Why were so many warships never built ? Naval history is littered with warships that were planned or designed but never built, especially in the past century or so. There were many reasons why proposed ships never saw the light of day. Some designs were abandoned at...
It is easy to declare that the Battle of Jutland – to the Germans, the battle of the Skagerrak[1] – fought over a hectic afternoon and night on 31 May-1 June 1916, was a tactical German victory and a strategic British one. The idea has become a trope in...
The Battle of the River Plate is one of the best known encounters of the Second World War. It was the first major sea battle of that conflict, and it came on 13 December 1939, a time when the so-called ‘phony war’ was in full swing – the brief period when the Second...
Over a century ago, Admiral Sir John Fisher (1841-1920) – one of the main forces behind both the dreadnought and the battlecruiser – declared that both were obsolete. The ideal warship of the future, he insisted, was the submarine – the perfect stealth warship that...
On the afternoon of 31 May 1916, and on into the early hours of 1 June, the British Grand Fleet and the German fleet came to blows off the Denmark coast in a battle known to the British as the Battle of Jutland, to the Germans as the Skagerrak.[1] It was the first –...
What was the last naval battle of World War 2 ? When was the last battle between sailing ships? When was the last time that the United States boarded an enemy ship in combat? Would you be surprised if all three of those things occurred simultaneously? In...
Recent Comments