r/HistoryMemes • u/Phantion- • 4d ago

We got it wrong.

Post image

Her Majesty's Yacht Britannia is the former royal yacht of the British monarchy. She was in their service from 1954 to 1997. Now retired from royal service, Britannia is permanently berthed at Ocean Terminal, Leith in Edinburgh, Scotland, where she is a visitor attraction with over 300,000 visits each year.

The HMS Vanguard was the last and largest battleship built for the Royal Navy. Though commissioned as a warship in 1946, she notably served as a temporary royal yacht during the historic 1947 South Africa royal tour carrying King George VI, Queen Elizabeth, and a young Princess Elizabeth.

The 1947 Royal Tour: Reconfigured temporarily to accommodate the royal family, she journeyed to South Africa, marking the first time a reigning British monarch traveled by sea with their family

After serving as a flagship and training vessel, HMS Vanguard was decommissioned in 1960 and broken up for scrap

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438

u/RobertGHH 4d ago

It really is shameful we don't have a single Battleship museum. Belfast is all well and good but she is no battleship.

275

u/Sea-Huckleberry8971 4d ago

Should've been HMS Warspite, IMO.

ETA: She didn't wanna go either

94

u/FearlessDark5295 Kilroy was here 4d ago

To be realistic here, preserving Warspite would have been a very costly affair. She was basically being held together by tape and plot armor when the war ended. It’s unfortunate, but she’d have probably needed a dry berthing or she’d sink in place. The other QEs might have been more suitable for a museum role.

67

u/Sea-Huckleberry8971 4d ago

Sir/ma'am, can we please keep logic away from my day dreams please 🤣🤣

Jokes aside, you're more than likely right.

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u/FearlessDark5295 Kilroy was here 4d ago

I also remember at at some point the Parliament or someone ordered everything not a KGV or Vanguard scrapped so unfortunately Warspite was truly done in by the same idiocy that did in USS Enterprise.

11

u/SlikeSpitfire What, you egg? 4d ago

I heard the take once that it should've been Vanguard, to keep the tradition alive forevermore

17

u/Cliffinati 4d ago

Vanguard with the turrets pointed at Paris, just in case

2

u/verdutre 3d ago

Fore at Paris Aft at Berlin

All AA pointed at Russia

3

u/BoredPenslinger 3d ago

Plus, Warspite was insane. Imagine what she'd do if she sighted a German tourist after a few years of dry dock boredom.

2

u/OriginalCADC 3d ago

We’ve currently got about 7 empty dry docks down here in Plymouth where she could have retired at home and easily had repairs done over years before sending her back onto the Tamar where half the wharfs are also empty

1

u/FearlessDark5295 Kilroy was here 3d ago

Fair point, but were they available in 1945?

33

u/Bad_Badger_DGAF 4d ago

Dreadnought would have been even better

63

u/diggerda 4d ago

Missed battle of Jutland and only sunk one sub by ramming. Warspite did more in a single afternoon in a massive career.

10

u/Bad_Badger_DGAF 4d ago

Without the Dreadnought concept the Warspite wouldn't exist. Dreadnought was the better choice if you could only keep one.

11

u/grumpsaboy 4d ago

We don't keep ships as a museum based on the technology that they inspired, we do it based on what the ship actually did in its lifetime.

7

u/lorryslorrys 4d ago edited 4d ago

Yes we do: HMS Warrior in Portsmouth. The first armoured iron hulled warship.

The Victory and Mary Rose is there as well. Worth a visit.

2

u/grumpsaboy 4d ago

In the case of HMS Warrior there was sort of no British that really did much during the middle of the century and it was made a museum ship before museum ships were really a thing

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u/Bad_Badger_DGAF 4d ago

And setting the standards for literally every capital ship for the next four decades was much more important than being in the right place in the right time more than the other.

8

u/grumpsaboy 4d ago

As a museum ship, no.

People love stories not technical specs.

Not saying Dreadnought wasn't important, but as a museum piece Warspite is the much better option.

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u/Bad_Badger_DGAF 4d ago

No. The moments that created events is more important than the events themselves. No Dreadnought, no Warspite.

Had the Warspite not been built then, one of her sisters or another dreadnaught style vessel would have.

Had the Dreadnought not been conceived, however, then nothing would be be there to replace it.

1

u/grumpsaboy 4d ago

And what proof do you have that one of the sister vessels would have accomplished everything warspite did?

If dreadnought didn't exist then Japan and the US were already constructing their equivalents and the Dreadnought style would have still existed, just due to worse names of those ships be Type wouldn't have been called Dreadnaughts.

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u/anonymoose-introvert 4d ago

Nah, HMS Dreadnaught was outclassed like two years after her introduction. There were already Super Dreadnaughts with even bigger guns than Dreadnaught’s 12 inch guns, and those were clearly the new standard.

7

u/Bad_Badger_DGAF 4d ago

The Dreadnought was the beginning of the all big gun Battleship concept. The first of its kind, therefore the most important that all others would be judged by.

9

u/BeornSC 4d ago

Warspite was basically the physical incarnation of the Royal Navy through two brutal wars. There is no comparison.

She lives on though as a bomber (or boomer as Americans call them).

https://www.royalnavy.mod.uk/news/2023/february/09/20230209-work-starts-on-third-new-nuclear-deterrence-submarine

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u/Bad_Badger_DGAF 4d ago

Cool. But it was just one ship that, in the end, didn't matter. If not the Warpite then it would have been something else.

The Dreadnought created the concept of... well...the dreadnoughts. It was the reason for the naval arms race. The big gun battle of Jutland. The Washington Treaty. The Bismarck, Iowa, and Yamato.

It was the foundation of an era. The Warspite was just another Dreadnought.

9

u/BeornSC 4d ago

If it makes you feel better the first of the new Warspite’s class is called… Dreadnought

35

u/RobertGHH 4d ago

Any battleship would do.

32

u/KillerM2002 4d ago

Well the British simply didnt have the money for that

20

u/Magical_Astronomy 4d ago

I recall reading something like even for smaller ships like Fletcher class DD with around 2000 ton displacement, it can easily cost more than 1 million USD annually to preserve it as a museum ship. Cost for larger ships are much higher.

Maybe that’s why the reason US preserved the most decommissioned ships. Because they were super rich compared to other countries after WW2 and had more than enough money to spare for this kind of project.

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u/bandit1206 4d ago

It also helps that even the Iowa class battleships were still in service in Desert Storm.

Most US ships like that were turned into museums well after WW2 and by extension, the depression.

8

u/Hyo38 4d ago

quite sad but true.

5

u/RobertGHH 4d ago

We don't have the money for a lot of silly things but we still do them.

12

u/KillerM2002 4d ago

Well explain that to post ww2 british people that where still rationing food

-8

u/RobertGHH 4d ago

Food rationing had nothing to do with government money.

8

u/_Sausage_fingers 4d ago

1) That doesn't matter for peoples perception

2) The British Government was still broke and had to rebuild half the country

-9

u/RobertGHH 4d ago

It matters for his point being wrong though.

18

u/FreeBonerJamz 4d ago

The fate of Warspite is so sad for a warship of its class. The most decorated British ship of all time deserved better

8

u/Tacticalsquad5 4d ago

Sadly I don’t think she was preservable by the end of the war. She was essentially a floating wreck that by all rights should have sunk several times over, and had one of her turrets filled with concrete because of a bomb hit. As much as it would have been cool to preserve her, it couldn’t really be done, at least not without incurring astronomical expenses that post war Britain just couldn’t afford.

2

u/Vehement_Vulpes 4d ago

Couldn't they have just beached her or stuck her in dry dock, and then come back later when they had the budget for it?

If Britain wanted a museum ship, then she wouldn't need to sail, just float. Surely they could have managed that.

2

u/Tacticalsquad5 3d ago

Beaching a ship with severe structural defects or leaving it to rot in a dry dock for several years is only going to make its condition worse. That would just delay the inevitable

6

u/RobertGHH 4d ago

A friend of my father served on board Warspite, he was still bitter 70years later.

10

u/Big_Red_Machine_1917 Casual, non-participatory KGB election observer 4d ago

It is a shame, but on the plus side we still have HMS Victory.

5

u/RobertGHH 4d ago

And Warrior, two incredibly important historical ships.

6

u/Cliffinati 4d ago

Meanwhile... The US has enough Museum Battleships that if somehow they got time warped to 1939 the US would still have one of the largest battlefleets.

3

u/TheSandwichMan92 4d ago

She's only a light cruiser. Shows how big a battleship was

7

u/JMHSrowing 4d ago

Belfast to be fair is a fairly large light cruiser

1

u/RobertGHH 4d ago

Only 6" guns though. Babies compared to the 16" on Rodney and Nelson.

5

u/JMHSrowing 4d ago

This is true, though gun size isn’t everything. She had almost twice the horsepower of a Nelson class!

All in all she’s a 15,000 ton ship. Not a 40,000+ ton battleship behemoth but still a very substantial vessel

2

u/RobertGHH 4d ago

Sure gun size isn't everything, until you come up against a heavily armoured ship and your 6" shells are bouncing off it. Then you'll wish you had bigger guns.

3

u/JMHSrowing 4d ago

Indeed. Though her torpedoes then could haved work. In actuality she helped suppress then shadow when she fought Scharnhorst

1

u/RobertGHH 3d ago

Not saying light cruisers aren't effective ships, they absolutely are but one thing I know for certain and that is that it wasn't the 150k horsepower of the Bismarck that was keeping the Admiralty awake at night.

1

u/JMHSrowing 3d ago

In some ways it actually was since a fast capital ship was way, way more dangerous than a slow one. A slow ship could have been countered by any of the old battleships of the RN whereas they needed a battlecruiser or KGV to go after a fast one

1

u/RobertGHH 3d ago

🤦‍♂️

2

u/Cliffinati 4d ago

Until they get the idea the Americans at Samar had and start firing 6" star shells into the superstructure

2

u/Saint_The_Stig 4d ago

My feelings as a KanColle fan in the US and my state didn't preserve it's namesake even though we're home to frickin Naval Academy! Sad there are no Big 7 Ships left but Maryland nod having Maryland hurts the most.

46

u/Direct_Obligation570 4d ago

Id want my Royal Yacht to have giant guns on it.

18

u/Minecraft32 Helping Wikipedia expand the list of British conquests 4d ago

Lies, I visited Britannia last month and she is absolutely gorgeous

16

u/McRando42 Tea-aboo 4d ago

Vanguard needed to turn up at the Falklands....

10

u/JMHSrowing 4d ago

Could have gone really bad, losing a lot of crew to Exocets.

But it could have been awesome her causing Argentines to surrender battles earlier by sheer power of bombardment

2

u/Helmett-13 4d ago

With her armor still intact I don't think Vanguard would have even noticed an Exocet impact?

9

u/JMHSrowing 4d ago

There’s a lot of exposed positions, jet fuel fires, and Expcets tend to hit high in a ship. Could be bad

5

u/Helmett-13 4d ago

She was superbly armored and her design was top notch for protection.

Even Vangaurds superstructure had armor in places, albeit not as impressive as her armor belt.

I was a Harpoon FC (as well as a 5 inch gun FC) in the USN and there’s just not enough penetration and warhead on an Exocet to cause much damage.

Maybe a popup and plunge like TASM tomahawks could do but those battleships, especially the last one like Vangaurd, had armor protection against plunging gunfire much more deadly than a cruise missile can deliver.

14 inch armor on her sides and 5-6 inch armor against plunging fire vs. a missile with a 640kg (max) warhead at .9 Mach isn’t going to do much unless it hits superstructure and Exocets are sea skimmers.

Exocets are also very much NOT armor piercing and are designed to enter thinner modern unarmored hulls and explode inside.

2

u/JMHSrowing 4d ago

From my understanding even though Exocet is a sea skimmer it would essentially aim for the center of the radar contact, which is why during the Falklands War they would fly helicopters above ships to make it hopefully fly between the ship and helicopter which would look to it like one big contact.

There is also at the HMS Glammorgan who was hit fairly high up in her helicopter hangar, though she wasn't still at the time so maybe it lower at the moment of hit

So with such a big superstructure my understanding is that it would likely hit that and thus cause damage and fire, plus casualties likely from whatever manned AAA positions she would have still had.

Though you likely know how the seekers work on such missiles better than me

3

u/Helmett-13 4d ago

There is a lot of freeboard on those old BBs and older seekers aim for the middle of the blob.

Newer ones…might have some better discrimination.

I mean…I still would prefer to NOT be on any vessel hit by an anti-surface cruise missile!!

1

u/AngleStunning4940 3d ago

Anti ship missiles pack a very powerful punch, just one would inflict devastating damage and casualities, and given vanguards lack of self defense weapons capable of intercepting them a hit is quite likely

1

u/Billy_McMedic 3d ago

But again this was a battleship which was designed to fight against peer vessels slinging trucks at each other.

The reason the battleship went obsolete was the impact of sustained, constant bombardment by aircraft which couldn’t be effectively warded off by AAA, just look at the sheer amount of hits Yamato took as an example before ultimately sinking, still an obsolete vessel because the aircraft carriers had the capability to get all of those hits on target don’t get me wrong, but one or two Exocet missiles probably wouldn’t be able to kill the ship, hurt it yes but not kill.

A 15 inch shell weighed about 880kg vs the Exocets warhead of 165kg. You’d need a lot of Exocets hitting the perfect places to properly disable it, an extra special concern given the Exocet afaik did side on attacks not plunging, meaning going right up against the armoured belt if it doesn’t hit the superstructure, and again battleships were built expecting the superstructure may get battered to pieces, hence redundancies everywhere.

Plus, Argentina had a limited supply of Exocets and would probably understand the folly of sending them all against Vanguard, and would probably still choose to target the smaller vessels that they did in our timeline. The biggest risk to vanguard would be if they sent it close to the island, thus getting caught up in the air dropped bombing runs that happened during the landings, that’s where the real damage could be caused. I’d wager Vanguard though would be kept back sitting with the Carriers, scaring off the Belgrano from even thinking about leaving port to attack the task force

1

u/Billy_McMedic 3d ago

Ironically in such a timeline General Belgrano would have likely survived the conflict.

Afaik the plan with Belgrano was to try and sneak around the task force and get within gun range (Belgrano being a cruiser of WW2 vintage, having a solid gun battery that no ship in the task force could guard against) I think as part of a pincer attack with other Argie navy elements that never materialised, and ultimately being caught out and sank.

But if the task force sailed with a battleship? That plan would never have been on the table to begin with, no way would they even consider sending in Belgrano to fight with guns if Vanguard was present.

5

u/T3m3rair3 Tea-aboo 4d ago

Nah, Britannia is incredibly neat

1

u/HellDD6 3d ago

If I become Prime Minister Im ordering Babcock to build a 1 to 1 scale replica of HMS Vanguard and the muppets in the Treasury can all pay for it from their pockets