Battleship of your heart

[gumalangi]

Guys, lets have a look at the list, which of the Battleship you like most and state your reasons. And lets not talk about which one is the BEST, every battleship ever had its day.

Cheers,...

I'll go for Yamato,

It is big, imposing, frightening,.. The look, just the look.:mrgreen:

[pdf27]

Warspite, a survivor from the days when battleships actually meant something (she was part of the Grand Fleet at Jutland), and by far the best name of the lot :D

[Nickdfresh]

I went for the Iowa, just for nostalgia a since she served off an on for a while...

[Y Ddraig Goch]

Bismarck, beauty in a functional way

[Drake]

Bimarck, a real beauty and a legendary tale about her first and only voyage, what else could someone want from a ship.

[windrider]

How could you forget the Missouri in your list ?
it fought on till 1982, so that's something.

[gumalangi]

How could you forget the Missouri in your list ?
it fought on till 1982, so that's something.

sorry sir,. the number limitation did,.. otherwise,.. i shall put hiei, mutsu, yamashiro, dunkerque,. prince of wales etc,..

cheers

[Major Walter Schmidt]

Ise aircraft carrier battleship.

[George Eller]

-

I like the Iowa class battleships:

45,000 tons
861 feet at waterline, 887 feet - overall, 108 feet - beam, 29 feet - draft
212,000 S.H.P., 33 knots.
9 - 16 inch guns in 3 gun turrets (3 guns each)
20 - 5 inch DP guns in 10 gun turrets (2 guns each)
80 - 40mm AA guns
49 - 20 mm AA guns
Armor: hull belt - 19 inches, main gun turrets - 18 inches

BB.61 Iowa
BB.62 New Jersey
BB.63 Missouri
BB.64 Wisconsin

Best class of American battleships of WWII.

Two additional Iowa class battleships were planned, but cancelled.

BB.65 Illinois - cancelled 12 August 1945 (22 percent complete)
BB.66 Kentucky - construction suspended 17 February 1947 (69.2 percent complete - scrapped in Baltimore, MD in November 1958)

http://img218.imageshack.us/img218/8146/bb61iowajt0.jpg
http://img218.imageshack.us/img218/6170/iowaclass01ay1.jpg
http://img222.imageshack.us/img222/4488/iowaclass02hl6.jpg
http://img218.imageshack.us/img218/3931/montanaclassck8.jpg

A heavier class of American battleships was planned, but cancelled 21 July 1943 - model shown above.

Montana class battleships: 5 ships

60,500 tons
890 feet at waterline, 921 feet - overall, 121 feet - beam, 36 feet - draft
172,000 S.H.P., 28 knots.
12 - 16 inch guns in 4 gun turrets (3 guns each),
20 - 5 inch guns in 10 gun turrets (2 guns each),
32 - 40mm AA guns in 8 mounts (4 guns each).

BB.67 Montana
BB.68 Ohio
BB.69 Maine
BB.70 New Hampshire
BB.71 Louisiana

-

Source: U.S. Warships of World War II, Paul H. Silverstone, Doublday & Company, Inc., 1972, pp 29 - 34

-

[Moreheaddriller]

I gotta say tha NC a small but opposing warship

[Churchill]

The Hood. Yeah, That's right, The Hood. It was a one of a kind ship that was sent to the wrong place, at the wrong time, in the wrong war...

[Dallas]

USS Arizona, still on active service, (in name only).

[stidham]

I gotta go with the Missouri. It was there at the end and also in that Steven Seagal movie. ;)


Later,
Dave

[Dark1995]

I'd have to go with the Bismarck it fought hard and took lots of hits

[RifleMan20]

the giant bismark that only last for so little

[namvet]

ill go with the Missouri. but then thats the state i live in !!!! many cmdrs were very upset she was chosen for the surrender. but Truman was from Independence , mo. and prez's get there way. BTY i graduated from HS in Indep. and I used to see harry take his daily walks by the school every after noon. hahaha
when I was in Nam they deployed the New Jersey. I saw those 16" shells. about the size of a volkswagan. they scared the crap out of the north. at the peace tables in Paris the delegation from the north said send her home or no peace agreement. whats that tell ya ?????

[pdf27]

I'd have to go with the Bismarck it fought hard and took lots of hits
Bismarck got insanely lucky at Denmark Strait to destroy the Hood (a barely modified WW1 battlecruiser/battleship hybrid) and drive off Prince of Wales (barely in commission, with dockyard workers still aboard). Even so, the Prince of Wales still damaged Bismarck enough to score a mission kill - i.e. Bismarck was forced to abandon it's mission and leg it for France.
In the final battle, it was shot to pieces by King George V and Rodney, without inflicting any significant damage to either of them. The fact it kept floating is irrelevant, and even demonstrates poor design - the armour scheme protected watertight integrity but did not enable it to continue fighting. Fundamentally, it was a 1918 design (the Baden class) with a few minor improvements.

[Drake]

... and yet she still seems to touch a soft spot at our fellow englishmans national pride :mrgreen:

[pdf27]

... and yet she still seems to touch a soft spot at our fellow englishmans national pride :mrgreen:
Nah, that's the engineer in me being wound up at people praising a cr*p design. The only halfway decent battleship design of WW2 by the UK was HMS Vanguard, which turned up too late to be of any use. The Iowas were pretty good, as apparently was Richelieu. The UK had a fairly bad mix.
Hood - one of Fisher's Follies, over-aged and under-modernised.
Nelson/Rodney - not bad designs fatally compromised by adhering to a treaty
Queen Elizabeth class - among the best of a bad lot, but a design which predated WW1 isn't really what you want to rely on in WW2.
Revenge class - totally obselete, the biggest contribution these could have made to the war effort was as scrap steel, but instead they were kept on until the end of the war.
KGV class - about as useful as the QEs, the choice of an all new 14 inch turret really hurt these ships badly. Again, a case of bad design forced by political adherence to a naval treaty everyone else was unaffected by.

[Cojimar 1945]

The Iowa class ships are highly rated by some but they were among the last battleships ever built so have few competitors. Had people continued to design and build battleships they would doubtless have been surpassed.

[herman2]

Bismarck got insanely lucky at Denmark Strait to destroy the Hood (a barely modified WW1 battlecruiser/battleship hybrid) and drive off Prince of Wales (barely in commission, with dockyard workers still aboard). Even so, the Prince of Wales still damaged Bismarck enough to score a mission kill - i.e. Bismarck was forced to abandon it's mission and leg it for France.
In the final battle, it was shot to pieces by King George V and Rodney, without inflicting any significant damage to either of them. The fact it kept floating is irrelevant, and even demonstrates poor design - the armour scheme protected watertight integrity but did not enable it to continue fighting. Fundamentally, it was a 1918 design (the Baden class) with a few minor improvements.

The Bismarck was a state of advanced technology for its era built with steel imported from Austria with such advanced systems that the alias had even contemplated not bombing it to try and stealing it from the Germans. There can be no doubt that the Bismarck is unsurpassed by all others for its time. Some of its technology is even still used on the advanced warships of today.

[pdf27]

There can be no doubt that the Bismarck is unsurpassed by all others for its time. Some of its technology is even still used on the advanced warships of today.
I'm sorry, what planet are you on? There's loads of doubt, notably in the fact that it was mission-killed by a faulty battleship with dockyard workers aboard, crippled by an aircraft that wouldn't have looked out of place over the trenches, then shot to pieces by a 20 year old relic and another faulty battleship.

And the technology argument is specious too - some of the technology of HMS Victory is still in use by modern navies, and Victory was still in commission during WW2, but claiming that "Some of its technology is even still used on the advanced warships of today" would rightly get me laughed at.

[herman2]

I'm sorry, what planet are you on? There's loads of doubt, notably in the fact that it was mission-killed by a faulty battleship with dockyard workers aboard, crippled by an aircraft that wouldn't have looked out of place over the trenches, then shot to pieces by a 20 year old relic and another faulty battleship.

And the technology argument is specious too - some of the technology of HMS Victory is still in use by modern navies, and Victory was still in commission during WW2, but claiming that "Some of its technology is even still used on the advanced warships of today" would rightly get me laughed at.

If the Bismarck was so faulty then why were the British so fearful of it?. Why were the railroads leading from Austria to Germany bombed, during the time the enriched ore was transported to the ship yards?. The technology on the Bismarck was so advanced that the crew had difficulty working with it which caused much of the chaos and downfall of the Bismark. The navigation system utilized on the Bismark is nothing to laugh at. Re: Wartime archive files on the Bismarck. The Bismarck was something to fear!

[gumalangi]

The Bismarck was something to fear!

Reason wise,.. German has few capital ships,.. and Bismarck and her sister are the biggest of the lot,.. so they are making center page stories over British papers.

and on the top,.. it was not the ship itself feared by the british,. but the threat against allied merchants convoys does really matters,..

However,.. i must agree, Bismarck should be one of the most outstanding battleships of its time,.

Cheers
G

[snebold]

However,.. i must agree, Bismarck should be one of the most outstanding battleships of its time

In what way, if I may ask?

Well no, I´d rather propose a worldwide ban on mentioning "Bismarck" in WW2 forums as it always brings the worst up in people!
- those who thinks it´s the most crappy ship ever and can´t understand that it didn´t sink prior to its launch
-and those who think she´s beyond the state of art as of 2008 and actually invincible, (the Germans just felt like scuttling her that day)

Bismarck and Tirpitz did offer a wet foreship (as did many BB´s), a question of low freeboard, a shallow belt, tripple propellers (which rarely does a ship any good vibration-wise (they were better than the South Dakota class though), a range that worked out less than designed and the best armour quality (quality of the metal, not extent or lay-out), (followed closely by the British), by far the highest metacentric height of any WW2 BB (slower roll, easier to capsize -a deliberately chosen feature of German BB´s since the dawn of dreadnoughts), main caliber guns effective against belt armour at short range, but much less so against deck at long range, a high rate of fire from the main guns (a feature not useful in fx. the Denmark Strait engagement as time between firing at that range was determined by other factors than loading time).

A fault, design-wise was the weight consuming (and old fashioned) twin main gun turrets and seperate batteries for anti-DD and AA work. Like the Mediterrean powers and Japan the Germans could contemplate neither their BB´s working out of range of enemy DD´s, nor that dual purpose weapons could offer adequate protection.
Nor was the dedicated AA armament of 105/65´s adequate against aircraft and Tirpitz lived long enough to have 150mm and 380mm AA shells delivered (none of which could do much to protect the ship from aircraft). How many 128mm weapons they could have carried instead of the 150- and 105mm mix would be a question of space, not weight. A trippling of the main battery (3x3) could have bought a smaller (thus cheaper ship, thus more of them), a faster one, or a better armoured one.

At any rate the value/ton wasn´t good.

[albatrosdva]

I have to say my favorite would the the Queen Anne's Revenge. But for the purposes of the 20th century I would go with the Pennsylvania. Having planes fly off her at the end of WWI and then being instrumental in the start and for the duration of another war puts her memory in probably more then just my heart.

[gumalangi]

In what way, if I may ask?

.

i have to admit,. that i like bismarck was due to the fact,. like the reason on why bismarck and tirpitz made headlines over british papers,. they are the biggest of what Germans could throw,.

about technological aspects, designs and so forth,. i was quite ignorant about it at first,. I was tried to find facts on what the ship all about,. i must admit i found that compare to King George V, Iowa, Yamato or other biggest',. Bismarck was quite an average battleship.,.

However my choice was went to Yamato,. :)

[HG]

The Bismarck.

She was brave and is a legend, but I will also go with the Yamato and Iowa.

[Major Walter Schmidt]

the "super Yamato" looks pretty cool.
http://www.hs-tamtam.co.jp/goodsimages/22160_1.jpg
pretty much the same except that the triple 46cm were replaced by 2 500mm guns.

[Digger]

I would go with the Iowa's. Had the Montana's been built they would have been most impressive.

Digger

[B5N2KATE]

Historically, England had seen other nations rowing boats as a "threat to their maritime security"...

When you Army has been pushed off the continent, your air force getting shot down and wasting it's bombs, when you get a naval victory in the only service that the British could make a significant contribution to the war effort at that stage of the war...

You make the most of it.....

[SS Ouche-Vittes]

Yamato, but I rather prefer the Japanes fast destroyers. They ambushed and destroyed a couple American destroyers at Guadalcanal. Tokyo Express!!!

[namvet]

Yamato, but I rather prefer the Japanes fast destroyers. They ambushed and destroyed a couple American destroyers at Guadalcanal. Tokyo Express!!!

there wasn't much to ambush. we went there with very little to start with.