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Pilot Accidentally Lands in Enemy Airfield and Other Historic Mistakes

Khalid Elhassan October 5, 2020 31 min

Focke-Wulf Fw 190 Würger - Focke-Wulf — Fw 190 dogfighting a Spitfire over the English Channel. Pintrest

23. A Warship So Bad it Could Not Go to Sea

The Novgorod. The Sea Steading Institution

The Novgorod’s greatest oops had to do with its core function as a fighting platform. The ship’s two 11-inch guns had an exceptionally slow rate of fire, at 10 minutes per shot. The rotating mounts on which the guns were placed were also slow, taking 3 minutes to traverse 180 degrees. The problem was made worse by weak locks that caused the gun mounts to rotate on their own from the guns’ recoil. Worse, the guns’ firing caused the ship to rotate uncontrollably.

The flat bottomed vessel had no stabilizing keel to keep her in line and keep her guns pointed towards the target. The only solution was to moor the Novgorod in a fixed position. That transformed her from a ship to a floating fortress anchored in place, with her guns pointed seaward.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.