dsk wrote:
Jim21680 wrote:
It's such a shame none of the Queen Elizabeths were saved. If there was ever a battleship worthy of it, it was one of these.
Warspite was England's CV-6 Enterprise. Both ships had long and gallant careers, several times took a lickin' but kept on tickin', and they were the sort of ships worthy of a berth next to HMS Victory or the USS Constitution. Unfortunately people were too short-sighted after the end of WW2 to give a

abut preserving anything related to a war they'd rather forget. Instead England scrapped all of their battleships and the USA didn't think to save any carriers until the modernized Essex class were retired. I'm just glad that we saved at least a few of the battlewagons on this side of the pond.
Of course I can understand, that there are or better to say were several ships which people want to have been saved as monument like USS Texas is for example. Personally I find it as half German guy a shame that Germany wasn't some decades ago (around 1965 or so) interested to take over and save old WW-1 SMS Goeben from Turkey, which offered them to buy for a few DM.
On the other hand I have also some understanding that ships were not saved, because you have to take a look on the total situation of the time where the question "saving or scrapping?" was given. Most ships had a special history of war in background, but the money (and desire, as interesting) to save them all was not existing!
At Warspite I see another special background too. Sure, she fought heroic in 2 Wars and has a great history, no doubts, but after she was hit by the Fritz X bombs, she was nearly scrap and after D-Day taken out of service out of this reason. So to save her as monument like HMS Belfast or so, it will have cost a lot of money to repair her first ... money what Great Britain simply didn't have at this time! On the other hand, there were other QE classes, which could be saved cheap.
