Best posts made by Panzer Leader

The Big E all the way for the US. The US would have been in trouble had she not survived.

For Germany - The Bismark was quite a ship and was ahead of its time. Only by a one in a million fluke shot that jammed the rudder where the Brits able to take advantage. I watched a documentary on it and it had anti torpedo capabilitites that where state of the art, very quick speed and major armaments. The only two remaining surviving German sailors admitted that they actually sunk their own ship so it would not fall into the enemies hands.

@coachofmany:

They built the carrier “Graf Zepplin” 70% finished.
The Allies were watching but new that it would not complete and did not waste the resources on it to destroy it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_aircraft_carrier_Graf_Zeppelin

Thanks coachofmany, you learn something new every day. Seems like they could have finished it but never did. Might have made a difference if it had been ready when lauched.

Cheers. :-)

@Brain:

The Bismarck:

I saw this documentary on the Bismark were they found the ship wreck and had the three remaining German sailors that are still alive explain their side of the story and what happened as well as some of the British sailors and their side of the story. That was a very interesting show.

The Bismark was at the top and was almost unsinkable. It had some of the largest guns to date on a battleship and it had an inner wall that when a torpedo hit and penetrated the outer hull, huge flow pumps would kick in and fill the “cavity” between the outer and inner walls with sea water so fast that the torpedo would be “stopped” by the water and not allowed to actually detonate on the inner wall and therefore becoming a “dud”. The only reason it was actually sunk was due to a one in a million shot from a topedo plane that actually caught the rudder and jammed it forcing the Bismark into a circle pattern as they could not unjam it. The British fleet moved in and shelled it steady for several hours and it would not sink. The Germans said they actually scuttlled (sunk) their own ship so as to not fall into enemy hands.

Recommend it.

@Admiral:

The Battleship/Aircraft Carrier hybrid, Ise. Though, I am a fan of most IJN designs.

Was this actually built or simply a concept that they were thinking about?