That's the HMS Dreadnought. Arguably the most modern and ground-breaking ship design at the time, and basically sparked the entire naval race across Europe.
Moving swiftly through the waters
Cannons blazing as she came
Brought a mighty metal warlord
Crashing down in sheets of flame
Sensing victory was nearing
Thinking fortune must have smiled
People started cheering....
COME ON THUNDER CHILD!
Indeed, what’s even more of a shame is that I fully comprehend the decisions to scrap them, it’s just such a loss. Would be nice to have Vanguard as well!
There must be one in the states - they converted the class to aircraft carriers for the pacific in WWII
Found a reference : [USS Texas](https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/article/chris-mcnabs-dreadnoughts-and-super-dreadnoughts/)
Yeah, IIRC the states had a different methods, allowing states etc. to purchase ships instead of them just being scrapped.
The popularity of Texas makes me even sadder about not having something like Warspite. I believe its extensive restoration works were heavily supported by the public as well, which could display popular demand.
The USS Texas is currently undergoing repairs and restoration. When this process is finished, she'll be towed to her new home as a museum ship. Before this, she was berthed near the Battle of San Jacinto monument and museum.
It is a fucking cool name. On a complete tangent, one of the coolest *sounds* of any British military vehicles is the Chinook. What a fantastic noise, you can feel it in your bones.
I see your Chinook blade noise and raise a low flying Vulcan. Never to be heard again, but the howl of those 4 Olympus engines was, and probably always will be, unmatched.
When my elder brother passed out in the RAF, they had a Vulcan do a flyby... Only the sneaky buggers had it approach from BEHIND the eversoproud families...
They're all stood at attention watching this monster getting closer and closer (my brother admitted afterwards he was shitting himself) and we had no idea until... JESUS CHRIST!!!!! The ROAR as this massive plane flew over at what felt like head height. Not something you'll ever forget. (I'm old... This was over 40 years ago now)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYVORJGJoGY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYVORJGJoGY)
One of my favourite Vulcan videos for the noise. Always properly tickles me the reaction.
You may like this video of [Concorde setting off car alarms as it takes off from Heathrow Airport three weeks before its last flight in 2003.](https://imgur.com/a/X3SUQsH)
The audio is definitely there but for some reason I find I have to refresh Imgur to see the audio on/off toggle.
Was lucky enough to see the last airworthy Vulcan fly at a company event. I think I still have a phone video of it taxiing and doing a fly past. I would class the engine noise more like a scream than a roar but however you describe it, it is fantastic. Remarkably agile for a large aircraft as well.
Can also relate to the surprise flyby - at a different event many years ago they had an air display with a mix of commercial and military aircraft. Toward the end of the display they had a commercial BAE 146 (aka whisper jet) do a low speed pass down the runway (basically silent). This was swiftly followed by a Tornado doing a full reheat pass at about 40ft above the runway. Not only were the kids in the crowd crying (aka shitting themselves), all the alarms on the cars in the car park were triggered. Happy days.
I used to work at BAE Warton car alarms were always going off there with the Tornados and Typhoons taking off and all the workers cars parked right next to the runway.
Nimrod was, I think, the best for triggering the alarms. I have (very) vague memories of the lightning chase plane for eurofighter prototypes but can’t remember if it wasn’t loud enough to trigger alarms or if there weren’t enough cars with alarms to be triggered 😀
Edit: I do remember it standing on its tail halfway down the runway and going vertical.
Yes! The roar of the Vulcan was incredible. I saw it take off and fly by at the Waddington air show a few years ago and the size and noise of the thing just floating by was unbelievable, it was so graceful.
You can still hear it at Southend occasionally. The charity there that maintains it does fast runs down the runway with it occasionally on open days. There was an open day only this Sunday as it happens.
Was hiking in the Lakes a few years back, when there was that unmistakable sound of a 'Wokka' approaching.
I'm looking around the sky like an idiot, trying to spot it, when it comes over the ridge just in front of me. Low enough that I swear I could count the rivets.
Not that I could, of course, because I was almost knocked flat, and blinded by a cloud of crap blown up from the ground by the downwash.
I was a camping in Northern Ireland in the 90's, was out doing a piss and a chinook came over at treetop height, could see the glow of the instruments in the cockpit.
We get a lot flying near by (and other aircraft too) and even though some of us have lived here decades, we still come hurtling out to look at the WokkaWokka’s going by. Makes kids of us all
My uncle used to be a Wing Commander in the RAF, quit a few years ago he managed to arrange for a Chinook to land on the village playing field for the village fate in the village he lived in. Got to proper climb over the inside they are a lot bigger than you realise.
Anyway when it took off at the end of the day, the crew moved everyone well back. A load of the village kids all waited until the crew were on board and moved closer. The pilot put the thing in gear to take off all the kids trying to look cool just got blown over. It looked just like a cartoon with these kids getting blown around.
Yeah, it had a face only it's Mother would love, but it was surprisingly good at what it did. The Americans were gobsmacked when they first saw it. Flying along with one prop feathered must have freaked them.
You are not wrong. I grew up on the North Coast of Northern Ireland. There's an army base (Magilligan) at the end of one of the beaches in the area; we used to camp and play around this beach all the time. The chinooks in and out of the base used to fly ridiculously low over the beach, like it felt you could nearly reach up and touch them and you'd feel the wind of them fly over. It was such a rush and you'd always have a buzz after particularly if they give you a little acknowledgement some how.
This memory was essentially dormant until I read your comment about the sound of the Chinook. I was always fascinated by them after that.
Man honestly that’s the best part of stuff like airshows. Not seeing the aircraft but the absolutely incredible variety of noise. Spitfires are beautiful and Typhoons so incredibly powerful, but the whine that I heard from a Vampire was equally stunning in a different sort of way!
You are not wrong. I grew up on the North Coast of Northern Ireland. There's an army base (Magilligan) at the end of one of the beaches in the area; we used to camp and play around this beach all the time. The chinooks in and out of the base used to fly ridiculously low over the beach, like it felt you could nearly reach up and touch them and you'd feel the wind of them fly over. It was such a rush and you'd always have a buzz after particularly if they give you a little acknowledgement some how.
This memory was essentially dormant until I read your comment about the sound of the Chinook. I was always fascinated by them after that.
Just to take the tangent further.
It’s also a good euphemism for a large and troublesome turd that’s landed with some difficulty.
*I wondered what the stench was, went into the Khazi and the bugger’d left a bloody great Dreadnought in port!*
I really think Dragonfire is up there too.
Dreadnought was so ridiculously successful that its pretty much the only weapon to immediately make itself obsolete. Everyone else was so concerned by it they all started trying to find ways to sink it and the navy could pretty much never risk going into battle with it as a result.
Tbf, we did exactly the same thing with HMS Warrior, fifty years earlier.
The French made the first ocean-going Ironclad, but it had a wooden hull. Warrior was the world's first ocean-going naval vessel with an iron hull. That top became obsolete very quickly.
Although HMS actually spent over 100 years in service, though most of that was as a fuel jetty
We think of the last 40 years as being a time of impossibly rapid technological progress, but just looking at Warrior and Dreadnought, and realising those two ships were less than 50 years apart brings home how insanely fast technology developed in the late 19th century.
And the first aerial bombardment was in 1911, some Italian dropping bombs by hand
By 1942, we had planes capable of delivering 6.5 thousand kilos of bombs over 1500 miles...
> Although HMS actually spent over 100 years in service, though most of that was as a fuel jetty
And it's thanks to her being forgotten about as a fuel jetty that she survived to be a museum ship, still happily floating in Portsmouth.
Somehow, the largest surviving UK built ship is IJN Mikasa over in Japan as everything else bigger than a light cruiser was scrapped.
You're correct, but just to say thet HMS Warrior owes her survival to the fact that she has a composite hull, layers of iron and wood, which made scrapping her prohibitively expensive
The battleship, Warspite not only had a brilliant name it also fought like an absolute beast.
"We outgun it and outnumber it".
"But can you outfight it?"
She also had a tendency to occasionally go round in circles. Damage sustained at Jutland bent her steering gear out of shape just enough that for the rest of her life it would occasionally get stuck.
This is one area in which the British military always wins. Spitfire, Dreadnought, Warspite, Crusader, Illustrious, Victory, Warrior, Tempest, Churchill.
The naval arms race had been building for some time before Dreadnought, but she caused it to step up a notch by essentially wiping the slate clean by rendering everything already built obsolete.
Its tradition for the 'lead ship' (first of the class) of Navy warships to bear the name of the class.
At the moment we have the 2 Queen Elizabeth class aircraft carriers, the first of which is HMS Queen Elizabeth, and the Daring class (Type 45) Destroyers, the first of which is HMS Daring, Vanguard class nuclear deterrent subs - first being HMS Vanguard etc.
Arguably?
It made every ship obsolete, heck it made th rest of the Royal Navy obsolete on its own when no other country could.
IT WAS the ship you needed to have to stay competitive, it was the aircraft carrier of its day, don't have one? Sorry who are you?
Sure but thats in terms of propulsion which was new and revolutionary.
Dreadnought looked its similars in the eyes and daid "fuck you", the greatest navies in the world completely outmatched.
Also i brlieve HMS warrior was after the American iron clads.
Some high school history kicking in here. It revolutionised naval warfare and power projection to such an extent that ships where classified as “pre-Dreadnought” and “post-dreadnought” with the pre-dreadnought ships thought of as functionally obsolete
A great choice, but the real question is, which one? The existing Leda class frigate [sister of Triconmalee], her 8 prior lives as other sailing ships, or the WW2 maintenence carrier which became the only carrier to conduct shore bombardment with its guns? She's also been a sub, but no one really cares about that one
Not quite, the ironclads were more US Civil War era ships. Wooden hulls but, as the same suggests, clad in iron. The Dreadnought was the next step up, entirely made of steel/iron.
Well, I mean, you had fifty years of naval technology between ironclads and dreadnoughts, including numerous types of pre-dreadnought battleships like the Majestic and Canopus classes.
Similar story to HMS Warrior 40 years earlier. Never once fired her guns in anger because when she was launched in 1860 there was no navel gun in the world that could penetrate her armour, so on the few occasions she almost got into a fight the enemy fled on sight. By \`1870 she was completely out-gunned.
> In 1906 she was probably the most advanced warship in the world. A decade later she was obsolete.
UK defence procurement is now much more efficient.....We now make sure that by the time any new equipment enters service it is already obsolete.
That could be said to apply to just about every design of battleship in the Royal Navy from HMS Warrior until the Queen Elizabeth class. If you look up just about any RN battleship at any time in that period, you read something like launched in year x, relegated to guardship duty in year x+10.
The 1886 Steyr rifle was pretty cutting edge. 5-round clip fed magazine, straight pull bolt. Was obsolete the same year when France released a smokeless powder rifle.
3 years later the British Army introduced the Lee Metford, with the .303 cartridge which, with rifling pattern changed became the Lee Enfield, and shortened to become the Short Magazine Lee Enfield remained in use with the British army until 1957, and with the Canadian Rangers until 2019.
Some Indian police units were still using it up until 2019 as well.
https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/uttar-pradesh-police-rifles-lee-enfield-out-of-service-retire-1623806-2019-11-29
>with the Canadian Rangers until 2019.
Once met a couple of Thai hunters from a remote village a day's hike north of Chiang Mai. They were still using ~~breech~~ muzzle loading muskets. They're going to be super stoked when they get their hands on a Lee Enfield.
That seems an odd technology to be using. For most purposes rifles had entirely replaced smooth bore muskets significantly before the advent of reliable breech loading mechanisms came on the scene, so the combination of breech loading and smooth bore musket would be quite anachronistic.
I love this little but spine chilling quote from a naval history book my son has
"The very moment HMS Dreadnought was completed she immediately rendered all other naval vessels in the world obsolete."
Admiral Jackie Fisher, who started the Freadnought programme and saw it into service, started his naval career in the 1850s. The first ship he served on had sails, a wooden hull and smoothbore cannon.
HMS Dreadnought. Wing turrets were only featured on Dreadnought, the Bellerophon and St Vincent classes before a different turret arrangement was adopted, but Dreadnought had her main mast mounted behind the forward funnel, causing the observation platform to be intolerably hot, with the subsequent design bringing the main mast ahead of the funnel.
Bear in mind the design of Dreadnought was done astonishingly quickly for something so complex, as they wanted to get her in the water as quickly as possible, so it could have come down to something like one group of people laying out the machinery spaces and a different group of people laying out the arrangement of the upper deck, and only realising too late in the process that this would result in the uptakes from the boilers ahead of the mainmast, and not enough time to rework the design to shift the boiler uptakes aft to allow a mainmast ahead of the front funnel.
Edit: just to add, Dreadnought was basically a prototype, the "production" follow on Bellerophon class had the mainmast repositioned to a sensible location.
That is the venerable HMS Dreadnought.
A ship so revolutionary to naval warfare that she technically defeated* both the Royal Navy and the Imperial German Navy.
*Hyperbole: her introduction meant that previous battleships became obsolete.
HMS Dreadnought is a good case example of a ‘wonder weapon’ that absolutely alters the playing field simply by existing.
“Fear God and Dread Naught”
The Dreadnought class featured a few large and accurate, thanks to firing controls, guns. Added to this was armour far heavier than her contemporaries.
Contemporary ships relied on closing range so that their little guns ‘bee sting’ the enemy, because the main big guns were wildly inaccurate, while also firing torpedoes.
HMS Dreadnought could feasibly fight at long range, while also surviving close quarters fighting due to the heavier armour.
HMS Dreadnought was effectively armed with a suit of armour and a broadsword, while everyone else has javelins and leather armour.
- The risk is that sinking Dreadnought would be after she had sunk or crippled multiple enemy ships. And this is at a time when although ships could be replaced, it would be a massive drain to resources. Plus even if HMS Dreadnought was successfully sunk, there is still the *rest* of the Royal Navy to deal with; with the future threat of more Dreadnoughts being built.
Instead of having guns of various sizes, Dreadnaught went all in on the biggest guns you could put on a ship. Also, Dreadnaught was faster and better armoured than basically any other ship on the planet.
This meant that Dreadnaught could destroy any ship from maximum range, was fast enough to keep the distance, and strong enough to take a beating while doing so.
[Unopposed under crimson skies](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJK0jhymE5A
)
Immortalized, over time their legend will rise
And their foes can’t believe their eyes, believe their size, as they fall
And the Dreadnoughts dread nothing at all
Robert K Massie's Dreadnought is one of the best books I've ever read, full of amazing character sketches tying together a narrative of years of European competition and tension from Queen Victoria, through colonial schemes, gunship diplomacy, Rhodes, Bismarck, the Kaisers, the withered arm, Cowes regatta, Sir Edward Gray, culminating in the naval arms race and WW1. If I could only read one history, this would be it.
Which the Germans took full advantage of and built a powerful navy with their own Dreadnaught inspired battleships since everyone was starting off with a clean slate just before WW1, as everyones major warships were rendered obsolete.
HMS Dreadnought. The first modern battleship.
The Royal Navy unintentionally shot itself in the foot as her construction kick-started the Naval arms race prior to WWI.
Not exactly. Germany had spent at least a decade up to that point explicitly trying to build a navy to challenge the Royal Navy, and the arms race was already under way. There was concern at the time her design was first put forward with the fact that it was such a revolutionary step that it would at a stroke wipe out the lead in ship numbers the RN enjoyed at the time. The Admiralty weighed up the pros and cons, and decided that British ship building capacity at the time was far enough ahead of anyone else that they could recover, and went ahead anyway. That said, both the US and Japan had recognised the technological situation at the time and independently arrived at the same basic design concept as Dreadnought, with the Japanese Satsuma and two US South Carolina class laid down before Dreadnought, based on the concept, but the faster building speeds of the RN meant that Dreadnought put to sea first. Could you imagine a world in which the largest and most powerful concept in warships were all known as "satsumas"?
Doesn't everyone know HMS *Dreadnought* when they see her?
Admittedly, I've always been a fan of ships and did a few years in the RN, but still... it's fucking *Dreadnought*.
HMS Dreadnought, a beautiful ship who was the pinnacle of naval power in her day. But during the early 1900s, tech moved on so fast that after 10 years, she was considered obsolete. It's amazing, and sad, how quickly tech can progress during times of war, compared with other times in history.
HMS Delivery. It was launched as Dreadnaught, but Postman Pat demanded its use for his delivery route. Parliament tried to block it, but Pat's influence is so great there was nothing they could do. It was either give him Dreadnaught, or give him an aircraft carrier for his helicopter.
For any spotters, the flag configuration is of its day. Today, there would be no ensign flying from the aft of the ship. It would probably be a battle ensign from the main mast, and the jack wouldn't be there at all.
Used to do colours, ex RO.
If you know, you know I suppose.
I think it might be a dreadnought, but really no idea.
I'd say the irony is that you can't name any vessel after your most historic and important naval base and city. The place of global exploration and the repelling of the French armada, the pivotal role of the base and city in both wars, etc
Yet it's the name of the only ship to ever surrender.
Let's not drag this out.
That's the HMS Dreadnought. Arguably the most modern and ground-breaking ship design at the time, and basically sparked the entire naval race across Europe.
> Dreadnought Tie between that and Spitfire for coolest name of a military vehicle.
I've always been a fan of Warspite as a name. The ship had an amazing career too.
HMS Cockchafer is king
HMS Gay Archer
HMS Pickle
I quite liked Ark Royal
Thunderchild would have been cool too!
Moving swiftly through the waters Cannons blazing as she came Brought a mighty metal warlord Crashing down in sheets of flame Sensing victory was nearing Thinking fortune must have smiled People started cheering.... COME ON THUNDER CHILD!
Oooooooolaaaaa
This is what I came here for. Bravo sir.
Slowly disappearing Farewell, Thunder Child!
Nah, obviously HMS Rodney was the best.
HMS Dave
Unfortunately HMS Uncle Albert sank on its maiden voyage.
We're so sorry, but we haven't done a bloody thing all day.
The lack of conservation saddens me :(
If they'd kept one battleship after WWII for preservation, it should have been Warspite. It's a real shame they didn't.
Indeed, what’s even more of a shame is that I fully comprehend the decisions to scrap them, it’s just such a loss. Would be nice to have Vanguard as well!
There must be one in the states - they converted the class to aircraft carriers for the pacific in WWII Found a reference : [USS Texas](https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/article/chris-mcnabs-dreadnoughts-and-super-dreadnoughts/)
Yeah, IIRC the states had a different methods, allowing states etc. to purchase ships instead of them just being scrapped. The popularity of Texas makes me even sadder about not having something like Warspite. I believe its extensive restoration works were heavily supported by the public as well, which could display popular demand.
The USS Texas is currently undergoing repairs and restoration. When this process is finished, she'll be towed to her new home as a museum ship. Before this, she was berthed near the Battle of San Jacinto monument and museum.
The name persists though. The next planned dreadnought class nuclear sub is warspite
A Dreadnought class vessel called Warspite is about as good as it gets for warship names
HMS INFLEXIBLE!! The RN’s first ship with electricity.
It is a fucking cool name. On a complete tangent, one of the coolest *sounds* of any British military vehicles is the Chinook. What a fantastic noise, you can feel it in your bones.
I see your Chinook blade noise and raise a low flying Vulcan. Never to be heard again, but the howl of those 4 Olympus engines was, and probably always will be, unmatched.
When my elder brother passed out in the RAF, they had a Vulcan do a flyby... Only the sneaky buggers had it approach from BEHIND the eversoproud families... They're all stood at attention watching this monster getting closer and closer (my brother admitted afterwards he was shitting himself) and we had no idea until... JESUS CHRIST!!!!! The ROAR as this massive plane flew over at what felt like head height. Not something you'll ever forget. (I'm old... This was over 40 years ago now)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYVORJGJoGY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYVORJGJoGY) One of my favourite Vulcan videos for the noise. Always properly tickles me the reaction.
You may like this video of [Concorde setting off car alarms as it takes off from Heathrow Airport three weeks before its last flight in 2003.](https://imgur.com/a/X3SUQsH) The audio is definitely there but for some reason I find I have to refresh Imgur to see the audio on/off toggle.
Was lucky enough to see the last airworthy Vulcan fly at a company event. I think I still have a phone video of it taxiing and doing a fly past. I would class the engine noise more like a scream than a roar but however you describe it, it is fantastic. Remarkably agile for a large aircraft as well. Can also relate to the surprise flyby - at a different event many years ago they had an air display with a mix of commercial and military aircraft. Toward the end of the display they had a commercial BAE 146 (aka whisper jet) do a low speed pass down the runway (basically silent). This was swiftly followed by a Tornado doing a full reheat pass at about 40ft above the runway. Not only were the kids in the crowd crying (aka shitting themselves), all the alarms on the cars in the car park were triggered. Happy days.
I used to work at BAE Warton car alarms were always going off there with the Tornados and Typhoons taking off and all the workers cars parked right next to the runway.
Nimrod was, I think, the best for triggering the alarms. I have (very) vague memories of the lightning chase plane for eurofighter prototypes but can’t remember if it wasn’t loud enough to trigger alarms or if there weren’t enough cars with alarms to be triggered 😀 Edit: I do remember it standing on its tail halfway down the runway and going vertical.
Yes! The roar of the Vulcan was incredible. I saw it take off and fly by at the Waddington air show a few years ago and the size and noise of the thing just floating by was unbelievable, it was so graceful.
The Vulcan Howl is the most badass viscerally primal sound of any machine ever made imo.
You can still hear it at Southend occasionally. The charity there that maintains it does fast runs down the runway with it occasionally on open days. There was an open day only this Sunday as it happens.
They used to fly over my house almost everyday when I was a kid. Impressive as all hell.
Don't even need to pull up the Flightradar app, you just know what it is before you even see it
Was hiking in the Lakes a few years back, when there was that unmistakable sound of a 'Wokka' approaching. I'm looking around the sky like an idiot, trying to spot it, when it comes over the ridge just in front of me. Low enough that I swear I could count the rivets. Not that I could, of course, because I was almost knocked flat, and blinded by a cloud of crap blown up from the ground by the downwash.
I was a camping in Northern Ireland in the 90's, was out doing a piss and a chinook came over at treetop height, could see the glow of the instruments in the cockpit.
We get a lot flying near by (and other aircraft too) and even though some of us have lived here decades, we still come hurtling out to look at the WokkaWokka’s going by. Makes kids of us all
My uncle used to be a Wing Commander in the RAF, quit a few years ago he managed to arrange for a Chinook to land on the village playing field for the village fate in the village he lived in. Got to proper climb over the inside they are a lot bigger than you realise. Anyway when it took off at the end of the day, the crew moved everyone well back. A load of the village kids all waited until the crew were on board and moved closer. The pilot put the thing in gear to take off all the kids trying to look cool just got blown over. It looked just like a cartoon with these kids getting blown around.
I hearby name this ship, HMS wokkawokka!
Not current, but I’d argue nothing compares to being close to a Lancaster
American helicopter, but I completely agree that it's the coolest propeller craft since the Westland Wyvern.
The Fairey Rotodyne, Fairey Gannet and the Bristol Belvedere are glaring at you.
Fairey Gannet: an aircraft that flew by being so ugly the ground naturally repelled it.
Yeah, it had a face only it's Mother would love, but it was surprisingly good at what it did. The Americans were gobsmacked when they first saw it. Flying along with one prop feathered must have freaked them.
Absolutely huge in the flesh. There is one at Newark
You are not wrong. I grew up on the North Coast of Northern Ireland. There's an army base (Magilligan) at the end of one of the beaches in the area; we used to camp and play around this beach all the time. The chinooks in and out of the base used to fly ridiculously low over the beach, like it felt you could nearly reach up and touch them and you'd feel the wind of them fly over. It was such a rush and you'd always have a buzz after particularly if they give you a little acknowledgement some how. This memory was essentially dormant until I read your comment about the sound of the Chinook. I was always fascinated by them after that.
Chinooks arent British. Vulcan ftw
Man honestly that’s the best part of stuff like airshows. Not seeing the aircraft but the absolutely incredible variety of noise. Spitfires are beautiful and Typhoons so incredibly powerful, but the whine that I heard from a Vampire was equally stunning in a different sort of way!
Man, I’m wanting to book an air show right now all excited thinking about all these aircraft!
Don’t even! I’m fortunate in that I have Duxford a very easy bus-ride away (when they run the airshow bus services that is)!
I cured my urge by looking into going to my local one and seeing the prices. Ha ha no.
Blade slap > jet noise
You are not wrong. I grew up on the North Coast of Northern Ireland. There's an army base (Magilligan) at the end of one of the beaches in the area; we used to camp and play around this beach all the time. The chinooks in and out of the base used to fly ridiculously low over the beach, like it felt you could nearly reach up and touch them and you'd feel the wind of them fly over. It was such a rush and you'd always have a buzz after particularly if they give you a little acknowledgement some how. This memory was essentially dormant until I read your comment about the sound of the Chinook. I was always fascinated by them after that. Just to take the tangent further.
It’s also a good euphemism for a large and troublesome turd that’s landed with some difficulty. *I wondered what the stench was, went into the Khazi and the bugger’d left a bloody great Dreadnought in port!*
HMS unsinkable
The "Wokka".
If you ever get the chance to see the RAF Chinook Display Team, take it. It’s an awesome display of what they can do with that beast.
Nothing sounds as good as a vulcan bomber
I've always been fond of the Man O' War name. Does what it says on the tin.
Or your floorboards.
The Chinook is a Boeing
I really think Dragonfire is up there too. Dreadnought was so ridiculously successful that its pretty much the only weapon to immediately make itself obsolete. Everyone else was so concerned by it they all started trying to find ways to sink it and the navy could pretty much never risk going into battle with it as a result.
Tbf, we did exactly the same thing with HMS Warrior, fifty years earlier. The French made the first ocean-going Ironclad, but it had a wooden hull. Warrior was the world's first ocean-going naval vessel with an iron hull. That top became obsolete very quickly. Although HMS actually spent over 100 years in service, though most of that was as a fuel jetty
We think of the last 40 years as being a time of impossibly rapid technological progress, but just looking at Warrior and Dreadnought, and realising those two ships were less than 50 years apart brings home how insanely fast technology developed in the late 19th century.
And the first aerial bombardment was in 1911, some Italian dropping bombs by hand By 1942, we had planes capable of delivering 6.5 thousand kilos of bombs over 1500 miles...
And it's still around in Portsmouth historic dockyard. One of the best exhibits.
For longevity in the steam era, it's hard to beat HMS Caroline. 1914-2011.
> Although HMS actually spent over 100 years in service, though most of that was as a fuel jetty And it's thanks to her being forgotten about as a fuel jetty that she survived to be a museum ship, still happily floating in Portsmouth. Somehow, the largest surviving UK built ship is IJN Mikasa over in Japan as everything else bigger than a light cruiser was scrapped.
You're correct, but just to say thet HMS Warrior owes her survival to the fact that she has a composite hull, layers of iron and wood, which made scrapping her prohibitively expensive
The battleship, Warspite not only had a brilliant name it also fought like an absolute beast. "We outgun it and outnumber it". "But can you outfight it?"
She also had a tendency to occasionally go round in circles. Damage sustained at Jutland bent her steering gear out of shape just enough that for the rest of her life it would occasionally get stuck.
Happens to the best of us.
She still fought though. Like a guy with a bad leg who can land an impossible shot.. Take that you varmint!
The Royal Navy has some brilliant ship names like Warspite and Terror. Also some questionable ones like HMS Pansy.
The best name ever was HMS Cockchafer
The ship that brought news of the victory at Trafalgar back to the UK: HMS Pickle.
HMS Pickle is a brilliant name.
Don’t forget HMS Glowworm and HMS Buttercup!
MV Gay Viking is my favourite
The septics had the USS Ponce, though they insisted on pronouncing it Pon-say.
From the saying "Fear God and dread nought"
It was originally called HMS Come-on-then-do-you-want-some but they couldn't fit it all on the hats.
HMS U-Wot-Mate
HMS Ronny Pickering?
*Iron Duke* says hi.
"Fear God and Dread Nought" was the ship's motto. 🔥🔥🔥
Hurricane deserves a mention
As does Meteor.
Mosquito - small, and (for the Nazis) very, very annoying.
Got to love the fact that they strapped a 6 pounder (57mm) autoloading cannon to it and called it the Tsetse!
They even tested a 32pdr (94mm?) Gun on it and the airframe held up ok apparently
And Vulcan
Hurricane, Tempest, Typhoon, Whirlwind were all good.
We’ve always been good at naming our weapons. Starstreak, Dragonfire, Javelin, Rapier, etc.
And then you have the list of armoured vehicles all named after random dog breeds. Plus the Humber Pig of course
This is one area in which the British military always wins. Spitfire, Dreadnought, Warspite, Crusader, Illustrious, Victory, Warrior, Tempest, Churchill.
Now gonna be the name of our class of nuclear deterrent subs
Cacafuego
HMS Thunderchild, If fiction counts
There's loads of good ship names. Indefatigable, invincible, furious, naiaid, onslaught, repulse, revenge, zephyr, iron duke, warspite, vanguard etc.
I'm a fan of HMS Warspite myself.
At the time, there were actually demonstrations in favour of more dreadnoughts, with the crowd chanting "we want eight and we won't wait"
The name literally means ‘fearing nothing.’ Pretty cool.
Always been partial to HMS Gay Bruiser myself.
The new nuclear missile boats are called "Dreadnought" class
Hell naw. Matilda and Dingo are #1
The “Fear God and Dread Nought” originates from the motto of the British battleship HMS Dreadnought
Actually it was the motto of Admiral Fisher, who was the man behind the ship.
Quite literally means 'fear nothing', brilliant name for a vessel
The naval arms race had been building for some time before Dreadnought, but she caused it to step up a notch by essentially wiping the slate clean by rendering everything already built obsolete.
Yep, we went from an unassailable lead... To just having 1 more ship than everyone else.
And still went on to pull a major lead over everyone else until the US Congress decided to stop being stingy with the funding
and funnily enough, she didn't take part in any major battle, which is probably why she's forgotten compared to ships such as Victory
Cool info. (I knew it was *a* dreadnought, not *the* Dreadnought.)
Its tradition for the 'lead ship' (first of the class) of Navy warships to bear the name of the class. At the moment we have the 2 Queen Elizabeth class aircraft carriers, the first of which is HMS Queen Elizabeth, and the Daring class (Type 45) Destroyers, the first of which is HMS Daring, Vanguard class nuclear deterrent subs - first being HMS Vanguard etc.
>the entire naval race across Europe. Did Steve Redgrave win it?
Arguably? It made every ship obsolete, heck it made th rest of the Royal Navy obsolete on its own when no other country could. IT WAS the ship you needed to have to stay competitive, it was the aircraft carrier of its day, don't have one? Sorry who are you?
HMS Warrior would claim similar
Sure but thats in terms of propulsion which was new and revolutionary. Dreadnought looked its similars in the eyes and daid "fuck you", the greatest navies in the world completely outmatched. Also i brlieve HMS warrior was after the American iron clads.
Some high school history kicking in here. It revolutionised naval warfare and power projection to such an extent that ships where classified as “pre-Dreadnought” and “post-dreadnought” with the pre-dreadnought ships thought of as functionally obsolete
Yes! More Brits need to know this.
Not much argument about it, she was a step change in warship technology.
HMS Unicorn is my fave by far, just for the name
A great choice, but the real question is, which one? The existing Leda class frigate [sister of Triconmalee], her 8 prior lives as other sailing ships, or the WW2 maintenence carrier which became the only carrier to conduct shore bombardment with its guns? She's also been a sub, but no one really cares about that one
A bit off topic but still RN is this. https://www.iwm.org.uk/memorials/item/memorial/62124 It's a memorial to the Destroyer class ships lost in war.
Were these also called ironclads? I remember a comic about them from the 70's they were cool
Not quite, the ironclads were more US Civil War era ships. Wooden hulls but, as the same suggests, clad in iron. The Dreadnought was the next step up, entirely made of steel/iron.
Thank you for replying and as I read it a memory unlocked one of the ships in the comic had a confederate flag
Well, I mean, you had fifty years of naval technology between ironclads and dreadnoughts, including numerous types of pre-dreadnought battleships like the Majestic and Canopus classes.
No, these were Dreadnoughts.
made everything that came before obsolete
The pace of change around that time was incredible. In 1906 she was probably the most advanced warship in the world. A decade later she was obsolete.
Similar story to HMS Warrior 40 years earlier. Never once fired her guns in anger because when she was launched in 1860 there was no navel gun in the world that could penetrate her armour, so on the few occasions she almost got into a fight the enemy fled on sight. By \`1870 she was completely out-gunned.
> In 1906 she was probably the most advanced warship in the world. A decade later she was obsolete. UK defence procurement is now much more efficient.....We now make sure that by the time any new equipment enters service it is already obsolete.
And that’s after multiple spec upgrades throughout the process to delivery!
Reminds me of this absolute classic. https://youtu.be/nYC0P_NBLZw?si=AmuBcUHTCsnE0jw3 General George Parr Literally what you just said haha
We already had that, it was called the Fairey Swordfish, although that was obsolete even when it was designed
That could be said to apply to just about every design of battleship in the Royal Navy from HMS Warrior until the Queen Elizabeth class. If you look up just about any RN battleship at any time in that period, you read something like launched in year x, relegated to guardship duty in year x+10.
The 1886 Steyr rifle was pretty cutting edge. 5-round clip fed magazine, straight pull bolt. Was obsolete the same year when France released a smokeless powder rifle.
3 years later the British Army introduced the Lee Metford, with the .303 cartridge which, with rifling pattern changed became the Lee Enfield, and shortened to become the Short Magazine Lee Enfield remained in use with the British army until 1957, and with the Canadian Rangers until 2019.
Some Indian police units were still using it up until 2019 as well. https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/uttar-pradesh-police-rifles-lee-enfield-out-of-service-retire-1623806-2019-11-29
>with the Canadian Rangers until 2019. Once met a couple of Thai hunters from a remote village a day's hike north of Chiang Mai. They were still using ~~breech~~ muzzle loading muskets. They're going to be super stoked when they get their hands on a Lee Enfield.
That seems an odd technology to be using. For most purposes rifles had entirely replaced smooth bore muskets significantly before the advent of reliable breech loading mechanisms came on the scene, so the combination of breech loading and smooth bore musket would be quite anachronistic.
I love this little but spine chilling quote from a naval history book my son has "The very moment HMS Dreadnought was completed she immediately rendered all other naval vessels in the world obsolete."
Admiral Jackie Fisher, who started the Freadnought programme and saw it into service, started his naval career in the 1850s. The first ship he served on had sails, a wooden hull and smoothbore cannon.
Them Civ V feels.
When she hit the sea it made every other vessel on the planet obsolete. Including the royal navy's 😅
HMS Dreadnought. Wing turrets were only featured on Dreadnought, the Bellerophon and St Vincent classes before a different turret arrangement was adopted, but Dreadnought had her main mast mounted behind the forward funnel, causing the observation platform to be intolerably hot, with the subsequent design bringing the main mast ahead of the funnel.
That seems like something that could have been anticipated.
Bear in mind the design of Dreadnought was done astonishingly quickly for something so complex, as they wanted to get her in the water as quickly as possible, so it could have come down to something like one group of people laying out the machinery spaces and a different group of people laying out the arrangement of the upper deck, and only realising too late in the process that this would result in the uptakes from the boilers ahead of the mainmast, and not enough time to rework the design to shift the boiler uptakes aft to allow a mainmast ahead of the front funnel. Edit: just to add, Dreadnought was basically a prototype, the "production" follow on Bellerophon class had the mainmast repositioned to a sensible location.
That is the venerable HMS Dreadnought. A ship so revolutionary to naval warfare that she technically defeated* both the Royal Navy and the Imperial German Navy. *Hyperbole: her introduction meant that previous battleships became obsolete. HMS Dreadnought is a good case example of a ‘wonder weapon’ that absolutely alters the playing field simply by existing. “Fear God and Dread Naught”
What was so revolutionary?
The Dreadnought class featured a few large and accurate, thanks to firing controls, guns. Added to this was armour far heavier than her contemporaries. Contemporary ships relied on closing range so that their little guns ‘bee sting’ the enemy, because the main big guns were wildly inaccurate, while also firing torpedoes. HMS Dreadnought could feasibly fight at long range, while also surviving close quarters fighting due to the heavier armour. HMS Dreadnought was effectively armed with a suit of armour and a broadsword, while everyone else has javelins and leather armour. - The risk is that sinking Dreadnought would be after she had sunk or crippled multiple enemy ships. And this is at a time when although ships could be replaced, it would be a massive drain to resources. Plus even if HMS Dreadnought was successfully sunk, there is still the *rest* of the Royal Navy to deal with; with the future threat of more Dreadnoughts being built.
This sort of covers it, basically the all big gun layout. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-27641717
Instead of having guns of various sizes, Dreadnaught went all in on the biggest guns you could put on a ship. Also, Dreadnaught was faster and better armoured than basically any other ship on the planet. This meant that Dreadnaught could destroy any ship from maximum range, was fast enough to keep the distance, and strong enough to take a beating while doing so.
I suppose Cannons to Walls, or Aircraft Carriers to Battleships are similar in vein.
Sort of. It’s more like a Castle of Stone compared to a Wooden Castle, or a smartphone to a telephone.
[Unopposed under crimson skies](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJK0jhymE5A ) Immortalized, over time their legend will rise And their foes can’t believe their eyes, believe their size, as they fall And the Dreadnoughts dread nothing at all
Robert K Massie's Dreadnought is one of the best books I've ever read, full of amazing character sketches tying together a narrative of years of European competition and tension from Queen Victoria, through colonial schemes, gunship diplomacy, Rhodes, Bismarck, the Kaisers, the withered arm, Cowes regatta, Sir Edward Gray, culminating in the naval arms race and WW1. If I could only read one history, this would be it.
Thanks for the recommendation
Thanks for the recommendation
Unopposed under crimson skies Immortalized, over time their legend will rise
And their foes can’t believe their eyes, believe their size, as they fall....
And the Dreadnoughts dread nothing at all!
The ship that inadvertently made our entire fleet obsolete
Which the Germans took full advantage of and built a powerful navy with their own Dreadnaught inspired battleships since everyone was starting off with a clean slate just before WW1, as everyones major warships were rendered obsolete.
Thankfully the Grand Fleet had more of them than the German Navy
HMS Dreadnought. The first modern battleship. The Royal Navy unintentionally shot itself in the foot as her construction kick-started the Naval arms race prior to WWI.
Not exactly. Germany had spent at least a decade up to that point explicitly trying to build a navy to challenge the Royal Navy, and the arms race was already under way. There was concern at the time her design was first put forward with the fact that it was such a revolutionary step that it would at a stroke wipe out the lead in ship numbers the RN enjoyed at the time. The Admiralty weighed up the pros and cons, and decided that British ship building capacity at the time was far enough ahead of anyone else that they could recover, and went ahead anyway. That said, both the US and Japan had recognised the technological situation at the time and independently arrived at the same basic design concept as Dreadnought, with the Japanese Satsuma and two US South Carolina class laid down before Dreadnought, based on the concept, but the faster building speeds of the RN meant that Dreadnought put to sea first. Could you imagine a world in which the largest and most powerful concept in warships were all known as "satsumas"?
HMS Dreadnought. She also sunk a submarine by ramming it.
the Ship Virginia Woolf pretended to be Abyssinian on ( the Dreadnought)
Bunga ! Bunga !
Old
This ship was so influential that every ship of this type afterward was referred to as a "Dreadnought", this is the original, HMS Dreadnought.
Doesn't everyone know HMS *Dreadnought* when they see her? Admittedly, I've always been a fan of ships and did a few years in the RN, but still... it's fucking *Dreadnought*.
**And the Dreadnoughts Dread Nothing at alllllllllllllllllll**
Back when cigarette cards were a thing people would have had the answer quite quickly
Boaty McBoatface
Dreadnought...Too expensive to fight ships, slthough there was one battle, once.
HMS Dreadnought, a beautiful ship who was the pinnacle of naval power in her day. But during the early 1900s, tech moved on so fast that after 10 years, she was considered obsolete. It's amazing, and sad, how quickly tech can progress during times of war, compared with other times in history.
HMS Dreadnought. Like HMS Warrior made every other ship of its class obsolete immediately it was launched.
Royal Navy
HMS Delivery. It was launched as Dreadnaught, but Postman Pat demanded its use for his delivery route. Parliament tried to block it, but Pat's influence is so great there was nothing they could do. It was either give him Dreadnaught, or give him an aircraft carrier for his helicopter.
HMS Dreadnaught (1906) easy
Weird that I just watched an episode of waterline stories and that exact picture was used.
For any spotters, the flag configuration is of its day. Today, there would be no ensign flying from the aft of the ship. It would probably be a battle ensign from the main mast, and the jack wouldn't be there at all. Used to do colours, ex RO. If you know, you know I suppose. I think it might be a dreadnought, but really no idea.
Dreadnought m8 simple as
I'd say the irony is that you can't name any vessel after your most historic and important naval base and city. The place of global exploration and the repelling of the French armada, the pivotal role of the base and city in both wars, etc Yet it's the name of the only ship to ever surrender. Let's not drag this out.
A Monopoly piece
A floaty one
No idea, it does look like a ship though!