10 Worst ship designs

[BP]

By the way, I find it strange that all the OHP sailors I ever knew refuted the myth they were underarmed and poor seakeepers. That stuff only comes from people who have never been or served on warships.

 

Mike

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Second. The only fairly bad thing I ever (from a former skipper and a college buddy junior SWO) was that they had the single screw.

[Daniel Papp]

The darwing of the damaged SMS Szent István:

 

[Richard Young]

My only criticism of the list is that several of the ship designs themselves were fine, they simply came out too late for them to be useful or the world had moved on.  When I think worst ship I think a ship that, when built, someone in the yard should have looked at the blueprints and said WTF!?  As examples, the Yamatos were excellent battleships, although they suffer in comparison to Allied ones of the time because of the sensor fit.  The fact that they were a decade too late doesn't make them worse examples of battleship design.  Besides, at the time they were designed the idea was to make a BB that would be the equal of 2-3 Allied BB's, which a Kongo would not have been.

 

Shinano makes sense as a carrier group replenishment ship, especially as they already had the hull completed.  Knowing that Japanese waters were becoming a bad place to be, anything that could keep a Japanese carrier group on station longer was a good idea.  The fact that it sailed before it was unready with an untrained crew doesn't mean the design was awful.

 

I-400 makes sense in the original problem, how do you close down the Panama canal?  The submarine itself was apparently a pretty good one, especially considering what they were trying to accomplish.  The mission itself might not have been a good idea but again that's mission failure and not design failure.

 

And the Enterprise was a prototype, but we needed one before embarking on a CVN program.  As a prototype, I'd say she's been pretty damned successful; serving for decades in front line service isn't the sign of a failure.  Considering that she was a relatively cheap way to get a CVN into service so that the obvious virtues of a nuclear powered carrier would become apparent, had she truly been a failure then the US CVN program would have been set back terribly.

 

Matt

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This is a well-reasoned critique. My counter would be that one should also consider the relative effectiveness of alternate applications of the resoures, and the flexability to not only perform, but excel at new missions not originally intended for the platform - operational flexability, as it were. The Yamato class had an 18" gun that was LESS effective than the American 16" - what use size if not for increased performance? Plus the Japanese were afraid to SHOOT the silly things with some munitions, like the anit-aircraft round. I can forgive the sensor fit - who knew Allied fire control radar systems would get so good? But evven if you decide to build the monsters, either improved 16" guns on a smaller hull, with attendant reduction in the amount of armor required, or more 16"s on the same hull (quad turrets?) makes better sense. As to the Enterprise, I can see your point.

[Fermi2]

Uh the CVN 65 wasn't a prototype. She used a proven carier design with a proven nuclear plant. She was a One Of A Kind, NOT a prototype.

 

Mike

[muzza]

The big 1970s destroyer, with mixed steam/gas powerplant, Sea Dart, Ikara, and 4.5 in Mk 8. It was intended to be one of a class providing air defence to the big CA-01 carriers, but when these were cancelled it lost its role and became a big white elephant thereafter. I think it was only useful in the training role.

 

Tony Williams: Military gun and ammunition website and discussion forum

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Why they ever put a long range A/S system on an AAW ship is beyond me. Put the Sea Dart forrard and you've got room for decent aviation facilities and a couple of medium h/c aft - and maybe even life after CVA.

 

Cheers.

[Guest Murph]

What about the US Dynamite Cruisers?

 

I agree on the Omaha class, terrible ships

[5150]

What about the US Dynamite Cruisers?

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There was only one, the Vesuvius. Not a particularly large ship, either. She was pre-20th century in that role.

[FITZ]

Isn't the OHP all aluminum? She appears slightly bigger than the Type 21, too.

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Steel hull, steel superstructure, aluminum armor around some vital spaces.

[FITZ]

The big 1970s destroyer, with mixed steam/gas powerplant, Sea Dart, Ikara, and 4.5 in Mk 8. It was intended to be one of a class providing air defence to the big CA-01 carriers, but when these were cancelled it lost its role and became a big white elephant thereafter. I think it was only useful in the training role.

 

Tony Williams: Military gun and ammunition website and discussion forum

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Not a white elephant really. She became test ship for Sea Dart, the Mk 8 gun and Ikara and served as a task-force flagship before and during the Falkland's conflict. Her size and one-off nature made it logical for Bristol to replace Fife as traning ship once the Type 42 class was available in numbers, but that did not happen until 1987 - 15 years after she was commissioned. Typical service life for a RN destroyer is about 20 years.

[JOE BRENNAN]

Steel hull, steel superstructure, aluminum armor around some vital spaces.

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Steel hull; aluminum superstructure; aluminum, steel and kevlar armor in various places. Per Friedman as a specific reference but just makes sense in terms of the timing and the design characteristics (AL superstructure that is): Burke's steel superstructure wouldn't have been as notable if Perry's had them, and Perry's would have tended more to low profile and/or poorer hydrodynamic efficiency (of hull to carry the heavier superstructure upright or more stuff below deck) v. the Knox's, like the Burkes did v Spruances. That whole issue is often presented (not by you) as "hey can you believe how dumb those naval architects were?" to use light alloy superstructures, whereas there's a real benefit v. the cost/risk.

 

I think the Perry's were quite a successful design and don't belong anywhere near a bottom list. The adoption of the design for new foreign ships, besides hand me downs, (RAN, Taiwan, Spain) testifies to this. Somebody said poor seakeeping, then somebody else not; I've never heard that at all, maybe confusing with Knox class? Single screw propulsion might still be said unproven for real combat damage control effect because so little real sea combat, but the take home propulsors of the Perry's are again an advance over *just* single screw in previous US FF's back to the '50's, and worked in mining of USS Roberts.

 

"Underarmed" has limited meaning in the modern era of volume limited ships with expensive weapons systems built under no treaty restrictions. If you want more weapons you have to have fewer ships or spend more total $. And anyway, the Perry's armament compared reasonably with foreign contemporaries in general. One question could be the usefulness of that whole concept of ship; another could be whether point defense-only AAW and a 5" Mk.45 would have been a better balance for likely roles (eg. shore bombardment v. negligible opposition as opposed to "Harpoon" simgame stuff) rather than 76mm and (relatively weak) area AAW.

 

Joe

Edited January 7, 2006 by JOE BRENNAN

[FITZ]

Right you are. Jane's doesn't specify, which usually means all-steel.

 

I too concur that the Perry class proved remarkably successful and by no means "under-armed" for their size.

 

I always thought a configuration that added a Mk 45 gun and substituted a Mk 26 for the Mk 13 missile launcher while retaining other Perry characteristics would have been rather useful. This apparently was one of the options studied at the time. But it would have resulted in a larger, and rather more expensive ship. Mk 26 also implies ASROC capability which implies a larger hull sonar. Maybe not SQS-53 but certainly at least SQQ-23. Again this drives up size and cost while the entire point of the program was for a fixed-cost ship (a navy first) to be affordable in the numbers necessary to replace the mass of WWII construction.

Edited January 7, 2006 by FITZ

[Richard Lindquist]

There was only one, the Vesuvius. Not a particularly large ship, either. She was pre-20th century in that role.

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Vesuvius was not really a combat ship. She was a cheap platform built to test the feasibility of the Galinski Dynamite Gun as a naval weapon. Given that was her purpose, she was a success. The Galinski Dynamite Gun was a failure though. Vesuvius was kept on the Navy list because she had a real shallow draft and when a city with a shoal harbor or up a river wanted naval representation at a 4th of July celebration or other time when the navy wanted to "show the flag" to the home folks, the Vesuvius with her impressive, though useless dynamite guns filled the bill. The Navy referred to these requests for a Navy ship for a celebration as "flower shows". Think of the Vesuvius as a 1895-1915 version of the Blue Angels.