Battleship

This article is about the type of warship. See also Battleship (game).

HMS Victory in 1884.

Battleship was the name given to the most powerfully gun-armed and most heavily armored classes of warships built between the 15th and 20th centuries. Battleships evolved from northern European cogs, and included carracks and galleons in the 16th Century, ships of the line in the 17th and 18th centuries, broadside ironclads and Pre-Dreadnoughts in the 19th century, and Dreadnoughts in the 20th Century. For over 300 years battleships ruled the waves, allowing nations such as the Netherlands, Spain, France and the United Kingdom to create and maintain trade-based overseas empires and restrain their rivals. During World War II (1939-45) they were superseded as the deciding factor at sea by aircraft carriers.

Battleships were designed to engage similar enemy warships with direct or indirect fire from an arsenal of main guns. As a secondary role, they were capable of bombarding targets on and near an enemy coast to support infantry assaults. A third role for the battleships emerged during World War II, when they used their powerful anti-aircraft weaponry to screen aircraft carriers from enemy air attacks. After World War II some continued to be used for shore bombardment and as missile platforms until the early 1990s.

The word "battleship" originated with the development of the line-of-battle tactic, in which ships usually followed each other single-file and engaged the enemy ships to one side, in the mid 17th century. Ships expected to form part of this line were called ships-of-the-line-of-battle or line-of-battle ships, eventually reducing to battleship. They were divided into several classes - first-, second- and third-rates. Fourth- and fifth-rates were frigates, and sixth-rates were sloops (strictly "sloops-of-war"). These vessels were used for communications and reconnaissance and did not usually fight in fleet encounters. Although this classification worked well in the 18th century, from the middle of the 19th century, the terminology became confused by the introduction of large steam-powered armoured single-deck ships with a small number of very powerful guns. These were technically frigates because they had a single gundeck, but they were designed to fight as ships of the line, and were the most potent warships of their time.

Early battleships

A 16th century Spanish galleon.

The origin of the concept of the battleship can be found in the cogs used by northern European navies in the 12th-15th Centuries. These vessels had an advantage over galleys or viking longships because they had raised platforms called "castles" at bow and stern which could be occupied by archers, who fired down on enemy ships. Over time these castles became higher and larger, and eventually started to be built into the structure of the ship, increasing overall strength.

It was ships such as these that were first used in experiments with carrying large-caliber guns aboard. Galleys had had guns, mainly of small caliber, but these ships could carry heavier guns, and by placing them higher and firing them through holes cut in the sides of the ships, a much more powerful warship type was developed. These were known as "round ships" or "great ships", and had several advantages over lower vessels. They were more weatherly, could fire their guns from higher up and could therefore do more destruction amongst crews in galleys, were harder to board and more resistant to gunfire. The lack of need for rowing crews saved much space, but left them at the mercy of fickle winds, meaning that galleys were still often used to tow these ships into position for a battle and during battles. Galleys could still overwhelm great ships, especially when there was little wind and they had a numerical advantage, but as great ships increased in size, galleys became less and less useful. As great ships, later known as carracks, and then galleons, spread through Europe, reaching the Mediterranean Sea in around 1600, and helping to explore the world and maintain trade routes across stormy oceans, galleys and galleasses (a larger, higher type of galley with side-mounted guns, but lower than a galleon) were used less and less, and by about 1750 had little impact upon naval battles. By the 1710s every major naval power was building ships like these.

Large sailing junks of the Chinese Empire, described by various travelers to the East such as Marco Polo and Niccolò Da Conti, and used during the travels of Admiral Zheng He in the early 15th century, were contempories of such European vessels, but China never developed them into such advanced fighting ships, and when European interests overtook China the remnants of these sailing junk fleets were vastly outclassed.

The "Age of Sail"

HMS Howe in the late 19th century.

In the early to mid 17th century, new fighting techniques came to be used by several navies, in particular those of England and the Netherlands. Whereas previously battles had usually been fought by great fleets of ships closing with each other and fighting it out in whatever arrangement they found themselves, often using boarding, they now formed long single-file lines, and closed with the enemy fleet on the same tack, trying to stay in formation, and battering the other fleet until one side had had enough and retreated. Ships in this formation formed a mutually protective unit. Their guns were pointed at the enemy, and their weakest spots, their stern and bow, were shielded by other ships in the line. This was known as the "line of battle", and ships considered powerful enough to take a place in it were known as line-of-battle ships. This method of fighting lasted until a number of British admirals in the late 18th Century tried new more aggressive modifications of the same basic technique. Even after the end of the Age of Sail in the 1850s, and the development of turretted centre-line guns, the line-of-battle technique was the one used by most navies.

In the 17th century fleets could consist of almost a hundred ships of various sizes, but by the mid 18th century, ship-of-the-line design had settled on a few standard types: older two-deckers (i.e. with two complete decks of guns firing through side ports) of 50 guns (which were too weak for the battle-line but could be used to escort convoys), two-deckers of between 64 and 90 guns which formed the main part of the fleet, and larger three- or even four-deckers with 98–144 guns which were used as admirals' command ships. Fleets consisting of perhaps 10–25 of these ships, with their attendant supply ships and scouting and messenger frigates kept control of the sea-lanes for major European naval powers whilst restricting sea-borne trade of enemies.

Although Spain, the Netherlands and France built huge fleets, they were rarely able to match the skill of British naval crews. British crews excelled, in part, because they spent much more time at sea, were generally better fed, and were generally more competent as the Royal Navy based promotion on merit rather than lordship. In addition, with no large land army to support, the United Kingdom was always free to devote more resources to her prized navy.

The French Valmy (1847), the largest sailing battleship ever built.

In the North Sea and North Atlantic Ocean the fleets of the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, France and Spain fought numerous battles in support of their land armies and to deny the enemy access to trade routes. In the Baltic Sea, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands and Russia did likewise, while in the Mediterranean Sea Russia, Ottoman Turkey, Venice, the United Kingdom and France battled for control of the Balkans, Egypt and Malta.

During the Napoleonic Wars, the United Kingdom defeated Europe's major naval powers at battles such as at Copenhagen, Cape St. Vincent, Aboukir and Trafalgar, allowing the Royal Navy to establish itself as the world's primary naval power. Spain, Denmark and Portugal largely stopped building battleships during this time under duress from the British. The United Kingdom emerged from the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 with the largest and most professional navy in the world, composed of hundreds of wooden, sail-powered ships of all sizes and classes. The Royal Navy had complete naval supremacy across the world following the Napoleonic Wars, and demonstrated this superiority during the Crimean War in the 1850s.

The largest sailing three-decker battleship ever built was the French Valmy (launched in 1847). She had right sides, which increased significantly the space available for upper batteries, but pejorated the stability of the ship; wooden stabilisators were added under the waterline to address the issue. Valmy was thought to be the largest sort of sailing ship possible, as larger dimensions made the maneuver of riggings impracticable with mere manpower. She participated to the Crimean War, and after her return to France later housed the French Naval Academy under the name Borda from 1864 to 1890.

Industrial Age

However, from the early 1840s onwards, several technological innovations started to revolutionize the conception of warships. Reliable steam power made warships much more maneuverable, and became the obvious choice against sail as soon as the issue of long-distance travel and re-coaling was solved. Naval guns with exploding shells, capable of penetrating wooden hulls and setting them on fire, were invented by the French Admiral Henri-Joseph Paixhans, and adopted from 1841 by the navies of France, the United Kingdom, Russia and the United States. Their efficacy, largely proven during the Crimean War in turn led to the development of the first ironclad warships in 1859, and the subsequent generalization of iron hulls. In the 1860s major naval powers built "armoured frigate" type ships, which, although having only one gundeck, were used as battleships, not frigates. The first steel-hulled ships then appeared in 1876, with the launch of the French Redoutable.

Explosive-shell naval guns

Although explosive shells had long been in use in ground warfare (in howitzers and mortars), they could only be fired at high angles in elliptical trajectories and with relatively low velocities, which rendered them impractical for marine combat. Naval combat had required flat-trajectory guns in order to have some odds of hitting the target, so that naval warfare had consisted for centuries in encounters between flat-trajectory cannons using inert cannonballs, which a wooden boat could rather easily absorb.

The French general Henri-Joseph Paixhans developed a time-delay mechanism which, for the first time, allowed shells to be fired safely by high-powered and hence flat-trajectory guns. The effect of explosive shells against wooden hulls causing fires was devastating. The first Paixhans guns were produced in 1841 and France, the United Kingdom, Russia and the United States adopted the new naval guns in the 1840s. The change on naval warfare was demonstrated to its greatest effect when the Russian Navy equipped with these guns annihilated the Turkish fleet at the Battle of Sinop in 1853.

From 1854, the American John A. Dahlgren, took the Paixhans gun, which was designed only for a shell, to develop a gun capable of firing shot and shell, and these were used during the American Civil War (1861-1865).

Steam battleships

Le Napoléon (1850), the first purpose-built steam battleship

Before the experimental adoption of the screw in warships in the 1840s, the only available steam technology was that of the paddle wheels, which, due to their positioning on the side of the hull and the large machinery they required, were not compatible with the broadside cannon layout of the battleships. The screw was therefore the only technological option for the development of steam battleships.

The French Navy battleship Le Napoléon became the first purpose-built steam battleship in the world when she was launched in 1850 . She was also the first screw battleship, and is considered as the first true steam battleship . In the United Kingdom, Agamemnon was ordered in 1849 as a response to rumours of the French development, and commissioned in 1853.

The United Kingdom had developed a few harbour-protection units with screw/steam propulsion in the 1840s, called "blockships" or "steam-guard-ships", which were conversions of small traditional battleships cut down into floating batteries, with ballast removed, and a jury rig with a medium 450 hp (340 kW) engine for speeds of 5.8 kts (11 km/h) to 8.9 kts (16 km/h) installed. These ships, converted in 1846, were Blenheim, Ajax and their sisters . The United Kingdom was however reluctant to develop regular steam battleships, apparently due to her commitment to long-distance, worldwide operation, for which, at that time, sail was still thought the most appropriate and reliable mode of propulsion.

Eight sister-ships to Le Napoléon were built in France over a period of ten years, as the United Kingdom soon managed to take the lead in production, in number of both purpose-built and converted units. Altogether, France built 10 new wooden steam battleships and converted 28 from older battleship units, while the United Kingdom built 18 and converted 41 . In the end, France and the United Kingdom were the only two countries to develop fleets of wooden steam battleships, although several other navies are known to have had at least one unit, built or converted with British technical support (Russia, Turkey, Sweden, Naples, Denmark and Austria).

Ironclads

The French La Gloire (1858), the first ocean-going ironclad warship

The United Kingdom's naval supremacy was further challenged in 1859 when France launched La Gloire, the second (first was the 'turtle ships' of Korea) ocean-going ironclad warship. La Gloire was developed as a ship of the line, in effect a battleship cut to one deck due to weight considerations. Although made of wood and reliant on sail for most of her journeys, La Gloire was fitted with a propeller and her wooden hull was protected by a layer of thick iron armour. This ship instantly rendered all British battleships obsolete, as British vessels would easily be outmaneuvered and their cannonballs would simply bounce off Gloire's revolutionary metal armour. The United Kingdom sparked a massive naval arms race by launching the superior all-iron Warrior in 1860. The improvements in ship design that followed made both ships obsolete within 10 years. With the Royal Navy's "wooden walls" rendered obsolete by the new breed of ironclad ships, other world powers seized the opportunity to build high-tech warships to rival British vessels, and major warship construction programmes began in earnest in the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Austria-Hungary, Russia and Prussia/Germany. Intent to maintain naval superiority (under the premise that the Royal Navy had to outnumber the world's next two largest navies combined), the British government spent more and more money on up-to-the-minute warship designs.

Turrets and rifled guns

Soon after, however, turreted guns began to be used, following the designs of the Swedish shipwright John Ericsson and the British inventor Captain Cowper Coles. Turrets helped to solve the problems posed by the rapidly inceasing size and weight of heavy guns; by allowed a much-improved arc of fire, they maximised the potential of the relatively small number of guns that could now be embarked. In the 1870s the armoured frigate type, with its side-ported guns, dropped out of fashion. Armoured cruisers, which were first built with broadside guns, soon adopted turrets as well. The transition from smoothbore cannon to Rifled Muzzle Loaders and Rifled Breech Loaders greatly affected the design of the ships. The fear that an enemy naval power could launch an attack with ships that were only slightly superior became a major factor in British defence policy during the late 19th century. Warship technology was advancing so rapidly from 1865–1906 that new battleships were often rendered obsolete within a few years of construction. By 1870, the British government was spending an average of £1.75 million per year (approximately 0.2% of GNP) on the construction of new warships; the greater part of this going on battleships.

Gunpowder advances

Black powder combusted rapidly, and therefore useful cannons required relatively short barrels, otherwise the friction of the barrel would slow down the shell accelerated by the violent expansion of the powder. The sharpness of the black powder explosion also meant that guns were subjected to extreme material stress. One important step was to press the powder into pellets. This kept the ingredients from separating and allowed some control of combustion by choosing the pellet size. Brown powder (black powder, "incorporating charcoal that was only partially carbonized" [2]), which combusted less rapidly, allowed longer barrels, which allowed greater accuracy; and because it expanded less sharply than regular black powder, it put less strain on the insides of the barrel, allowing guns to last longer and to be manufactured to tighter tolerances.

The development of smokeless powder was a critical step in the creation of the modern battleship. It did not seriously impede vision. The energy content, and therefore the propulsion, is much greater than that of black powder, its rate of combustion can be controlled by choosing the right mixture, it resists detonation and it has little tendency to corrode the metal of the gun.

These advances permitted a battleship to mount fewer guns to greater effect than its predecessors.

Steel battleships

The French Redoutable (1876), the first battleship to use steel as the main building material

Compared to iron, steel allowed for greater structural strength for a lower weight. France was the first country to manufacture steel in large quantities, using the Siemens process. The French Navy's Redoutable, laid down in 1873 and launched in 1876 was a central battery and barbette warship which became the first battleship in the world to use steel as the principal building material . At that time, steel plates still had some defects, and the outer bottom plating of the ship was made of wrought iron.

Warships with all-steel constructions were later built by the Royal Navy, with the dispatch vessels Iris and Mercury, laid down in 1875 and 1876. For these, the United Kingdom initially adopted the Siemens process, but then shifted to the more economical Bessemer steel manufacturing process, so that all subsequent ships were all-steel, other than some cruisers with composite hulls (iron/steel framing and wood planking).

Design experiments

From 1870 to 1890 battleship design was in a wildly experimental phase, as different navies experimented with different turret arrangements, sizes and numbers, with each new design rendering the previous ones largely obsolete overnight. Unlike the British the French often built a single example of each new design. Therefore the French navy was mocked as a "fleet of samples". Bizarre experimental warships appeared—a series of German warships were built with dozens of small guns to repel smaller craft, a British vessel was built using a turbine engine (which ironically much later became the main propulsion system for all ships), whilst an entire class of French battleships such as the 1896 Bouvet — known as "fierce-face" designs — were developed without regard to symmetry or harmony of appearance, and favoured an aggressive look. The main battleship nations during this period were the United Kingdom, France and Russia, plus newcomers Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy, while Turkey and Spain built small numbers of armoured frigates and cruisers, and Sweden, Denmark, Norway and the Netherlands built smaller "coastal battleships" ("Pantserschip" or "Panzership" depending on the language) of up to 5,200 tons. Some navies experimented with "second class battleships", vessels which were designed to be less expensive than full battleships but also at the cost of power; these were not, however, particularly popular, especially in navies of nations with global ambitions. The United States experimented with four such ships, including the first two American battleships, Maine and Texas.

Pre-Dreadnought battleship Mikasa, flagship of the Japanese fleet at the Battle of Tsushima, in 1905

The first warships resembling modern battleships were built in the United Kingdom around 1870 with the Devastation class of low-freeboard turret ships, a few years after the first battle between ironclad warships (the USS Monitor and CSS Virginia at Hampton Roads, Virginia). However, it was not until around 1880 that battleship design became stable enough for larger classes to be built to a single design. Later in the period battleship displacement grew rapidly as more powerful engines and more armour and minor guns were added. Many experimental ships were built, but all navies finally converged on a design known after-the-fact as Pre-dreadnoughts, which were battleships built in the period 1890–1905 and usually having a displacement of 9,000–16,000 tons, a speed of 13–18 knots, and an armament of four "big guns", usually 12 inches (305 mm) in bore diameter, in two centreline turrets, fore and aft, plus a heavy intermediate battery of typically eight 8-inch (200 mm) guns carried in double turrets on the superstructure corners, and a secondary battery of smaller guns. The 12-inch (305 mm) mains and 8-inch (200 mm) intermediates were generally used for battleship to battleship combat, while the secondaries (typically 7-inch (178 mm) to 5-inch (127 mm)) were reserved for smaller threats, cruisers and the new destroyers. A small number of designs, including the American Kearsarge and Virginia classes, experimented with all or part of the 8-inch (200 mm) intermediate battery superimposed over the 12-inch (300 mm) primary, with less than stellar results (nearly universally, recoil factors resulted in the 8-inch (200 mm) battery being completely unusable. Additionally, the inability to train separately the primary and intermediate armament led to significant tactical limitation). Turrets, armour plate, and steam engines were all improved over the years, and torpedo tubes were introduced. However, events in 1906 sparked off another naval arms race.

The Dreadnought era — "All-big-gun" battleships

In May 1905 the Russian Navy was decisively defeated at the Battle of Tsushima by the modern Japanese Navy, which was equipped with the latest battleships. The events of the battle revealed to the world that only the biggest guns mattered in modern naval battles. As secondary guns grew in size, spotting gun splashes (and aiming) between main and secondary guns became problematic. The Battle of Tsushima demonstrated that damage from the main guns was much greater than secondary guns. In addition, the battle demonstrated the practicability of gun battles beyond the range of secondary guns (12,000 yards/ 11 000m).

The United States, Japan, and the United Kingdom all realized this and launched plans for all-big-gun ships. The Imperial Japanese Navy's Satsuma was the first battleship in the world to be designed and laid down as an all-big-gun battleship, although gun shortages only allowed her to be equipped with four of the twelve 12-in (300 mm) guns that had been planned. She was fitted additionally with eight 10-in guns.

The Imperial Japanese Navy's Satsuma, the first ship to be designed and laid down as an "all-big-gun" battleship

The United Kingdom, led by the efforts of the First Sea Lord (head of the Admiralty), Jackie Fisher, took the lead and completed HMS Dreadnought in only 11 months. Dreadnought carried ten 12-inch (300 mm) guns in 5 turrets, and was powered not by reciprocating engines, but by revolutionary (for large ships) steam turbines. Previous ships powered by reciprocating steam engines were, in practice, limited by engine vibration to 18 knots (33 km/h). Even at that speed vibration limited aiming ability and the engines wore out quickly. Dreadnought had a top speed of 21 knots (39 km/h). It was the first of the new breed of "all-big-gun" battleships. Major naval powers raced to build their own dreadnoughts to avoid being overtaken by the United Kingdom. The Royal Navy, labouring under the expectation that it should be able to match any two of its competitors combined, began demanding increasingly unaffordable sums from the government for dreadnought construction. The government, already burdened with financial crises caused by the Second Boer War and a voting population demanding more government expenditure on welfare and public works, could not afford to squander precious money on even more dreadnoughts, allowing rival navies (particularly the Kaiserliche Marine) to catch up with the United Kingdom's battleship forces. Even after Dreadnought's commission, battleships continued to grow in size, guns, and technical proficiency as countries vied to have the best ships. By 1914 Dreadnought was outmoded. This expensive arms race would not end until the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922. This treaty limited the number and size of battleships that each major nation could possess.

With advances in gun laying and aiming, engagement ranges had increased from 1000 yards (900 m)or less to 6000 yards (5500 m) or more over the previous few years, in part as a consequence of the devastating, but short-ranged firepower of the recently invented torpedo. This had caused a move away from mixed calibre armament, as each calibre required a different aiming calibration, something which unnecessarily complicated gunnery techniques. At longer ranges, the higher maximum rate of fire of the smaller calibres was negated by the need to wait for shell splashes before firing the next salvo and the determination of those from the other calibres. This negated the advantage of small-calibre guns; heavier weapons were effectively as fast and packed a much greater punch.

File:HMS Dreadnought 1906 H63367.jpg

HMS Dreadnought

The French navy solved the problem of identifying the results of individual ships in a clever way; each ship added color to its shells. Other nations adopted this measure as well.

Partially as a consequence of this new philosophy, and partially as a consequence of its powerful new turbine engine, Dreadnought dispensed almost completely with the smaller calibre secondary armament carried by her immediate predecessors, allowing her to carry more heavy calibre guns than any other battleship built up to that time. She carried ten 12-inch (300 mm) guns mounted in five turrets; three along the centreline (one forward and two aft) and two on the wings, giving her twice the broadside of anything else afloat. She retained a number of 12-pounder (3-inch) quick-firing cannon for use against destroyers and torpedo-boats. The first large warship equipped with steam turbines, she could make 21 knots (39 km/h) in a calm sea, allowing her to outrun existing battleships (with a typical speed of 18 kts (33 km/h)). Her armour was strong enough that she could conceivably go head-to-head with any other ship afloat in a gun battle and win.

Although there were some problems with the ship — the design's wing turrets strained the hull when firing broadsides, and the top of the thickest armour belt lay below the waterline when the ship was fully loaded — Dreadnought was so revolutionary that battleships built before her were afterward known as "pre-Dreadnoughts", and those following as "Dreadnoughts". Vessels built within a few years that were bigger and mounted more powerful guns were referred to as "Superdreadnoughts". In a stroke, Dreadnought had made all existing battleships obsolete; including those of the Royal Navy, which embarked on a programme of building ever-more-powerful Dreadnought designs.

National pride in the early 20th Century was largely based on how many of these ships a navy had, and details were published in the newspapers for the public to avidly follow; the naval arms race which Dreadnought sparked, especially between the United Kingdom and the young German empire, was to create powerful shockwaves. Whereas Germany before the commissioning of Dreadnought had been behind the British Empire by more than twenty battleships of the highest class, they were now behind by only one.

Dreadnought was powered with steam turbines, which enabled her to sustain a higher maximum speed for longer, and with less maintenance than her triple-expansion engine powered predecessors. Being more compact, the turbines also allowed for a lower hull, which had the side-effect of reducing the amount of armour the ship had to carry. Although turbines had been used in destroyers for some years previously, Dreadnought was the first large warship to use them. As a consequence of the turbines, Dreadnought was actually slightly cheaper than the previous Lord Nelson class of pre-Dreadnoughts.

The American South Carolina class battleships were begun before Dreadnought, and had most of her features, except for the steam turbines; however, their final design was not completed before Dreadnought, and their construction took much longer. Smaller than Dreadnought at 16,000 tons standard displacement, they carried eight 12-inch (300 mm) guns in four twin turrets arranged in superfiring pairs fore and aft along the centreline of the keel. This arrangement gave South Carolina and her sister Michigan a broadside equal to Dreadnought's without requiring the cumbersome wing turrets that were a feature of the first few British dreadnought classes. The superfiring arrangement had not been proven until after South Carolina went to sea, and it was initially feared that the weakness of the previous Virginia class ship's stacked turrets would repeat itself.

The "Super Dreadnoughts"

Orion class battleships in line.

The arrival of Super Dreadnoughts is not as clearly identified with a single ship in the same way that the dreadnought era was initiated by HMS Dreadnought. However, it is commonly held to start with the British Orion class, and for the German navy with the Königs.

The Orions were just one step in a breathtakingly rapid evolution that Dreadnought had initiated. What made them "super" was the unprecedented jump in displacement of 2,000 tons over the previous class, the introduction of the heavier 13.5 inch (343 mm) gun, and the distribution of all the main armament on the centreline of the keel. Thus, in the four years that separated the laying down of Dreadnought and Orion, displacement had increased by 25%, and weight of broadside had doubled. Because of Admiralty insistence on open sighting hoods, however, the raised turrets in this class could not fire on the axial line without concussing the gunlayers in the lower turret, a feature avoided in the South Carolina class battleship.

Superdreadnoughts also incorporated, during construction, the latest technical gunnery advances. Thus they received director control, designed from the outset with larger observation positions with range finders and electrical repeaters aloft, mechanical calculators and predictors in protected positions below, and very advanced alignment and correction devices for the guns.

The design weakness of super dreadnoughts, which distinguished them from post-Great War designs, was armour disposition. Their design placed emphasis on vertical protection which was needed in short range battles. These ships were capable of engaging the enemy at 20 000 metres, but were vulnerable to the angle of fire that came at such ranges. Post-war designs typically had 5 to 6 inches (127 mm to 152 mm) of deck armour to defend against this dangerous, plunging fire. The concept of Zone of immunity became a major part of the thinking behind battleship design. Lack of underwater protection was also a weakness of these pre-World War I designs which were developed only as the threat of the torpedo became real.

The superdreadnoughts that had already been built were surpassed by designs developed during the Great War. Any remaining that served in World War II had all either received extensive modifications, or were a source of extreme anxiety because of their vulnerability to more modern battleships, or both.

World War I

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British Grand Fleet during WWI.

A naval arms race had been ongoing between Germany and the United Kingdom since the 1890s. The building of Dreadnought actually helped Germany in this, as instead of having a lead of 15 or so ships of the latest type, the United Kingdom now had a lead of just one. Furthermore, the United Kingdom's policy of maintaining a navy larger than the world's second and third largest navies combined was becoming unsustainably expensive. All other battleship navies switched over in the next few years to building Dreadnought-type ships as well.

At this point in time, the Royal Navy of the United Kingdom had ruled the seas for at least a century, but the German emperor Kaiser Wilhelm II and his naval minister, Alfred von Tirpitz, set out to change that, in part for strategic reasons, but mainly due to a simple desire to challenge the United Kingdom. The culmination of this race led to a stalemate in World War I. The German High Seas Fleet and the British Grand Fleet were too valuable to be risked in battle and so both spent the majority of the war in port, waiting to respond should the other go to sea. Paradoxically, the ships were too valuable (strategically, at least) to leave at port, and too expensive to use in battle. Apart from some operations in the Baltic against Russia, Germany's main fleet limited itself to making battlecruiser raids on the British east coast, in an attempt to lure part of the British fleet out so that it could be defeated by the waiting High Seas Fleet. In their turn, the British made sweeps of the North Sea, and both sides laid extensive minefields. Although there were several naval battles, the only engagement between the main British and German fleets was the abortive Battle of Jutland, a German tactical victory of sorts (fourteen British ships were sunk to eleven German, although the High Seas Fleet fled the field) but a British strategic victory, as although the German fleet was not destroyed it took longer to come back to operational status than the British and mostly remained in port for the rest of the war.

After World War I, the Armistice with Germany required that most of the High Seas Fleet be interned at Scapa Flow, Scotland. Most of these ships were subsequently scuttled by their German crews on 21 June 1919 just before the formal surrender of Germany. As far as the German sailors were concerned, they were undefeated; it was felt that their ships should not fall into the hands of the British.

World War II

File:German battleship Bismarck.jpg

Stern view of Bismarck, c.1940.

With the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922, the major navies of the world scaled back their battleship programs, with numerous ships on all sides scrapped or re-purposed. With extensions, that treaty lasted until 1936, when the major navies of the world began a new arms race. Famous ships like Bismarck, Prince of Wales and Yamato were all launched in the next few years. During the conflict naval warfare evolved quickly and battleships lost their position as the principal ships of the fleet. Most new-build World War II battleships had similar layouts, typically equipped with three triple turrets of 14 inch (356 mm) to 16 inch (406 mm) calibre (18.1 inch (460 mm) in the mighty Yamatos) in a "2-A-1" layout, and the superstructure flanked with secondary guns of 4-6 inch (100 mm to 152 mm) caliber. The big guns of Yamato were intended to outmatch any armor in the world, even the sophisticated and tough armor of the American and British battleships, but in practice they were no more powerful than the 16 inch (406 mm) guns of the American WW2 battleships. Neither ever fired on, or even saw, the other.

In the early stages of the Battle of the Atlantic, Germany's surface units threatened the Atlantic convoys supplying the United Kingdom, so the British surface units devoted themselves to protecting the convoys, and seeking out and trying to destroy the German ships, as well as lying in wait at the Royal Navy's principal anchorage at Scapa Flow. The German battleship raiders recorded early successes, with Scharnhorst and Gneisenau surprising and sinking the aircraft carrier HMS Glorious off western Norway in June 1940. A subsequent cruise in the North Atlantic netted the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau 22 ships. On 24 May 1941 during an attempt to break out into the North Atlantic, Bismarck sank the battlecruiser HMS Hood. The Royal Navy hunted down Bismarck; an attack by Swordfish biplane torpedo-bombers from the aircraft carrier Ark Royal disabled her steering and allowed the British heavy units to catch up. Instead of further attacks by aircraft, on Monday 27 May the Royal Navy's battleships King George V and Rodney with 2 cruisers and a number of destroyers engaged her with guns and torpedoes, such as the HMS Dorsetshire. After an eighty-eight minute battle, the Bismarck sank; however, accounts of her crew have always said that she was scuttled to avoid capture, giving rise to a lasting controversy.

Battleships were also involved in the battle for control the Mediterranean. At the Battle of Taranto in November 1940, Swordfish aeroplanes from HMS Illustrious attacked the Italian fleet at their base at Taranto. For the loss of two aircraft, the Royal Navy effectively sank one battleship and disabled two others. The success of this raid inspired the Japanese plan to attack Pearl Harbor which entered the planning stage three months later. At the Battle of Cape Matapan, 27–29 March 1941, three Italian heavy cruisers were surprised and destroyed in a brief battle with a British battleship force near Crete.

The Imperial Japanese Navy's Yamato, seen in 1941, and her sister ship Musashi were the largest battleships in history

However, technology was overtaking the battleship. A battleship's big guns might have a range of thirty statute miles (48 km), but the aircraft carrier had aircraft with ranges of several hundred miles (kilometres), and radar was making those attacks ever more effective. Bismarck was crippled by obsolete Swordfish torpedo bombers from Victorious and Ark Royal. The Soviet dreadnought Petropavlovsk and Italian Roma were sunk by German air attacks. The British battleship HMS Prince of Wales and her battlecruiser consort HMS Repulse were sunk by Japanese torpedo bombers while operating in the defence of Malaya (Malaysia and Singapore). Prince of Wales became the first battleship to be sunk by aircraft while able to defend itself in open water.

D-Day saw battleships in the role of coastal bombardment in support of an amphibious landing on a hostile, fortified shore. Several older battleships came into their own, not only knocking out coastal guns which threatened transports and landing craft, but also hitting troop and tank concentrations, and railway marshalling yards. HMS Ramillies fired 1,002 15-inch (380 mm) shells at shore targets as well as driving off German aircraft, E-Boat and destroyer attacks.

The Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941 sank or damaged most of the U.S. Pacific Fleet's battleships, but the three aircraft carriers (USS Yorktown, USS Lexington, and USS Enterprise) were not in port and so escaped damage. Six months later, two of those carriers (Yorktown and Enterprise; Lexington was lost at the Battle of Coral Sea) and the USS Hornet turned the tide of the Pacific War at the battle of Midway. As the war progressed, battleships became festooned with anti-aircraft weapons such as the 40 mm Bofors gun. Nonetheless, the advent of air power spelled doom for the battleship.

Battleships in the Pacific ended up primarily performing shore bombardment and anti-aircraft defense for the carriers. The largest battleships ever constructed, Japan's Yamato and Musashi, were sunk by aircraft attacks long before they could come within striking range of the American fleet. The last active German battleship, Tirpitz, had lurked until late into the war in Norwegian fjords protected by anti-submarine defences and shore based anti-aircraft guns. A daring covert attack by British mini-subs failed, but it was nevertheless finally damaged there and sunk by RAF aircraft using Tallboy bombs.

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Pennsylvania leading Colorado, Louisville, Portland, and Columbia into Lingayen Gulf, Philippines, January 1945

The second half of World War II saw the last battleship duels. The USS Massachusetts fought Vichy French battleship Jean Bart on 27 October,1942. In the Battle of Guadalcanal on November 15 1942, the United States battleships South Dakota and Washington fought and destroyed the Japanese battleship Kirishima. In the Battle of North Cape, on 26 December 1943, HMS Duke of York and destroyers sank the German Scharnhorst off Norway. And in the Battle of Leyte Gulf on 25 October 1944 six battleships, led by admiral Jesse Oldendorf of the US 7th Fleet sank the Japanese admiral Shoji Nishimura's battleships Yamashiro and Fuso during the Battle of Surigao Strait.

Nevertheless, the Battle of Samar on 25 October 1944 during the Battle of Leyte Gulf proved that battleships still were a lethal weapon. The indecision of Admiral Takeo Kurita and the valor of the American destroyer escort and fighter crews, who gamely put their ships and aircraft in harm's way against the much heavier battleships, saved the American escort carriers of "Taffy 3" from being pounded to the bottom by gunfire of Yamato, Kongo and Nagato and their cruiser host. Miraculously, only Gambier Bay and four destroyers were lost due to surface action. The fierce attacks of the American pilots led Kurita to mistakenly believe he had accidentally attacked Admiral Halsey and the Fast Carrier Task Force, a mistake that if real would have cost him his fleet and his life.

As a result of the changing technology, plans for even larger battleships, the American Montana class and Japanese "Super Yamato" class, were cancelled. At the end of the war, almost all the world's battleships were decommissioned or scrapped. It is notable that most battleship losses occurred while in port. No battleship was lost to heavy bombers on the open seas, which was considered the most grave aerial peril to battleships prior to World War II due to Billy Mitchell and the Ostfriesland experiment. The Roma was sunk by a guided bomb, a Fritz X, while underway to surrender and HMS Warspite severely damaged by another a week later. But, the real aerial peril to battleships came from small, one to three-man dive bombers and torpedo bombers like the SBD Dauntless and TBF Avenger.

Post World War II

The battleship USS Iowa firing a salvo to starboard

After World War II, several navies retained battleships, but they were now outclassed by carriers. The Italian Giulio Cesare was taken by the Soviets as reparations and renamed Novorossiysk; it was sunk by a German mine in the Black Sea 29 October 1955. The two Doria class ships were scrapped in the late 1950s. The French Lorraine was scrapped in 1954, Richelieu in 1964 and Jean Bart in 1970. The United Kingdom's four surviving King George V class ships were scrapped towards the end of the 1950s, and Vanguard followed around 1960. All other surviving British battleships had been scrapped in the late 1940s. The Soviet Union's Petropavlovsk was scrapped in 1953, Sevastopol in 1957 and Gangut in 1959, Brazil's Minas Gerais was scrapped in 1954 (sister ship Sao Paulo sank en route to the breakers during a storm in 1951), Argentina kept its two Rivadavia class ships until 1956, Chile kept Almirante Latorre (formerly HMS Canada) until 1959, and the Turkish battlecruiser Yavuz (formerly the German Goeben, launched in 1911) was scrapped in 1976 after an offer to sell it back to Germany was refused. Sweden had several small coastal defense battleships, one of which, Gustav V, survived until 1970. The Russians also scrapped four large incomplete cruisers in the late 1950s, whilst plans to build new battleships were abandoned following the death of Stalin in 1953. There were also some old sailing battleships still used as housing ships or storage depots. Of these, all but HMS Victory were sunk or scrapped by 1957.

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USS Missouri launches a Tomahawk missile.

The battleships gained a new lease of life in the U.S. Navy as fire support ships. Shipborne artillery support is considered by U.S. Marine Corps as more accurate, more effective and less expensive than aerial strikes. Radar and computer controlled gunfire can be aimed with pinpoint accuracy to target. The United States recommissioned all four Iowa class battleships for the Korean War and New Jersey for the Vietnam War. These were primarily used for shore bombardment. As part of Navy Secretary John F. Lehman's effort to build a 600-ship Navy in the 1980s, and in response to the commissioning of Kirov by the Soviet Union the United States recommissioned all four Iowa class battleships. These were modernized to carry Tomahawk missiles, with New Jersey seeing action bombarding Lebanon, while Missouri and Wisconsin fired their 16-inch (406 mm) guns at land targets and launched missiles in the Gulf War of 1991. Wisconsin served as the TLAM strike commander for the Persian Gulf, directing the sequence of launches that marked the opening of Operation Desert Storm and firing a total of 24 TLAMs during the first two days of the campaign. This will most likely be the last combat action ever by a battleship.

All four Iowas were decommissioned in the early 1990s, making them the last battleships to see active service. Missouri, and New Jersey are now museums at Pearl Harbor and Camden, N.J. respectively. Wisconsin is a museum (at Norfolk, Va.), and was recently removed from the NVR. However, pending donation, the public can still only tour the deck, since the rest of the ship is closed off for dehumidification. Iowa (at Suisun Bay) and Wisconsin were, until recently, in the Naval Reserve Fleet, and, if it were to happen, the most likely to be re-activated.

From the late 1970s onwards, the Soviet Union (later Russia) built four large nuclear-powered Kirov class missile cruisers (Raketny Kreyser (Missile Cruiser)), one of which is still operational as of 2005. Their introduction had been one of the factors leading to the reactivation of the four Iowas. The ships, while comparatively big for a cruiser, are not battleships in the traditional sense; they adhere to the design premise of a large missile cruiser and lack traditional battleship traits such as heavy armor and significant shore bombardment capability. For example, at ~26,000 tons displacement they are double the Krasina class missile cruisers (~11,000 tons), but half the Iowa class (~55,000 tons).

Battleships still in existence as museums include the American USS Massachusetts, North Carolina, Alabama and Texas, the British HMS Mary Rose and Warrior, the Japanese Mikasa, the Swedish Vasa, the Dutch Buffel and Schorpioen, and the Chilean Huascar. (See Category:Museum ships for other museum ships). Like museum ships, HMS Victory is open to the public, but she is the flagship of the Royal Navy and the oldest ship in commission in any navy.

USS Iowa and USS Wisconsin had been, until fiscal year 2006, maintained in accordance with the National Defense Authorization Act of 1996, which includes the following battleship readiness requirements:

1. List and maintain at least two Iowa class battleships on the Naval Vessel Register that are in good condition and able to provide adequate fire support for an amphibious assault;
2. Retain the existing logistical support necessary to keep at least two Iowa-class battleships in active service, including technical manuals, repair and replacement parts, and ordnance; and
3. Keep the two battleships on the register until the Navy certified that it has within the fleet an operational surface fire support capability that equals or exceeds the fire support capability that the Iowa-class battleships would be able to provide for the Marine Corps' amphibious assaults and operations ashore. (Section 1011)

Plans in the United States Navy had called for keeping Iowa and Wisconsin on the register until the naval surface fire support gun and missile development programs achieve operational capability, which was expected to occur sometime between 2003 and 2008. Yet the Littoral Combat Ships and DD(X) are still under construction, and neither will have the capability to put as much ordinance on target as the Iowas. Since Iowa and Wisconsin were removed from the Naval Vessel Register interest groups will request that they be placed on donation hold and transferred for use as museums.

The longterm plan to remove Iowa and Wisconsin and donate them as museum ships is not without controversy; the United States Marine Corps has fought to get both battleships reinstated. The USMC believes that the naval surface fire support gun and missile programs will not be able to provide adequate fire support for an amphibious assault or onshore operations; additionally, the USMC is claimed not to think that the Navy's DD(X) destroyer program will be an acceptable replacement for the battleships, and points out that the DD(X) will not be available until 2013 in any event.

Refurbishing Iowa and Wisconsin has been priced at either $430 million for a 14-month program or $500 million for a 10-month program. These figures are however now more then ten years old, and assumes restoration of the battleships to a 1991 configuration, which includes several obsolete systems.

Fictional appearances

The term "battleship" often makes an appearance in military-oriented science fiction, where they often occupy a role similar to their historical one. It should be noted that some writers have come to believe "battleship" is synonymous with "warship", and thus we see strange classifications like "light battleship" or "small battleship". Sometimes the futuristic battleships are large starships operating in outer space, rather than the open ocean.

Like aircraft carriers, conventional ocean-going battleships both fictional and real have also made frequent appearances in fictionalized accounts.

References

• Steam, Steel and Shellfire: The steam warship 1815-1905 - Conway's History of the Ship, ISBN 0785814132
• British Battleships (1957) - Dr Oscar Parkes Octopus Publishing Group
• DK Brown Warrior to Dreadnought: Warship Development 1860-1905. Caxton Editions 2003. ISBN 1-84067-5292
• DK Brown The Grand Fleet: Warship Design and Development 1906-1922. Caxton Editions 2003. ISBN 1-84067-5314
• Conway’s All the World’s Fighting Ships, 1906-1921 (1985) ISBN 0-85177-245-5
• EHH Archibald The Fighting Ship in the Royal Navy 1897-1984 (Blandford, 1984), ISBN 0-71371-3488.

See also

• List of battleships
• List of battleship classes
• Battleships throughout history (table only)
• List of Royal Navy ships
• List of ships of the Canadian Navy
• List of ships of the Japanese Navy
• List of ships of the Norwegian Navy
• List of ships of the Danish Navy
• Naval ship
• United States battleships
• Crossing the T

External links

• "Dreadnought" by Kelley L. Ross, Ph.D.
• World Battleship Lists at hazegray.org
• List of early armored ships
• Maritimequest U.S. Battleship Index
• Maritimequest British Battleship Index
• Maritimequest German Battleship Index
• Maritimequest French Battleship Index
• Maritimequest Italian Battleship Index
• Maritimequest Japanese Battleship Index
• Maritimequest Russian Battleship Index
• GlobalSecurity.org
• Video: Inside one of Missouri’s 16" gun room, about 1955. (Windows Media File)
• Comparison of the capabilities of seven WWII battlesips
• An overview of the United States Navy Naval Surface Fire Support
• University of Washington Libraries Digital Collections – Transportation Photographs An ongoing digital collection of photographs depicting various modes of transportation in the Pacific Northwest region and Western United States during the first half of the 20th century. Includes images of battleships.