Quote:
Originally Posted by RyanW
Apparently, King George V's 14 inch shells were largely ineffective against Bismarck's armor, so a lot of those hits were effectively meaningless. I've heard it claimed that the RN so wanted to be sure they killed it, they closed to point blank range. While that gave them a lot of hits, most of them were high, disabling things like gun direction and turrets (and most likely killing the bulk of the senior officers early on) but not having as great an effect on the seaworthiness as would ordinarily be expected.
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I know there's a
reason that
Bismarck survived three shell hits from
Rodney on the 24th, a torpedo hit and at least one shell hit on the 25th, and four hunred shell hits on the 27th, before being sunk by two torpedos, or whatever the hellish battering it took was. I'm just trying to give context to the statement that it was "effectively killed by one shell".