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Battleship

This article is about a battleship as a type of warship. See also Battleship (game). Dreadnought redirects here. See also Workers' Dreadnought.

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In naval history, battleships were the most heavily armed and armored warships afloat. In the mid-20th century they were made obsolete by the aircraft carrier. Although some continued to be used for shore bombardment and as missile platforms, the last battleships were decommissioned in the late 1990s.

The name "battleship" was initially given to first-, second-, and third-rate ships of the line during the age of sail. These ships were called the "main line of battle ships", or battleships for short.

Early battleships

The line of battle was first used by England and Spain in the early 17th century, although ships of similar type, generally called "Great Ships" had existed in several European countries since around 1410. For over 500 years battleships were the main instrument of naval warfare, particularly in Europe where they allowed nations such as the Netherlands, Spain, and particularly Britain, to create and maintain trade empires.

In the 17th Century fleets could consist of almost a hundred ships of various sizes, but by the mid 18th Century, battleship design had settled on a few standard types: older two-deckers (ie. 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 84 guns which formed the main part of the fleet, and larger three- or even four-deckers with 90-144 guns which were used as admirals' command ships. Fleets consisting of perhaps 10-25 of these ships kept control of the sea-lanes for Britain and its allies while restricting sea-borne trade of Britain's enemies.

Although Spain, the Netherlands, and France built huge fleets they were rarely able to match the skill of the British crews, who spent much more time at sea. In the North Sea and North Atlantic Ocean the fleets of Britain, 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, Britain and France battled for control of the Balkans, Egypt and Malta.

After the Napoleonic Wars Spain, Denmark and Portugal largely stopped building battleships. In around 1855, with the advent of reliable steam power and iron hulls, wooden sail battleships were quickly redesigned or fitted with engines. In the 1860s many nations built "armored frigate" type ships, which, although having only one gundeck, were used as battleships, not frigates. Soon after, however, turreted guns began to be used, notably by the designer John Ericsson. These meant that guns could fire on both beams, meaning that fewer guns needed to be carried. IN the 1870s the armored frigate type, with its side-ported guns, dropped out of fashion. Armored cruisers, which were first built with broadside guns, did the same.

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. The main battleship nations during this period were Britain, France and Russia, plus newcomers Germany, Austria and Italy, while Turkey and Spain built small numbers of armored frigates and cruisers, and Sweden and the Netherlands built smaller "coastal battleships" (pantserschip) of up to 5,000 tons.

The first warships resembling modern battleships were built in Britain 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), fought at Hampton Roads, Virginia. It wasn't 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 armor and minor guns were added. Apart from some experimental types, battleships built in the period 1870-1905 usually had a displacement of 9,000-16,000 tons, a speed of 13-18 knots, and an armament of four big guns, usually 12" (305mm) in bore diameter, in two centreline turrets, fore and aft, plus secondary and smaller guns. Turrets, armor plate, and steam engines were all improved over the years, and torpedo tubes were introduced. It was this type of battleship that made up the "Great White Fleet", as well as the main battle fleets of many nations.

Dreadnought

Battleship design underwent another revolution with HMS Dreadnought, launched in 1906. Dreadnought had 10-12" guns mounted in five turrets; three along the centreline and two on the wings, giving it twice the broadside of anything else afloat. She could make 21 knots in calmer sea states, allowing her to outrun existing battleships. Her armor was strong enough that she could conceivably go toe-to-toe with any other ship afloat in a gun battle and win.

Although the wing turret design was flawed, Dreadnought was so revolutionary that battleships built before her were afterward known as "pre-Dreadnoughts", and those following as "Dreadnoughts" or "Super Dreadnoughts". 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 follow. The other great innovation of the Dreadnought was the introduction of steam turbines, enabling it to sustain its maximum speed for longer and with less maintenance than its triple-expansion engine powered predecessors and contemporaries were able to do. This made it slightly cheaper than the previous "Lord Nelson" class of pre-Dreadnoughts.

The American South Carolina class battleships were actually designed before Dreadnought, and had most of the features, except for the steam turbines; however, these ships were completed after Dreadnought. Otherwise we might have been using another term for this revolution in naval technology.

World War I

A naval arms race had been going on between Germany and the United Kingdom for several years. The building of the Dreadnought actually helped Germany in this, as instead of having a lead of 15 or so ships of the latest type, Britain now had a lead of just one. All other battleship navies switched over in the next few years to building Dreadnought-type ships as well.

The Royal Navy of the United Kingdom had ruled the seas for several centuries, but the German emperor Kaiser Wilhelm and his naval minister, Alfred von Tirpitz, set out to change that, in part for strategic reasons, but mainly due to a desire to challenge Britain. The culmination of this race was 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. 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 (fourteen British ships were sunk to eleven German) but a British strategic victory, as the High Seas Fleet fled and mostly remained in port for the rest of the war.

After World War I, the Armistice of 1918 required that most of the High Seas Fleet be surrendered to Britain, and its ships were interned at Scapa Flow, Scotland. Most of these ships were subsequently scuttled by their German crews 21 June 1919.

World War II

With the Washington Naval Treaty of 1924, the major scaled back their battleship programs, with numerous ships on all sides scrapped or repurposed. 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.

In the early stages of the Battle of the Atlantic, during World War II, Germany's large surface units threatened the Atlantic convoys supplying Britain, so the British surface units devoted themselves to protecting the convoys, and seeking out and trying to destroy the German ships, as well lying in wait at Scapa. The German battleships and pocket battleships recorded early successes, such as when Scharnhorst and Gneisenau surprised and sank the carrier HMS Glorious off western Norway in June 1940. A subsequent cruise in the North Atlantic netted the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau 22 ships, and when Bismarck sank the battlecruiser HMS Hood May 24 1941 during an attempt to break out into the North Atlantic, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill sent every element of the Royal Navy he could to sink it.

Battleships had also played a major role in the Battle of Cape Matapan, 27-29 March 1941, when three Italian heavy cruisers were surpised and overwhelmed by a British battleship force near Crete. However technology was overtaking the battleship. A battleship's big guns might have a range of thirty miles, but the aircraft carrier had aircraft with ranges of several hundred miles, and radar was making those attacks ever more effective. Bismarck was sunk a few days after it destroyed Hood, after being crippled by torpedo bombers from HMS Victorious and HMS Ark Royal, and later the Russian dreadnought Petropavlovsk and Italian Roma were sunk by German air 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 were not in port and so escaped damage. Six months later, it was those carriers that were to turn the tide of the Pacific War at the Battle of Midway. Battleships in the Pacific ended up primarily performing shore bombardment and providing anti-aircraft defense for the carriers. The largest battleships ever constructed, Japan's Yamato and Musashi, were sunk by aircraft attacks. The last active German battleship, Tirpitz, survived until late into the war by hiding in Norwegian fjords, but was eventually also sunk by aircraft.

On November 15, 1942, in one of the last last engagements between capital ships in history, the United States battleships South Dakota and Washington fought and destroyed the Kirishima at Savo Island. The second last capital ship engagement was the Battle of North Cape, on 26 December 1943, in which the battleship Duke of York and destroyers sank the light battleship Scharnhorst off Norway.

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.

Post World War II

After World War II, several navies retained battleships, but they were now outclassed by carriers. The Italian Giulio Cesare was taken by the Russians as reparations and renamed Novorossiysk; it sank on 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. Britain's four surviving "King George V" class ships were scrapped around 1958, and Vanguard around 1960. All other surviving British capital ships were scrapped in the late 1940s. Russia'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 in a storm in 1951), Argentina kept its two "Rivadavia" class until 1956, Chile kept 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 coastal battleships which survived until the 1960s and 1970s. The Russians also scrapped four large incomplete cruisers in the late 1950s.

The United States recommissioned all four Iowa class battleships for the Korean War and USS New Jersey for the Vietnam War. These were primarily used for shore bombardment. All four were recommissioned under the Reagan administration and converted to carry Tomahawk missiles, with New Jersey seeing action bombarding Lebanon, while Missouri and Wisconsin fired their 16-inch (406mm) guns at land targets and launched missiles in the Gulf War of 1991.

All four were decommissioned in the early 1990s, the last battleships to see active service. Missouri, Wisconsin, and New Jersey are now museums at Pearl Harbor, Norfolk, and Camden, respectively; Iowa has been "mothballed" at Suisun Bay.

Other battleships still in existence as museums include the American North Carolina , Alabama and Texas, the British Mary Rose , Victory and Warrior , the Swedish Vasa and the Japanese Mikasa (the only "pre-Dreadnought" type left). Similar ships include the Netherlands Buffel and Schorpioen , the Chilean Huascar , the Greek armoured cruiser Giorgios Averoff and the Australian coastal battleship Cerberus .

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Battleships throughout history

These are lists of every battleship ever built. They will be added to gradually. Just great ships, galleons and carracks, sail battleships, steam battleships and dreadnoughts. No battlecruisers (they go on cruiser (or large cruiser if that page splits) page). Small monitors and coastal battleships can perhaps go on a separate page depending on size, I guess.

Note that early battleship-type ships from Algeria, Tunisia etc. are listed under Turkey, and early Norwegian battleships are listed under Denmark.

Need to rearrange cells so that some cells cover 2 columns. Check links to see which ones. For instance early and sail can be grouped together, steam and dreadnoughts also, or all 4.

• List of British battleships
• List of Japanese battleships
• List of battleships of the United States Navy
• United States battleships
• List of ships of the Royal Navy
• List of ships of the Canadian Navy
• naval ship