The RN would probably welcome a hasty ill organized series of uncoordinated sorties.
Hiow about a British Battleship caught in port in Singapore?
The USS Hornet was almost captured by the Japanese after attempts to sink it by U.S. Destroyers was unsuccessful ( 9 torpedoes some of which failed to explode and over 400 5" rounds) it was finally finished off with 4 Long Lance torpedoes by Japanese destroyers. That was the closest a 'modern' major naval ship has come to being captured that I know of.
Doubt it. Remember the very poor air cover the RN had at this time; and it's AAA was far from being the top notch it would become latter on.
You mean that poor aircover that crushed the Luftwaffe during the battle of Britain? That what the Luftwaffe has to get thru as the Prize Bismarck is being towed back to UK waters
IIRC there was some thought about towing her back to Japan. But the Japanese had no tugs, the distance was too great and the damage too severe. The IJN choose to sink her to make sure the USN couldn't salvage her later...
Doubt it. Remember the very poor air cover the RN had at this time; and it's AAA was far from being the top notch it would become latter on.
How long was Bismark able to communicate with the outside world after KGV and Rodney started firing?
The Bombardment of the Hartlepools might be a option. If the German ships come in too close the water gets very shallow (The dredged channel into the port was only 20ft deep), if the tide's wrong a ship could easily ground on the rocks. Plenty have on the Longscar rocks over the years.
Now that would be a tadd embarrassing....
It was a foggy morning. Looking back a hundred years it would be incredibly funny and might finally kill off that damn monkey hanging story.
I think the last ship to be surrendered by the Royal Navy was HMS Campbeltown. ...
... HMS Campbeltown. That was a big surprise for the Germans.
I don't think they boarded her but decided to sink her when they encountered her. I do not know any more details.
The painting of a pummeled and battered Bismarck being towed into Portsmouth replaces this as the UK most favorite naval painting
How about capturing it in port?
in the USN, battleships historically had their own attached Marines, who would man weapons or otherwise occupy battle stations during combat. In addition to being helpful during potential mutinies, they combined with the 1,000 or so crew, make successfully boarding a capital ship difficult in the extreme.Turning around the question for our military experts: suppose you have a commando of about a 100 Marines, paratroopers or commandos trained in boarding operations and you somehow have the means to land them on the deck of a military vessel. Let's say by dropping them from stealth helicopters or radar-jamming speedboats. What would be the biggest ship they could overpower? And could they realistically hope to sail it to their own fleet or would theirs just be a slash and grab mission of fetching everything that looks interesting and then blowing up the ship behind them?
Like I said, I have zero knowledge on that part starting with the most obvious question of how many men there are on a frigate versus an aircraft carrier. All I know is that in one of the comics I read in the 1980's, US Navy hotshot pilot Buck Danny with one sidekick once took over a complete Cuban frigate at least long enough to call a US helicopter to come and airlift him off to Guantanamo. (In 1980 that didn't yet have that cynical aftertaste.) Of course that was a comic book fantasy typical of it's time. 25 years later Bruce Willis would probably have taken over a nuclear submarine all by himself and another 10 years on a whole aircraft carrier with a little help from Silvester Stallone and Jet Li... But I digress....