Navy (USN) today displace less than a quarter that of the battleships of World War II. Except for aircraft carriers, where lethality still increased with size, naval architecture took a turn for the petite. The huge battleships of the Second World War could not survive concerted air and submarine attack, and could not punch back at sufficient range to justify their main armament. At the same time, a proliferation of threats made ensuring survivability more difficult. With the advent of the age of air power (and missile power), size no longer dramatically increased lethality for surface warships. Navy photo Why the big ships went out of style The battleship USS ‘Wisconsin’ launches a Tomahawk missile in 1991. The most likely vector of attack in the late 1890s came from large naval artillery carried by other ships, and consequently protective schemes could concentrate on that threat. The process of ensuring survivability was simplified, in these early battleships, by the predictability of the threat. The rest of the navies of the world adopted these basic design parameters, which provided a ship that could both deal out and absorb punishment. These ships displaced about 15,000 tons, with two heavy guns each in turrets fore and aft, and steel armor. The modern battleship form settled around 1890, with the British Royal Sovereign class. The label “battleship” emerges from the older “ship of the line” formulation, in the sense that a navy’s largest ships participated in the “line of battle” formation that allowed them to bring their broadsides to bear on an opposing line.Īfter the development of ironclad warships, the “battle ship” diverged from the armored cruiser based on expectations of usage “battleships” were expected to fight enemy “battleships.” The battleship USS ‘New Jersey’ firing nine 16-inch guns at the same time in 1986.
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