Battleship (warship)

A battleship is a class of heavily armored military vessel armed with large-caliber weaponry. While seagoing crafts had been used in warfare for thousands of years, true armor-plated battleships were first built in the late nineteenth century and used extensively in the world wars of the early twentieth century. The earliest battleships evolved from the heavily armed wooden warships of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and made use of advances in steam and iron-forging technology from the nineteenth century. The British were credited with building the first modern battleship, while the Japanese constructed the largest battleships during World War II. During that conflict, the aircraft carrier began to replace the battleship as the primary vessel for maritime warfare. In the United States, no new battleships were commissioned after 1944. The last US battleships were decommissioned in the 1990s.

Background

Evidence suggests the Minoans, a trading civilization that flourished on the Mediterranean island of Crete about 2000 to 1500 BCE, founded one of the world's first naval fleets. The earliest warships were sail- and oar-powered vessels known as galleys, which had about fifty oarsmen and primarily carried troops into battle. In the late first millennium BCE, the galleys became weaponized with the addition of a hull-shattering, armored point called a ram. In the ensuing centuries, the Greeks and Romans improved on the design and technological capabilities of the warship, but the basic concept remained relatively unchanged until the inclusion of gunpowder-propelled artillery in the early sixteenth century.

The Portuguese were the first to use canons mounted aboard ships in battle in 1501. Other navies soon followed, and heavy guns had replaced rams as the primary weapon in seagoing warfare by the end of the century. Naval tactics of the era primarily used a lined formation, which meant that warships needed to be strong enough to survive the broadside hits from an enemy's guns. Some of these warships had upwards of 30 inches of wooden planking and rows of more than one hundred guns. A vessel sturdy enough to enter the "line" of combat was called a ship-of-the-line. In time, the term became known as line-of-battle ship, which was eventually shortened to battleship.

Overview

The Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century allowed for great innovations in steam power and forging technology, advancements soon used to improve warship capabilities. Steam engines allowed ships to move without relying on the wind, and armored plating was used to protect the wooden body of the ships from explosive and incendiary artillery shells. The French Navy was one of the first to use ironclad vessels in battle against Russian artillery positions during the Crimean War of the 1850s. Great Britain followed suit and commissioned its own armored warships soon after. During the American Civil War, the Union warship Monitor and the Confederate warship Virginia fought to a draw in the waters off Hampton Roads, Virginia. The battle marked the first time two ironclad vessels engaged each other in combat.

The first warships to be called battleships were developed in the 1880s and 1890s. The steel- and iron-plated vessels were built specifically for fighting other enemy battleships. The British navy's HMS Royal Sovereign set a design standard for many of these early battleships. The Royal Sovereign had four 13.5-inch heavy guns mounted in two turrets, one near the front of the ship and one near the back. The first battleship commissioned by the United States was the USS Texas in 1895. The Texas was 309 feet long with 12 inches of steel armor. It had an arsenal of two 12-inch guns, six 6-inch guns, and four torpedo tubes.

In 1906, the British commissioned a revolutionary battleship called the HMS Dreadnought, a name taken from the phrase "Fear God and dread nought." Considered the first modern battleship, the Dreadnought set such a high standard that similar ships built after 1906 were referred to as dreadnought class. The Dreadnought measured about 527 feet long and held a main arsenal of ten 12-inch guns in five twin turrets. The ship's main innovation was a steam-driven, internal combustion engine, which allowed it to move at a higher speed than previous ships. The combination of bigger guns and faster speed made pre-dreadnought class battleships obsolete.

Military technology quickly advanced. By the outbreak of World War I in 1914, even Dreadnought was surpassed in capability. The largest naval battle of World War I was the Battle of Jutland fought in the North Sea off the coast of Denmark in 1916. Jutland marked the first time a full complement of battleships faced off against one another in warfare. The battle between the British and German fleets was indecisive.

By the time World War II began in 1939, combat tactics had begun to change, favoring the aircraft as a primary weapon in battle. Aircraft carriers, large warships that served as a base of operations from which to launch planes, began to reduce the role of battleships in combat. A main benefit of carriers was that they could be used to stage attacks from a distance, without ever entering the enemy's line of fire.

Still, the warring nations continued to produce state-of-the-art battleships almost to the end of the war. After nearly destroying the US fleet at Pearl Harbor in 1941, the Japanese felt that it would be impossible for the United States to sail large warships through the Panama Canal to reach the Pacific Ocean. They set out to build a battleship large enough to destroy any ship the Americans could send against them. The results were the Yamato and the Musashi. At more than 862 feet long and 127 feet wide, they were the largest battleships ever built. Both ships had an arsenal of nine 18.1-inch guns and dozens of smaller caliber weapons. The Americans responded with four Iowa-class battleships. These were about 887 feet long and 108 feet wide with a main armament of nine 16-inch guns and twenty 5-inch guns. Both the Yamato and Musashi were sunk by war's end, while the Iowa-class battleship Missouri was the site of the Japanese surrender on September 2, 1945.

The Missouri was the last battleship commissioned by the United States in 1944. The Missouri, Iowa, New Jersey, and Wisconsin were decommissioned after the war but were brought back to serve in other conflicts during the twentieth century. The Missouri and Wisconsin participated in the 1991 Persian Gulf War. A year later, all four Iowa-class ships were permanently decommissioned. In the twenty-first century, they function as naval museums in New Jersey, California, Hawaii, and Virginia.

Bibliography

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LaGrone, Sam. "The Rise and Fall of the Battleship (And Why They Won't Be Coming Back)." Popular Science, 3 Jan. 2014, www.popsci.com/blog-network/shipshape/rise-and-fall-battleship-and-why-they-wont-be-coming-back. Accessed 30 Jan. 2017.

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