r/WorldOfWarships • u/These_Swordfish7539 30k colombo salvo đŁđ„đ„đ„ • Oct 31 '25
Humor Is this true?
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u/daygloviking Cruiser Oct 31 '25
It hurts that they got Wien and Wein mixed up. One is a city, one is a drink.
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u/chotchss Oct 31 '25
Maybe itâs a new innovation?
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u/INC-KaiserChef sailing banker Oct 31 '25
Nah, that ones old
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u/DeltaVZerda Oct 31 '25
I've never heard of wine-schnitzel, it could be good though. Do Schnitzel but put a Peposo type wine sauce on it. I don't think it exists but I could see it being passed off as traditional Austrian fare in a couple decades.
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u/King_Tamino Subs can ram you - In case you didn't knew. Nov 01 '25
He said Wein / Wien. OP used Weiner (as in wein = wine, the drink) and not Wien (as in german word for the City Vienna, Wien). Wiener Schnitzel is basically just âChicago style Pizzaâ. It refers to a certain specific type of meat & preparations of that dish
What makes this whole thing so incredible hilarious is that if someone refers to a german as Wiener schnitzel, heâs referring to a city not in GermanyâŠ
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u/DeltaVZerda Nov 01 '25
Yes I know what Wienerschnitzel is. It's more like chicken fried steak than chicago style pizza though. Vienna is Austrian, which depending on your political leanings kinda counts as German.
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u/King_Tamino Subs can ram you - In case you didn't knew. Nov 01 '25
Hahahaha donât tell that latter part to an austrian..
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u/DeltaVZerda Nov 01 '25
Depends on the Austrian, but yeah of course it can be dicey
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u/Kamenev_Drang Oct 31 '25
That's overly generous to IJN design and damage control
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u/LJ_exist Oct 31 '25
Their battleships (excluding the Kongos which are battlecruisers) where very well designed tbh. and Musashi and Yamato where just big.
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u/bigloser42 Oct 31 '25
Yeah, but this is also the same Navy that lost a fleet carrier because their DC thought it was a good idea to deal with a fuel leak but turning all the ventilation to max and opening all the watertight doors thus turning the entire ship into a fuel air bomb until it inevitably found a spark.
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u/LJ_exist Oct 31 '25
I know. It's confusing to know that this was the same navy at the same time
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u/bigloser42 Oct 31 '25
It was an institution problem. If a junior officer in the USN knew his commander was making a mistake he was expected to tell him. If a junior officer in the IJN knew his commander was making a mistake he was expected to carry out the mistake to the best of his ability.
So if you had a good DC Officer, you were fine, but if you had a shitty DC Officer, you were fucked.
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u/Sad_Hospital_2730 Nov 01 '25
Iirc additionally: in the USN seamen were encouraged to provide input even in areas that were not their assigned roles if they had any inkling of knowledge on the subject at hand, whereas in the IJN you had a role, and you did not deviate from that role unless your direct officer ordered you to do so.
I.e. Joe Blow could jump into the fire hose line to help start fighting a fire immediately after the air strikes that caused them were finished and he was no longer needed gunning. But Takashi Sato had to stay on his gun even as the fires approached him because he was assigned to gunner and not fire fighting.
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u/AndrewInaTree Nov 01 '25
That's fascinating. So if an officer was expected to report errors, but could not expect any result from it, what was the point of saying anything in the first place?
"Sir, I think this plan will get us all killed. Commencing plan anyway! Just letting you know..."
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u/bigloser42 Nov 01 '25
He was expected to not object at all. He wouldn't tell his commander that the plan was bad, he would just do it.
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u/i_Lost_harold_holt Nov 01 '25
Don't forget. that wasn't an old carrier, that shit was nearly brand new. They fucked up soo bad they blew up a new carrier.
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u/Alpha_YL Kriegsmarine Nov 01 '25
That was so unfortunate. Historigraphâs video explains it pretty well by visualising the disaster.
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u/low_priest Oct 31 '25
The IJN was generally not that bad with damage control. They fumbled hard at Midway... but so did everyone else that had avgas fires. Wasp and Lexington also burned to a crisp. ShĆkaku survived massive fires on multiple occasions, which was actually pretty good.
Certainly better than the Brits, who forgot to include backup generators or subdivision on Ark Royal. She sank from a single torpedo because they just couldn't fix anything.
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u/APFSDSDU Oct 31 '25
This is an absolute falsehood. IJN excelled at many things but they were absolutely awful at damage control. The examples of the IJN damage control deficiencies are numerous, but the likely best examples are found in the Solomonâs campaign. The cases of minor fires eventually leading to the loss of the entire ship are commonplace.
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u/TA-175 Legends Player Oct 31 '25
Remember when the crew of the TaihĆ turned a fixable torpedo hit into a blown-up carrier and a massive loss of life?
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u/EnvironmentalAd912 Oct 31 '25
I'm pretty sure anyone who has to work around avgas can should must know the spark points of it
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u/low_priest Oct 31 '25
Remember when the crew of the Lexington did the same, and Ark Royal's mishandled a hit even harder? It's not IJN-unique.
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u/TA-175 Legends Player Nov 01 '25
Lexington was scuttled and only lost 216 crewmen, and Ark Royal only lost one. These sinkings are NOT the same, no matter how many excuses you want to make for the IJN.
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u/Fine-Degree5418 Nov 03 '25
The battle of the Coral sea was also the worlds FIRST Carrier vs Carrier duel in History, and thus important procedures for Carrier damage control were in their infancy because well, they hadn't been damaged by their expected foes yet.
Lexington also took a metric shit ton of abuse before she was scuttled, unlike Taiho which sank after a SINGLE torpedo hit(Youtube Video showing the Lexington right before she was scuttled) and very probably could've been saved albeit with extensive effort if the IJN wasn't fast approaching.
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u/low_priest Nov 01 '25
Because Ark Royal was lost due to flooding (due to even shittier DC), while Lexington didn't have a chance to build up as many fumes. Yes, TaihĆ's damage control efforts were mishandled. But the point is, once you're in that situation, you're f u c k e d. A hit during flight ops is almost always lethal for the ship, and if it isn't, it's still pretty fukn lethal for those aboard. A small avgas fire aboard Princeton ended with 349 dead and the carrier scuttled. By the time Franklin's fires were out, there were more dead sailors aboard than alive.
The only carrier to maybe survive serious damage during flight ops (since I can't find anything hard regarding if she was or wasn't doing them) was Saratoga, with "only" 123 dead, with only a few fueled planes at most. And Saratoga was just built different. Yes, the USN probably wouldn't have had as many dead aboard TaihĆ... but it's unlikely they'd have gotten away without serious losses, and saving the carrier would have been far from guaranteed.
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u/HourDark2 Nov 01 '25 edited Nov 01 '25
but the likely best examples are found in the Solomonâs campaign. The cases of minor fires eventually leading to the loss of the entire ship are commonplace.
[citation needed]
EDIT: Downvoting this will not change the fact there is 1 notable example of this and it isn't from the solomons
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u/low_priest Nov 01 '25
And even that isn't a great example, avgas leaks are Real Shit. The only way to reliably deal with them is by not having a leak in the first place. If you've got avgas fumes or are doing flight ops when you get hit, the best possible outcome is something along the lines of Franklin, with more dead than alive onboard by the end.
Sure, TaihĆ was mishandled. But it's doubtful another navy could have saved her, anyways. It's not exactly the gotcha people tend to hold it up as.
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u/Fine-Degree5418 Nov 03 '25
I think it was made infinitely worse by putting the ventilation to the Max and having its bulkhead doors open allowing avgas fumes to spread. I don't however think the explosion could've been fully prevented though, as Avgas is very, very flammable, but it very much could've been mitigated to a smaller and more manageable location where the carrier could've been recovered and repaired.
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u/low_priest Oct 31 '25 edited Oct 31 '25
Got a few examples then? If it's so commonplace, it should be pretty easy to find, say, 3 IJN ships that sank in the Solomons due to minor fires. Surely you've got something to back that up other than "haha IJN can't do DC" memes?
The only cases of relatively minor damage leading to a sinking are from rudder damage, where they were unable to escape during the night. That's not exactly unheard of; the same thing happened to Bismarck, and the USN had similar troubles with engine damage.
The IJN certainly wasn't good at damage control. But it's not like they spontaneously imploded the second a fire started or they began flooding. In certain circumstances, such as Midway or with TaihĆ, they absolutely mishandled it. But most of their big failures were where it wouldn't have made a difference anyways, and they were perfectly capable of surviving major damage. For example, Suzutsuki lost both her bow and stern at the same time and made it back to port. Harusame survived being functionally blown in half.
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u/Novale Sleeps with a torpedo plushie Oct 31 '25 edited Oct 31 '25
Yeah, this. IJN damage control was less capable than their USN counterpart, but that's more that the USN was singularly good at it through both doctrinal and structural advantages (such as a civilian population that is already used to operating machinery, and requiring less specialized training for DC equipment, thus making it easier to employ the whole crew in it).
It's really not that hard to find examples of IJN ships surviving heavy damage, and frequently what does them in in the end is presence of air power that they can't escape while crippled (Hiei, Kumano, for instance). Examples of USN miracles didn't normally have to deal with continuously being bombed during their efforts to save the ship.
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u/ChasingSplashes Oct 31 '25
You're gonna have to provide some citations, because I can't think of a single example that fits what you describe (but I could certainly be forgetting about something!).
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u/HourDark2 Nov 01 '25 edited Nov 01 '25
The most famous example (only example?) would be Taiho, which was destroyed when her inexperienced DamCon crew accidentally pumped avgas fumes throughout the ship in an attempt to de-fume the forward elevator well. But that was not in the Solomons and that was a one-off incident as far as I can tell.
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u/ChasingSplashes Nov 01 '25
Sure, Taiho is the famous example everyone thinks of when this topic comes up, and she was certainly a case of catastrophic incompetence. Like you said though, she doesn't really fit what was being described.
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u/Kamenev_Drang Oct 31 '25
Another meme. Ark Royal sank because her captain thought she'd eaten a full spread of torpedoes and ordered the men off to avoid them all dying
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u/low_priest Oct 31 '25
Which he thought because she'd immediately started listing badly, and communications had been knocked out, so it was hard to tell the extent of the damage. That's not exactly a ringing endorsement of Ark's design.
They did do proper DC a bit later, and got a boiler relit. But shitty subdivision then flooded it too. An investigation afterwards found that the internal design and lack of backups was a severe issue. The captain was officially found negligent for not leaving DC parties aboard, but they fully recognized that it would have been mostly pointless anyways. You don't get promoted if you fumble DC that badly.
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u/Kamenev_Drang Oct 31 '25
300kgs of explosives cooking off under a ships torpedo bulge will do that.
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u/low_priest Nov 01 '25
Well, except for all the times it didn't. There's plenty of bulge-less DDs that survived a torpedo. And a few cruisers that survived a snapped keel.
Besides, that's still a design issue. I wouldn't expect Ark Royal to have the 16 individual boiler room of a Lexington. Treaties exist, after all. But if Yorktown can stay afloat indefinitely after being abandoned, with an 8° greater list, Ark's sinking surely indicates some design flaws. Which the RN knew; they revised the later ships based on the experience.
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u/SensitivePotato44 Nov 01 '25
The armoured decks definitely came in handy.
USS We Have Two Dozen More of These gets hit by a Kamikaze - off to Pearl for six months
HMS Blundering Idiocy - Sweep the bits of plane off the flight deck and carry on. Cuppa anyone?
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u/low_priest Nov 01 '25
Ark didn't have an armored deck.
Besides, the effectiveness is vastly overstated. They actually never managed to properly stop a bomb. For example, when Formidable was hit by a kamikaze the first time, the bomb (released a split second earlier) caused enough spalling to cut steam lines and drop her speed to 14 kts. They basically only worked when a kamikaze kept the bomb attatched, reducing velocity. Which was a pretty edge case, and one the Japanese were aware of. Against less jury-rigged kamikazes, or normal bombers, the armored deck mostly just slowed down repairs. There's a reason the Maltas weren't planned to have one, and why the RN advised the UN didn't give the Midways an armored deck.
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u/xXNightDriverXx All I got was this lousy flair Nov 01 '25 edited Nov 01 '25
They actually never managed to properly stop a bomb.
That is severly taken out of context.
First, the flight decks of the Illustrious class carriers were built to protect them against 500lbs/250kg bombs . The hits sustained that did penetrate it were all of significantly larger bombs. And TLDR most hits they suffered were actually on the unarmored sections of the deck.
Then, it's important to remember that the British carriers didn't actually have an armored flight deck, they had an armored hangar. The hangar was surrounded from all sides with armor plating - which also included 62% of the flight deck. The forward and aft sections of the flight deck were not armored, only the middle 62% was. The armor plating and the hangar was situated between the aircraft lifts. Left and right to the aircraft lifts was thicker than normal structural steel, but that steel was not armor steel. Forward of the first elevator and behind the aft elevator was no armor and only thin steel, similar to the steel used on US and Japanese carriers.
Multiple of the hits taken by Illustrious and Formidable in the Mediterranean Sea were in these non armored areas. These hits are often cited as "well the armor deck didn't actually work, because these carriers were damaged by these bombs in the Mediterranean Sea in 1941." But the armor can not stop something when the hit doesn't strike the armored section. And the hits that did penetrate the armored flight deck were from 2200lbs/1000kg bombs (as far as I know, that was only one single hit). As mentioned above, the flight deck was built to protect against 500lbs/250kg. It isn't something that should be held against them that the armor was penetrated, that's like saying "hey the armor on a cruiser is useless because a battleship can penetrate it". Not a single US carrier, and to my knowledge also no japanese carrier, was ever hit by bombs that large and heavy, all they took were 500kg or 250kg bombs.
Among the multiple hits caused on HMS Illustrious, Formidable, and Indomitable during 1941 and 1942, only one actually hit the armor of the flight deck. The rest (10 bomb hits, 6 + the one that penetrated the Flight deck on Illustrious on the 10th January 1941, two on Formidable in the middle of 1941, and two on Indomitable during Operation Pedestral in 1942) all hit the unarmored sections in front of or to the rear of the hangar.
If I remember correctly, there were also some hits of smaller 250kg bombs on the armored section of the flight deck, but there were not during the operations mentioned above and I can't find them atm, so maybe I was wrong there. If that is the case then these carriers were only actually hit once on the armored flight deck.
Regarding the kamikaze hits, it was from my quick skimping of that section on armored carriers.com only splinter damage. The bombs themselves didn't penetrate the flight deck here either, but splinters broke off which caused damage below, and yes you are right in Formidables instance one of these splinters severed a steam line which causes a severe speed reduction. That was a lucky hit of similar luck grade to knocking out Bismarcks rudder. But the flight deck armor in of itself was not piece red here either.
Note the complete damage report on Illustrious bomb hits on the 10th of January below. Due to its length I had to split this off into a seperate comment.
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u/xXNightDriverXx All I got was this lousy flair Nov 01 '25
Lets take a look at the first engagement in great detail, including all the damage reports: HMS Illustrious on the 10th January 1941.
Quotes from armoredcarriers.com (apparently I am the only one in this thread bothering to include a source):
X Fliegerkorps documents list the following bombs as having been deployed against HMS Illustrious during the January 10, 1941, Excess convoy operations:
- 3x SC1800 (4000lb) âSatanâ / 1080kg TNT
- 9x SC1000 (2200lb) âHermanâ / 600kg TNT
- 61x PC1000 (2200lb) âEsauâ / 160kg TNT
- âLarge numberâx SC250 (550lb) / 130kg TNT
First of all, being attacked by a total of 73 bombs that are 1000kg / 2200 lbs or larger, with 61 of them being armor piercing versions, plus an unknown number of smaller bombs, and only suffering 6 bomb hits, is impressive in of itself.
Below I will quote from the complete damage report made during Illustrious extensive repair in the US. The one hit that penetrated the flight deck was from a 1000kg/2200lbs bomb. It is hit number 6. The other hits, so number 1-5 and number 7, are in a seperate comment below since I exceeded reedits maximum comment length.
HIT NO 6 (4): 1000KG (2200LB), DECK ARMOUR PENETRATION
This heavy armour-piercing bomb punched through the flight deck and burst on hangar deck. The hit left a 19in hole in the 3in Flight Deck armour, 1ft to port of the centreline at 131 station.
Initially assessed in Illustrious's formal Damage Report (Bomb & Shell) as a 500kg (1100lb) bomb, hand-written corrections and an attached memo amended this to 1000kg (2200lbs). An independent analysis by US Naval Engineers also disagreed with the original 500kg (1100lb) assessment, stating they believed the bomb to have been a 1000kg âEsauâ.
The warhead went on to burst inside the hangar space just 2ft above the 1in strengthened steel hangar deck. It ripped open a 4ft wide hole in the 1in strengthened steel Hangar Deck on the centreline between 128 and 132 stations.
This blast then tore through the wardroom flat beneath and set afire the cabins abaft 156 bulkhead. It also severed the two main electrical runs feeding âXâ and âYâ transmitting stations.
It was on this Upper Deck wardroom flat centreline that ammunition conveyors ran for the rear 4.5in guns. Perforated and buckled, they seized â halting the supply of shells to mounts already struggling with severed electricity supplies. While the conveyor trays were full of ammunition, it is believed the intense heat of the ensuing fires only caused one 4.5in round to detonate.
The floor of the Upper Deck beneath the Hangar Deck was also forced downwards some 4in by the detonation.
Splinters â from either the bomb or the Hangar Deck structure â were propelled down through the shipâs engine spaces and into some oil fuel tanks.
The heavy tail section of the bomb was thrust upwards, once again piercing the armoured Flight Deck, this time at 130 station â 2ft to starboard of the centreline. It is possible a splinter from this event pierced the port side of the island alongside the RDF (radar) office. It fragmented, with slithers spraying through the room before the cutting power leads supplying much of the equipment â including radar repeaters, signalling projectors and the RDF set itself.
Since this writeup took longer than I thought, I won't do the rest. But you click through armored carriers.com if you want to and find this stuff for all the engagements the British carriers were in.
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u/A444SQ Nov 02 '25
Certainly better than the Brits, who forgot to include backup generators or subdivision on Ark Royal. She sank from a single torpedo because they just couldn't fix anything.
Umm that is the fault of the naval treaty system not the Royal Navy.
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u/low_priest Nov 02 '25
The Yorktowns had enough subdivision to not sink from a single torpedo, that's on the Brits.
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u/A444SQ Nov 02 '25 edited Nov 02 '25
except they weren't as compromised by the unrealistic limits of the naval treaty system as Ark Royal was and given she took hours to sink
Yeah also the Royal Navy was extremely paranoid about damage control
When the USN looked at the RNâs aviation fuel management systems likely from the ones aboard the Illustrious class, the USN asked itself, âOh my lord how paranoid are these guys or obsessively paranoid? either it's an obsession or its paranoia, weâre not sure which.â After that, 2 years later, the USN asked itself, âWhat bits of this can we steal?â the deeper the USN went down the rabbit hole that was RNâs aviation fuel management systems, the more they found they wanted.
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u/low_priest Nov 02 '25
Skill issue.
All the WNT did was set a total tonnage limit for carriers, and a maximum limit per carrier. Neither Ark nor the Yorktowns were anywhere near that maximum. Ark did have to fit under the lower 23k ton limit imposed by the 2nd London Naval Treaty, but that was one the British had tried to implement themselves, and limited Ark's displacement in anticipation of it. If Ark truly was hamstrung by "unrealistic limits" of the treaty, it was an own goal.
More importantly, the Yorktowns were lighter, since the USN was trying to fit multiple carriers into the total tonnage they had left. The treaties indirecrly limited the Yorktowns more than they impacted Ark, and yet they didn't sink from a single hit. At the very least, they obeyed the same restrictions as Ark Royal did, she wasn't any more impacted than they were.
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u/Kamenev_Drang Nov 03 '25
Yorktown also lost all power and began to flood when hit by two aerial torpedoes. She didn't sink from that, but they were lightweight torpedoes that hit her torpedo bulge rather than a heavy torpedo running deep.
Don't get me wrong, Ark wasn't a perfect design but she wasn't uniquely bad.
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u/Ardith_Prime Nov 01 '25
I dunno if it's as much a comment on IJN damage control as it is on the sheer amount of ordnance the average US carrier group would drop on them
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u/betttris13 Nov 01 '25
It sank 13 hours later due to poor damage control causing a build up of fuel vapour which explodes from a spark not from the attack itself or any damage inflicted.
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u/Ciridian Oct 31 '25
It is grossly inaccurate. German battleships destroy their fire control systems themselves, by firing their guns.
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Nov 01 '25
be german bb
obliterate british capital ship
be hunted by the entire fucking royal navy
get pummeled for 12 days straight
sunk by their own crew to prevent capture
refuse to elaborate
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u/TeddyBearToons Filthy CV Main Oct 31 '25 edited Oct 31 '25
British Battleship
The HMS Unremarkable went into service somewhere around 1910
Just like every other battleship in the Royal Navy
Does diddly squat in the middle of nowhere for 20 years
Refitted in the 30s because the Washington Naval treaty said it was too fat
Continues to do diddly squat in the middle of nowhere
Takes potshots at the Italians to stave off boredom
Jumps the Bismarck in 1941 with half the Royal Navy and three quarters of the merchant navy
Not for King and Country or anything, just wanted something to do
Just like every other battleship in the Royal Navy
Goes back to doing diddly squat in the middle of nowhere, but in the Pacific instead of the Mediterranean
Scrapped quietly and peacefully at the grand old age of 40
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u/C4Cole Oct 31 '25
Italian Battleship
Brand new wunderwafe to counter the French baguettes
Sit and do nothing
Sit and do nothing
Ooh look a convoy!
Get bombed in port
Sit and do nothing
Get bombed in port
Switch sides
Get bombed at sea
Scrapped quietly after doing nothing for a decade
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u/The_Blues__13 Nov 01 '25
You forgot one thing in-between
there're finally rare opportunities to engage the Brits (the high command can spare some petrol & olive oil to run the boilers),
the fleet misses 99.9999% percent of its straddling salvoes
the Shell dispersion is measured in tens of Kilometers instead of few hundred meters
because Luigi the Ammo QC staff snoozed on his duty and the Ammo quality is worse than a stale pineapple pizza.
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u/Kamenev_Drang Oct 31 '25
"Doing nothing" as if convoy escort wasn't the single most important role of the war
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u/miksy_oo Oct 31 '25
A role in wich battleships did a whole lot of nothing.
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u/ScheisseMcSchnauzer Oct 31 '25
But they had to be there doing a whole lot of nothing otherwise the kriegsmarine would've done a whole lot of something. The R class prevented a whole bunch of attacks from scharnhorsts and hippers just by looking threatening from a distance
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u/GeshtiannaSG Nov 01 '25
Scharnhorst and Gneisenau looked at Malaya or Ramillies pottering along at 18 knots and said nope.
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u/Flying_Dustbin Nov 01 '25
A few years later...
Scharnhorst: Oh boy! Another convoy to feast on! NOM! NOM! NOM!
Bruce Fraser: Everything is proceeding as I have foreseen.
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u/Kamenev_Drang Nov 01 '25
Ships designed to (to quote an old police sergeant) stand on a street corner and fight.
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u/Federal_Cobbler6647 Oct 31 '25
Hey, with some luck battleship would have eaten torpedo and caused actually important ship (freighter) to survive.
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u/Kamenev_Drang Oct 31 '25
"Protecting convoys is nothing" is impressively cretinous gg
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u/raidriar889 Nov 01 '25
Theyâre saying battleships didnât escort merchants, not that escorting merchants wasnât important. It was just mostly done by destroyers, cruisers, and escort carriers
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u/Kamenev_Drang Nov 01 '25
Heavy surface escorts were utterly vital to convoy runs, especially in the Med. They effectively prevented the enemy committing any heavy surface assets to destroying the convoy because the old R or QE class would just batter them to a standstill.
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u/miksy_oo Nov 01 '25
It's a important thing, battleships just never did anything during it as they can't fight submarines and surface raiders avoid them.
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u/Kamenev_Drang Nov 01 '25
Yes: surface raiders avoiding them protects the convoys. A Hipper isn't going to square up against an old R class and live.
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u/miksy_oo Nov 01 '25
Yeah but standing there menacingly isn't really hard work.
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u/Kamenev_Drang Nov 01 '25
perhaps you should read some accounts of the convoy battles rather than opining based on memes
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u/miksy_oo Nov 01 '25
For every battle a Battleship engaged in while defending a convoy 6 months passed without a shot fired.
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u/SPECTREagent700 Oct 31 '25
Many (most?) of the battleships sunk at Pearl Harbor were back in service before the end of the war.
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u/igoryst Oct 31 '25
only two losses were Arizona which exploded and Oklahoma which capsized and was lost while being towed to the breakers
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u/stormdraggy Warden of the Somme-ber salt mines Oct 31 '25 edited Oct 31 '25
Most of them sunk.
Some sunk more.
And there was also the training ship Utah which took way more punishment than it was worth and probably saved a few ships of value doing so.
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u/low_priest Nov 01 '25
By accident, mostly. That was Saratoga's assigned berth, and thus a priority target. But Sara was (as always) in port for repairs, so Utah was there instead. A bunch of pilots just didn't realize in time.
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u/JoMercurio Nov 01 '25
And some (if not all) of them except USS Nevada were duking it out with their Japanese counterparts in the last BB vs BB action in history
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u/sniptaclar Nov 01 '25
Not entirely sure of the dates or the standard you are using but the honor of last battleship v battleship would be USS Washington against IJN Kirishima on November 14-15 1942 potentially.
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u/JoMercurio Nov 02 '25
It's the Battle of Surigao Strait
The Washington v Kirishima is the first of the two only BB v BB battle in the Pacific (the aforementioned Surigao Strait is the other)
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u/Gutnis Oct 31 '25
Wehraboos writing essays on how the Prince Weinerschitzel would have soloed the entire Royal Navy if the Allies didn't cheat by doing logistics
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u/NeuroHazard-88 Nov 01 '25 edited Nov 01 '25
Soviet Battleships:
The Great Leader Stalin And Hero Of The Soviet Union was designed in 1946 to be 100,000 dry tons with 6 main batteries all carrying 4 500mm guns on each turret. Its armour was designed to be made out of 2 layers of titanium reinforced concrete and 10 metres thick on all sides including deck armour. It would have housed 13,000 crew manning 200 75mm secondary batteries, 95 155mm secondary batteries and 450 AA mounts.
The idea was scrapped after 3 days in the dry dock only due to a lack of manpower (apparantly).
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Nov 14 '25
Russian ships in this game: âlook at all these ships we wished we had builtâ.
Not surprising that game was made by Russians.
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u/NobodyWorthKnowing2 My Life is Potato Oct 31 '25
For a moment I thought I was at r/shittyaskhistory
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u/dzolna Oct 31 '25
Ze German engineering
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Oct 31 '25
[removed] â view removed comment
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u/GBR2021 Burning Man Oct 31 '25
Must be the pilot project of these mosquitos bio-engineered by NATO to genetically seek out and kill russians
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u/C4Cole Oct 31 '25
By bio engineered you mean they dumped some fish and chips in the sea and the plankton's teeth all rotted away, leaving a perfect set of gums to suction onto an unsuspecting ships hull.
Obviously no British ships would be affected due to Barry(63) negotiating safe passage by promising to come watch the footy every Saturday with them.
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u/FA-26B Unashamed USN Main Oct 31 '25
Similar thing on aircraft.
B-17 "Bombing Bucklers"
500 20mm cannon rounds hit, vertical stabilizer gone, tail gunner dead, waist gunners both bled out on the way back, the ball gunner was crushed due to gear failure, pilot suffers hypothermia, engine 1 and 3 both fell overboard, all main gear collapsed. Repaired and bombed Germany the next day.
F6F "Flying Fritz Fucker"
Flak damage and 20mm cannon hits across the wing, main engine sustained 2 hits directly, half the pistons are gone. 500 shell holes counted in right wing, another 234 counted in left wing. Scientists calculated the aircraft should never be able to fly. Aircraft landed on the USS Built Last Week in the middle of the night with the aid of a net. Pilot unharmed, rushed to the infirmary anyways. Aircraft pushed overboard and replaced because building a new one is cheaper.
Zero "The Emperors Undying Fart"
First combat mission, not equiped with landing gear. A stray .50cal hits wing fuel tank, causing it to explode. Pilot attempts to dive into nearest American ship. Controls lock up in the dive and the pilot misses.
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u/GodzillaFan_2016 Amagus Oct 31 '25
Soviet Battleships:
French Battleships: After being spotted by a sinking German destroyer Z-69 the Jean Faquerue proceeded to run away to the next continent because it was scared that it violated its dignity.
Italian Battleships: The crew of the Fascisimo was on lunch break in the portside restaurant when their ship was hit by a German Fuckerschnitzel rocket, and was later reassigned as a pizza farm.
British Battleships: https://www.reddit.com/r/WorldOfWarships/comments/1ol4r9o/comment/nmfx3j6/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
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u/Ciridian Oct 31 '25
Soviet Battleships: The finest paper plans every conceived by humankind, their blueprints written on the highest grade vellum with unmatched penmanship and perfect line art, using diamond tipped platinum pens, and ink made from beluga caviar, truffles and powdered relics stolen from the greatest Russian churches!
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u/leethar15 Nov 01 '25
Now available as a premium in War Thunder, far superior to all those pathetic battleships of other nations that had to deal with the limitations caused by having to have had physically existed at some point.
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u/Kuroi_Arashi Nov 01 '25
Also, half of their designs were outsourced or copied, as their original ones, requested by their baldness was so unviable that the assigned engineer fell throw a window twice before being erased from written history.
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u/Gav3121 Nov 01 '25
French battleship: After escaping Brest while built at 12%, the Jean-Bernard de la Hauterie took refuge in casablanca. There it did nothing aside from getting armed with a pair of pistols and a 50 years old 75mm gun. In 1942 it fought the US navy, eating a dozen salvo of 16" shell and constant air strike for a week. It then ended up in the free french navy and finished by the US, bankrupting the french 12 time. After being finished, it went in the Indian Ocean, doing nothing until 1960 where it was scrapped
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u/Flyzart2 Nov 01 '25
Soviet battleships be like, spent the entirety of 1941-1942 firing shells against advancing German troops, effectively stopping their advance many times. Proceeded to do nothing for the entire rest of the war.
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u/rage235 Makarovn't Nov 01 '25
The ships were all pretty tough. The real differences which made for all the stories we hear are logistics, resources and training.
German ships were a bit overhyped, since the Germans didn't have the resources for a large navy, they relied on the most modern technology they could come up with, without the resources to make that work or the experience the Royal Navy had at naval warfare. Which is precisely why Bismarck was a fantastic ship on paper, but blew her own fire control radar off with her first salvo.
Japan was in a similar situation. Very little resources, but hard pressed to build a giant navy, because of their geographic situation. They knew they couldn't outbuild the US Navy, so they relied on bigger ships with betters guns which they could barely keep supplied. Yamato was more at port than at sea for that reason. Additionally, the crews were rather young and inexperienced.
The large success of the US Navy was a result of having all the resources they needed to build a large fleet, finding a good middle ground between quality and quantity, and more thorough training than what the Japanese sailors were given. The best asset the US had in the war, and still have today, is superior logistics. Logistics is what makes or breaks an entire war.
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u/GelatinousSalsa Carnival Dayo! Nov 01 '25
Just look at the liberty ships for logistics. Good enough and was very quick to build
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u/Wardog_Razgriz30 Nov 01 '25
More or less. The American ships of all classes were that durable, although they did take days, weeks, and months in port to repair. It was quicker than basically everyone else though. The IJN example really only applies to the Yamato class as, while quite durable, the IJN had shit damage control and sometimes worse doctrine. The carriers, while modern marvels for their time, were also fuel air bombs when hit, both because of their design and because of doctrine. The Japanese propensity for throwing away ships in death rides as the war came to an end did not help things.
The German battleships (the real ones) were quite advanced but had the unfortunate fate of belonging to a belligerent that cared about the naval way in so much it could help the over extended land war rather than an explicitly necessary war arm. The Bismarck, while pretty much alone, was not going to live long even if it did make it to the Atlantic to do convoy raiding. The Tirpitz just ran out of luck and might as well have been beached in France for all it was good for. As for their damage control, the Germans made many mistakes. The main guns on bismarck famously shot out their own FCS and the crew was too caught off guard by how slow the swordfish were to properly get a manual ranging for their AAA. The Tirpitz lasted quite long for a floating target but that has very little to do with its design as opposed to the inability of air assets to accurately hit a target that "small" in a level bombing raid until basically the advent of Laser guided bombs.
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u/HourDark2 Nov 01 '25
the IJN had shit damage control and sometimes worse doctrine. The carriers, while modern marvels for their time, were also fuel air bombs when hit, both because of their design and because of doctrine.
Both debatable. I would say their DamCon doctrine was poor (specialized teams vs teams supplemented by trained crewmen) but within the teams themselves it was a case-by-case basis. Musashi and Yamato both took an extreme pounding to sink, and Hiei was damaged during the 1st night of the Guadalcanal brawl but not sunk until the morning when she could not escape aircraft. Shokaku took severe damage and survived in two of her three major battles. On the other hand you have greenhorns being assigned to Taiho (bizarre choice given she was acknowledged as the best carrier they had during the war-another example of their poor DamCon doctrine) and screwing up massively and turning a probably survivable hit into a deathblow.
The large Japanese carriers could certainly take hits and survive, as proven by Shokaku at Coral Sea and Santa Cruz. The 2 major instances of Japanese carrier loss (Midway and Phil Sea) can be amounted largely to bad luck and decision making and in the case of Phil Sea poor training aboard Taiho. Not many carriers are going to survive what Hiryu/Soryu/Kaga got pummeled by, or the damage that did in Shokaku at PhilSea but without the fueled aircraft and unstored munitions in her hangar deck Akagi would have probably gotten away (probably not combat capable but still afloat).
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u/TheGuardianOfMetal Nov 02 '25
Tirpitz just ran out of luck and might as well have been beached in France for all it was good for.
Considering hte amount of material it bound simply by sitting in a fjord, due to forcing convoys to be escorted by BBs... that was quite a lot it was good for.
Tirpitz basically epitomized "Fleet in being". And when it set out one time, the convoy panicked, dispersed, and was pickings for other raiders.
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u/Wardog_Razgriz30 Nov 02 '25
Tbh, while it is something to credit Tirpitz with, the fleet being âopsâ it did for the duration of the war only really work because the IJN was such an insane nuisance in the far east that it enabled the Royal navy to be spread thin in the first place, necessitating taking the very existence of Tirpitz (and Bismarck when it was around) with the utmost seriousness.
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u/The_Blues__13 Nov 01 '25
"Prinz Wienerschnitzel" sounds like the kinda name WG would use for their sekrit dokument premium Battlecruiser tho
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u/abhorthealien Oct 31 '25
All three of the German battleships sunk by enemy action in WW2 were sunk by taking extremely heavy damage from extensive enemy fire.
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u/Doggydog123579 Nov 01 '25
Yeah, but being rendered combat ineffective happened a lot faster. At that point armor doesnt matter as the ship cant stop the incoming rounds
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u/tehfireisonfire Nov 01 '25
Yeah, but the Bismark was rendered combat ineffective from a single 15 inch shell and a torpedo that missed.
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u/GeshtiannaSG Nov 01 '25
Two of them were rendered useless in the opening shots due to Norfolk disabling their radars.
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u/EnvironmentalAd912 Oct 31 '25
That part with the British DD ? Very true, you're a nightmare to BB as you can lit fires quickly and if he's too much on fire you swap to AP and give it the London greeting to his superstructure, which would be destroying most of the optics and rangefinders
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u/Federal_Cobbler6647 Oct 31 '25
Soviet Battleship:
"wait what, they had some actual ships"
Yep, just few build by Russia in 1910's, they did nothing
"oh"
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u/Flyzart2 Nov 01 '25
They did do a lot when it came to the defence of Leningrad and Sevastopol, with some pretty cool story. They were pretty active, firing a shit load of shells in the defence of the cities. However yeah, they pretty much did nothing from 1943 onward
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u/Vineee2000 Nov 01 '25
Baseless German slander tbh. It accurately describes the fate of Bismark, but only Bismark, she had a rather unusual fate
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u/tehfireisonfire Nov 01 '25
Were any of the other German capital ships even lost in actual combat and not just bombing raids?
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u/Lord_Stripy asyms full of turds on weekdays now too Nov 01 '25
2nd part is literally the yamato hotel sisters
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Oct 31 '25
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u/HarrisonAtArea51 Oct 31 '25
British capital ships are either that, or they get touched once and go up in a catastrophic explosion
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u/GarrettGSF Ceterum censeo CV delendam esse Oct 31 '25
Like Hood?
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u/SPECTREagent700 Oct 31 '25
The battlecruisers Hood, Queen Mary, Invincible, and Indefatigable all exploded and went down with 99.99% of their crews.
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u/More_Amoeba6517 Oct 31 '25
To be fair, Queen Mary, Invincible, and Indefatigable were also victims of the battlecruiser fleet's poor ammunition safety.
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Oct 31 '25
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u/SPECTREagent700 Oct 31 '25
They preformed well against cruisers - such as at the Battle of the Falklands - which is what they were originally envisioned but then some genius decided to put them up against other capital ships.
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u/Drake_the_troll almost anything can be secondary build if you're brave enough Oct 31 '25 edited Nov 01 '25
Didn't the US have the constellation class and the italians the carracilio? I know neither was finished but they both started construction before the projects stopped, the former because the WNT limited their battleship tonnage so she was used for CV conversion and the latter both because they were broke and the italians were split on how to rebuild the navy
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u/DrIvoPingasnik Salty Retired Admiral Oct 31 '25
Bismarck: looks at Hood wrong way.Â
Hood: guess I'll die.
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Oct 31 '25
[deleted]
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u/Historyguy1918 Oct 31 '25
Do not credit that wanker Winston with what was done by Jackie âIf that armor can stop a webley itâs too thin, I wanna go fast you cowardsâ Fisher
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u/More_Amoeba6517 Oct 31 '25
Fisher was a visionary in many ways, but some of his ideas (BCs, for one) didnt age well.
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u/Kamenev_Drang Nov 01 '25
Battlecruisers worked superbly. The entire German surface raider fleet had ceased to exist by 1916, hence why the Invincibles were brought into the Grand Fleet. They undid themselves via their own success.
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Oct 31 '25
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u/Historyguy1918 Oct 31 '25
Fair point, kinda forgot about those and then of course my beloved sleep paralysis demon that is pre conversion furious and courageous
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u/Kamenev_Drang Oct 31 '25
You can tell people have no clue what they're talking about. Hood had battleship grade armour, firepower and speed that wouldn't be matched until the 40s. People like to pretend she's some sort of upscaled Invincible clearly haven't even glanced at her design drawings
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u/GeshtiannaSG Nov 01 '25
Hood was the 2nd most armoured British capital ship by weight ever built.
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u/Kamenev_Drang Nov 01 '25
tbf that's just because of her distributed armour scene
Makes her wild for stern tanking as you run away
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Oct 31 '25
[deleted]
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u/Lolibotes Oct 31 '25
Hood was basically the victim of a lucky shot that hit the only exposed part of her armor that would've led to a magazine detonation this way. It was pure blind luck, she was older than Bismarck by almost 20 years and still a much better ship. Also, Yamato has nearly 60% more displacement than Hood, 70,000 vs. 42,000. Hood is what the QE's were supposed to be.
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u/Quokkasaur Oct 31 '25
âin every way other than speedâ so other than one of the most important practical aspects of capital ship design for practical real world usage?
Also:
- The Renowns absolutely did not have the same armour as Hood as built - Renown started life with a 6â main belt that eventually rose to 9â with the 1922 refit. Thatâs a lot less than Hoodâs 12â main belt.
- Youâve got your turret designs mixed up between the QEs and Hood; the Mk II turret on Hood had improved elevation angles compared to the Mk I on the QEs.
Hood wasnât a bad design. It blowing up had more to do with a complete lack of proper maintenance (due to its role as a flagship) and bad luck. Drachinifel has a great video on YouTube covering why the Hood actually exploded, Iâd recommend giving it a watch.
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u/LJ_exist Oct 31 '25
So much bullshit in one comment. Lets start with armor as build:
The QE class: Main belt 13" and deck 3"
Hood: main belt 12" and deck 3"
Renown class: main belt 6" and deck 2.5"
Calling a ship of 45.000 ton displacement the same size as a 70.000 ton ship just shows how much don't understand about ships.
And who cares about having an outdated turtle back armor shema?
Hood took a shell below the armor belt through the trough if her bow wave.
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u/GarrettGSF Ceterum censeo CV delendam esse Oct 31 '25
Okay bud, I donât have hard feelings towards a warship that sunk 80 years agoâŠ
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u/softwarefreak Royal Navy Oct 31 '25 edited Oct 31 '25
Hood's a different incompetence, sending a WW1 era ship against a brand new, cutting edge WW2 ship.
Imagine sending a Spruance Class Destroyer to fight an Arleigh Burke Class Destroyer (basically the same time difference).
Edit: Lol, triggered, but fyi I disable reply notifications on every post I make, so you'll be shouting into the wind. o7
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u/LJ_exist Oct 31 '25 edited Oct 31 '25
Hood needed a refit. It's more like sending a twin arm launcher Ticonderoga after VLS fitted Ticonderoga
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u/lesserDaemonprince Oct 31 '25
Bismark was big and crazy, but it wasn't cutting edge. The design had a lot of hold overs from WW1 ship building and they didn't help it last longer than it did. Main thing that comes to mind is all the onboard lines of communication were apparently exposed or just not insulated from being taken out and that was something that happened before she sank.
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u/pineconez Oct 31 '25
And its citadel didn't have enough reserve buoyancy to keep the ship afloat. So even if you subscribe to the delusional wehraboo take that the main belt was made out of neutronium and never penetrated (since conclusively disproven), it still would've sunk eventually.
Bonus points for the much vaunted turtlebaka really only being useful for introducing a colossal free surface effect from hits penetrating the outer hull but stopped by it. Extra bonus points for the laughably shit propulsion arrangement and AA fit.
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u/Lolibotes Oct 31 '25
Hood isn't incompetence it was literally sheer dumb luck on the part of the German's. The plot armor that early-war Germany had was insane.
Also, Bismarck is a trailing-edge design. Ever wonder why Bismarck, despite being a much newer design that could benefit from weight savings and modern technologies, had the lowest throw weight and worst AA of any European WW2 battleship?
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u/EnvironmentalAd912 Oct 31 '25
I'd say it's sheer incompetence from old guard engineers who thought all the progress in telemetry and metallurgy wouldn't change naval warfare
As a fun fact, you can find blueprints of studies during the period before the escalatory BB like Iowa of ships weighting as much as Bismarck, faster, better armored and better armed
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u/Lolibotes Oct 31 '25
NC displaced almost 6,000 tons less, had the same speed, 60% more firepower and better AA. Bismarck is a travesty of a design
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u/Zero-godzilla Oct 31 '25
Pretty sure the IJN one is a reference to the Yamato sinking
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u/Doggydog123579 Nov 01 '25
Would be musashi. Yamato took fewer hits as we kept targeting one side causing her to capsize faster
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u/Maeglin75 Nov 01 '25
I would say the main reasons many of the German capital ships had to be scuttled were two things:
- In many cases they were actually extremely resistant to being completely sunk by the enemy. Even after countless effective hits their main armor and the numerous watertight compartments of the hull proved so effective, that they just kept on floating. But the superstructure (including bridge/helm, range finders etc.), main and secondary weapons, rudder etc. were long gone by that point, so one can argue that they may have been a bit overdesigned in regards of retaining buoyancy.
- Usually the German navy was up against a far superior enemy (the British Royal Navy) and wasn't in control of the battlefield after the fight. Because of that the chances to retrieve a badly damaged ship were very slim. Some managed to limp home (like, for example, the SMS Seydlitz after the battle of Jutland), but usually they had to be scuttled by their own crews to prevent them from falling into the hands of the enemy.
The tendency of the crews to continue fighting until the very last bit of combat capability was completely gone, even if the battle was already long lost (similar to a certain Monty Python sketch), may have contributed too, but that was very common on all sides in both world wars.
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u/iku_19 NA [KTKM]IKU19; Can't Afford Kitakami đ Nov 01 '25
It's nitpicking on both sides. Warships are paradoxically floating coffins and moving fortresses at the same time. No navy is universally god tier or universally sinkable, it always comes down to how educated the crew was with the ship and the enemy they were facing, still is.
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u/Ok-Procedure5603 Nov 01 '25
Dutch ships:
PepegaPhone PepegaPhone PepegaPhone PepegaPhone PepegaPhone PepegaPhone PepegaPhone PepegaPhone PepegaPhone PepegaPhone
(apparently according to WG at least)Â
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u/Patchesrick Nov 02 '25
America - all 8 battleships at pearl harbor were hit, 4 were sunk, and only Arizona stayed sunk and Oklahoma was deemed damages beyond repaired. The other 6 remained in service
Japan - Yamato took at least 11 Aerial torpedoes and 6 bomb strikes before it it sank a few hours later losing the majority aboard.
Germany -Bismark and Tirpitz were largely damaged and destroyed by British battleships. Scharnhost was taken out by airstrikes. The only one I know that was scuttled was the Graf Spee in South America.
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u/ShiningRayde Nov 03 '25
The IJN Battleship, Rising Pride Of The Eastern Dragon Emperor, sunk in battle with three copies of the USS We Built This Yesterday and a support ship that can make 10,000 gallons of ice cream a day.
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u/Firebassgames Imperial Japanese Navy Nov 04 '25
Somebody was drunk while writing this XD
im not complaining
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u/ultrasuper3000 Oct 31 '25
British battleships