Tag: cruisers

South American Fleets added to the Project!

The Ship Identification Section (SIS) at Shipsearcher are very pleased to announce five new pages of satellite views, giving a veritable tour-de-force of large South American navies! These nations have interesting fleets made up of a diverse collection of ships, often acquired from elsewhere. The pages are for Brazil, Peru, Chile, Argentina, and Ecuador.

Almirante Grau
Peruvian cruiser BAP Almirante Grau at Curaçao, June 1973. CLM-81 Credit: Lswarte / CC BY

These views add 39 more pages, 63 classes of ships, and 94 satellite views to the database. The largest and most capable navy documented is Brazil’s fleet, which ranges from a recently-retired aircraft carrier to the last operational river dreadnought, the Parnaiba, originally commissioned in 1938. We have been trying to locate this active monitor in the interior of Brazil for months! We eventually found it far up the Paraguay River at the Mato Gosso do Sul port of Base fluvial de ladário.

Parnaiba on Paraguay River
Navy of Brazil [Attribution or Attribution]

There is much to discover about the other navies, too! Argentina’s fleet have been going through a lengthy period of neglect, symbolized by the sinking of the retired ARA Santissima Trinidad at its berth in 2013, and the tragic loss of the ARA San Juan submarine in 2017.

Santissima Trinidad Puerto Belgrano ARG 2013
Shipsearcher staff discovery: ships viewed in profile from a satellite are not doing well.
Muratureclass Buenos Aires
One highlight of Argentina’s fleet is the Murature class patrol ships, with one ship, ARA King, in commission since 1946! Credit: Diegoventu / CC BY-SA

Peru’s pages include the recently decommissioned light cruiser, BAP Almirante Grau, which was once the pride of the Dutch Navy. Chile has a great variety of frigates and a lovely sail training ship with a troubled past, the Esmeralda, which was once used by the Pinochet regime as a jail for political prisoners.

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Esmeralda entering Charlottetown Harbour, PEI, Canada, July 2017. Credit: Warsearcher.com

Ecuador’s small fleet includes a US Second World War Landing Ship (Tank), and some updated Leander-class warships, which have been serving for almost a half-century. We hope you enjoy these views, and welcome comments and suggestions.condell and leander class frigates ecuador 2009

 

2020 – The Next Navy in our Sights!

A powerful fleet is emerging from the mists of the South China Sea. Led by a pair of carriers, in line ahead, cruisers, destroyers, frigates, amphibious assault ships, landing ships and other units are being systematically identified and logged in the Shipsearcher Database by Ship Identification Directorate (SID) staff.

The People’s Republic of China-where even the theme park attractions scare the hell out of naval observers.

The last of the large shipsearcher pages will be the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN). The PRC fleet was once viewed as an out-dated adjunct to the massive land forces. These days, the furious pace of naval construction is setting China on a path to become the World’s penultimate naval force, second only to the USN. In the meantime, please check out any of the other 13 navies on the site!

The entire Russian Northern Fleet has sortied and they are searching for YOU!!

Comrades, this is your captain. It is an honor to speak to you today, and I am honored to be sailing with you on the maiden voyage of our motherland’s most recent achievement. Once more, we play our dangerous game, a game of chess against our old adversary — The American Navy. For forty years, your fathers before you and your older brothers played this game and played it well. But today the game is different. We have the advantage. (Captain Marco Ramius – Hunt for Red October)

Introducing Russian Surface Units – Current and Retired. It joins the Soviet / Russian submarines page to document many classes of Russian warships, from the massive Kirov class battlecruisers to new stealth frigates. Among the strangest of naval vessels, near the end of the list, are the Ekranoplans: These are the daughters of the “Caspian Sea Monster.” You will have to visit the page to untangle that shipsearcher statement!

Navies Down Under!

Two new pages explore the past and present surface warships of the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) and the Royal New Zealand Navy (RNZN). For shipsearcher staff, it was particularly challenging to locate imagery of these vessels, as they were all loaded upside down (we hope you enjoyed that truly elevated piece of imagery-related humour)!

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HMAS Vampire D-11 ca. 1959 © Australian War Memorial 301609 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/au/

Some of the more interesting features of these pages include the RNZN 1963 views of Devonport Naval Base, Auckland’s major naval facility. The aerial views make identification of early Cold War and long-service Second World War-built warships possible. As for the RAN, the range of ship classes depicted speaks to a diversified, potent force capable of undertaking a range of missions. As always, we have taken pains to track down long out of service or preserved warships.

Loch Class D Devonport 1963
Loch Class frigate and Bathurst Class corvettes, 1963 view of Devonport near Auckland, NZ

These posts complement pages on some of the other Commonwealth navies: Royal Navy and Royal Canadian Navy. 

Royal Navy Shipsearcher page now up!

“Heart of Oak are our ships, jolly tars are our men, we are always ready; Steady, boys, steady, We’ll fight and we’ll conquer again and again”…so goes the chorus of Heart of Oak, the official march of the Royal Navy, Royal Marines, and several Commonwealth navies [Youtube rendition here]. The oldest ship on this new shipsearcher page – Royal Navy Surface Units – Current and Retired – is HMS Victory.

HMS Victory portsmouth 1945
HMS Victory, raising the yards in August 1945 © IWM (A 30810)

This first-rate line of battle ship was being built when Heart of Oak first appeared on the London scene to commemorate the victories of 1759. Our Royal Navy page starts with Victory and spans 260 years to the newly commissioned and largest-ever British carrier, HMS Queen Elizabeth.

HMS Queen Elizabeth R08 Halifax 2019
HMS Queen Elizabeth R-08 in Halifax NS, Sep. 2019

Another unique feature of this page is the use of the Kent County Council Archives historical aerial mosaic photos (provided to Google Earth), which allow for Second World War-era captures of ships in Chatham Royal Dockyard. These views make ship identification of famous RN ship classes, such as County Class Cruisers, and aircraft carriers possible. For the first time, we also have a category for monitors, which during the first half of the twentieth century were tubby, short vessels that mounted a few battleship-sized guns! As always, we hope you appreciate the listing, and would be happy to hear about issues with any identification: help us identify our views of unknown ships!HM Monitor Chatham Kent SWW