What the Bismarck's 15-Inch Guns Were Actually Built For

The Bismarck carried eight 15-inch guns arranged in four twin turrets. Each barrel was 64 feet long. Each shell weighed 1,764 pounds. The fire control system could find a moving target at fifteen miles in heavy weather and deliver a firing solution accurate enough to place that shell onto a target the size of a tennis court. In their entire operational existence, those guns were fired in anger for less than twenty minutes. In this video we go beneath the famous story of the Bismarck and explain what those guns were actually built for — and why the most accurate naval guns Germany ever put to sea were designed for a campaign that lasted nine days and fired in anger for less time than it takes to watch a television episode. The Bismarck was not built to fight a fleet engagement with the Royal Navy. Grand Admiral Raeder knew in 1935 that Germany could not match British naval production in a direct arms race. The Bismarck was a commerce raider wearing battleship armor — and her guns were the instrument of that strategy. Built by Krupp, designed to destroy any escort ship Britain could send to protect its Atlantic convoys, powerful enough that the Royal Navy would have to commit capital ships to convoy protection rather than offensive operations. The guns were not built to win a battle. They were built to make Britain afraid to fight one. The 38cm SK C/34 fire control system was extraordinary. The Bismarck carried 10.5-meter rangefinders — 34 feet wide — that could determine the distance to a target at fifteen miles with extraordinary precision. A mechanical analog fire control computer integrated range, bearing, ship speed, and target movement into a continuous firing solution, slaving the gun turrets to its output in real time. At the Battle of the Denmark Strait on May 24th, 1941, that system found HMS Hood within the first exchange of salvos at 26,500 yards — nearly fifteen miles — in heavy weather. The fifth salvo struck Hood near the mainmast. Her magazine detonated. She sank in three minutes. 1,415 men died. The Bismarck's guns had performed exactly as designed. In twenty minutes of combat they had destroyed the largest and most celebrated warship Britain possessed. They never fired at an enemy warship again. After the Denmark Strait, the Bismarck was running for Brest with contaminated fuel and a damaged hull. A Swordfish biplane flying at 90 miles per hour jammed her rudder on May 26th. On May 27th, HMS Rodney and HMS King George V closed in and fired 700 to 800 shells over ninety minutes. The Bismarck's fire control — built for a stable platform at long range — could not function with its directors destroyed and the ship locked in a turn. The guns that had found Hood at fifteen miles in heavy weather scored no significant hits in the final battle. Not because they failed. Because the conditions they were built for no longer existed. At 15,719 feet on the floor of the North Atlantic, Anton, Bruno, Caesar, and Dora are still there — pointed at targets they never got to find. If you're new here — Warships Explained covers the real engineering decisions and unexpected turns behind the most famous warships ever built. Subscribe so you don't miss the next one. —————————————————————————————— CHAPTERS: 0:00 — Introduction 1:00 — What the guns were actually built for 2:30 — The commerce raiding strategy 4:00 — How the 38cm SK C/34 was designed 6:00 — The fire control system that found Hood at 15 miles 7:30 — Denmark Strait — 20 minutes of combat 9:00 — Why the guns never fired again 9:45 — What the Bismarck's guns actually were —————————————————————————————— Further reading: Battleship Bismarck: A Survivor's Story — Baron Burkard von Müllenheim-Rechberg The Bismarck Chase — Robert J. Winklareth German Capital Ships of World War Two — M.J. Whitley —————————————————————————————— Copyright fair use notice. All media used in this video is used for the purpose of education under the terms of fair use. All footage and images used belong to their respective copyright holders where applicable. —————————————————————————————— #Bismarck #BismarckGuns #NavalHistory #WW2 #WarshipsExplained #GermanNavy #BattleshipBismarck #HMSHood #DenmarkStrait #MilitaryHistory