I’m expecting a flood of Battleship-related posts in the near future with the U.S. opening this weekend. For instance, I’ve been promised a humorous take of this hard-hitting documentary over at USNI blog, so I’ll take a more straight-faced look at battleships.
As nukes are to the egos and deterrent calculus of nations today, so were battleships in the first half of the 20th Century. While the fact that today’s navies no longer possess battleships may be lost on this weekend’s moviegoers, what’s even more shocking is that after conducting extensive Wikipedia research, I uncovered no instances in which a battleship was sunk due to alien action.
This is an inexcusable error on the part of the filmmakers, but I thought our readers might nonetheless like to know the truth behind battleship sinkings. Below are the rough figures of the fates of post-Dreadnought battleships (excluding battlecruisers). Those not listed were scrapped, turned into a museum, taken to sea by Stephen Seagal, or commandeered by Cher (see photo above).
Doing some rough, back-of-the-envelope calculations, it looks like the number one cause of a sinking during a conflict (granted due primarily to the exceptional actions at Scapa Flow) was the hands of a ship’s own crew.
Sunk by Aircraft – 12 – 27%:
- – RN Conte di Cavour 1940
- – HMS Prince of Wales 1941
- – Marat 1941
- – USS Arizona 1941
- – USS West Virginia 1941 (Salvaged and returned to service)
- – USS California 1941 (Salvaged and returned to service)
- – USS Oklahoma 1941
- – USS Utah: 1941 (After conversion to an anti-aircraft training ship)
- – RN Roma 1943
- – SMS Tirpitz 1944
- – IJN Musashi 1944
- – IJN Yamato 1945
Scuttled to Prevent Enemy Use – 15 – 33%:
- – Imperatritsa Ekaterina Velikaya 1917
- – SMS Kaiser 1919
- – SMS Prinzregent Luitpold 1919
- – SMS Kaiserin 1919
- – SMS Friedrich der Grosse 1919
- – SMS König Albert 1919
- – SMS König 1919
- – SMS Großer Kurfürst 1919
- – SMS Kronprinz Wilhelm 1919
- – SMS Markgraf 1919
- – SMS Bayern 1919
- – SMS Bismarck 1941 (While under enemy fire – cause disputed)
- – Dunkerque 1942
- – Strasbourg 1942
- – Provence 1942
Surface Fire or Surface Torpedoes – 4 – 9%:
- – SMS Szent István 1918
- – Bretagne 1940
- – Fusō 1944
- – Yamashiro 1944
Torpedoed by Submarine – 2 – 4%:
– SMS Szent István 1918(h/t Chuck Hill)- – HMS Royal Oak 1939
- – HMS Barham 1941
Sunk as Breakwater – 2 – 4%:
- – HMS Centurion 1944
- – Courbet 1944
Sunk after Running Aground – 1 – 2%:
- – España 1923
Sunk by Frogmen – 1 – 2%:
- – Viribus Unitis 1918
Sunk by Claimed Sabotage – 2 – 4%:
- – RN Leonardo da Vinci 1916
- – Jaime I 1937
Sunk by Mines – 2 – 4%:
- – HMS Audacious 1914
- – España 1937
Sunk by Internal Explosion – 4 – 9%:
- – Imperatritsa Mariya 1916
- – HMS Vanguard 1917
- – Kawachi 1918
- – Mutsu 1943
Sunk by Aliens – 0 – 0%
Sunk During Peacetime
Scuttled at Sea:
- – USS Pennsylvania 1948
Sunk after Running Aground
- – France 1922
Sunk During Target Practice:
- – SMS Ostfriesland 1921
- – SMS Baden 1921
- – SMS Thüringen 1923
- – Aki 1924
- – Satsuma 1924
- – USS Washington 1924
- – HMS Monarch 1925
- – HMS Emperor of India 1931
Sunk During Underwater Nuclear Test
- – Nagato 1946
- – USS Arkansas 1946
Unknown Cause:
- – Novorossiysk 1955
Sunk due to Weather:
- – São Paulo 1951
SMS Szent István was sunk by Italian torpedo boats, not a submarine.