Ramming speed.

[CWO Marc]

@Gargantua:

GREAT examples by the way, what inspiration!

Here are a couple of others.  The idea of fitting ramming bows on battleships became quite fashionable after the Battle of Lissa, in which the ironclad Re d’Italia was rammed and sunk by an enemy ship.  Naval architects and naval officers became mesmerized by the impressive image of the Re d’Italia rolling over and sinking…but ignored the fact that, prior to being rammed, it had been lying dead in the water from battle damage.  Fast-forwarding a bit, an example of the kind of peacetime accident which finally convinced people that ram bows could be more dangerous to your friend and enemies is the Victoria-Camperdown collision of 1893, which is described in detail in the Wikipedia article on HMS Victoria (1887).

Of course, a ship doesn’t need a special ramming bow to ram another ship.  A dedicated ram simply increases the amount of damage to the enemy and minimizes the damage to yours.

For a few civilian examples of ships plowing bow-first into other ships (collisions, not ramming attempts), see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empress_of_ireland

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halifax_Explosion

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Andrea_Doria

Note in the case of the Andrea Doria sinking that the vessel which struck it –  MS Stockholm – was equiped with an icebreaking prow, and collided at a 90-degree angle, so the result was severe damage.

[knp7765]

I read an issue of GI Combat where Lt Jeb Stuart’s Sherman tank was on the deck of a US cargo ship when they were surprised by a German Pocket Battleship. The US Cargo ship rammed the German Pocket Battleship and Lt. Jeb Stuart drove his Sherman tank onto the deck of the German ship, blasting away at German sailors and causing much damage before returning to the cargo ship. The US Cargo ship then retreated with moderate damage to it’s bow while the German Pocket Battleship went down in flames.

So, we need to expand this rule to allow transport ships carrying tanks to ram enemy warships, at which point the tank will become an active participant in a naval conflict against the enemy warship.

(hee hee hee hee hee)

[lozmoid]

I once saw a poster of an Allied warship (a destroyer, I think) ramming an Axis submarine. How about a rule whereby your ships could try and ram an enemy sub before it submerges, or something?

[CWO Marc]

@Lozmoid:

I once saw a poster of an Allied warship (a destroyer, I think) ramming an Axis submarine. How about a rule whereby your ships could try and ram an enemy sub before it submerges, or something?

For inspiration, I recommend watching the last 10 minutes or so of the movies Action in the North Atlantic and The Enemy Below.  Both show an Allied surface ship ramming a sub which they’ve tricked into surfacing.

[Gargantua]

How do you “trick” someone into surfacing?

[CWO Marc]

@Gargantua:

How do you “trick” someone into surfacing?

The same trick was used in both films.  After the ship was torpedoed (but was still operational to some degree), its captain called for all stop on the engines (so the ship would look dead in the water), then ordered his men to simulate severe damage (by setting fire to the deck cargo in one film, by ordering his engineer to generate black smoke from the funnel in the other).  The rationale in both cases was to convince the U-boat captain to save his torpedoes by surfacing and finishing them off with his deck gun.  As soon as the Germans fell for it (in both films), the ship captain ordered full steam on all engines, turned sharply and headed straight for the sub.

[Gargantua]

They used that trick in an episode of Star-Trek voyager too.  To get someone to uncloak.

As I recall Chekotay vented plasma through the port necels.

[MacNaughton]

Apparently Star Trek is more realistic than any of us ever expected…

[CWO Marc]

@Gargantua:

They used that trick in an episode of Star-Trek voyager too.  To get someone to uncloak.

Which is hardly a coincidence because the script for the episode in question is a blatant rip-off of The Enemy Below, with a few elements of Run Silent, Run Deep thrown in for good measure.

[Red Harvest]

I would think that any ramming scenario is already factored in to the attack and defense values.

Yes, ramming was still occurring, but most of what I recall involves destroyers or other vessels ramming surfaced subs, or the collision between the cruiser Hipper and the destroyer Glowworm (which is credited as ramming by the Glowworm although it was the Hipper’s intent to ram the destroyer and the destroyer’s steering was out by then, so its turn was coincidence), or the sinking of PT-109 by the destroyer Amagiri.

The last boats that I would think of making a ramming attack in the WWII era would be capital ships, particularly undamaged capital ships.  Big ships were stand off weapons (aircraft carriers and battleships.)  Unless there is a long/mid range combat phase followed by a short range naval combat phase I don’t see how the attack roll would work conceptually.

[kcdzim]

Can’t believe none of you listed the RMS Queen Mary’s run in (so to speak) with the light cruiser HMS Curacoa…

[CWO Marc]

@Red:

The last boats that I would think of making a ramming attack in the WWII era would be capital ships, particularly undamaged capital ships.  Big ships were stand off weapons (aircraft carriers and battleships.)  Unless there is a long/mid range combat phase followed by a short range naval combat phase I don’t see how the attack roll would work conceptually.

An excellent point.  Using big ships as rams rather than as long-range weapon platforms would be roughly in the same league (though slightly more credible) than bringing them alongside an enemy ship so that the crew – armed with pistols and cutlasses, if their captain is a traditionalist – could board it.  The British captain who came closest to carrying on this tradition during WWII was (as I recall) Captain Vian of HMS Cossack (a destroyer), who led a boarding party over to the German supply ship Altmark and freed its POWs with the dashing remark (addressed towards the ship’s holds), “Any British down there?  Well, come on up – the Navy’s here!”