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World's Worst Warships?

Trebuchet said:
CGI is yet another one of those things where just because you can doesn't mean you should.
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Well, that's a valid point and well worth remembering, but the idea with CGI was that you can do more, not just repeat the same stuff with different insignia on the planes. If more than one scene looks exactly like one from another movie -- albeit here a game movie -- I think the bigger issue is plain old lack of creativity.
 
Reactor drone said:
Those mitsubishi G3M "Nell"s are keen flying all the way over to Midway to bomb the US fleet.
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I was wondering about that. Unless they have a brief interlude over to the Battle of the Phillipines I have to wonder what they are thinking.

I grant you, an interlude to the Phillipines is possible given that they are starting with Pearl Harbor...maybe they establish the battle by showing a bunch of prior Japanese victories?
 
That actually did happen, during the Marshall Islands raid on February 1.

From cv6.org:

Four VF-6 Wildcats made contact with the bombers 15 miles from the Big E, but jammed guns and cloud cover allowed the Nells to elude the CAP. Approaching in a shallow dive, the bombers burst from the clouds 3500 yards off Enterprise's starboard bow, hurtling towards their target at 250 knots. Every five inch gun that could be brought to bear opened fire, but the gunners' inexperience, the stress of battle and the high speed of the approaching planes led to the shells trailing their target, where they were of more danger to the CAP than to the enemy. Captain George Murray ordered hard left rudder quickly followed by hard right; the ship responded with reassuring nimbleness and neatly "stepped aside" from the approaching bombers. As the 1.1" gun mounts began their deafening fire, the five planes let fall a loose "stick" of three 60 kg bombs each. Most fell harmlessly to port, the concussions pounding the ship's hull and lifting her in the water. One bomb exploded close enough to severe a gasoline line, starting a small fire and mortally wounding BM 2/c George Smith.

Recovering from their dive a scant 1500 feet above the Big E's flight deck, four of the five bombers sped away, but the fifth plane - piloted by the flight leader LT Kazuo Nakai - turned sharply to the left and circled back towards the carrier as if to land. Despite the combined fire of every gun that could bear, the plane kept coming on, clearly intending to crash into the ship. At the last moment, Enterprise veered hard to the right, and the plane - whether due to mechanical damage or an incapacitated pilot - failed to match her turn. Hurtling mere feet over the aft flight deck, the bomber's right wing clipped the tail of parked Scouting Six Dauntless (whose rear gun had been manned by AMM 2/c Bruno Gaido), and snapped off, drenching the island and flight deck forward with gasoline, before coming to rest in a port catwalk. The Nell, Nakai, and his crew plunged into the sea off Enterprise's port quarter and were quickly left behind.​

Gaido is presumably the guy shown climbing into the rear seat of an SBD in the clip. He was promoted to AMM 1/c for his heroism that day, IIRC.
 
OK that makes sense then. Especially since it now I see it looks like the tail gunner is not in a flying plane, but on the deck.

I assume the Marshall raid is what Woody is referring to as the strike back against Japan.

Oddly, the 70’s Midway movie implied the Doolittle raids were the cause of the Japanese attack at Midway.
 
Back on topic, I've been reading a naval historical novel set in the late 1890's and featuring a (fictional) Nymphe class sloop. Pretty much obsolete when built, full sailing rig, composite construction -- wood planking over iron frames -- and generally behind the times. They seem, however to have made themselves somewhat useful on distant shores.
 
Trebuchet said:
Back on topic, I've been reading a naval historical novel set in the late 1890's and featuring a (fictional) Nymphe class sloop. Pretty much obsolete when built, full sailing rig, composite construction -- wood planking over iron frames -- and generally behind the times. They seem, however to have made themselves somewhat useful on distant shores.
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I'm sure they were very useful on duties like suppressing smuggling in remote places distant from coaling ports.
 
Craig B said:
I'm sure they were very useful on duties like suppressing smuggling in remote places distant from coaling ports.
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From a quick scan of Wikipedia, it looks like the RN had been building similar ships for four decades and carried on doing so for another two, and they were very handy maids of all work for a maritime empire. In peacetime they were probably a hell of a lot more useful and cost-effective than battleships.

Dave
 
Well, you also have to bear in mind that the sloop-of-war was always intended for convoy escort and such, rather than actual taking on enemy warships. It's basically similar to the role of a later merchant cruiser. It's not something you put in your taskforce for battle, but something that's a deterrent to enemy raiders.

And sloops (albeit of all metal construction) would be used again in that role all through WW1.

Later in WW2 you'd use destroyers for that role, but here's the thing: A sloop would also not be all that much more fragile than a destroyer of the same era. I mean, sure, the destroyer was still better, but not by a whole lot.

While we're more used to modern destroyers being (relatively) powerful warships in their own right, they really originated as very light, small and virtually unarmoured vessels, that just had to be fast enough to intercept a torpedo boat. Hell, the first ones were so small, that the officers had to sleep in their chairs, because there was no room for beds.

A sloop was actually larger and generally better, if not particularly armoured, at least the pre-ww1 kinds.

So let's think this through, 1890 style:

You can't send battleships with your convoys. Not just because of cost, but they don't have the range. The lack of range of battleships was the whole reason why the cruiser had to be invented.

You can't really send cruisers with most convoys, because of cost.

You can't send destroyers with the convoys, because at this point the destroyer is just narrowly qualifying as a ship instead of a boat. It's an auxiliary and very specialized vessel for the battle taskforces, and not really that much use for anything else.

You can't send frigates, because they don't exist any more at this point. (Until they'd be reinvented much later as an ASW vessel.) They got bigger, they got armoured, they became ironclads, and then eventually became what's known as the (pre-dreadnought) battleship.

Sloops are pretty much the only things that are now filling that hole in the lineup.
 
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BTW, now you can design your own awful ships in the Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts alpha. The name is a bit misleading, since it actually lets you play with everything from 200 ton torpedo boats to pre-dreadnoughts to battleships, and everything in between.
 
HansMustermann said:
BTW, now you can design your own awful ships in the Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts alpha. The name is a bit misleading, since it actually lets you play with everything from 200 ton torpedo boats to pre-dreadnoughts to battleships, and everything in between.
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You can do that as well with Springsharp. And that one is free. :)

The development has stopped, but for designing warships up to the end of WWII, it is still very, very good.
It's rather difficult to make a truly balanced ship, given some reasonable restrictions. Whether they be cost, tonnage, endurance or whatever.
 
JayUtah said:
Were there treaty limits on Japan in the 1930s? I'm familiar with the ones imposed on Germany.
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The Washington Navel Treaty 1922 and London Treaty 1930 limited number and size of capitol ships allowed each of the signatories, including Japan.
 
Japan was a signatory to the London Naval TreatyWP of 1930 (an extension and expansion of the earlier Washington Naval TreatyWP), which expired at the end of 1936. Japan declined to sign the Second London Naval TreatyWP which extended some of the terms of the earlier treaties.

Battleships were limited to 35,000 tons standard displacement, and 16-inch guns. Cruisers were limited to 10,000 tons standard displacement, and only a certain number of heavy (8-inch gun) cruisers were allowed to each signatory. Overall tonnage in all categories of warships was restricted.

The Japanese regularly violated the treaty in many respects; for example, their heavy cruisers were almost all significantly over the limit.

"Standard displacement" refers to a ship's full-load displacement less fuel; the British insisted on this provision because of the need for their warships to carry more fuel in order to defend their far-flung empire.
 
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