World's Worst Warships?

Well, maybe not worst, but it was a design that needed a decade of fixing to work as intended. That's bad even by Electronic Arts standards ;)

Edit: Also, I'm not even sure what's supposed to be controversial there. All the issues I've mentioned are well known and documented.
 
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Trebuchet said:
As I recall, the light shells were supposed to be combined with high muzzle velocity, which turned out to cause unacceptably short barrel life. So they wound up with a 16" gun which hit little, if any, harder than the previous (and excellent) 15".
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Well, indeed, that was the whole idea behind the lighter shells. They come out a lot faster.

Which really works out to about the same at point blank range, since a good measure of penetration is kinetic energy divided by surface. The latter being fixed for a circle with a 16" diameter, and the former being somewhat proportional to how many pounds of propellant you put behind the shell.

Problem is, air resistance increases a LOT with speed, and since F=ma still applies and m is smaller, they lose speed a lot faster. And kinetic energy even faster, since that is based on the square of the speed.

So I'm not entirely sure why it seemed that it should work any better.

Still, it's really not the biggest issue I have with it. The fact that they lightened the structural elements and barbettes to save weight, to the point where it jammed its turret after firing a couple of salvos ranks higher on my list. I mean, a shell that only hits like an old 15" shell is still a lot better than no shell because you can't turn the turret to fire on the target :p
 
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They might have been mentioned, but the Ise class hybrid were not a brilliant idea. The Ise was a Japanese battleship which ,to try to make up for the carrier loss at Midway, had one half of it's main guns ripped off and replaced by a short carrier deck. Luckiily for the sailors on board her, she never saw combat.

OOPS,got mentioned with a photo on the first page of this thread. Still a bad idea though.
 
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Ise and Hyuga DID see combat, at the Battle of Cape Engaño. They didn't attract all that much attention as the American pilots were more interested in the helpless carriers, but both received minor damage. They did not, however, ever operate aircraft in combat. Oh, and 1/3 of the main battery removed, not 1/2. [/pedant mode]

And just for fun, I give you Kamchatka!
 
Trebuchet said:
Ise and Hyuga DID see combat, at the Battle of Cape Engaño. They didn't attract all that much attention as the American pilots were more interested in the helpless carriers, but both received minor damage. They did not, however, ever operate aircraft in combat. Oh, and 1/3 of the main battery removed, not 1/2. [/pedant mode]

And just for fun, I give you Kamchatka!
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The Kamchatka is not so much a bad warship, but a textbook situation of a break down of leadership. As is the case for the rest of the Second Pacific Squadron.

But oh so funny. :)
 
Any torpedo ram.

When the only thing they've destroyed are Martian fighting machines in war of the worlds and a harbour defence in a trial run....you suck.
 
HansMustermann said:
I would like to re-nominate the Nelson class, AS DESIGNED, although not for some "half a battleship" silliness.

And duly noted, it IS a treaty BB, and the UK does deserve kudos for being pretty much the only ones who even tried to stick to the treaty limits (even if redefined in their favour) while almost everyone else simply lied their ass off. So, hats off to the UK.

The problem isn't with its being cut down to size or to weight, but with HOW it was done. The ship tended to damage its turret rings while firing and basically jam a turret. The first blast also tended to simply shatter the bridge windows and concuss any unfortunate soul in there. Some half a dozen decks had to be evacuated before firing, because anyone there would be concussed by the blast and get such fun stuff as bleeding inside the eyeballs. It also tended to damage or outright destroy anything on the deck in the forward half of the ship. The off-center tower tended to create torque in a sideways wind and basically turn the ship off course, as would the asymmetric blast from the turrets. The choice of light shells also was later shown to be based on some flawed tests, and while on paper the ship did throw a respectable amount of steel into the air, drag slowed them down considerably and limited its penetration at high range. Etc.

Now I say AS DESIGNED, because most of those problems would be fixed over the course of the next 10 years. (Then again, others like the light shells never could be fixed.) Which in the process brought its weight back way up.

So yes, it's the class that spent a lot of time sinking the Bismarck, but that was the fixed version. As designed and launched I dare say it was a much worse ship, and would have probably jammed its own turrets long before destroying those on the Bismarck.
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HansMustermann said:
Well, indeed, that was the whole idea behind the lighter shells. They come out a lot faster.

Which really works out to about the same at point blank range, since a good measure of penetration is kinetic energy divided by surface. The latter being fixed for a circle with a 16" diameter, and the former being somewhat proportional to how many pounds of propellant you put behind the shell.

Problem is, air resistance increases a LOT with speed, and since F=ma still applies and m is smaller, they lose speed a lot faster. And kinetic energy even faster, since that is based on the square of the speed.

So I'm not entirely sure why it seemed that it should work any better.

Still, it's really not the biggest issue I have with it. The fact that they lightened the structural elements and barbettes to save weight, to the point where it jammed its turret after firing a couple of salvos ranks higher on my list. I mean, a shell that only hits like an old 15" shell is still a lot better than no shell because you can't turn the turret to fire on the target : p
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I always struggle with cases like this. It's never clear to me if the whole thing was a wrongheaded idea, or if it was a commendable attempt to get to something that just wasn't quite feasible yet. They had an idea, they tried it, and it turned out to be not as practical as they'd hoped. Yes, the Nelson had some design problems. But was it a bad idea, or was it a best effort and a harbinger of the future of warship design?
 
Captain_Swoop said:
Either a Destroyer or 6" cruiser
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Nope, one of three battleships.

ETA: Nevermind, I've been assuming, from the stumpy tripod aft, that it was either USS Arkansas or one of the New York class. Now that I've stopped the video on that frame and looked at some pictures of those, it looks like I'm wrong. Funnels aren't right and there doesn't seem to be a turret forward of the short tripod.
 
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Trebuchet said:
Nope, one of three battleships.
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Hmm, I'm gonna guess a standard-type USN battleship? Amidships turret behind the bridge, and that mast sure looks USN pre WW2. Since you said 1 of 3 it kinda has to be New Mexico class.

ETA: err nope NM class didn't have an amidships turret, maybe thats not what im seeing?
 
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erwinl said:
The Kamchatka is not so much a bad warship, but a textbook situation of a break down of leadership. As is the case for the rest of the Second Pacific Squadron.

But oh so funny. :)
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The Kamchatka wasn't a warship at all, just a repair ship and collier with a conscript crew and incompetent, opium addicted, captain.
 
Trebuchet said:
Drach has HMS Thunderchild covered as well!

ETA: Bonus trivia question: What type of ship is seen firing at 0:25 of the intro?
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Hmm.

Obviously a dreadnought from the first half of the century.
Super firing turrets. Tripod mast forewards. So is possibly not American. No tripod mast aft, that we can see.
Not a ram type bow at the front, looks like. So possibly not British as well.
I see a turret midships. The shot just before that is of Japanese 14 inch guns firing (where the ‘stuff’ flies away during the shot). First smokestack higher than the second, but both quite skinny.

I think it is IJN Fuso, or Yamashiro in their 1920’s disguise.
(I hope the link comes through. I’m on my phone here).
 
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lobosrul5 said:
Hmm, looks like this is some sort of structure behind the second funnel in the video, that I'm not seeing when searching Iron Duke class for pictures.
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The bow shape has a flare, looks like. The Iron Duke ships did not have that.
Edit. And the smoke stacks of Iron Duke are closer together.

I still put my money on a Fuso class battleship.
 
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theprestige said:
I always struggle with cases like this. It's never clear to me if the whole thing was a wrongheaded idea, or if it was a commendable attempt to get to something that just wasn't quite feasible yet. They had an idea, they tried it, and it turned out to be not as practical as they'd hoped. Yes, the Nelson had some design problems. But was it a bad idea, or was it a best effort and a harbinger of the future of warship design?
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Actually, it was not as stupid as it sounds. Yes, simple physics should have told them that it doesn't work that way, but it wasn't as simple as having a dumb idea and just running with it.

What actually happened is that the RN had gotten a whole bunch of German warships at the end of WW1, and it wasn't something you wanted to keep around against your treaty limits anyway. So they used this opportunity in a more intelligent way than just scrapping them. They actually took their guns and ran extensive tests to determine what works best for ammo. Since, you know, if you wear out or otherwise ruin THOSE, you haven't really lost anything of value.

And those tests said that very light shells coming out at higher speed consistently work marginally better.

Thing is, only after they had built the Nelsons they looked at their methodology again and realized, basically, damn, we ran those tests wrong and got the wrong data and the wrong conclusion. It turned out that light ammo doesn't actually work better in German guns either.

Well, anyway, as you can see, it wasn't some dumb thing done on a whim. They actually went very sanely and scientifically about it. It just turned out to be the wrong data, but, anyway, a honest mistake, not something dumb.

So, anyway, my nomination for the Nelsons isn't in a "hur hur, dumb ideas" way -- as would be the case for, say, the Vasa -- but building it wrong based on wrong data is still building it wrong at the end of the day. Honest mistake is still a mistake.
 
erwinl said:
The bow shape has a flare, looks like. The Iron Duke ships did not have that.
Edit. And the smoke stacks of Iron Duke are closer together.

I still put my money on a Fuso class battleship.
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I agree. From before the foremast evolved into a pagoda. The smoke deflector on the forward funnel works too.

Thanks for figuring that out for me!
 
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