Talk:German battleship Bismarck

Legacy and Impact

Holy cow these old war stories spawn a lot of chatter. UK English is my two cents, and not making definitive statements about "who sank the ship" beyond that so many shells hit her, and orders to scuttle were given, etc. The fact is, she went down.

The article is missing a section on the impact of the sinking in Britain and Germany. At some point, the German capital ships stayed in port. How did this contribute? Etc.

Thanks. 184.69.174.194 (talk) 03:37, 10 March 2019 (UTC)

Although it could be expanded it's covered in the "Aftermath" part of Last_battle_of_the_battleship_Bismarck#Aftermath which is linked in the article. - MTWEmperor (talk • contribs) 18:46, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

Strange

It is strange that the following article is not cited here:

• Garzke, William H. Jr., Dulin, Robert O. Jr. and Webb, Thomas G. (1994) Bismarck's Final Battle, Warship International No. 2. Available as a web version at NavWeaps.com [1]

It contains a wealth of very pertinent information, particularly about the damage Bismarck suffered in its final combat. It could be employed to the advantage of this page. Urselius (talk) 07:48, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

I don't really see how - this is an encyclopedia article, not a specialist source. The reader gets the sense that the ship was reduced to a charnel house, we don't need to bog down the narrative with overly specific details about individual hits. More importantly, the article is already over 70kb, which is verging on WP:TOOBIG as it is - as articles become longer, they become more difficult for readers to actually read. If anything, the article could probably be trimmed a bit. Parsecboy (talk) 12:42, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

By way of example, I recently took a buzzsaw to rewrote Richelieu-class battleship, and in the process cut it from an unreadable 117kb to a much more manageable 55kb (and in the process cut out a good bit of plagiarized material, but that's beside the point). The point of writing articles here isn't to record every known fact about a topic, but to produce a readable summary of secondary sources. In the Richelieu example, the reader doesn't really need to know (or even care about) the specific location of the searchlights or what the weight of the main battery turrets were. And if they do care to dig deeper, they can look at the specialist sources - the same as with any paper encyclopedia. Parsecboy (talk) 12:49, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

There is a huge amount of information in the page on how the underwater hull was not significantly damaged by shellfire, and probably this could be drastically pruned. However, there is little mention about why this was the case. To quote Garzke, Dulin and Webb: "As a practical matter, Bismarck was vulnerable to penetration by British heavy caliber shellfire throughout almost all of the final engagement. Most of the battle was fought at very close ranges and the resultant flat trajectory fire was very likely to ricochet off the surface of the water. This prevented many hits on Bismarck's underwater hull as shells falling short would probably ricochet and careen into the upper hull or superstructure instead of penetrating the surface." I would submit that detailing the effect(s) of something without adequately addressing its cause(s) is fundamentally un-encyclopaedic, if relevant sources are available. Urselius (talk) 13:53, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

That's a point worth including. Parsecboy (talk) 14:53, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

Fate

Is there any way of changing the Bismarck's fate? Stating that the ship was scuttled after damage implies that the ship was sunk through the sole effort of the scuttling charges placed on its interior, which, despite its hefty contribution to its sinking, was not the original cause (torpedo hits, shellfire etc.). It just seems unfair to not credit the British ships at least partially in its direct sinking, and not just its incapacitation (shown by the belief of it sinking regardless of the scuttling performed). I'm no expert in this field, so if I'm wrong please correct me. Remeau Bro (talk) 19:42, 17 September 2019 (UTC)

Short of a time machine to go back to mid-May 1941, no ;) In any event, we write articles based on what reliable sources say - and the preponderance of sources support scuttling as at least the proximate cause the ship's sinking. The current wording is the best compromise to have emerged in the last 15+ years of discussion (if you want your brain to hurt, type "scuttling" into the archive search bar in the top and read through the resulting walls of text). At this point, I for one am not particularly interested in rocking the boat. Parsecboy (talk) 19:59, 17 September 2019 (UTC)

German Naming Convention during the Nazi period.

German Capital ships were referred to using male pronouns during the reign of the Third Reich. -A — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.96.30.55 (talk) 17:18, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

You should ask your self where and when we find ourselves living... Parsecboy (talk) 17:25, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

If this is wikipedia's policy, I can do very little about it. But it is disrespectful to the Crews that serve on any ship to refer to their ship improperly; Regardless of what these men died for, their memories should be honored all the same. I protest this decision on such grounds, semantics should not be more important than the memory of the dead. -A — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.96.30.55 (talk) 17:29, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

Following stupid Nazi propaganda has nothing to do with the memory of the dead. Parsecboy (talk) 18:07, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

Just to make a point, the practice of the Germans using male pronouns for their ships was around long before "stupid Nazi propaganda" as you put it. Imperator was a German passenger ship. HE was given a male pronoun. Don't believe me? Look up the Wiki article. The Nazis were not around when Imperator was launched. Instead of dismissing people's thoughts on an article - try putting some thought into it.