Naval Battles of World War II Trivia
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67 free Naval Battles of World War II trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This naval battles of World War II trivia quiz covers the sea war in every ocean. In the Pacific it runs from Pearl Harbor and the sinking of Force Z through Java Sea, Coral Sea, Midway and the brutal night actions off Guadalcanal, to the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot, Leyte Gulf, Taffy 3's stand off Samar and Yamato's last sortie. In the Atlantic and Mediterranean it takes in the River Plate, Narvik, Taranto, Matapan, the hunt for the Bismarck, the Channel Dash, PQ 17, Operation Pedestal, the Barents Sea, the North Cape and the U-boat war that turned in Black May 1943. The questions range from easy (the date of Pearl Harbor, how many carriers Japan lost at Midway) to genuinely hard (which cryptanalyst first read Italian naval Enigma, who commanded Yamato's final mission), with the admirals, codebreakers, ships and decisions that shaped each battle. If you want the wider conflict, our World War 2 and World War I pages are the place to go next. Every answer has been checked against Wikipedia's battle articles and the official histories they cite, and each explanation adds one more thing worth knowing.
30 of 67 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which October 1944 engagement was the largest naval battle of World War II?
Leyte Gulf
Leyte Gulf, fought 23–26 October 1944 in the waters around the Philippines, was the largest naval battle of the war by ships and men engaged, and it broke the Imperial Japanese Navy as a fighting fleet.
Q 02Which May 1942 battle was the first in which the opposing fleets never sighted or fired on one another?
Coral Sea
Coral Sea, fought 4–8 May 1942, was the first carrier-versus-carrier battle; every blow was struck by aircraft, and the Japanese seaborne push toward Port Moresby was turned back.
Q 03How many Japanese fleet carriers were sunk at the Battle of Midway in June 1942?
4
4 carriers went down, Akagi, Kaga, Sōryū and Hiryū, against a single American carrier lost; all four had taken part in the raid on Pearl Harbor.
Q 04How did US codebreakers confirm that the Japanese target 'AF' was Midway?
A fake water-shortage report
A fake water-shortage report was broadcast from Midway at the codebreakers' suggestion; soon afterwards a Japanese message noted that 'AF' was short of water.
Q 05Which US carrier was lost at Midway, days after being rushed through repairs at Pearl Harbor?
USS Yorktown
USS Yorktown, damaged in the May carrier battle, was patched in about 72 hours at Pearl Harbor and reached Midway in time; crippled by Hiryū's aircraft and torpedoed by submarine I-168, she sank on 7 June 1942.
Q 06Yamamoto planned Pearl Harbor and Midway, but which admiral led the carrier strike force in both?
Chūichi Nagumo
Chūichi Nagumo led the Kidō Butai in both battles; Yamamoto, who planned them, was never with the carriers, and at Midway he stayed far astern aboard the battleship Yamato, out of the fight.
Q 07The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor took place on what date?
December 7, 1941
The raid came on December 7, 1941, a Sunday morning in Hawaii, though across the date line in Japan it was already December 8; the United States declared war on Japan the following day.
Q 08Which battleship got under way during the Pearl Harbor attack and was deliberately beached?
USS Nevada
USS Nevada was the only battleship to get under way that morning; bombed as she headed for the sea, she was run aground near Hospital Point so she would not block the channel.
Q 09Which US warships were all away from Pearl Harbor when Japan attacked?
The aircraft carriers
The aircraft carriers, all three of the Pacific Fleet's, were absent that morning; untouched, they fought the carrier battles of 1942 while the sunken battleships were still being raised.
Q 10Along with the target ship USS Utah, which battleship sunk at Pearl Harbor was never refloated?
USS Arizona
USS Arizona was left where she sank after a magazine explosion killed 1,177 of her crew; decades later, survivors of that crew could choose to have their ashes placed inside the wreck beside their shipmates.
Q 11Which Japanese craft tried to enter Pearl Harbor before the raid?
Midget submarines
Midget submarines, five two-man craft, went in ahead of the planes; the destroyer Ward sank one more than an hour before the first bombs, but her report was still being checked when the raid began.
Q 12Which October 1944 Philippines engagement was history's last battleship-versus-battleship action?
Surigao Strait
Surigao Strait, on the night of 24–25 October 1944, saw Oldendorf's old battleships cross the T of Nishimura's force; Fusō had already been torpedoed, and Yamashiro was sunk by gunfire and torpedoes.
Q 13In October 1944, Halsey took the Third Fleet north after a decoy carrier force led by which Japanese admiral?
Jisaburō Ozawa
Q 21Why did British warships break off the rescue of Bismarck's survivors?
A suspected U-boat
A suspected U-boat sighting sent the cruiser Dorsetshire and the destroyer Maori racing away with the rest still in the water; a U-boat and a German weather ship later found just five more men alive.
Q 22How many of HMS Hood's crew survived her destruction on 24 May 1941?
3
Only 3 men, Ted Briggs, Bob Tilburn and Bill Dundas, survived; a shell from Bismarck is thought to have reached Hood's aft magazines, and she sank in about three minutes with 1,415 of her crew.
Q 23The May 1941 breakout of Bismarck and Prinz Eugen was code-named what?
Operation Rheinübung
Jisaburō Ozawa's Northern Force, carriers with few aircraft or trained crews left, was bait; the Third Fleet chased it north, leaving the San Bernardino Strait unguarded for Kurita's Centre Force.
Q 14Who commanded the escort carrier group Taffy 3 during its desperate stand off Samar on 25 October 1944?
Clifton Sprague
Clifton Sprague's Taffy 3, a handful of escort carriers with a thin screen of destroyers and destroyer escorts, held off Kurita's battleships and cruisers off Samar, losing the carrier Gambier Bay and several of its escorts.
Q 15Off Samar, Kurita mistook Taffy 3's escort carriers for what?
Halsey's main fleet
Kurita took the ships for 'Halsey's main fleet' of fast fleet carriers and, fearing air attack, broke off after a confused running fight, sparing the vulnerable landing force on Leyte.
Q 16Which destroyer captain charged Kurita's fleet off Samar and was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor?
Ernest Evans
Ernest Evans turned USS Johnston alone toward the Japanese line, laying smoke, and a torpedo blew the bow off the heavy cruiser Kumano; badly wounded, he ordered abandon ship and was never seen again.
Q 17Which battleship, Yamato's sister ship, was sunk by carrier aircraft in the Sibuyan Sea in October 1944?
Musashi
Musashi, Yamato's sister, absorbed more than a dozen torpedo hits on 24 October 1944 as carrier aircraft concentrated on her; Kurita's other heavy ships came through the Sibuyan Sea largely intact.
Q 18The battleship Yamato was sunk in April 1945 on a one-way mission to which island?
Okinawa
Okinawa was the goal of Operation Ten-Go: Yamato was to beach herself there and fight on as a shore battery, but carrier aircraft sank her long before she reached the island.
Q 19Five brothers who died together when the cruiser USS Juneau was sunk off Guadalcanal in 1942 shared which surname?
Sullivan
Sullivan: the five brothers from Waterloo, Iowa had enlisted on condition that they serve together; Hollywood filmed their story in 1944, and the Navy has named two destroyers The Sullivans.
Q 20Swordfish from which British carrier jammed Bismarck's rudders on 26 May 1941?
HMS Ark Royal
HMS Ark Royal's Swordfish first attacked the British cruiser Sheffield by mistake; their faulty magnetic detonators spared her, so the crews switched to contact fuses for the strike that jammed Bismarck's rudders.
Operation Rheinübung sent Bismarck and Prinz Eugen into the Atlantic in May 1941 to raid the convoys supplying Britain; the sortie ended within ten days when Bismarck was sunk on 27 May.
Q 24After the December 1939 Battle of the River Plate, Admiral Graf Spee was scuttled off which neutral port?
Montevideo
Montevideo, in neutral Uruguay, allowed Graf Spee 72 hours; her captain, convinced a far stronger British force waited outside the estuary, scuttled her on 17 December 1939.
Q 25Which cruiser in the River Plate squadron was serving with the Royal Navy's New Zealand Division?
Achilles
Achilles, a Leander-class light cruiser manned largely by New Zealanders, fought alongside her sister Ajax and the heavy cruiser Exeter, which was badly mauled by Graf Spee's heavy guns.
Q 26The November 1940 raid on Taranto used 21 Swordfish flying from which carrier?
HMS Illustrious
HMS Illustrious launched the 21 Swordfish on the night of 11–12 November 1940; their torpedoes and bombs put half the Italian battle fleet out of action in the first all-aircraft ship-to-ship attack in history.
Q 27Why did Japanese planners study the Taranto raid while preparing the Pearl Harbor attack?
Both targets were shallow harbours
'Both targets were shallow harbours': Taranto showed aerial torpedoes could run in water only about 12 metres deep, and Japan fitted wooden fins to its Type 91 torpedoes so they would work in Pearl Harbor's shallows.
Q 28Which British admiral commanded at both Taranto and Cape Matapan?
Andrew Cunningham
Andrew Cunningham led the Mediterranean Fleet through both: Taranto, he wrote, proved the Fleet Air Arm was the Navy's most devastating weapon, and at Matapan his fleet sank three Italian heavy cruisers in one night.
Q 29In April 1942, sixteen Army B-25 bombers flew from a US carrier's deck on the Doolittle Raid against which city?
Tokyo
Tokyo was the main target, with Yokohama, Kobe and Nagoya also hit; the plan was never to return to the ship, and fifteen of the sixteen bombers came down in China or off its coast.
Q 30Before Matapan, the British fleet commander made a show of visiting which Alexandria venue to fool the Japanese consul?
A golf club
The venue was 'A golf club': he arrived with a suitcase as if staying the night and spent time on the course in view of the Japanese consul, then slipped away after dark to his flagship Warspite.