Tirpitz

[Alexanderofmacedon]

I stayed up till around 3 am watching a special about the Tirpitz. What a badass ship...

Discus.

[Csargo]

It seems to ring a bell but I just cant remember.

[spmetla]

Yeah it was a great ship. Too bad (or good for us) that it was never used. After the sinking of the Bismark Hitler required of the Kriegsmarine that his personal approval was required for the use of capital ships which he was too afraid to do. If it had been allowed to go after some of those convoys heading to the USSR it would have done some major damage, required a larger diversion of the Royal navy's capital ships to help escort convoys to the USSR and if it was successful as I imagine it would upon a large convoy in tight formation would have hampered the Soviets supplies along with hurt relations between the USSR and the Western Powers.

here's the best site I know of about them:
http://www.bismarck-class.dk/index.html

Great site with good information and lots of photography, theres also sister sites about the other German Capital ships.

[AggonyDuck]

Whoah! That's a nice amount of information.

[Alexanderofmacedon]

It seemed that Hitler was too scared to use this beast though at times. If the allies, knew the ship was on the way, he'd simply bring it back to the Noregan (sp?) port where it was staying.

[Watchman]

Heh. By what I've read of it the bugger somewhat perversely had its greatest impact simply by existing there in Norway, but did not directly manage to get about anything done. The Allies were scared to death of the bugger, full well knowing that if it managed to engage one of the Murmansk convoys they'd have very little to stop it with at hand before it sent the freighters to the bottom. One of its typically soon aborted sorties actually made one of the convoys disperse and duly get severely shredded by the Kriegsmarine and Luftwaffe bombers and subs.

It was like some sort of gravity singularity that made all the operations in the region revolve around itself, and the Allies expended considerable energy in trying to get rid of the pesky thing.

[The Wizard]

Well, Soviet subs caused the worst civilian disasters at sea, with the death toll peaking around 20000 men, women and children...

[Seamus Fermanagh]

The Scharnhorst and Gneisnau were, arguably, the best battle cruisers ever built. Though only armed with 280cm guns, they had excellent firepower, speed, and better protection than any ship of their cruising speed until the Iowa class. Had they been re-armed with twin 380cm turrets to replace the 280's (planned, but never got enough of the big tubes built) they would have been even more fearsome. They might even have been capable of the old BC goal of being able to outrun anything they couldn't kill.