“Off the coast of Salerno in the morning, the USN light cruiser USS Savannah (CL-42) is struck by a remote controlled Ruhrstahl/Kramer X-1 (Fritz X) glide bomb launched by a Do-217K-2 of III/KG 100. It pierces through the armored turret roof of the Number 3 Gun Turret, passes through three decks into the lower handling room where it explodes causing a gaping hole in the bottom, and tears open a seam in the ship’s port side. For 30-minutes, secondary explosions in the gun room hamper firefighting efforts; 197 crewmen are killed and 15 seriously wounded. The ship arrives at Malta on 12 September and then departed for the U.S. in December.”
I am amazed that the USS Savannah didn’t sink!
Their damage control drills paid off when it mattered.
The Savannah was a 9500 ton light cruiser of the Brooklyn class. She survived a hit from a Fritz. The 40000 ton Italian Battleship Roma did not, although it took two hits from Fritzes to destroy her. What is interesting is the Savannah was hit in the “handling room,” which is the room under a main turret where the propellant is hoisted to the guns. Roma was hit in the forward magazine, a similar spot. Roma blew up. Savannah did not.
I would attribute this not so to much damage control as to naval construction and ammunition handling procedures. I have toured a couple of American battleships, the North Carolina and Alabama. In American ships, all of the propellant bags were in brass containers. There were several layers of “protection” designed to prevent a magazine explosion in terms of keeping the bags in the containers until they were needed, keeping the powder in the lowest decks, having many separate storage rooms, limiting the number of bags in the handling room under the turret, etc... A tour of an American 16” gun battleship is quite interesting to say the least.
I don’t know how the Italians or other navies stored their powder, but with the exception of the USS Arizona and the USS Maine, no American battleship has suffered a fatal magazine explosion. The Roma did, and I suspect her internal design did not have the same safety features as her American counterparts.
Looking at the specs for the Brooklyn class light cruisers, the 6” 47 cal. gun ammunition consisted of separate projectiles and propellant. The propellant was contained in individual brass casings, so it would be less susceptible to the sort of chain-reaction powder explosion you would get with a number of powder bags in a bigger ship. Add to it that despite being a lightweight ship, they were apparently tough to kill. Savannah’s sister, USS Boise suffered a magazine explosion at the Battle of Cape Esperance off Guadalcanal. Despite losing 107 crewmen, the ship stayed afloat and returned to the US for repair. In fact, she was off Salerno providing fire support as this article was written.
To my knowledge, no Brooklyn class hulls were sunk during the war. Only one Cleveland Class CL hull was sunk; the CVL USS Princeton, sunk at the Battle of Leyte Gulf, was built on a Cleveland class hull.
While damage control was important, I think the construction was even more important. American ships were built to take a pounding. You just don’t see many examples of a “lucky hit” in combat that sank them, blew them up, or burned them out. Maybe you could count the two torpedoes on the USS Indianapolis, or the single torpedo that sank the very thin-skinned USS Atlanta.
Off the top of my head, “lucky kill shots” of other navies:
RM Roma
HMS Barham
KM Blucher
IJN Taiho
IJN Akagi
HMS Hood
HMS Illustrious
Given time I could come up with a few more.
Also lost was IJN Mutsu, a 16” gun battleship, which mysteriously blew up, and was not claimed as a loss by any American ship, submarine or aircraft. She appeared to have some sort of magazine issue.