History UsefulNotes / HistoryOfNavalWarfare

''Steam and Sail (1810s-1870s)''

''Ironclads (1850s-1890s)''

''Pre-Dreadnought Battleships and Cruisers (1890s-1910s)''

''Dreadnoughts, Super-Dreadnoughts, Battlecruisers, and Fast Battleships (1900s-1950s)''

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 guns (usually two each in turrets before and after the superstructure), an intermediate armament of around 10x 5-to-8 inch guns (in turrets or broadside casemates), and a secondary armament of 10-30 3-to-5 inch 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.

In all cases, the entire armament was expected to work together attacking a single target at a relatively short range -- although the bigger guns could shoot further, the fire control of the period was too primitive to allow for accurate long-range shots. Likewise, the line between cruisers and battleships was blurry, since the battleship was initially no more than a more powerful type of cruiser. As technology slowed enough for standard ship roles to start developing, it became typical for the cruiser to become a fast, long-range ship with around 8 to 12 guns in the 5-to-10 inch range. The idea is that a major navy would do most of its commerce raiding and GunboatDiplomacy with a fleet of cruisers, and keep the battleships for fleet actions against the battleship fleets of other navies -- similar to the roles of frigates and ships-of-the-line during the Age of Sail.

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), USS ''Iowa'' straddled Japanese destroyer ''Nowaki'' with five out of ten salvos at 35,000-38,000 yards (20 miles) and USS ''White Plains'' received a damaging near miss at 32,000-33,000 yards (19 miles) when a salvo of 18.1 inch shells from ''Yamato'' exploded under her bilge.[[/note]] 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.

After Jutland, the Royal Navy remained in control of the North Sea and maintained their NavalBlockade of Germany. The Germans never challenged the Royal Navy again. After a ([[UnreliableNarrator heavily biased, with egregious methodological and computational errors]]) study claimed that 'unrestricted' (indiscriminate) anti-commerce submarine warfare could cripple the Entente's war effort the Reichstag went along with the recommendations of the Navy and OHL (Army High Command, headed by Hindenburg and Ludendorf) and voted in favour of it in early 1917. This ultimately and predictably, not least by Chancellor Bethman Hollweg, backfired when it drew the United States decisively into the war against them ([[RightHandVersusLeftHand when combined with the blundering of the independently-acting diplomatic service]], [[WhatAnIdiot which tried to persuade Mexico to attack the USA]]). The powerful, if untested, US Navy added its battleships and cruisers to the Home Fleet under British command[[note]] British commanders commented in early reports that American gunnery was horrible. These accounts carried a heavy dose of Edwardian jingoism, came from the men who had made the same claims about the Germans right before Jutland, and didn't take into account that the Americans lacked the benefit of the Royal Navy's hard-won combat experience. The US Navy had worked hard to improve the dismal marksmanship displayed in 1898, and after learning from the British, were shooting quite well indeed[[/note]], turning the prospect of another German breakout attempt from a desperate long shot to certain suicide. Having no further role to play in the war, the High Seas Fleet was neglected. The sailors on larger vessels were confined to port, suffering from reduced rations and subjected to harsh discipline. The last straw came in 1918: the German admiralty, knowing that the war was all but lost, decided to send out the fleet for a last, glorious (and completely futile) action. This led the sailors of the High Seas Fleet to mutiny, hastening the collapse of the German war effort. The German fleet eventually scuttled itself at the British anchorage at Scapa Flow on June 21, 1919: 52 ships were scuttled in all, including 10 battleships and 5 battlecruisers.

In the Spanish-American War (1898), the new all-steel ships of the U.S. Navy [[FlawlessVictory sank two Spanish fleets and seized their Caribbean and Pacific colonies without losing any ships of their own,]][[note]]not counting the sinking of the ''Maine'' before the war, which most modern historians consider to be caused by an accidental explosion rather than a hostile attack[[/note]] despite [[ATeamFiring admittedly poor gunnery]]--the Americans missed most shots, while the Spanish ''[[EpicFail couldn't hit anything]]''. The only damage the American ships received in battle was when the blast from ''Texas's'' main battery blew holes in her own superstructure. In the UsefulNotes/RussoJapaneseWar (1904-05) [[{{Foreshadowing}} (opened with a surprise torpedo attack against the Russian fleet in Dalian/'Port Arthur', Liaoning province)]] the [[UsefulNotes/KatanasOfTheRisingSun Imperial Japanese]] managed to sink [[UsefulNotes/RussiansWithRifles Imperial Russia's]] (smaller-than-Japan's) Pacific Fleet with land-based artillery and destroy Russia's (slightly-larger-than-Japan's) Baltic fleet, [[CurbStompBattle the latter in less than an hour]].

In the Spanish-American War (1898), the new all-steel ships of the U.S. Navy [[FlawlessVictory sank two Spanish fleets and seized their Caribbean and Pacific colonies without losing any ships of their own,]][[note]]not counting the sinking of the ''Maine'' before the war, which most modern historians consider to be caused by an accidental explosion rather than a hostile attack[[/note]] despite [[ImperialStormtrooperMarksmanshipAcademy admittedly poor gunnery]]--the Americans missed most shots, while the Spanish ''[[EpicFail couldn't hit anything]]''. The only damage the American ships received in battle was when the blast from ''Texas's'' main battery blew holes in her own superstructure. In the UsefulNotes/RussoJapaneseWar (1904-05) [[{{Foreshadowing}} (opened with a surprise torpedo attack against the Russian fleet in Dalian/'Port Arthur', Liaoning province)]] the [[UsefulNotes/KatanasOfTheRisingSun Imperial Japanese]] managed to sink [[UsefulNotes/RussiansWithRifles Imperial Russia's]] (smaller-than-Japan's) Pacific Fleet with land-based artillery and destroy Russia's (slightly-larger-than-Japan's) Baltic fleet, [[CurbStompBattle the latter in less than an hour]].

Ultimately the end result of the battle of the Atlantic (which lasted from the beginning of the war in 1939 to the end in 1945, making it the longest battle in human history) was defeat for Germany. But that didn't mean it wasn't a near-run thing. And despite all the gee-whiz gadgetry the true key to victory proved to be the German's heavy dependence upon radio to control their Wolfpacks, which left the U-boats vulnerable to both high-tech code-breaking and low-tech radio direction finding. Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, the United States, despite having been drawn into two world wars largely over their objections to the unrestricted submarine warfare conducted by Germany, was ironically enough engaged in an unrestricted submarine campaign of their own against another island nation-state: UsefulNotes/ImperialJapan. This time with the technological balance firmly on their side the result was a resounding victory for the submarines. U.S. submarines sank thousands of Japanese ships, far more than all other arms combined, despite having spent the first 21 months of the war with defective (and often ineffective) torpedoes. Nor was the Pacific submarine war entirely one sided: early Japanese successes against major U.S. warships [[note]]sinking carriers ''Yorktown'' and ''Wasp'' and damaging carrier ''Saratoga'' and battleship ''North Carolina''[[/note]] critically reduced U.S. aircraft carrier strength during the pivotal Guadalcanal campaign and ensured that there were no carrier battles in 1943.

After the war, somebody came up with the idea that the newly-invented nuclear reactor would make a fine, nearly unlimited, energy source for a submarine, allowing the sub to stay underwater almost as long as its crew wanted to. And then, somebody got the idea -- first proposed by, again, the Germans (they even had prototypes) -- to arm them with rockets, this time [[AtomicHate nuke-tipped.]] And thus, thanks to wonders of nuclear physics, the sub was promoted from highly dangerous seaborne nuisance to strategic threat (Creator/HGWells saw it coming). As a nearly unintentional side-benefit, nuclear power also made the noisy, clanky machinery of submarines much, much quieter, making true stealth under the water possible. Ironically there some water conditions where some of the quietest submarines, such as the United States' ''Ohio'' class, can be detected by a particularly skilled and alert sonar operator by being quieter than the surrounding water. Non-nuclear submarines can also shut down any mechanical equipment, potentially rendering them entirely quiet at the cost of not being able to do anything. A nuclear sub cannot shut down its coolant pumps while the reactor remains hot.

The pace of combat accelerated considerably over each of these periods, as each new advance in technology allowed ships to travel and fire farther and faster. Steam power freed ships from from dependence upon the winds, though it did not free them completely from the affects of the sea (one reason Bismarck fared so poorly in her final battle was her loss of steering left her crew unable to plot a course that would minimize the effect of the waves on their gunnery.) Breach loading guns replaced muzzle loaders, turrets replaced manual training, gun directors replaced manual aiming, rates of fire increased. Maneuvers that took hours under sail now took only minutes, and high rates of fire meant a battle could be over in seconds if the enemy found your range. A single well-aimed salvo from ''Bismarck'' totally destroyed HMS ''Hood'', and when the Japanese destroyer ''Amatsukaze'' attracted the attention of USS ''Helena'' at the Naval battle of Guadalcanal when her captain left his searchlights on too long she was riddled by 20-30 hits and near misses in just over a minute and a half, only surviving because the burning USS ''San Francisco'' obstructed ''Helena''[='s=] line of fire.

-->The last known words of Commander Howard Gilmore, Captain of USS ''Growler'' (SS-215). Wounded during a surface gun battle with a Japanese escort vessel Gilmore ordered his crew to dive ''[[HeroicSacrifice while he was still on top of the submarine and outside the pressure hull]]'', [[HeroicSacrifice sacrificing his own life to save the ship.]]''

It was realised that nuclear power was not only useful for submarines, but other vessels too, which would not need to be refueled at sea. And fuel occupies space and weight that ship designers would often prefer to use for other things. Even burning fuel can cause problems if the empty tanks are not ballasted to maintain stability. Aircraft carriers especially benefit from nuclear power, since the tanks not used to carry fuel for the ship can instead be used to carry fuel for the aircraft. The United States proved the concept with USS ''Enterprise'' followed over a period of five decades by the ten-ship ''Nimitz''-class, the last of which is now entering service. Another class, the ''Gerald R. Ford''-class (named after Ford more or less because he happened to have died shortly before the construction contract was awarded, and also because he had served on a light carrier in the Pacific Theatre during WWII), is in the construction process; the lead ship, USS ''Gerald R. Ford'' (CVN-78) is due to be launched in spring 2016. Nuclear-powered cruisers and destroyers followed, but nearly none remain in service (bar two of the Soviet/Russian "''Kirovs''"), mostly due to the end of the UsefulNotes/ColdWar.

While there have been some safety concerns, especially early on and in the Soviet Navy (whose early nuclear shipbuilding program was ''very'' rushed), radiation has not proven to be the problem so much as cost. The major bar to nuclear powered ships is and always has been the expense. Nuclear ships are extremely expensive to build and even expensive to decommission after you are done with them. Nuclear powered ships are so expensive that only a few countries were ever able to afford them, and even then a few. It's been calculated that the total cost of running a nuclear ship over its lifetime becomes lower than that of a conventional ship only for the fairly large ones: starting at about 12 to 15 kilotons of displacement, and few modern warships are that big. Basically only heavy cruisers and aircraft carriers can be justified to be made nuclear, and so they did.

To some degree, development of the ironclad (wooden-hulled ships encased in iron armor, as opposed to complete iron hills) came from the French Navy attempting to use technology to offset the numerical superiority of [[FriendlyEnemy the English Navy]]. The French built the (unarmored) 90-gun steam-powered line-of-battle ship ''Napoleon'' in 1850, and several French-designed ironclad floating batteries were fielded in the Crimean War. Putting the two together, the French commissioned ''Gloire'' in 1859, an oceangoing 36-gun ironclad that would easily lay waste to the unarmored Royal Navy. The British countered with HMS ''Warrior'' in 1860, the first iron-hulled warship.

There were also two engagements of where battleships managed to get within gun range of carriers. The first (HMS ''Glorious'' vs KM ''Scharnhorst'' and ''Gneisenau'') took place in 1940 and was won by the battleships; the second (the Battle Off Samar) took place in 1945 and was won by the carriers. (See the UsefulNotes/WW2 CrowningMomentOfAwesome for the details of the latter.) But by 1945 battleships were no longer a match for even escort carriers. The swan song of the battleship was written in the final, futile sortie of IJN ''Yamato'', which was literally obliterated by swarms of aircraft less than halfway to her objective, having never justified the vast resources expended on her construction. Barely one month later the last operational major Japanese warship, the heavy cruiser ''Haguro'', was sunk off Penang by a British destroyer squadron in the world's last mass torpedo attack. Ironically, the navy that launched the era of seaborne air power suffered its final defeat in history's last traditional surface battle.

The torpedo[[note]] Specifically, the self-propelled torpedo. The word originally referred to mines, and only took on its modern definition when somebody had the idea of putting a motor on a mine and setting it to drive itself into a target instead of the other way around[[/note]], originally meant as a short-range weapon for battleships and cruisers, was quickly realized as a very mobile weapon that could be carried by vehicles that couldn't possibly carry a heavy gun. Countries that couldn't afford battleships quickly adapted the torpedo to smaller craft such as torpedo boats and (eventually) submarines -- very inexpensive vessels that could easily sneak up on an unsuspecting battleship and sink it. Torpedo boats were further divided into "fleet" torpedo boats capable (somewhat) of blue-water operations on the high seas, and the smaller and faster "motor torpedo boats" or "PT boats" that stayed closer to shore. This in turn lead the big navies to develop "Torpedo Boat Destroyers;" fast, maneuverable ships able to keep up with torpedo boats and carrying enough guns to readily overpower them before they could do any damage. In response, fleet torpedo boats got bigger and mounted more guns, while torpedo boat destroyers soon mounted torpedo tubes in case they got a chance to sucker-punch an enemy capital ship. The two types soon merged, and "torpedo boat" was dropped from the name, giving us the modern Destroyer[[note]] Except for the Germans, who insisted on calling their destroyers "fleet torpedo boats" through both World Wars, and were still doing it when Hitler ate his pistol[[/note]]. Thus, shortly before UsefulNotes/WorldWarI, the TypesOfNavalShips had been well-developed -- the battleship, the cruiser, the destroyer, the submarine, and the torpedo boat.

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), USS ''Iowa'' straddled Japanese destroyer ''Nowaki'' with five out of ten salvos at 35,000-38,000 yards (20 miles) and USS ''White Plains'' received a damaging near miss at 32,000-33,000 yards (19 miles) when a salvo of 18.1 inch shells from ''Yamato'' exploded under her bilge.[[/note]] Dreadnought battleships and the counters developed against them created the 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.

This was around the time the United States -- having been predominantly a frigate navy for its entire history[[note]] The US Navy built several (nowhere near as many as the British, French, or Spanish) ships of the line after the war of 1812. They were prohibitively expensive to operate, only putting to sea for their initial sea trials before being relegated to the Mothball Fleet, and had all been converted to barracks ships (a couple of which lasted through WWI), depot ships, or gunboat tenders by the time the Civil War broke out, never facing an enemy in their intended role[[/note]] -- began to build itself into a significant naval power. In response to Brazil's launching of the battleship ''Riachuelo'' in 1883 (which by itself made Brazil the most powerful Navy in the Americas by a wide margin), the US Navy launched the battleship USS ''Texas'' and her half-sister, the "Second-Class Battleship" (often considered an armored cruiser with bigger guns than usual) ''Maine''.

In the Spanish-American War (1898), the new all-steel ships of the U.S. Navy [[FlawlessVictory sank two Spanish fleets and seized their Caribbean and Pacific colonies without losing any ships of their own,]] despite [[ImperialStormtrooperMarksmanshipAcademy admittedly poor gunnery]]--the Americans missed most shots, while the Spanish ''[[EpicFail couldn't hit anything]]''. In the UsefulNotes/RussoJapaneseWar (1904-05) [[{{Foreshadowing}} (opened with a surprise torpedo attack against the Russian fleet in Dalian/'Port Arthur', Liaoning province)]] the [[UsefulNotes/KatanasOfTheRisingSun Imperial Japanese]] managed to sink [[UsefulNotes/RussiansWithRifles Imperial Russia's]] (smaller-than-Japan's) Pacific Fleet with land-based artillery and destroy Russia's (slightly-larger-than-Japan's) Baltic fleet, [[CurbStompBattle the latter in less than an hour]].

By the turn of the 20th Century, the Royal Navy had made several important observations about battleship engagements in the 1890s and early 1900s, particularly the Russo-Japanese war mentioned before. First, speed was an undervalued asset - the faster fleet can control of many important aspects of battle. (Whether or not to engage, what range to fight at, etc.) Second, the effective range of even pre-existing naval guns was quite a lot larger than expected - the Russian and Japanese fire directors at the Battle of the Yellow Sea maxed out at 4 and 6 km, respectively, and yet they each made solid hits at distances up to 13 km. Additionally, longer-range torpedoes made it too dangerous for battleships to fight closer than 4 km. Both of these trends seemed likely to continue. At these ranges, however, all but the main batteries were minimally effective.

This period lasted until the mid-Renaissance period, when improvements in ship design and the invention of firearms led to a shift in strategy. The last great galley battle was the Battle of Lepanto in 1571, an Austrian-Italian-Spanish victory over superior Turkish forces that gives its name to a common strategy in ''TabletopGame/{{Diplomacy}}''.

Five (arguably six) battles between carrier groups involving the mutual exchange of air strikes took place during World War Two, most famously Midway in June 1942. [[note]]The reason the sixth is arguable is that by the time of the sixth battle (Leyte Gulf) the Japanese were so short of quality pilots that they had no hope of winning a carrier vs carrier confrontation. So their carriers functioned as diversions to draw the US Navy away from the Philippines while the Japanese battleships attacked American troop transports invading the islands. So while exchanges of strikes did technically occur, vert few airplanes were launched by the Japanese carriers and even those were just to say "hey, our carriers are over here!" rather than a serious attempt to damage the US carrier fleet. [[/note]] All of these battles took place in the Pacific between the U.S. and the Japanese. By the end of the war the U.S. Navy's Pacific fleet outnumbered all of the rest of the world's navies put together, centered around massive task forces composed of dozens of carriers plus all the logistics necessary to support them across transoceanic distances. By contrast the 21 major Pacific surface engagements (most of which took place in the South Pacific at night) generally proved less decisive though costly in men and materials, with the sole exception of the battleship era's second to last hurrah, the horrific Second Naval Battle of Guadalcanal on 14-15 November 1943.

Five (arguably six) battles between carrier groups involving the mutual exchange of air strikes took place during World War Two, most famously Midway in June 1942. [[note]]The reason the sixth is arguable is that by the time of the sixth battle (Leyte Gulf) the Japanese were so short of quality pilots that they had no hope of winning a carrier vs carrier confrontation. So their carriers functioned as diversions to draw the US Navy away from the Philippines while the Japanese battleships attacked American troop transports invading the islands. So while exchanges of strikes did technically occur, vert few airplanes were launched by the Japanese carriers and even those were just to say "hey, our carriers are over here!" rather than a serious attempt to damage the US carrier fleet. [[/note] All of these battles took place in the Pacific between the U.S. and the Japanese. By the end of the war the U.S. Navy's Pacific fleet outnumbered all of the rest of the world's navies put together, centered around massive task forces composed of dozens of carriers plus all the logistics necessary to support them across transoceanic distances. By contrast the 21 major Pacific surface engagements (most of which took place in the South Pacific at night) generally proved less decisive though costly in men and materials, with the sole exception of the battleship era's second to last hurrah, the horrific Second Naval Battle of Guadalcanal on 14-15 November 1943.

Five battles between carrier groups involving the mutual exchange of air strikes took place during World War Two, most famously Midway in June 1942. All of these battles took place in the Pacific between the U.S. and the Japanese. By the end of the war the U.S. Navy's Pacific fleet outnumbered all of the rest of the world's navies put together, centered around massive task forces composed of dozens of carriers plus all the logistics necessary to support them across transoceanic distances. By contrast the 21 major Pacific surface engagements (most of which took place in the South Pacific at night) generally proved less decisive though costly in men and materials, with the sole exception of the battleship era's second to last hurrah, the horrific Second Naval Battle of Guadalcanal on 14-15 November 1943.

Ultimately the end result of the battle of the Atlantic (which lasted from the beginning of the war in 1939 to the end in 1945, making it the longest battle in human history) was defeat for Germany. But that didn't mean it wasn't a near-run thing. And despite all the gee-whiz gadgetry the true key to victory proved to be the German's heavy dependence upon radio to control their Wolfpacks, which left the U-boats vulnerable to both high-tech code-breaking and low-tech radio direction finding. Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, the United States, despite having been drawn into two world wars largely over their objections to the unrestricted submarine warfare conducted by Germany, was ironically enough engaged in an unrestricted submarine campaign of their own against another island nation-state: UsefulNotes/ImperialJapan. This time with the technological balance firmly on their side the result was a resounding victory for the submarines. U.S. submarines sank thousands of Japanese ships, far more than all other arms combined, despite having spent the first 21 months of the war with defective (and often ineffective) torpedoes. Nor was the Pacific submarine war entirely one sided: early Japanese successes against major U.S. warships [[note]]sinking carriers ''Yorktown'' and ''Hornet'' and damaging carrier ''Saratoga'' and battleship ''North Carolina''[[/note]] critically reduced U.S. aircraft carrier strength during the pivotal Guadalcanal campaign and ensured that there were no carrier battles in 1943.

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. 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]])

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), USS ''Iowa'' straddled Japanese destroyer ''Nowaki'' with five out of ten salvos at 35,000-38,000 yards (20 miles) and USS ''White Plains'' received a damaging near miss at 32,000-33,000 yards (19 miles) when a salvo of 18.1 inch shells from ''Yamato'' exploded under her bilge.[[/note]] Dreadnought battleships and the counters developed against them created the 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.

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. HMS ''Warspite'' achieved a hit on the Italian battleship''Giulio Cesare'' at 25,000-27,000 yards (15 miles), USS ''Iowa'' straddled Japanese destroyer ''Nowaki'' with five out of ten salvos at 35,000-39,000 yards (20 miles) and USS ''White Plains'' received a damaging near miss at 34,000-32,000 yards (19 miles) when a salvo of 18.1 inch shells from ''Yamato'' exploded under her bilge.[[/note]] Dreadnought battleships and the counters developed against them created the 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.

The British, in a brilliant case of "AdaptationDistillation", decided to leapfrog everyone by combining ''all'' of these technological advances into one battleship. For speed, she eschewed triple-expansion steam engines for more powerful steam turbines[[Turbines were a new and unproven technology that most Navies were hesitant to rely upon. ''Dreadnought'' was one of several ships that proved their viability[[/note]]. For protection, heavy armor around her machinery, magazines, and gun turrets, with minimal armor around non-critical spaces.[[note]]The "armored citadel" approach was already well-established, so while the quality, thickness, and layout of the armor were all excellent, they were no more remarkable than any other ship of that time.[[/note]] For firepower, no intermediate guns at all, only [[MoreDakka ten 12" guns]] in 5 independent turrets.[[note]]The secondary guns were kept; 27 12-pdr 18cwt (somewhat equivalent to 3" guns) were kept for close-range protection[[/note]] They named her HMS ''[[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast Dreadnought]]'' and she reduced the worldwide number of first-class capital ships to 1, as no one else had anything that could compete. But the British technological lead was only temporary, as Germany, the U.S., and Japan all had Dreadnought-style battleships on the drawing board before she was even launched (and in some cases before her keel was laid.)[[note]]Ironically, ''Dreadnought'' backfired by setting a new standard that threw away the Royal Navy's existing advantage in pre-dreadnought battleships, triggering a new building race where everyone started from scratch. And even ''Dreadnought'' had her weaknesses, as her five gun turrets were arranged in a manner that significantly limited the field of fire of three of them without their muzzle blast damaging the ship, and her secondary guns were too light to fend off the ever-bigger torpedo boats.[[/note]] Clearly the all big gun battleships' time had arrived and dreadnought construction became the first 20th century arms race. The US Navy soon one-upped ''Dreadnought'' with USS ''South Carolina''. Although slower and shorter-ranged, she introduced the "superfiring" gun layout, with the second gun turret sitting on an elevated mount to fire over the top of the first, maximizing their field of fire and allowing ''South Carolina'' to match ''Dreadnought'''s throw weight with fewer guns at less cost. All future designs would adopt the best features of both ships.

The torpedo[[note]] Specifically, the self-propelled torpedo. The word originally referred to mines, and only took on its modern definition when somebody had the idea of putting a motor on a mine and setting it to drive itself into a target instead of the other way around[[/note]], originally meant as a short-range weapon for battleships and cruisers, was quickly realized as a very mobile weapon that could be carried by vehicles that couldn't possibly carry a heavy gun. Countries that couldn't afford battleships quickly adapted the torpedo to smaller craft such as torpedo boats and (eventually) submarines -- very inexpensive vessels that could easily sneak up on an unsuspecting battleship and sink it. Torpedo boats were further divided into "fleet" torpedo boats capable (somewhat) of blue-water operations on the high seas, and the smaller and faster "motor torpedo boats" or "PT boats" that stayed closer to shore. This in turn lead the big navies to develop "Torpedo Boat Destroyers;" fast, maneuverable ships able to keep up with torpedo boats and carrying enough guns to readily overpower them before they could do any damage. Thus, shortly before UsefulNotes/WorldWarI, the TypesOfNavalShips had been well-developed -- the battleship, the cruiser, the destroyer, the submarine, and the torpedo boat. By the time the war broke out, though, the torpedo boat destroyer had assumed the role of the fleet torpedo boat as well as the primary defense against those newfangled submarines, thus becoming the "destroyer" we know today[[note]] Except for the Germans, who insisted on calling their destroyers "fleet torpedo boats" through both World Wars, and were still doing it Hitler ate his pistol[[/note]].

Warship development became rapid and confusing; many countries repeatedly designed and laid down ships [[LensmanArmsRace that would become obsolete before they were even completed]]. 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 (limited armor), and armored cruisers (lots of armor). In 1892 the Royal Navy formally classified its most powerful steel warships as "battleships."

The British, in a brilliant case of "AdaptationDistillation", decided to leapfrog everyone by combining ''all'' of these technological advances into one battleship. For speed, she eschewed triple-expansion steam engines for more powerful steam turbines[[Turbines were a new and unproven technology that most Navies were hesitant to rely upon. ''Dreadnought'' was one of several ships that proved their viability[[/note]]. For protection, heavy armor around her machinery, magazines, and gun turrets, with minimal armor around non-critical spaces.[[note]]The "armored citadel" approach was already well-established, so while the quality, thickness, and layout of the armor were all excellent, they were no more remarkable than any other ship of that time.[[/note]] For firepower, no intermediate guns at all, only [[MoreDakka ten 12" guns]] in 5 independent turrets.[[note]]The secondary guns were kept; 27 12-pdr 18cwt (somewhat equivalent to 3" guns) were kept for close-range protection[[/note]] They named her HMS ''[[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast Dreadnought]]'' and she reduced the worldwide number of first-class capital ships to 1, as no one else had anything that could compete. But the British technological lead was only temporary, as Germany, the U.S., and Japan all had Dreadnought-style battleships on the drawing board before she was even launched (and in some cases before her keel was laid.)[[note]]Ironically, ''Dreadnought'' backfired by setting a new standard that threw away the Royal Navy's existing advantage in pre-dreadnought battleships, triggering a new building race where everyone started from scratch. And even ''Dreadnought'' had her weaknesses, as her five gun turrets were arranged in a manner that significantly limited the field of fire of three of them without their muzzle blast damaging the ship.[[/note]] Clearly the all big gun battleships' time had arrived and dreadnought construction became the first 20th century arms race. The US Navy soon one-upped ''Dreadnought'' with USS ''South Carolina''. Although slower and shorter-ranged, she introduced the "superfiring" gun layout, with the second gun turret sitting on an elevated mount to fire over the top of the first, maximizing their field of fire and allowing ''South Carolina'' to match ''Dreadnought'''s throw weight with fewer guns at less cost. All future designs would adopt the best features of both ships.

Ten years of dreadnought battleship development were finally put to the test of massed combat during the Battle of Jutland on 31 May 1916, the British Grand Fleet confronted the German High Seas Fleet off the coast of Denmark. The battle itself was inconclusive: the British lost more ships and men but more of the German ships were damaged. However, the British Grand Fleet was larger and could afford to take losses whereas the German High Seas Fleet could not; the Grand Fleet was ready for battle the next day and the High Seas Fleet wasn't. Here the battlecruiser concept died rather spectacularly with the loss of HMS ''Queen Mary'', HMS ''Indefatigable'', and HMS ''Invincible'' in catastrophic explosions; Admiral Beattie's own flagship HMS ''Lion'' only avoided sharing their fate by the narrowest of margins due to a HeroicSacrifice by a turret officer, prompting Beattie's acerbic quote above.

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 12-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 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[[/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. 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]])

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. 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.

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 smallarmy 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 str ain 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.

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 very little capacity for weapons manufacture [[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. The other weapons systems are a similar story. What the US did have was enormous logistical capacity -- France and Britain were already heavily dependent the American agricultural and auto industries so the US could and did provide millions of pounds of foodstuffs and tens of thousands of trucks to deliver them.[[/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.

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 1943; 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 12-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.

* On 10 December 1941, HMS ''Prince of Wales'' and HMS ''Repulse'' (a brand-new battleship and an old battle cruiser, respectively) were engaged by aircraft off Malaya. Despite being out at sea, fully alert and defending themselves (but without friendly fighter cover) the ships were no match against a concerted aerial attack by Japanese land-based torpedo bombers. [[note]] Mitsubishi [=G3M=] and [=G4M=] as noted above. It's also worth noting that both the British and the Japanese placed unwarranted confidence in the capabilities of their relatively unsophisticated antiaircraft gun directors, which resulted in a nasty shock for the British when their AA fire proved ineffective off Malaya and another for the Japanese when a smaller but similar attack off Guadalcanal was massacred by the U.S. Navy's vastly more sophisticated computerized fire control systems.[[/note]]

Steam-powered paddleboats began appearing in the first decades of the 19th Century, and proved useful for riverboats and other watercraft traveling short distances over calm waters. While a few oceangoing steam pattleboats were developed starting in the 1810s, they were not exactly [[GameBreaker gamebreakers]] as the paddlewheel interfered with the placement of guns, and presented a large target to enemy fire. The development of the screw propeller in 1840s - which solved the earlier problems along with greatly increasing efficiency - quickly made steam-and-sail ships practical and led to a number of screw frigates.

To some degree, development of the ironclad came from the French Navy attempting to use technology to offset the numerical superiority of [[FriendlyEnemy the English Navy]]. The French built the (unarmored) 90-gun steam-powered line-of-battle ship ''Napoleon'' in 1850, and several French-designed ironclad floating batteries were fielded in the Crimean War. Putting the two together, the French commissioned ''Gloire'' in 1859, an oceangoing 36-gun ironclad that would easily lay waste to the unarmored Royal Navy. The British countered with HMS ''Warrior'' in 1860, the first iron-hulled warship.

Numerous armored gunboats appeared during the US Civil War, mostly designed with broadside batteries. 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), it was also iron-hulled (less than two years after the ''Warrior'') and entirely reliant on its steam engines--a rarity at that time. In 1862, the first battle between ironclads took place, with the ''Monitor'' engaging CSS ''Virginia'' after the ''Virginia'' had engaged a Union blockade 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.

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, although masts were retained because they were useful for signalling, fire control, and so forth.

This was around the time the United States -- having been a frigate navy for its entire history -- began to build itself into a significant naval power. In response to Brazil's launching of the battleship ''Riachuelo'' in 1883 (which by itself made Brazil the most powerful Navy in the Americas by a wide margin), the US Navy launched the battleship ''Texas'' and armored cruiser ''Maine''. In the Spanish-American War (1898), the new all-steel ships of the U.S. Navy [[FlawlessVictory sank two Spanish fleets and seized their Caribbean and Pacific colonies without losing any ships of their own.]] In the UsefulNotes/RussoJapaneseWar (1904-05) [[{{Foreshadowing}} (opened with a surprise torpedo attack against the Russian fleet in Dalian/'Port Arthur', Liaoning province)]] the [[UsefulNotes/KatanasOfTheRisingSun Imperial Japanese]] managed to sink [[UsefulNotes/RussiansWithRifles Imperial Russia's]] (smaller-than-Japan's) Pacific Fleet with land-based artillery and destroy Russia's (slightly-larger-than-Japan's) Baltic fleet, [[CurbStompBattle the latter in less than an hour]].

The torpedo, originally meant as a short-range weapon for battleships and cruisers, was quickly realized as a very mobile weapon that could be carried by vehicles that couldn't possibly carry a heavy gun. Countries that couldn't afford battleships quickly adapted the torpedo to smaller craft such as torpedo boats and (eventually) submarines -- very inexpensive vessels that could easily sneak up on an unsuspecting battleship and sink it. This in turn lead the big navies to develop "Torpedo Boat Destroyers" (later shortened to the familiar "destroyer"); fast, maneuverable ships able to keep up with torpedo boats and carrying enough guns to readily overpower them before they could do any damage. Thus, shortly before UsefulNotes/WorldWarI, the TypesOfNavalShips had been well-developed -- the battleship, the cruiser, the destroyer, the submarine, and the torpedo boat.

The British, in a brilliant case of "AdaptationDistillation", decided to leapfrog everyone by combining ''all'' of these technological advances into one battleship. For speed, she eschewed triple-expansion steam engines for more powerful steam turbines. For protection, heavy armor around her machinery, magazines, and gun turrets, with minimal armor around non-critical spaces.[[note]]The "armored citadel" approach was already well-established, so while the quality, thickness, and layout of the armor were all excellent, they were no more remarkable than any other ship of that time.[[/note]] For firepower, no intermediate guns at all, only [[MoreDakka ten 12" guns]] in 5 independent turrets.[[note]]The secondary guns were kept; 27 12-pdr 18cwt (somewhat equivalent to 3" guns) were kept for close-range protection[[/note]] They named her HMS ''[[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast Dreadnought]]'' and she reduced the worldwide number of first-class capital ships to 1, as no one else had anything that could compete. But the British technological lead was only temporary, as Germany, the U.S., and Japan all had Dreadnought-style battleships on the drawing board before she was even launched (and in some cases before her keel was laid.)[[note]]Ironically, ''Dreadnought'' backfired by setting a new standard that threw away the Royal Navy's existing advantage in pre-dreadnought battleships, triggering a new building race where everyone started from scratch.[[/note]] Clearly the all big gun battleships' time had arrived and dreadnought construction became the first 20th century arms race.

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 1943; and North Cape, 26 December 1943.[[/note]] each time, a battlecruiser was sunk. Jutland also saw the introduction of a new kind of fast battleship or 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.

After Jutland, the Royal Navy remained in control of the North Sea and maintained their NavalBlockade of Germany. The Germans never challenged the Royal Navy again. After a ([[UnreliableNarrator heavily biased, with egregious methodological and computational errors]]) study claimed that 'unrestricted' (indiscriminate) anti-commerce submarine warfare could cripple the Entente's war effort the Reichstag went along with the recommendations of the Navy and OHL (Army High Command, headed by Hindenburg and Ludendorf) and voted in favour of it in early 1917. This ultimately and predictably, not least by Chancellor Bethman Hollweg, backfired when it drew the United States decisively into the war against them ([[RightHandVersusLeftHand when combined with the blundering of the independently-acting diplomatic service]], [[WhatAnIdiot which tried to persuade Mexico to attack the USA]]). Having no further role to play in the war, the High Seas Fleet was neglected. The sailors on larger vessels were confined to port, suffering from reduced rations and subjected to harsh discipline. The last straw came in 1918: the German admiralty, knowing that the war was all but lost, decided to send out the fleet for a last, glorious (and completely futile) action. This led the sailors of the High Seas Fleet to mutiny, hastening the collapse of the German war effort. The German fleet eventually scuttled itself at the British anchorage at Scapa Flow on June 21, 1919: 52 ships were scuttled in all, including 10 battleships and 5 battlecruisers.

Despite the ambiguous and much debated results of Jutland, a new round of battleship construction was triggered, as each nation sought to acquire "super-dreadnoughts" featuring ever higher speeds with even heavier armor and bigger guns. The high costs of this naval arms race grew to be such a concern that the world's first major international arms reduction treaties (The 1922 Washington and 1930 London Naval Conferences) were aimed at limiting battleship size and reducing their numbers. (Ironically, Japanese anger at the way they were treated at these conferences actually helped set the stage for UsefulNotes/WorldWarTwo). As these treaties were eventually abandoned during the run-up to World War Two, battleships became ridiculously large and powerful -- the largest battleship ever created, the Japanese ''Yamato'' had [[MoreDakka nine 18" guns]], and the fastest, the U.S. ''Iowa'' class, could sail at 33 knots.[[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. Also, the ''Iowa''s did prove to be quite useful 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]]

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 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 was pretty well irrelevant.

All of the carrier battles took place in the Pacific since only the US, Japan, and Great Britain were able to create naval air arms. The Germans belatedly realized the value of carriers in 1940 but were never able to complete any (they never even developed a naval air arm as Hermann Goering saw it as a threat to his authority as Commander of the Luftwaffe). The other major sea powers, France and Italy, had little need for carriers since they operated mostly within the Mediterranean well within the range of land-based aircraft. (That no other country could even be considered a major sea power indicates just how expensive navies had become.) With the Italians bottled up in the Mediterranean and the German surface fleet largely confined to Norway and the Baltic most carrier operations in the Atlantic consisted of convoy escort and anti-submarine warfare with attacks on German warships in port and a little invasion support thrown in.

This was around the time the United States -- having been a frigate navy for its entire history -- began to build itself into a significant naval power. In response to Brazil's launching of the battleship ''Riachuelo'' in 1883 (which by itself made Brazil the most powerful Navy in the Americas by a wide margin), the US Navy launched the battleship ''Texas'' and armored cruiser ''Maine''. In the Spanish-American War (1898), the new all-steel ships of the U.S. Navy [[FlawlessVictory sank two Spanish fleets and seized their Caribbean and Pacific colonies without losing any ships of their own.]] In the RussoJapaneseWar (1904-05) [[{{Foreshadowing}} (opened with a surprise torpedo attack against the Russian fleet in Dalian/'Port Arthur', Liaoning province)]] the [[KatanasOfTheRisingSun Imperial Japanese]] managed to sink [[RussiansWithRifles Imperial Russia's]] (smaller-than-Japan's) Pacific Fleet with land-based artillery and destroy Russia's (slightly-larger-than-Japan's) Baltic fleet, [[CurbStompBattle the latter in less than an hour]].

-->--UsefulNotes/GeorgeWashington

Thus Naval Aviation was born. At first they were just little seaplanes used as long-range scouts for Battleships, but as [[PlaneSpotting airplanes developed]] they gradually became capable of carrying enough explosives to do some major damage. Meanwhile, the desire for scouting aircraft to accompany the battle fleet beyond the range of land based aircraft resulted in an entirely new type of warship when the Royal Navy converted HMS ''Furious'' into the world's first aircraft carrier. This was followed by a two-decade period of naval experimentation similar to the one proceeding the Big-gun battleship that also produced some rather odd-looking vessels before arriving at the basic carrier design of a large fast ship with a flat deck and minimal superstructure that is still familiar today. And to pile irony upon irony, several of these carriers were built using the hulls of battleships and battlecruisers countries were forced to discard under the Washington Naval Treaty.