Naval Quiz

[Battleship IOWA]

Its a plane from VF-2B "The Flying Chiefs". A squadron with almost all enlisted pilots from the late 1920s to 1942. They were disbanded after the battle of Coral Sea.

I noticed the chevron on the tail

Correct! the "Flying Chiefs"was considered "the hottest outfit afloat" and were chosen to test the feasibility and practicality of deploying a single fighter to each ship to protect the scout planes. The experiment lasted from July until September 1927, and was the only time fighters were deployed aboard Battleships.

http://www.vfa2.navy.mil/flyingchiefs.htm

[Gun Grape]

I'm thinking of a 20th century naval battle. One of the most famous. This battle is famous because things happened it it that were First ever, Last ever and Only time.

I'll give you one of them.

It was the last time that the ships of a defeated fleet surrendered at sea.

Name the battle

[Ironduke]

Operation ZZ, aka Der Tag?

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-30128199

Armistice Day is remembered as the day World War One ended, but for naval historians Britain's greatest victory came 10 days later. Operation ZZ was the code name for the surrender of Germany's mighty navy.

For those who witnessed "Der Tag" or "The Day" it was a sight they would never forget - the greatest gathering of warships the world had ever witnessed.

It was still dark in the Firth of Forth when the mighty dreadnoughts of the Royal Navy's Grand Fleet began to raise steam and one by one let slip their moorings.

The huge shapes of more than 40 battleships and battlecruisers began to ease out, course set due east. As the procession of steel headed for the open water of the North Sea, more than 150 cruisers and destroyers joined them. The mightiest fleet ever to sail from Britain's shores was heading for a final rendezvous with its mortal enemy - the German High Seas Fleet.

Victory would be total. But there was to be no battle. After four years of naval stalemate, this was the day when Germany would deliver her warships into British hands, without a shot being fired.

The date was 21 November 1918. World War One had ended on land 10 days earlier, but this was to be the decisive day of victory at sea.

[Gun Grape]

Operation ZZ, aka Der Tag?

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-30128199

No this was a battle. Not a surrender ceremony.

[Gun Grape]

The was history's only decisive battle that was fought by modern battleship fleets. This battle caused the defeated country to negotiate a peace treaty.

[Ironduke]

Battle of Lemnos (1913)?

If this the wrong answer - by "modern battleship" do you mean post-Dreadnought?

[Gun Grape]

Battle of Lemnos (1913)?

If this the wrong answer - by "modern battleship" do you mean post-Dreadnought?

Nope.

Lets use the term steel battleships. Because pre or post Dreadnought this is the only decisive battle between 2 battleship fleets that brought on the end of a war

[Ironduke]

Battle of Tsushima?

[Gun Grape]

Battle of Tsushima?

We have a winner.

Also notible in the Battle of Tsushima, Or otherwise know as the Battle of the Sea of Japan, This was the first naval battle that used wireless telegraph (Japan).

And President Theodore Roosevelt Jr. was awarded the Nobel Prize for brokering the Treaty of Portsmouth that ended the war

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Tsushima

Your question

[Ironduke]

Which ship, built in 240 BC, had bronze-clad mast-tops for Ancient Greek Marines to fight from, and an iron palisade on its fighting deck to defend against enemy Marines trying to board the ship?

hint: this ship was ordered built by the Greek tyrant Hiero II of Syracuse

[Battleship IOWA]

The Syracusia, designed by Archimedes?

[Ironduke]

The Syracusia, designed by Archimedes?

Correct. You're up.

Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world. -Archimedes

Syracusia

The Syracusia was probably the largest transport ship of antiquity build after an order of Hieron II, king of Syracuse, by Archias of Corinth around 240 BC, later it was given as a gift to Ptolemy III Euergetes of Alexandria and it was renamed to Alexandria (or Alexandris). Designed by Archimedes. Used a variant of his screw to pull the unfinished ship into the sea where the work was completed.

One of the earliest mosaics mentioned in literature are those made for the ship of Hiero II. with scenes from the Iliad, which took 300 skilled workmen a whole year to execute (Athenaeus, 206 d).

Dimensions

55m x 14 m x 13 m.

Material

Wood; Pine and fir from Mount Etna forests, cordage from Spain. Hemp and pitch for caulking from France (Rhone Valley). Hull fastened with cooper spikes, and also lead sheets used to cover the planks. The material used for the Syracusia was enough to build 60 conventional trireme ships.

The earliest Greek ships were decked over at the stem and at the stern, as described above; but towards B.C. 500 the ships appear without poop. Occasionally about this time the forecastle is represented as supporting the forepart of a hurricane-deck and enclosing a cabin below. The stern now held a tier of seats for the steerer and for officers. There was also usually a deck-house at the stern for the commander, oftenest lightly constructed of wicker-work, and sometimes merely of canvas. Later ships have deck-houses all along the upper deck, and these were sometimes fitted up very luxuriously, like the cabines de luxe on a modern transatlantic liner, having paintings, statuary, marble-baths, and even aries in the saloons. Alongside ran covered promenades, lined with rows of vines, and even trees planted in tubs (Athen. v. 41; Calig. 37). But these vessels partook probably more of the nature of barges than of actual ships. Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities (1898)

Archimedes screw was used as a bilge pump for the Syracusia, operated by only one man:

The bilge-water, even when it became very deep, could easily be pumped out by one man with the aid of the screw, an invention of Archimedes. Athenaeus of Naucratis (c. AD 200), Deipnosophistae, Book V

Transportation

400 soldiers on the first upper deck. 142 First Class passengers cabins on the second deck with a library and reading room, a gymnasium, a chapel dedicated to Aphrodite (maybe Aphrodite Pontia), a dining room and a bath. According to the archaeologist Marsia Sfakianou there were 15 rooms on each side each with 4 beds. Lower deck for cargo, example for the first trip from Syracuse to Alexandria: 60000 measures of grain, 10000 jars of pickled Sicilian fish, 20000 talents of wool, 20000 talents other cargo that adds up to 1900 tons of our time. Also separate stalls to transport 20 horses. Usually ships in the Hellenistic times transported less than 1/10 of this weight. A container with 78 tons water was used to provide water for the passengers and for the bathroom with a water container heated with steam.

Arms for defense

Eight deck towers including a 18-foot arrow or 180 pound stone catapult build by Archimedes. (Athen. 5.206d-209b. )

Source: http://www.hellenicaworld.com/Greece...Syracusia.html

[Battleship IOWA]

This diminutive aircraft was intended for what service? And yes this is still a Naval quiz.

[tbm3fan]

I want to say Subs since you said "service" and in some places it is know as the Submarine Service.

Edit: Also the Silent Service

[Battleship IOWA]

I want to say Subs since you said "service" and in some places it is know as the Submarine Service.

Edit: Also the Silent Service

Correct!



This reassembled Martin MS-1 is about to taxi off submarine S-1 on October 24, 1923.