World's Worst Warships?

But basically just to illustrate how bad the fuel situation was, at one point Opel nearly closed a truck factory because they weren't even getting enough fuel to test that the damn thing even starts. They literally had no idea whether the fuel pump works, because they weren't getting enough fuel to do that test. Eventually they got special dispensation from the party and could keep the factory open.

So, yeah, it's in that context that you have to judge the decision to not do some extensive programme of using old aces to train really good new pilots.
 
Actually, to return to the actual topic, did anyone mention the Kaiten yet? I mean, it's the only naval vessels DESIGNED to kill the crew in action. Other ships may have been a death trap in practice, but they weren't usually DESIGNED to be.

Worse yet, not even just in an actual successful engagement. They tended to kill or maim people even in training, since even without a warhead, it still involved driving at 30 knots at a target, without a seatbelt. And possibly sinking even in training.

Even WORSE yet, they weren't awful just for their own crews' survival. They tended to also get the submarine carrying them killed.

Thing is, with a normal torpedo you can just flood the tubes, fire, and dive to avoid the DDs. The launch procedure for a Kaiten took a whole lot of time, including loading its compressed air tanks (or peroxide for the type 2!!), ventilating the crew compartment, loading the guy in, etc. It was a long time and it had to be done at pretty much periscope depth, since these didn't have much of a pressure hull or anything. And if you got spotted by some airplane or destroyer in that time, you tended to be pretty much screwed.

So, anyway, a vessel that's not only a literal deathtrap for its own crew, but jeopardises ANOTHER allied vessel too as part of its normal operation, well, it has to count as THE worst ever.
 
Last edited:
Slightly off-topic, but as I'm reading Shattered Sword (Hiryu is about to get hit) I thought I'd do an image search for "Battle of Midway", and came across this complete mess. It's apparently an image from the recent and much hated film, clearly depicting the Pearl Harbor raid. Talk about your bad warships!
The ship on the left has the old-style cage masts. Four ships present for the raid had those: Tennessee, California, West Virginia, and Maryland. The ship in the picture has triple turrets, hence either California or Tennessee, the other two having twins. But she also has notches in the hull for casemate mounted secondaries. None of the "Big Five" ever had those. Tennessee was moored alongside WV, which also had cage masts. California was by herself. But alongside in the image is a ship with tripods.
It's difficult to tell how many guns per turret in that other ship, but probably three. That would be Arizona (moored alongside repair ship Vestal) or Pennsylvania (in drydock). Just possibly the ship could be Oklahoma (moored alongside Maryland, which had a cage mast and twin turrets) or Nevada, which had twin over triple and was moored by herself.
Did these clowns simply not care at all?
 

Attachments

  • mess.jpg
    mess.jpg
    82.6 KB · Views: 12
HansMustermann said:
Actually, to return to the actual topic, did anyone mention the Kaiten yet? I mean, it's the only naval vessels DESIGNED to kill the crew in action. Other ships may have been a death trap in practice, but they weren't usually DESIGNED to be.

Worse yet, not even just in an actual successful engagement. They tended to kill or maim people even in training, since even without a warhead, it still involved driving at 30 knots at a target, without a seatbelt. And possibly sinking even in training.

Even WORSE yet, they weren't awful just for their own crews' survival. They tended to also get the submarine carrying them killed.

Thing is, with a normal torpedo you can just flood the tubes, fire, and dive to avoid the DDs. The launch procedure for a Kaiten took a whole lot of time, including loading its compressed air tanks (or peroxide for the type 2!!), ventilating the crew compartment, loading the guy in, etc. It was a long time and it had to be done at pretty much periscope depth, since these didn't have much of a pressure hull or anything. And if you got spotted by some airplane or destroyer in that time, you tended to be pretty much screwed.

So, anyway, a vessel that's not only a literal deathtrap for its own crew, but jeopardises ANOTHER allied vessel too as part of its normal operation, well, it has to count as THE worst ever.
Click to expand...

Huh. You know, I occasionally play a game call Star General (it's old but good) and a few of the races in it have as part of their navies "manned torpedoes" and I thought huh, that's a novel idea. I mean, no one in reality would be insane enough to actually USE a manned torpedo right?

Then I googled Kaiten. Holy crap.
 
rjh01 said:
Here is a problem all air forces have. What do you do with your very best pilots? The Japanese Navy put them on the aircraft carriers. The Americans used them to train other pilots. Result: When a Japanese pilot was lost they could not be easily replaced. When an American pilot was lost, that did not matter for quality purposes, they were replaced by someone who had been trained by the best pilots. This is one reason Japan lost the war.
Click to expand...

It works the same way with farming :)
 
MarkCorrigan said:
Huh. You know, I occasionally play a game call Star General (it's old but good) and a few of the races in it have as part of their navies "manned torpedoes" and I thought huh, that's a novel idea. I mean, no one in reality would be insane enough to actually USE a manned torpedo right?

Then I googled Kaiten. Holy crap.
Click to expand...

Actually the Royal Navy used manned torpedoes to attempt to destroy the Tirpitz (very unsuccessfully), and on other occasions. However, they weren't designed to work by sealing the 'man' element in to his death.

Trebuchet, I suggest you don't look at a recent post in the 'Watched Movies' thread.
 
gypsyjackson said:
Actually the Royal Navy used manned torpedoes to attempt to destroy the Tirpitz (very unsuccessfully), and on other occasions. However, they weren't designed to work by sealing the 'man' element in to his death.

Trebuchet, I suggest you don't look at a recent post in the 'Watched Movies' thread.
Click to expand...

I'd disagree, X-craft were midget submarines, and the Italian "human torpedoes" were for a similar role, which was commando-type attacks on high-value ships at anchor.

It's a bit like saying that a kamikaze and a dive bomber are essentially the same, except that the dive bomber is supposed to survive.
 
Yeah, all the non-Japanese ones were really used nothing like a torpedo.
 
Last edited:
jimbob said:
I'd disagree, X-craft were midget submarines, and the Italian "human torpedoes" were for a similar role, which was commando-type attacks on high-value ships at anchor.

It's a bit like saying that a kamikaze and a dive bomber are essentially the same, except that the dive bomber is supposed to survive.
Click to expand...

I wasn't referring to the X-class attacks (which were somewhat successful at keeping Tirpitz out of action), but this one: https://codenames.info/operation/title/ - an almost total disaster.

I also certainly wasn't trying to equate the RN operations with the Kaiten (as I thought I made clear with my last line in my post).

I was referring to MarkCorrigan's line that no-one would be insane enough to use a manned torpedo. As you point out the Italian Navy in addition to the Royal Navy did have something in that line, though it is really a misnomer. I don't know anything about the game he referred to so I don't know how that class was designed to be used.
 
Trebuchet said:
Slightly off-topic, but as I'm reading Shattered Sword (Hiryu is about to get hit) I thought I'd do an image search for "Battle of Midway", and came across this complete mess. It's apparently an image from the recent and much hated film, clearly depicting the Pearl Harbor raid. Talk about your bad warships!
The ship on the left has the old-style cage masts. Four ships present for the raid had those: Tennessee, California, West Virginia, and Maryland. The ship in the picture has triple turrets, hence either California or Tennessee, the other two having twins. But she also has notches in the hull for casemate mounted secondaries. None of the "Big Five" ever had those. Tennessee was moored alongside WV, which also had cage masts. California was by herself. But alongside in the image is a ship with tripods.
It's difficult to tell how many guns per turret in that other ship, but probably three. That would be Arizona (moored alongside repair ship Vestal) or Pennsylvania (in drydock). Just possibly the ship could be Oklahoma (moored alongside Maryland, which had a cage mast and twin turrets) or Nevada, which had twin over triple and was moored by herself.
Did these clowns simply not care at all?
Click to expand...


I mentioned most of these things up-thread after I watched the trailer. It's even worse when you the movie; there's so much wrong it would take me way too long to even start mentioning them all. Nevertheless I still think it's one of the better naval war movies that's been made recently, and it's head and shoulders above The Movie That Must Not Be Named, although that's not saying a whole lot.
 
SpitfireIX said:
I mentioned most of these things up-thread after I watched the trailer. It's even worse when you the movie; there's so much wrong it would take me way too long to even start mentioning them all. Nevertheless I still think it's one of the better naval war movies that's been made recently, and it's head and shoulders above The Movie That Must Not Be Named, although that's not saying a whole lot.
Click to expand...
And in the watched movies thread I just had to go look at, someone liked it for historical accuracy.
 
To be fair, I don't think that the accuracy of the mooring positions is what people criticized the most, though. I mean, I know I'm far from being a WW2 historian, but the average Joe knows even less, and it didn't occur to me to count the guns per turret.

The bigger problem seems to be that, as struck me way back when we were talking about the trailer, it seems to be mostly indistinguishable from a video game trailer. There is a lot of spectacular CGI action (although as I said back then, some of it leaves me with the impression that I've seen the exact same scene before in an actual game trailer.) But there is very little actual story that connects it all, other than that there was a war back there, nor reason to be particularly invested in any characters. There are times when it's not even clear after the fact why they're bombing some target or whatnot.

I mean take even, say, Top Gun as another movie with aircraft and carriers. It's even less historically accurate, and in fact it pretty much just overall fails reality. Hard. But you've been given a protagonist, followed him through the story, and generally there's no point where you're left wondering either (A) what the hell is happening, or (B) who the hell is that guy, or (C) why should you care.

In Midway most of that is lacking.

In fact, forget Top Gun, I've been more emotionally invested in a silly SF anime like Girly Air Force than in Midway. Not by much, but still.
 
Well, I'm not saying they couldn't do better. Just that that's the least of the problems that it had.
 
Yeah.
Some years back, my wife got me a copy of "Air Force One". Because I worked at Boeing, and mostly on the 747. That was, to put it mildly, a mistake. I managed not to put my foot through the screen, but it was a close thing.
Watching movies about subjects of which you have event a little knowledge is generally not going to go well.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom