HMS Warspite. What a ship. In WWI at the Battle of Jutland 1916. Fired 259 15in rounds. Received 2 11 inch and 13 12 inch hits and sustained 14 killed and 32 injured. In WWII she went into a knife fight at Narvik ( more hereand here), and at the landings at Salerno, she was hit by a German Glider bomb, she was towed to Gibraltar for temporary repairs and fully repaired at Rosyth in March 1944. In June 1944 she was deployed at Normandy with only three functioning main Turrets.Here are three photos for you in her prime: pulling into Malta, bombarding a nice liberty port in Cantania, and hitting the beaches at Normandy.
I could never be a ship breaker, it would bother me. DOG GEORGE WARSPITE! ( Dog George, D G Damned Good, the WWII RN equivalent of BZ ).
ReplyDeleteSuperb ship, first class of the Superdreadnoughts in 1915 and still effective 30 years later...
ReplyDeleteIf comparing WW2 "presence record" it would be equaled only by the Big E...
A warship with a warship's name. Unlike the future USS Murtha.
ReplyDeleteOne of the most hated jobs I've ever had was decomming Saratoga. I'm seriously hoping I don't have to decom the McInerney just so we can giver her to the Pakistani's, that'd be enough to make get seriously drunk.
ReplyDeleteBetter to send the Mac to the Pak than make her a reef.
ReplyDeletegrand old lady.
ReplyDeleteActually, I'd rather see her go in a SINKEX..
ReplyDeleteHer nickname was "the Old Lady". From Wiki: "Viscount Cunningham impressed by the vintage ship's speed during a mission to aid the British Army in Sicily, Cunningham remarked, "When the old lady lifts her skirts she can run."."
ReplyDeleteGreat history of her (and her predecessors) by Roskill re-issued by USNI some years back.
ReplyDeleteWhy can't we come up with names like Warspite? And we need to have ship classes like "dreadnaughts". LCS? WTF?
ReplyDeleteI've never had the privelege of serving on a ship, though I love sea stories and I've heard plenty from Papa Bravo and the Brothers Bravo, but I grew up with a picture of Papa Bravo's favorite heavy cruiser on the wall on a knotboard some of his men in his division made for him and some of it sunk in. That respect for a beautiful ship. This Warspite is one. Something in me cries when I see photos of these being scuttled. I'm with Byron... a SINKEX is better than a reef. At least there is some dignity in going down that way. Like taking a grand horse out and shooting it rather than sending it to the glue factory. I found pictures online of what was left of Papa Bravo's heavy cruiser being dismantled at a pier and what was left turning to rust. I'll never tell him about it. It would break his heart.
:'(
(And kudos to the people on the ship's fantastic website who had that part put under warning not to look if you didn't want to see.)
DB, We can't use names like "Warspite" because we're too busy naming ships after politicians.
ReplyDeleteAs for MCINERNY, somebody should think of saving at least one of the FFGs as a museum ship before they're all gone. Would have loved to have visited an old 4-piper but, alas...
Speaking of Bang ! Bang !! I hear the Dutch Navy cracked the heads of some Somalis. Freed a German merchie with no casualties to the crew. Took the piratical types into custody which is OK, but they would have looked better had they been flown from the yardarms.
ReplyDeleteCatania a good liberty port? CDR's a stranger bird than I thought. Although I have a good story about that place. However it's stranger than fiction and some not so innocent still need to be protected.
ReplyDeleteThat was kind of my opinion too (although Catania's better than Augusta Bay). Catania was good if you had a car and could leave the place to drive to Taromina.
ReplyDeleteOr a BENSON/LIVERMORE, the backbone DD in the Atlantic. A JPHN C BUTLER would have been nice, my favorite DE, to represent Samar, perhaps with a CASABLANCA to go with it?
ReplyDeleteThis dude has made up some pretty cool images of QE class dreadnoughts, especially Warspite.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.warspite.dk/
We'll never be able to make up for the unbelievable stupidity of scrapping ships like Warspite and Enterprise. Out of all the dreadnoughts only one now remains, and Texas isn't long for this world if they don't come up with enough money to work on her.
Sal - very nice piece and the posted notes remind me of a dear and missed forebearer of mine who served on a former RN cruiser transferred to the Canadian Navy at the end of WW2. He always remembered her as a stylish ship, something that may seem odd to those who only look on warships as fighting platforms. But compared to the corvettes he'd started out on...well, there's no real comparison. And as to the comment about the breaking up of such vessels, I can tell you that as someone who has spent a lot of time in places like India's Alang yards, watching any vessel beached on the shore during the high tides is hard to see. Unless, of course, you're one of the thousands of migrant workers waiting to cut them up. For them, each ship is just another job. Without those who lived aboard them, ships like the warspite are just ghosts.
ReplyDeleteLet's say some fellow OS's tried to film some of the local ladies of the night performing their duties. Needless to say the ladies were not so keen on the ideal. I was not one of the actors but only the director of filming. It was strictly for cinematic value only.
ReplyDeleteModern Navy Capital "warship" that really is a "dread" not: USS ZUMMWALT's. The eventual 3 ship class of DDX-1000 will each carry two 155mm guns. Of course these DDX ships might occassionly encounter some bad weather in their future deployments around the world. Unlike a real warship, the DDX-1000 will be unable to raise (elevate) and train her two giant 155mm gun barrels if the seas are rough. Exactly what the sea conditions are that prevent using the main batteries of DDX-1000 ships has only been estimated, but the Navy will someday discover (as will the enemy) that when a DDX-1000 is on station off your country and a storm of moderate or mild sea conditions arises, then those 155mm guns won't be elevating and training 90 degees to conduct any shore fire. It's a kinder-gentler-Navy we are building. Bring back the old (real) battle ships.
ReplyDeletesolution is to completely remove those large guns from future CG's if they are ever funded in the next 20 years!
ReplyDeleteMe too. We've given the Paks enough to shoot back us as it is.
ReplyDelete