Warship Appreciation Thread

[Harlock]

Edit-
As an extra note this image was taken in Sept 1945 after the war had ended so this would be the end of her combat career. The old warrior returning home weary but victorious before hanging up her sword.

 

[Deleted member]

Edit-
As an extra note this image was taken in Sept 1945 after the war had ended so this would be the end of her combat career. The old warrior returning home weary but victorious before hanging up her sword.

She well deserves the glint. I wish we had saved her.

 

[Aaron Fox]

Here is something that people tend to not appreciate and always forget: the US Standard line of BBs.

(this is the USS Nevada, of the Nevada class Standard Dreadnoughts in her 1944/45 config)​

People should know that in the Dreadnought race, there were four contenders: The US, Germany, UK, and Japan. The US with the USS Michigan, the Japanese with the Satsuma, the UK with the Dreadnought, and German Nassau were all basically fighting for the 1st spot. The USS Michigan would be delayed because of Congress (again, pre-Cold War USN history is basically 'the USN thinks of something and... Congress gives the ol' stick up the ass without lube' treatment), the Satsuma wasn't completed with her full gun layout due to procurement problems, the Nassau got construction problems, and the Dreadnought only got first because the RN basically did a 4X rush-build on the thing after they got word everyone else had the same brilliant idea. The USN, though, had a decent idea of where to go with the Standards, which would lead to numerous improvements in design.

The USN had this novel idea of simply clocking all dreadnought ships at one speed (21 knots) and it allows your battleline to maneuver as one despite having three or more different dread classes in said line. In addition, they were the first to implement the 'all or nothing' armor scheme which was revolutionary for the time. While the clocked speed was dropped by the time the SouCals (South Carolina) class was put to the drawing board, the many improvements to design and setup were retained. This included the 'long legs' that the Standards had from the get-go.

People who play World of Warships would know that US Standard BBs are slow as fuck well into the higher tiers.

Yeah. And asides from US Navy, there is the United States Maritime Service that serves to keep the US Armed Forces and her allies stocked with needed supplies around the world. They deserve more respect than they currently get.

Logistics ain't sexy, it is boring and repetitive as fuck despite the fact that wars are won or lost because of logistics.

 

[Bacle]

USS New Mexico, the All Electric Battleship, in front of Mt. Fuji


IJN Sendai, a.k.a. Yasen-Baka, a.k.a. Eldest Traffic Cone


USS Alaska, one of two of the commissioned Alaska-class Large Cruisers

 

[Husky_Khan]

I'll always remember when the USS Missouri came to rescue the town of Pine Valley, California when the Soviets invaded via Seattle.



Very epic hero moment.

I also like how the battleship is dumping full salvos into somewhere while asking for accurate targeting coordinates.

 

[Aaron Fox]

An interesting what if, Warrior vs. Monitor

Fun fact, the Parrot Gun was able to use 30-pound charges for it's shot, meaning that it actually had AP to speak of, an unusual for the early Ironclad period.

Then again, the USN had a history of their guns literally exploding so they decided to cut the recommended charges in half. Parrot, on the other hand, made one of the sturdier naval rifles of the time...

... so in this situation, the Warrior is so going to get pummeled.

Now, for something different:

The Seeadler, the last of the fighting sailing ships.


I'm not shitting you guys. Due to the coal shortages that Germany was having in WW1, the navy decided to take a captured clipper (a type of sailing ship) that was captured under unusual circumstances (basically the British captured the American ship told the crew to strike its colors, and sail to an island... which led to the American crew selling out the British prize crew and getting sent to a neutral country free of charge while the Germans kept the ship), arm it with some cruiser guns and torpedo tubes, and tell the crew to go essentially pirate.

... and they did this successfully for almost a year.

... also what is it with Imperial German naval commanders doing crazy shit like this and having some measure of success despite the odds?

 

[gral]

... also what is it with Imperial German naval commanders doing crazy shit like this and having some measure of success despite the odds?

Well, they had a few exceptional officers. Felix von Luckner was one of those.

 

[Deleted member]

@Aaron Fox , Warrior would completely destroy the Monitor. It’s not even a contest. Parrott Rifles also have nothing to do with it at all.

 

[Harlock]

Fun fact, the Parrot Gun was able to use 30-pound charges for it's shot, meaning that it actually had AP to speak of, an unusual for the early Ironclad period.

Then again, the USN had a history of their guns literally exploding so they decided to cut the recommended charges in half. Parrot, on the other hand, made one of the sturdier naval rifles of the time...

... so in this situation, the Warrior is so going to get pummeled.

Warrior just as to sail past and let the bow wave sink Monitor, easy



On topic, SoDak, klutziest ship in the navy

Best known for being the punching bag of Guadalcanal and for sailing into things of at least trying to.

She didn't do great at Guadalcanal, an electrical short leaving her blind in the middle of a night battle which saw her stroll into the middle of a Japanese battlegroup and get smacked about at point blank range taking nasty damage. Luckily she was bailed out by Washington who used the SoDak's bad luck to sneak up and brutalise the Japanese fleet quite decisively.

SoDak went home for repairs and was praised with winning the battle earning her the undying hatred of the Washington which actually did all the hard work, afterwards the two ships had to stagger shore leave due to the constant brawling between their crews.

So pretty clumsy, but also unbelievably lucky as while she did get smashed by Kirishima's guns she also managed to somehow dodge every torpedo fired against her, a wall of 34 long lances mostly by sheer dumb luck as her crew didn't even know they were there.

That alone would suggest a pretty sad combat record, but she did have one moment of glory at Santa Cruz. For all her bad luck the SoDak excelled at gunnery, her Captain was an extremely aggressive officer who trained his gunners hard and it paid off.

During the battle Enterprise, the only USN Carrier still afloat in the Pacific was getting slammed by the Zuikaku, Japans last elite carrier. She was under fierce attack soaking bomb hits and at the end of her famous luck. Right until SoDak rushes in, falls in beside the stricken carrier and proceeds to clear the sky with the finest flak barrage ever deployed by a warship.

SoDak brought down the last scraps of the elite of the IJN carrier force deploying so much gunfire with such accuracy the pilots that returned were too shaken to speak or stand. She not only gutted the Japanese airwing she also saved Enterprise, somewhat marred by her almost ramming the Carrier afterwards and nearly wiping out Enterprise's returning airwing in a moment of excessive enthusiasm.

Clumsy, unlucky, trigger happy, reviled by naval aviators and hated by the ship that bailed her out, yet also absolutely lethal to enemy aircraft and unmatched in her role as a carrier escort.

 

[PsihoKekec]

British carriers, I think jet aircraft are scheduled to arrive 2021, until then Seafire will have to do.

 

[Deleted member]

@PsihoKekec the combination of the Seafire and multiple large aircraft carriers makes it look like Britain has gone back to the 50s.

 

[PsihoKekec]

It would be good for them.

Anyway, in the spirit of the season:

 

[Deleted member]

@PsihoKekec , Is that in the Falklands?

 

[PsihoKekec]

No such mountains there, South Georgia is more likely.

 

[Harlock]

you can also see HMS Victory not far from the Carriers, quite the contrast

Today also is the 80th anniversary of the Admiral Graf Spee being scuttled

Quite the adventure running her down and her fate was in no small part due to some clever trickery making her commander think she was hopelessly outmatched.

Her Captain Hans Langsdorff was a man of honour, while the Graf Spee sunk many merchant ships she didn't take a civilian life ensuring the ships were evacuated before destroying them.
As a small aside the Langsdorff family were neighbours of the Von Spee family, including the original Admiral the later warship was named for.

He regrettably took his own life to restore the honour of his command three days after the scuttling

 

[Deleted member]

@Harlock , I wish they had managed to raise more of her. Though I have sometimes mused that if she ended up at Buenos Aires instead of Montevideo that the Argentines would have prevented her scuttling and then ended up commissioning her into the ARA in 1945. I think the story is such a touchstone because it remains one of those epics like out of an older age that occasionally cropped up in WW2.

 

[PsihoKekec]

And then the HMS Conqueror sinks her in 1982. As they said in the Ghostbusters: ''Better late than never.''

 

[Harlock]

Pity that, she'd have made a fine museum ship

 

[Sailor.X]

My old ship the Nasty Nick. DD 982.

 

[Bacle]

So this is something interesting that I found.

Looks like Ballard's original Titanic search was partially a cover for checking on the wrecks of USS Scorpion and USS Thresher to see what had happened to thier nukes and reactors.