The official AHF Allied & Neutral Navies quiz thread

[Dreeze]

Well pb, I'm not sure which classes you are refering to, but there were at least two other U.S. ship classes with four funnels in world war 2:

The Independence class of light aircraft carriers and the Omaha class cruisers.

Then there's also the French [EDIT] Vauquelin and Aigle [/EDIT] destroyer classes and the last ship of the British/Australian Town class cruisers HMAS Adelaide, which I suspect is the lone ship you're refering to.

EDIT:

The Chilean destroyers of the Almirante Lynch class also had four funnels and were in commission till 1945, the same year Chile joined the Allies. I am not certain if they were decommissioned before or after Chile participated in the war.

/EDIT

[Polar bear]

hi, dreeze,

Actually, I was thinking of CL "Omaha" (USA), DD "Guepard" (FRA) and TB "Draug" (NOR) when specifying three different Allied nations, but your answer is fine, too, especially ref. "Adelaide".

over to you,

greetings, the pb

[Dreeze]

Thanks p.b.

As you know, I am not really all that much into the big floats with the large boom-booms, so let me take you all to the very edge of naval warfare:

What island is being invaded here?

[Rob Stuart]

Corsica?


Rob

[Dreeze]

No, not Corsica.. But in the European theatre.

And just to keep you navy boys hooked, here's a little hint: The worst, and costliest, part of this invasion lay in it's naval component..

[Rob Stuart]

Sicily then.


Rob

[Dreeze]

Sorry, no, not Sicily either..

[mescal]

Great Britain ?

According to this link :
http://www.navsource.org/archives/10/18/180624.htm
"LCT-624 is beached in the center of this photo with LCI(L)-85 beyond her, probably at or near Slapton Sands, England, during rehearsals for the Normandy invasion. A M4 "Sherman" tank, with floatation skirts, is partially visible at left. "

[Dreeze]

Yes, it is Great Britain. During the disastrous exercise Tiger. Almost a thousand American service personnel perished because of lack of cover, bad planning, bad communications and friendly fire.

One of the invasion convoys was attacked by German Schnellboote (MTB's) sinking two and damaging another LST, killing over 700.

And another convoy's landing was delayed by an hour by HQ, but this order did not reach the U.S. landing ships because, due to a typographic error, they were listening on the wrong frequency. During this exercise live fire was put on the beach to make the exercise more realistic and on the beach the target area's for 'friendly' fire were marked by white tape. These areas were not to be entered by the invasion forces until after the artillery bombardment had ceased, but due to the hour delay the firing commenced just when the troops had entered the specified area, killing another 200 or so...

Pointless as these deaths may seem, the lessons were learned and D-day might have been a disaster if these shortcomings had come to light only then..

Over to France

http://www.secondworldwar.org.uk/tiger1.html

[mescal]

Thank you.

During the war, the US Navy named some new ships with the namesake of ships previously lost.
Three of those names may have been unlucky, as the second ship named after the same namesake was also lost.

Can you name them ?

[Dreeze]

U.S.S. Meredith
U.S.S. Shark
U.S.S. Colhoun

[mescal]

Well, I forgot the submarines ...

I was thinking of Meredith, Colhoun and Little.
But Shark is perfectly correct.
Therefore it's up to you, Dreeze !

[Dreeze]

Thank you, Mescal.. I only found those ship names because wikipedia has some rather fine lists on ships serving in ww2. I couldn't have named any of them myself. Which also explaines why I never found Little: It's rather hard to search for double ship names when the two have different classifications, as they won't appear next to one another in the lists.

Now for the next question, please identify this ship:

[AVV]

Hello!
Dutch gunboat - I think, Johan Maurits van Nassau, but may be Flores or Soemba.

Best regards, Aleks

[Dreeze]

That wasn't hard, was it?

It is indeed the Johan Maurits van Nassau. She was slightly bigger than the preceeding Soemba and Flores gunboats, as she was intended as a gunboat squadron leader. She also had different guns and turrets, but that's hard to tell in this picture.

Over to you.