Photos Navies Of All Nations

Germany:
During the severe Winter of 1940, battleship Gneisenau steams slowly in the ice with an escorting destroyer.


Type VIIA U-boat U-34 emblem during winter of 1940-41. Beneath it is the training boat emblem.

She was sunk at 21:55 on 5 August 1943 at Memel (today's Klaipėda in Lithuania), in the Baltic, after a collision with the U-boat tender Lech. Four men died, although 39 survived. The boat was raised on 24 August but stricken on 8 September 1943.

Conning tower of Type VIIC U-boat U-756. Commisioned in Dec 1941. U-756 did not survive to complete her first patrol and did not sink or damage any ships. Eighteen days into her first patrol, on 1 September 1942 U-756 was in the mid North-Atlantic when she was attacked by the corvette HMCS Morden. Heavily damaged, the vessel went down with all 43 aboard.


Neger human torpedo inspected by an Allied serviceman on the Anzio beachhead in April 1944

The first mission took place on the night of 20/21 April 1944. Thirty Negers were launched against Allied ships berthed in Anzio. Only 17 of them managed to deploy, with the other 13 capsizing upon reaching the water. Three failed to return and up until then, the Allies had no knowledge of this new unusual weapon. None had made any successful attacks.

Italy:
Brin class submarine Brin under air attack, Atlantic Ocean, spring of 1941. Surrendered to the Allies in 1943; discarded in February 1948.


Battleship Duilio at a bouy in the years immediately after WWII

RN:
Column 'B', Royal Navy Fleet Review, 1909, Thames River Estuary. All four ships in Column B were King Edward VII-class predreadnoughts- HMS King Edward VII, Britannia, Hindostan and Dominion

France:
Aquitaine class FREMM frigate Lorraine (D657). 2022

Germany:
Derfflinger class battlecruiser SMS Hindenburg being raised, July 1930.

USN:
Pennsylvania-class armoured cruiser USS Maryland (ACR 8) showing off her 8" main battery, circa 1905.


USS Maryland (ACR 8),circa 1905

RN:
HMS Queen Elizabeth and Type 23 frigate HMS Richmond pass through the Verrazzano Bridge, New York. 25 September 2022


Type 23 frigate HMS Kent returns to HMNB Portsmouth after operations in the North Sea (2 December 2022)

Italy:
Carlo Bergamini-class FREMM frigate Carlo Margottini (F 592)

Russia:
Project 941UM Akula (NATO Typhoon) class SSBN Dmitriy Donskoi (TK-208) during Navy Day, 2018. He was decommissioned in Feb 2023

Japan:
Aircraft carriers Kasagi and Ibuki at Sasebo in about 1948 while being broken up for scrap

USN:
Battleship USS West Virginia (BB-48) En route to the west coast after she had been salvaged and given preliminary repairs at Pearl Harbor. Original photo is dated 20 April 1943


Alaska-class large cruiser USS Hawaii (CB-3) leaving the launching ways at the New York Shipbuilding Corp., Camden, NJ on 3 November 1945.

Italy:
Maestrale-class frigate Maestrale (F-570), underway during Operation Enduring Freedom, May 8, 2002

USSR & USN:
At anchor in the harbour at Sevastopol: Project 1134B Berkut B (NATO Kara) class guided missile cruisers Azov & Project 1164 Atlant (NATO SLAVA) class guided missile cruiser Slava, Ticonderoga class guided missile cruiser USS Thomas S. Gates (CG 51) & OHP class guided missile frigate USS Kauffman (FFG 59). Aug 4-8, 1989

USN & Japan:
Independence class USS Charleston (LCS-18) and Takanami class destroyer JS Makinami (DD-112) conducting joint training in the South China Sea, Feb 2023

RN & USN:
HMS Queen Elizabeth, flagship of the Grand Fleet, seen from USS New York (BB-34) at Scapa Flow, 1918. Note the rangefinder baffles between the funnels, designed to confuse optical rangefinders, a common sight late war.

Netherlands:
Coastal defence ship HNLMS De Zeven Provinciën in 1910. She suffered a high-profile mutiny on 5 February 1933, which had far-reaching implications for politics in the Netherlands

HNLMS De Zeven Provinciën was a coastal defence ship in service from 1910 until 1942. It was a small cruiser-sized warship that sacrificed speed and range for armour and armament.

While off the northwest tip of Sumatra, mutiny broke out on 5 February 1933. Part of the mixed Dutch and Indonesian crew seized control of the ship, keeping it in operation and sailing it southwards along the Sumatran coast. After six days during which the mutineers remained defiant, the Dutch Defence Minister Laurentius Nicolaas Deckers authorized an attack by military aircraft.

On 10 February 1933 a task group of five Dornier 'Wal' flying boats (D-7, D-8, D-11, D-18 and D-35) and three Fokker 'T' bombers was launched.

At 9:18 AM a 50 kg bomb from D-11 struck the ship, killing 23 mutineers, whereupon the others immediately surrendered. In the fierce controversy which broke out immediately afterwards, it was asserted that this outcome was not deliberate, and that the only intention was to intimidate the mutineers. Incidentally, this was an early demonstration of the vulnerability of surface ships to aerial bombardment, of which this ship itself was to be a victim 10 years later. However, at the time naval experts in the Netherlands and elsewhere paid little attention to this aspect, the whole event being mainly discussed in terms of the putting down of a mutiny.

The cause and motivation of the mutiny was the focus of considerable debate, both in the Dutch public opinion and political system at the time, and among historians up to the present.

Dutch researchers such as Loe de Jong believe that an active communist cell had been among the sailors—which was asserted in a highly inflammatory manner by nationalist right-wingers at the time, while in later periods Dutch and Indonesian communists were happy enough to be credited with what became a heroic myth in left-wing circles.

However, J. C. H. Blom asserts that the mutiny was essentially spontaneous and unplanned, resulting from protest at pay cuts and bad working conditions, as well as generally poor morale in the Dutch Royal Navy at the time.

HMS Glamorgan

Spain
Flagship of the Fleet Cruiser CANARIAS 1936-1975

RN:
Torpedo ram HMS Polyphemus in drydock at Malta, 1881.

The third HMS Polyphemus was a Royal Navy torpedo ram, serving from 1881 until 1903. A shallow-draft, fast, low-profile vessel, she was designed to penetrate enemy harbours at speed and sink anchored ships. Designed by Nathaniel Barnaby primarily as a protected torpedo boat, the ram was provided very much as secondary armament

USN:
Battleship USS New Jersey (BB-62) in dry dock at Long Beach Naval Shipyard, undergoing modernization and reactivation. She was recommissioned for the fourth and last time on December 28, 1983. Photographed by PH2 Gary G. Ballard, on February 5, 1982