When has ramming a ship ever worked in reality

Cafe Society
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When has ramming a ship ever worked in reality ?

It is common in many motion pictures to use ramming a ship as a plot device.

IE Star Trek has used it many times.

As a background, here is the Wikpedia entry on it

Aside from a dozen or so instances in WW2 of submarines mostly and the Kamikazes of WW2, it has not been overly effective in real life as a military action.
It can be used for a unprovoked surprise attack (ie 9/11 or by the many suicide vehicle attacks) but that is the equivalent of a sucker punch

There were a couple of attempts in the US Civil War, but overall the success rate was very low.

More recently, the US Navy had 2 recent accidental rammings but both appear to be accidental rather than being deliberate.

Aside from accidents or unprovoked sneak attacks, in reality, has this ever been an effective technique.

Thanks

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Through the 19th century many warships were designed specifically to ram. So ramming was effective from the time we learned wood could float until effective cannon fire rendered it obsolete.

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Heck, the ancient triremes used ramming as their main tactic.
Pretty much their only tactic, too.

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Ask the 7th Fleet. They have 2 ships in drydock because they hit/were hit. Apparently, it works.

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In WWII, USMC Lieutenant Robert ‘Bob’ Klingman sawed down a Japanese ‘Nick’ (twin-engine fighter) with the propeller of his F4U Corsair. Kingman made it home. The ‘Nick’ didn’t.

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The Battle of Lissa in 1866. It was a naval battle fought in the Adriatic between the Austrians and the Italians. Due to luck and an odd set of circumstances, ships ramming each other decided the outcome of the battle.

That screwed up military thinking for a few decades. Navies were undergoing major technological changes at the time and Lissa was mistakenly seen a harbinger rather than an unrepeatable fluke. It wasn’t until 1905 and the Battle of Tsushima that naval theorists completely shook off the belief in ramming as a viable tactic.

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Thanks for the additional quotes

Still aside from these number of actual incidents, it is more of a last gasp attempt rather than a real effective technique.
Thanks

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Fictional example, but since we’re still in Cafe Society for some bizarre reason:

In the novel (but not movie) The Hunt for Red October, the Red October destroys Tupelov’s attack sub by ramming it.

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Worked well in Animal House.

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There’s at least one Star Trek: TNG novel that uses ramming (the only Star Trek example I can think of; I’m not sure where the OP gets “many”) in which the Enterprise-D puts its “Structural Integrity Field” to maximum (the SIF get referenced numerous times during the show to lampshade why the ship doesn’t fall apart under the various stresses of maneuvering at warp speed, see also “Inertial Dampeners”) and plows through a Klingon warship like it was tissue paper. I found it amusing.

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The Enterprise E and the Kelvin employed ramming. Worf ordered the Defiant to “ramming speed”, but was rescued before carrying it out.

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Let’s see on Star Trek alone that I can remember

  1. The reboot of Star Trek with the Kelvin

  2. Star Trek TOS, The Doomsday Machine episode

  3. Star Trek TNG, the last movie where the Enterprise E rams the Romulan supership

  4. Star Trek TNG, in Best of the Both Worlds, they are going to ram the Borg ship at the end when they found an alternate way to defeat them

5, Multiple times on Star Trek DS9

  1. The pilot episode of Star Trek Discovery

That is just what I can remember off the top of my head

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I must be suppressing most of these memories because the idea is inherently ridiculous and my mind rejects it.

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Even though it was an accident due to a tragic miscalculation, HMS Camperdown collided with HMS Victoria during maneuvers in 1893. Both Battleships had ‘ram’ bows. Victoria was struck and severely holed on the starboard side, filled and capsized within 13 minutes with the loss of half the crew.

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I go to a family camp where we usually have a “water event day” featuring lots of silly water races, many of which involve canoes or kayaks. Ramming is a highly effective tactic to slow an opponent’s vessel, although the speed cost to the rammer is great enough that it’s often a third party who most benefits.

Still, I have lots of real-life experience that ramming a canoe without a paddle (kids use their hands) or even a canoe in a straight-up canoe race will significantly increase the time it takes to complete a course.

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This doesn’t involve naval ships, but there were cases of tanks ramming other tanks in WWII.

The German Tiger was a mean monster. It could easily poke holes through a Sherman, and the Sherman in response couldn’t penetrate the Tiger’s front armor, even with a direct hit. The only hope a Sherman had of taking out a Tiger was to maneuver around behind it and shoot it in the ass (which was featured as a plot point in the movie Kelly’s Heroes). It took on average four Shermans to take out a single Tiger.

The Russian T-34 had a better gun than the woefully undergunned Sherman, but even the Russians had a difficult time against the Tiger’s thick armor. Fortunately for both the Russians and the U.S. forces, the Germans couldn’t build enough Tigers, because the Tigers were just too complex and difficult to build (this is often cited as a classic example of why the “best” weapons don’t always win wars).

While the Russians had difficulty shooting the Tigers, they found out that they had a fair success rate if they just rammed the Tigers. The Russian philosophy, which they still use, is to make things simple, easy to produce, and rugged, and the simpler and more rugged T-34 would often survive the ramming, and the Tiger often would not.

This has been greatly exaggerated, with lots of tales of those “crazy Russians”, but there is some truth to the legends, and T-34s did ram Tigers on many different occasions in WWII. The Battle of Kursk is often cited as a great victory for the Russians and their ramming. The reality of that battle is that while some tanks were rammed, the Tigers generally kicked the T-34’s backsides up and down the battlefield. Once you get past the hype though, there is good evidence that many T-34s did intentionally ram Tigers during WWII on several different occasions, and they were often successful.

There was also at least one case that I’m aware of where a Sherman rammed a Tiger and managed to disable it. during the Battle of Caen. The Sherman shot the Tiger with a direct hit, which the Tiger just shrugged off (a common occurrence in the rare exchanges between Shermans and Tigers), so the Sherman commander just rammed it. The Sherman had hit the Tiger’s track, but the Tiger’s gun still worked. In order to finish it off, the Sherman tank commander quickly got a Firefly (basically, a Sherman upgraded with a much better gun, one that could actually penetrate the armor of a Tiger) and used that to permanently take out the Tiger.

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Aerial Ramming has been used since pretty much the beginning of aerial combat.

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Greenpeace seems to have a lot of experience getting rammed during their protests

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At the Second Battle of the Dover Straight in 1917 the British destroyer Broke rammed the German* G42*. Some of the German crew scrambled aboard the bows from their sinking vessel and the pipe of ‘Hands to repel boarders’ was passed for probably the last time in the Navy.

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Did you ever hear of PT 109?