Warships

This generic term covers all government naval warfare vessels—even noncombatant support craft operated by uniformed personnel—including torpedo boats with only a few crew members to large aircraft carriers with more than five thousand personnel. Interaction between warships and tactics has been constant and reciprocal. The nature of warships has influenced fighting methods and vice versa. Thus, warships evolved from floating platforms for carrying infantry, to artillery craft for targeting at gradually increasing distances, to carriers of guided missiles and aircraft. Although virtually all warships were surface vessels, submarines have assumed crucial importance in their attack of other submarines, surface vessels, and enemy cities, as have airplanes. Especially in the twentieth century, even when wars were won as the direct consequence of land battles, this was often achieved or facilitated through the conduct of war at sea.

Early History

At the outset, naval craft used for war were often undifferentiated from those used for other purposes. The earliest specialized warships circa 7 b.c.e. were Phoenician and Greek galleys—long, narrow vessels often reinforced at the bow with bronze sheeting. For about two millennia, from the Battle of Salamis in 480 b.c.e. to the Battle of Lepanto in 1571 c.e., warships used oars in various configurations in combat and sails for cruising. The biremes were galleys that had two banks of oarsmen and a ram at the bow for piercing enemy hulls. These craft evolved into three-banked triremes, four-banked quadriremes, and five-banked quinquiremes with hundreds of oarsmen along both sides of the craft. The Romans preferred biremes because they were more maneuverable but also used triremes, as did the Greeks, Egyptians, and Carthaginians. Top speed was about seven knots. Eventually, the Romans used the corvus, a gangplank with a heavy spike that when dropped on enemy decks allowed legionnaires to fight an infantry action at sea.

Byzantine galleys packed Greek fire, an incendiary substance projected onto enemy vessels by hand-operated water pumps that ignited upon contact and burned even on water. By about 9 c.e., the English and the Scandinavian Vikings used longships—low, open boats with high bows and sterns and a row of oars down each side. They were built of overlapping planks, or clinkers, and had one square sail for cruising, as did the galleys. As in the case of the Romans, their tactic was also to grapple alongside and board enemy craft, as did the Arabs, who also adopted Greek fire.

The first cannons on warships appeared in about 13 c.e. At first, these were fired across the bow and targeted enemy personnel rather than their vessels. Frequently, there were smaller guns as well. The use of guns was further developed with the advent of galleons, the first true warships capable of carrying a battery of heavy artillery. From about 1650 c.e. on, galleons were full-rigged fighting ships with stronger hulls to carry the greater weight of anything from two dozen guns in the case of the smaller frigates to more than one hundred guns mounted on two or three decks in the case of ships of the line. The cannons were fired through ports on the side of the ship. This arrangement mandated follow-the-leader tactics; hence the designation ships of the line. These fighting vessels of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries allowed European nations to explore and colonize a great part of the world by combat, blockading ports, or convoy duties.

Modern Era

By 1815, the ships of the line (capital ships), frigates, and lesser craft marked the end of a long, static era that had continued for much of the eighteenth century. The invention of steam power and its application to naval propulsion gradually brought an end to wooden sailing ships of the line. Indeed, the more powerful steam-driven propulsion made it possible to use heavier, armor-plated vessels free from dependence on wind and tide. In the meantime, paddle wheels were replaced by the less vulnerable screw propellers. Although wind-driven ships could be out at sea for as long as supplies lasted, steam-driven vessels needed bunkering and thus had to return to port frequently until World War II (1939–1945). By that time, at least in the case of the U.S. Navy, fueling at sea from a tanker overcame this limitation.

The French ironclad frigate Gloire, launched in 1859, was the first of these armor-plated vessels. Initial combat between ironclads occurred only during the American Civil War (1861–1865), when the Confederate Virginia (formerly the USS Merrimac) engaged the USS Monitor. By that time, rotating gun turrets had become operational, making it possible to fire in all directions without the need to maneuver the vessel into combat position. By the 1870’s and 1880’s, armor plating, which protected only a portion of the hull and had been increased from 4.5 inches to 12 and even 24 inches in thickness, was being phased out in favor of integral iron and later steel construction. Steam power now became generalized, marginalizing sails. Submarines were also being introduced in the late nineteenth century, even though it was not before World War I (1914–1918) that the German navy perfected the use of its U-boats (Unterseebote) into a fine art, wreaking havoc among Allied North Atlantic shipping as it was to do again in World War II, until the Allies devised the convoy system for protection. Meanwhile, naval weaponry was also being improved with the replacement of cannonballs by explosive shells driven by constantly more powerful propellants and the invention of self-propelled torpedoes for submarines.

Twentieth Century

Beginning in 1906, when Britain’s 17,900-ton Dreadnought was launched, to the 1950’s, the heaviest class of warships—battleships—reigned supreme. This class of warship had been anticipated by the Royal Sovereign of 1892 weighing 14,150 tons. The dreadnought “all-big-run” class had ten 12-inch guns and no secondary battery. Its steam turbines could generate a speed of twenty-one knots (about twenty-three miles an hour), which outclassed all other warships. By World War I, Britain’s and other navies were converting from the use of coal to fuel oil. Long-range fire-control systems, optical ranging, and other gear were also enhanced. Eventually, navies built such giants as the 69,100-ton Japanese Yamato and Musashi and the German 52,600-ton Bismarck and Tirpitz, although these ships were sunk by Allied bombers during World War II. Battleships usually cruised with battle groups—squadrons of small cruisers, destroyers, and other escort craft—to guard them against enemy aircraft and submarines.

However, the vulnerability of these large battleships had become evident. The U.S. Navy phased out all of them by 1958, although the USS New Jersey, Wisconsin, and Missouri were reactivated during the Vietnam Conflict (1961–1975) for coastal bombardment and other duties.

As early as World War II, aircraft carriers had supplanted battleships as the principal war vessels because their target could far exceed—by hundreds of miles—the approximately twenty miles that even the largest battleship guns were able to reach. Accordingly, the carrier task force has replaced the old battle line as the major tactical formation. Planes brought up by elevators from below-deck hangars and often shot off from catapults are snagged by wire when landing on the “flattops.” By 1955, the 56,000-ton U.S. carrier Forrestal had a flight deck more than 1,000 feet long and more than 250 feet wide, capable of accommodating some 100 fighter and bomber aircraft.

By the 1950’s, atomic propulsion for surface ships and submarines as well as guided missiles was replacing conventional fuels. By the 1960’s and 1970’s, nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines became the most important units in the U.S. Navy, combining speed, endurance, and concealment capability with a firing range of more than 2,500 miles, eventually with multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRVs). The Soviet (later Russian) Navy was not far behind.

Attack carriers with aircraft and helicopters and speeds of more than thirty knots and attack submarines capable of forty knots had become the new capital ships by the close of the twentieth century. Cruisers, destroyers, frigates, corvettes, gunboats, and torpedo boats—a number of them carrying guided missiles—were also replacing the larger but slower battleships and sharing many of the same antisubmarine and antiaircraft duties. Similarly, hybrid vessels were becoming commonplace, and thus the earlier breakdown of warships into distinct classes had become increasingly blurred. This complex naval ranking order could be exemplified with the Russian Kiev, a cruiser-carrier equipped with both missiles and aircraft. By the twenty-first century, the advanced navies of the world were operating as an integral part of air, land, and sea strategies.

In the meantime, a wide array of specialized vessels for specific purposes such as Landing Ship Tanks (LSTs) was also developed. Gear such as radar (dating from World War II), surveillance sonar, guidance systems, and other technology was greatly improved, transforming navies into formidable weapons, not only against other moving craft but also against inland targets.

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