistakes in the commentary by the 'Historian' in this video. For more accurate videos on the subject please do look up Drachinifel's channel on TH-cam.
There is a Battlefield 360 series on the USS Enterprise (CV-6) which is the most decorated ship in US Navy history. It is a good introduction to how WWII carriers operated.
The first film I ever saw at the cinema was a 1960 release called Sink The Bismark. It's in black and white but is a very accurate account of the hunt for, and confrontation with the mighty battleship. I was only 6 when I was taken to see it, but enjoyed it. Try and track it down and watch it. It is very good, probably on you tube!. I had an uncle who was on the Hood, but was taken off with appendicitis before it sailed on its last mission. The family didn't know about his move and thought he'd gone down with it. He was on the Warspite after that, another distinguished battleship that had a fine reputation.
Wow, what a lucky (and unlucky) man your uncle was, lol. I’ve had appendicitis and he has my sympathies. But I’d rather have appendicitis than sink with the ship.
HMS Rodney was a hulking monster with three triple 16 inch turrets up front, She pounded Bismarck to scrap and as a side note scored the only battle ship on Battle ship torpedo hit against Bismarck.
Of Hood's total crew of 1,419, only 3 survived since the explosion tearing the ship in two caused her to sink in around 3 minutes being the cause behind the high death rate. Hood was not the first British battlecruiser destroyed outright by magazine detonations, HMS Indefatigable, HMS Queen Mary and HMS Invincible were lost to magazine detonations at Jutland in 1916.
The Royal Navy has it's own air force - but it is very small. In the Falklands War both RAF and the Fleet Air Arm (Royal Navy) pilots served side-by-side, flying Harrier and Sea-Harrier Jumpjets from HMS Hermes and HMS Invincible. Naval fliers held naval ranks. "HMS Rodney" was named after Admiral Rodney, an admiral in Britain's 18th Century fleet.
In addition to my previous comment, there were TWO raids by the Swordfish from the Ark Royal. The first attacked a British ship, but the magnetic fuses which were a new design, caused the torpedos to explode when they hit the water. The main effect of the second raid was that the Bismark had its rudders jammed in one direction, so she could not steer, but was forced to go in a large circle which brought her straight to H Force.
his name is Par Sundstrom he's the bass gitarist. hood was found by the same gut who found the titanic and sits on her side in 3 pieces not surprizing only 3 of her crew survived. Bismark sits proudly upright at the btm of an underwater volcano. well worth watching the documentry where they go looking for them
This is the link to the original footage of the Bismarck v. HMS Hood battle and of the Hood blowing up. th-cam.com/video/oWvZ8EEoovM/w-d-xo.html The original had no sound but some has been added for dramatic effect.
The Bayern class of WW1 also had 15 inch guns (380mm), there was even plans to to convert the two 1930s Scharnhorsts (Scharnhorst and Gneisenau) from 11 inch guns to 15 inch guns.
Bismarck was bout twice the weight of HMS Arc Royal, but just a few meters longer. Early aircraft carriers started their lives as ships with landing strips built on top of them. Arc Royal were among the first purpose built aircraft carriers, hut had to fit within the Washington treaty.
The ship was named for Admiral George Brydges Rodney, a great naval hero, one of his midshipmen was Samuel Hood later admiral Hood after whom HMS Hood was named.
Hi So Gal, Another great video. There was an enjoyable British film made in the 1960’s starring Kenneth Moore called ”Sink the Bismarck” which was the order issued by Churchill. The battle of the Atlantic was what worried Churchill more than any other conflict. The film dramatises the whole of the operation. With your love of history you must visit the UK sometime. We have more history than we can use.
![Vet Reacts to Bismarck - Battle of the Atlantic - Sabaton History 012 [Official]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/KRIrYYOoz18/mqdefault.jpg)
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Sabaton is the best metal band today ... they don't glorify or pick sides they are about educating their fans
@Alba1970 Thanks - should be the same music video I watched here :)
the salvo that sank HMS Hood was a 1 in a million shot which had anything been different it likely wouldn't have hit were it did
I'd recommend this video by Drachinfel which goes into more detail of how HMS Hood sank
th-cam.com/video/CLPeC7LRqIY/w-d-xo.html
Tirpitz and Bismarck were arguably the only Super Heavy Battlecruisers built, though due to their weight, they were mostly referred to as battleships. The only British ships with comparable firepower had much lower speed and armour.
The only British ships with comparable armour had less firepower and lower speed.
The only British ships with comparable speed had less firepower and armour.
Basically meant Bismarck could defeat any single opponent it faced and his first, and only, kill was the flagship of the British Home Fleet.
Unfortunately, he also sank the flagship of the Home Fleet. Bismarck was hounded by the Home Fleet until his rudder was disabled by a Fairey Swordfish (underappreciated but stable anti ship platforms) launched by a RN aircraft carrier. He was bombarded by the guns of the persuing RN battleships.
Ultimately though, he was scuttled by his crew after his armour began to fail.
Tirpitz fares even worse; it had to hide in a Norwegian fjord until it was ultimately split in half by the largest and most powerful conventional weapon ever built, bigger even than the current US MOAB.
Bismarck and Tirpitz were extremely capable, very expensive and in the end, they contributed more to the German defeat than anything they did to help them succeed.
The Kreigsmarine was massively outclassed by the RN. The entire German navy combined was about half as powerful as a single British fleet. The ONLY navy the Germans could compete with was the French. It was pointless challenging the Royal Navy.
i'll try to answer a couple of your questions as best i can:
the RAF and the royal navy while separate entities, were always pretty much tied together when it came to sea based engagements, the royal navy has its own air force called the fleet air arm, they now consist mainly of helicopters and other support vehicles, they do have 1 type of attack jet vehicle the F-35, but the FAA as a whole is significantly diminished compared to what it used to be way back when.
in terms of the size, an aircraft carrier back then was very small (relatively speaking) in comparison to say a battle cruiser or battleship, because back then you would have a flagship in the formation flanked by supporting cruisers and aircraft carriers as well as other ships if the convoy was big enough, whereas today the scales have tipped to where you have 1 gargantuan aircraft carrier as the flagship vessel surrounded and supported by multiple battleships and cruiser etc, because of precisely the thing you identified, the aerial superiority of planes, which is where most warfare occurs these days.
likely part of the reason they never test fired the guns of the Bismarck is due to the severe shortage of materials for making munitions and so they were to only use them in actual combat situations, even during training and test operations, most of the time there was never any actual munitions used it was all just decoy items and using callouts etc.
in terms of the actual battle of the Atlantic, there's 2 schools of thought on the significance of the battle, there's one side that believes it was one of the most pivotal battles of the war and there's others who believe that even if the Bismarck had succeeded in its mission it wouldn't have changed the overall outcome of the war, i'm personally in the camp that believes it to have been a pivotal battle that shaped the war and the overall outcome but there's arguements for both sides.
the band member featured in this video was Pär, the bassist for the band, in terms of the music video there's several keys things to be aware of, the actual fighting between the different ships is almost 100% historically accurate both in terms of how it is portrayed, but also the overall outcome of the battle, also, the man who was at the helm of the little boat the band were playing on is the son of the surviving crewman of the Bismarck who was given the compass pocketwatch by the commanding officer and it is a family heirloom, the one used in the video is a fake and just a prop but the real thing does exist.
as a little bit of general trivia, the resting place of both the Bismarck and the Tirpitz are considered war graves and protected under law, only a small handful of people actually know the true location of the Bismarck, and the man who found it initially is the same person who also first found the wreck of the Titanic, Robert Ballard.
And that's why my lady, you should react to the greatest raid of all by Jeremy Clarkson.... The raid has to do with the bismarcks sister ship, the Tirpitz...
thank god it was Ballard, as he is a man who respects the loss of life in these situations.
@@stu2333 I second this!
Originally the army and the navy had their own air arm, the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Service. In 1918 they were amalgamated and became the Royal Air Force. The Fleet Air Arm was formed in 1924, but remained under RAF control until 1939. That is why Britain, which led the world in aircraft carrier innovation, had the poorest carrier-borne aircraft of all the major powers. While the FAA was under RAF control, research and development on naval aviation took second place to land-based fighters and bombers.
Also back then, battleships were seen as the main naval killer, aircraft carrier were not seen as anything, but support. Only when the Japanese woke up the world at Pearl did people start looking at carriers differently.
The band member was Pär Sundström, bass player and together with Joakim the runner of the band
And they are the only original band members left
@@connydely1460 yeah well the others just packed up amd left because they couldn't handle the tour schedules
The Royal Navy was responsible for a number of breakthroughs in naval aviation, including the first full length fight deck (HMS Argus 1918), the angled flight deck, steam catapults, optical landing systems and ski-jump ramp.
With the demise of the Sea Harrier in 2006 the Royal Navy no longer operates its own fixed wing aircraft owing to cost, but the RAF now fly the F-35B from the two RN aircraft carriers although some of the pilots are still RN aviators.
Is that you brother?
Yep the Brit's invented the aircraft carrier and the battleship.
The Germans had incredibly bad luck running into the Swedish cruiser Gotland when they passed the Swedish west coast.
She was possibly the only ship in the Swedish navy at the time with ultra low frequency communications radios fitted (the radio waves don't travel very far so very good for ship to ship communications without being detected) this meant that the Swedish ship could pick up the Zig-Zag instructions from the German flagship to the squadron and follow them more easily.
Unlucky? New analysis has shown that if the Hood hadn't been in a turn she would have survived the hit. In fact they think the shell actually missed and she was hit below the normal water line. See here for an explanation th-cam.com/video/CLPeC7LRqIY/w-d-xo.html& . An explosion would have been impossible had she not turned into the plunging shell and with a speed of 26 knots creating a trough in the waves two thirds down the port side and a list to port where the shell hit just below the 4inch armour and just above the torpedo blisters. We know she was in a tight turn because of the rudder position on the wreck and the flag signal 2 RED sent to the Prince of Wales. Meaning Turning 20 degrees to port. Further bad luck on Vice Admiral Holland's part was the intention to engage the Bismarck at dawn, so that Bismarck fired into darkness whilst Hood fired into the lightening sky. It failed because Suffolk lost contact during the night and Bismarck wasn't in the position she was thought to be. The situation was reversed and Hood was firing into darkness (effectively North North West 0600hrs) with only the two foreword turrets able to engage. She was trying to turn to enable the two aft turrets to engage when the explosion occurred. They never fired a shot. The lead ship was Prinz Eugen and misidentified as the Bismarck. The Hood's crew was unable to identify her because of the darkness and Hood fired on her first.
Perhaps tyrants deserve bad luck ...
@@JohnGrayOnline while you are right the people on the ships were no tyrants
@@bastik.3011 If you are talking about the poor sods (excluding the maniac Nazi captain and his Japanese equivalent) I agree ... but the Bismarck was sent out by a Nazi tyrant to defeat Britain before the USA could be persuaded to join in the war ... if that had happened the world, your world wherever you are, woulkd have been a nastier place than it is now
@@JohnGrayOnline i totally agree even for me the world would be worse. And i am German.
I am just saying that most soldiers during ww2 were just fighting for their country even some in the Nazi Party were in it out of fear or peer pressure. Was the Wehrmacht clean? No not at all but neither was any big army in the war
Its important to understand the despair of the British people and the need for positive news early in the war. Things did not go well in France - Dunkirk was a salvation from disaster, but marked failure nevertheless. People had little faith left in the strength of the British Army. The Royal Air Force fought on after the defensive Battle of Britain - struggling to keep the enemy from the door at huge losses of aircrew, planes and after massive damage to British cities and morale. The public still trusted that the Royal Navy was strong and could protect against invasion and keep supply lines open. The "Mighty Hood" had been the RN flagship - largest warship in the world for 20 years, well known to the public. When Bismark sunk Hood so quickly with only 3 survivors - protecting convoys was the clear practical reason to command: "Sink the Bismark", but beyond that - restoring some of the public's faith in the Navy was also massively important for morale - dark days indeed.
From what I recall, wasn't the Hood also consdered to be completely unsinkable and the Bismarck literally sank it in a couple of volleys?
I remember there was a huge part of it that they had no choice but to actually hunt it down while they knew where it was, because if they didn't at that point and it had time to regroup with the main German fleet, it was so powerful that it's believed it would have potentially brought an end to the war as it would have crippled supply lines across the Allied front.
@@Grigeral No - I don’t think Hood was ever considered unsinkable in term of armor - it was more lightly armored than typical battleships. When built it was faster and had bigger guns than any other ship - which made it practically dominant. But in time other ships got faster and better armed and due to maintenance issues Hood got slower and therefore more vulnerable. Lax magazine anti-flash procedures may have been the biggest cause ultimately.
Hood was at the end of its life and Bismarck brand new - that usually doesn't go well for the old ship. Bismarck was good but it was not "war winningly" good as you seem to think. In the grand scheme of things: Hood was the flagship of the biggest navy in the world for 20 years and Bismarck was sunk on its first outing - sounds like a quite different story...
@@alanmoore2197 It's less that I think it war winning in the sense of it being so far beyond anything else.
I just recall a number of different views stating that it was lucky to have been caught 'when' it was.
The issue was that the only ship the Bismarck had with it was the Prince Eugen. If the German navy had played things out differently and actually pulled back more of the fleet to support it on its maiden voyage, then it would have been a very different story.
Considering that it took almost 2 hours to sink it once it was finally cornered and the only ship being fired on, I'd say it could have certainly had a big impact if it had managed to join the main fleet.
@@Grigeral It was a good large modern ship with excellent armor, guns and with a well trained crew. I don’t think it was particularly remarkable beyond that. The Royal Navy would have hunted it down either way - they had the advantage of massive scale - that scale rather than individual capability doomed the Bismarck either way. Yes if it broke out it could have rampaged for a bit - but that would not have altered the war’s outcome.
Also there was really not much of an effective capital fleet available to sail with... Tirpitz (bigger than Bismarck) was busy in the Baltic, Gneisenau and Scharnhorst were under repair after battle damage, Blücher had been sunk, Admiral Hipper was in overhaul, Admiral Graf Spee had been scuttled.
Guns. Naval guns are huge and powerful. The shells weigh a ton each and the guns fling them twenty miles. The recoil and blast frequently causes strain and damage to the ship when it fires them. The gun barrel's also have a limited life before wear reduces accuracy, 150 rounds or so. That being so, I'm not surprised Bismark didn't spend time lobbing shells to see how they worked.
Richtig.
Also you can't fire them for testing purposes as long as the ship is not launched into water; the recoil could not be absorbed and would damage the turrets after just one salvo.
An interesting note is that Bismarck failed to hit any of the Swordfish torpedo bombers that attacked it. It was discovered that, because Bismarck's anti-aircraft systems had been designed with modern aircraft speeds in mind, the Swordfish flew so slowly that Bismarck's AA guns couldn't aim slowly enough to hit them.
Which was particularly dumb since the Swordfish was the plane most likely to be encountered on the open ocean😎🇳🇿
imagine the most modern class of ship gets defeated by ww1 bi-planes just because they were so inferior that it surprised the ship crew and they weren't able to hit them 💀
they aktually destroyed a bunch of them but coudnt destroy all thanks to this fact
@@fiveninenowNOWthey could hit an few and even destroyed some but the AA Crews had to more or less guess where to shoot
Fun fact, British Aircraft carrier during WW2 had armored deck, while US carriers had wooden deck.
HMS Indefatigable was once hit by a kamikaze on the flight deck with it's bomb detonating as well, a USN Liaison Officers on HMS Indefatigable commented:
(When a kamikaze hits a US carrier, it’s six months repair at Pearl. In a Limey (British) carrier it’s a case of “sweepers, man your brooms”.”)
37 (45) minutes after being hit by a Kamikaze, HMS Indefatigable started flight operation again.
"Sink the Bismark" is a good film to watch.
"SHOOT!" as opposed to "FIRE!" or "FEUR!"
Not entirely accurate but still a good film
Great old movie but it would be awesome if they did a remake
Be nice if they did a remake with the CGI available today.
@@obi-wankenobi4640 only if it was completely faithfull to the old film
Disabled by Fairey Swordfish, biplanes. We also took out St.Nazaire dry Dock as it was the only Dock large enough to accommodate her. The raid on St.Nazaire is worth a look. They are roundels, the Royal Navy have the fleet Air arm. The Bismark was 11 metres bigger than Ark Royal, so not a lot of difference in size.
The attack on St Nazaire was to deny Tirpitz the use of the dock. Bismarck was already sunk.
Don`t laugh about the Swordfishs...They are string bags...but those planes hit the Italian Fleet at Taranto in a night action...which inspires the Japanese Navy to try that trick...at Pearl Harbor. I can not emphasise this enough go watch Drachinifel`s channel...he has an entire episode dedicated to Carrier development up to the end of WW2
Even the designers of the Bismarck didn’t expect swordfish plans to attack. The targeting equipment on the Bismarck could be set for the low speed of Swordfish plans.
@@johnsimmons5951 Like many other aircraft that had a canvas skin, the ammo from small and medium AA guns didn't get enough resistance to trigger the fuse when they hit. That was also a contributing factor as the small and medium guns was more suited to target the slow flying aircraft.
The Japanese apparently learnt from the destruction of the Italian fleet at Taranto by the Royal Navy. The Japanese would sink H.M.S Repulse and the Prince of Wales within an hour of each other steaming on their way to Singapore.
@@chrisholland7367 Yeah the IJN used the experience from Taranto... Not at Singapore, but the attack on Pearl Harbor!
The americans luck was that a few days earlier the Carriers went out, while the fleet of WWI era battleships still were in place. If the carriers had been present there too, the war might have looked a little different.
@@andreaspedersen3952 I suggested that the IJN used those tactics on the British battle ships HMS Prince of Wales and Repulse not directly at Singapore itself ensuring their would be no support for the garrison.
Battleships had been the biggest ships and main force of navies since the advent of the ironclad, in the late 19th century. It had been a constant development, with better armor, bigger guns, more powerful engines.
Aircraft carriers had only begun their career, when the battleships were at the absolute height of their power.
The change in size demonstrates the shift in importance.
The first series of US carriers - the Yorktown class - massed about 20,000 tons. The next class, the mainstay of the carrier fleet in WW2, the Essex-class, came in at 27,000 tons.
The following class, the Midway-class, was designed during the war.
Up to that point, the USA had always limited her capital ships to the maximum size that could pass the Panama canal. The Iowa-class battleships were about the top of that limit. During the war, this limit was dropped, and the next class of battleships - designated Montana-class - were to have been at about 55,000 tons or more.
They were never build. The plan was dropped, and in their stead were build the Midway carriers, at about the same mass.
The aircraft carrier had surpassed the battleship for good.
One of my distant uncles was on one of the Swordfish that attacked the Bismark and was shot down... The planes are FAA, Fleet Air Arm...
germany did try to build an aircraft carrier called the "Graf Zeppelin" (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_aircraft_carrier_Graf_Zeppelin ) but resources went short so the project was never finished.
Another great video.
The Royal Navy does have its own aircraft wing, (Fleet Air Arm) which operates from aircraft carriers (and other ships and bases), there is also the Army Air Corps. The Swordfish planes actually attacked HMS Sheffield by mistake first.
You definititely should do Night Witches next. Choose the animated history version.
There's a Russian TV drama series about them too, which is entertaining if not very accurate.
@Carlos Arrieche ... might? They might?
or watch all of em.
19:52 Fun fact about HMS Rodney. Rodney was one of the Nelson-class battleships. This class was unique for having all three main turrets in front of the superstructure. This layout was very similar to Royal Navy oil tankers, another similarity being the use of a single funnel. Such ships always had names that ended in "-ol". As a result, the Nelson-class ships quickly recveived the nicknames "Nelsol" and "Rodnol".
I may be misremembering, but I believe both the Dunkerque-class and Richelieu-class battleship
s also had all forward main armaments, although they were distributed in 2 quad turrets rather than 3 triples.
@@sgt.oddball7556 They only had two turrets, though. They also had their superstructures much further forward.
My mum used to work with a guy who was on the Rodney. He said that when the Bismark had stopped firing, as many men as could be spared were allowed topsides to see her. He recalled that there was no cheering and the mood was sombre. Somebody said "poor bastards" quietly and everyone was thinking things along the lines of "there but for the grace of God go I..."
Sailors have a common bond, whatever their flag.
The Bismark definitely wasn't the biggest or most powerful battleship ever (the commentary is a little overblown in places) and she had some questionable design features that can cause an argument even today. She was certainly top-tier though, capable of doing plently of damage and worth treating with a healthy respect. To give you an idea of where she stood:
Main gun batteries:
Bismark: 8 x 15 inch guns
Hood: 8 x 15 inch guns (this was the standard British battleship armament until the naval treaties of the '20s and '30s started screwing around with things).
Prince of Wales and King George V: 10 x 14 inch guns (they went down to 14" in anticipation of a naval treaty that never got signed)
Rodney: 9 x 16 inch guns
USS New Jersey: 9 x 16 inch guns (standard US battleship armament by the end of WWII)
IJN Yamoto (Japanese): 9 x 18 inch guns (that's the heaviest gun battery ever put to sea)
Wasn't the Yamato the largest ship ever built? But even it was turned aside by Taffy 3.
@@rcrawford42 It was far from being the biggest ship of any kind or even the biggest warship. It was the biggest _battleship_ ever bult in terms of displacement and gun calibre, but the US Iowa class were 20 feet longer due to a different hull design.
Taffy 3 didn't win by being more powerful than the IJN fleet they faced. What happened was that the ferocity of Taffy 3's defence, combined with some inaccurate intelligence reports, conviced the Japanese admiral that he was facing a much more powerful US fleet than he was, hence his decision to disengage. If he'd known the true position and decided to press on, Taffy 3 would have been annihilated, however bravely they fought.
Ahh, that time in Korea that the USS New Jersey sunk an island...
Since you're from Memphis, the next Sabaton song you should do is called "82nd All The Way." It's about Tennessee native Sergeant York, and Tennessee is mentioned a lot in the song.
Interesting I watched that movie about Sergeant York a few times as a kid :)
Poor Joakim’s leg it’s always getting pounded by Joakim’s metal hand.
Also his metal machine
Its almost as pummeled as Till Lindemanns.
(12:33) Incorrect The Hood had fired a shot in combat. She had fired on the French Fleet at Mers el Kebir.
Thank you for a really great reaction to both the Sabaton History and the music video on Bismarck.
I really enjoyed the format you had that you started with the history lesson and after that watched the official music video. It helped a lot (even though I seen both before) to understand the music video and seeing all the small details explained in the history lesson.
The band member in the history channel is Pär, the bassist. He is the main song/lyric writer besides Joakim, who sings.
Seeing forward to more reactions on Sabatons rich history lessons.
Since 1870 the french and germans were fighting over border territories so war with France was most likely because of revanchism about WW1 and losing that bit of territory in the Treaty of Versailles.
19:46...Before you fall about laughing too much HMS Rodney was named after one of our greatest naval heroes, Admiral Rodney. Rodney was his surname and only became a first name after he became famous. Another great reaction though. Keep up the good work. 😊
It's really interesting because during ww2 in the war of the pacific there was the Battle of the Coral Sea, like 8 or 9 days long and it was the first naval battle where the ships never directly saw each other. So much happened during ww2 that changed the world
HMS Rodney was named after Admiral Lord George Rodney and NOT Del boy's brother...
You sure Dave?
HMS You Plonker…
Is this a reference to the Dave vs. Rodney sketch?
@@SoGal_YT Could be, Unc.
@@SoGal_YT Yes. This may be more info than you need but in the BBC comedy series ‘Only Fools and Horses’ the unremittingly dim character Trigger insisted on calling Rodney ‘Dave’ despite all evidence to the contrary.
The airforce circle logos are called roundles and most nations have them, they were needed in the old days to indicate friend from fow by eye sight but now are more of a tradition. You've probably seen the US one that is the state with blue and white bars on the sides of a circle or the Japanese which is just a full red dot (this is were the term Zeros come from as the dot was a O)
Thanks, I knew “logo” was probably the wrong term 😁
Roundel not roundlel, just t,o be accurate.
The Zero name comes from its type designation: Type 0. Not from the marking. See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitsubishi_A6M_Zero#Name
MItsubishi A6M2 carrier fighter type O. Allied Code Name ZEKE.
The planes that disabled the Bismarck had the same roundel as RAF aircraft, but were actually part of the Fleet Air Arm, which was responsible for several other famous operations such as the attack on the Italian harbour of Taranto, which inspired the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour.
In WW1, Germany had a massive fleet of modern battleships. In a way, Germany _having_ such a massive fleet of modern battleships was one of the reasons why WW1 happened.
After WW1, Germany didn't have this massive fleet anymore. The fleet had been, in a way, a big factor in ending the war as it had been in causing it, when the sailors rather rebelled than set on into One Last Glorious Battle.
Most of that fleet was handed over to the victorious allies, sank itself (look up Scapa Flow - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scuttling_of_the_German_fleet_at_Scapa_Flow) or was used for bombing tests.
The new German Republic wasn't allowed a major fleet. It was left with some old, obsolete battleships (The "Schleswig-Holstein", build in 1906, before the " HMS Dreadnaught" revolutionized battleship construction, fired the first shots of WW2).
The Third Reich rebuild the navy as it did the rest of the military. The "Bismarck" was one of these newly build ships.
With perfect timing, The History Guy has released a video about the scuttling of the German high seas fleet.
th-cam.com/video/Hxgds0tYl_Y/w-d-xo.html
In terms of relative power compared to other Navies the Kriegsmarine was just a far cry from the Imperial Navy, but one needs to be reminded how Plan Z was supposed to last until 1945 and sought after the procurement of successively larger units towards its end. The Kriegsmarine was assured they won't find themselves at war with Britain until the mid-1940s.
The French have been Germany's primary enemy in a historic sense. Also the region between France and Germany has always been a contested region. It used to be inhabited in a bilingual sense. Kinda like the Sudetenland. So, where Great Britain was a possible enemy, France was a certain enemy.
1. The Swordfish bombers were an older design, and almost obsolete. But the Navy had problems with the designed successor (also a biplane and from the same company), so the old model was kept in service. It's success in the hunt for the Bismarck was in equal parts luck and suicidal bravery.
2. The rondel marking only shows the nationality. The Royal Navy had their own planes, seperate from the Royal Air Force.
The Swordfish wasn’t really old, it had its first flight in 1934 and entered service in 1936.
@@HingerlAlois Not a slight on the Swordfish, which was quite a good plane. Just a sign of the speed of development during that time. The Swordfish wasn't an _old_ design in years... but it was already almost obsolute at the time it was commissioned.
5:39 The main reason they were more worried about fighting France than Britain was because they had a chance of winning against France. The Royal Navy was absolutely gigantic so the Kriegsmarine's strategy in the planning stage was to look the other way and pretend they didn't exist.
Also, 10:44 the most decorated ship in US Naval History was the carrier USS Enterprise
(19:30) The name HMS Rodney goes back to the mid 18th century, originally named after Admiral George Rodney, the 1st Baron Rodney a naval commander who made his name during the American revolutionary war where he defeated the French fleet at the Battle of Saintes in the Caribbean which halted French plans to invade Jamaica. A hero of Lord Nelson he is reputed to have invented the naval tactic of 'Breaking The Line' used so effectively by Nelson at the battle of Trafalgar.
There have been six Royal navy ships named HMS Rodney, the last being the one mentioned here. Launched in 1925, she survived the war and was broken up for scrap in 1948.
my brother flew the navy museum swordfish when he was still in the Fleet Air Arm and noted that the bi-plane had tremendous lift, and this means you could land it in a very short space, great for carrier ops.. do try to see the historic demise of its sister ship Tirpitz
My great uncle was a Lieutenant on the HMS Hood and perished in her sinking. Thanks for covering this in a way.
You need to watch Sabaton's and Yarn Hub's colab for "No Bullets Fly" and "Night Witches." For those two, watch the music video first, then Sabaton History. The info that you want for context is already in the music video.
Oh hell yes! Absolutely seconding that recommendation!
HMS Rodney was a pretty powerful ship. She was older and slower than Bismarck (or the brand new King George V-class just rolling out for the Royal Navy), but her armour belt was thicker and her guns were bigger and she had more of them (3 turrets with three 16-inch guns compared to 4 turrets with twin 15s for the Bismark-class). This was the highlight of her career imo. The Nelson's (made up of Nelson and Rodney) are really interesting looking ships, kinda funky.
Blast damage from battleship main guns isn't all that strange, with some ships having more issues than others. Big guns have big shocks. Rodney and Nelson had issues with it too, with the blast of the guns shattering windows. It was to the point they had to fit blast deflectors under windows to protect them. And you probably wouldn't want to be out on deck in an open anti-air mount when the main guns are firing. Both because you're probably being shelled too, and the blast of your own ship's guns going off won't be fun.
Nelson and Rodney both had a need of repairs to damage resulting in the use of their own guns. For one thing, this caused their decking to buckle.
If you're interested in naval history I recommend Drachinfel, IDK if it's worth making reactions to anything but he does have a lot of videos of INSANE depth and manages to somehow be entertaining on quite dry topics.
My middle name is Rodney, I was named after HMS Rodney the ship my grandfather served on during the war. Hated it when younger, love it now.
KernowWarrior Is your first name dave.
@@terrynash8087 😂
OK, making notes as I go here... In Europe of that period, there were still continental rivalries which are inconceivable today. But back then there were two main 800 pound gorillas sitting around in Europe, indeed as they are today: France and Germany. The UK itself had identified France as the most likely source of the next war in Europe as a matter of fact, not Germany.
In Hitler's case, he intended on striking West to conquer western Europe so as to keep it from interfering in his vision of lebensaum (totally misspelled!) on the Eastern front in Russia. This was the concept of destroying the Slavs he hated so much in order to take their extremely fertile lands for pure Aryan German farmers to exploit (using Slavs as slaves - the word slave comes from Slav).
As for the Bismarck, this particular battle demonstrates the reason why large "all eggs in one basket" type ships were obsolete with the development of the aircraft carrier (and submarine). Not only do you place a lot of firepower on one platform which is susceptible to destruction, but the nation's pride and morale goes down with it.
lebensraum, literally living room or living space. For those wondering, it's the idea of what a country needs to expand and thrive. So Hitler viewed Europe not only as racially pure but as Germany's lebensraum, vital space to conquer to grow.
@@Glisern Thanks for expanding on that. Since learning of that concept many years ago I've observed how it applies to the way countries behave before and since. The great empires of history are basically this very idea. And lets not forget.. the good ol' USA...
Hi SoGal, A lot of people have recommended the 1960 film "Sink The Bismark". One fact about it, the actor playing the Captain of HMS Prince of Wales was actually a gunnery officer on Prince of Wales during the battle with Bismark. As for naval aviation, you should look at the career of Captain Eric Brown of the Fleet Air Arm. He did more to advance naval aviation than anyone else in history. Some of his achievements, most types of aircraft ever flown, 487, most carrier take offs and landings, 2,407 and 2,271 respectively. First carrier landing of a twin engine bomber, a jet aircraft, tricycle undercarriage aircraft and helicopter. He singlehandedly accepted the surrender of 2,000 german troops at the end of the war. As he spoke fluent German he interviewed Herman Goring, Willy Messerschmitt, Wernher Von Braun, Ernst Heinkel and Kurt Tank. He survived the sinking of the carrier HMS Audacity, he spent a night adrift in the North Atlantic in December. Of the 24 men in his life-raft 22 died of hypothermia. You,ll be hard pressed to find a documentary about him that is less than an hour long, he was just that interesting a character.
Great reaction video.
There are so many good Sabaton songs you could check out and to each there is a Sabaton History video. From WW1 there are "Fields of Verdun", "The Red Baron" (Official Lyric video), "Cliffs of Gallipoli", "The Great War" and "Seven pillars of Wisdom".
From WW2 you could check out "40-1" (live from Woodstock festival 2012), "Ghost Division" (live Woodstock festival 2012), "Uprising" (live Woodstock festval 2012), "Night Witches" (Animated STORY video) or "No Bullets Fly" (Animated STORY video) or "82nd all the Way".
Then they have a couple of songs that have nothing to do with the World Wars like "En Livstid i Krig" (Live - The Great Tour - Gothenburg), "Livgardet" and "Swedish Pagans" (live at Wacken 2019).
So much history to learn. And if someone asks "Who told you all that?" your answer would be "A Swedish metal band". Enjoy all the history lessons :-)
Saw them live for the first time last year just before everything went down and oh man...That's something you can't describe but have to experience. Looking forward to you reacting to more of their stuff! Definetely check 40-1 :)
Hi SoGal, there is a British film from 1960 called (Sink The Bismark), it is just over 1.5 hrs long & is available free on TH-cam. As well as combat scenes, it shows the work involved in the search to locate it. It also features the U.S. Radio broadcaster (Edward R. Murrow) who was reporting from here in 1941.
there's a brief scene in the film after HMS Sheffield has mistakenly been attacked by British planes. The camera zooms close into the face of the captain who is clearly saying 'stupid f**king bastards' but you can't actually hear his voice as the music volume is increasing for the start of the next scene. When the film was shown recently that scene had been cut.
Thanks, I’ll check it out.
@@albrussell7184 Hi, I have the DVD which I`m pleased to say, is as it was meant to be seen. I think he was quite restrained under the circumstances.
@@albrussell7184 I saw that movie recently on British TV and it hadn't been cut. I mean, why on earth would they when swearing is accepted now on TV, especially given the context. On another subject, they do sometimes cut out the name of Wing Commander Guy Gibson's dog in the Dambusters movie!
@@jimjess6864 I had to rewind in case I only imagined it, but yes it had been cut. There was still some swearing though - me saying "what the fu...!". Can't remember the channel (not a major one) and it was very recently.
My great uncle served aboard HMS Hood in the 1930's. He transferred to another ship in the late 1930's. He served on Mediterranean convoys before joining HMS Belfast (which is moored in the Thames) and serving on Russian convoys, participating in the Battle of the North Cape against the Scharnhorst and D-Day. Two very interesting naval operations to consider looking at are the RN attack on the Italian fleet at Taranto (the first ever all air ship to ship attack in history I believe) and Operation Pedestal, an attempt to deliver much needed supplies to Malta, A very good channel with information on WW2 aircraft carriers is Armoured Decks. Cheers!
There is quite a lot of difference between early aircraft carriers and later ones, even the carriers build at the end of WW2. A lot of the early ones were converted from battleship hulls they could no longer use because of the Washington Naval Treaty. But the carriers build near the end of WW2 were from the very start designed to be aircraft carriers once their value had become clear.
The USS Ranger (CV-4) was America's first purpose-built aircraft carrier. Granted, she was a light carrier and not a fleet carrier. She was also one of the first American ships in combat in WW2 since she was on loan to the RN in the Mediterranean before Pearl.
The part I hate the most is they scrapped most of the ww2 ships that survived, either that or used it in Operation Crossroads which is kinda dumb imo. They scrapped USS Enterprise
@@erichvondonitz5325 Makes sense though. Those ships are expensive to maintain and eventually are outclassed by more modern vessels. You can only retrofit them so much and at some point that is going to be more expensive than just building a new ship. And sometimes you have to get new ones anyway because they are simply incompatible with new technology, like ww2 aircraft carriers and fighter jets.
Sabaton also made a song about the battle of Greece, which was important at the time because Greece was the only European country left, fighting alongside Britain and the country that gave the first land allied victory in WW2. Later the Germans attacked and eventually won the battle of Greece, but Greek forces that fled to Egypt kept fighting till the end of WW2. Hitler himself acknowledged that the Greeks were the toughest fighters from every other army they faced to that point. Germany suffered more casualties in Greece than all the other military operations combined up to this point in WW2. The Germans considering the Greeks to be equal fighters to them, did not take the Greek troops as prisoners and allowed the officers to keep their side arms. It is said that when the Italians demanded to take the Greek soldiers as POWs, The German Waffen SS general Sepp Dietrich, commanding the Liebstandarte SS "Adolf Hitler" regiment, told the Italian general that he would have to do so over his SS troops, because the losers could not take their victors as POWs.
th-cam.com/video/VPXxWT0-Tis/w-d-xo.html
and some links with more historical details:
th-cam.com/video/_jDBQijICTo/w-d-xo.html
th-cam.com/video/XBZpBAKliWE/w-d-xo.html
th-cam.com/video/K3JlZ9vfYnU/w-d-xo.html
Star Trek related info, the Royal Navy had 5 ships titled Enterprise before the US navy had it's first.
Indeed, the current HMS Enterprise, the tenth ship to bear this name, is a multi-role hydrographic oceanographic survey vessel of the Royal Navy. 👍
Also the organal USS Enterprise was taken from the Royal Navy
HMS Enterprise (1705) was a 24-gun sixth rate, previously the French frigate L'Entreprise, captured in May 1705. She was wrecked in October 1707.
@@skeezesmith7954 Yes I know.
@@eddiegaltek I just thought it was interesting that the French had the first Enterprise. I didn't know that until I checked it out.
Those old Swordfish torpedo planes wrecked the Italian fleet at Taranto in an action that inspired the attack on Pearl Harbour. Until then it was thought that it was impossible to use aerial torpedoes in a shallow anchorage.
On the subject of the symbol on the sides of the Swordfish, all UK planes carried the same Roundel whether RAF, Navy or Army Air Corps, like all US military planes display a Star on stripes
There is a video called” Evolution of American Aircraft Carriers”, by Not What You Think, and It covers the history of Us carriers, from the Langley to the Gerald R. Ford.
We should never forget the Brits invented the carrier and that they were far more effective than those used by all other navies in WW2!
When it comes to testing large ships like Battleships it's extremely difficult to know what will and won't work on paper alone. In peacetime, ships spend years going through trials gradually gearing up to combat effectiveness. In wartime, this is a luxury none can afford. Potential issues are just that until you can prove they have a major effect and they can only be done in a fight.
The USS Hood was an Excelsior class! I do like all the nods Star Trek gets in your videos!
No, she was an Admiral-Class.
@@Inny1984
HMS Hood was Admiral class.
USS Hood was definitely Excelsior class!
@@AndrewD8Red Ah i missed the USS prefix and misunderstood the whole sentence, sorry my bad ^^
@@Inny1984
Don't apologise, you were still right!
Wasn't there also a vessel called thunder child named after the ship from the war of the worlds
I love your channel keep up the great stuff!!!!
The French fleet was considered a threat to the German s. However the French as they are gave up therefore the French fleet became a threat to Britain which had to be dealt with. The second world war began with air forces on all sides (apart from the late arrivals) started by flying bi planes and finished with jet engined fighters. The Royal Navy has a tradition of no surrender and engages and fights an enemy to the end. Air superiority is a majure factor in war but sloging matches between Navy forces and troops on the ground are still a requirement in "total war"
i really enjoyed watching you look at this your doing a great job ! much appreciation .
You should react net to Sabaton - The Final Solution. It's about Holocaust. I highly encourage you to watch ShadowRider's version "Sabaton - The Final Solution (polskie napisy) HD" because of addition of scenes from movies about Holocaust - they are dramatic and terrifying but they really adding "the feeling" to this song.
I’ll get to all of their songs eventually, just don’t know the order yet.
Hood actually had two final salvos, the first was her A turret fired one last time as she sank the second was a pair of torpedos that she fired just before she was hit that caused Bismarck and Prinz Eugen to turn away and open the range letting Prince Of Wales to disengage when her guns stopped working.
you should look for a documentary on the British 'Dam Buster mission' simply amazing story.
The HMS Rodney is named after Admiral Rodney who fought in the Seven Years War just before the American War of Independence in which he also fought.
A tragicomic piece of naval history you should definately look into is the story of the Russian 2nd pacific squadron. Drachinifel has a great two part video about their journey.
Do you see torpedo boats?
The Rhine River valley and the Alsace-Lorraine region has been disputed territory between France and Germany since forever and have changed hands a number of times.
HMS Rodney was named after Admiral Lord George Rodney, who fought - victoriously - in the American Revolutionary War.
The Royal Navy have a long tradition of naming ships after famous admirals. The sunk "Hood" was named after Admital Samual Hood, a contemporary of Rodney, and one of Rodney's sister-ships was the HMS Nelson.
The USA follows a similar tradition... just look at the majority of the modern aircraft carriers. Luckily, it's not a requirement to name these ships after Presidents, and so in spite of the "Gerald R. Ford", "Ronald Reagan" and "George H.W. Bush", there won't be a USS Donald Trump. The latest ship of the new aircraft-carrier class will be called - funny name that - "USS Doris Miller".
Doris Miller was a black cook, who was awarded the Navy Cross for his heroic actions at Pearl Harbor. The first black American to get that medal, and worthy of being remembered. Naming a major warship in the US Navy after him wasn't uncontroversial... but no less than he deserved.
Don't judge a book by its cover, or a ship by its name.
There is another branch of the armed force in the UK which is the Fleet Air Arm. They are the air contingent of the Royal Navy although they are separate. In WW2 my father was conscripted into the Royal Navy but was moved to Fleet Air Arm and trained to be a radio operator/gunner on the Fairey Swordfish aka 'the Stringbag'. He didn't like his chances as the survivability rate of the aircraft was not very high. I think it was then that he met one of the survivors of the Hood. When the opportunity arose he was able to move to REME (Royal Electrical & Mechanical Engineers) as an electrician working on radios and other equipment. He landed on D-Day +2 to work on damaged Sherman tanks. I know he ended up in Berlin. What I find amazing is that he managed to serve in three branches of the armed forces!
They weren't less worried about the British navy, they were more focused on the french navy as it was weak enough to contend with whereas the British navy was too strong to directly challenge
That's why the British attacked the French Fleet rather than let the Germans take it over! "weak"? - not really, comparable or more equal perhaps!
@@damienmaynard8892 by saying their navy is weak enough to contend with im saying that its more comparable, it was weaker than Britain's, and would be completely unable to contend with the other great naval powers. You seem to be making a fuss over the world "weak" which is completely valid when comparing it to the royal navy and other than that you completely agree with my point.
The British Navy was also majorly occupied in East Asia with Japan and the mediterranian with Italy so they were less of a concern. The British atlantic fleet was (in the beginning) mostly supposed to protect Atlantic shipping rather than making attacks.
The French in comparison really were a wild card.
Drachinifel is the best ww1-ww2 naval history youtube channel
If you're interested the channel drachinifel has a much more detailed video on this, as well as many other naval topics.
Battle off Samar and The Russian 2nd Pacific Squadron being particular classics
I would like to particularly recommend Drach's analysis on what exactly caused Hood's demise. Quite interesting.
Rodney and Nelson are probably my favourite designs from the British Navy in WW2. Names make it even better.
I recommend you watch the 2012 Woodstock Poland performance they performed in front of over half a million Polish fans they got the Polish fans to sing about the Ghost Division which is about Rommel and the German Panzer Tank Division which is pretty significant in and of itself considering Poland history with Germany.
The follow-up song Uprising the crowd went nuts because of the Uprising is about the citizens of Warsaw rebelling against the nazi oppressors and then they played 40 to 1 which is about 700 polish soldiers fighting to the bitter end against 40,000 German infantrymen.
The show was so fantastic that the crowd started singing the Poland National Anthem and I believe The members of Sabaton left the country as newly citizens of Poland
P.S that Par he's the bassist for Sabaton him and Joakim Broden are the only OG band members
There were actually 40 British warships that took part in the sinking of the Bismarck, the Bismarck was first sighted by an RAF Catalina by an Ensign in the US navy (Leonard Smith) who was a Catalina flying instructor. At this stage of the war the USA hadn't joined the war until December 7th 1941 (Pearl Harbour), so poor old Leonard wasn't allowed to be mentioned under the 'secrets act' for 30 years. So Sogal as an American you can take pride knowing it was a fellow countryman who discovered the Bismarck rudderless and doomed to the Royal Navy.
James Cameron, of Titanic fame, visited the site of the Bismarck and stated that there is a good case that the crew scuttled the ship. Cameron could find no damage to the internal hull of the ship caused by the torpedo's. That and the fact that it went down so quickly makes a strong case that the crew scuttled it possibly to be picked up. The ship was so tough that it would have taken more punishment before actually sinking. So, in order to save further lives it was scuttled. Cameron does admit that with the Royal Navy pounding it, it would have eventually sunk with its plates opening at the seams.
Sooo good election!!! A very good song and about a very famous WW2 topic. I think you have done it right listening into the history before the song
Regarding the ships sizes: Nowadays ships (same class/type) are bigger than in WW2 and then the Battlecruiser were the biggest and most importants ships of every Navy. Carriers were the newbie/newcomers... it was during the war that they become bigger and the most important ships of every Navy as they are today....
Highly recommend Uprising next about a polish uprising in Warsaw during ww2.
It shows sooooo much
The ‘Battle of the Atlantic WW2’ refers to the entire campaign, not just the British pursuit of & sinking of the German ship Bismarck in WW2
Aircraft carriers were not larger than battleships. When Aircraft Carriers became larger than battleships, those were no longer being built.
And it should be noted, that if battleships weren't made obselete by more and more powerfull aircraft on carriers, than they might also grown larger and larger.
Germans had plans of constructing battleships (so called H-Class) that in their most ambitous incarnation were up to 345 meters in lenght, before the outbreak of the war. Longer and with more displacement than even Nimitz Class carriers.
battlecarrier conversions... then antiship misiles, could be bolted to just about anything and sink battleships for pocket change comparatively. lots of other tech changes. speed. radar. comms etc...
The British where the first to have an aircraft carrier and recognise the importance aircraft can play in war.
In the action the aircraft attack slowed the Bismarck down allowing the British ships to close and sink the German ship.
please react next to ghost division rommel's 7th panzer division
I second this. Rommel is one of my fav generals in ww2.
You earned my follow, because you gave historical referances... great
France and Germany were more hostile, they had been to war with each other twice in recent memory Prussia had invaded France in the creation of Germany or the German empire.
Napoleon the 3 or whatever invaded germany and got defeated ...
@@EngelinZivilBO correct napoleon the third.
The thing about battleships is they became a big symbol of firepower even when they stopped being as effective as they once were (due to submarines, aircraft, etc. being able to sink them while costing much less) and governments paradoxically got scared of using them in case they got sunk! Even as Japan was showing that aircraft could sink battleships easily at Pearl Harbour and their attacks on HMS Prince of Wales and Repulse, their pilots also obsessed over sinking battleships first - the US Navy wasn't hurt as badly at Pearl Harbour as it might have been because Japanese gloryhound pilots ignored submarine and repair facilities over sinking battleships that could then be raised and repaired. Then they lost the Battle of Midway in part because they obsessed over their battleship force which never even made it to the battle, while the aircraft carriers decided it. They spent zillions on the world's biggest battleship, the Yamato, and then it fired its guns exactly ONCE in the war before being sunk by American aircraft! Nowadays some people argue that we have the same attitude towards aircraft carriers - former British Foreign Secretary David Owen thought spending millions on them was pointless when he said they'd all be sunk by submarines in the first hour of World War III. (But, of course, not every war is that big!)
Battleships were essentially obsolete by WW2. That’s one of the reasons the attack on Pearl Harbour wasn’t as devastating as it could have been as the US aircraft carriers were out at sea.which meant it didn’t take long for America to strike back at Midway. It would have been a different story in the war in the Pacific otherwise, at least for a short time.
Not true at all. They were not obsolete until after the war, and not truly until the invention of the anti-ship missile (which pretty much rendered cruisers obsolete as well). It Is true that their importance was significantly reduced though, and there was no longer any reason to build them in sch massive numbers... And thus, having built so many during the war, no need to build new ones at all until they became obsolete in truth.
The fact is, at the start of the war (and remember, pearl harbour was Not the start of the war), while most were aware that aircraft carriers would be significant, the technology was still unproven and in significant need of refinement. No one yet knew what was and wasn't good doctrine regarding their use. Many were hasty conversions from other ship types: small, cramped, and badly laid out as a result. In many theaters, land based airfields rendered carriers an utterly unnecessary risk and expense, even as battleships were still very well protected and provided the necessary space for fleet command and control capabilities, which was limited or non-existant on smaller ships. American battleships rapidly became essentially super-destroyers, being able to mount frankly Absurd amounts of anti-aircraft weaponry, massively improving the ability of the whole fleet (particularly the carriers, which could barely mount any AA due to flight deck operations) to survive air-attacks that got past the fighter screen.
Even reduced to only being useful for costal bombardment in their last days, they still weren't Entirely obsolete until the anti-ship missile, which combined all the advantages of the torpedo and the dive bomber and then some with few, if any, of the disadvantages, brought about the situation where Any ship, even a random fishing trawler someone had bolted a launcher and maybe a decent radar to, (or, for that matter, sometimes even a relatively small Infantry Unit) could destroy a battleship with impunity from outside of its range.
Until that point, what they were was Expensive, and no longer the biggest deciding factor in a battle. Far from the same thing as being obsolete.
Thanks for that. I wouldn’t dispute anything you said but I did use the term essentially which I think is a fair enough word to have used.
22:13 Bismarck was the heaviest Warship ever put to sea UNTIL THAT POINT in time. This includes Aircraft Carriers - but again only those commissioned up to that point. In terms of Battleships She would later be surpassed by her own sister Tirpitz (who got a little heavier due to design improvements and additional armament in form of more AA guns and Torpedoes) as well as the American Iowa-class (USS Iowa, USS New Jersey, USS Missouri, USS Wisconsin) and of course the Japanese Yamato-class (Yamato, Musashi) while the British HMS Vanguard would also come close to her.
To their lack of armor Aircraft carriers were always large but pretty light ships when compared to heavily armored Battleships. As mentioned in the video: some 40% of Bismarck's displacement were dedicated to defensive measures, mostly armor. The first carriers coming close to a modern Battleship's displacement were the American USS Midway and the Japanese Shinano - which were both built on the hull of incomplete battleships: Midway on the hull of uncompleted USS Montana and Shinano was supposed to become the third Yamato-class battleship before she was redesigned into a carrier.
Post-war warships generally became much lighter as the invention of Cruise Missiles rendered armor redundant and Missile Launchers also didn't need large Barbettes and Arsenals, thus were much lighter and didn't consume much space. A modern Destroyer or Missile cruiser comes in at about 10-15% of a Battleship's displacement but could easily defeat it in combat. Aircraft Carriers were the sole exception from that trend as they became even larger. A modern US Supercarrier has twice the displacement of Bismarck.
Ouch! Indy is a good source for narrative history, but he starts of with a mistake already. The Bismarck wasn't the largest battleship ever build.
It was 251m long and massed not quite 42,000 metric tons. The American "Iowa" class of battleships, the last build by the USA, came in at 270m and almost 46,000 tons.
Biggest battleship(s) ever build were the Japanese "Yamato" and her sistership "Musashi" at 263m length and 65,000 tons.
To compare: the latest class of US aircraft carriers is about 100,000 tons.
And I should have watched on before posting... so ETA:
He's also wrong that "the world had never seen anything like this". The Royal Navy had several ships of a comparable or bigger size. The "HMS Hood" - sunk by the "Bismarck" - was of almost exactly the same mass, even a bit longer, and had an equal armament. Some British battleships sported even bigger guns.
Indy, Indy, Indy...
They sometimes make a few mistakes but nothing huge and as you said Indy is still a very good source for narrative history.
What they meant was that Bismarck was the largest battleship at the time it was completed, of course there were a bunch of larger ones later.
@@HingerlAlois Well, Indy's exact words were "the largest battleship ever built", so he probably could have phrased it better.
@@HingerlAlois Ok, that's fair. It should be noted though that the Hood was bigger than the Bismarck... but it was "only" a battlecruiser, not a battleship.
But still... the Hood had been build twenty years before the Bismarck.
@@Groffili
The Bismarck had a slightly larger displacement than the Hood.
The Bismarck was not the largest Battleship ever built, it was, along with her sister ship Tirpitz, the largest built by Germany with a maximum overload weight around 50,000 tons. The largest ever were the Japanese Yamato class by some margin. The Bismarck's were not as groundbreaking as is often claimed. They were an enlarged updated WW1era Bayern class design and their armour layout was outdated. HMS Hood was also a WW1 designed ship and by the outbreak of WW2 was over due for a major refit and she was over weight. It was not true that she had not seen action in WW 2, she took part in the action against the French Fleet at Oran in July 1940. Recent thinking on her loss in the action with Bismarck is that the Germans scored a lucky hit aft where her below waterline hull was exposed by the bow wave due to her high speed at the time. This penetrated a magazine for 4" ammunition which caught fire, in turn setting fire to the adjacent 15" magazine resulting in the explosion that destroyed her. There is a good recent video on TH-cam by Drachinifel. HMS Prince of Wales was a new ship that was still in the process of 'Working Up'. She still had Dockyard workers aboard and was suffering many 'Teething Problems' with her systems and guns.
What is not mentioned in this video is that prior to their attack on the Bismarck the Swordfish had mistakenly attacked one of the shadowing British Cruisers, scoring a hit, but, the torpedoes were fitted with magnetic detonators, a new technology, and they failed to detonate. The Torpedoes used in the follow up attack were fitted with the older contact detonators and they did work. The aircraft on British aircraft carriers are flown by the Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm. They use the same roundel marking as the Royal Air Force. Between the wars the RAF had been responsible for providing the aeroplanes and the flight crews, but this had been a very unsatisfactory arraignment, and control of carrier aircraft was returned to the Navy a couple of years prior to the outbreak of war. Sadly not in time to undo the neglect by the RAF between the wars.
The Bismarck had been spotted by a Spitfire photo reconnaissance aircraft whilst still in Norwegian waters. After the action with Hood and Prince of Wales Bismarck's where about's was not known for a while until she was re located by a RAF Catalina flying boat.
HMS Rodney was named for a 18th century British Admiral. She was built between the wars and was armed with 9 16" guns in 3 triple turrets all forward of the superstructure. Her sister ship was HMS Nelson. HMS King George V, name ship for her class, was a sister ship of HMS Prince of Wales, a new ship with 10 14" guns in 2 quad and 1 twin turrets.
There are many mistakes in the commentary by the 'Historian' in this video. For more accurate videos on the subject please do look up Drachinifel's channel on TH-cam.
Thanks for the clarification:)
There is a Battlefield 360 series on the USS Enterprise (CV-6) which is the most decorated ship in US Navy history. It is a good introduction to how WWII carriers operated.
The first film I ever saw at the cinema was a 1960 release called Sink The Bismark. It's in black and white but is a very accurate account of the hunt for, and confrontation with the mighty battleship. I was only 6 when I was taken to see it, but enjoyed it. Try and track it down and watch it. It is very good, probably on you tube!.
I had an uncle who was on the Hood, but was taken off with appendicitis before it sailed on its last mission. The family didn't know about his move and thought he'd gone down with it. He was on the Warspite after that, another distinguished battleship that had a fine reputation.
Wow, what a lucky (and unlucky) man your uncle was, lol. I’ve had appendicitis and he has my sympathies. But I’d rather have appendicitis than sink with the ship.
HMS Rodney was a hulking monster with three triple 16 inch turrets up front, She pounded Bismarck to scrap and as a side note scored the only battle ship on Battle ship torpedo hit against Bismarck.
Of Hood's total crew of 1,419, only 3 survived since the explosion tearing the ship in two caused her to sink in around 3 minutes being the cause behind the high death rate.
Hood was not the first British battlecruiser destroyed outright by magazine detonations, HMS Indefatigable, HMS Queen Mary and HMS Invincible were lost to magazine detonations at Jutland in 1916.
The Royal Navy has it's own air force - but it is very small. In the Falklands War both RAF and the Fleet Air Arm (Royal Navy) pilots served side-by-side, flying Harrier and Sea-Harrier Jumpjets from HMS Hermes and HMS Invincible. Naval fliers held naval ranks. "HMS Rodney" was named after Admiral Rodney, an admiral in Britain's 18th Century fleet.
In addition to my previous comment, there were TWO raids by the Swordfish from the Ark Royal. The first attacked a British ship, but the magnetic fuses which were a new design, caused the torpedos to explode when they hit the water. The main effect of the second raid was that the Bismark had its rudders jammed in one direction, so she could not steer, but was forced to go in a large circle which brought her straight to H Force.
his name is Par Sundstrom he's the bass gitarist.
hood was found by the same gut who found the titanic and sits on her side in 3 pieces not surprizing only 3 of her crew survived. Bismark sits proudly upright at the btm of an underwater volcano. well worth watching the documentry where they go looking for them
This is the link to the original footage of the Bismarck v. HMS Hood battle and of the Hood blowing up.
th-cam.com/video/oWvZ8EEoovM/w-d-xo.html
The original had no sound but some has been added for dramatic effect.
A lot of early Aircraft Carriers were not really purpose built for it, but older and civilian ships retrofitted with a kind of loft platform
The Bayern class of WW1 also had 15 inch guns (380mm), there was even plans to to convert the two 1930s Scharnhorsts (Scharnhorst and Gneisenau) from 11 inch guns to 15 inch guns.
Bismarck was bout twice the weight of HMS Arc Royal, but just a few meters longer. Early aircraft carriers started their lives as ships with landing strips built on top of them. Arc Royal were among the first purpose built aircraft carriers, hut had to fit within the Washington treaty.
It's Ark Royal!
The ship was named for Admiral George Brydges Rodney, a great naval hero, one of his midshipmen was Samuel Hood later admiral Hood after whom HMS Hood was named.
Hi So Gal, Another great video. There was an enjoyable British film made in the 1960’s starring Kenneth Moore called ”Sink the Bismarck” which was the order issued by Churchill. The battle of the Atlantic was what worried Churchill more than any other conflict. The film dramatises the whole of the operation. With your love of history you must visit the UK sometime. We have more history than we can use.
Actually loving your vids!
But gotta say this:
You got to react to Sabaton - No Bullets Fly So effing emotional!
HMS Hood was named after Admiral Samuel Hood, who fought victoriously in the American Revolutionary War.
History, Sabaton, Star Trek... Keep this coming, hahah! :)