Key Points and Summary – While the U.S. Navy has a storied history of dominating the seas, it has also experienced some notable failures.
-Among the worst ships ever built is the USS Massachusetts, a top-heavy battleship whose own guns made it list dangerously.
-The entire Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) program was a modern fiasco, resulting in unreliable and costly vessels.
The 5 Worst US Navy Ships Ever Built
The US Navy has ruled the oceans of the world since World War II, building up incredible power and able to project US influence in several places at the same time.
While China now has more ships, the US still leads in tonnage. However, the United States Navy has not had a spotless record in building ships, some of the ships throughout its history have been historic failures.
Five of the U.S. Navy’s worst ships include the USS Massachusetts due to a catastrophic accident with its own guns, the USS Wasp which was poorly armored and quickly sunk, the USS Belknap whose aluminum superstructure was melted by fire, the modern Littoral Combat Ship known for being unreliable and expensive, and the USS Thresher, the first nuclear submarine lost with all its crew.
The USS Massachusetts BB-2:
This Indiana-class pre-dreadnought battleship was launched to great fanfare in 1896. Fifteen thousand people watched it launch. The battleship was originally designed for coastal defense.
Because of the original design, it was incredibly top-heavy and poorly balanced. She had the biggest guns in the world. Each gun weighed more than 66 tons. The shells weighed 1,130 pounds.
This poor top-heavy balance was impossible to fix, when her big 13-inch guns rotated to the side, the ship would immediately list to the opposite side, putting the guns of the listing side under water. And being as top-heavy and unbalanced as she was, the battleship was not good in open ocean.
The Massachusetts also ran aground on two separate occasions, and nine sailors died during a training exercise when one of the 8-inch guns exploded
The Massachusetts class of 35 battleships would have cost the Navy around $300 million, equivalent to $6 billion today. The Navy had enough of the battleship by 1910, and relegated it to a training vessel for the Naval Academy. She was retired in 1919 and taken to the shores off Pensacola, Florida, where it was sunk and became a man-made reef. It is visited often by divers today.
The Entire Littoral Combat Ship Program
The ships in the Littoral Combat Ship Program (LCS) were supposed to be next-generation warships that would operate closer to enemy shores than other Navy warships could. However, their design was subpar, and their underperformance was consistent.
The LCS program came about during arguably the worst decade in US Navy history for shipbuilding, the 2000s. The Navy spent the decade building ships that either didn’t work, cost too much to build in large numbers, or had fundamentally flawed designs on a conceptual level—some, like the LCS, combined all three.
Sailors mockingly nicknamed the LCS “Little Crappy Ships,” as it was one of the Navy’s worst mistakes.
The ships were a nightmare, slated to cost $220 million each; cost overruns ballooned to $500 million per ship. Everything that could go wrong did. Combining a diesel engine and a gas turbine to propel the ship to 40 knots has proved to be a colossal headache. The entire premise was ludicrous.
Why have a 40-knot ship when the rest of the fleet can’t go that fast? And it doesn’t provide any more survivability against anti-ship missiles traveling at 40 knots, as it would at 30 knots. How did the Navy get locked into this fiasco?
“Do I really need a Littoral Combat Ship to go 40 knots?” then-Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Michael Gilday asked in 2020.
The USS Thresher, An Entire Submarine Crew Lost
The USS Thresher (SSN-593) was the lead nuclear-powered attack submarine of its class, and was lost on April 10, 1963, during deep-diving tests approximately 220 miles east of Cape Cod.
The submarine, carrying 129 officers, crewmen, and civilian technicians, sank after experiencing uncontrolled flooding, which led to a catastrophic hull implosion at a depth beyond its design limits.
The disaster prompted the creation of the rigorous Submarine Safety (SUBSAFE) program, which continues to ensure the safety and reliability of U.S. Navy submarines.
During deep-diving tests with the USS Skylark, the Thresher experienced a minor pipe leak, which then shorted out the electric system. This scrammed the nuclear reactor, and the ship lost the ability to surface, then it went silent. Communications ceased, and the submarine was lost when the Thresher reached its crush depth.
A total of 17 civilian construction workers accompanied the sailors on the shakedown cruise, which did not inspire much confidence in naval personnel. There was a faulty joint in a seawater pipe that may have been the cause of the sinking. There was also a lack of a central safety system that would have prevented the tragedy.
The USS Wasp (CV-7):
Many historians consider the Washington Naval Treaty of 1921 to be one of the sparks that lit the cause of World War II.
Due to the treaty, the USS Wasp (CV-7) was constructed and commissioned in 1940, operating under the limitations imposed by the Washington Naval Treaty, which restricted its size, armor, and survivability.
The Wasp was smaller than the Essex-class of carriers and would prove to be susceptible to torpedoes because its armor was limited. She was the eighth ship named USS Wasp, and the sole ship of a class built to use up the remaining tonnage allowed to the U.S. for aircraft carriers under the treaties of the time.
She was a reduced-size version of the Yorktown-class aircraft carrier hull; Wasp was more vulnerable than other United States aircraft carriers available at the opening of hostilities.
After serving in the Atlantic during the early months of the war, the Wasp was transferred to the Pacific after the battles of the Coral Sea and Midway. On September 15, 1942, off Guadalcanal, the Wasp was trading out its Combat Air Patrol (CAP), when the Japanese submarine I-19 launched a spread of six torpedoes.
Three torpedoes slammed into the Wasp, gasoline and ammunition fires quickly burned out of control. The Abandon Ship order was given and the Wasp was scuttled later that night.
The USS Belknap (CG-26):
The USS Belknap was a guided-missile cruiser, with much of its construction made of aluminum, which the Navy would come to regret. In 1975, it collided with the USS John F. Kennedy aircraft carrier in one of the worst crashes of all time.
Both ships were operating in the Ionian Sea, just off the coast of Sicily. Belknap’s aluminum superstructure could not withstand the heat of the fire; it rapidly melted and collapsed. The fires were not brought under control until the next day, and Belknap was not seaworthy when they were. Seven sailors died on Belknap, and one on the John F. Kennedy, with another 47 Belknap crew members injured.
After the fire, the hull was basically intact, but the ship’s superstructure was destroyed. Belknap was towed back to the US, where it was decommissioned and entered the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard. Over the course of the next four years, the ship was rebuilt from the weather deck up.
Belknap continued to serve in the Atlantic Fleet until she was decommissioned in 1995. In 1998, the ship was sunk by naval gunfire in a training exercise.
Due to the disastrous fire in 1975, it was decided that all future cruisers would be built with steel superstructures, a decision reinforced by the destruction of HMS Sheffield, a British ship with an aluminum superstructure, which was largely destroyed by fire after being struck by an Exocet missile during the Falklands War.
About the Author
Steve Balestrieri is a National Security Columnist. He served as a US Army Special Forces NCO and Warrant Officer. In addition to writing on defense, he covers the NFL for PatsFans.com and is a member of the Pro Football Writers of America (PFWA). His work was regularly featured in many military publications.
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