Was a battleship ever used against a coastal city at any time during the war? Large or small? Is there any evidence of any damage ever done to a land installation by a battleship?
In February of 1941, the HMS Renown, Malaya, and Sheffield bombarded the docks at Genoa, sinking 4 ships, damaging 18, and damaging the city. In July of 1945, the USS Iowa bombarded the Japanese cities of Muroran and Hitachi.
In fact, there were plenty of shore bombardments during World War II, especially in the Pacific theater. Almost every invasion was accompanied by shore bombardments to soften up enemy forces and destroy fortifications.
The German battleship SMS Schleswig-Holstein bombarded military positions in Poland as a precursor to the invasion of that country. The linked article and others mention bombardments of targets (at least one military) in urban areas.
Naval bombardment wasn’t enough to wipe out the Westerplatte at least.
I knew about the Pacific shellings, but I couldn’t think of any uses against cities. Thanks to you and Pushkin for the cites.
But OTOH, the Japanese survived the bombardments all too well and the rest … well, they don’t show much faith in the concept if that’s all that can be dredged up for an entire war.
This is an absence of proof issue, ie you’re being asked to prove it never happened which would be very difficult, as its essentially a conspiracy ‘its all secret’ claim. At best you can find nothing about it, whereupon he can go ‘well there you go told you it was hushed up’.
It would be pretty easy to ask the person questions that would be verifiable, eg what rank he was, what ship he was on, what were the other two ships, why he was given the info when it would obviously be pretty sensitive, etc etc.
Whether its worth it of course is another story. Its possible the story really did go round a ship he was on at the time and he was credulous enough to believe it, but complete fabrication by him is my guess.
A number of things come to mind, first and foremost is that most of the modern American sluggers were at Pearl Harbor, thus the battle line was in disarray from the get go. While the Bismark was sent to the bottom, preceding American entry into the way, the Tirpitz was very much a real bogey man to the convoys heading from the States and Canada, to England.
I dont recall any English sluggers stationed in American waters, but a number of them were being refitted and modernized at various US locations. Its possible that the gun room gossip got out of hand with a few beers and lasted that long.
Declan
I think there is a lot to this. Someone, somewhere could possibly produce some “highly classified paperwork” that would describe an invasion of Canada (or anywhere else). Part of the job of the Pentagon is to prepare war games. Create a scenario and prepare for it. I remember reading an article after Gulf War I. It seems that the Pentagon’s war games plans regarding the Mid-East were concentrated on a war with Iran. There was very little in war games plans for a war with Iraq. The Iraq invasion of Kuwait took place in August but it wasn’t until the next year that Gulf War I started. It took that long to revise the plans and implement the logistics of going to war.
In WWII there were guys that got rejected for enlistment in the US military and went to Canada to serve in the Canadian military because they believed in the war effort. That’s how close the alliance was. (I knew a guy who did exactly that.)
Completely agree. It’s almost certain that King is personally responsible for more American deaths than the Japanese caused at Pearl Harbor. His complicity in the success of the German Operation Drumbeat took more than just one form; in many ways he contributed directly to the Nazi success. In addition to resisting convoy and opposing security measures, he directly withheld ships from the defense, keeping them idle in port.
Of course, he wasn’t some Nazi villain; his reasoning was sound in a sense. Only surface warfare against Japan in the Pacific offered the kind of glory he hoped would make the Navy the darling of Congressional funding, and he was determined to point as many resources as possible toward the Pacific, at any cost. Turns out that cost was thousands of American lives, enormous financial loss, and a shattering blow to transatlantic shipping capacity, but that is exactly the kind of thing that happens when people make these “at any cost” decisions.
I find the story in the OP hard to credit. Churchill knew he needed American support to keep up the British war effort and was hoping for America to enter the war on the British side. Even in the extraordinarily unlikely case of the United States invading Canada, Churchill’s response probably would have been to put the needs of Britain ahead of those of Canada and try to reach an agreement with the United States rather than bomb us in retaliation.
I don’t see how any conceivable US invasion of Canada could have figured into British war plans.
However, I could see it just barely within the realm of possibility that the UK kept in mind the chance that the US government could switch sides and begin supporting the Nazis. Like an asteroid strike, it would be unlikely almost to the degree of impossibility – but if it did happen, the result would be sufficiently catastrophic that some sort of contingency plans were warranted.
So, a plan shell US ports to prevent U-boats from staging operations from the other side of the Atlantic, and to fend off American material support for the Nazis as long as possible? Maaaaybe?
Not really, tactically it would simply be throwing away 3 ships for no gain and if anything giving free propaganda to the US.
I could imagine some kind of sneak attack on military vessels or airfields if attack was thought to be credible/imminent, but simply having 3 valuable ships sitting around for so long a shot would be militarily ridiculous when you’re currently under direct attack from another power.
Otara
This is yet another strong argument against the story having any truth. What on earth would be the point of stationing ships on the far side of the Atlantic against a highly improbable military contingency? The whole point about fleets is that they can move - a squadron of battleships sitting safe and snug in Scapa Flow could cross the Atlantic in less than a week if His Majesty’s Government were mad enough to think bombarding New York was a good idea. It’s not as if the on-station ships can actually do anything to stop an invasion.
Actually we did have ships stationed along the coasts, and it was to do sentry duty [more or less] protecting american and canadian coastal waters against Germans on the east coast and Japanese on the west coast.
We did actually have german vessels and japanese vessels get quite close to the US. There are online sites where you can look for the locations of sunken miltary vessels from WW2 off the US coast. There is a german sub off Orient Point NY. It sunk an american collier. It was not a waste of time posting american war vessels along the coast.
No apparntly thought this responding to, and they were probably right to ignore it, but the two situations have… oh, I don’t know, NOTHING in common. at all. 1812 was largely a political mistake: it was not intended to be a sufficient force, but rather to get Canada to join the U. S. of A*. The major ground forces were reserved for defense, not attack. Regardles, then, during WW2, or now, an all-out attack by the United States against Canada would likely have been an overwhelming victory. That never happened because the United States never wanted an overwhelming attack. And Quebec would probably have been much happier and more quiescent as part of the United States, like Louisiana.
*Ironically, this may have failed principally because of the Revolution.
There were also coastal defense batteries around all the major cities and ports. I know Boston had a number of batteries guarding the entrance to the harbor. And these weren’t dinky little batteries just to scare off the occasional submarine, they were full-strength fortifications that could hold off a squadron of battleships. Boston harbor alone was protected by a handful of 16" guns, and several dozen 12" guns (see herefor the full list). And, IIRC, Boston didn’t have any particularly great military importance during the war.
If any battleship decided to start shelling the city, it might be lucky enough to get off a few salvos before getting sunk by the coastal defenses.
The Royal Navy had more than enough real work to do without wasting resources on a possible (but unimaginable) U.S. invasion of Canada.
But the Royal Navy DID sink a number of French ships, after the Germans installed the Vichy regime, in order to keep those ships from being used in support of the Axis.
It’s not critical to the discussion at hand, but I’d strongly disagree with that statement. We don’t have plans to invade all that many countries actually. I’ve spent some time in an operations, plans and strategy office. It’s very intensive and costly to develop these plans. And with requirements, objectives capabilities and forces (yours and their’s) changing all the time, the plans that you drew up four years ago aren’t all that currently anymore. So is there some invasion plan for Canada that was drafted 75 years ago that wasn’t cancelled? I suppose. but to say that we have an actual plan for Canada, or “every country on Earth” is nonsense.
Correct. Not an easy decision at all for Churchill, but probably the right one, under the circumstances: Attack on Mers-el-Kébir - Wikipedia
As for the OP: no frickin’ way.
Well, it would have been a waste of time to use a battleship (as in the OP) for that. Almost all the fighting that took place near any US coastline was submarine-vs-antisubmarine forces. A battleship would have been a liability when German wolfpacks were hunting. Yes, there was a limited German surface threat in the first half of the war, but it seems wasteful to station a huge chunk of resources in one place and hope the Germans come there. In reality, if the Germans had sortied into the Atlantic, there would have been a “Sink the Bismarck” style search, not a reliance on static pre-positioned ships.
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The British government knew we were still smarting from our last two attempts at bringing Canada into the fold. Were they expecting the Green Mountain Boys to come in by sea this time? I say BS on the claim of the OP’s wife’s sister’s husband about his grandfather. I’m also guessing that a sailor on a WWII battleships didn’t really know why he was anywhere unless he happened to be the Captain.
What others have said. Against subs the battleships would be worse than useless. Against a determined USA, a few battleships would have been sunk and gone at a serious time of need. There were probably battleships that patroled the Atlantic and refueled in North America at various times.