World War II: Ships

Allied battleships (2 British and one New Zealand) that damaged the Graf Spee so severely that it had to be scuttled		HMNZS Achilles
		HMS Ajax
		HMS Exeter
German supply ship boarded by Royal Navy personnel in Norwegian waters in February 1940, to rescue prisoners of war (merchant seamen)		Altmark
Sunk at Pearl Harbor; gave its name to a war memorial that marks its resting place		USS Arizona
Carried the Swordfish planes that attacked the Bismarck on 26th May, inflicting more severe damage		Ark Royal
British cruise liner, sunk by a U-boat near Rockall on the day Britain declared war on Germany (3 September 1939), while en route to Montreal		SS Athenia
Formidable German battleship, launched in February 1939; sunk on her only voyage of active service; sailed from the Baltic on 19 May 1941 to attack British supply ships; sank HMS Hood with one salvo on 24 May 1941; headed back to St. Nazaire for repairs, but was intercepted on 26 May and rendered unsteerable by 14 Fairey Swordfish bombers; attacked by the heavy cruiser Norfolk and the battleships Rodney and King George V; scuttled by her crew on 27 May after being crippled by torpedoes from HMS Dorsetshire		Bismarck
Obsolete destroyer – formerly USS Buchanan – blown up in the entrance to St. Nazaire harbour, in March 1942, at the start of "the greatest raid of all"		HMS Campbelltown
British battleship that sank the Scharnhorst in the Battle of the North Cape		HMS Duke of York
Sister ship of the Scharnhorst: commissioned in 1938, withdrawn from service in 1942		Gneisenau
Scuttled in the mouth of the River Plate (off Montevideo), December 1939		Graf Spee
Germany's only aircraft carrier in WWII		Graf Zeppelin
The 13th and last British battlecruiser: launched in 1918, the pride of Britain's Royal Navy at the outset of World War II; sunk by the Bismarck in the Denmark Strait, with one salvo, on 24 May 1941 (only three of the 1,418 crew members survived)		HMS Hood
Royal Navy ship that attacked the Admiral Scheer on 5 Nov 1940 in 'the most heroic naval action of all time'		HMS Jervis Bay
Destroyer commanded in the early years of WWII by Lord Louis Mountbatten		HMS Kelly
Former ocean liner, requisitioned for use as a troop ship: sunk by German bombers off St. Nazaire on 17 June 1940: the largest loss of life from a single ship in British maritime history (probably between 4,000 and 7,000)		RMS Lancastria
Ship on board which Japan surrendered in Tokyo Bay on 2 September 1945		USS Missouri
French ocean liner – the largest and fastest passenger ship of her day: seized by US authorities at New York for use as a troop ship, and renamed USS Lafayette; caught fire in 1942 while being converted; salvaged at great expense, but restoration was deemed too costly; scrapped in 1946		SS Normandie
British heavy cruiser: involved in the sinking of the Bismarck in 1941; engaged with the Scharnhorst on its way to the North Cape on Christmas Day 1943 – inflicting damage, but suffering damage itself		HMS Norfolk
Built in 1940 by the Texas Oil Company (now Texaco) as an oil tanker; requisitioned by the Allies to re–supply Malta; played a fundamental role in Operation Pedestal, one of the fiercest and most heavily contested of the Malta Convoys, in August 1942; reached Malta successfully, but was so badly damaged that she had to be effectively scuttled in order to offload her cargo, and never sailed again; fondly remembered in Malta to this day, considered to be the saviour of the island		SS Ohio
Survived Pearl Harbor: sold to Argentina, renamed General Belgrano		USS Phoenix
British battleship: launched March 1941, involved in the Battle of Denmark Strait, May 1941, when it attacked the Bismarck along with HMS Hood (which was sunk); carried Churchill across the Atlantic for his first meeting with Roosevelt; sunk by Japanese aircraft on 10th December 1941 (3 days after Pearl Harbor)		Prince of Wales
German heavy cruiser that accompanied the Bismarck on its only offensive operation, and was engaged by HMS Hood in the Battle of the Denmark Strait, in May 1941 (before Hood was sunk by the Bismarck with a single salvo)		Prinz Eugen
British battlecruiser, launched 1916; sent to the Far East with the Prince of Wales 1941, and sunk in the same Japanese raid		Repulse
Italian battleship sunk by the Germans while on her way to Malta to surrender, September 1943		Roma
The first of five Royal Navy battleships and battlecruisers to be sunk in WWII: torpedoed in Scapa Flow on 14 October 1939, by a German U–boat commanded by ace Günther Prien		HMS Royal Oak
German battle–cruiser sunk at the North Cape (Norway) on Boxing Day 1943		Scharnhorst
Sister ship of the Bismarck – known as the Lone Queen of the North – sunk by the RAF in a Norwegian fjord in November 1944		Tirpitz
The other ship left where it sank at Pearl Harbor		USS Utah
Carried the Swordfish planes that attacked the Bismarck on 24th May		Victorious
German troopship sunk by Russian submarine on 30 Jan 1945 with the largest ever loss of life at sea (903 of about 8,500 survived)		Wilhelm Gustloff

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World War II: Ships