Talk:List of ships of World War II/Archive 1

INTRODUCTION to Classification System and Listing Rationale
Hello Everyone,

This article, and all the linked alphabetical and class ship lists, have been extensively modified from various earlier lists, and connected via the new sidebar navigation box. The lists are to contain all armed naval vessels that served during the Second World War. This includes all vessel types and all countries, regardless of active combat experience or national allegiance. Previous editors included Axis ships that were not completed, out of historic interest. In addition, the list contains ships that served in immediate post war activity to the end of 1945. This includes post-surrender occupation support and combat, colonial re-occupation, troop transport, and prisoner repatriation.

To avoid confusion, aid concision and allow for sorting: Not all classes and national attributions are clear cut. Many vessels changed hands at least once, or were built in one country but served in another. For example, numerous ships built in Canada were immediately transferred upon completion to the US and Royal Navy, and they are not attributed to Canada. Similarly, ships built for the US Navy but which where simultaneously commissioned in and immediately transferred to the Royal Navy, are not attributed to the US Navy, as their service to the US Navy was "on paper" only. Ships serving in the US Navy before the US declared war are not included. All vessels are attributed to the nation they served in war time, not the nation that built them, nor any nation they previously served.
 * ships are listed only once, under one name, without prefixes
 * ships are classed according to the role they played for the majority of the war,
 * ships are attributed to the navy they served longest in declared wartime, and
 * where a specific day of commissioning is not know it is listed as being the 1st of the month.

Many vessels changed their roles and configurations. For example, vessels built as aircraft carriers before the war, but that served as escort carriers during the war, are listed as escort carriers. Many destroyers for example had multiple changing configurations as fast transports, minelayers, minesweepers and convoy escorts. They are listed as destroyers along with their unique specialization.

Before changing any of the current classifications or lists please consult with others, especially when there are grey areas.

thanks to all for their contributions! Robert Brukner (talk) 23:45, 30 March 2016 (UTC)

re President Masaryk (monitor)‬
An editor added the President Masaryk (monitor)‬ to the list. The President Masaryk was a monitor (I guess, or any rate it's called a monitor), but it was a river monitor, not a coastal defense monitor (Czechoslovakia had no coast).

I would think that either the President Masaryk ought to be removed or else the article (which is short) should be renamed and expanded to "List of monitors of the Second World War". Herostratus (talk) 20:21, 23 May 2016 (UTC)

Well this is peculiar. I was talking about the article List of coastal defence ships of the Second World War. Apparently the talk page of that article redirects to this talk page, which I've never seen before and which means you have to describe the particular article you're addressing, although I can also see the benefit. Anyway, the question is does the President Masaryk belong in List of coastal defence ships of the Second World War. Herostratus (talk) 20:25, 23 May 2016 (UTC)
 * I'm struggling to find a singular term for this whole interrelated cluster of classes. Littoral and coastal are close, but don't include rivers. Monitors include rivers and coasts, but are not really considered coastal defence ships in the literature. The Czech ship is totally odd ball, like the Austrian river ships. How can landlocked countries even have naval ships? But they did. So anyway, I'm stuck. I don't want to set up various pages with one or two ships in them. The point of these articles is to group for concision and comparison. Any ideas or suggestions? Robert Brukner (talk) 02:37, 24 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Well, List of coastal defence ships of the Second World War] has 14 ships listed as "coastal defense ships" (plus two listed as "riverine battleships"). Let's assume you move the riverine battleships to a new article "List of river monitors of the Second World War" (or some name like that). That leaves 14 in List of coastal defence ships of the Second World War, which is plenty for an article. And AFAIK there might be a few more that could be added... in fact, for instance there's the Italian monitor Faà di Bruno, which was an extremely ignorant ship but probably a monitor IMO.


 * So then "List of river monitors of the Second World War" has two, plus add the President Masaryk to make three so far. That's a short article so far. But note Dnieper Flotilla under "Types" you have "...the Zheleznyakov class river monitor. Five of these were built..." and they had twin 4-inch guns, and some specs are given. So add them (I can't get the ref to work though). Then the articles under Danube Flotilla may (or may not) yield some more leads; I suss that Romania, Hungary, and Jugoslavia had ships more powerful than the President Masaryk; its just a matter of finding info on them. Oh here's one: Yugoslav monitor Drava, so that goes in. I would be surprised if the Poles had no river monitors; and sure enough five ships described as "monitors" are listed at List of World War II weapons of Poland, with little info and no refs, but these things had 4" guns which your not a sea monitor with main armament that small, they're probably river monitors. And other countries probably also. So its a valid article.


 * Excellent work creating this article (or these articles) by the way. Herostratus (talk) 07:46, 26 May 2016 (UTC)


 * Oh OK, I see that there are currently two articles: List of coastal defence ships of the Second World War and List of monitors of the Second World War. Maybe this is the best way to divide and classify these ships, but I'm not so sure: "coastal defence" is a function, and "monitor" is a type. And so for one thing some ships are properly going to go into both articles, which actually is not a problem IMO. But the non-parallel classification doesn't feel quite right to me. IMO I see two solutions:
 * 1) A single article "List of monitors..." which includes all ships called "monitors" by their owners or by a notable source(s), or which clearly are monitors. This means riverine and coastal oceanic ships would go in the same article, which is not a problem, and some fairly large ships (nearly battleships) would be in the article along with some rather small ships with 4" main batteries, which... is reasonable I suppose, but I don't like it. (We could then, if we wanted, have another article "River patrol craft of the Second World War" or something, for non-monitor riverine craft)
 * 2) Two articles, the current List of coastal defence ships of the Second World War and another article "List of river naval craft of the Second World War" or somesuch title. This article could include some riverine craft and maybe also classes of craft that are notable but are not monitors. (For instance, if we wanted to include classes as well as individual ships, the Soviet BK-1124 and BK-1125 gunboats were important (263 were built); but whether to include classes or not is something to be discussed.)
 * I prefer #2. The downside of that is that reader who wants to see all the WWII ships called "monitor" in one place will not be served, and there will be such readers. The best way to handle this IMO would be to create a category, "Monitors of World War II", to serve this function.


 * The upside of #2 is that craft are cleanly grouped by function, and I think that this would serve more readers and serve them better. The "Monitors of World War II" category serves reasonably well IMO those readers who want to see a list of all the craft called "monitor"; for them this is not necessarily ideal but at least its something, and my guess is they would be fewer than the readers who would benefit from two lists grouped by function. Herostratus (talk) 17:01, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

Battleship type- and Battlecruiser
Thanks for updating this list. However I do wonder whether "type" is a useful field in the Battleships list. At this point in history there was not really distinction between "dreadnought", "super dreadnought" and other "battleships". Listing these as separate categories of battleship creates a distinction that wasn't a consideration at the time, and isn't really reflected in the underlying sources. Also I think that for World War 2 it is appropriate to include battleships and battlecruisers in one list, as individual ships crossed over between the two categories (Kongo for instance being reclassified as a battleship after a rebuild, and King George V being referred to in some of its design documentation as a battlecruiser....) and there was little operational distinction between them. The Land (talk) 09:41, 28 May 2016 (UTC)


 * Honestly I am not sure where to draw the lines, as I am not an expert, and there seem to be several different approaches across the literature. There are many overlapping classes and types. Battleships, battlecruisers, coastal defence ships and monitors are all of one species for example. But the convention seems to be to divide them up based largely on slight variations in task, draught and displacements, as opposed to truly significant architectural or technological differences. But even that breaks down in many areas where for example ships of supposedly utterly different types do in fact closely resemble each other like large German torpedo boats and British destroyers for example. There are other overlaps in types as well between destroyers, destroyer escorts (USN), escort destroyers (RN), sloops and frigates. Every type has its outliers, that often resemble more the next type then the type to which they are attributed. To keep things non-controversial and focused I am following standard conventions as utilized in other Wikipedia articles, and also the categorizations common to the Royal Navy (similar in broad strokes to the USN, to the best of my ability. I should also mention that I have had comments that types need to be tighter and so there is a "coastal defence ship" section, to keep monitors and coastal defence ships apart. I sort of feel my hands are tied. Robert Brukner (talk) 05:13, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

Spanish Navy
The Spanish Navy ships (cruisers, destroyers) are missing. However, Spain was one of the few countries which never entered the war officially (albeit it supported Germany for quite some time by sending troops to fight on the Eastern Front). Is this list only for countries officially at war in WWII? Should the Spanish ships be added? Dead Mary (talk) 09:53, 6 April 2017 (UTC)
 * "The list includes armed vessels that served during the war..." So, no. ☽Dziban303  »»  Talk☾  06:20, 28 July 2018 (UTC)

List invisible on mobile?
Just wanted to ask/notify anyone who knows how to fix this, but the list of ships doesn't appear in the mobile view of the page as of (at least) 28 Nov 2017. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.19.222.249 (talk) 03:40, 29 November 2017 (UTC)

Missing ship in Corvette list
HMS Morpeth Castle (K 693) not listed. Simon Sains (talk) 09:12, 31 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Then why don't you add it? ☽Dziban303  »»  Talk☾  06:58, 28 July 2018 (UTC)

Incomplete List wrt to Destroyer Escorts
Searching for "Buckley-Class" one gets 27 results whereas the class conisted of 102 units! Noticed because of looking for USS England (DE-635) and not finding it anywhere! 80.151.9.187 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 07:03, 1 June 2018 (UTC)
 * I added 'England' due to its notoriety. For the others, why don't you add them? ☽Dziban303  »»  Talk☾  06:58, 28 July 2018 (UTC)

List cleanup and class corrections
When I went to add a missing ship, USS 'England', to the E-page, I noticed many errors with cruiser class and type fields. In the class box, e.g., it shows "'Danae' class cruiser" rather than just 'Danae', and would leave the class box blank rather than adding, in that particular case, "light cruiser." These cruiser errors are apparently pervasive throughout the list. I assume this error was introduced when User:Robert Brukner split the class and type fields, possibly through a mistake in regex or something.

Additionally, in some cases for unique ships (sole member of the class), someone has either duplicated the ship's name, or added a "-", contrary to the rest of the list's style to just leave the field blank. I cleaned up E to bring it in line with the style used in all the other pages; only 25 more to go. ☽Dziban303 »»  Talk☾  07:25, 28 July 2018 (UTC)

Q-ships and "Special Service Ships" consolidation proposal
"Special Service Ship" is just an alias for Q-ship. Both are used in the list. I propose replacing "Special Service Ship" with Q-ship throughout the article, as they mean the same thing and Q-ship is the better-known term. I'd like your input. ☽Dziban303 »»  Talk☾  07:25, 28 July 2018 (UTC)

The USS Slater is not listed under Destroyers, but should be. It is a current active floating Museum open to the public in Albany New York (on the Hudson River). www.ussslater.org/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2604:6000:1117:5EE:1F7:221F:26D2:5B43 (talk) 10:41, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

USS Slater is missing from the Destroyer list. Floating Museum in Albany NY.
The USS Slater is not listed under Destroyers, but should be. It is a current active floating Museum open to the public in Albany New York (on the Hudson River). www.ussslater.org/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2604:6000:1117:5EE:1F7:221F:26D2:5B43 (talk) 10:43, 4 July 2019 (UTC)