WW2 ships with a partially submerged design?

[leerm002]

Greetings everyone! 

Now I want to preface this with the fact that I am NOT very knowledgeable about history (especially compared to some,) nor ship design and mechanics. I think that sort of thing is quite interesting, but I can't say I am "in the know". 

Now, as to the actual question for you folks that ARE knowledgeable: Were there any ship designs in WW2 that had the sort of super-low deck (or even partially submerged) that is often shown for the old USS Monitor style ironclads? You see, I remember reading a thing on that old ship awhile ago that said that by keeping the majority of the actual ship under-water, and the armoring the top sections, the ship was able to provide a significantly smaller target to enemy ships as well as offer enhanced protection to what it DID present. Now, I have no idea if that is true or not, but it sounds like an interesting theory anyway. That's what leads me to my question: did any nation try a more modern version of that idea? Something with an extremely small profile, topmounted armor, and perhaps a few heavily armored turrets seems like a really interesting ship design. Of course I could be forgetting something very obvious here that would make the design completely impractical...

But how about it folks? Any modern takes on the good old USS Monitor out there? 

(Thanks in advance!)

[zergling_]

such design would not be suitable for ocean going nature of the pacific/atlantic fleet.

[EvyL]

Well the monitors aren't exactly kitted for blasting the crap out of ships despite carrying big guns themselves since they were simply used to shell targets and a low freeboard ship can potentially put the deck awash constantly if the ocean decides to screw that ship over with big swells

[BunnyDragon]

Monitors were built for river and unique to North American Gulf/Atlantic coast inter-coastal waterways.  You can have a very unocean worthy ship go through, but I know of at least one monitor lost to rough seas moving down the inter-coastal waterway during the Civil War. With that design, open ocean sailing would be suicide. So closest modern ship/boat would be subs. 

[Wombat56]

The only one I can think of was in the Australian navy in WW1, decommissioned before WW2.

HMAS Cerberus.

A monitor with two turrets (2x2 10") and capable of taking on water to lower the already low free board so that only the turrets were above water.