Quote:
Originally Posted by Agemegos
In the final battle on the 27th, four British ships fired 2,800 shells at Bismarck and scored 400 hits. Then they sank it with two torpedo hits.
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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.