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Post by swanrail on Apr 12, 2008 0:00:28 GMT 1
When I first read the story of the sinking of the Bismarck, I could not understand why there seemed to be no attempt to steer the ship using engine control of the three props when the rudder was damaged. Issue 59 clears up the mystery for me. The ship had an inherent design fault which during her trials, showed up as there was a test to fix the rudders dead ahead and steer the ship by engine controls only. At above 5 knots, they found the ship veered too much and could not hold a straight course. The problem apparently was caused by the outer two props not being parallel to each other. Such a simple problem led to the downfall of the ship, mystery solved. So another bonus for getting info in the mags as well as the kit!!!!
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Post by shane67 on Apr 12, 2008 0:20:09 GMT 1
it was very interesting i couldn't believe that they seem to have left that fact out of the history books,probably the only reason we caught up with her ,personally i think the only reason she went over was that the crew had opened all the seacock's which allowed us to put a torp above her citadel armour which ultimately put her on the bottom.they also seem to be publishing some unbefore seen photo's.
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Post by eric on Apr 12, 2008 7:30:36 GMT 1
Baron Von Mullerheim wrote that the rudders were at quite a tight turn angle when the torp hit and jammed them there in that position permenantly, there was a huge hole in the rudder room, so sea water was violently sloshing around inside, meaning nobody could get in to disengage the rudders or manualy put them to neutral.
Bismarck was already slowly settling when the order to scuttle was given, she may have taken some time to sink without the order, but she eventualy would have gone down. In any case, she was a raging infreno by then, it is more than likely fire would have reached a magazine sooner or later......and then.....
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