Why Battleship Blogging Matters
By Brock points us to this disgrace:
The authorities in Moscow have hastily removed posters congratulating Russian war veterans which mistakenly showed the American warship USS Missouri. The posters were taken down on Wednesday – just hours before Defender of the Motherland Day.
The Russian defence ministry said it did not produce the posters.
A Moscow city hall official said the design “should have been shown to specialists who can distinguish one battleship from another”.
A defence ministry spokesman, Vyacheslav Sedov, said “it was a civilian firm that produced the poster, and the people who made it were simply incompetent”.
“We do have similar ships, beautiful ships. They should have used one of those,” he added.
The poster in question, which clearly depicts a battleship of the Iowa class:
Now, I can understand why the Russians used an American battleship. The Russian Ganguts were hardly the most photogenic of warships, and the other options include the Italian Giulio Cesare and the British Royal Sovereign, both transferred to the Soviet Union late in their careers.
Nevertheless, there is no excuse for such an oversight.