Name this Naval Vessel

Hey, I can't go easy on you guys. And you wouldn't want me too. Mere fanboiz would snag something like this:



So let's stick with my admittedly obscure but nevertheless interesting submersible.

 

Polish submarine Sęp, she was one of two Orzeł class submarines.

 

Correct

 

Well, I think Mogami's kind of interesting. So count me a fanboi. (Oh wait, you meant that big thing in the front. Okay, yeah, she was a bit overrated. But might still have bested Bismark on the right day. Yeah, I'm probably a fanboi.)

And I will bite my horrid little tongue over all the lousy adolescent jokes about Polish submarines. How exactly did Poland end up the butt of all the jokes from when I was in High School? What exactly did they do wrong, save possibly being rolled by the German machine? (And they were far from unique in that respect.)

Well done Takao. I am impressed.

 

The Polish submarine in WWII achievement was spotty, in spite of having some excellent boats. Sęp managed to get herself interned by the Swedes, yet her sister Orzeł escaped internment and passed the very tricky Skagerrak without charts. As part of the British Sub Flotilla 2 she made a nuisance of herself to the German invasion of Norway. Orzeł disappeared in June 1940, possibly hitting a mine.

 

I'd been looking through early British subs (and rediscovering oddities like steam powered subs with 12" guns), so I was a bit surprised at how new she was. I think the rather beamy look in the picture and the cowl on the conning tower fooled me. Sounds like they were pretty solid little boats even if their record was hit and miss. (Difficult to achieve stunning results operating out of foreign ports with foreign logistics and munitions. The Free French don't seem to have done even that well, though the Dutch might have fared somewhat better. Helps when you don't have to get out of the Baltic.)

 

After the pic failed to match any soviet class I skimmed over the Baltics but the "beamy" look misled me, nice work Takao. BTW I'm a fan of Taiho that big thing in the front leaves me cold.

 

Taiho's a gorgeous lady. 'Tis true. But I think she may have been a little too extravagant to be practical for Japan. (Too expensive.) For all that they're maligned, I think the Soryu/Hiryu designs and the Unryus derived from them were probably about the best IJN carriers for the for the Yen. Now if there were a way to go the Zuikaku/Shokaku route on a budget . . .

But I'm getting off topic waiting for Takao's next post.

 

The Taiho class were fine looking ships, but the canted funnel that was in vogue, at the time, always looked "wrong" to me. And, I'm still trying to figure out how Japan thought she could build 7 more "modified" Taihos. I agree with SymphonicPoet that the Unryus represented the most "bang for the buck."

The Shokakus were probably the "best" of the Japanese carriers, but would also require a sizable investment to construct more.

But on to the topic at hand. Let's see how long this "famous" ship lasts

 

Single row of portholes, "ram" bow, and what looks like one big turret ring .... IMO a pre-dreadnaught as the "turret ring" looks too far forward for a monitor.

 

You're very much on the right track. I'll sit this one out, as I know precisely the old barge at a glance. Lovely old lady.

 

TiredOldSoldier,

You are correct, she is not a monitor. If you look closely at the aft end you can see where the second turret's barbette was.


SymphonicPoet,

Yes, a sad end to a lovely old lady. Such a waste...

 

That's a rather odd hulk for a pre-dreadnought battleship, and she's too stout in the beam for a cruiser. Flush-decked therefore not a Mississippi-class. She roughly resembles the Russian Retvizan in that she has only two barbettes, but there's no evidence of sponson-mounted secondaries except up forward. Many old ships had their secondaries removed and the mount plated over, but in most cases the hull retained traces of the old configuraton. This one seems to have had her midship secondaries mounted above deck.

Retvizan was expended as a target in 1924, so that's out as this thread is supposed to be confined to ships which had a role in WWII, also her hull isn't quite right for that ship.

The only pre-dreadnoughts that were active as warships in WWII that I'm aware of were German. She's no German. The Greek ships were inactive and ex-USN Mississippi-class. The hulk in question is no Mississippi sister.

 

The ship in question could be considered on of the great-great-great-great-grandparents of the Mississippi class pre-dreadnoughts.

This ship had no sponson-mounted secondaries in the hull, the wasn't enough freeboard for them.

The Retvizan is in the right era, however, my ship was built on the opposite coast.

 

I was thinking USS Massachusetts (BB-2) but I finally found the pic as USS Oregon (BB-3).

 

Or IX-22 by that point. Unclassified barge. Got to be about the prettiest barge the Navy ever owned.

 

You got her TiredOldSoldier!

It was a real shame what the Navy did to her, but there probably wasn't a better armored ammo barge.

 

Here's a beautiful model of Oregon from modelshipmaster.com:

Note how high the secondaries are mounted. This may be an illustration of the technical difference between a turret and a barbette. As I understand it a turret is essentially a covered turntable (the gun mount on Erickson's original Monitor was a turret), while a barbette is a rotating cylindrical structure that extends through two or more decks. The distinction wasn't important from the Dreadnought era forward because the Erickson turret was by then totally obsolete. However, 19th century battleships are commonly said to have turrets, barbettes or both. Oregon's secondaries are a deck above her main battery. I would imagine they are in turrets, otherwise they might make she topheavy. Note the centerline Whitehead torpedo tube just below her lovely prow decorations. Inside the torpedo room:

from navweapons.com
Note the lack of apparent derricks or hoists. Were the torpedoes manhandled? No! I'm wrong again. Note the I-beam in the overhead. It is has two bends, one at about 30 degrees, then another at ninety, The ninety puts the I-beam inline with the tube. Evidently the beam served as a track for a rolling hoist. There's no similar overhead track bearing to the port side. Does this mean there were only two ready reloads?

The cutouts in the hull which I took to be accommodation for forward-firing sponson mounts (a typical feature of old battlewagons) are for her anchors! What are these called, anyway?

Altogether a lovely ship! No awkward-looking tumblehome, no silly anachronistic sternwalk, she looks more modern than her contemporaries from other navies. It's a real shame that none of these "Great White Fleet" beauties were preserved. Sold for scrap to Japan!

 

When I was in school any mention of this one's name would have the whole class groan.

View attachment 13245

 

She's Russian. The Imperial Romanov arms are plainly visible on her prow. It's Potemkin.

Now watch me eat some fresh meat... Don't want to see that? OK, now I'll push a baby's pram down some steps! Am I in Odessa? No! I'm in a Chicago railway station stealing a scene from Eisenstein. Next I'll rip off The Road Warrior, but I'll change it to from a desert to an ocean... I'm the Wet Warrior! I'm Kevin Jesus Christ Himself Costner the greatest genius for yards around!