;
Pacificateur In September 1819, the French engineer and Army artillery officer
Henri-Joseph Paixhans wrote to the Ministry of the Navy to propose a fusing system to fire explosive shells at wooden warships, instead of the usual, solid round shots that were then in general naval use. A commission studied the matter, and decided to build two
Paixhans howitzers for trial purposes in 1822. In 1824, the 80-gun
ship of the line , made redundant by the
Bourbon Restoration, was condemned. She was a two-decker of the same type as the French
flagship of the
Battle of Trafalgar. The two prototypes were fired at her with devastating effect. This led to the adoption of the Paixhans gun in 1827. They were used to great effect at the
Battle of San Juan de Ulua, to the interest of British and US observers, who announced the demise of wooden warships and the era of the
ironclad. ;
Baden In 1921 former German
battleship was used by the Royal Navy to test new types of shells. The tests indicated that medium-strength armour could not stop the latest armour-piercing shells, causing the British switch to an
all or nothing armour scheme for their new battleships.
Baden was then scuttled in
Hurd Deep. ;
Agamemnon and
Centurion The British
pre-dreadnought battleship was converted to radio-control in 1920–1921 and used for assessments of the damage that could be caused by aircraft and various calibres of guns. She was replaced in the role by the battleship in 1926. This followed the work by the secret
Distantly Controlled Boat (DCB) Section of the Royal Navy's Signals School, Portsmouth started in 1917. ;
Iowa (BB-4) After World War I ended, the US Navy and Army did live fire testing of attacking warships from the air. To get the testing as close to wartime conditions as possible, a well known radio engineer,
John Hays Hammond Jr., developed the radio control gear to convert into a remote-controlled target ship, a US naval first. She was sunk off the Pacific coast of Panama during fleet exercises by the battleship , with members of the
United States Congress and the press attending. In the early 1930s the US Navy put considerable effort into the development of remote control ships and fitted the destroyer with improved radio controls developed by Lieutenant Commander Boyd R. Alexander, a radio design officer, and the Naval Research Laboratory in Bellevue DC for further testing and evaluation. The evaluation proved so successful that the US Navy moved up their plans for radio controlled warships and in 1932 the obsolete battleship
USS Utah and the destroyers and were converted. ;
James Longstreet A familiar sight for more than fifty years in Cape Cod Bay, Massachusetts, was . This World War II
Liberty ship was towed to a sandbar off shore in 1944 and was used for bombing practice through the
Vietnam War. ;Operation Crossroads
Operation Crossroads was a 1946 series of US nuclear tests at
Bikini Atoll that used 95 target ships. Some were obsolete US ships, such as , others were ships surrendered by the
Axis powers at the end of World War II, such as the German
heavy cruiser and the Japanese battleship . ;
Torrens The
Royal Australian Navy (RAN) sank on June 14, 1999, with a
Mk48 wire guided torpedo fired from the .
Torrens was the last of six Australian s, the others (
Derwent,
Parramatta,
Stuart,
Swan and
Yarra) having been disposed of previously. Before the sinking
Torrens had been thoroughly cleaned of all fuels, oils and potentially environmentally harmful substances. Her gun turret was donated to the South Western City of
Albany.
Torrens was then towed from Fleet Base West (HMAS
Stirling) out to sea, west of
Perth. The submarine fired the torpedo at the stationary target from a submerged position over the horizon. The sinking of
Torrens was a display of firepower that provided some much needed positive publicity for the
Collins-class submarines, plagued by numerous technical problems and criticised over troubles with the combat system and noise reduction. Ric Shalders, commander of the Submarine Squadron said "the requirement of new submarine trials, the new need to test war-stock and the availability of the Torrens all came together to produce a very satisfactory result".{{cite web ==As exercises==