![]() ![]() ![]() USS Buckley rammed and was rammed by U-66 in May 1944 and HMS Easton rammed U-458 in 1943. The damage that lightly-constructed destroyers took from using the tactic led the Royal Navy to officially discourage the practice from early 1943, after HMS Hesperus spent three months in dry dock following her sinking of U-357 in December 1942, and after HMS Harvester was torpedoed and sunk after damaging her propellers during the ramming of U-444 in March 1943. In World War II (1939-1945), naval ships often rammed other vessels, though this was often due to extraordinary circumstances, as considerable damage could be caused to the attacking ship. In 1918 the British troop ship HMT Olympic rammed SM U-103 – the submarine sustained such heavy damage that its crew was forced to scuttle and abandon ship. This was an incidental use of the ship's bow, however. ![]() The Austrian ship retreated unharmed as the Italian vessel rolled over and sank.ĭuring the War of the Pacific of 1879-1884, the Peruvian ironclad Huascar repeatedly rammed the Chilean corvette Esmeralda, sinking the wooden steam- and wind-powered ship (May 1879).ĭuring World War I (1914-1918), HMS Dreadnought rammed and sank German submarine U-29 in 1915. Lying helpless in the water, she was struck three times by the Austrian Erzherzog Ferdinand Max, the flagship of the Austrian Commander-in-Chief Admiral Tegetthoff. The Italian ironclad Re d'Italia, damaged aft by gunfire, had no functioning rudder. The first recorded use of a ram in modern times in fighting between major warships occurred in the American Civil War at the Battle of Hampton Roads in March 1862, when the armored Confederate warship CSS Virginia rammed the Union frigate Cumberland, sinking her almost immediately.Īnother significant use of the naval ram occurred during the Third Italian War of Independence (June to August 1866) at the battle of Lissa, between Italy and Austria. In ancient China, rams were largely unknown, as the lack of a keel and the flat shape of the junk's bow was not conducive to constructing an elongated underwater spur. The ancient Greeks used their trireme vessels for ramming as well. Navies in antiquity commonly used the ram: the "beak" ( Latin: rostrum) became an important part of the armament of the galleys of Imperial Rome. View from US destroyer Caron at the moment of ramming by Soviet light frigate (FFL 824) on 12 February 1988 ![]()
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