Photos Navies Of All Nations

Italy:
Spica class torpedoboat Cigno during trials, 1937. She was part of the screen of destroyers and torpedo boats escorting a four-freighter convoy to Tripoli on 26 May 1941, when two Blenheim bombers were shot down. Cigno rescued hundreds of Italian survivors after the Battle of Cape Bon, where she dodged four torpedoes launched by the Dutch destroyer HNLMS Isaac Sweers. Sunk in battle 16 April 1943 southeast of Marettimo island, by British destroyers HMS Paladin and HMS Pakenham, while escorting a transport ship to Tunis. Pakenham was also sunk in the same engagement.
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During the afternoon of 15 April, the British destroyers HMS Pakenham and Paladin were on an exercise off Malta. A signal arrived from the C-in-C Malta that ships had been sighted off Pantelleria, giving orders to investigate.

At 02:48, after illuminating the foremost Italian ship, Pakenham opened fire at 2,700 yd (1.3 nmi; 1.5 mi; 2.5 km).[9] When the range was estimated by Cigno at 2,500 yd (1.2 nmi; 1.4 mi; 2.3 km) it also opened fire and hit Pakenham on the stern with a 100 mm (3.9 in) 100/47 shell, starting a fire and disabling its aft torpedo tubes. Cassiopea, having steered north north-west to confront Paladin, opened fire at 4,500 yd (2.2 nmi; 2.6 mi; 4.1 km). As soon as the firing was heard, Belluno and its escorts turned for Trapani. Pakenham received a second hit at 02:50 which exploded in the lower deck and caused a much bigger fire, leading to Stevens ordering the aft magazine to be flooded.

The ships were very close and both fired with every weapon that could be brought to bear, filling the air with multi-coloured tracer ammunition. Pakenham hit Cigno in the forward boiler just to the rear of the bridge at 02:53, releasing a large cloud of smoke and steam over the ship as it came to a stop. While drifting, Cigno fired torpedoes at Pakenham to no effect and Pakenham replied from its undamaged forward torpedo tubes and struck Cigno amidships, breaking the ship in two. The stern quickly sank but the forward section of the ship stayed afloat; its 100 mm (3.9 in) gun-crew continuing to fire.

Pakenham turned north towards Cassiopea but just after 03:00, one or two shells, fired from the forward half of Cigno as it was sinking or from Cassiopea, hit on the waterline cutting the boiler tubes and causing the engine room to flood; the steam forcing the engine-room crew to evacuate. Pakenham listed 15° to port, electrical power was lost and stopped in the water, fires burning. Cassiopea and Paladin had not been hit until Paladin raked Cassiopea with a burst of QF 2-pounder pom-pom fire, which jammed the rudder and started a big fire forward and a smaller one aft. The crews of the two 100 mm (3.9 in) guns to the rear remained in action and at 03:06 Cassiopea fired a torpedo at 1,200 yd (0.59 nmi; 0.68 mi; 1.1 km) to no effect.

At 03:08 Paladin doused its lights and ceased fire, which misled the crew of Cassiopea into claiming a hit. Paladin was taking evasive action and broke away to the south-east, after its captain mistook Cassiopea for a Capitani Romani-class cruiser, because Italian shells exploding in the water caused unusually large splashes. Pakenham had regained power and continued north, achieving a hit on Cassiopea at 4,000 yd (2.0 nmi; 2.3 mi; 3.7 km); Cassiopea returned fire from its rearward guns and scored two hits on its stern pom-pom mounting and searchlight at 03:13. Pakenham ceased fire and turned to follow Paladin; Cassiopea was badly damaged, with two large fires onboard and did not pursue.

In 2009, Vincent O'Hara wrote that the Battle of the Cigno Convoy was a rare occasion when Italian naval escorts defeated a night attack by British ships. The British thought that they had been engaged by two fleet destroyers and believed that they had sunk them, putting the loss of Pakenham down to an unlucky hit and the lack of experience of both British crews. O'Hara wrote that experience had more influence on the result; the British ships had recently been transferred from the Indian Ocean and Rich deciding to turn away was "unusually cautious". The two Italian crews were veteran and spotted the British ships before the British opened fire but for the Italians to call the engagement a success when one ship was saved for the loss of one escort and another seriously damaged showed the extent of the British ascendancy in night-fighting

Cigno suffered the loss of 103 crew. Pakenham suffered nine crew killed and fifteen wounded; one of whom died on 18 April
 
USN:
Nimitz class USS Ronald Reagan (CVN-76) and a Los Angeles-class fast-attack submarine in the waters east of the Korean Peninsula. Sept. 30, 2022.
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Russia:
Project 941UM Akula (NATO Typhoon) class SSBN Dmitriy Donskoy (TK-208), withdrawn from service in July 2022
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Italy:
Submarines Archimede (left) and Leonardo Da Vinci (right) shortly before sailing from Bordeaux, France, for their last mission, February 1943
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Archimede, a Brin-class submarine, had been stationed in the Red Sea at the outbreak of World War II. In the spring of 1941, shortly before the fall of Italian East Africa, she left Massawa, Eritrea, and reached Bordeaux after circumnavigating Africa. She joined Betasom, the Italian submarine base in the Atlantic located in Bordeaux; she carried out three patrols in the Atlantic, sinking two ships for a total tonnage of 25,629 GRT. On 26 April 1943 she sailed from Bordeaux for a patrol in the Southern Atlantic, off the coast of Brazil, under the command of Lieutenant Commander Guido Saccardo; she reached her patrol area and patrolled it for over a month without sighting any ships, until on 15 April, while on her way to a position where she was to rendez-vous with a German ‘milk cow’, she was attacked and sunk by a PBY Catalina flying boat of the USAAF, some 350 miles off the coast of Natal. Of her crew of sixty-seven, forty-two men went down with the ships; twenty-five climbed onto three life rafts that the Catalina had dropped before flying away, but only one man, Leading Seaman Giuseppe Lo Coco, was still alive when his raft was finally found by Brazilian fishermen after twenty-seven days adrift. The other rafts were never seen again.

Leonardo Da Vinci, a Marconi-class submarine, had been dispatched to the Atlantic in the autumn of 1940, shortly after entering service; between 1940 and 1943 she had carried out eleven patrols, becoming Betasom's most successful submarine with seventeen ships sunk, totalling 120,243 GRT (including the one sunk during her last patrol). On 20 February 1943 Da Vinci, under the command of Lieutenant Commander Gianfranco Gazzana Priaroggia, sailed from Bordeaux for a patrol in the Southern Atlantic and the Indian Ocean. She sailed down the west coast of Africa and reached her patrol area in the Indian Ocean, some 200 miles east of Durban; after patrolling it for three weeks, Da Vinci began her voyage home. This patrol had been the most successful for this submarine: on 14 March 1943 she had sunk the British troopship/liner Empress of Canada (21,517 GRT), the largest ship ever sunk by an Italian submarine; four days later, the British freighter Lulworth Hill (7,628 GRT); on 17 April, the Dutch merchant Sembilan (6,566 GRT); on the following day, the British steamer Manar (8,007 GRT); on 21 April, the American Liberty ship John Drayton (7,177 GRT); and finally, on 25 April, the British tanker Doryessa (8,078 GRT). During her inbound voyage, on 23 May, Da Vinci ran into two British convoy some 300 miles west of Vigo, Spain, and was located and heavily depth charged by destroyer HMS Active and frigate HMS Ness. After the last attack, the British warships saw air bubbles, oil, wreckage, and human remains come to the surface. There were no survivors.
 
Australia:
Majestic class light fleet carrier HMAS Melbourne (R21) on RAS approach whilst en route to Indian Ocean deployment. Photographed from Tide-class replenishment oiler HMAS Supply (AO195) September 8, 1980
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Italy:
Aircraft carrier Giuseppe Garibaldi (C 551) with nine AV-8B Harrier II and one Sea King in the flight deck. Astern is San Giorgio-class LPD San Giusto (L 9894) and a Stromboli-class oiler on the starboard quarter, 2016
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Sweden:
Armoured cruiser HMS Fylgia passing under the Kiel Canal, 1907
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Austro-Hungary:
Ship of the line SMS Kaiser after the Battle of Lissa, partially dismasted. July 1866
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USN:
Block 1 Virginia-class attack submarine USS North Carolina (SSN 777) leaving Pearl Harbor - December 2, 2023
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Flight IIA Arleigh Burke class destroyer USS Daniel Inouye (DDG 118) coming into Pearl Harbor. Dec 6, 2023
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PACIFIC OCEAN (Dec. 6, 2023) The Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72) transits the Pacific Ocean.
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USN:
Prisoners from U-490 (centre, two wearing life vests, one in shirtsleeves) on Edsall-class destroyer escort USS Inch (DE-146)'s quarter deck, awaiting transfer to USS Croatan (CVE-25)
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Type XIV supply and replenishment U-boat U-490's only patrol began with her departure from Kiel on 4 May 1944. She headed for the Atlantic by way of the so-called Faeroes Gap between Iceland and the Faeroe Islands, north of the British Isles.

Although as a supply boat, she avoided combat, she was lost on her first patrol when on 12 June, she was attacked in mid-ocean by the escort carrier USS Croatan and the destroyers Frost, Huse and Inch.

On the evening of 11 June the ship, in company with USS Frost and USS Huse, the three ships made contact with a submarine and proceeded to attack. After over 40 depth charges, the submarine surfaced, signaling SOS. Suspecting a ruse, Inch and her companions opened fire and destroyed German submarine U-490. The entire crew of 60 German sailors was rescued by the escorts
 
USN:
Nimitz class carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN-69) on builder's trials, James River, 30 July 1977
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USN:
Clemson class destroyer USS Goff (DD-247) making a full-power run in the Sea of Marmora, Turkey, on 25 March 1923
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Clemson class destroyer USS King (DD-242) off New York, September 19, 1925
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USN:
Wickes-class destroyer converted to high speed transport, USS Ward (APD-16) after being hit by a kamikaze on December 7, 1944. USS Ward (DD-139) fired the first shots of war for the United States when she spotted a midget submarine near the entrance to Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. At the time her captain was LCDR William W. Outerbridge, who had taken command of the ship two days earlier.

Exactly 3 years later, the Ward now a high-speed transport was operating off the Philippines when she was struck by a Japanese kamikaze amidship. The ship came to a stop and the crew attempted to fight the fires, but to no avail. They abandoned the ship around 11 am. Later that day the USS O'Brien (DD-725) was ordered to sink the Ward with gunfire. O'Brien's commanding officer at the time was William W. Outerbridge.
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Gleaves-class destroyer USS McCook (DMS-36) at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, 7 July 1945 after conversion to a destroyer/minesweeper
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Baltimore-class heavy cruisers USS Quincy (CA-71) and USS Boston (CA-69), Third Fleet, anchored in Sagami Wan, outside of Tokyo Bay, Japan, on August 28, 1945
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RN:
Queen Elizabeth class aircraft carriers HMS Queen Elizabeth (R08) and HMS Prince of Wales (R09) together in The Channel, 19 May 2021
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USN:
Iowa class battleship USS New Jersey (BB-62) during sea trials. Pacific Ocean, 24 September 1982
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Iowa class battleship USS Missouri (BB-63) at Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1991
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Sweden:
Tre Kronor class cruiser HMS Göta Lejon carrying mines, 1948
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