History Main / RammingAlwaysWorks

* ''Fanfic/{{Bait and Switch|STO}}'':

** Defied in chapter five of the original fic. Referencing the destruction of the USS ''Odyssey'' by a Jem'Hadar ramming attack in ''[=DS9=]'': "[[Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine The Jem'Hadar]]", a Jem attack ship attempts to ram the USS ''Bajor''. Difference is, Captain Kanril cuts power to the engines and aft deflector and diverts the power to the navigational shield, which is ''built'' to repel kinetic impacts. The Jems only end up crippling their own ship and a phaser hit to the forward torpedo magazine finishes them off.

* Happens so much in ''Franchise/StarTrek'' it's probably required reading at the Academy. No matter the situation, ramming is almost always more effective than weapons at causing damage.
** The ''Enterprise's'' second encounter with the Borg in ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'', "[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS3E26S4E1TheBestOfBothWorlds The Best of Both Worlds]]": In the absence of any other way of stopping the Borg from assimilating Earth, Riker orders Wesley to aim the ship at the Borg cube, and go to maximum warp. (It's unclear exactly what happens when a ship in warp hits a solid object, but at a minimum, a forced collapse of the warp field would be chaotic.) Fortunately, this proves unnecessary.

** The Dominion of ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'' employ suicide ramming tactics to destroy Federation ships; specifically, the destruction of the USS ''Odyssey''. They also take down multiple Klingon ships using this tactic during the Dominion War. In ''Odyssey'''s case, the ship was already withdrawing, but the Jem'Hadar rammed it anyway, just to show how serious they were.

* {{Defied|Trope}} by [[UsefulNotes/RMSTitanic First Officer Murdoch]], who elected to try to avoid the iceberg. Then again, considering that we're talking about a 52,000+ ton ship travelling at almost 35 miles per hour hitting a mountain of what geologists consider a sedimentary rock (resulting in the glancing blow alone generating the force equal to 37 contemporary express trains), the ship was held together with rivets and steel plates rather than welded together like modern ships, and the business end housed hundreds of sleeping passengers and crew... [[AvertedTrope Ramming might not have been exactly wise.]] Not to mention that the first instinct of any competent sailor is ''not'' to ram their ship into an obstacle. Though it turns out that because the iceberg was noticed too late to avoid, ramming it head-on actually ''would'' have been the best thing ''Titanic'' could have done. It would have resulted in considerable damage and likely killed some of the third-class passengers and off-duty crew whose accommodations were near the bow, but the ship would have been unlikely to sink. There are examples of liners surviving a head-on impact with an iceberg, such as [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Giuion_Arizona_Bow.jpg SS ''Arizona'' in 1879]], though the faster ''Titanic'' likely would've been in worse shape for it.

* Subverted in the case of pre-dreadnought battleships. Because it was thought that they would engage at only 1 mile, or 3 miles at most, a typical pre-dread was armed as many as three gun calibres, plus torpedoes ''and'' rams. However, throughout the 1890s there were few engagements between them. The only major wars involving pre-dreadnoughts as the capital ships of the navy were the [[UsefulNotes/FirstSinoJapaneseWar First Sino-Japanese War]], the [[UsefulNotes/SpanishAmericanWar Spanish-American War]], and the [[UsefulNotes/RussoJapaneseWar Russo-Japanese War]]. Of these, the first two were between small navies with very limited use on one side only of battleships; the Russo-Japanese War, however, involved two major naval powers, with two major battles in the Yellow Sea and off Tsushima. The former, while a tactical stalemate, was the first engagement between steel battleships, and was in fact first engaged at the unanticipated range of nearly 8 miles, and fought mostly at a 3-mile range. The [[CurbStompBattle Battle of Tsushima]] was fought at around 6 miles, using mostly the large-calibre 12in guns. In both cases, small guns, torpedoes and rams were useless due to distance, and this was reflected in later battleships such as HMS ''Dreadnought'', which was not equipped with a ram.

** According to the codex, some military strategists consider ramming things at superluminal speed. The Mass Effect cores have hardwired safety systems to prevent this that no one has been able to remove. They theorize that the Reapers put this in their technology specifically to avert this trope.

*** Ironically, the Battle of Hampton Roads ''could'' have proven exactly the opposite, that cannon could be an effective weapon against ironclads (as they eventually became). Both ships had weapon specs that might have allowed them to penetrate the other's armor, but for the circumstances of the battle: the ''Virginia'' had been issued with armor-piercing shells in addition to regular shot, but had left them in dock, [[DidntSeeThatComing not expecting to fight another ironclad]]; whereas the ''Monitor'' was using only 15 pounds of gunpowder in each shot instead of the [[{{BFG}} 30 pounds]] it was rated for, under the mistaken impression that [[DangerousForbiddenTechnique the full load would put the ship in danger]]. Had the two ships been able to bring their full loadouts to bear, the battle could easily have [[NoHoldsBarredBeatdown become much shorter and more vicious]].

*** The torpedo ram (with a "spar torpedo") was a common tactic during the American Civil War -- The CSS ''Hunley'' sank the USS ''Housatonic'' with one. And Lt. Alonzo Cushing of the US Navy sank the CSS ''Albemarle'' with one; in addition to the submarine ''Hunley'' (the first such vessel ever to sink an enemy), both sides employed non-submersible torpedo boats. This tactic was even more dangerous than it sounds -- the contact exploder did not yet exist, and spar torpedoes had to be set off post-ram with an attached lanyard, exposing the person who pulled it (and in the case of the ''Hunley'', having to leave the hatches open for seawater to get in, one of several suggested possibilities for the sub's sinking soon after). This is actually how the modern definition of "torpedo" came into existence. It was originally a term for the SeaMine. The spar torpedo was a variation of sea mine used in ramming attacks, and when the self-propelled torpedo was invented it inherited the name from the spar torpedo. Then self-propelled torpedoes became so widespread that the name ceased to apply to sea mines, only to the self-propelled weapon.

[[caption-width-right:350:[[Music/TheBeatles We ran into a German submarine, a German submarine, a German submarine.]]\\