I've seen this a few times myself, noticeably when I sank the Ark Royal in Plymouth. Struck ground then her aft end kind of started levitating until she was 90 degrees. Then she started disappearing into the seabed.
I always chalked it up as a way to keep the performance issues to a minimum with all the new eye candy, less things to render. Also get's rid of the sunk ship but too shallow to register as sunk thing that you get in the harbors at times.
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