World's Worst Warships?

OK, I'll probably need asbestos pants for this one, but I nominate HMS Dreadnought.

I know, it sounds crazy, but hear me out.

Now my... hypothesis for this one isn't that it was something technically wrong with the ship, just like there didn't seem to be any with the Tillman maximum battleships. Indeed, it was the most powerful battleship at the time, just like the Tillman maximum battleships would have been, if built.

Also I'm not picking on the uniform calibre, which was a great idea indeed.

Instead what I propose is the bad idea is that HMS Dreadnought was essentially the equivalent for its time of the Tillman battleships. In a world of incremental increases, it just jumped up so many notches, as to make everything before it obsolete, including own fleet. And just like was clear for the Tillman ones, it just made everyone else now go up from there. In fact, soon we would be talking about super-dreadnoughts.

And in the process it also jumped up exactly as many notches in the cost of building and cost of ownership of those ships, draining the economy of the UK and the world as a whole. As can be seen soon enough in the naval treaties... and setting up the roots of the WW2 conflict for resources with Japan.
 
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HansMustermann said:
OK, I'll probably need asbestos pants for this one, but I nominate HMS Dreadnought.

I know, it sounds crazy, but hear me out.

Now my... hypothesis for this one isn't that it was something technically wrong with the ship, just like there didn't seem to be any with the Tillman maximum battleships. Indeed, it was the most powerful battleship at the time, just like the Tillman maximum battleships would have been, if built.

Also I'm not picking on the uniform calibre, which was a great idea indeed.

Instead what I propose is the bad idea is that HMS Dreadnought was essentially the equivalent for its time of the Tillman battleships. In a world of incremental increases, it just jumped up so many notches, as to make everything before it obsolete, including own fleet. And just like was clear for the Tillman ones, it just made everyone else now go up from there. In fact, soon we would be talking about super-dreadnoughts.

And in the process it also jumped up exactly as many notches in the cost of building and cost of ownership of those ships, draining the economy of the UK and the world as a whole. As can be seen soon enough in the naval treaties... and setting up the roots of the WW2 conflict for resources with Japan.
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Are you going to do the same for the Warrior?
 
HansMustermann said:
OK, I'll probably need asbestos pants for this one, but I nominate HMS Dreadnought.

I know, it sounds crazy, but hear me out.

Now my... hypothesis for this one isn't that it was something technically wrong with the ship, just like there didn't seem to be any with the Tillman maximum battleships. Indeed, it was the most powerful battleship at the time, just like the Tillman maximum battleships would have been, if built.

Also I'm not picking on the uniform calibre, which was a great idea indeed.

Instead what I propose is the bad idea is that HMS Dreadnought was essentially the equivalent for its time of the Tillman battleships. In a world of incremental increases, it just jumped up so many notches, as to make everything before it obsolete, including own fleet. And just like was clear for the Tillman ones, it just made everyone else now go up from there. In fact, soon we would be talking about super-dreadnoughts.

And in the process it also jumped up exactly as many notches in the cost of building and cost of ownership of those ships, draining the economy of the UK and the world as a whole. As can be seen soon enough in the naval treaties... and setting up the roots of the WW2 conflict for resources with Japan.
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Doesn't follow...

Per Wiki, HMS Dreadnought cost some 1.75 million GBP while the preceding ship class Lord Nelson cost 1.65 million GBP. Thats only a 6% increase.

The naval army race between the UK and Germany would've happened no matter if the Dreadnought concept would have been created or not. The UK likely would've been using their large drydocks to build pre-dreadnoughts in the years leading up to and during WW1 anyways. With the dreadnoughts the UK got a jump on Germany and ensured they had naval supremacy during the first World War. Not building a new type of weapon that revolutionizes warfare is unlikely to be cost saving. What if they had continued on with older types and lost the Battle of Jutland, and faced a naval invasion by Germany... had to pull troops out of France/Belgium and the allies lost WW1?
 
Germany had given up trying to outbuild the RN by the time the war started anyway.
 
I understand that while I may not like it, this is what peak electronic warfare performance looks like.

But this is definitely not the ideal destroyer superstructure. The new widebody Burke just emphasizes how much the USN needs a new destroyer class, built from the keel up with the latest tech and future upgrades in mind.

This thing may be one of the best warships in the world today, but aesthetically it's one of the worst.
 
Look, all I'm saying is that while all of that is probably common knowledge, the general consensus seems to be:

- Tillman maximum battleships: omg, dumbest idea ever, would just cause everyone else to go even higher, anyway

- HMS Dreadnought: OMG bestest idea since the oar

Lile, why? What's the actual difference in terms of skipping a couple of notched up?
 
Andy_Ross said:
Are you going to do the same for the Warrior?
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Not really, no. HMS Warrior was a combination of proven technologies and stuff that was obviously the next step up, as illustrated by everyone else trying it. Might not have nailed it on the first try (although it missed the mark by less than the previous false start of iron hulls), but it's hard to find any significant fault with the general idea.
 
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HansMustermann said:
Look, all I'm saying is that while all of that is probably common knowledge, the general consensus seems to be:

- Tillman maximum battleships: omg, dumbest idea ever, would just cause everyone else to go even higher, anyway
- HMS Dreadnought: OMG bestest idea since the oar

Lile, why? What's the actual difference in terms of skipping a couple of notched up?
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I've never seen that as a criticism to them or why they weren't built. More along the lines of they were just a thought exercise by a US Senator trying to make a point. They would've been incredibly expensive unlike the Dreadnought (compared to her contemporaries). And they were not revolutionary in any sense... just bigger.
 
Not being a naval history buff, I'd not heard of them but some of those designs seem a bit extreme.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximum_battleship

4x6 16" guns or 5x3 18" guns would have been something when they fired.

I wonder how well the fittings would have survived firing a broadside. I seem to recall someone in this thread saying that either Nelson or Rodney experienced damage to their toilets on firing a broadside.
 
HansMustermann said:
Not really, no. HMS Warrior was a combination of proven technologies and stuff that was obviously the next step up, as illustrated by everyone else trying it. Might not have nailed it on the first try (although it missed the mark by less than the previous false start of iron hulls), but it's hard to find any significant fault with the general idea.
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Exactly the same as the ******* Dreadnought. Warrior rendered every other warship obsolete.
The US Navy had a very similar ship to Dreadnought being built, all it lacked was turbine propulsion.
 
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Andy_Ross said:
Exactly the same as the ******* Dreadnought. Warrior rendered every other warship obsolete.
The US Navy had a very similar ship to Dreadnought being built, all it lacked was turbine propulsion.
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Do you mean the South Carolina class? Her keel wasn't even laid until after Dreadnought had her first sea-trials... but I do believe her design pre-dated any public knowledge of HMS Dreadnought. So it would appear you are correct, the US essentially designed a "Dreadnought" before the HMS Dreadnought was even known to be a revolutionary design that would make all previous battleships obsolete.
 
Andy_Ross said:
Exactly the same as the ******* Dreadnought. Warrior rendered every other warship obsolete.
The US Navy had a very similar ship to Dreadnought being built, all it lacked was turbine propulsion.
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Not really, no. It didn't nearly do the same jump as from 2x2 main gun pre-Dreadnoughts to 5x2 main guns. And yeah, there were some "semi-dreadnought" experiments along the way, but nothing as extreme a jump as the actual HMS Dreadnought. HMS Dreadnought was literally as big a jump as the Tillman maximum battleships would have been, had they actually been constructed.
 
lobosrul5 said:
Do you mean the South Carolina class? Her keel wasn't even laid until after Dreadnought had her first sea-trials... but I do believe her design pre-dated any public knowledge of HMS Dreadnought. So it would appear you are correct, the US essentially designed a "Dreadnought" before the HMS Dreadnought was even known to be a revolutionary design that would make all previous battleships obsolete.
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More than one navy did, actually. I believe the Italian navy also had a project for an all big gun ship.
 
jimbob said:
Not being a naval history buff, I'd not heard of them but some of those designs seem a bit extreme.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximum_battleship

4x6 16" guns or 5x3 18" guns would have been something when they fired.

I wonder how well the fittings would have survived firing a broadside. I seem to recall someone in this thread saying that either Nelson or Rodney experienced damage to their toilets on firing a broadside.
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Nelrod class suffered from being treaty battleships -- and the UK made a conspicuous point of strictly adhering to the treaty limitations they had come up with (as opposed to everyone else just lying their ass off) -- so a lot had to be sacrificed to both fit a 16" gun AND fit within those treaty limits. Including having to use lightweight 16" projectiles, and generally being AWFUL ships as designed initially, with yeah, severe problems for both itself and the crew if it ever fired its main guns. Fixed partially later, but still, the initial design sucked almost as much ass as the vacuum toilets on the space station :p

But still, that was the result of trying to fit as much battleship as possible under some ridiculously low treaty limitations (again, unlike everyone else.)

The Tillman design exercise were well before any treaties, so there's no real reason to believe they'd have to cut the same corners. And indeed, looking at the blueprints, they didn't.
 
By all means, my esteemed coleague, if you have more modern examples of awful ships than WW2, by all means, I would love to hear your opinion. In fact, I dare say most of us geeks would.
 
HansMustermann said:
By all means, my esteemed coleague, if you have more modern examples of awful ships than WW2, by all means, I would love to hear your opinion. In fact, I dare say most of us geeks would.
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Asked and answered.

ETA: Why is there no discussion of late Soviet designs? Where is the aircraft carrying missile cruiser Kuznetsov? Where is the nuclear powered missile cruiser Kirov?

A hundred years of naval engineering results to draw on, and you're still stuck on the HMS Dreadnought.
 
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Andy_Ross said:
Exactly the same as the ******* Dreadnought. Warrior rendered every other warship obsolete.
The US Navy had a very similar ship to Dreadnought being built, all it lacked was turbine propulsion.
Click to expand...

lobosrul5 said:
Do you mean the South Carolina class? Her keel wasn't even laid until after Dreadnought had her first sea-trials... but I do believe her design pre-dated any public knowledge of HMS Dreadnought. So it would appear you are correct, the US essentially designed a "Dreadnought" before the HMS Dreadnought was even known to be a revolutionary design that would make all previous battleships obsolete.
Click to expand...

An interesting class. Significantly smaller and slower than Dreadnought, but with a far superior main armament layout. Even after the RN started installing superfiring turrets they couldn't actually fire the upper turret over the lower due to open sighting hoods.
 
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