Ship Trivia Quiz

USS Mississippi BB-23 and USS Idaho BB-24. Both were decommissioned by the USN in 1914 and sold to Greece, where they became Kilkis and Limnos, and served in the Royal Hellenic Navy. Both were sunk by Stuka dive bombers on April 23, 1941.

Bondo

I think you forgot the USS Idaho that was still in commission in the US Navy until sunk at Pearl Harbor Dec 7 1941 although she was being used as a target at the time.

Idaho BB-42 was commissioned in 1919 and wasn't at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and she was a 14" ship.

I think you mean Utah BB-31 and you are of course correct.

I was thinking Utah but my fingers spelled Idaho. They sometimes play tricks on me.

what american 12" guns ship fought in both world wars?

BB-32 Arkansas. And I'm standing behind Amphib- Utah certainly did fight on 12/7/41, to the death.

arkansas is what i was looking for as she lasted the war wereas utah was destroyed on the 1st day of the war for the americans. also the utah did not have 12" guns on her just the turrets at the start of ww2. your turn.

Name a US navy ship named after a foreign monarch. I can think of two, but would be interested in any others. Stuff like "Queen of the Seas", or USS Monarch don't count.

Would "Alfred" and "Bourbon" of the continental navy count?

Other US warships named after Englishmen were Alfred, an armed merchantman named after King Alfred the Great

Bourbon, no. Alfred, maybe but provide a citation that it was King Alfred. In my list, one male, one female.

USS Kamehameha (SSBN-642) (called Kamfish by her crew), a Benjamin Franklin-class submarine, was the only ship of the United States Navy to be named forKamehameha I (c. 1758-1819), the first King of Hawaii (c. 1795-1819). She is one of only two ships of the United States to be named after a monarch.^[1] She later was reclassified as an attack submarine and redesignated SSN-642.

The other was the Alfred (Named after Alfred the Great.)

Yes, F9 the SSBN is a good answer. As I suggested earlier, I was quite attached to a certain officer in the nuclear boat fleet, his son Skipper was a good friend too. We spent summers with his family in Mare Island, Pearl Harbor and Newport News; all the hot spots of the Silent Service.

The other ship I had in mind was Reina Mercedes, a Spanish Battlecruiser captured in the S/A war and named after a Spanish Queen.

Your turn.

This SSBN stuff reminds me of one of my life's regrets... When I was in college I got a letter from the US Navy inviting me down for dinner at the officers club and a night on a submarine at the San Diego sub base.  They were recruiting tech students from tech colleges with high GPA (little did they know my GPA was about to plummet!).  I didn't take 'em up on it and I lost an opportunity for a great experience -- toss it on the heap of stuff I'd do different if I could pass this way again...

Anyway, I'm new to this trivia stuff so I'll start out simple and keep to the current theme:

How many US Warships have been named after foreign nationals?  Hint: only one is in current active service.

You are referring to USS Winston Churcill,   There are plenty, like Lafayette and Comte de Grasse.  But to find them all is going to take someone with better resources than mine.

USS WINSTON S. CHURCHILL is the fifth U.S. warship to be named in honor of an Englishman and the 16th warship to be named after a foreign national – the only one in active service today.

http://www.churchill.navy.mil/site%20pages/history.aspx

Force 9 I don't think your original question can be answered. I mean, John Hancock was a "foreign national", correct? SSN/ SSBN wise, Simon Bolivar and Mariano Vallejo also come to mind, not to mention Ben Franklin.

Force9

 

ddp59 easily takes the prize.    I certainly cannot name each of the vessels, but I'll take the count of 16 as gospel since it is noted on the Churchill's official navy website.

The Winnie is also the source of a few other trivia tidbits - the only American warship with a foreign national assigned to the crew and the only one to officially fly a foreign ensign.  Of course, it was one of these Royal Navy exchange officers who got throttled by her infamously indelicate lady skipper when she thought he'd run aground leaving port.  Turns out she ordered an acceleration outside the official tolerances (apparently over the objections of the crew) and broke the screw...

Bondo - your objection is duly noted but denied.  Certainly John H. and big Ben both ceased to be foreign nationals when they invented our country.

ddp59 - over to you...

 

I suppose a court of inquiry could demand that I name all qualifying ships and not rely on website hearsay... But I plead the fifth.

what american battleship is supposedly longer then her sisters but not by design so is supposedly the longest battleship in the us navy?

Are you referring to the USS Wisconsin (or WisKy) as she recieved the bow of the unfinished USS Kentucky after her original bow was damaged and had to be replaced?

with Winston Churchill he could claim US citizenship since his mother was an American. Also, he wasn't a monarch but the Prime Minister, the King or Queen eventhough a figurehead is still the monarch.

edit:

Churchil; was also the first person to recieve honary US citizenship in 1963.

Lafayette received "Natural Born" US citizenship in 1784 through an act of the Maryland General Assembly and was legal through the Articles of the Confederation. 

Mike T.

subfixer, yes.

Subfixer

Why would you think that the Wisconsin got longer just because the lower portion of the bow of the Kentucky was grafted on after her collision? The hulls of the Iowa and New Jersey were 859'-10.25" long. Those of the Missouri, Wisconsin, and Kentucky were 860 feet even. Unless you are going to add the width of a weld it would seem the finished length didn't change.

Ted

When the bow was repaired, the undamaged upper portion was cut off to allow lowering the lower bow section to the hull which had been previously prepared to receive it. I've witnessed this myself on other ships at the Navy Yard. It would be very difficult, if not impossible, due to the space restrictions in a drydock that is virtually filled up with the mass of a ship, to lower a big section of hull to the drydock floor and push it in to fit the hull cut. I don't know if the upper portion that was fitted was the Wisconsin's  or the Kentucky's but, since the Kentucky was being built at the Norfolk Navy Yard in the first place, it might still have been in the local area. All of those old shipfitters are gone now, so I don't know who to ask at the Yard. We have a technical library here but I've never used it. The info is there I'm sure. The difference in length is supposed to be only about three inches. There are some who claim that due to a building error, that the New Jersey is actually two feet longer than Wisconsin. But I don't know what the basis for that is.

As for the accounting of the discrepancy in lenght; I think that it was, indeed the width of the weld and the structure added to allow the two to mate. It is not just a matter of sticking the two pieces together and welding them up, there is a lot to the art of shipfitting and I respect the guys (and girls) who practice that trade.

This is from GlobalSecurity.org:

The Kentucky (BB-66) was built at the Norfolk Navy Yard, Portsmouth, Virginia, but never completed. Her keel was first laid in March 1942. Construction was suspended in June of that year and not resumed until December 1944. Work was again suspended in February 1947. The ship, completed only up to her second deck, was launched to clear the building drydock, so that USS Missouri (BB-63) could undergo repairs for damage received when she went aground on 17 January 1950. Though several schemes were entertained for completing Kentucky as a guided-missile ship, none were pursued. Her bow was removed in 1956 to repair USS Wisconsin (BB-64), and she was sold for scrapping in October 1958. However, Kentucky's engines remain in service to this day, powering the fast combat support ships USS Sacramento (AOE-1) and USS Camden (AOE-2).

BB-64 Wisconsin is allegedly three inches longer than the other Iowa-class battleships. This minor extension in the 887-foot battleship’s hull occurred, so the story goes, when shipyard workers placed the bow of unfinished Kentucky (BB-66) on to Wisconsin after her collision with the destroyer Eaton. As Wisconsin is three inches longer, she is the largest battleship currently in the world

Anyway, here is the next question: How did the Johnny and  Sisters almost sink?

She pissed off Tankerbuilder.

bondoman

She pissed off Tankerbuilder.

Wah! Hee hee!     But, no.

According to the info I have both the Missouri and the Wisconsin, as well as the unfinished Kentucky, were 1 3/4" longer than the New Jersey at the water line. I have a picture showing the Kentucky being moved into drydock to remove the engines. What you can see on the bow and is in the caption is that the upper bow section from the Kentucky and the undamaged lower bow section from the Wisconsin are on deck. So I don't think the Wisconsin got any longer in the process.

However are we talking about waterline length or over all length? Water line length of the Iowa 859'-5 3/4", New Jersey 859'-10 1/4", Missouri, Wisconsin, Kentucky 860'-0" However if you look at overall length Iowa 887'-2 3/4", New Jersey 887'-6 5/8", Missouri, Wisconsin, and Kentucky as designed 887'-3". Therefore even if you added three inches to the overall length of the Wisconsin, New Jersey would still be longer by 5/8".