Salvaging and "scavenging" sunken ships

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Ruthlesssamuria

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Italy did the same at Taranto and so did the UK at Alexandra

Italy repaired their BB's after the UK attacked them in port same with the UK in Alexandra after the Italians returned the favor with their Frogmen using their"Pig Boat's"
 

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Perhaps the most extreme cases were the US cruisers blown apart in the night battles off Guadalcanal and neighboring islands. Ships like New Orleans and Minneapolis had their bows cut off by torpedo strikes, were saved by excellent damage control, fitted with false bows and steamed back to Pearl Harbor/US west coast for repairs. Also the Franklin was wrecked by kamikazes and fighters but managed to steam home under her own power at 14 knots. US damage control was generally outstanding; there are numerous cases of US ships being saved after taking what should have been fatal damage. Whether or not these fit the example of HoI ships steaming with 1%-5% strength remaining depends, I think, on whether you base that figure on combat strength or absolute ability to float.

Raising ships from the harbor bottom is hard work - the US BBs sunk at Pearl Harbor were tough to raise from shallow water but the capsized Oklahoma took years to right, raise and move - and the ship was effectively destroyed by the stresses of rolling over twice. Once capsized, a ship is a almost always a total loss. One feat of salvage that excited the world's admiration was the raising of the Italian battleship Leonardo Da Vinci, capsized and sunk by a magazine explosion in 1916 while loading ammunition. The Italians hoped to repair her but it would have been prohibitively expensive.

So ships can be salvaged, repaired and returned to service but this is usually done only if the damage is minor and the water shallow (as at Pearl Harbor, Alexandria and Taranto), otherwise the best course is to remove equipment and fittings and cut up the hulk for scrap. Some, of course, are left in situ as war graves.
 

Bluestreak2k5

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Perhaps the most extreme cases were the US cruisers blown apart in the night battles off Guadalcanal and neighboring islands. Ships like New Orleans and Minneapolis had their bows cut off by torpedo strikes, were saved by excellent damage control, fitted with false bows and steamed back to Pearl Harbor/US west coast for repairs. Also the Franklin was wrecked by kamikazes and fighters but managed to steam home under her own power at 14 knots. US damage control was generally outstanding; there are numerous cases of US ships being saved after taking what should have been fatal damage. Whether or not these fit the example of HoI ships steaming with 1%-5% strength remaining depends, I think, on whether you base that figure on combat strength or absolute ability to float.

Raising ships from the harbor bottom is hard work - the US BBs sunk at Pearl Harbor were tough to raise from shallow water but the capsized Oklahoma took years to right, raise and move - and the ship was effectively destroyed by the stresses of rolling over twice. Once capsized, a ship is a almost always a total loss. One feat of salvage that excited the world's admiration was the raising of the Italian battleship Leonardo Da Vinci, capsized and sunk by a magazine explosion in 1916 while loading ammunition. The Italians hoped to repair her but it would have been prohibitively expensive.

So ships can be salvaged, repaired and returned to service but this is usually done only if the damage is minor and the water shallow (as at Pearl Harbor, Alexandria and Taranto), otherwise the best course is to remove equipment and fittings and cut up the hulk for scrap. Some, of course, are left in situ as war graves.

The 1% strength is ok to mimic this as long as it affects everything on the ship. A 1% ship should be able to move at a ridiculous low speed, have little to no fire power, and little to no defenses.

If they implemented the change I think should be done where ships are separated into different pieces, then it would be easier to model a lot of this. You could completely destroy the bridge, front, bridge, and armaments, and still be able to move the ship at quite a decent speed if the engines hadn't been damaged. You could even enable "ship repairs" where the crew is able to repair a small % of the damage on each compartment.
 

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The US could spend the time, money and resources to rebuild outdated ships and so it did - but if the old BBs hadn't been present it seems likely that they would not have been much missed.

True, but I want to add that the US didn't even really need a "fleet in being" to deter certain kinds of attacks. While Tirpitz sat in Norway being a continuous source of irritation to the Royal Navy, US battleships weren't even doing that kind of thing.

That being said, I wouldn't fault them for rebuilding those ships. No one know just how bad things were going to be, so the idea that "we need to make sure we have every possible ship back in operation, even if it takes years, because we have no idea how many more we are going to lose or be able to actually build" is sound.

US damage control was generally outstanding; there are numerous cases of US ships being saved after taking what should have been fatal damage. Whether or not these fit the example of HoI ships steaming with 1%-5% strength remaining depends, I think, on whether you base that figure on combat strength or absolute ability to float.

If ships with lots of damage had sharply reduced speed, combat effectiveness, and were more vulnerable to certain kids of attacks (I'm specifically thinking of torpedo attacks on crippled ships), then I think that it would be fair to say that a ship with 5% remaining health is either a ship with a false bow that made it back to a dry dock, or it was a ship sunk in a shallow harbor that was salvaged. That would be good enough, without turning the game into D&D..."Destroyers and Dry Docks".
 

SchwarzKatze

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The 1% strength is ok to mimic this as long as it affects everything on the ship. A 1% ship should be able to move at a ridiculous low speed, have little to no fire power, and little to no defenses.

If they implemented the change I think should be done where ships are separated into different pieces, then it would be easier to model a lot of this. You could completely destroy the bridge, front, bridge, and armaments, and still be able to move the ship at quite a decent speed if the engines hadn't been damaged. You could even enable "ship repairs" where the crew is able to repair a small % of the damage on each compartment.
Still no capture or raising sunken ships. Both cruisers of the ROCN were sunk, raised, and then operated by the IJN.