The Duchess of Zeon wrote:
In reference to eyci mentioning that he thought it was normally for ships to be easily killed. Which is manifestly not the case; it's really all across the board. The German battlecruisers at Skaggerak for instance were far more resistant than the British, to the point of being their exact opposites in damage handled.
They did do better, but exact opposites, I think not. If they’d had British ammunition then at least two of them would have blown up too. As it was the British ships that didn’t suffer magazine explosions held up to some non trivial levels of damage, several remained in action with over a dozen heavy hits. Some of the German ships that survived were effectively out of action, like Von Der Tann, which fought much of the battle with one gun in one turret firing under manual power only. The survival of Seydlitz was epic, but only possible because she was able to run herself aground at several points along the short trip home.
Edit: found I still have a listing I made a while back of what sank all of Japanese WW2 cruisers, which shows the diversity of damage that can be fatal and the tendency to overkill anything that stops moving. The Japanese heavy cruisers are for the most part big tough ships, but the light cruiser… ugh even Sydney can clearly outmatch every single one of them. Many sank from one torpedo, but a number also did previously survive single torpedoes.
In some cases I have excluded minor damage taken before the sinking but not repaired, as I judged it not relevant to the ships loss. Note also that more ships then listed suffered explosions of its own torpedoes but I have not always mentioned this, since in many cases the vessel was already clearly lost by the time the warheads detonated.
Fatal Damage Inflicted On Japanese Cruisers
Heavy Cruisers
Kako – 3 Mk10 submarine torpedo hits
Furutaka – 24 x 6in and 8in shells
Kinugasa – 1 x 500lb bomb hit, 1 x 1000lb near miss bomb
Aoba – 1 x 500lb bomb hit, 1 x 2000lb near miss bomb
Myoko – scuttled postwar after being crippled by a single submarine torpedo
Nachi – the ship that wouldn’t die – 9 x aerial torpedoes, 20 x aerial bombs, 16 aerail rockets
Ashigara – 5 x submarine torpedoes
Haguro – 3 x destroyer torpedoes
Takao – scuttled postwar after being crippled by two submarine torpedoes
Atago – 4 x Mk14 submarine torpedoes
Maya – 4 x Mk14 submarine torpedoes
Chokai – crippled by a single 500lb bomb, scuttled during battle off Samar
Mogami – 15-25 8in shell hits + 2 x 500lb bomb hits
Mikuma – 5 x 500lb and 1000lb bomb hits explode ships Long Lance torpedoes, companion at the time Mogami jettisons torpedoes and survived at least seven hits
Suzuya – 1 x near miss disables a shaft, second near miss bomb explodes Long Lance torpedoes
Kumano – no one likes Kumano, 8 x aerial torpedoes and 7 x 500lb bomb
Tone – 1 x 500lb bomb, 2 x 1000lb bomb plus near misses, ship beached with main deck above the waterline, raised and scrapped postwar.
Chikuma – crippled by 1 x Mk13 aerial torpedo, scuttled during battle off Samar
Light Cruisers
Kuma – 2 x submarine torpedo
Tama – damaged but amazingly still mobile after 1 x submarine torpedo hit, she was attacked days later by a second sub and broke in half and sank in minutes after three additional hits
Kitakami – survived war having been near missed to the point of engine damage, but never took a direct hit from anything, scrapped
Ooi – 2 x submarine torpedoes, one a dud, broke in half and sank after some hours
Kiso – 3 x 500lb bomb hit and 1 x 500lb near miss
Nagara – 1 x submarine torpedo
Isuzu - 1 x submarine torpedo reduced speed to 10knts, sank in minutes two hours later after a second sub scored two additional hits
Natori – crippled by 1 x Mk23 submarine torpedoe, fatally damaged by a second Mk18 torpedo an hour later
Yura – reduced to 14knts by two bomb hits from dive bombers, crippled several hours later by three more bomb hits from B-17s and dive bombers, scuttled with torpedoes
Kinu – one bomb hit and six near misses
Abukuma – damaged by one PT boat torpedo, hit by three bombs and numerous near misses the next day she remained underway until the fires spread to her torpedoes, four of them exploding, sank two hours later and after abandonment
Sendai – sunk by several 6in shell hits
Naka – broken in half by one aerial torpedo and one bomb, the ends of the wreck remained afloat until being sunk by a follow up dive bombing attack!
Jintsu – crippled by at least 10 x 6in shells and sunk by one surface torpedo
Yubari – 1 x submarine torpedo
Oyodo – sunk by numerous near miss bombs, but had taken 5 x 500lb bomb hits in previous attacks.
Agano – 2 x Mk14 submarine torpedoes
Noshiro – 1 x 500lb near miss, 2 x aerial torpedoes
Yahagi – sunk by a literal rain of aerial torpedoes and bombs, at least seven and twelve respectively, when accompanying Yamato, she was crippled and doomed by the first aerial torpedo hit
Sakawa – not proof against 21kt nuclear airburst at 500 meters, one of the few ships sunk by Test Able, abet only after a day of slow flooding.
"This cult of special forces is as sensible as to form a Royal Corps of Tree Climbers and say that no soldier who does not wear its green hat with a bunch of oak leaves stuck in it should be expected to climb a tree"
— Field Marshal William Slim 1956
Commander of the MFS Darwinian Selection Method (sexual)
