Biggest Loser...

The Yamato.  To my knowledge, it never sank an enemy ship or engaged an enemy battleship.  All of the material used to build her could've been better employed building aircraft carriers and naval aircraft.

The Tirpitz fits into the same catagory as Yamato.  Both ships were only useful as being a "threat in being".

I'll be interested in seeing other opinions.  Good question, Herr Feldmarshall.

Swedish warship VASA.  According to wiki, she sailed less than 1 natical mile before she foundered.  Poor handling and planning.

My first two thoughts were the same as Mike. Yamato would be my first pick. Largest battleship, along with the Musashi, to have ever been built yet really contributed nothing, and in some cases, contributed negatively to the war effort.

She didn't do much of anything during the battle of the Philippine Sea aside from mistakenly shooting down some of her own airmen. She shot at enemy ships only one time in her short career, damaging a few but sinking none. Of course, she finally sank in a not-so-blaze of glory....

For a ship that was suppose to embody the might and determination of the Imperial Navy and the Japanese culture of the time, it was serious let down, in my opinion.

First off... Great question!!

Second, I dont know if this qualifies.  For unless you read into the questions further, it is not considered a naval warfare vessel. 

And, due to being at work I cannot lay down a detailed explanation for the nomination.

I nominate the Hughes Glomar Explorer and its Azorian project.  Although the mission and ship were not a total failure, had they succeeded in what they set out to do,  it would have been an intelligence bonanza with untold benefits to our own defenses and warships.

I too am interested in what other have to say.

f8sader

Swedish warship VASA.  According to wiki, she sailed less than 1 natical mile before she foundered.  Poor handling and planning.

Definitely! Way too top heavy complicated by insufficient ballast. She sunk within minutes of her first time out, thanks to the impatience of the Swedish king to get her into service.

Rich

 

f8sader:

 

Swedish warship VASA.  According to wiki, she sailed less than 1 natical mile before she foundered.  Poor handling and planning.

 

 

Definitely! Way too top heavy complicated by insufficient ballast. She sunk within minutes of her first time out, thanks to the impatience of the Swedish king to get her into service.

Oh yes!  This one for sure!

joeviz

 

Rich:

 

 

f8sader:

 

Swedish warship VASA.  According to wiki, she sailed less than 1 natical mile before she foundered.  Poor handling and planning.

 

 

Definitely! Way too top heavy complicated by insufficient ballast. She sunk within minutes of her first time out, thanks to the impatience of the Swedish king to get her into service.

 

 

Oh yes!  This one for sure!

Yikes. That's a pretty big failure....but reading about it, I wonder if any one was really surprised by the outcome.

Militarily, I'd argue the Bismark. Yes, she sunk the Hood, (some books I've read theorize that it was the first hits by the Prinz Eugen that might have set off the ensuing explosion), but other then that, she achieved nothing against commerce, which was her primary strategic intentions. She was also sunk on her first and only voyage into the Atlanctic. A lot of Reicsmarks down the drain.

I'd say Tirpitz deserves an honorable mention. She achieved more by just being a threat, i.e. PQ 17 was dispersed because it was believed that the Tirpitz was at sea. She was holed up in Norway for most of the war and from all reports I've read, sank nothing.

This is an interesting question, and one that could be interpreted two different ways.  Do you choose the Vasa, a ship with serious intrinsic flaws, or do you pick the Yamato, a ship of incredible scale and power that never had the chance to realize its potential in a surface action. 

Shinano got torpedoed and sunk  while just trying to move her to a safer location with contractors still aboard.Not one battle cruise and all that steel.

von Gekko

This is an interesting question, and one that could be interpreted two different ways.  Do you choose the Vasa, a ship with serious intrinsic flaws, or do you pick the Yamato, a ship of incredible scale and power that never had the chance to realize its potential in a surface action. 

Good point.  Is/was the ship a loser because of its design and construction or was it a loser because of a flawed operational concept.

The Yamato, Bismarck, and Tirpitz were state-of-the-art battleship designs.  By the time they were launched, naval operations had passed them by and they were obsolete dinosaurs.  All three would have been better off as aircraft carriers.  Certainly this would've been true for the Imperial Japanese Navy, less so for the Kriegsmarine.  The Germans didn't have any grasp for carrier operations and given the limitations of the German surface fleet, I suspect any German aircraft carrier would've been sunk pretty quickly.

There's no one good answer for Manny's question.  Its not as simple as it seems.

MAJ Mike

There's no one good answer for Manny's question.  Its not as simple as it seems.

Is anything Manny says as simple as it seems?

Hercmech

MAJ Mike:

There's no one good answer for Manny's question.  Its not as simple as it seems.

 

Is anything Manny says as simple as it seems?

You speak truth, Grasshopper.

joeviz

I nominate the Hughes Glomar Explorer and its Azorian project.  Although the mission and ship were not a total failure, had they succeeded in what they set out to do,  it would have been an intelligence bonanza with untold benefits to our own defenses and warships.

 

Good choice, though my question is, how do you know it was NOT an intelligence bonanza? Sure, they SAY that they didn't get what they were after, but they can't prove that they did not. I don't want to get all conspiracy theory-ed in here, but I believe they recovered far more than they admitted too.

You almost need one of those "Discovery Channel" "Top 10" rating systems to objectively evaluate different warships.  You could argue that the Bismarck and the Tirpitz had large impacts on Allied strategy during WW II - beyond the sinking of the Hood, the Bismarck's single sortie into the Atlantic caused shipping disruptions and forced the Royal Navy to pull in units from across the Atlantic and from Gibraltar.     The Tirpitz, simply by sailing, caused the British to scatter PQ-17 leading to its decimation by U-Boats and the Luftwaffe.  Not bad for a ship that spent nearly all of its operational career behind torpedo nets.  And the experience of the British with the Bismarck and the Tirpitz led Wm. Churchill to insist on sending the Prince of Wales and the Repulse to Singapore in 1941.  So indirectly, the Bismrack and Tirpitz contributed to their loss as well. 

On the other hand, the Wasa and the Yamato seem to have exerted little, if any, influence on strategy and/or operations.  So they would be high on my list of ships that failed to meet the expectations of their designers.  Other candidates would be:

1- The USS Maine (ACR-1) which was obsolete before she was completed, never fired a shot in anger, and was likely destroyed by an internal explosion in one of her magazines / shell rooms; and

2 - The USS Kearsarge and USS Kentucky (1898), two battleships whose design was characterized by an Admiral as a "crime" and had unwieldy two-story turrets (twin 13" guns below and twin 8" guns above).  They were so poorly designed that a baseball thrown through the large turret openings went straight down to the magazine!

3 - The Royal Navy's HMS Captain, a turret ship that capsized.

sub revolution

 

joeviz:

 

I nominate the Hughes Glomar Explorer and its Azorian project.  Although the mission and ship were not a total failure, had they succeeded in what they set out to do,  it would have been an intelligence bonanza with untold benefits to our own defenses and warships.

 

 

 

Good choice, though my question is, how do you know it was NOT an intelligence bonanza? Sure, they SAY that they didn't get what they were after, but they can't prove that they did not. I don't want to get all conspiracy theory-ed in here, but I believe they recovered far more than they admitted too.

True!  But...

I do understand your point, however I too  "don't want to get all conspiracy theory-ed in here", but your argument of conspiracy holds true for pretty much everything involving any Government entity anywhere.  

In order to answer the question at hand one must look at the "facts" at face value with some level of trust.  Otherwise, we are just spinning our wheels whiteout making any headway.

All of us here know that many details of what was actually found must remain a secret.  Yet, I want to believe, if we were told the truth, that we could have gotten a whole lot more than what was released to the public. 

That is why  I tossed the Glomar Explorer into the mix here, because of the what could have been.  Ah the essence of the question.

My productivity at work has gone to H.E. double hockey sticks, I have you know!  What a great question to ponder your day away.  Kudos manny

ZUIHO........................?

no explanation required.................

Tirpitz...

...just sayin...

Got to agree with Shinano as a top pick.  By far the biggest aircraft carrier of WWII as she was built on a Yamato hull.  Due to one lucky hit by USS Archerfish she went down in minutes and contributed absolutely nothing to the war effort.  Come to think of it,  ALL of Yamato's ilk were pretty much worthless.

I'll also nominate the Hood.  Built up for years as the baddest thing afloat and when the sh-t hit the fan, she proved to be a tin foil tiger.  

                                                                             Pat.

1. All of the Yamato class ships: Yamato, Musashi and Shinano

2. Tirpitz....

3. Graf Spee: What an idiot of a Captain...He's lucky he shot himself; he would have been executed had he returned to Germany...

4. Taiho...closest thing the Japanese got to an Essex class carrier but stupidity reined when she was hit with a very survivable torpedo hit but as per Japanese doctrine, "Why repair a damaged ship when you can have it blow up and kill most of the crew?"

5. Fuso and Yamashiro...Suicide by battleship...

I favor the Yamato in this bull session, but what about her sister ship, the Musashi? She seems to be uniquely cursed to be in her sister’s shadow. Doesn’t that make her even MORE of a loser?

And then there’s the Design A-150 AKA Super-Yamato, which was halted even before the keel was laid.

Manstein's revenge

1. All of the Yamato class ships: Yamato, Musashi and Shinano

2. Tirpitz....

3. Graf Spee: What an idiot of a Captain...He's lucky he shot himself; he would have been executed had he returned to Germany...

4. Taiho...closest thing the Japanese got to an Essex class carrier but stupidity reined when she was hit with a very survivable torpedo hit but as per Japanese doctrine, "Why repair a damaged ship when you can have it blow up and kill most of the crew?"

5. Fuso and Yamashiro...Suicide by battleship...

Not to pick on you good sir, but don't you think that the Bismarck was a bigger flop? She survived all of about a week on her one mission, where as the Tirpitz survived for most of the war. Granted the Hood was again credited to the Bismarck, it might well have been the Prinz Eugen's 8-inchers that started a fire near the exposed torpedo tubes that led to her destruction. (at least to some books and data I've read)

tigerman

Manstein's revenge:

1. All of the Yamato class ships: Yamato, Musashi and Shinano

2. Tirpitz....

3. Graf Spee: What an idiot of a Captain...He's lucky he shot himself; he would have been executed had he returned to Germany...

4. Taiho...closest thing the Japanese got to an Essex class carrier but stupidity reined when she was hit with a very survivable torpedo hit but as per Japanese doctrine, "Why repair a damaged ship when you can have it blow up and kill most of the crew?"

5. Fuso and Yamashiro...Suicide by battleship...

 

Not to pick on you good sir, but don't you think that the Bismarck was a bigger flop? She survived all of about a week on her one mission, where as the Tirpitz survived for most of the war. Granted the Hood was again credited to the Bismarck, it might well have been the Prinz Eugen's 8-inchers that started a fire near the exposed torpedo tubes that led to her destruction. (at least to some books and data I've read)

Zuiho????

The CSS Virginia. It was designed to blast through and break the Union blockade. With the exception of it's debut, it accomplished nothing and led to more ships that did just as little. the money and materials used could have been used to improve the railroad system and buy more blockade runners. 

The Graf Zeppelin. There were a lot of technical innovations incorporated, and the creation of a suitable air wing was done, but even if she had been commissioned and used, there was no support task force available.

joeviz

sub revolution:

 

joeviz:

 

I nominate the Hughes Glomar Explorer and its Azorian project.  Although the mission and ship were not a total failure, had they succeeded in what they set out to do,  it would have been an intelligence bonanza with untold benefits to our own defenses and warships.

 

 

 

Good choice, though my question is, how do you know it was NOT an intelligence bonanza? Sure, they SAY that they didn't get what they were after, , but I believe they recovered far more than they admitted too.

 

That is why  I tossed the Glomar Explorer into the mix here, because of the what could have been.  Ah the essence of the question.

I read a very good book on this subject a couple years ago, Red Star Rogue. The author makes a very convincing arguement on that path. One key piece of evidence he discussed was the fact that CIA admitted to recovering the ship's bell, which would be located in an area of the wreckage not admitted to being recovered by CIA. The book actually makes some very frightening suppositions about the Golf's last patrol and reason for loss, but I will not delve in to that here.

The story I heard about the Vasa was that she was designed for 2 decks, but the Swedish king decided that he wanted a third deck added against the wishes of the designers. On her maiden voyage she entered the bay, since she had the extra weight of the additional deck she road deeeper in the water.The wind caused her to lean over. Her guns were run out to give a salute to the king. Instead, they gave entrance to the water which quickly filled the vessel sinkling her with great speed. Many visitors were aboard and most were lost. As she settled in the bay on her keel, her top mast with the Swedish royal banner were still out of the water. The king ordered the masts cut down as they reminded him of his embarassing decision.

Mike T.

I have one to throw out there and maybe someone here can confirm or deny a story I heard from "a friend of a friend". That would be the hydrofoil patrol boats. I know the Tucumcari hit a reef, stopped in the length of her hull, and required explosives to get her free. The first of the Pegasus was built, but the Navy apparently did not press for more, and no foreign sales came around the way they were supposed to. Finally Congress forced the building of the last 5 because the money had been appropriated.

Now the story I heard was from someone who served on one of them out of Key West. He said the problem was debri strikes and even whale strikes. He claimed to have been standing in a hatchway when they struck a whale and he was thrown half the length of the boat. Was this a good idea on paper that just didn't work in the real world?