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A battleship is a large, heavily naval armour warship with a main battery consisting of large naval gun, designed to serve as a capital ship. From their advent in the late 1880s, battleships were among the largest and most formidable weapon systems ever built, until they were surpassed by beginning in the 1940s. The modern battleship traces its origin to the sailing ship of the line, which was developed into the steam ship of the line and soon thereafter the ironclad warship. After a period of extensive experimentation in the 1870s and 1880s, ironclad design was largely standardized by the British , which are usually referred to as the first "pre-dreadnought battleships". These ships carried an armament that usually included four large guns and several medium-caliber guns that were to be used against enemy battleships, and numerous small guns for self-defense.
Naval powers around the world built dozens of pre-dreadnoughts in the 1890s and early 1900s, though they saw relatively little combat; only two major wars were fought during the period that included pre-dreadnought battles: the Spanish-American War in 1898 and the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905. The following year, the British launched the revolutionary all-big-gun battleship . This ship discarded the medium-caliber guns in exchange for a uniform armament of ten large guns. All other major navies quickly began (or had already started) "" of their own, leading to a major naval arms race. During World War I, only one major fleet engagement took place: the Battle of Jutland in 1916, but neither side was able to achieve a decisive result.
In the Interwar period, the major naval powers concluded a series of agreements beginning with the Washington Naval Treaty that imposed limits on battleship building to stop a renewed arms race. During this period, relatively few battleships were built, but advances in technology led to the maturation of the fast battleship concept, and several of these ships were built in the 1930s. The treaty system eventually broke down after Japan refused to sign the Second London Naval Treaty in 1936. Although the rise of the aircraft carrier during World War II largely relegated battleships to secondary duties, they still saw significant action during that conflict. Notable engagements include the battles of Cape Spartivento and Cape Matapan in 1940 and 1941, respectively; the sortie by the German battleship in 1941; the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal in 1942; and the Battle of Leyte Gulf in 1944. After World War II, most battleships were placed in reserve fleet, ship breaking, or used as , and few saw significant active service during the Cold War. The four American s were reactivated during the Korean War in the early 1950s and again in the 1980s as part of the 600-ship Navy.
Even at the height of their dominance of naval combat, some strategists questioned the usefulness of battleships. Beginning in the mid-1880s, the Jeune École (Young School) argued that construction of expensive capital ships should stop in favor of cheap and . Despite a period of popularity for the Jeune École, the idea fell out of favor and the battleship remained the arbiter of naval combat until World War II. Even afterward, they remained potent symbols of a country's might and they retained significant psychological and diplomatic effects. A number of battleships—predominantly American—remain as .
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 . Early vessels used paddle wheels for propulsion, but by the 1840s, the first screw propeller equipped vessels began to appear. The value of these smaller steam-powered warships demonstrated their worth, when vessels like the British Nemesis proved to be critical to the Anglo-French success in the First Opium War in the 1840s.
The French Navy introduced steam to the line of battle with the 90-gun in 1850—the first true steam battleship. Napoléon, which was designed by Henri Dupuy de Lôme, was armed as a conventional ship-of-the-line, but her steam engines could give her a speed of , regardless of the wind. This was a potentially decisive advantage in a naval engagement. The introduction of steam accelerated the growth in size of battleships. France and the United Kingdom were the only countries to develop fleets of wooden, steam-screw battleships although several other navies operated small numbers of screw battleships, including Russian Empire (9), the Ottoman Empire (3), Sweden (2), Naples (1), Denmark (1) and Austrian Empire (1).
Concurrent with the development of steam power, another major technological step heralded the end of the traditional ship of the line: guns capable of firing explosive shells. Pioneering work was done by the French artillery officer Henri-Joseph Paixhans beginning in 1809. The American artillerist George Bomford followed not far behind, designing the first shell-firing Columbiad in 1812. The British and Russians began to follow suit in the 1830s, though early smoothbore guns could not fire shells as far as solid shot, which hampered widespread adoption in any fleet. By the early 1840s, the French Paixhans gun and American Dahlgren gun had begun to be adopted by their respective navies. In the Crimean War of 1853–1855, six Russian ships of the line and two frigates of the Black Sea Fleet destroyed seven Turkish frigates and three corvettes with explosive shells at the Battle of Sinop in 1853. The battle was widely seen as vindication of the shell gun. Nevertheless, wooden-hulled ships stood up comparatively well to shells, as shown in the 1866 Battle of Lissa, where the modern Austrian steam ship of the line ranged across a confused battlefield, rammed an Italian ironclad and took 80 hits from Italian ironclads, many of which were shells, but including at least one shot at point-blank range. Despite losing her bowsprit and her foremast, and being set on fire, she was ready for action again the very next day.
In March 1858, the French took development of the ironclad to its next logical step: a proper, ocean-going armored warship. This vessel, another design by Dupuy de Lome, was , and after her launching in 1859, Napoleon III ordered another five similar ships, which sparked a naval arms race with Britain. The first French ironclads 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 journeys, Gloire and her contemporaries were fitted with screw propellers, and their wooden hulls were protected by a layer of thick iron armor. Britain responded promptly with , a similar but much larger ironclad with an iron hull. By the time Warrior was completed in 1861, another nine ironclads were under construction in British shipyards, some of which were conversions of screw ships of the line that were already being built.
During the Unification of Italy in 1860, the Kingdom of Sardinia entered the ironclad building race by ordering the s from French shipyards; their long-term rival across the Adriatic Sea, the Austrian Empire, quickly responded later that year with the two s. Spain and Russia ordered ironclads in 1861, as did the United States and rebel Confederate States of America after the start of the American Civil War. Construction of these large and expensive warships remained controversial until March 1862, when news of the Battle of Hampton Roads, fought between the Union and the Confederate , firmly settled debate in favor of even larger construction programs.
From the 1860s to 1880s, navies experimented with the positioning of guns, in Gun turret, central-batteries, or ; ironclads of the period also prominently used the naval ram as a principal weapon. As steam technology developed, masts were gradually removed from battleship designs. The British Chief Constructor, Edward Reed, produced the s in 1869. These were mastless , which adopted twin-screw propulsion and an arrangement of two pairs of guns, one fore and one aft of the superstructure, that prefigured the advent of the pre-dreadnought battleship some two decades later. By the mid-1870s steel was used as a construction material alongside iron and wood. The French Navy's , laid down in 1873 and launched in 1876, was a combination central battery and barbette ship, which became the first capital ship in the world to use steel as the principal building material.
The rapid pace of technological developments, particularly in terms of gun capabilities and thickness of armor to combat them, quickly rendered ships obsolescent. In the continuous attempt by gun manufacturers to keep ahead of developments in armor plate, larger and larger guns were fitted to many of the later ironclads. Some of these, such as the British , carried guns as large as in diameter, while the Italian s were armed with colossal guns. The French experimented with very large guns in the 1870s, but after significant trouble with these guns (and the development of slower-burning gunpowder), they led the way toward smaller-caliber guns with longer barrels, which had higher muzzle velocity and thus greater penetration than the larger guns.
Foreign navies quickly began pre-dreadnoughts of their own; France began in 1889 and German Empire keel laying four s in 1890. The United States Navy laid down three s in 1891, the same year work began on the Russian battleship . Japan ordered the two s from British yards, to an improved Royal Sovereign design, in 1894. The Austro-Hungarian Navy eventually ordered its own pre-dreadnoughts, beginning with the in 1899. All of these ships carried guns of between , save the Austro-Hungarian vessels, which, being significantly smaller than the rest, only carried guns.
Most pre-dreadnoughts followed the same general pattern, which typically saw a ship armed with four large guns, usually 12-inch weapons, along with a secondary of medium-caliber guns (usually guns early in the period), which were also intended for combat at close range with other battleships. They also generally carried a light armament for defense against and other light craft. Some ships varied from this general pattern, such as the American Indianas, which carried a heavier secondary battery of guns, and the German Brandenburgs, which had six 11-inch guns for instead of the usual four heavy guns. Many of the early French pre-dreadnoughts, such as , carried a mixed heavy armament of two 12-inch and two guns.
Pre-dreadnoughts continued the technical innovations of the ironclad throughout the 1890s and early 1900s. Compound armor gave way to much stronger Harvey armor developed in the United States in 1890, which was in turn superseded by the German Krupp armor in 1894. As armor became stronger, it could be reduced in thickness considerably, which saved weight that could be allocated to other aspects of the ship design, and generally permitted larger and more capable battleships. At the same time, the advent of smokeless powder continued the trend begun in the French navy of comparatively smaller guns firing at higher velocities. Early on in the pre-dreadnought era, most navies standardized on the 12-inch gun; only Germany remained the significant outlier, relying on 11-inch and even 9.4-inch guns for its pre-dreadnoughts. Similarly, later in the pre-dreadnought era, the secondary batteries grew in caliber, usually to guns. Some final classes, such as the British with a secondary battery of guns, or the French that had 9.4-inch secondaries, have been subsequently referred to as "semi-dreadnoughts", reflecting their transitional step between classic pre-dreadnought designs and the all-big-gun battleships that would soon appear.
In the last years of the 19th century and the first years of the 20th, the escalation in the building of battleships became an arms race between Britain and Germany. The German naval laws of 1890 and 1898 authorized a fleet of 38 battleships, a vital threat to the balance of naval power. Britain answered with further shipbuilding, but by the end of the pre-dreadnought era, British supremacy at sea had markedly weakened. In 1883, the United Kingdom had 38 ironclad battleships, twice as many as France and almost as many as the rest of the world put together. In 1897, Britain's lead was far smaller due to competition from France, Germany, and Russia, as well as the development of pre-dreadnought fleets in Italy, the United States and Japan. The Ottoman Empire, Spain, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Chile, and Brazil all had second-rate fleets led by , coastal defence ships or monitors.
Conflicting colonial ambitions in Korea and Manchuria led Russia and Japan to the next major use of pre-dreadnoughts in combat. During the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905, squadrons of battleships engaged in a number of battles, including the Battle of the Yellow Sea and the Battle of Tsushima. also proved to be a deadly threat to battleships on both sides, sinking the Russian in March 1904 and the Japanese battleships and on the same day in May. The action in the Yellow Sea began during a Russian attempt to break out of Dalian, which the Japanese under Admiral Tōgō Heihachirō had blockaded. The Russians outmaneuvered the Japanese and briefly escaped, but the latter's superior speed allowed them to catch up. A 12-inch shell struck the Russian flagship, killing the squadron commander and causing the Russian ships to fall into disarray and retreat back to Port Arthur. With night falling, the Japanese broke off and reimposed the blockade. At Tsushima, Togo outmaneuvered the Russian Second Pacific Squadron that had been sent to reinforce the Pacific Fleet, and the Japanese battleships quickly inflicted fatal damage with long-range fire from their 12-inch guns.
In both actions during the Russo-Japanese War, the fleets engaged at longer range (as far as at the Yellow Sea), where only their 12-inch guns were effective. Only in the final stages of the battle at Tsushima, by which time the Russian fleet had been severely damaged and most of its modern battleships sunk or disabled, did the Japanese fleet close to effective range of their secondary guns, fighting as close as . The actions, particularly the decisive engagement at Tsushima, demonstrated that the lessons taken from the Spanish-American War were incorrect, and that the large-caliber gun should be the only offensive weapon carried by battleships.
Though several navies had begun design work on all-big-gun battleships, the first to be completed was the British , which had been ordered by Fisher. He actually preferred a very large armored cruiser equipped with an all-big-gun armament, which would come to be known as the battlecruiser, and he only included Dreadnought in his 1905 construction program to appease naval officers who favored continued battleship building. Fisher believed that Britain's security against the French and Russian threats would be better guaranteed by squadrons of fast battlecruisers, three of which were laid down in 1906. Regardless of Fisher's intentions, the rapidly changing strategic calculus invalidated his plans and ensured that when the 1906–1907 program was being debated, Germany would be Britain's primary rival, the Royal Navy chose to build three more dreadnoughts instead of further battlecruisers. Reactions from the other naval powers was immediate; very few pre-dreadnoughts were built afterward, and in the first seven years of the ensuing arms race, all of the major naval powers either had their own dreadnoughts in service or nearing completion. Of these competitions, the Anglo-German race was the most significant, though others took place, such as the South American contest. Even naval powers of the second and third rank, such as Spain; Brazil, Chile, and Argentina in South America; and Greece and the Ottoman Empire in the Mediterranean had begun dreadnought programs, either domestically or ordering abroad.
Dreadnought carried ten 12-inch guns, all in twin turrets: one was forward, two further aft, all on the centerline, and the remaining pair were with more restricted arcs of fire. She disposed of the medium-caliber secondary battery and carried only guns for anti-torpedo boat work. A variety of experimental arrangements followed, including the "hexagonal" layout adopted by the German Nassaus (which had four of their six twin turrets on the "wings"), or the Italian and Russian s that mounted their guns all on the centerline, but with restricted arcs of fire for half of the guns. The South Carolinas dispensed with Dreadnoughts wing turrets, adopting instead a superfiring arrangement of eight guns in four twin turrets, which gave them the same broadside as Dreadnought, despite having two fewer guns.
Technological development continued over the decade that followed Dreadnoughts launch. Already by 1910, the British had begun the first of the so-called "super-dreadnoughts" that carried significantly more powerful guns, all on the centerline. The United States followed suit in 1911, though increasing the caliber of their guns to . France adopted a gun for its s, laid down in 1912. That year, Japan laid down the first of its s, also armed with a 14-inch main battery. The Germans waited until 1913, but skipped directly to guns. By this time, Britain had led the way to the 15-inch gun with the begun in late 1912. But more importantly than the increase of caliber, these were the first completely fuel oil-fired battleships these were the first . At around the same time, the United States introduced the next major innovation in battleship design: the all or nothing armor system in the laid down in 1912. The heaviest possible armor was used to protect the ship's propulsion machinery and ammunition magazines, but intermediate protection was stripped away from non-essential areas, since this mid-weight armor only served to detonate armor-piercing shells.
In the Baltic Sea, Germany found itself in the reverse situation, in an even more lopsided fashion versus its Russian opponent. The Russian Baltic Fleet had only four dreadnoughts at the start of the war, so they adopted a purely defensive approach to guard the capital at Petrograd and the northern flank of the Russian army units fighting on the Eastern Front. In the Mediterranean Sea, Italy initially remained neutral, despite being a member of the Triple Alliance with Germany and Austria-Hungary, leaving the latter to face the French Navy and British Mediterranean Fleet alone. After ensuring the French army units in French North Africa were safely convoyed to France, the French fleet sailed to the Adriatic Sea to blockade the Austro-Hungarian fleet, which refused to leave their fortified bases. The French, like the other major European naval commanders, had failed to consider that their opponents would not concede to engaging in battle on terms unfavorable to them. The Adriatic quickly turned into another stalemate as the threat of Austro-Hungarian mines and prevented a more aggressive employment of the French fleet.
The Germans embarked on a number of sweeps into the North Sea and raids on British coastal towns to draw out part of the Grand Fleet, which would be isolated and destroyed. These included the raid on Scarborough, Hartlepool and Whitby, where the Germans nearly caught an isolated British battle squadron, but turned away, thinking that it was the entire Grand Fleet. This strategy ultimately led to the Battle of Jutland on 31 May – 1 June 1916, the largest clash of battleship fleets. The first stage of the battle was fought largely by the two sides' battlecruiser squadrons, though the British were supported by four of the Queen Elizabeth-class battleships. After both battleship fleets engaged, the British crossed the Germans' "T" twice, but the latter managed to extricate themselves from the action as darkness fell. Early on 1 June, the High Seas Fleet had reached port. In the course of the fighting, three British battlecruisers were destroyed, as was one German battlecruiser and the old pre-dreadnought . Numerous cruisers and destroyers were lost on both sides as well.
The Germans made two further offensive operations in the months after Jutland. The first, which led to the inconclusive action of 19 August, saw one German battleship torpedoed by a British submarine and two British cruisers sunk by German . This incident convinced the British that the risks posed by submarines were too great to send the Grand Fleet into the southern North Sea, barring exceptional circumstances like a German invasion of Britain. In the second German operation, which took place on 18–19 October, a German cruiser was damaged by a submarine and the Grand Fleet remained in port. By this time, the Germans were similarly convinced of the futility of their attempts to isolate part of the British fleet, and discontinued such raids. They instead turned to unrestricted submarine warfare, which resulted in their battleships being reduced to a supporting force that guarded the U-boat bases.
In the Baltic, the Germans made two attempts to capture the islands in the Gulf of Riga. The first came in August 1915, and in the ensuing Battle of the Gulf of Riga, a pair of German dreadnoughts engaged in an artillery duel at long range with the Russian pre-dreadnought guarding the minefields that protected the gulf. The Germans were drove off the Russian ship, cleared the minefield, but by the time they entered the gulf, submarines had reportedly arrived. Unwilling to risk the battleships in the shallow, confined waters of the gulf, the Germans retreated. The second attempt—Operation Albion—took place in October 1917. During the Battle of Moon Sound, another pair of German dreadnoughts damaged Slava so badly that she had to be scuttling, and the Germans completed their amphibious assault on the islands.
The modern units of the French and British fleets in the Mediterranean spent much of the war guarding the entrance to the Adriatic, first based at Malta and later moving to Corfu. They saw very little action through the war. In May 1915, Italy entered the war on the side of the Triple Entente, declaring war on their former allies; the Austro-Hungarians, who were prepared for the betrayal, sailed with the bulk of their fleet to raid the Italian coast on the first hours of the war on 24 May; the battleships were sent to bombard Ancona, but there were no heavy Italian or French units close enough to intervene. For their part, the Italians were content to reinforce the blockading force guarding the Adriatic, as they, too, were unwilling to risk their capital ships in the mine and submarine infested waters of the Austrian Littoral. Instead, light forces carried out most of the operations. Meanwhile, several French and British pre-dreadnoughts were sent to attack the Ottoman defenses guarding the Dardanelles. In the ensuing naval operations from February to March 1915, several battleships were sunk or damaged by mines and torpedoes. When the fleets failed to break through the defenses, the British and French decided to land at Gallipoli to try to take the fortifications by land; the remaining battleships were thereafter used to provide naval gunfire support. This, too, ultimately failed and by January 1916, the British and French withdrew their troops.
Russian battleships saw more action in the Black Sea against their Ottoman opponents. The Ottomans had the battlecruiser SMS Goeben (formerly the German Goeben ), which the Russians attempted to destroy in a series of short engagements, including the Battle of Cape Sarych in November 1914, the Action of 10 May 1915, and the Action of 8 January 1916, though they were unsuccessful in all three attempts, primarily because the faster Yavuz Sultan Selim'' could easily escape from the more numerous but slow Russian pre-dreadnoughts. By 1916, the Russians had completed a pair of dreadnoughts in the Black Sea, which severely curtailed Ottoman freedom of maneuver.
In the course of the war, older pre-dreadnoughts proved to be highly vulnerable to underwater damage, whether by naval mine or ship-launched or submarine-delivered torpedoes. was sunk by a German U-boat in the English Channel in 1915. At the Dardanelles, was sunk by a German U-boat, was sunk by the Ottoman destroyer . The British and and the French were all sunk by mines. and were both sunk by mines in the Mediterranean in 1916 and 1917, respectively. was similarly mined and sunk off the British coast in 1916, and was sunk by a U-boat in the final days of the war. The French were sunk by U-boats in 1916, and was torpedoed and sunk by a U-boat in 1917 At Jutland, the only battleship lost was the old pre-dreadnought Pommern, which was torpedoed by a destroyer.
In contrast, dreadnoughts proved to be much more resilient to underwater attack. was damaged by a torpedo at Jutland, but nevertheless returned to port. The German was torpedoed at the action of 19 August 1916, and and were torpedoed by the same submarine in November 1917; all three survived. was mined during Operation Albion and remained in action against Russian artillery batteries for some time thereafter. Dreadnoughts lost to underwater attack were rare. was sunk by a mine in October 1914, the Austro-Hungarian was sunk by Italian MAS boats in June 1918, and five months later, Italian frogmen sank using a powerful limpet mine.
While the other major naval powers remained free to build new battleships, most of them were financially crippled after the war. The prospect of a renewed naval arms race between the United States, United Kingdom, and Japan, appealed to few politicians in the three countries, and so they concluded the Washington Naval Treaty in 1922, which also included Italy and France. The treaty limited the number and size of battleships, and imposed a ten-year building holiday, along with other provisions. The treaty also imposed a ratio of 5:5:3 on total displacement of battleships for the US, UK, and Japan, respectively, and it severed the Anglo-Japanese Alliance. The only exceptions to the building holiday were for the two British s, which were permitted to give Britain parity with the latest American and Japanese battleships, which were all armed with guns.
The Washington treaty was followed by a series of other naval treaties, including the First London Naval Treaty (1930) and the Second London Naval Treaty (1936), which both set additional limits on major warships. The treaty limitations meant that fewer new battleships were launched in 1919–1939 than in 1905–1914. The treaties also inhibited development by imposing upper limits on the weights of ships. Designs like the projected British , the first American , and the Japanese —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. The collapse of the treaty system began during the negotiations for the Second London Treaty, where Japan demanded parity with Britain and the US, which the latter two flatly rejected. Japan withdrew from the treaty system in 1936, though the agreements remained in effect until January 1937.
In 1921, US General Billy Mitchell used the ex-German dreadnought in a series of bombing tests conducted by the Navy and Army. The test involved a series of attacks on the stationary, unmanned ships using low-level, land-based bombers dropping bombs that ranged from . Ostfriesland was sunk by the heaviest bombs, though Mitchell broke the rules of the tests and the subsequent report concluded that had the ship been crewed, underway, and firing back at the aircraft, damage control teams aboard Ostfriesland could have managed any damage inflicted. Mitchell and his supporters nevertheless embarked on a public campaign that falsely claimed that Ostfriesland was a super-battleship, and the quick sinking proved that battleships were obsolete. Mitchell would eventually be subjected to a court martial, convicted, and discharged from the Army over his insubordinate tactics.
Naval aviation traces its origin back to the first decade of the 20th century, though early efforts were based on using aircraft to scout for the fleet and help direct gunfire at long range. A number of experimental aircraft carriers were employed during World War I, primarily by the Royal Navy, all converted from merchant vessels or existing warships. The US Navy completed its first carrier, , in 1922. But aircraft carriers in the 1920s faced a number of challenges to be overcome: aircraft of the day were short-ranged, which meant the carrier had to be very close to the enemy to be able to launch and then recover a strike, which exposed the carriers to attack. In addition, the available planes had insufficient power to carry meaningful bomb loads. Early naval aviators nevertheless pioneered effective tactics like dive bombing during this period.
The French and Italian navies were exempted from the 10-year building holiday, owing to the comparative obsolescence of their battleships; they were permitted to build worth of battleships. But the weak economies of both countries led both to defer new construction until Germany began building the of heavily armed cruiser at the end of the 1920s. This prompted the French to build the of small, fast battleships armed with guns, which led to a short arms race in Europe in the mid-1930s. The Italians responded with the significantly larger and more powerful , armed with 15-inch guns. The French, in turn, began the s to counter the Littorios. By this time, Nazi Germany had signed the Anglo-German Naval Agreement in 1935, which removed the restrictions imposed by Versailles and pegged German naval strength to 35% of British tonnage. This permitted the construction of two s, which were also a response to the Dunkerques. The advent of the Richelieus prompted the Germans to build the two s late in the decade. The Germans thereafter embarked on the ambitious Plan Z naval construction program, which included a total of eight battleships, of which the Bismarcks would be the first two.
Against the backdrop of European rearmament in the mid-1930s, Britain began planning its first battleship class in a decade: the . These were armed with 14-inch guns intended to comply with the terms of the Second London Naval Conference, and they were laid down in 1937. The United States began their at the same time, and though they were intended to be armed with 14-inch guns, Japan's refusal to agree to the Second London Treaty led the US to invoke a clause of the treaty that allowed an increase to 16-inch guns. In 1939, these were followed by the four s, and in 1940 by the first of four s. For its part, Japan had decided to embark on a program of four very large s, armed with guns, as early as 1934, though work did not begin on the first ship until late 1937.
Italy entered the war in June 1940, shortly before the French defeat. In November, the British launched a nighttime airstrike on the naval base at Taranto; in the Battle of Taranto, Fairey Swordfish disabled three Italian battleships, though they were subsequently repaired. Over the next year, Italian and British battleships engaged in a number of inconclusive actions as they contested the supply lines to North Africa. These included the Battle of Cape Spartivento in November 1940 and the Battle of Cape Matapan in March 1941. At Matapan, the battleship was badly damaged by a Swordfish, though the ship returned to port. The British battleships , , and nevertheless caught a group of three heavy cruisers that evening and destroyed them in a furious, close-range night action. Convoy battles continued through 1941 and into 1942, with actions such as First and Second Sirte. By 1943, Italian operations were sharply reduced due to a shortage of fuel, and after the Allied invasion of Italy, the country surrendered, allowing most of its fleet to be interned at Malta. While on the way, the battleship was sunk by a German Fritz X guided glide bomb.
In the meantime, in January 1941, the Germans began to send their few battleships on commerce raiding operations in the Atlantic, starting with the two Scharnhorst-class ships in Operation Berlin, which was not particularly successful. followed with Operation Rheinübung in May, which resulted in two actions, the Battle of the Denmark Strait and the sinking of Bismarck. During the operation, Bismarck was crippled by Swordfish torpedo bombers, which allowed a pair of British battleships to catch and destroy her. By 1942, the last operational German battleships— and —were sent to occupied Norway to serve as a fleet in being to tie down British naval resources and to attack supply convoys to the Soviet Union. The battleship eventually sank Scharnhorst at the Battle of North Cape in December 1943, and Tirpitz was destroyed by British in 1944.
Employment of battleships during the Pacific War was limited by a number of factors. Japanese strategic doctrine, the Kantai Kessen, envisioned a decisive clash of battleships at the end of the war, and so kept most of their battleships in home waters, and only the four Kongōs were routinely detached to escort the aircraft carriers of the Kido Butai. For their part, the US kept its surviving pre-war battleships out of action primarily because they were too slow to keep up with the carriers. Later in the war, they were employed as coastal bombardment vessels. Nevertheless, American and Japanese battleships saw significant action during the Guadalcanal campaign in 1942, most notably at the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal in November. There, an American squadron centered on the battleships and intercepted and sank the battleship , though South Dakota received significant damage in return. As more and more of the American fast battleships entered service from 1942, onward, they were frequently used as escorts for the fast carrier task force that was the US Navy's primary striking arm in its campaign across the central Pacific.
During the Philippines campaign, battleships played a central role during the Battle of Leyte Gulf in October 1944. The action was one of the largest naval battles in history, which took place over several days and as three Japanese fleets attacked the Allied invasion fleet. The Japanese battleship , part of Center Force, was sunk by American carrier aircraft during the Battle of Sibuyan Sea on 24 October. During the Battle of Surigao Strait the following night, several US battleships that had been repaired from the attack on Pearl Harbor defeated the Japanese Southern Force that included a pair of battleships. Center Force attacked again on 25 October and in the Battle off Samar, but was driven off by destroyers and aircraft from several . During the Battle of Okinawa in April 1945, Japan sent Yamato as a final Operation Ten-Go to attack the landing beaches and attempt to stop the invasion of the island. American aircraft scored between nine and thirteen torpedo hits and six bomb hits on the ship and sank her. was sunk by US aircraft off Kure, Japan, in July. Only survived the war. The war ended with the Japanese surrender aboard the battleship in September 1945.
Of the remaining, smaller battleships fleets, Italy retained its two s, of 1913 vintage, until the late 1950s and early 1960s, when they were scrapped. One other battleship, was taken by the Soviets as reparations and renamed Novorossiysk; she was sunk by a mine in the Black Sea on 29 October 1955. The two surviving Littorio-class ships were taken by the US and UK as war reparations and scrapped in the late 1940s. The Soviets still had a pair of World War I-era battleships— and —, but they, too, were scrapped in the late 1950s. The three large South American navies still had a handful of pre-World War I dreadnoughts in service after the war. Brazil eventually discarded its two s in the early 1950s; Argentina sold its two s in 1956; the last ship in the region, the Chilean , followed them to the breakers' yard in 1959.
The four Iowa-class battleships were the only vessels of the type to see significant combat after World War II. All four ships were reactivated for gunfire support duties during the Korean War in the early 1950s, and was also deployed during the Vietnam War in 1968–1969 for the same task. All four ships were modernized in the early 1980s with Tomahawk cruise missiles, Harpoon anti-ship missiles, and Phalanx CIWS systems, along with the latest radar systems. They were recommissioned as part of the 600-ship Navy program under President Ronald Reagan. New Jersey next saw action in 1982, bombarding Syrian artillery during the Lebanese Civil War. Missouri and took part in Operation Desert Storm against Iraqi forces in 1991, bombarding enemy positions along the coast. The ships proved to be expensive to operate, and they required thousands of men to keep in service, so Iowa and New Jersey were already back in reserve by that time, and Missouri and Wisconsin were also decommissioned by the end of 1991. All four were struck from the Naval Vessel Register in 1995.
When the last Iowa-class ship was finally stricken from the Naval Vessel Registry, no battleships remained in service or in reserve with any navy worldwide. A number are preserved as museum ships, either afloat or in drydock. The U.S. has eight battleships on display: Massachusetts, North Carolina, Alabama, Iowa, New Jersey, Missouri, Wisconsin, and Texas. Missouri and New Jersey are museums at Pearl Harbor and Camden, New Jersey, respectively. Iowa is on display as an educational attraction at the Los Angeles Waterfront in San Pedro, California. Wisconsin now serves as a museum ship in Norfolk, Virginia. "WCBC files lawsuit" . Associated Press. April 14, 2010. Retrieved April 15, 2010. Massachusetts, which has the distinction of never having lost a man during service, is on display at the Battleship Cove naval museum in Fall River, Massachusetts. Texas, the first battleship turned into a museum, is normally on display at the San Jacinto Battleground State Historic Site, near Houston, but as of 2021 is closed for repairs. North Carolina is on display in Wilmington, North Carolina. Alabama is on display in Mobile, Alabama. The USS Arizona Memorial was erected over the wreck of , which was sunk during the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941, to commemorate those killed in the raid. Memorials were also placed to mark the wreck of , also sunk during the attack. The only other 20th-century battleship on display is the Japanese pre-dreadnought , preserved since 1923.
A competing doctrine, that of the "fleet in being" dates at least as far back as the 17th century Royal Navy; its commander, Lord Torrington, argued that his fleet, though significantly outnumbered by the French navy of the day, posed enough of a risk as to dissuade a French attempt to invade England. The "fleet in being" in part acts as a deterrent against attack. The concept underpinned Tirpitz's so-called "risk theory" that was the basis of his program to build a German battle fleet. Even if the Royal Navy maintained a numerical superiority, the risk that the German fleet would inflict grievous damage even in the case of a British victory would militate against any such battle taking place, and Germany would be free to pursue its global ambitions.
As the threat of underwater attack, including mines and torpedoes, developed after the 1860s, capital ships could no longer maintain close blockades of enemy ports. This required smaller, faster scouts to observe hostile ports so that an enemy fleet could be brought to battle. Modern cruisers began to be built in the 1880s for this purpose. Almost immediately after the invention of the airplane, navies recognized its potential as a reconnaissance unit for the fleet's battleships.
The Austro-Hungarian Navy, then following the Jeune École doctrine of the 1870s and 1880s, devised the tactic of placing torpedo boats alongside battleships; these would hide behind the larger ships until gun-smoke obscured visibility enough for them to dart out and fire their torpedoes. While this tactic was made less effective by the development of smokeless propellant, the threat from more capable torpedo craft (later including submarines) remained. By the 1890s, the Royal Navy had developed the first destroyers, which were initially designed to intercept and drive off any attacking torpedo boats. The other major naval powers quickly followed suit with similar vessels of their own.
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 Greece waters staved off a possible Soviet thrust into the Balkans region. 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.
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