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Old 2012-12-31, 12:24   Link #13
Ithekro
Gamilas Falls
 
 
Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: Republic of California
Age: 46
Gneisenau had a mazagine explostion due to a bomb hit. She was not sunk by this, but by that time in the war, it was considered too expensive to repair and the leadership no longer carried for naval warships. She was used as a blockship after that.

It was suggested that the bomb that hit her did not penetrate the armor, but went squarely through an open hatch on the turret.

Scharnhorst was done in by the HMS Duke of York and torpedo fire from cruisers and destroyers.

Tirpitz was attacked many times and done in by several 12,000 pound bombs.

Bismarck was technically done in by two things. Prince of Wales hit him once and basically mission killed him by putting a hole in his fuel comparment. Not only did this make the mission impossible, it also slowed him down a little. Ark Royal's planes took care of his rudder on his way back to France. The British still claim they sank him with torpedoes, but due to how he sits in the mud, thre is no way to confirm that. Presently it seems more likely he was scuttled as the Germans said they did (as from what they can see it seems the ship's torpedo bulkheads are still intact).

Yamato and her sister ship Musashi both took massive numbers of bombs and torpedoes to sink. Musashi took more due to the Americans hitting both sides of the ship with torpedoes so she sank more slowly on an even keel. For Yamato (having learned from sinking Musashi) they focused on one side for the most part, so she rolled over and exploded.

One Japanese battleship (of the era) survived the war. Nagato (the first modern battleship to have 16" guns back in 1920) survived to be used at the Bikini Atoll atomic bomb tests along with several other captured vessels and many older American warships. The other surviving Japanese battleship was a museum piece....Mikasa, which currently still exists in a concrete drydock. She was a from the Russo-Japanese War over a century ago (and built in Britain).
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