Okay, my posts keep getting eaten. I’ll try one more time, highly abbreviated. Here is a breakdown of all sunken post-dreadnought battleships that I could find, by nation. I highly recommend that you check my work, because I don’t entirely trust it myself.
United States
Two battleships, Arizona and Oklahoma, were sunk at Pearl harbor. Others were badly damaged and refloated, but no further battleships were lost by the U.S. in the course of the war.
Japan
Ten battleships total were lost. Three were sunk in port at Kure in July, 1945. Three were lost in night surface actions (Savo Island III and Surigao Straight). One was lost to a British submarine. Three, Hiei, Yamato, and Musashi were caught by American aircraft in the open sea, Hiei after it was damaged in a nighttime surface engagement. Of those, only Musashi was sailing with a large fleet, and even she sustained most of her damage after she fell out of formation.
(A third super-dreadnought, Shinano was converted to an enormous aircraft carrier and sunk by an American submarine during its tryouts.)
Italy
One battleship, Conte di Cavour, was sunk at Taranto, re-floated, and sunk again at Trieste after falling into German hands. Another, the Roma, was sunk by German glide-bombs as the entire Italian fleet made its way to Malta to surrender to the Allies. Aside from Musashi, Roma may be the only example of a well-protected battleship going down to air attack.
Britain
Royal Oak was sunk by Gunther Prien’s U-47 inside Scapa Flow. Hood, a battlecruiser, was lost in a surface action. Barham was sunk at sea by U-331. Prince of Wales and the battlecruiser Repulse were of course sunk near Singapore by Japanese aircraft.
Germany
Bismark was lost to combined surface and air action. Tirpitz was sunk by aircraft while docked. Battlecruiser Scharnhorst was sunk in a surface action. Gneisenau was scuttled in 1945, still unrepaired from damaged sustained by air attack in 1942.
France
Ocean was captured by the Germans and bombed so badly in port that the Germans scuttled it a week later. Bretangue was sunk by British warships at Mers-el-kebir in 1940. Light battleship Strasbourg was sunk by Allied planes in 1944 in port. Clemenceau, though incomplete, was floated by the Germans, and the hulk was subsequently sunk by allied bombers, 1944.
So to sum up, here are the final results of World War II, unless I’ve omitted something:
[ul]
[li] Sunk in port by aircraft: 11 (counting incomplete ships and the eminently sinkable Conte di Cavour twice)[/li]
[li] Sunk in port by surface ships or submarine: 2[/li]
[li] Sunk by submarines at sea: 2 (3 including Shinano)[/li]
[li] Sunk exclusively by surface ships at sea: 5 (Hood, Scharnhorst, Fuso, Yamashiro, Kirishima)[/li]
[li] Sunk by combined surface and air: 2 (Hiei and Bismarck)[/li]
[li] Sunk exclusively by aircraft at sea: 5 (Yamato, Musashi, Prince of Wales, Repulse, and Roma.)[/li][/ul]
Of the five battleships sunk exclusively or near-exclusively by aircraft, only two, Musashi and Roma were in large formations that provided anything close to effective AA protection. None were sunk in the presence of a fleet with aircraft carriers, as best I can tell, but I suspect that one can argue that the carriers became the primary targets in that situation.
I’d like to see how many battleships and battlecruisers were damaged by aircraft, but that’s a much more difficult task. Anyway, it looks like a battlship was safest in a combined arms, three-dimensional setup at sea, and most endangered while sitting in port.