6 WWII Surface Warships that sank the Most Naval Vessels

My dad served on Hms Warspite from early 41 till same 43 and he always said she was a lucky ship.

The Warspite was just about everywhere during WWII. Amazing story. Shameful that she was scrapped.

My grandfather served on the Bismarck as a AA gunner he unfortunately died when the Bismarck sunk but my grandmother told me he loved what he was doing and she still has a letter from him about the ship and what he said about it

The list is not complete. The german pocket battleship "Admiral Graf Spee" sank in the year 1939 nine enemy vessels in the south atlantic and the indian ocean.

Don’t forget that HMS Warspite’s swordfish floatplane also sank a U boat at Narvik.

The Scharnhorst 11'' guns hit and sunk the Aircraft carrier HMS Glorious while at full speed from 26.000 meters or 26 Kms away. Outstanding by any standards.

Scharnhorst and Gneisenau jointly sank, or captured, 22 ships in Operation Berlin, these are not included in the computation. If these are added to the talley reported these two are by far the most successful ship killers

My Father was Marine gunner on Warspite from 1938 to 1943 and is partly responsible for many of these sinkings.

The Warspite should have been saved as a National Treasure. I would have gone to England to see her.

Early in WW2 allied navies weren’t aware of the extreme range of the Long Lance. That range wasn’t known until 1943

Mogami's total is off - in the battle of Sunda Strait she fired a single spred of torpedoes at USS Houston that missed, continued on into the Japanese invasion convoy on the far side of Houston (Houston was between Mogami and the transports), and sank five of Japanese ships in the invasion convoy: minesweeper W-2, troop transports SAKURA MARU and TATSUNO MARU, hospital ship HORAI MARU, and the invasion force flagship SHINSHU MARU (with CinC of the invading 16th Army LtGen Imamura Hitoshi onboard - Imamura was forced to abandon ship by jumping into the sea, but was picked up by a lifeboat and survived). This event was the single deadliest (in terms of the total number of ships sunk) torpedo attack by a surface ship during the entire war.

🇬🇧​ That HMS Warspite does not lie in the port as a museum ship next to HMS Victory still hurts today, because what other ship would really have deserved this place? As a battleship that took part in the Battle of Jutland and fought in the Mediterranean in the Second World War, among other things, and was involved in the Normandy landings, she was one of the first warships ever to be hit by a guided bomb, the German Fritz-X, on 16 September 1943 and held her own. For me, one of the most legendary warships in naval history. 🇩🇪​ Dass die HMS Warspite nicht als Museumsschiff neben der HMS Victory im Hafen liegt, schmerzt noch heute, denn welch anderes Schiff hätte diesen Platz wirklich verdient? Als Schlachtschiff, das an der Skageraggschlacht teilgenommen hat und im 2. Weltkrieg u.a. im Mittelmeer gekämpft und an der Landung in der Normandy beteiligt war, wurde sie am 16. September 1943 als eines der ersten Kriegsschiffe überhaupt von einer Lenkbombe, der deutschen Fritz-X getroffen und hielt stand. Für mich eines der legendärsten Kriegsschiffe der Marinegeschichte überhaupt.

Some people dont seem to understand that transports are a valid and important target. Attacking the enemy logistics is what wins wars. Its like saying the u boats were irrelevant because they mostly sank convoys.

I think Warspite is the most bad ass name ever given to a navy ship. She definitely earned that name

For any Canadians here, according to the official website of the Canadian Tribal-class destroyer HMCS Haida, she is credited with sinking a total of 9 ships, though admittedly, one was a trawler, not a military vessel. I don't actually know why they engaged the trawler and the two other vessels it was with. If we're strictly talking about military vessels, Haida sank 8: 2 torpedo boats, 2 destroyers, a U-boat, a minesweeper and its escort vessel, and a patrol vessel, all between April 26, 1944 and September 6, 1944. She is known as "The Fightingest Ship in the Royal Canadian Navy", and still exists today as a national historic site and the ceremonial flagship of our navy.

U.S.S. England DE 635 sank 6 Japanese submarines single handedly. No accounts dispute this, none in combination of hits by other vessels, no merchant vessels.

USS Massachusetts has another distinction: She didn't lose a single sailor to action, accident or disease during the entire war.

One of Gneisenau's turrets still remains in Ørland, Norway.

Very imprecise about Warspite..the battle against the Italian fleet in 1940 took place in July and Giulio Cesare was only sligthly damaged, re-entering service after a very brief period

4:24 The Cesare suffered slight damage to the smokestack, starting a fire which was quickly put out. After a few weeks he returned to regular service, participating in the clash at Capo Spartivento and in numerous convoy escort operations