Seventy eight years and several days ago, over the course of a half week, the British Royal Navy and Fleet Air Arm, Polish Navy and German Kriegsmarine were involved in one of the most tragic maritime engagements of the Battle of the Atlantic, with exceptional heroism displayed on both sides of a terrible, world-defining war. A suprising number of families today, including my own, contain veterans of the battle of the Denmark Strait or people who served aboard the Prinz Eugen, Bismark, Hood, Rodney, King George the V, Prince of Wales, Ark royal, Sheffield, etc, within some point of their service history. The story is well-told, but often disrespected or presented inaccurately. Hilariously, I have a grandfather who served aboard Hood who only managed to avoid being at the battle of the Denmark Strait due to a mix-up in his shore leave. It's sobering to think the only reason why me/my family is alive is due to a bureaucratic screw up in the royal navy.
I was wondering if anybody else had naval associations in their family, and if there's any interesting attached stories that they'd be willing to share? For a game that is heavily inspired by the age of battleships and early pre missile age aircraft carriers, I can imagine there might be some appeal for fellow navy families.
Bureaucratic screw ups are awesome. That is why Steiner is the head of the Bretonian government.
But no, no naval traditions in my family. I live in a landlocked country. I'm only here to troll Steiner.
Mostly Air Force in my family.
But that's a neat thing of history, a little screw up keeping him off the Hood before that day.
Only civilian when it comes to boats. Precisely arctic voyages for science. I cant give exact year but it was halfway Cold War
Otherwise just infantry in Poland/Soviet Union, late WW2 to 1947 in what is now Ukraine
Like most old english families, my family has a long tradition of naval service - though, with the exception of the world wars, this "tradition" had died out by the 1900s - I was the first in a long time to actually volunteer. That being said, I thought I should share a story my grandfather told me once about his naval service - he started prior to WW2, as a junior officer (midshipman or some shit, I dunno, I was army not navy issue gay XD).
So he told me the story from before the war, and it goes vaguely like this: he and his mates - mostly junior officer ranks - served with a commander that was very doting, didn't check up on things sort of guy. So they got into this habit: They all wrote "Church of Turkey" on their forms, and every time one of their group had a religiously sanctioned holiday (eg. Jewish, Christian, Moslem holidays... whatever they could get, basically), they would all declare that their "Church" followed that same belief, thus earning themselves a paid day off. They did this for
years (grandfather used to joke he probably owned the Navy "thousands in back pay for holidays"), before eventually the old captain retired and was replaced by a more savvy officer who put a stop to the shenanigans. Strange as it sounds, seems the war did him some good - post war he was the model officer, got his own command toward the end of his career. I can never help but smile when I imagine a ship full of navy officers coming up with weird and wonderful holidays, so they could go out to the pub with their mates!
Edit:
You say that, but
Landlocked Navies 
my great grandfather went down with the USS Houston at sunda strait and my dad blew up an oil refinery in northern iraq with a tomahawk missile during desert storm
well my parents and grandparents crossed the florida straits during the cuban revolution on a dinky fishing boat so
My Father and Grandfather both served in the United States Navy. My Grandfather served in Vietnam and I don't know much about my Fathers service other than he was a Petty Officer.