HMS Vanguard - Britain's Last Ever Battleship 

I don't agree...she and all ships were exposed to radiation. The wrecks of ships before Hiroshima etc are the ones sought after because they were not exposed to radiation at all. That's why wrecks are being robbed of their steel today

The German ships in scape flow also used as sunk before nukes, I have no idea how much is left now!

better to have not scraped it though

@@kiba775237 Why would you need 10 000+ tons of steel in a museum?

@@Sword_of_Saint_14 Vanguard weighed a little more than that at 45,200 tons.

Thank you, thought I was hallucinating when and heard that.

Well described and stated. Britain should have stopped construction and converted to an aircraft carrier. Even those went through immense change during the advent of jets

sorry to say but it was one torpedo hit that sunk the POW the flawed electrical system made her vulnerable to the bombing.b

The mighty Bismarck was sunk because it was hamstrung by attacks from some very very slow Swordfish torpedo bombers in open sea. The Admiralty should have clicked by then.

Was the proximity fuse for anti aircraft guns in use at the time? If so it seems the HMS prince of Wales perhaps could have defended herself better.

Respect sir, how old you are now ?

@@pembakarhutan1202 Met my husband a 23 year old sailor on June 10, 1951 when the Vanguard was in Bournemouth . It was the festival of Britain and princess Margarete visited the ship. We were married for 69 happy years he was 95 when he died November 2023. He always told me how much he loved his time on the Vanguard and Gibralta. He was still as slim and handsom as the day I met him on that zig-zag path in Bournemouth.

Give her a lot of modern AA, some ASW and cruise missiles, she'd be still in service/reserve today probably. Her WW1 style main guns would be removed anyway.

Exactly what I was thinking at the end! "Surely I can go see this ship in person... oh..."

@@Fish1701A Her AA was unmatched at the time, given modern progress you may well be correct. The major problem would be finding enough crew for her.

@@Fish1701A OMO her guns would have stayed. the New Jerey's main guns did awesome work in Korea and off Beirut in 83. Also when sitting in a foreign port, those BFG's are a very intimidating sight.

@@stevewixom9311 Vanguards guns were WW1 guns. But yes, the ship would have been very impressive in any port.

My father did too. He loved it.

@@Healthhazard43 Did he ever mention anything about the Vanguard being haunted? Supposedly the galley was spooky.

@@pencilpauli9442 Unfortunately not. He only told me a couple of stories from his navy days.

My Dad was the Royal Marine RSM of the Home Fleet. She was the flag ship.

80% of a watermelon is a lot more than 100% of a grape.

Except that the fear of enemy battleships was almost always unfounded in such cases.

@@bkjeong4302 the point is the psychological threat was enough to make them relevant, where resources were devoted to taking them out or avoiding them.

@@gl3618 That only works if the enemy mistakenly assumes your battleships are useful for you. A plan that relies on the enemy being incompetent isn’t a good plan.

@@bkjeong4302 you're not getting it...it obviously worked because the Axis were the only ones (other than Italy) that didn't worry too much about hunting or avoiding enemy battleships. England and US spent considerable time and energy hunting Tirpitz and Bismark, even launching dangerous and suicidal raids against Tirpitz. The plan may not be fool proof, but it worked for what it was designed to do partially.

@@bkjeong4302 The fear was hardly unfounded. As much as battleships were too vulnerable to the new weapons of the day. They were most certainly still capable of delivering awesome firepower, and largely invulnerable to most ships in most navies. If, and when, a battleship engaged an enemy vessels or fleet that didn't comprise of capital ships, those fleets were sunk. The problem was, that the oceans are too big, and the BBs too expensive. You could comfortably gamble on not encountering an enemy Battleship. The largest navy as of 1939 (the Royal Navy) had 15 or so. Spread across the Atlantic, Indian, Pacific, and Mediterranean. When you look at engagements like Narvik. It is abundantly clear, that Battleships were well worth fearing, in the abstract. (In contrast, a single carrier can cover hundreds of miles with it's aircraft, a battleship is limited to the range of its guns, so well within the 10s of miles)

even when old, the British 15" guns stacked up well against the Richelieu, Littorio and Bismarcks main batteries. And were better than the guns mounted on the Dunkirques and Scharnhorsts.

I was there on that day too. There was a large photo of the ship in the upper room at the Still & West up until early 2000s. I haven't been in there since although I have been back to Portsmouth a few times in the last 20 yrs. My late father served in the RN in WW2 & Portsmouth was his base. We used to go to Navy days every year. Happy times.

People do that with cars all the time.

Exactly, people just don't fact check when making videos and make statements for dramatic impact. The line in the video saying PoW was "sunk by a single aircraft" is absolute nonsense. The Japanese prepared 200 aircraft for the attack on PoW and Repulse, nearly 100 of which engaged the two ships. With no carrier escort or effective AA protection, its amazing that the two ships lasted as long as they did.

@@richardwinstanley8219 If I recall correctly, the POW [a thoroughly modern ship in her time, with the latest AA weaponry] succumbed rather quickly, whilst the Repulse [ a veteran of WWI] put up one hell of a fight until she was utterly overwhelmed.

@@Plesiosaur68 To an extent. Prince of Wales was effectively killed by the very first torpedo hit, which wrecked the bracket for her port outside propeller. It was stopped to effect repairs, but the repair teams didn't realise the shaft was no longer attached to the ship, and so when they restarted it the shaft tore PoW's hull to shreds of it's own accord both within and without the ship, tearing a cast gash in her hull whilst also destroying waterproof bulkheads within, which lead to her electrical generators failing and producing a desperate list. Her AAA, which was electronically powered and radar-aimed, completely failed at this stage, but the powder used as propellant for it wasn't rated for tropical climes either, and she also didn't have tracer rounds on-board (which literally meant the Japanese aircraft couldn't really tell when they were under fire, which meant more of them completed their runs succesfully due to the pilots feeling safe to do so). Repulse was masterfully captained, and certainly took much, much longer to bring to heel, with her crew doing a heart-wrenchingly good job of avoiding repeated attacks. But once she was hit her age - a full three generations older than PoW, told, and she sank rapidly. PoW took about half an hour longer to sink than Repulse, despite being struck fatally at 1140, a full two hours before Repulse died. Part of the reason for the loss of both ships was that the KGV class of battleships had already proven themselves to be very good at fighting of air attack - Prince of Wales herself had done sterling work on the Malta Run before being assigned to Force Z - add to this that Singapore had (in a miscommunication) effectively told Force Z that they would have no air support (which meant none was asked for until much too late) and the fact that Force Z should have had a carrier with them, but didn't and there you have it. The first battleship in history that was maneuvering and able to defend herself to be destroyed solely by air power.

Ironically, Vanguard was the rearguard of the battleship era.

@@32bevula And was the eleventh RN ship to carry that name.

HMS Warspite should have been kept since she was the most decorated British warship of the 20th century.

@@TimDyck Or HMS Rodney or Nelson as the twins were the most unique looking battleships ever designed with all three turrets fore of the superstructure.

@@krashd. They Were So Ugly & A Shitty Design

@@krashd Rodney and Nelson were incredibly ugly , and anyway they were not at all typical of battleship design, In general it is unfortunate that when things are set aside as keepsakes, "freaks" are often preferred because they seem more interesting at the time, but years later they only become misleading examples.

@@dukenukem5768 Freaks or oddities are worth keeping for the exact reason they are freaks or oddities, people like things that stand out or else you get the "once you've seen one battleship you've seen them all" argument. Though I wouldn't pick an oddity over a legend such as Warspite.

Too many bent congressmen/contractors looking for the next littoral combat ship as a money sink for that to happen

Worth saying too that the Iowas were used right up until the first Gulf War in 1990.

Wow, that's cool. I live in Lymington.

@@AttitudeCharter- Happy memories, I learned to sail at The Salterns when attending Walhampton long ago.

@@FloatingOnAZephyr Not really. They were mothballed for most of that time until being reactivated to look Big and Scary for Reagan's pointlessly expensive 1000 ship fleet.

@@bairdrew but still served in the gulf war so he is correct

thought that was the Warspite?

That was Warspite.

@@fusioncannon nope, definitely Vanguard, there is footage of it happening, on RU-vid.

@@davidribeiro1064 nope, definitely Vanguard, there is footage of it happening, on RU-vid.

@@fusioncannon Warspite did break her tow further on round the coast. One of the pubs in Old Portsmouth has a photo in the bar of Vanguard blocking the harbour entrance. :)

I hope you were inside the pub at the time. It’s bloody cold in the harbour at the moment - roll on the summer and sitting down Old Portsmouth reminiscing 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻

while there were no anti ship missiles like the ones we know today, there were large guided bombs, for example the german Fritz X, which could be steered to some extend and could be dropped outside of the effective AA range. These weapons sank the Italian battleship Roma in 1943.

@@xxnightdriverxx9576 Not a major threat to something like Vanguard, and not a long range missile by any stretch of the imagination

@@silverhost9782 HOW is a Fritz X not a major thread to Vanguard? It was a 1500kg armor piercing bomb with a 320kg warhead that could be guided and steered, which resulted in very good accuracy. Ideally it would be dropped from above 5km (higher drop altitude means higher speed when the bomb hits the target and thus greater armor penetration). Vanguards deck armor was identical to that of a KGV class, it was rated to protect against a 450kg AP bomb dropped from 4300m. There was no way her deck armor would have been able to withstand a Fritz X that hit it. That bomb would have gone straight through and exploded either in the magazines or machinery spaces. Of course Vanguard had excellent long range AA guns, so it is likely that any bombers that try to drop a Fritz X on her would be shot down, but if one of those hits Vanguard is fucked. Also, I specifically said it was a guided bomb and not a missile, I dont know why you think I did.

@@xxnightdriverxx9576 Because a plane has to drop it. Vanguard has an extremely mean AA suite and would certainly be operating with escorts too. A missile doesn't suffer from requiring a WW2 medium bomber to drop it. Also didn't read all that so hope it wasn't too important lol

@@silverhost9782 okay not reading my answer then commenting on it was really stupid from you. I literally talked about Vanguards AA suite in it. I also never said it was a missile.....

The guns on a battleship have a realistic range of no more than 20 miles. Contemporary aircraft for the Iowas when they completed had 20x the strike range and could deliver far greater damage. Even when refit, the Iowas anti-ship missiles had a maximum range of 150 nmi, and while the difference isn't so staggering as WW2 planes vs the 16in guns, the F-14 could still outdo that range by 4-5x and more by average range. Battleships are simply not fit for purpose anymore and haven't been for 80+ years.

If you want nuance and accuracy go watch Drach, here he uses words because they found cool when he's half whispering them :)

Absolutely! The old school admirals loved their mighty battleships but it was the aircraft carrier that changed the dynamics of naval warfare.

Newsreels usually got their facts right. This video doesn't.

BISMARCK NOT BISMARK

What's so notable about the Royal Navy hitting the pub? USN does it every chance it gets.😁

Other than being the last battleship, there is not the historic significance that HMS Rodney held. Rather surprising that Vanguard was not completed as a carrier along the lines of IJN Shinano. As an American, I would like to have seen Enterprise saved. She fought throughout the war and was Flag Ship for Admiral Halsey.

Warspite would have been the one to save.

Britain prowess as a great power has been fading away for decades since ww2, once the greatest naval power in the world, now has only a small navy of fewer than a 100 active combat vessels. And with few preserved remnants of british naval history, today it is hard to believe that this was once the greatest naval power in the world for over 2 centuries. today's britain can be scarcely recognizable from the world spanning empire it was 100 years ago. Especially with all of its once proud maritime tradition and history slowly fading away. i do wish that such an influential nation in the history of the modern world, should have at least some of that history and prestige retained.

@@livethefuture2492 - For Britain, WWII was incredibly expensive and the loss of Empire following the war had a huge impact on their position as a world power.

@@livethefuture2492 Every Empire turns to dust. and so has the British Empire as the UK slowly goes down the toilet .

When I was in the US Navy there was a rumor going round back in 1991 that they conducted a computer simulation of the 4 Iowa's with their upgrades and Iowa missing No. 2 Main Turret. No fighter cover, no escorts, and no sub protection. They pitted this battleship squadron against the US 6th fleet. Several hours later the last Iowa sank. And along with them half the 6th fleet. Did this actually happen? I have no confirmation. But considering their added defense and ranged fire power of the missiles to me it is possible.

@@davidtherwhanger6795 I suspect that modern supersonic anti ship missiles and or modern torpedoes would prove lethal to the Iowa's pretty quickly...They still look great though!

@@mdavid1955 Not as much as you would think. The only way they would prove greatly effective is that you don't upgrade the Iowa's countermeasures. People tend to think of the battleships in their classic form. They forget that you would refit those ships just as much as you do your other ships. The 80's refit on the Iowa's IIRC added 64 Harpoon Missiles and 48 Tomahawk Missiles along with 4 Phalanx CIWS's. The upgrade of those plus newer torpedo countermeasures would make them a very difficult kill if they had been kept in service. As I understood it the reasons we decommissioned them were numerous. Firstly they were costly to maintain as they were very old, and replacement of much of the structure would need to be done eventually. That is a lot of steel. Probably enough to build a new aircraft carrier. Two, the railgun and laser programs were still way off from being mountable in any practical term. And we were still using ammunition from WW2 for the main guns as none was made for them after they were first decommissioned. And lastly they needed more support on deployment. With the escorts changing over to Gas Turbine engines and the carriers being nuclear powered, they just couldn't get the operational range of the other combat ships. I could be wrong, but that is what I was told.

@@davidtherwhanger6795 I'm fairly sure that at some point a British destroyer was tasked with defending one of your Iowas in the late 80's or early 90's when it came under missile attack and could not defend itself, if it had Harpoons on board they weren't using them.

@@krashd The Harpoon missile is an all weather, over the horizon, anti-ship missile. Not a missile interceptor system. And crazy as it sounds all capital ships are normally assigned destroyers to screen them as the first line of defense by all nations. Your probably reading more into it than actually what was happening. Confusing standard procedure with a actual need. Back in those days they had normally 1 or 2 missile intercept weapons on destroyers. The Iowa's had 4. But as with any system, fire enough missiles at it one will get thru. So to protect your big assets like carriers and battleships that can take years to build, you dedicate smaller escort vessels to help protect them.

they did. Thats one of the reason the Lion class was cancelled and the construction of Vanguad so heavily delayed, because the steel and workers were needed for other projects, such as anti submarine escords

There were two dreadnought battleships sunk by submarines in WW2 on the open sea....the IJN Kongo and the HMS Barham. In addition the HMS Royal Oak was sunk by a submarine at anchor in Scapa Flow.

The UK was already building 16 (!) carriers of the 1942 light fleet carrier program (which is not well known since those carriers didnt do much in the war, but those were medium sized carriers with a similar size to the Japanese Soryu class and carrying up to 52 aircraft each, so MUCH more capable than the light carriers of the US). There were also the Audacious class fleet carriers, basically a class between the Essex and Midway class in capability. Those are of course in addition to the much better known Illustrious and Implacable class carriers, which actually saw heavy use.

bear in mind that Taranto and Pearl Harbour were attacks on HARBOURS. The ships could not move. If either fleet had been out at sea at those times, the results would have been quite different. The only battleships that were actually sunk by carrier aircraft alone while operating in open sea were the japanese Yamato and Musashi. And they were attacked by 6 and 11 carriers respectively. And on the other side, if you manage a surprise attack on a harbour you dont need aircraft to inflict heavy damage. A moving battleship fireing on a stationary battleship in harbour? Automatic win for the attacker. Happened 2 times in WW2, with british battlecruiser Hood and battleships Valiant and Resolution sinking the french battleship Bretange and heavily damaging Dunkerque and Provence (which would also have sunk if they were not beached) during the attack on Mers El Kabir, and USS Massachusetts fireing on Jean Bart during operation torch.

The Soviets (later the Russians) built the Kirov battlecruisers, a kind of modern battleship.

To be honest with the modern tech we have now a about 2 guided missile destroyers could take on the Bismarck so making ships like these anymore would be wasteful and would use more resources and time to build

If we manage to develop an energy source that is small enough to fit on a ship but powerful enough to drive a heavy railgun then we might see the return of the battleship, but instead of flinging shells at each other from a distance of 15-20 miles they will snipe each other at distances up to 140+ miles. Armour would be redundant against a rail projectile and they wouldn't require more than a single turret so they would likely be small, nimble vessels like a large destroyer using speed as a defence.

The yanks have money to burn, Britain bankrupted itself fighting Germany.

They are similar BL 15" Mk.I guns but they aren't hers, they were HMS Ramilies' and Resolution's

@@quadri31 correct and when I visited the museum many years ago I was very impressed how massive it was....

@@paoloviti6156 Yeah they're absolutely huge, I still can't believe they were able to make those more than 100 years ago along with the complex loading and aiming mechanisms

@@quadri31 You're correct about the Ramilles however I think the other one is actually from a Monitor

@@stephenchappell7512 Yes I am actually wrong I think it was HMS Roberts' gun if I'm not mistaken

Should have been completed as an aircraft carrier.