A 'battleship' is a large, heavily-
armored warship with a main battery consisting of the largest
caliber of
guns. They are larger, better-armed and better-armored than
cruisers.
Battleships have evolved a great deal over time, as designs continually adapt technological advances to maintain an edge. The word ''battleship'' was coined around 1794 and is a shortened form of ''
line of battle ship'', the dominant warship in the
Age of Sail.
["battleship" The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. 1989. OED Online. Oxford University Press. 4 Apr. 2000] The term came into formal use in the late 1880s to describe a developed type of
ironclad warship,
[Stoll, J. ''Steaming in the Dark?'', Journal of Conflict Resolution Vol. 36 No. 2, Jun 1992] and by the 1890s design had become relatively standard on what is now known as the
pre-''Dreadnought'' battleship. In 1905,
HMS ''Dreadnought'' heralded a revolution in battleship design, and for many years modern battleships were referred to as
dreadnoughts.
As much as a type of war vessel, battleships constituted a potent symbol of national might and naval domination.
[Sondhaus, L. ''Naval Warfare 1815-1914'', ISBN 0-415-21478-5] For decades, the numbers and abilities of battleships were a major factor in
diplomacy and military
strategy. The global
arms race in battleship construction in the early 1900s was a significant factor in the origins of
World War I, which saw a clash of huge battlefleets at the
Battle of Jutland. The construction of battleships was limited by the
Naval Treaties of the 1920s and 1930s, but battleships both old and new were deployed during
World War II.
Despite this record, some historians and naval theorists question the value of the battleship. Aside from Jutland, there were few great battleship clashes. And despite their great firepower and protection, battleships remained vulnerable to much smaller, cheaper ordnance and craft: initially the
torpedo and
mine, and later
aircraft and the
guided missile.
[Lenton, H. T.: ''Krigsfartyg efter 1860''] The growing range of engagement led to the battleship's replacement as the leading type of warship by the
aircraft carrier during World War II, being retained into the
Cold War only by the
United States Navy for fire support purposes. These last battleships were removed from the U.S.
Naval Vessel Register in March 2006.
The ship of the line
Main articles: Ship of the line
The 'ship of the line' was a large, unarmored wooden sailing warship mounting a
battery of up to 120
smoothbore and
carronade guns. The ship of the line was a gradual evolution of a basic design dating as far back as the 1400s, and had changed little between the adoption of
line of battle tactics in the early 17th century and the end of the sailing battleship's heyday in the 1830s. From 1794, the alternative term 'line of battle ship' was contracted (informally at first) to 'battle ship' or 'battleship'.
The sheer number of guns fired
broadside meant that the sailing battleship could wreck any wooden vessel, smashing the hull and masts and killing the crew. However, the effective range of the guns was as little as a few hundred yards, and sail tactics were dependent on the wind.
The first major change to the ship of the line concept was the introduction of
steam power as an auxiliary
propulsion system. Steam power was gradually introduced to the navy in the first half of the 19th century, initially for small craft and later for
frigates.
The
French Navy introduced steam to the line of battle with the 90-gun
''Le Napoléon'' in 1850
[1] — the first true steam battleship.
[2] ''Napoleon'' was armed as a conventional ship-of-the-line, but her steam engines could give her a speed of , regardless of the wind conditions: a potentially decisive advantage in a naval engagement. In the end, France and the United Kingdom were the only two countries to develop fleets of wooden steam screw battleships, although several other navies made some use of a mixture of screw battleships and paddle-steamer frigates. These included
Russia,
Turkey,
Sweden,
Naples,
Prussia,
Denmark and
Austria.
Ironclads
Main articles: Ironclad warship
The adoption of steam power was only one of a number of technological advances which revolutionized warship design in the 19th century. The ship of the line was overtaken by the
ironclad: powered by steam, protected by metal armor, and armed with guns firing high-explosive shells. The first Royal Navy ship to bear the formal designation 'battleship' was the ironclad
HMS ''Warrior''.
[3]
Explosive shells
Wooden-hulled ships stood up comparatively well to solid shot, as shown in the 1866
battle of Lissa, where the old Austrian steam battleship ''Kaiser'' ranged across a confused battlefield, rammed an Italian ironclad and took a pounding of several 300
pound shots at point blank range. Despite losing her bowsprit and her foremast, and being set on fire, she was ready for action the very next day.
[4] By contrast, guns which fired explosive or incendiary shells were a major threat to wooden ships, and these weapons became widespread in the 1840s. In the
Crimean War, the Russian Black Sea Fleet destroyed a flotilla of wooden Turkish ships with explosive shells at the
Battle of Sinop in 1853. Later in the war French ironclad floating batteries used similar weapons against the defenses at
Kinburn.
[Lambert, Andrew: ''Battleships in Transition'', pp. 92-96]
Iron armor and construction
The development of high-explosive shells made the use of iron
armor plate on warships necessary. In 1859
France launched
''La Gloire'', the first ocean-going ironclad warship. She had the profile of a ship of the line, 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 armor.
[5] ''Gloire'' prompted further innovation from the
Royal Navy, anxious to prevent France from gaining a technological lead. The superior armored frigate
''Warrior'' followed ''La Gloire'' by only fourteen months, and both nations embarked on a programme of building new ironclads and converting existing screw ships of the line to armored frigate.
[6] Within two years, Italy, Austria, Spain and Russia had all ordered ironclad warships, and by the time of the famous clash of the
USS ''Monitor'' and the
CSS ''Virginia'' at the
Battle of Hampton Roads at least eight navies possessed ironclad ships.
The French
''Redoutable (1876), the first battleship to use steel as the main building material.
[7]
Navies experimented with the positioning of guns, in
turrets (like the
USS ''Monitor''),
centre-batteries or
barbettes, or with the
ram as the principal weapon. As steam technology developed, masts were gradually removed from battleship designs. By the mid-1870s steel was used as a construction material alongside iron and wood. 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.
[8]
The pre-dreadnought
Main articles: Pre-dreadnought
By the late 19th century, there was an increasing similarity between battleship designs, and the type now known as the 'pre-dreadnought battleship' emerged. These were heavily armored ships, mounting a mixed battery of guns in turrets, and without sails. The typical first-class battleship of the pre-dreadnought era displaced 15,000 to 17,000
tons, had a speed of 16
knots, and an armament of four 12-
inch guns in two turrets fore and aft with a mixed-calibre secondary battery amidships around the superstructure.
[ An early design with superficial similarity to the pre-dreadnought is the British ''Devastation''-class of 1871.[9] However, it was not until the 1880s that similar designs were widespread,]
The slow-firing main guns were the principal weapons for battleship-to-battleship combat. The intermediate and secondary batteries had two roles. Against major ships, it was thought a 'hail of fire' from quick-firing secondary weapons could distract enemy gun crews by inflicting damage to the superstructure, and they would be more effective against smaller ships such as cruisers. Smaller guns (12-pounders and smaller) were reserved for protecting the battleship against the threat of torpedo attack from destroyers and torpedo boats.[10]
The beginning of the pre-dreadnought era saw Britain's attempt to assert its naval might. For many years previously, Britain had taken naval supremacy for granted, and expensive naval projects were criticised by political leaders of all inclinations.
In the last years of the 19th century and the first years of the 20th, the battleship building race became defined by conflict between Britain and Germany. The German naval laws of 1890 and 1898 authorised a fleet of 38 battleships, a vital threat to the balance of naval power.
Pre-dreadnoughts continued the technical innovation of the ironclad. Turrets, armor plate, and steam engines were all improved over the years, and torpedo tubes were introduced. A small number of designs, including the American ''Kearsarge'' and ''Virginia'' classes, experimented with all or part of the 8-inch intermediate battery superimposed over the 12-inch primary. Results were poor: recoil factors and blast effects resulted in the 8-inch battery being completely unusable, and the inability to separately train the primary and intermediate armament led to significant tactical limitation. Even though such innovative designs saved weight (a key reason for their inception), they proved too cumbersome in practice.[13]
The Dreadnought era
Main articles: Dreadnought
In 1906, the revolutionary HMS ''Dreadnought'', created as a result of pressure from Admiral John A. Fisher, made existing battleships obsolete. Combining an 'all-big-gun' armament of ten 12-inch (305mm) rifles with unprecedented speed and protection, she prompted navies worldwide to re-evaluate their battleship building programmes. While the concept of an all-big-gun ship had been in circulation for several years, and the Japanese had even laid down an all-big-gun battleship in 1904,[14] ''Dreadnought'' sparked a new arms race, principally between Britain and Germany but reflected worldwide, as the new class of warships became a crucial element of national power.
Technical development continued rapidly through the dreadnought era, with step changes in armament, armor and propulsion. Ten years after ''Dreadnought's commissioning, much more powerful ships, the 'super-dreadnoughts', were being built.
The origin of ''Dreadnought''
Vittorio Cuniberti
The
Imperial Japanese Navy's
''Satsuma'', the first ship to be designed (1904) and laid down (May 15th, 1905) as an "'all-big-gun" battleship was also the largest battleship in the world at the time of her launch
General Vittorio Cuniberti, the Italian Navy's chief naval architect, first articulated the concept of an all-big-gun battleship in 1903. When the ''Regia Marina'' did not pursue his ideas, Cuniberti wrote an article in ''Jane's'' proposing an "ideal" future British battleship, a large armored warship of 17,000 tons, armed solely with a single caliber main battery (twelve 12-inch {305 mm} guns), carrying 300 mm belt armor, and capable of 24 knots (44 km/h).[15]
The Imperial Japanese Navy's battleship ''Satsuma'' became the first ship in the world designed (1904) and laid down (1905) as an all-big-gun battleship, although her armament would ultimately not be completed to specifications due to shortages of the British 12-inch Armstrong guns. ''Satsuma'' retained triple-expansion engines, though her sister ship ''Aki'', completed in 1911, used turbines.
An American design, ''South Carolina'', authorized 1905, also makes the claim for "first dreadnought", but she and her sister, ''Michigan'', would not be launched until 1908. Both used triple-expansion engines, but had superior layout of their main battery, dispensing with ''Dreadnought'''s wing turrets, and so retained the same broadside despite having two fewer guns.
Jackie Fisher
The Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905) provided operational experience to validate the 'all-big-gun' concept. At the Battle of the Yellow Sea and the Battle of Tsushima, pre-Dreadnought fleets exchanged 12-inch volleys at ranges of 7,600-12,000 yd (7 to 11 kms), beyond the range of the secondary batteries. It is often held that these engagements demonstrated the importance of the gun over its smaller counterparts, though some historians take the view secondary batteries of the pre-dreadnoughts were just as decisive as the larger weapons.
It was to prove the revolutionary technology ''Dreadnought'' was laid down in 1905 and sped to completion by 1906. She carried ten guns, had an 11-inch armour belt, and was the first large ship powered by turbines. She mounted her guns in five turrets; three on the centreline (one forward, two aft) and two on the wings, giving her twice the broadside of anything else afloat (when she was launched). She retained a number of 12-pounder (3-inch/76 mm) quick-firing cannon for use against destroyers and torpedo-boats. Her armor was heavy enough she could conceivably go head-to-head with any other ship afloat in a gun battle and win.[16]
''Dreadnought'' was to have been followed by three ''Invincible''-class battlecruisers, their construction delayed to allow lessons from ''Dreadnought'' to be used in their design. While Fisher may have intended ''Dreadnought'' to be the last Royal Navy battleship,
The dreadnought arms race
In 1897, before the revolution in design brought about by ''Dreadnought'', the Royal Navy had 62 battleships in commission or building, a lead of 26 over France and of 50 over Germany.[17] In 1906, the Royal Navy now had a lead of one: ''Dreadnought''. The new class of ship prompted an arms race with major strategic consequences. Major naval powers raced to build their own dreadnoughts to catch up with the United Kingdom. Possession of modern battleships was not only vital to naval power, but as with nuclear weapons today, represented a nation's standing in the world.
World War I
Main articles: Naval Warfare of World War I
The First World War was almost an anticlimax for the great Dreadnought fleets. There was no decisive clash of modern battlefleets to compare with the Battle of Tsushima. The role of battleships was marginal to the great land struggle in France and Russia; and it was equally marginal to the First Battle of the Atlantic, the battle between German submarines and British merchant shipping.
By virtue of geography, the Royal Navy could keep the German High Seas Fleet bottled up in the North Sea with relative ease. Both sides were aware that, because of the greater number of British Dreadnoughts, a full fleet engagement would result in a British victory. The German strategy was therefore to try to provoke an engagement on favourable terms: either inducing a part of the Grand Fleet to enter battle alone, or to fight a pitched battle near the German coastline, where friendly fields, torpedo-boats and submarines could be used to even the odds.[19]
The first two years of war saw conflict in the North Sea limited to skirmishes by battlecruisers at the Battle of Heligoland Bight and Battle of Dogger Bank and raids on the English coast. In the summer of 1916, a further attempt to draw British ships into battle on favourable terms resulted in a clash of the battlefleets in the Battle of Jutland: an indecisive engagement.[20]
In the other naval theatres there were no decisive pitched battles. In the Black Sea, Russian and Turkish battleships skirmished, but nothing more. In the Baltic, action was largely limited to convoy raiding and the laying of defensive minefields; the only significant clash of battleship squadrons was the Battle of Moon Sound at which one Russian pre-dreadnought was lost. The Adriatic was in a sense the mirror of the North Sea: the Austro-Hungarian dreadnought fleet remained bottled up by British and French blockading fleets. And in the Mediterranean, the most important use of battleships was in support of the amphibious assault on Gallipoli.
The course of the war also illustrated the vulnerability of battleships to cheaper weapons. In September 1914, the U-boat threat to capital ships was demonstrated by successful attacks on British cruisers, including the sinking of three British armored cruisers by the German submarine U-9 in less than an hour. Sea mines proved a threat the next month, when the recently commissioned British super-Dreadnought ''Audacious'' struck a mine. By the end of October, British strategy and tactics in the North Sea had changed to reduce the risk of U-boat attack.[21] While Jutland was the only major clash of battleship fleets in history, the German plan for the battle relied on U-boat attacks on the British fleet; and the escape of the German fleet from the superior British firepower was effected by the German cruisers and destroyers closing on British battleships, causing them to turn away to avoid the threat of torpedo attack. Further near-misses from submarine attacks on battleships and casualties amongst cruisers led to growing paranoia in the Royal Navy about the vulnerability of battleships. By October 1916, the Royal Navy had essentially abandoned the North Sea, instructing the Grand Fleet not to go south of the Farne Islands unless adequately protected by destroyers.
For the German part, the High Seas Fleet determined not to engage the British without the assistance of submarines; and since the submarines were more needed for commerce raiding, the fleet stayed in port for the remainder of the war.[22] Other theatres equally showed the role of small craft in damaging or destroying Dreadnoughts. The two Austrian Dreadnoughts lost in 1918 were the casualties of torpedo boats and of frogmen. The Allied capital ships lost in Gallipoli were sunk by mines and torpedo,[23] while a Turkish pre-Dreadnought was caught in the Dardanelles by a British submarine.
The inter-war period
The inter-war period saw the battleship subjected to strict international limitations to prevent a costly arms-race breaking out.
For many years, German battleships simply ceased to exist. The Armistice with Germany required that most of the High Seas Fleet be disarmed and interned in a neutral port; largely because no neutral port could be found, the ships remained in British custody in Scapa Flow, Scotland. The Treaty of Versailles specified that the ships should be handed over to the British. However, instead most of these ships were scuttled by their German crews on 21 June 1919 just before the signature of the peace treaty. Versailles also limited the German Navy, preventing Germany from building or possessing any capital ships.[24]
While the victors were not limited by the Treaty of Versailles, many of the major naval powers were crippled from years of war. Faced with the prospect of a naval arms race against the USA, Britain was keen to conclude the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922. This treaty limited the number and size of battleships that each major nation could possess, requiring Britain to accept parity with the USA and abandoning the British alliance with Japan.[25] The Washington treaty was followed by a series of other naval treaties, e.g. the First Geneva Naval Conference (1927), the First London Naval Treaty (1930), the Second Geneva Naval Conference (1932), and finally the Second London Naval Treaty (1936), which all meant limitations for major warships. These treaties would effectively end on 1 September 1939 with the beginning of World War II, but the ship classifications that had been agreed upon still apply.[26] The treaty limitations meant that fewer new battleships were launched from 1919–1939 than from 1905–1914. The treaties also inhibited development by putting maximum limits on the weights of ships. Designs like the projected British N3 battleship, the first American ''South Dakota''-class, and the Japanese ''Kii''-class — all of which continued the trend to larger ships with bigger guns and thicker armor — never got off the drawing board. Those designs which were commissioned during this period were referred to as 'treaty battleships'.
Rise of the aircraft carrier
Bombing tests which sank SMS ''Ostfriesland'', September, 1921
As early as 1914, the British Admiral Percy Scott prophesied that battleships would soon be made irrelevant by aeroplanes.[27] By the end of World War I, aeroplanes had successfully adopted the torpedo as a weapon.[28] A proposed attack on the German fleet at anchor in 1918 using the Sopwith Cuckoo carrier-borne torpedo-bomber was considered and rejected — but it was only so long before such a technique would be adopted.
In the 1920s, General Billy Mitchell of the United States Army Air Corps, believing that air forces had rendered navies around the world obsolete, presented his theory which claimed that aircraft could sink ships "under war conditions". This infuriated the U.S. Navy, but Mitchell was nevertheless allowed to conduct a series of bombing tests on battleships. In 1921, he successfully sank numerous ships, including the stationary German World War I battleship ''Ostfriesland'' and the American pre-dreadnought ''Alabama''.
Although Mitchell had stressed "war-time conditions", the ships themselves were obsolete, had no damage control and were stationary defenseless targets. The sinking of ''Ostfriesland'' was accomplished only by violating agreed-upon rules that would have allowed Navy engineers to examine the effects of various munitions; Mitchell's airmen disregarded the rule and quickly sank the ship in a coordinated attack. This proved—at least to Mitchell—that surface fleets were obsolete. In 1922, he met the like-minded Italian air power theorist Giulio Douhet on a trip to Europe and soon after an excerpted translation of Douhet's ''The Command of the Air'' began to circulate in the Air Service.[29] While far from conclusive, Mitchell's test was significant in that it put proponents of the battleship against naval aviation on the back foot.
Rearmament
The Royal Navy, United States Navy, and Imperial Japanese Navy extensively upgraded and modernized their WWI-era battleships during the 1930s. One aspect of reconstruction were towers tall and stable enough to support optical rangefinder equipment for gunnery control. Some British ships received a large block superstructure nicknamed the "Queen Anne's castle", such as in the case of the ''Queen Elizabeth'' and ''Warspite'', and this would be used in the new conning towers of the ''King George V'' fast battleships. The Japanese rebuilt all of their battleships, plus their battlecruisers, with the distinctive "pagoda" structures, though the ''Hiei'' received a more modern bridge tower that would influence the new ''Yamato'' battleships. The US experimented with tripod and later caged masts, though after Pearl Harbor some of the most severely damaged ships such as ''West Virginia'' and ''California'' were rebuilt to a similar appearance to their fast battleship contemporaries. Optic fire-control systems were rendered obsolete by radar, which was effective beyond visual contact and was effective in complete darkness or adverse weather conditions[1].
Even when the threat of war became significant again in the late 1930s, battleship construction never regained the level of importance which it had held in the years before World War I. The "building holiday" imposed by the naval treaties meant that the building capacity of dockyards worldwide was relatively reduced, and the strategic picture had changed. The development of the strategic bomber meant that the navy was no longer the only method of projecting power overseas. And the development of the aircraft carrier meant that battleships had a rival for the resources available for capital ship construction.
In Germany, the ambitious Plan Z for naval rearmament was abandoned in favour of a strategy of submarine warfare supplemented by the use of battlecruisers and ''Bismarck ''-class battleships as commerce raiders. In Britain, the most pressing need was for air defences and convoy escorts to safeguard the civilian population from bombing or starvation, and re-armament construction plans consisted of five ships of the ''King George V '' class. It was in the Mediterranean navies remained most committed to battleship warfare. France intended to build six battleships of the ''Dunkerque'' and ''Richelieu'' classes, and the Italians two powerful ''Littorio''-class ships. Neither navy built significant aircraft carriers. The USA preferred to spend limited funds on aircraft carriers until the ''South Dakota '' class. Japan, also prioritising aircraft carriers, nevertheless began work on the two mammoth ''Yamato'' class.
At the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, the Spanish navy consisted of two small dreadnought battleships, ''España'' and ''Jaime I''. ''España'', by then in reserve at the northwestern naval base of El Ferrol, fell into Nationalist hands in July 1936. The crew aboard ''Jaime I'' murdered their officers, mutinied, and joined the Republican Navy. Thus each side would have one battleship; however, the Republican Navy generally lacked experienced officers. The Spanish battleships mainly restricted themselves to mutual blockades, convoy escort duties, and shore bombardment, rarely in direct fighting against other surface units.[30] In April 1937, ''España'' ran onto a mine laid by friendly forces and sank with little loss of life. In May 1937, ''Jaime I'' was damaged by Nationalist air attacks and a grounding incident. The ship was forced to go back to port to be repaired. There she was again hit by several aerial bombs. It was then decided to tow the battleship to a more secure port, but during the transport she suffered an internal explosion that caused 300 deaths and her total loss. Several Italian and German capital ships participated in the non-intervention blockade. On May 29, 1937, two Republican aircraft managed to bomb the German pocket battleship ''Deutschland'' outside Ibiza, causing severe damage and loss of life. ''Admiral Scheer'' retaliated two days later by bombarding Almería, causing much destruction, and the resulting ''Deutschland'' incident meant the end of German and Italian support for non-intervention.[31]
World War II
German battleships — obsolete pre-dreadnoughts — fired the first shots of World War II with the bombardment of the Polish garrison at Westerplatte;[32] and the final surrender of the Japanese Empire took place aboard a United States Navy battleship, the USS Missouri. Between the two events, it became clear that battleships were now essentially auxiliary and aircraft carriers the new principal ships of the fleet.
Battleships played a part in major engagements in Atlantic, Pacific and Mediterranean theatres; in the Atlantic, the Germans experimented with taking the battleship beyond conventional fleet action into an independent commerce raider. However, there were few battleship-on-battleship engagements. Battleships had little impact on the destroyer and submarine Battle of the Atlantic, and most of the decisive fleet clashes of the Pacific war were determined by aircraft carriers.
In the first year of the war, battleships and battlecruisers defied predictions that aircraft would dominate naval warfare. ''Scharnhorst'' and ''Gneisenau'' surprised and sank the aircraft carrier ''Glorious'' off western Norway in June 1940.[33] Although unescorted carriers still were considered vulnerable to attack by other ships, and therefore had to travel with escort, this engagement marked the last time a fleet carrier was sunk by surface gunnery. In the Attack on Mers-el-Kébir, British capital ships opened fire on the French battleships harboured in Algiers with their own heavy guns, and later pursued fleeing French ships with planes from aircraft carriers.
Taranto and Bismarck
In late 1940 and 1941, a range of engagements saw battleships harassed by carrier aircraft.
The first example of the power of naval aviation was the British air attack on the Italian naval base at Taranto that took place on the night of 11 November–12 November 1940. The Royal Navy flew a small number of aircraft to attack the Italian fleet at harbour. One Italian battleship was sunk and two damaged. Just as importantly the attack forced the Italian navy to change tactics and seek battle against the superior British navy, resulting in the defeat at the Battle of Cape Matapan.
The battleship war in the Atlantic was driven by the attempts of German capital ship commerce raiders—two battleships, the ''Bismarck'' and the ''Tirpitz'', and two battlecruisers—to influence the Battle of the Atlantic by destroying Atlantic convoys supplying the United Kingdom. The superior numbers of British surface units devoted themselves to protecting the convoys, and seeking out and trying to destroy the German ships, assisted by both naval and land-based aircraft and by sabotage attacks. On 24 May 1941, during an attempt to break out into the North Atlantic, the battleship commerce raider ''Bismarck'', was engaged by the British battleship HMS ''Prince of Wales'' and the battlecruiser ''Hood''. ''Hood'' was sunk quickly by a hit to her magazines, while ''Bismarck'' and ''Prince of Wales'' scored three hits on each other, which compelled the German battleship to return home.[34] 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 battleships to catch up; ''Bismarck'' was sunk on May 27.[35]
The Pacific battles
In many of the crucial battles of the Pacific, for instance Coral Sea and Midway, battleships were either absent or overshadowed as carriers launched wave after wave of planes into the attack at a range of hundreds of miles. Battleships in the Pacific ended up primarily performing shore bombardment and anti-aircraft defense for the carriers. Even the largest battleships ever constructed, Japan's ''Yamato'' class, which carried a main battery of nine 18.1-inch (460 millimetre) guns and were designed as a principal strategic weapon, were seldom given a chance to show their potential. This a product of technical deficiencies (slow battleships incapable of operating with carriers), faulty doctrine (the Japanese waiting for a "decisive battle" which would never eventuate), and defective dispositions (as at Midway).
Pearl Harbor
Before hostilities broke out in the Pacific Theatre, there was extensive pre-war planning centered around dreadnoughts. The Royal Navy could not achieve parity with the estimated nine Japanese capital ships in Southeast Asia, since doing so would leave only a handful of ships to use against Nazi Germany. However, Prime Minister Winston Churchill was optimistic about the improving situation in the North Atlantic and Mediterranean and allocating two ships to the colony's defense was seen as a compromise. Furthermore, the US Navy would agree to send its Pacific Fleet with its eight battleships to Singapore in the event that hostilities with Japan broke out.[2]
On December 7, 1941 the Japanese launched a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. Within a short time five of eight U.S. battleships were sunk or sinking, with the rest damaged. The Japanese had neutralized the U.S. battleship force in the Pacific by an air attack, and thereby proven Mitchell's theory, showing the vulnerability of major warships lying at anchor, as at Taranto. The American aircraft carriers were however out to sea and evaded detection. They in turn would take up the fight, eventually turning the tide of the war in the Pacific.
The sinking of the British battleship ''Prince of Wales'' and her escort, the battlecruiser HMS ''Repulse'', further demonstrated the vulnerability of a battleship to air attack, in this case while at sea without air cover. Both ships were on their way to assist in the defense of Singapore when they were caught by Japanese land-based bombers and fighters on December 10 1941. ''Prince of Wales'' has the distinction of being the first modern battleship sunk by aircraft while underway and able to defend herself.[36]
Midway
Commonly understood as a victory of carriers, Midway showed up deficiencies in Japanese operational planning. Yamamoto, considering them his most valuable units, kept his battleships far to the rear, in line with traditional practise. This placed them too far away to assist Nagumo (and were too slow to keep up with him in any case). Yet, when Nagumo's carriers were sunk, Yamamoto lost an opportunity to salvage something. Carriers, for all their evident potency, were virtually defenseless at night, and Fletcher might have been dealt a crushing blow by ''Yamato'' the night of 6-7 June, had Yamamoto stayed closer.[37]
Guadalcanal
Initially, when the U.S. entered the war in December 1941, they had no battleships available in the Pacific Theatre. Eight of them were sunk or crippled at Pearl Harbor and would be sent home for repairs and reconstruction; they would not have been able to keep up with the carriers in any case. As well, the new fast battleships of ''North Carolina'' and ''South Dakota'' classes were still undergoing trials. ''North Carolina'' and ''South Dakota'' were ready by summer of 1942 and provided crucial anti-aircraft defense during the Eastern Solomons and Santa Cruz Islands carrier battles.
By contrast, the Imperial Japanese Navy enjoyed the advantage of a dozen operational battleships early in the war, but chose not to deploy them in any significant engagements. The ''Fusō''s and ''Ise''s, despite their extensive modernization and respectable speeds, were relegated to training and home defense, while the ''Nagato''s and ''Yamato''s were being saved for Isoroku Yamamoto's "Decisive Battle" which never came to fruition on Japanese terms. In fact, the only Japanese battleships to see much action in the early stages were ''Kongō''s, which served mostly as carrier escorts due to their high speed.[38]
During the later part of the Guadalcanal campaign in fall 1942, the Japanese and U.S. were both forced to commit their battleships to surface combat, due to the need to carry out night operations, and because of the exhaustion of their carrier forces. During the First Naval Battle of Guadalcanal, battleships ''Hiei'' and ''Kirishima'' were driven off by a force of U.S. cruisers and destroyers. Several USN ships were lost and others were crippled but they managed to inflict critical damage on ''Hiei'', which was abandoned after being subject to repeated air attacks that made salvage impossible. The following evening, at the Second Naval Battle of Guadalcanal on 15 November 1942, the United States battleships ''South Dakota'' and ''Washington'' fought and destroyed the surviving ''Kirishima''.
It was also at Guadalcanal battleships demonstrated the other primary use to which they would be put, delivering devastating fire against Henderson Field.
Leyte Gulf
''Yamato'' under air attack, March 1945
At the Battle of the Philippine Sea, heavy aircraft losses made the carriers ineffectual and forced the Japanese to finally commit their dreadnoughts, both old and new, to the upcoming Leyte Campaign. The objective in the "Decisive Battle" was to stop the Allies from capturing the Philippines, which would cut off the oil supply for the Empire and render the navy useless. The Battle off Samar, on 25 October 1944, proved that battleships were still a lethal weapon. The American escort carriers of "Taffy 3" had a narrow escape from falling under the guns of the Japanese battleships ''Yamato'', ''Kongō'', ''Haruna'' and ''Nagato'' and their cruiser escort. American destroyers and aircraft attacked the battleships, enabling the American task force to disengage. Inexplicably, the Japanese fleet disengaged as well, despite being near to their intended target - the American amphibious landing forces at Leyte.
At Leyte Gulf, on 25 October 1944, six battleships, led by Admiral Jesse Oldendorf of the U.S. 7th Fleet sank the Japanese admiral Shoji Nishimura's battleship ''Yamashiro'' and would have sunk ''Fusō'' if it had not already been broken in two by destroyer torpedoes moments earlier during the Battle of Surigao Strait. This engagement marked the last time in history when battleship faced battleship. It was also the day before this battle in a separate group further north that ''Musashi'', sistership to ''Yamato'', was sunk by aircraft attacks long before she could come within striking range of the American fleet.
Soviet and Finnish battles
During the Soviet-Finnish Winter War, the Soviet battleships ''Marat'' and ''Oktyabrskaya Revolutsiya'' made several attempts to neutralize Finnish coastal batteries in order to implement a full naval blockade. The damage was however little on the Finnish side and the defenders bit back, claiming at least one hit on ''Marat''.[39] During the German assault on the Soviet Union, the Soviet battleships would serve as convoy escorts during the evacuation of Tallinn, and as floating batteries during the siege of Leningrad.[40] The dense German and Finnish minefields and the submarine nets would effectively restrict Soviet traffic in the Gulf of Finland, forcing the larger vessels to remain at port.[40][42] The ''Marat'' would eventually be sunk at her moorings by the German Stuka pilot Hans-Ulrich Rudel on 23 September 1941. The wreck continued in action as a floating battery for the remainder of the siege. ''Marat'' would later be refloated and both battleships served until the 1950s.[43]
Fire support
With the German capital-ship raiders sunk or forced to remain in port, shore bombardment became the focus of Allied battleships in the Atlantic. It was while covering the Allied invasion of Morocco that the ''Massachusetts'' fought and disabled Vichy French battleship ''Jean Bart'' on 27 October,1942. A concentration of six battleships occurred as part of Operation Neptune, in support of the D-Day landings in June 1944. D-Day also saw the humble sacrifice of two obsolete dreadnoughts, which were sunk as part of the breakwater around the Allied Mulberry harbours.
Aerial Defense
The Sinking of Prince of Wales and Repulse off the coast of Malaya in 1941 demonstrated that even the most modern battleships could not hold off aerial attacks without air cover. Afterwards, an aircraft carrier's combat air patrol proved to be the most effective form of defense against enemy bombers; nonetheless a modern fast battleship could provide a vital point defense against attackers that broke through the fighter screen. The ''North Carolina'' and ''South Dakota'' demonstrated just that in the battles of the Eastern Solomons and Santa Cruz Islands, respectively, with ''North Carolina'' downing between 7 to 14 planes while ''South Dakota'' shot down 26 to 32. The battleships' presence was crucial during these 1942 battles, as the US were still months from being able to realize their material advantage, with too few planes and ships to interdict enough of the skilled Japanese pilots.
By 1944, Admiral Raymond A. Spruance had arrayed his forces, with the first line of defence being a radar-vectored combat air patrol, and any attackers who managed to get through would be faced with anti-aircraft fire from a line of screening battleships and cruisers. This exacted such a heavy toll on the Japanese during the that they failed to cause any significant damage to their targets, the aircraft carriers.[3] That being said, circumstances were vastly different from 1942 as the Japanese aircrews were inexperienced, and they were going up against veteran US pilots as well as many new carriers and battleships.
AA Guns
By the time that WWII came around, most battleships were heavily defended by numerous anti-aircraft batteries. Light AA guns (the Allies used autocannons like the Bofors 40 mm gun and Oerlikon 20 mm cannon) were similar to these on smaller ships but battleships had far more of them. Complementing these weapons were the developments of the proximity fuse and radar.
Post WWI battleships, particularly British and American, had discarded the casemates in favour of turret-mounted dual purpose secondary batteries (5-inch or 6-inch calibre). Secondaries were initially designed to deal with rushing destroyers and torpedo boats, but there arose a need for heavy anti-aircraft armament as the potency of aircraft grew, particularly torpedo planes. The rationale was that it is unlikely that a battleship would be simultaneously facing both destroyers and aircraft, but it would take up too much space to have separate types of guns to deal with both threats. Both weapons had similar calibers and so they could be merged into a single battery type, and the turret mountings were less susceptible to flooding and had a better firing arc than casemates. The space saved from combining the two types of guns added to simplification of supply, increased deck armour coverage, stowage of other equipment, more light anti-aircraft batteries, and other needs.
The Nelson class battleship, incorporating many concepts from the G3 battlecruiser, was the first design to incorporate the dual-purpose secondary battery. The secondaries were dual-purpose guns, which could be used both against surface and airborne attacks. Compared to light AA they had a slower rate of fire but they had a greater range and had sufficient punch to knock enemy planes out of the sky, which was a crucial defense against Japanese Kamikazes in the latter years of WWII. They could also fire into the sea and create waterspouts to slap low flying torpedo planes with tonnes of water. Battleships could mount many more of these DP batteries than cruisers or carriers.
German vessels such as the ''Bismarck'' class, by comparison, had dedicated secondary anti-ship batteries as well as dedicated heavy anti-aircraft batteries, instead of adopting the dual-purpose secondaries like the British or Americans. The ''Bismarck'' for instance had a battery of twelve 6 inch (150 mm) cannon that could be used against ships only, as they could not be elevated to fire on high-level targets, another sixteen 4 inch (105 mm) battery was mounted to deal with air threats. This tended to complicate ammunition supplies, take up more space, and compromise the numbers of both guns (reducing the anti-ship ''or'' anti-aircraft broadside). Like the Germans, the Imperial Japanese Navy also suffered similar problems as their secondaries were too slow to track aircraft.[4]
The Japanese even used the "San Shiki" (the Beehive) Model 13 anti-aircraft shell for the main gun armament of the Yamato class battleships, which would have in theory functioned as a supersized "shotgun", though this was not considered a success.[5])
Armour
In the aftermath of the Battle of Jutland and post-WWI era, designers began drawing up armour schemes that protected against ordnance dropped by aircraft or submarines. The five ships of the American ''Tennessee'' and ''Colorado'' classes had considerably enhanced underwater hull protection over previous battleships, as the result of extensive experimentation and testing. The proposed G3 battlecruiser planned to incorporate a thoroughly tested torpedo defense scheme, which was later used in the ''Nelson''-class. Not surprisingly, as many WWI battleships did not have such a protection system, they fared poorly against such weapons, which in WWII were increasingly being delivered, by submarines and aircraft.
Battleships had an armoured belt for underwater protection against torpedoes or shells which hit betlow the waterline. From the lessons of Jutland, the protection scheme incorporated a sophisticated torpedo defense system (TDS)[6]. By adopting a turbo-electric drive, this allowed a wholesale rearrangement and fine subdivision of the machinery spaces, while simultaneously narrowing them and permitting more space outboard for a layered system of voids, liquid-filled tanks and thin armored bulkheads[7]. By contrast, "thin-skinned" cruisers and carriers relied only on numerous compartments to prevent flooding from spreading (some were upgraded with anti-torpedo blisters, though these were much inferior to the battleship's armoured belt). During Pearl Harbor, TDS and damage control counterflooding saved ''West Virginia'' from nine torpedo hits, while ''Oklahoma'', which lacked it, capsized after just three.
During the attack on ''Yamato'', according to a PBS documentary, U.S. torpedo bombers were taught to aim for either the bow or the stern, where the protective belt did not extend. In order for torpedo planes to make their runs successfully, it was the job of fighters to strafe the battleship to suppress the AA guns, and for dive bombers to wreak havoc on the upper decks, destroying AA weapons and fire control systems. Pilots were also instructed to focus on one side of the ship, causing massive flooding which was difficult to counteract, leading to the ship capsizing. A bow hit was deadly, since the onrushing water from the battleship's high speed could wrench the hole open wider and collapse compartment bulkheads, which was why ''Yamato'''s sister, ''Musashi'', foundered at Sibuyan Sea.[8] The stern attacks are best demonstrated by the cases of ''Bismarck'' and ''Prince of Wales''; the rudders and screws were similarly vulnerable.
As the armour decks of battleships were also of sufficient thickness, the Fleet Air Arm planned to release their armour-piercing bombs from a certain height in order to penetrate ''Tirpitz'''s armor during Operation TUNGSTEN[9]. As the British pilots did not release their ordnance from the optimal altitude, ''Tirpitz'' suffered extensive damage to her upperworks but her deck armor remained intact.[10] While the suicide air attacks - the so-called kamikaze - struck many U.S. battleships, none were seriously damaged due to their thick armor. ''Kamikaze'' were much more successful against lesser-armored ships.[44]
There were limits to the battleship's protection scheme, since it could not keep pace with the quicker developements in ordnance. For instance, the TDS in the ''South Dakota''s and ''Iowa''s battleships were designed to absorb the energy from an underwater explosion equivalent to 700 pounds (317kg) of TNT — the Navy's best guess in the 1930s about Japanese weapons. But unbeknownst to U.S. Naval Intelligence, the Japanese 24-inch (60cm) Type 93 torpedo, carried a charge equivalent to 891 pounds (405kg) of TNT. And no amount of armour that could be practically incorporated would have saved the ''Tirpitz'' from the massive 12,000 lb (5.4t) Tallboys dropped by RAF Lancaster bombers during Operation CATECHISM.[45][46]
Coordination and Waves
In a well-planned attack, fighter planes strafed the battleship to suppress the AA guns, dive bombers used their armour piercing bombs to cause topside damage and havoc. The fighters and dive bombers, however, were diversions in order to allow the torpedo planes to deliver their ordnance.
Battleships were able to sustain more punishment and had fewer vulnerable spots than cruisers and carriers, so it was difficult to rely upon scoring a critical hit (the cases of the Bismarck and Prince of Wales are considered exceptional). Instead, the way to defeat battleships was by attrition, inflicted accumulating damage, by overwhelming them with repeated waves of attacks. This is best demonstrated at the Battle of Leyte Gulf; at the Sibuyan Sea where the super-dreadnought ''Musashi'' eventually succumbed to her damage, after being beset by waves of US carrier aircraft and with her being the primary focus of their attacks. The US planes would have accomplished less if they spread out to attack the rest of the ships in Kurita's powerful force. By contrast, the October 24 air attack on Nishimura's southern pincer did little damage, even though both of his battleships were slow WWI-era dreadnoughts and his force had far fewer screening ships, as he only faced a single wave from US carriers ''Franklin'' and ''Enterprise''.
Innovative Attacks
The Axis Powers implemented some unconventional methods. The Italians used with success their tested method of having frogmen delivering explosive charges to the ships, and managed to sink HMS ''Valiant'' and HMS ''Queen Elizabeth'' in the shallow waters of the harbor of Alexandria, putting them out of action until 1942. Other more or less successful Italian methods included manned torpedoes and small motor assault boats, which were filled with explosives, aimed at the target, sped up to full speed, while the pilot catapulted himself out from the dashing craft.[47]
The Germans developed a series of stand-off weapons, e.g. the guided bomb Fritz X, which scored some early successes. On 9 September 1943, the Germans managed to sink the Italian battleship ''Roma'' and severely damage her sister ship, the ''Italia'', while they were underway to surrender. The first one hit ''Roma'' amidship between 90 mm AA gun mounts, piercing deck and side, then exploded halving speed; the other one hit above deck between turret #2 and the conning tower. It caused an explosion that threw the turret outboard and affected the boilers, starting a major fire that detonated the main magazines. 1353 lives were lost; only 596 survivors, most badly burned, were rescued. Among those killed was the Italian Commander in Chief of Naval Battle Forces, Admiral Carlo Bergamini. One week later, the Germans scored another hit with a Fritz X on the British battleship ''Warspite''. The bomb penetrated six decks before exploding against the bottom of the ship, blowing a large hole in her. The ship took in a total of 5,000 tonnes of water, lost steam (and thus all power, both to the ship herself and to all her systems), and had to be taken in tow. She reached Malta but was out of action for the next 12 months.[48]
The British further developed their ability to sink battleships in harbour with minisubs and very heavy bombs dropped by strategic bombers. The last active German battleship, ''Tirpitz'', lurked until late into the war in Norwegian fjords protected by anti-submarine weapons and shore based anti-aircraft guns. She was severely damaged in September 1943 during Operation Source, a daring covert attack by British mini-subs. After several air strikes, including Operation Tungsten which was made with carrier aircraft, ''Tirpitz'' was finally sunk in harbour by RAF heavy bombers carrying massive tallboy bombs. During that action, codenamed Operation Catechism, two of the bombs had penetrated her armour, one holing her portside and the other starting a fire that eventually detonated her magazines and blew off her Caesar turret, causing her to capsize and killing 1000 of the 1700 men aboard.[45][46]
The Cold War
After World War II, several navies retained battleships, but it became clear that they were not worth the considerable cost. During the War it had become clear that battleship-on-battleship engagements like Leyte Gulf or the sinking of the Hood were the exception and not the rule, and that engagement ranges were becoming longer and longer, making heavy gun armament irrelevant. The armor of a battleship was equally irrelevant in the face of a nuclear attack, and nuclear missiles with a range of 100 kilometres or more could be mounted on the Soviet ''Kildin'' class destroyer and ''Whiskey'' class submarine by the end of the 1950s.
The remaining battleships met a variety of ends. USS ''Arkansas'' and ''Nagato'' were sunk during the testing of nuclear weapons in Operation Crossroads in 1946. Both battleships proved resistant to nuclear air burst but vulnerable to underwater nuclear explosions. 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 on 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 in 1957, and ''Vanguard'' followed in 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 ''Oktyabrskaya Revolutsiya'' in 1959. Brazil's ''Minas Gerais'' was scrapped in 1954, and her sister ship ''São 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. 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 a number of new Stalingrad Class Battlecruisers were abandoned following the death of Stalin in 1953. There were also several old ships of the line still used as housing ships or storage depots. Of these, all but HMS ''Victory'' were sunk or scrapped by 1957.
The ''Iowa'' class battleships gained a new lease of life in the U.S. Navy as fire support ships. Shipborne artillery support is considered by the U.S. Marine Corps as more accurate, more effective and less expensive than aerial strikes. Radar and computer controlled gunfire could be aimed with pinpoint accuracy to target. The United States recommissioned all four ''Iowa'' class battleships for the Korean War and the ''New Jersey'' for the Vietnam War. These were primarily used for shore bombardment, ''New Jersey'' firing seven times more rounds against shore targets in Vietnam than she had in the Second World War.[51]
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. On several occasions, battleships were support ships in carrier battle groups, or led their own battle groups in a battleship battle group. These were modernized to carry Tomahawk missiles, with ''New Jersey'' seeing action bombarding Lebanon in 1983 and 1984, 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 fired 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. The primary threat to the battleships were Iraqi shore based surface-to-surface missiles; ''Missouri'' was targeted by two Iraqi Silkworm missiles, with one missing and another being intercepted by the British destroyer HMS ''Gloucester''.
All four ''Iowas'' were decommissioned in the early 1990s, making them the last battleships to see active service. USS ''Iowa'' and USS ''Wisconsin'' were, until fiscal year 2006, maintained in to a standard where they could be rapidly returned to service as fire support vessels, pending the development of a superior fire support vessel. [52] The U.S. Marine Corps believes that the current naval surface fire support gun and missile programs will not be able to provide adequate fire support for an amphibious assault or onshore operations.[53][54]
Today
The American
''Texas'' is the only preserved Dreadnought battleship
With the decommissioning of the last ''Iowa''s, no battleships remain in service (including in reserve) with any navy worldwide. A number are preserved as museum ships, either afloat or in dry-dock. The USA has a large number of battleships on display. USS ''Massachusetts'', ''North Carolina'', ''Alabama'', ''New Jersey'', ''Wisconsin'', ''Missouri'', and ''Texas''. ''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 Naval Vessel Register. However, pending donation, the public can still only tour the deck, since the rest of the ship is closed off for dehumidification. The only other true battleship on display is the Japanese pre-Dreadnought ''Mikasa''. A number of ironclads and ships-of-the-line are also preserved, including HMS ''Victory'', ''Warrior'', the Swedish ''Vasa'', the Dutch ''Buffel'' and ''Schorpioen'', and the Chilean war trophy, ''Huáscar''. The earliest ancestor of the battleship still on display is the sixteenth-century English war vessel ''Mary Rose''.
Battleships in strategy and doctrine
Doctrine
Battleships were the embodiment of sea power. For Alfred Thayer Mahan and his followers, a strong navy was vital to the success of a nation, and control of the seas was vital for the projection of force on land and overseas. Mahan's theory dictated that the role of the battleship was to sweep the enemy from the seas.[55] While the work of escorting, blockading and raiding might be done by cruisers or smaller vessels, the presence of the battleship was a potential threat. (This came to be known as a "fleet in being".) Mahan went on to say victory could only be achieved by engagements between battleships[56] (which came to be known as the "decisive battle" doctrine in some navies), while ''guerre de course'' (developed by the ''Jeune Ecole'') could never succeed.
Mahan was highly influential in naval and political circles throughout the age of the battleship,[57]
A related concept was a "fleet in being": the idea a fleet of battleships, simply by its presence, could tie down superior enemy resources and, even without a decisive battle, tip the balance of a conflict. This suggested even for inferior naval powers a battleship fleet could have important strategic impact.[58]
Tactics
While the role of battleships in both World Wars reflected Mahanian doctrine, the details of battleship deployment were more complex. Unlike the ship-of-the-line, the battleships of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries had significant vulnerability to torpedoes and mines, weapons which could be used by relatively small and inexpensive craft. The Jeune Ecole school of thought of the 1870s and 1880s recommended the placing of torpedo boats alongside battleships; the boats would hide behind the battleships until gun-smoke obscured visibility enough for them to dart out and fire their torpedoes.
Battleship doctrine emphasised the concentration of the battlegroup. In order for this concentrated force to be able to bring its power to bear on a reluctant opponent (or to avoid an encounter with a stronger enemy fleet), battlefleets needed some means of locating enemy ships beyond horizon range. This was provided by scouting forces; at various stages battlecruisers, cruisers, destroyers, airships, submarines and aircraft were all used. (With the development of radio, direction finding and traffic analysis would come into play, as well, so even shore stations, broadly speaking, joined the battlegroup.[59]) So for most of their history, battleships operated surrounded by squadrons of destroyers and cruisers. The North Sea campaign of the First World War illustrates how, despite this support, the threat of mine and torpedo attack, and the failure to integrate or appreciate the capabilities of new techniques,[60] seriously inhibited the operations of the Royal Navy Grand Fleet, the greatest battleship fleet of its time.
Strategic and diplomatic impact
The presence of battleships had a great psychological and diplomatic impact. Similar to possessing nuclear weapons today, the ownership of battleships made a country count for something.
Even during the Cold War, the psychological impact of a battleship was significant. In 1946, USS ''Missouri'' was dispatched to deliver the remains of the ambassador from Turkey, and her presence in Turkish and Greek waters staved off a possible Soviet thrust into the Balkan region.[61] In September 1983, when Druze militia in Lebanon's Shouf Mountains fired upon U.S. Marine peacekeepers, the arrival of USS ''New Jersey'' stopped the firing. Gunfire from ''New Jersey'' later killed militia leaders.[62]
Value for money
Battleships were the largest and most complex, and hence the most expensive warships of their time; as a result, the value of investment in battleships has always been contested. As the French politician Etienne Lamy wrote in 1879, ''The construction of battleships is so costly, their effectiveness so uncertain and of such short duration, that the enterprise of creating an armored fleet seems to leave fruitless the perseverance of a people''.[63] The Jeune Ecole school of thought of the 1870s and 1880s sought alternatives to the crippling expense and debatable utility of a conventional battlefleet, proposing what would nowadays be termed a sea denial strategy, based on fast, long-ranged cruisers for commerce raiding and torpedo boat flotillas to attack enemy ships attempting to blockade French ports. In many respects the ideas of the ''Jeune Ecole'' were ahead of their time; it was not until the twentieth century that efficient mines, torpedoes, submarines and aircraft were available allowing similar ideas to be implemented with much more potent effect.[64]
The determination of powers such as Imperial Germany to build battlefleets with which to confront much stronger rivals has been criticised by historians, who emphasise the futility of investment in a battlefleet which has no chance of matching its opponent in an actual battle.
The problem for a maritime nation that does not maintain a balanced fleet, with at least some ability to contest a set-piece battle, is that it surrenders the use of the sea for its own purposes, whether economic or military. In addition, such a nation lacks the ability to interdict enemy shipping movements which are protected by a sufficient escort. Such a strategy exposes the nation to blockade or even, in the worst case, invasion. In addition, while a navy optimised for sea denial operations may maximise its potential against a stronger opponent, it will be at a disadvantage against nations of similar strength of its own, but which have invested their resources in a more conventional fleet. For this reason, maritime nations which are unable to compete with the dominant naval power have usually sought to achieve an accommodation with that power, thereby allowing them to resource a balanced fleet with which to deal with their more direct rivals. Examples of this strategy are the French ''entente'' with Britain in the decade preceding the First World War; and the British withdrawal in 1921 from its alliance with Japan, in order to avoid a confrontation with the potentially much more powerful USA.[65]
See also
★ List of battleships
★ List of battleships by country
★ List of battleship classes
★ Fast battleship
★ Naval ship
★ Books by Robert K. Massie, including ''Dreadnought'' and ''Castles of Steel''
Notes
1. "Napoleon (90 guns), the first purpose-designed screw line of battleships", ''Steam, Steel and Shellfire'', Conway's History of the Ship (p39)
2. ''"Hastened to completion Le Napoleon was launched on 16 May 1850, to become the world's first true steam battleship"'', ''Steam, Steel and Shellfire'', Conway's History of the Ship (p39)
3. The HMS Warrior Story
4. Wilson, H. W.: ''Ironclads in Action - Vol 1'', London, 1898, p. 240
5. Gibbons, Tony: ''The Complete Encyclopedia of Battleships'', pp. 28-29
6. Gibbons, pp. 30-31
7. Gibbons, p. 93
8. Conway Marine, "Steam, Steel and Shellfire" (p. 96)
9. Gibbons, Tony: ''The Complete Encyclopedia of Battleships'', p. 101
10. War at Sea in the Ironclad Age, Richard Hill, ISBN 0-304-35273-X
11. Kennedy, p. 209
12. Preston, Anthony: ''Jane's Fighting Ships of World War II''
13. Preston, Anthony. (1972) ''Battleships of World War I'', New York City: Galahad Books
14. Gibbons, p.168
15. Cuniberti, Vittorio, "An Ideal Battleship for the British Fleet", ''All The World’s Fighting Ships'', 1903, pp.407-409.
16. Gibbons, pp. 170-171
17. ''The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery'', Paul M. Kennedy, ISBN 0-333-35094-4, p. 209
18. ''The First World War'', John Keegan, ISBN 0-7126-6645-1, p. 281
19. ''The First World War'', John Keegan, ISBN 0-7126-6645-1, p. 289
20. Ireland, Bernard: ''Jane's War At Sea'', pp. 88-95
21. Massie, Robert. ''Castles of Steel'', London, 2005. pp127-145
22. ''The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery'', Paul Kennedy, ISBN 0-333-35094-4, pp. 247-249
23. HMS ''Majestic'' and HMS ''Triumph'' were torpedoed by ''U.21''; HMS ''Goliath'' was torpedoed by the Turkish torpedo boat ''Muavenet''.
24. Ireland, Bernard: ''Jane's War At Sea'', p. 118
25. Kennedy p 277
26. Ireland, Bernard: ''Jane's War At Sea'', pp. 124-126, 139-142
27. Kennedy, op. cit., p. 199
28. From the ''Guinness Book of Air Facts and Feats ''(3rd edition, 1977): "The first air attack using a torpedo dropped by an aeroplane was carried out by Flight Commander Charles H. K. Edmonds, flying a Short 184 seaplane from HMS ''Ben-My-Chree'' on 12 August 1915, against a 5,000 ton (5,080 tonne) Turkish supply ship in the Sea of Marmara. Although the enemy ship was hit and sunk, the captain of a British submarine claimed to have fired a torpedo simultaneously and sunk the ship. It was further stated that the British submarine E14 had attacked and immobilised the ship four days earlier.
However, on 17 August 1915, another Turkish ship was sunk by a torpedo of whose origin there can be no doubt. On this occasion Flight Commander C. H. Edmonds, flying a Short 184, torpedoed a Turkish steamer a few miles north of the Dardanelles. His formation colleague, Flight Lieutenant G. B. Dacre, was forced to land on the water owing to engine trouble but, seeing an enemy tug close by, taxied up to it and released his torpedo. The tug blew up and sank. Thereafter, Dacre was able to take off and return to the ''Ben-My-Chree''
29. Ireland, Bernard: ''Jane's War At Sea'', p. 126
30. Gibbons, p.195
31. Greger, René: ''Schlachtschiffe der Welt'', p. 251
32. Gibbons, p. 163
33. Gibbons, pp. 246-247
34. Gibbons, pp. 228-229
35. Zetterling, Niklas: ''Bismarck'', pp. 248-260
36. Axell, Albert: ''Kamikaze'', p. 14
37. Willmott, ''Barrier and the Javelin'', ''passim''.
38. Gibbons, pp. 262-263
39. Appel, Erik: ''Finland i krig 1939-1940'', p. 182
40. Linder, Jan: ''Ofredens hav'', pp. 50-51
41. Linder, Jan: ''Ofredens hav'', pp. 50-51
42. Brunila, Kai: ''Finland i krig 1940-1944'', pp. 100-108, 220-225
43. Greger, René: ''Schlachtschiffe der Welt'', pp. 201
44. Axell, Albert: ''Kamikaze'', pp. 205-213
45. Tamelander, Michael: ''Slagskeppet Tirpitz''
46. Jacobsen, Alf R.: ''Dödligt angrepp''
47. Taylor, A. J. P.: ''1900-talet'', p. 139
48. Ireland, Bernard: ''Jane's War At Sea'', pp. 190-191
49. Tamelander, Michael: ''Slagskeppet Tirpitz''
50. Jacobsen, Alf R.: ''Dödligt angrepp''
51. History of World Seapower, Bernard Brett, ISBN 0-603-03723-2, p. 236
52. Iowa Class Battleship
53. The USMC has revised its Naval Surface Gunfire Support requirements, leaving some questions as to whether or not the Zumwalt class destroyer can meet the Marine qualifications
54. Naval Surface Fires Support United States General Accounting Office
55. Massie, Robert K. ''Castles of Steel'', London, 2005. ISBN 1-844-134113
56. Mahan, A.T., Captain. ''Influence of Sea Power on History, 1660-1783''. (Boston: Little Brown), ''passim''.
57. Kennedy, op. cit., p2, p200, p206 et al.
58. "Fleet In Being", Globalsecurity.org, retrieved 18 March 2007
59. It could presage an enemy sortie, or locate an enemy over the horizon. Beesly, Patrick. ''Room 40'' (London : Hamish Hamilton)
60. Beesly.
61. USS Missouri
62. USS New Jersey
63. Quoted inNet-Centric before its time: The Jeune École and Its Lessons for Today Erik J. Dahl US Naval War College Review, Autumn 2005, Vol. 58, No. 4
64. Dahl, ''op cit.''
65. According to Norman Friedman, ''American policy generally'' [after the First World War] ''was 
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