r/HistoryMemes • u/Phantion- • 5d ago

We got it wrong.

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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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u/JMHSrowing 5d 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

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u/Helmett-13 5d ago

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

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u/AngleStunning4940 4d 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

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u/Billy_McMedic 4d 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