In a short but dramatic career the Nazi battleship Scharnhorst became one of the most feared warships of the Second World War. She sank the Royal Navy aircraft carrier HMS Glorious and became the scourge of Allied Convoys in the North Atlantic. Then, when under threat of destruction, Scharnhorst escaped back to Germany through the English Channel in one of the most audacious naval operations in the entire war. But her luck would finally run out in the freezing waters of the Arctic, in a deadly battle with the British battleship Duke of York.
The loss of the Skipjack-class nuclear powered submarine USS Scorpion is one of the greatest maritime mysteries of the 20th Century. When she disappeared in 1968, the Scorpion was one of the most modern and deadliest attack submarines the world had ever seen. Following a huge search and rescue operation the wreck was finally located at a depth of just under 10,000 feet. But speculation over the cause of her loss continues to this day. Was it a faulty torpedo, a fire within the submarine's batteries, or even a deadly confrontation with America’s cold war rival, the Soviet Union?
For centuries, explorers have searched inside shipwrecks for gold, but there has never been a treasure trove as valuable - or as difficult to recover - as that lost in the waters of the Barents Sea in 1941. British light cruiser HMS Edinburgh was assigned the dangerous mission of escorting an Arctic convoy to the Soviet Union. But on her trip home, laden with Russian gold, the warship was attacked by a German U-boat. Edinburgh's fight for survival and the audacious operation launched to recover the gold decades later tell a remarkable forgotten story of bravery above and below the sea.
USS Nevada was a legend in the United States Navy. She was the only American battleship to raise steam during the deadly Japanese attack on the US fleet at Pearl Harbour and managed to survive the assault despite suffering appalling torpedo and bomb damage. Nevada’s guns would go on to support the D-Day landings in Europe and those in the Pacific at Iwo Jima and Okinawa. But despite her exemplary service, at the end of the war, she was selected as a target ship for the atomic bomb tests at Bikini Atoll. But even a nuclear bomb couldn't sink Nevada...
Formerly light cruiser USS Phoenix but sold to Argentinia after World War II, the renamed General Belgrano was controversially torpedoed during the Falklands Conflict.
In The Royal Navy, HMS Exeter has become synonymous with bravery and sacrifice but her luck didn't last. Severely damaged by an enemy shell, she was sunk in shark-infested waters.
The German warship Bismarck terrified British naval planners - and with good reason. In 1941, the battleship destroyed the Royal Navy's most famous cruiser, HMS Hood.
HMS Barham's distinguished career was ended in 1941 by a torpedo from a German U-boat.
