[LAH 1 SS]

it was well known that whilst the fitting out of bismark and tirpitz was taking place that allied convoys were being hunted and descimated by the scharnhorst and gneisnau along with other pocket battleships like admiral hipper and admiral scheer working together as small battlegroups there gun size and speed made them ideal surface raiders . to add to this the plan was to have the bismark and tirpitz (when finished) both head the two seperate battle groups and to have them roaming the oceans sperately to attack the convoys thus increasing the firepower and the tonnage rate of ships that could be sunk.

it was well known that during the engagement prinz eugen took alot of the fire from hood and prince of wales due to the british being unable to tell which ship was which. it wasnt until bismark fired that the error was recognised, have a look at german ship design or the profiles of the various ships and see how similar the silhouettes were. at a range of 1mile you could mistake the sharnhorst, prinz eugen or bismark for each other. this was very clever of german ship design at the time and it worked in the case of operation rhinebung. this along withe the speed that german warships could get to 30+ knots makes them very agile surface raiders and faster than any british warship of the time .

i know the orders were for bismark to remain silent and to try and slip into the atlantic convoy lanes unspotted (didnt work). hitler's orders were that he expressly forbade any german capital ship to engage another capital ship as hitler feared loosing the super ships (hence why tirpitz spent all her time in the norwegian waters after bismark was sunk she never fired her guns at another capital ship). there were further plans to build 6 ships bigger than bismark classed h class ships. these were similar in design but carying 18 in guns could you just imagine if these ships had been built and bismark not sunk no allied capital ship would have been safe or convoy as well for that matter.

lutgens waited to return fire becuase of hilters orders ( as stated earlier) however the pounding the prinz eugen was getting plus the fact that bismark was being called upon to test her strength helped the process a bit i feel. another thing to take into account would be that the german range finders on bismark would have been taking note of the fall of shot from prince of wales and hood alot easier to gauge the range of an enemy vessel when you see where there shots are landing. from this bismarks shot was far more effective than prinz eugen becuase prinz eugenwould have been trying to find range whilst being fired upon just my theory on things guys what do you think