History UsefulNotes / HistoryOfNavalWarfare

Armored warships continued to be constructed of a combination of iron and wood until the development of steel shipbuilding in the 1870s. Armor technology improved and guns became increasingly powerful. The way that guns were described changed -- where sailing warships carried cannon that threw balls of specific weights (9-pound, 12-pound, 24-pound, etc.), the new generation of naval guns were described in terms of the barrel diameter: 6-inch, 9-inch, 12-inch, etc. Marine steam power was sufficiently reliable, and (more importantly) coal fueling stations became sufficiently numerous, that sails largely disappeared[[note]] Most steam-powered ships, military and civilian alike, were equipped with auxiliary sail rigs until the first decade of the twentieth century, although they generally weren't used much unless the engines failed or they ran short of coal[[/note]], although masts were retained because they were useful for signalling, fire control, and so forth.

The policy not only failed, but drew the United States into the conflict in mid-1917. This was not an immediate disaster, as the USA had a very small army at the time, and moreover was on the other side of the ocean. [[note]] For instance the USA produced just 400 of the 3000 artillery pieces its Expeditionary Force finished the war with, all of these being 'light' (small) ones to boot. France manufactured the rest. It was enough of a strain on the combined allied navies and merchant fleets just to ship hundreds of thousands of men with their foodstuffs and personal gear across; it was faster and easier to have them use artillery and other heavy equipment that was already in Europe than try to find shipping for all those heavy guns.[[/note]]. However, it did give the Western Allies the loyalty off one of the greatest industrial and commercial powerhouse on the planet that was not already on their side, and a potentially vast military in which veteran Marine and Regular Army and Navy troops could be supplemented by huge numbers of conscripts, all of whom began being shipped across the Atlantic in droves during 1917 and 1918. The Central Powers recognized the problems with this and pulled out all the stops to try and knock the major Western Entente nations (by now the only continental Entente powers still in the game after the fall of Russia) out of the war while the US was still mobilizing, but their do-or-die attacks against Italy and the Western Front ultimately broke down, leaving a broken and demoralized German-led alliance that was outnumbered, outgunned, increasingly unpopular at home, and about to be squeezed from all sides, helped by the growing Allied skill at fighting submarine warfare. The result was that the Allies kept pushing for about 100 days and ultimately broke through on all fronts in summer 1918, with Austria-Hungary and Germany suing for peace in October-November 1918.

Armored warships continued to be constructed of a combination of iron and wood until the development of steel shipbuilding in the 1870s. Armor technology improved and guns became increasingly powerful. Marine steam power was sufficiently reliable, and (more importantly) coal fueling stations became sufficiently numerous, that sails largely disappeared[[note]] Most steam-powered ships, military and civilian alike, were equipped with auxiliary sail rigs until the first decade of the twentieth century, although they generally weren't used much unless the engines failed or they ran short of coal[[/note]], although masts were retained because they were useful for signalling, fire control, and so forth.

Warship development became rapid and confusing; many countries repeatedly designed and laid down ships [[LensmanArmsRace that would become obsolete before they were even completed]], and a total lack of combat experience led to some decidedly daft ideas in shipbuilding. In the last decades of the 19th Century, cruisers began being classified based on their thickness and arrangement of armor - unprotected cruisers (no armor), protected cruisers (internal armored deck but no side armor), and armored cruisers (internal armored deck and side armor). In 1892 the Royal Navy formally classified its most powerful steel warships as "battleships."

The line between ironclad and battleship is not clear, but arguably the first battleships were the turreted, sail-less ironclads of the 1870s - HMS ''Devasation'' commissioned in 1871, the all-steel French ''Redoubtable'' of 1878, and the Italian ''Caio Duilio'' of 1880. By the 1890s most capital ships were of a similar type -- coal-powered triple-expansion engines, heavy steel armour, with a main armament of around 4x 12 inch[[note]]305mm[[/note]] guns (usually two each in turrets before and after the superstructure), an intermediate armament of around 10x 5-to-8 inch[[note]]127-to-203mm[[/note]] guns (in turrets or broadside casemates), and a secondary armament of 10-30 3-to-5 inch[[note]]76-to-127mm[[/note]] guns (turrets or casemates). The main armament was powerful but slow-firing, meant to punch through heavy armour with ease; the secondary armament was quick-firing but weak, meant to wreck the lightly armoured parts of the target with a torrent of explosive shells as well as destroy lighter vessels; the intermediate guns split the difference.

On the German side SMS ''Lutzow'' was scuttled after the battle, too severely damaged to make port and SMS ''Seydlitz'' only barely managed to limp home with less than one foot of freeboard minus all of her turrets. All but Lutzow were sunk by other battle cruisers and no battle cruiser on either side returned undamaged. None of the more heavily armored Dreadnoughts were sunk. Though some battlecruisers survived until UsefulNotes/WW2 few were built during the interwar period. During [=WW2=] battlecruisers fought battleships on 3 occasions:[[note]]Denmark Strait, 24 May 1941; Second Guadalcanal, 14-15 November 1942; and North Cape, 26 December 1943. The second two are somewhat questionable as to whether the ships were battlecruisers or not. ''Scharnhorst'' was armored like a fast Battleship and was only considered a battlecruiser by some because she mounted 11-inch guns compared to the 14, 15, and 16-inchers of her contemporaries. Even the Germans couldn't really make up their minds about it. In the Pacific, Japan's ''Kongō''-class battlecruisers (including ''Hiei'' and ''Kirishima'' had been up-armored between wars and were officially rated fast battleships by 1942. The Royal Navy had planned a similar conversion for HMS ''Hood'', but peacetime budget cuts forced it to be repeatedly postponed until it was too late. [[/note]] each time, a battlecruiser was sunk. Jutland also saw the introduction of a new kind of super-dreadnought in the ''Queen Elizabeth'' class, which attempted to address the battlecruisers' shortcomings by combining relatively high speed with even bigger guns and commensurate protection.

The policy not only failed, but drew the United States into the conflict in mid-1917. This was not an immediate disaster, as the USA had a very small army at the time, and moreover was on the other side of the ocean. [[note]] For instance the USA produced just 400 of the 3000 artillery pieces its Expeditionary Force finished the war with, all of these being 'light' (small) ones to boot. France manufactured the rest. It was enough of a strain on the combined allied navies and merchant fleets just to ship hundreds of thousands of men with their foodstuffs and personal gear across; it was faster and easier to have them use artillery and other heavy equipment that was already in Europe than try to find shipping for all those heavy guns.[[/note]]. However, it did give the Entente enough 'first-rate' manpower to execute another two years of high-casualty warfare which valued taking and holding as much ground as possible over preserving lives. Germany, France, and Britain had all run out in 1916 and switched to low-casualty warfare which valued preserving as many lives as possible over taking and holding ground. The USA's entry was a game-changer because now, the Entente could take the losses needed to force its way through Germany's defences again, and again, and again, until they could no longer form any more and their depleted forces broke completely. This is exactly what happened in summer 1918, with Austria-Hungary and Germany suing for peace in October-November 1918.

It is something of a stereotype that galleys were [[SlaveGalley largely manned by slaves at the oars]] but this was actually only true for a relatively short period from the mid-1600s to the mid-late 1700s. Rowing a warship and maneuvering in order to effectively board or ram an enemy ship is actually quite difficult, and slaves are generally not highly motivated to fight the enemies of those who enslaved them, so ancient navies relied on free, skilled mariners, each handling a single oar and joining in the ship's defense if boarded.[[note]]This is incidentally why the ancient navies needed ships with multiple rowing decks such as Biremes, Triremes, and Quadremes; with one person per oar the only way to get more power was to add more oars. 17th-19th century galleys instead used multiple slaves per oar, and thus larger and heavier oars, but only one rowing deck.[[/note]] It was only with the advent of naval guns that a slave galley became viable, as the tricky maneuvering was no longer necessary; you just had to generally get the ship pointed at the enemy and let the gunners do their work. But of course, [[TechnologyMarchesOn sailing vessels became dominant around the same time and so slave galleys quickly disappeared]]. The concept of a slave galley is so dominant in the popular imagination simply because they were used so much more recently and many more records and stories of their use still exist.

Despite their power, cannons were still relatively short ranged and were unlikely to sink or destroy a ship outright. A ship that lacked in the firepower department but had good maneuverability and lots of men could also manage to get in close and carry the ship by boarding. For this purpose, Marines were developed as soldiers specifically trained to fight at sea, as opposed to the crew just trying to kill the other crew. Ship designs gradually became more specialized as fleets gradually evolved from hastily organized mobs of armed merchant and trading vessels to professional standing navies.

* Line formations and "crossing the T" make little sense when exchanging airstrikes; instead, circular formations that put layers of escorts armed with anti-aircraft weapons in a "ring of steel" around the high-value ships became dominant. Conveniently this approach also worked decently well at defending against submarine attack.

The old methods had their last hurrah in UsefulNotes/WorldWarII as well, largely because there were still conditions (night battles and arctic seas) where aircraft were ineffective, especially early in the war; as well, even the late-war US Navy aerial strikes had issues stopping a large, determined surface force willing to take casualties (see Sibuyan Sea), and while carriers could easily evade battleships, landing forces and supply ships were another story, requiring battleships to hang around a bit longer. There were nine battleship-on-battleship engagements in UsefulNotes/WW2, all but one happening by 1943. [[note]] The first three years of the war were effectively "battleship years" because the US and Japan were not engaged yet and intra- and inter-service rivalry within the Royal Navy and with the RAF had left Britain's Fleet Air Arm with a small number of overage or undersized carriers and a motley collection of aircraft running the gamut from obsolescent through lame to pathetic, a situation it took three years to correct. The unfortunate decision to assign all aircraft and aircrew to the RAF between the wars also meant there were no aviators and hence little aviation savvy amongst the Royal Navy's senior leadership.[[/note]]. There were also many surface engagements among cruisers and destroyers in the Mediterranean, Pacific, and Indian oceans without battleships present. And battleships did continue to prove useful since they made good antiaircraft and shore bombardment platforms. Later they were even placed in front of the carriers to protect them from aircraft attack since they could [[SuperToughness take more damage]] and were [[WeHaveReserves more expendable]] in the aviation era and proved highly effective in this role since late war advances in radar and anti-aircraft gunnery gave them the means to protect themselves if they were provided with sufficient air cover.

-->Horatio Nelson

** The classic battle-winning maneuver was "crossing the T". Ships were heavily armed and relatively well armored on their sides, but very vulnerable from the bows and sterns, with relatively thin hulls, nearly no armament, and nothing to prevent a penetrating shot from flying clear from one end of the ship to the other. Thus, if you could sail your ships ahead or behind the enemy's line and cross their direction of travel at a right angle, your ships could [[AttackItsWeakPoint fire full broadsides at the enemy's most vulnerable aspects]] while taking negligible damage in return. British Royal Navy Admiral Horatio Nelson famously achieved this against a combined Franco-Spanish fleet at the battle of Trafalgar in 1805, sailing his two lines perpendicular to the enemy line and cutting it in two places. During his approach, he basically crossed his own T, but once he cut their line, his two lines of ships were able to fire both left and right into enemy ships, essentially ''crossing their T four times simultaneously''. Crossing the T would remain a relevant tactic into the age of big gun battleships but lost favor with the advent of aircraft and submarines.

Tactics changed again, from "take your fleet and find the enemy's and sink it with your battleships" to "find the enemy's fleet with your planes and sink their carriers while protecting your own at all costs" and all surface ships besides carriers became little more than escorts. Meanwhile, acquiring new carriers became so important that the U.S. converted nine cruisers under construction into "light" carriers -- almost anything would do as long as it could launch planes. The U.S. also constructed or converted dozens of small "escort" carriers that the U.S. and Royal navies used for escorting convoys, antisubmarine patrols, and invasion support -- nearly a hundred carriers all told. Battle ranges increased yet again, this time to well over the horizon, and battles were fought entirely with aircraft without each fleet ever seeing the other. The OldSchoolDogfight as a factor in naval warfare originates here, though it took the invention and proliferation of radar to make fleet defense from air attack possible. Ironically, the heavy bombers that Mitchell believed would make navies obsolete proved largely ineffective at attacking ships.

Cannons and maneuver were now the decisive weapons in battle -- a ship or fleet with longer-range cannons and better maneuverability could dance around their enemy, just out of range of return fire, and pound them into a splintery, bloody mess. This is exactly what the English did to the Spanish in 1588. Tactics began to depart from the terminology of land battles and become unique to the ocean environment. Battles took place at longer range, with fewer but more powerful ships. Standard practice for fleet battles was to line up one-on-one with the enemy to avoid interfering with your allies, and may the best man win. Battles between single frigates could be more interesting. And since all ships were powered by sails, simply having "the Weather Gauge" (the upwind position) often made all the difference because it could make your ships faster and literally (if you 'stole' their wind by being directly upwind of them) bring the enemy's to a standstill.

Despite their power, however, cannons were still relatively short ranged and were unlikely to sink or destroy a ship outright. A ship that lacked in the firepower department but had good maneuverability and lots of men could also manage to get in close and carry the ship by boarding. For this purpose, Marines were developed as soldiers specifically trained to fight at sea, as opposed to the crew just trying to kill the other crew. Ship designs gradually became more specialized as fleets gradually evolved from hastily organized mobs of armed merchant and trading vessels to professional standing navies.

The Japanese chose a different route: building the largest battleships ever created, [[UpToEleven by a wide margin]]. ''Yamato'' and her sister ''Musashi'' had nine [[{{BFG}} 18.1-inch guns]] each, with tremendously-thick armor and a small army's worth of secondary, intermediate[[note]]The ''Yamato''-class had an intermediate battery of 5" AA guns complementing the anti-surface 6.1" secondary guns[[/note]], and antiaircraft guns.[[note]]Arguably, ''both'' the ''Yamato''-class superbattleships and the ''Iowa''-class fast battleships were terrific wastes of resources, as these jewels of the IJN and USN battle fleet never had opportunity to meet a worthy target during the Pacific Campaign. The important difference being the USA could ''afford'' to build these ships without making the slightest dent in its production of more critical aircraft carriers; indeed, by this point in the war the US had economically dominated the IJN to such a degree the USN was running out of things to buy and already had more ships under construction than they had sailors to man them. Also, the ''Iowa''s did prove to be quite useful as antiaircraft escorts (their massive AA suite combined with advanced fire control meant that hardly anything could survive long overhead); even more so in a fire-support role supporting American troops fighting within 20 miles of shore--which happened strangely often in the latter half of the 20th century--and their speed came in handy keeping up with the nuclear-powered ships that popped up in the same period.[[/note]] How these "superbattleships" would have performed against the American ''Iowa'' and British ''King George V''-class fast battleships is a topic of speculation, as both of them were sunk by American aircraft ([[MadeOfIron though it wasn't easy]])

Numerous armored gunboats appeared during the US Civil War, mostly designed with broadside batteries and mostly intended for inshore/riverine operations. USS ''Monitor'' introduced the rotating armored gun turret, allowing the gunboat to engage targets from any angle (the arrangement was so peculiar at the time that observers initially called the turret a "cheesebox" because that's what it looked like[[note]] Eyewitnesses described ''Monitor'''s inconclusive duel with the broadside-configured ironclad CSS ''Virginia'' as a fight between a floating barn and a cheesebox on a raft[[/note]]), she was also iron-hulled (less than two years after ''Warrior'') and, lacking masts or rigging of any kind, entirely reliant on her steam engines--a rarity at that time. In 1862, the first battle between ironclads took place, with ''Monitor'' engaging CSS ''Virginia'' after the latter had attacked a Union blockade of Hampton Roads, Virginia and damaged or destroyed several ships. The two ships fought to a draw, [[StoneWall neither having the firepower to significantly damage the other]]. With this proof that a single ironclad could wipe out an entire unarmored fleet and that nothing could stop it but another ironclad, Great Britain and France decided that ironclads were no longer simply a supplement to their mostly unarmored fleet - ironclads were now the only type of warship worth building. Construction of unarmored line-of-battleships ended almost immediately.

It is something of a stereotype that galleys were [[SlaveGalley largely manned by slaves at the oars]] but this was actually only true for a relatively short period from the mid-1600s to the mid-late 1700s. Rowing a warship and maneuvering in order to effectively board or ram an enemy ship is actually quite difficult, and slaves are generally not highly motivated to fight the enemies of those who enslaved them, so ancient navies relied on free, skilled mariners, each handling a single oar and joining in the ship's defense if boarded. It was only with the advent of naval guns that a slave galley became viable, as the tricky maneuvering was no longer necessary; you just had to generally get the ship pointed at the enemy and let the gunners do their work. But of course, [[TechnologyMarchesOn sailing vessels became dominant around the same time and so slave galleys quickly disappeared]].

With the battles conducted close to shore and with lots of generally small, slow ships that were only useful at close range, tactics at sea in this period mimicked tactics on land. Your ships formed up into ranks, tried to maneuver and flank the enemy from the side, and then charged into them, with the battle devolving into a general melee after this point. If you want a good picture of this, the first act of ''Film/BenHur'' is a pretty decent reenactment.

It is something of a stereotype that galleys were [[SlaveGalley largely manned by slaves at the oars]] but this was actually only true for a relatively short period from the mid-1600s to the mid-late 1700s. Rowing a warships and maneuvering in order to effectively board or ram an enemy ship is actually quite difficult, and slaves are generally not highly motivated to fight the enemies of those who enslaved them, so ancient navies relied on free, skilled mariners, each handling a single oar and joining in the ship's defense if boarded. It was only with the advent of naval guns that a slave galley became viable, as the tricky maneuvering was no longer necessary; you just had to generally get the ship pointed at the enemy and let the gunners do their work. But of course, [[TechnologyMarchesOn sailing vessels became dominant around the same time and so slave galleys quickly disappeared]].

The dreadnought increased the range at which battles could be fought to approximately eleven miles or all the way out to the visible horizon.[[note]] The advent of radar in WWII extended these ranges even further. The German ''Scharnhorst'' hit the aircraft carrier HMS ''Glorious'', and in a separate battle HMS ''Warspite'' achieved a hit on the Italian battleship ''Giulio Cesare'', at 25,000-26,000 yards (15 miles)[[note]]22860-23775m (24km)[[/note]], USS ''Iowa'' straddled Japanese destroyer ''Nowaki'' with five out of ten salvos at 35,000-38,000 yards (20 miles) [[note]]29260-34747m (32km)[[/note]] and USS ''White Plains'' received a damaging near miss at 32,000-33,000 yards (19 miles)[[note]]29260-30175m (31km)[[/note]] when a salvo of 18.1 inch[[note]]460mm[[/note]] shells from ''Yamato'' exploded under her bilge. Dreadnought battleships and the counters developed against them created the UsefulNotes/TypesOfNavalShips that we use today. Tactics no longer resembled land warfare in the slightest, focusing instead on good scouting so you could discover the enemy first and place your own battleships in the most advantageous position.

Development of naval aviation initially strengthened the role of the battleship by allowing small floatplanes to act as scouts and artillery spotters, but as aircraft technology advanced their attack capabilities eventually seemed to have made the battleship irrelevant. WWII was the last hurrah for the battleship; development of aircraft carriers quickly pushed battleships into a supporting role during the conflict, and by the end of the 1940s the battleship had been replaced as the primary instrument of sea power.

Whether or not battleships, or at least the concepts behind them, are truly obsolete is a matter of debate. The ''Iowa''s were [[BreakOutTheMuseumPiece reactivated and modernized]] several times during the Cold War, both for the Naval Gunfire Support mission and for their capability as surface combatants. Cruise missiles don't perform well against armor. Additionally, the Bikini Atoll tests proved that an armored battleship is ''the'' most survivable ship in a nuclear environment (surviving anything short of a direct hit or underwater near-miss, and keeping the crew alive), and air conditioning and filtration systems could protect the crew from fallout. Most importantly, their high speed (faster than most of the Soviet fleet) and ability to continue fighting at visual range with EMP-proof analog fire control systems meant that a fast battleship, if escorted against submarines, could potentially dominate even the most nightmarish of naval scenarios, something that the Russians knew and ''feared''.

As 21st-Century point-defense technology is chipping away at the effectiveness of cruise missiles, naval strategists and engineers are once again looking at big guns as a viable anti-ship armament. It has also been noticed that 76mm (3-inch) and 5-inch guns just don't fulfill the Naval Gunfire Support role like the old big guns.

* On 7 December 1941 Japan combined all six of its fleet carriers into a unified strike force and surprised the US Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor, destroying virtually all of their aircraft on the ground and disabling or destroying seven of the eight battleships present.[[note]]Somewhat ironically, the carriers ''Yorktown'' and ''Enterprise'' were spared because they were at sea delivering aircraft to other Pacific bases to help strengthen them in case of a sudden Japanese carrier attack.[[/note]]

The Germans and the Americans had some success with with radio-guided bombs and missiles during UsefulNotes/WorldWarII and both sides had also fielded successful acoustic homing torpedoes. The American air-launched Mark 24 "Fido" acoustic torpedo sank or damaged 27% of the submarines it was dropped on. The Germans even managed to sink an Italian battleship (after Italy switched sides and joined the Allies) using the "Fritz-X" air-to-surface missile. The Japanese managed to trump both the Germans and the Americans (and horrify the world) by damaging more than 300 ships using the ''human-guided'' missiles known as [[SuicideAttack Kamikaze]], sinking 47 ships and causing more than 15,000 casualties. But things really started to develop in the 1960s after the development of semiconductors resulted in quantum leaps in electronic control systems.