The Only Battleships Ever Sunk on Camera at Sea

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Across more than a century of naval warfare, hundreds of battleships were damaged or destroyed.
But only two were ever sunk in combat at sea while being actively filmed.

Those ships were:

HMS Barham (1941)

SMS Szent István (1918)

Their sinkings weren’t just military disasters—they became some of the most haunting pieces of wartime footage ever recorded.

HMS Barham (1941): Annihilated in Seconds

The Context

In late 1941, the Royal Navy’s Mediterranean Fleet was desperately trying to cut Axis supply lines feeding Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps.

Three British battleships—Queen Elizabeth, Valiant, and Barham—were operating south of Crete.

What they didn’t know was that U-331, commanded by Hans-Diedrich von Tiesenhausen, had slipped through their destroyer screen.

The Attack

On 25 November 1941, U-331 fired a spread of torpedoes at point-blank range.

Three torpedoes hit HMS Barham almost simultaneously

Flooding was catastrophic

Within four minutes, the ship rolled onto her side

Then came the moment captured on film.

The Explosion

As Barham capsized, a massive internal magazine explosion tore the ship apart.

A towering fireball erupted

The hull disintegrated

Men and steel were thrown hundreds of feet into the air

The camera aboard a nearby British ship recorded everything.

Casualties:

862 killed

~400 survivors

It remains the most violent battleship explosion ever filmed.

SMS Szent István (1918): A Slow, Helpless Death

The Context

By 1918, the Austro-Hungarian Navy was largely trapped in port, bottled up by Allied patrols and the Otranto Barrage.

In June, the fleet attempted a breakout.

Among them was SMS Szent István, one of the empire’s newest dreadnoughts.

The Attack

In the early hours of 10 June 1918, two tiny Italian motor torpedo boats—MAS 15 and MAS 21—slipped through the darkness.

They were commanded by Luigi Rizzo.

Two torpedoes struck Szent István’s boiler rooms

Power failed

Pumps stopped

Flooding spread uncontrollably

The Sinking

Unlike Barham, Szent István did not explode.

She:

Listed slowly

Rolled over after several hours

Finally capsized and sank just after sunrise

An onboard camera from her sister ship recorded the entire ordeal.

Casualties:

89 killed

Majority of the crew survived

The footage shows something rare in naval warfare:
a battleship dying in slow motion.

Why These Two Sinkings Are Unique

These events were captured because of circumstance—not intent.

Cameras were already running for training or documentation

Nearby ships had a clear line of sight

The sinkings were sudden and unmistakable

Later battleship losses—like Yamato, Bismarck, or Musashi—either:

Occurred under air attack

Were not filmed directly at sea

Or the footage did not survive

Two Eras, One Lesson

Barham represents the brutal lethality of submarines in WWII

Szent István marks the decline of the battleship in the face of small, cheap torpedo craft

Together, they show that:

Even the largest warships ever built could be erased by weapons a fraction of their size—and sometimes the world was watching when it happened.