The first major German warship sunk in WW2 was the "pocket battleship" Admiral Graf Spee, scuttled by her crew outside Montevideo, Uruguay on 17 December 1939.
In 1915, the British ocean liner Lusitania was torpedoed by a German u-boat (submarine) and sunk because the central powers believed the ship was being utilized to transport contraband (war materials) to the United Kingdom.
It's highly probable that the last battleships; USS Pennsylvania, USS New York, USS Arkansas, USS Nevada, and the battleship IJN Nagato were the last battleships ever sunk. These vessels were sunk during tests (target practice) from 1946 thru 1948.The only record of a battleship being sunk in May 2009 is the WW2 battleship AP-145 (known as both the USS Gen. Harry Taylor and the USNS Gen. Hoyt S. Vandenberg) which was sunk off the Florida coast to provide an artificial reef on May 27, 2009.
USN battleship USS New York (BB34), sunk in the Pacific as a target in 1948.
The Japanese Navy figured it was better for the battleship Yamato to go down fighting; rather than being ingloriously sunk at her moorings.
The Titanic was advertised as "unsinkable". Sank in 1912 in the North Atlantic after hitting an ice berg.The German battleship SMS Ostfrieslandwas claimed to be an unsinkable "super-battleship". It was sunk in 1921.The German Battleship Bismarckwas also claimed to be unsinkable but was sunk after a fierce sea-battle in 1941.
No such vessel was sunk in 1993.
Admiral Graf Spee
Tirpitz was sunk in a fiord Scharnhorst was sunk off the Norwegian coast and the Cruiser Blucher was destroyed in another fiord
The Maine
War time or peace time? In peace time, the major warships sunk in the ocean have been: 1. Battleship USS Oklahoma, sunk while under tow to California after WWII. 2. Battleship USS Arkansas, sunk by an Atomic Bomb, during testing in the Pacific in 1946. 3. Battleship USS Nevada, sunk for target practice in the Pacific. 4. Battleship USS Pennsylvania, sunk for target practice in the Pacific. 5. Battleship USS New York, sunk for target practice in the Pacific. Wartime, in the ocean: British Battleship HMS Prince of Wales was sunk by Japanese airplanes in the Pacific (South China Sea-part of the Pacific). Japanese Battleship IJN Yamato, sunk by US airplanes in the Pacific. German Battleship DKM Bismarck, sunk itself in the Atlantic.
USS Maine
Admiral Graf Spee
The first major German warship sunk in WW2 was the "pocket battleship" Admiral Graf Spee, scuttled by her crew outside Montevideo, Uruguay on 17 December 1939.
In 1915, the British ocean liner Lusitania was torpedoed by a German u-boat (submarine) and sunk because the central powers believed the ship was being utilized to transport contraband (war materials) to the United Kingdom.
Battleship Yamato.
The USS Maine.