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Michael Peck, National Interest: Everything You Need to Know: 5 Ways to Kill a Battleship
What’s the best way to sink a battleship? Put a hole in it.
Easier said than done. Yet for all their vast hulls, big guns and thick armor plates, these titans of the sea have proven quite mortal since their debut in the early years of the twentieth century. More than a hundred battleships and pre-dreadnoughts have succumbed to various causes, according to one vigorously sourced list.
So here are the top five ways in which battleships die. Note: some cases are ambiguous. For example, the Bismarck was damaged by a torpedo launched by British Swordfish aircraft, which slowed the German battleship until the Royal Navy’s battle fleet caught up and sank the Bismarck with gunfire. So should credit for the kill be shared?
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WNU Editor: One can say the same thing about aircraft carriers .... with a few more hits to kill them.
Carriers are a lot more vulnerable than battleships. For example, the Kirishima, during the second naval battle of Guadalcanal took up to 20 main gun hits from the USS Washington (9x16 inch main guns) and did not immediately sink.
ReplyDeleteI don't believe a modern carrier could survive a quarter of that damage. It was not much different with bombing aircraft. Many hits were required to significantly damage a battleship. A carrier was disabled or sunk with an average of 5 hits. The Yamato required both torpedo and dive bombers to put it under.
With the hundreds of water tight compartments modern carriers are very hard sink.
DeleteModern ordance such exocet, harpoon or penguin antiship missiles also lack sink power and are better suited for a bridge kill.
I cant remember what ship it was but not that long ago the u.s used a decommissioned frigate? as live target oractice7and it survived multiple harpoons, guided bombs, a couple of hell fires and 75mm deck gun hits.
The Bismarck was not sunk by an Allied Fleet. underwater drone camera proved it was scuttled. The media sucks as a rule now it seems.
ReplyDelete"The Bismarck was not sunk by an Allied Fleet"the British Fleet caused enough damage to Losers/Germans to avoid the ship falling into British hands they scuttled Her, but it was the British Fleet that put Bismarck in that position.The Losers/Germans been whining about this for 70 years, they screwed up, people should not believe their national myths and propaganda, War is a crap shoot Germany had the best trained modern armed forces in 1940 but by 1943 they were having their asses handed to them by the Decadent British the Mongrel Americans and the Sub Human Russians, none of which was true, but that was what the propaganda said and they believed it to their folly. The Bismarck was sunk because of the Actions of the Royal Navy period.
ReplyDeleteYour kidding? If germany had gone for quantity over wat changing uber weapons and hitler got the phone call at d day youd be eating schnitzel.
DeleteYou really need to read Adam Toonze's "Wages of Destruction",
Deleteamongst other things, he notes that the Nazi's never engaged in true mass production, making changes and improvements as for example, tanks rolled down the production line. As a result, the transmission salvaged from a knocked out MK1 Tiger, couldn't be fit into another knocked out MK1 Tiger, other than by a skilled machinist with full access to a machine shop.
The continual "quest for perfection" is why the Soviet Union, a country that at the start of WWII, had a heavy industry base 1/8th the size of Germany's, and 1/4 the production of steel, could overwhelm the Reich with "good enough" tanks.
And the Soviet Union had already "won" the war on the Eastern Front, by the time of D-Day.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_Eastern_Front_of_World_War_II#1944
Gotta love Russian winters
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