Eight Inventions That Were Supposed To Be Indestructible (But Weren’t) – SlashGear

Whenever someone talks about a vehicle that was significantly less invincible than advertised, the Titanic is often the first analogy made. But while the Titanic was the first supposedly unsinkable ship that proved quite sinkable, it wasn’t the last. The Titanic was the second in the Harold & Wolf shipyard’s White Star Line fleet of Olympic-class liners. While the first, the Olympic, served a respectable 24-year tour of duty, its younger sisters were significantly less lucky. The third Olympic-class liner, the Britannic, launched in February of 1914, just a few months before World War 1, and started life as a passenger ship before it was used as a hospital vessel. The Britannic’s creators learned from the Titanic’s mistakes and designed the Britannic to be the safest Olympic-class liner out there. Unfortunately, those intentions didn’t help much.

On November 21, 1916, the Britannic ran into German mines and sank. The explosions ripped through the ship’s watertight compartments, which could have saved the Britannic had it hit something like an iceberg. But as Dr. Robert Ballard pointed out, “You can have all the safety in the world and it’s not going to help you if you hit a bomb.” Then again, the Britannic’s steel hull was allegedly of poor quality, which made the ship more brittle than intended. And even if the hulls had been made of high-quality metals, according to Dr. Ballard’s findings, some “idiot” left many watertight compartments and portholes ajar, thus letting water flow unimpeded.