I gotcha.

I don’t know if that particular detail was a propaganda centerpiece. Mostly people just celebrated that the Bismarck was sunk.

It was a real monster of a ship, with it’s final engagements being back to back (for it, essentially one long engagement with a chase in the middle) from the 24th to the 27th of May 1941. The final engagement was 1 aircraft carrier, 2 battleships, 2 heavy cruisers, and 8 destroyers against the Bismarck. The British really, really did not like the idea of it existing.

That’s a Fairey Swordfish, which was the type of plane launched by the HMS Ark Royal to disable the Bismarck.

Quick wiki grab:

On 26 May, Ark Royal launched two Swordfish strikes against Bismarck. The first failed to locate the ship. The second attack scored two torpedo hits, one of which jammed the ship’s rudders at a 12° port helm. This made Bismarck unmanoeuvrable and unable to escape to port in France. She sank after intense Royal Navy attack within 13 hours. Some of the Swordfish flew so low that most of Bismarck’s flak weapons could not depress enough to hit them.

The short version with the Berthier is that it was very limited by the 8mm Lebel cartridge. It is a terrible cartridge to design a rifle around.

Brutal that the French military was stuck with the Lebel Model 1886 rifle through the war. The downside of rushing to be the earliest adopter of smokeless powder is that everyone else is going to have better rifles when they catch up.

That’s a discussion far beyond the scope of “Is the Patriot in its existing configuration working as needed?”

That’s more or less partially repeating the article on why missiles are more difficult to intercept, but it isn’t providing the actual numbers to examine. Given that Russia has modified missiles and is firing larger barrages to overwhelm defense systems, the nuance with numbers is important.

If 10 interceptor missiles are fired with an expected hit rate of 9/10, how much do the modified Russian missiles affect that? Does it drop to say, 8/10 or 3/10. The actual numbers are very important to figure out what to prioritize in defense between upgrading systems or deploying more of existing systems.

Previously Ukraine was intercepting 30%ish of missiles with Patriots which historically have a 90%+ interception rate. I don’t think the drop in interception can be entirely laid on modification to Russian missiles but also to the increase in firing and use of barrages. The interaction between all the variables is important.

I’d like a better breakdown on numbers to know if the Patriot’s inception missiles themselves are missing when they are fired, or if the problem is more on Russia firing many more missiles.

Other articles only address the total interception stats dropping rather than stats of the Patriot batteries themselves. I know the total interception rate has gone from mid 30% numbers to around 6%.

I think looking at a breakdown is an important nuance because it shows if the Patriot systems themselves need to be upgraded, or if there just need to be more of the existing systems deployed. I know the spokesperson said the modified Russian missiles are more difficult to intercept, but what does “more difficult” translate to in the percent of fired interception missiles that successfully connect? Is that a 5% drop or a 35% drop for the interception missiles actually fired?

Given that Ukraine is looking to the US for more Patriots, I suspect the systems themselves are acceptable but there just aren’t enough deployed to provide enough coverage.

This is all curiosity from a public sideline, as I’m sure that privately the ordnance experts have these numbers and details on interceptions to do better breakdowns.

Something about the specificity of “6 towels” made me laugh. That is a very German kind of thing.