Send a carrier to fight a carrier. Because not everyone is as lucky as Scharnhorst and Gneisenau in finding HMS Glorious without air cover and minimal escorts.
It's not like Ark Royal actually sunk Bismarck. A lucky hit on the rudder that crippled her ability to maneuver, allowing the RN to catch up to her. If I were Bisko, I'd be more irritated than traumatized.
I'll add that Ark Royal's Swordfish had a rather glaring example of friendly fire when they attacked a British cruiser after mistaking it for Bismarck. In which case, everyone should be worried about Ark Royal because she obviously has unaddressed vision problems and requires glasses.
Steak said: In which case, everyone should be worried about Ark Royal because she obviously has unaddressed vision problems and requires glasses.
Ultimate example being when she damaged herself with her own Swordfish in March 1941 = her catapult malfunctioned, trashed the plane and hurled the wreckage into the sea ahead of her. She was unable to stop and sailed over the broken plane as the depth charges it was carrying detonated right beneath her bow. She had to abandon her search for Scharnhorst and Gneisenau and limp back to port for repairs.
The example attacking the cruiser allowed them to swap the magnetic torpedoes (that failed to detonate on the cruiser, luckily) for more reliable contact detonation torpedoes. I believe regardless, Bisko wants Grafs cover as a safeguard.
Also, mildy related:HMS King George V accidentally rammed and sunk a friendly DD while USS Washington followed. As the DD sank as KGV passed over, then as Washington passed, the DCs started going off, causing hull damage. Till then US BBs were under British command. Americans reversed this partly because of that incident.
Ultimate example being when she damaged herself with her own Swordfish in March 1941 = her catapult malfunctioned, trashed the plane and hurled the wreckage into the sea ahead of her. She was unable to stop and sailed over the broken plane as the depth charges it was carrying detonated right beneath her bow. She had to abandon her search for Scharnhorst and Gneisenau and limp back to port for repairs.
So... she used to be an Adventurer... until she took an arrow to the knee
It's not like Ark Royal actually sunk Bismarck. A lucky hit on the rudder that crippled her ability to maneuver, allowing the RN to catch up to her. If I were Bisko, I'd be more irritated than traumatized.
I'll add that Ark Royal's Swordfish had a rather glaring example of friendly fire when they attacked a British cruiser after mistaking it for Bismarck. In which case, everyone should be worried about Ark Royal because she obviously has unaddressed vision problems and requires glasses.
Once again, that's really not how it worked.
Bismarck had evaded the Royal Navy, and the battleships would have been powerless to stop her, but Ark Royal's swordfish completely disabled Bismarck to the point where there wasn't any chance for Bismarck to escape, even without any further pursuit. Ark Royal could have easily just sent another flight off to finish off Bismarck (which had failed to shoot down any of the incoming torpedo bombers), but the brass wanted to have the kill come from some sort of battleship-to-battleship "fair fight" (against a sitting duck) to avenge the loss of the Hood.
Again, the metaphor is more like sawing off someone's arms and legs and leaving them bleeding in the woods for wolves to finish them off. Yeah, technically, the wolves do the final killing blow, but there was no way to survive what you'd already done, regardless, and it would have been effortless to finish them off. (And yeah, that should be plenty traumatizing.)
If you want to claim any sort of "Ark Royal didn't matter" argument, the only way to do so is to claim that Bismarck was already bleeding out from the previous battle where Prince of Wales had landed a serious blow that was never repaired thanks to the high speed maneuvers by Bismarck, and only increased in severity with time... but that makes the technical final blow by the pursuing battleships even more irrelevant, regardless.
So far as friendly fire goes, that was rather endemic in the early years of the war on both sides. (Just ask the Italians, Lebe, and Max about friendly fire....) And that's not counting the constant misidentification of enemy ships. (Like how Yorktown was declared sunk 3 times in the Battle of Midway.)
Bismarck had evaded the Royal Navy, and the battleships would have been powerless to stop her, but Ark Royal's swordfish completely disabled Bismarck to the point where there wasn't any chance for Bismarck to escape, even without any further pursuit. Ark Royal could have easily just sent another flight off to finish off Bismarck (which had failed to shoot down any of the incoming torpedo bombers), but the brass wanted to have the kill come from some sort of battleship-to-battleship "fair fight" (against a sitting duck) to avenge the loss of the Hood.
I don't think Ark could've finished Bismarck off herself. Battleships generally take a lot of punishment to sink-more than a single carrier's air wing can deal. Just look at the sinking of Yamato and Musashi.
I don't think Ark could've finished Bismarck off herself. Battleships generally take a lot of punishment to sink-more than a single carrier's air wing can deal. Just look at the sinking of Yamato and Musashi.
Musashi notably sucked up a massive amount of overkill, (and that's assuming more realistic numbers of hits, rather than the propaganda numbers), and the Yamato-class was generally much more difficult to sink than most. By comparison, Kongou went down to a single torpedo. (Although, granted, it was a larger submarine-based torpedo.) Likewise, the once-going-to-be-a-Yamato-class Shinano went down in one torpedo, thanks to severe mismanagement. I would also point out that the German commerce raider ships like Bismarck also carried torpedoes - not for damaging enemy ships in gun battles, but for finishing off transports, because it's possible to shell a completely disabled ship for hours with surface guns without sinking it, but torpedoes are rather effective at sinking things, what with those large flooding holes below the waterline... Torpedoes could be somewhat random in their damage, but even just a couple solid hits would have sunk Bismarck (even one further solid hit after what Prince of Wales had already done could have been enough). The torpedo that disabled Bismarck was a functional near-miss that was certainly lucky in disabling Bismarck entirely, but also could have been much more immediately fatal in terms of flooding than it actually was.
It would've taken a few flights to get a killshot, sure, but what was Bismarck going to do about it? Spin in circles well out of range? Bismarck had no real way of repairing the damage it had already sustained, and barring the Kriegsmarine actually sending out a fleet to tow Bismarck back to port, just leaving Bismarck there to gradually sink over the course of a week would have been a viable tactic. Ark Royal wasn't the only source of aircraft within the region, either, as Victorious was with the battleship group.
NWSiaCB said: By comparison, Kongou went down to a single torpedo... Likewise, the once-going-to-be-a-Yamato-class Shinano went down in one torpedo, thanks to severe mismanagement.
Kongou was struck by 2 torpedoes from USS Sealion. Damage was initially considered not too severe but her captain maintained her high-speed while conducting evasive maneuvers, which wrenched the holes the wider and worsened the flooding.
USS Archerfish landed 4 torpedo hits along Shinano's starboard side, each of which resulted in serious flooding.
but according to bisko's underwater discovery, theres no hole on her belt armor. Means those "fair fight" between battleships didnt do much to her
actually kinda the same, while one swordfish flying low below bismarck's AA gun can cover and got a lucky strike on rudder, Bismarck's shoot on Hood's armoury is also lucky to get her burned down in an explosion