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Originally Posted by 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. 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.
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The Admiral Hipper was not a pocket battleship, but was the lead ship of the Hipper class heavy cruisers that included Blücher and Prinz Eugen. (also Lützow and Seydlitz).
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it was well known that prinz eugen took all of the fire from hood and prince of wakes 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.
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Not so. The Bismarck was seen leading the Prinz Eugen by allied airplanes in the inital breakout and at the time was the lead ship, and was so as shadowed by Norfolk and Suffolk. Admiral Holland ordered the initial fire to concentrate on the lead ship, believing it to be the Bismarck, but corrected that mistake before the Bismarck returned fire.
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at a range of 1mile you could mistake the sharnhorst, prinz eugen or bismark for each other. 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 .
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You and I can mistake the ships, but the men of the ships can tell.
The similarities were by coincidence. The Scharnhorst was based on the Mackensen class of WWI and the Bismarck was based on the Baden class.