When it comes to unlucky ships I think everyone knows the absolute legend that is the William D Porter
Almost torpedoing the battleship carrying President Franklin Roosevelt to the Tehran Conference was not the first misadventure of the ill-fated 'Willie Dee'.
www.historynet.com
but I always thought it was more those in proximity that suffered rather than the ship itself. Rather there is the German heavy cruiser Blucher which was declared operational on April 5th 1940 and sunk just three and a bit days later. That has to be some sort of record
Probably best known for being knocked out by guns and torpedoes made in the 1890s. The scene showed up in a film which was made at the same fortress using the same elderly cannons
Blucher herself was a potent warship and sister to Prinz Eugen (and one sold to the Soviets and later used against the Germans) but her crew were green and inadequately trained. Blucher was tasked with leading a task force to capture Oslo landing by surprise in the early morning dark and deploying a battalion of troops directly into the city. these men would seize the Norweigian king, government and gold reserves.
It did not go as planned
Oslo was approached by sea using quite a narrow fjord which was defended by an old fortress at Oscarborg dating back over a century and last modernised in the 1890s. By 1940 it was being used as a training facility for gunners.
The main fort boasted a trio of old but still impressive 11 inch guns, plus a supporting defence of three 5.9 inch guns further down the fjord and some 57mm guns scattered as flank defence. There was also a hidden torpedo battery consisting of a trio of concrete tubes built into the coastline armed with whitehead torpedoes delivered in 1900.
If Blucher's crew were new the fortress gunners were even more so, most of them having being conscripted 7 days earlier. They were also greatly understaffed with only enough men to crew two guns and not enough to reload them in a timely manner after firing.
Before the battle to man the torpedo battery the fort had needed to recall a previous commander who had once run the place but had retired in the 20s and had been enjoying his pension ever since. Luckily he remained an expert on the exact same weapons he had overseen before WWI
The Colonel commanding the fort was in a sticky situation, with no clear orders he had to make the call on whether to shoot or not without knowing the identity or intentions of the ships. Ultimately he chose wisely. despite having just two shots both hit squarely at point blank range. The first hit the aircraft fuel and munitions magazine causing massive damage and a fierce fire, the second knocked out Blucher's main turret generators.
The smaller guns joined in after knocking out the cruisers steering and her firefighting capacity, in addition to keeping her crew pinned down under a hail of splinters.
Finally there were the two ancient torpedoes fired by their pensioner commander who had been waiting since 1909 for this moment. His aim was perfect and the forty year old weapons worked perfectly. The second torpedo in particular was highly effective hitting n area already weakened by one of the big gun hits, it killed the engines and compounded the already severe structural damage.
Eventually fire spread to one of the 105mm ammo magazines blasting a massive hole in the side and further cracking the already weakened hull. The raging fires ignited her ruptured fuel tanks and that was that.
While the Blucher was clearly unlucky falling to such elderly weapons it was more than just that. Most of the damage was concentrated in one section, both the 11 inch hit, a torpedo and the magazine detonation happened in close proximity. These blew out all the bulkheads and opened up the machinery spaces making it incredibly hard to control flooding. This was made worse by the inferno which ultimately doomed her.
Damage to the fire suppression system meant there was no water pressure in the hoses to fight the flames, plus the crew were being suppressed by the defenders light guns in the crucial early stages greatly hindering damage control. When they tried to flood the burning magazine again there was no water pressure meaning the operation failed dooming the ship. As an added bonus the fires also set off grenades and ammo the embarked soldiers had brought along killing and wounding sailors trying to fix the situation.
While the victory only bought Oslo a few hours it was enough to evacuate key persons and avoid the country losing its leaders at the start of the invasion. Still, sinking a ship only on its fourth operational day has to count for something, and that the killing blow was delivered by 40 year old torpedoes launched by a pensioner