A deafening explosion radiates from the 12-inch guns as they fire from the deck
of an ironclad ship. Sailors scramble across the damp planks to reach their
stations and prepare for the next volley. In the distance, an explosion erupts,
sending debris and enemy bodies flying through the air as shells
hit the shoreline. This isn’t a scene from a World War II sea battle; surprisingly,
this all happened in 1882 when the HMS Monarch bombarded the shores of Alexandria using
turret-mounted big guns to decimate its target, thus ushering in the age of the battleship.
Surprisingly, the legacy of these behemoths of iron and firepower was relatively short-lived.
Naval confrontations from the early 1900s through World War II were full of battleships firing
cannons at one another and decimating anything in their path. So, this begs the question:
why were battleships only a blip on the timeline of maritime warfare? There are many reasons that
battleships were eventually retired, but the main two come down to technology and crew. The fate of
retired battleships varied. Some are still in existence today, while others were annihilated
in nuclear explosions. Let’s go on a voyage to uncover how battleships came to be so powerful,
their role in shaping maritime warfare, and their ultimate destiny following World War II.
Before we dive into a brief history of battleships, let's clarify what they
were. Battleships were heavily armored vessels that displaced large quantities of water. This
meant they typically had reinforced hulls and extra plating to withstand being hit
by enemy fire. However, the key aspect of battleships that distinguished them
from other naval vessels was that their main battery consisted of large caliber
guns. This meant that battleships did not employ missiles but were instead equipped
with huge turrets that could fire shells anywhere from 5 to 16 inches in size. It
was these types of guns that determined whether a ship was classified as a battleship or not.
The battleship was birthed out of the early ironclad ships of the 19th century. Typically,
the French ship Glorie is considered to be the first ironclad vessel to sail the seas
when it was launched in 1859. The Glorie was a 5,630-ton broadside ironclad with a wooden
hull that combined sail and steam propulsion to travel. The vessel had 4.7-inch (12cm) thick
armor plates and was equipped with the most advanced cannons of the day. However,
this meant that even though the Glorie was the first vessel to have a heavily armored hull,
it did not have the guns to be considered a battleship.
In the United States, armored ships were brought to the forefront of naval military battles when
the Civil War ripped the country in two. In 1862 fighting erupted at Hampton Roads where the James,
Nansemond, and Elizabeth rivers meet near the Chesapeake Bay in Virginia. The Union’s
USS Monitor and the Confederacy’s CSS Virginia, also known as the Merrimack,
duked it out for naval supremacy. Both of these vessels were ironclad and used steam
engines to move through the murky waters of the estuary. The battle itself ended in a draw,
but the conflict between the Monitor and Merrimack showed the future of
naval warfare would consist of more heavily armored ships with powerful guns.
In 1869, a crucial development towards the conception of true battleships occurred. The HMS
Monarch became the first oceangoing iron-hulled vessel to have mounted guns. This goliath of a
ship displaced 8,456 tons of water and had four 12-inch guns in two separate revolving turrets on
the main deck. The ship was still propelled by sails along with a steam engine, but the
mounted turrets were a crucial step forward toward what we think of as battleships today.
In 1906, a little over four decades after the battle between the Monitor and Merrimack,
the British Royal Navy commissioned the HMS Dreadnought. Many consider this the
first modern battleship as it was heavily armored, no longer employed the use of sails,
and had a complement of five twin 12-inch guns, 24 single 3-inch guns, and four 18-inch torpedo
tubes. This type of layout became known as the “all-big-gun” armament. The Dreadnought was 527
feet (161m) in length and displaced around 18,410 tons of water. It could also reach speeds of more
than 20 knots. The HMS Dreadnought would act as a template for future ships of similar caliber and
would eventually evolve into the Battleships of World War II. For a while, all of these types of
vessels were called Dreadnoughts, but eventually, the term battleship became more and more
commonly used, until it was synonymous with the “all-big-gun” vessels now considered battleships.
Between 1906 and the First World War, there were engagements between Dreadnought-type
ships across European waters. However, it was the Battle of Jutland in 1916 that ushered in
the age of the battleship as a main staple of naval warfare. During this conflict,
the British Royal Navy and the German Navy engaged one another in the North Sea. The battleships
deployed needed to have line-of-sight to be effective, as radio communications to coordinate
large-scale battle plans were in their infancy, and radar wouldn’t be developed as a practical
engineering device until 1935. This meant that the heavily armored big gun ships fired upon one
another at relatively close range, causing massive amounts of damage and loss of life.
There was no definitive winner in the Battle of Jutland, but it did show that naval technology
had made tremendous leaps and bounds over the past several decades and that any pre-Dreadnought ships
were all but obsolete. Naval warfare would now be dominated by battleships with heavy armor, big
guns, and powerful propulsion. Another huge win for battleships was that while submarines in World
War I were deadly to pre-dreadnought vessels, these new floating fortresses were well protected
against enemy U-boats by their thick armor. By 1918, battleship numbers were at their peak.
118 dreadnoughts sailed for 13 different navies around the world. After the Great War ended,
the Washington Treaty was established in 1922, which limited the size of new battleships being
constructed to 35,000 tons. Some historians view the ramping up of battleship production
in the post-World War I world as similar to the nuclear arms race of the Cold War.
The nation with the biggest, toughest, and most numerous battleships would rule the oceans. At a
time when airplanes were still being refined for both long-distance flights and warfare, whoever
controlled the oceans controlled the movement of goods, people, and ideologies around the world.
Regardless of the limitations the Washington Treat put in place, nations still continued to improve
upon their naval technology and upgrade their battleship designs. It was during this time
that the “fast battleships” started to be developed. These vessels combined the heavy
armor and weapons of the dreadnoughts with the speeds of cruisers, which meant these new war
machines could exceed speeds of 30 knots and unleash an unholy barrage of shells against
an enemy. As a new threat arose in Europe with the rise of the Nazi Party, countries completely
abandoned the Washington Treaty. Germany began building Bismarck Class ships at 52,600
tons. The United States constructed Iowa-class battleships at 45,000 tons. And Japan followed
suit with two of their Yamato class vessels, the largest battleships ever built at 72,000 tons.
Ironically, it was during the time between World War I and World War II,
when restrictions on battleship construction were put in place,
that the largest and most destructive vessels of this type were constructed. This was also when
the usefulness of battleships was still at its peak. Soon after World War II started, the once
mighty battleships that dominated the oceans would become bygones of a different era. In hindsight,
the battleship really didn’t last that long as a main player in naval warfare. However,
it was the construction of these war vessels that led to progress being made on many other types of
ships. Therefore, the rise of the battleship can be viewed as a catalyst for their demise.
In the interim between the World Wars, naval powers upgraded their World War I battleships
while simultaneously building new vessels. The World War I era battleships were fitted
with increasingly tall towers, more armor, and anti-aircraft weapons. With these new upgrades
and ever-larger battleships being built, more and more sailors were needed to operate these vessels.
When World War II erupted, battleships were still major threats in naval warfare. In June of 1940,
the German battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were able to launch a surprise
attack against the British aircraft carrier HMS Glorious and sank it off the coast of Norway.
Interestingly, one of the earlier Allied missions that utilized battleships was against themselves.
On July 3, 1940, British battleships opened fire on French warships at the naval base
at Mers El Kébir, near Oran, on the coast of French Algeria. This was done as a part
of Operation Catapult to destroy neutral French ships in order to prevent them from falling into
the hands of the Nazis after the Allies were defeated at the Battle of France. The British
bombardment from both the air and sea cost the lives of approximately 1,300 French servicemen.
However, as the war progressed, the future of the battleship became more and more uncertain. Ships
were being built to fulfill multiple roles, some of which were formerly prescribed to battleships.
It was one vessel in particular that would bring in a new age of naval warfare. The aircraft
carriers and the planes launched from them were becoming more efficient at destroying targets,
including other ships. Battleships were excellent at damaging or destroying naval
vessels and shore targets but were much less efficient at destroying aircraft. 5 of the 8
battleships stationed at Pearl Harbor were sunk by Japanese aircraft during their surprise attack.
The British battleships Prince of Wales and the Repulse were sunk on the way to support ground
troops in the invasion of Malaya by Japanese land-based bombers and torpedo aircraft in 1941.
These examples are just a subset of the many the many times battleships were destroyed or severely
damaged by aircraft on both sides of World War II. These air-to-sea interactions would mark
the beginning of the end for battleships playing a major role in naval warfare.
It’s interesting to note that the Schleswig-Holstein,
an early pre-dreadnought battleship, fired the first shots of World War II during the
bombardment of a Polish garrison stationed at Westerplatte and that the war concluded
aboard the battleship USS Missouri when Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu and General Yoshijiro
Umezu signed the Instrument of Surrender on September 2, 1945. Meaning that the battleship
had a key role in both the very beginning and the very end of the Second World War.
After World War II, many navies continued utilizing their remaining battleships to
patrol the world’s oceans. However, battleships would eventually be phased out and would only
play minor roles in future conflicts. The only battleship commissioned after World War II was
the HMS Vanguard, and although several nations, including the United States,
had battleships in the works, they were scrapped for reasons that we will come to very soon. The
remaining battleships that no longer had a purpose in the post-World War era were used
in a variety of ways. The USS Arkansas and Nagato were destroyed during nuclear weapons
testing during Operation Crossroads in 1946. Both battleships were able to withstand the
airburst of a nuclear bomb but sunk when exposed to an underwater nuclear explosion. Many other
battleships were scrapped for parts as navies shifted towards different types of vessels.
The use of battleships in combat didn’t end there though. The United States would
recommission four Iowa-class battleships, the Iowa, the New Jersey, the Missouri,
and the Wisconsin, in 1951 as the Korean War erupted in Asia. Their 16-inch guns
continued to be highly effective at bombarding targets on shore from a
distance. The guns had a range of about 20 miles and could hit their intended targets
with relative accuracy. After the Korean War, the battleships would once again be decommissioned,
but the New Jersey would see battle again during the Vietnam War, firing around 6,000
rounds of 16-inch shells and over 14,000 rounds of 5-inch shells while deployed. Interestingly,
this was approximately seven times more ordnance than the vessel fired in all of World War II.
By the 1980s, the United States was the only country with operational battleships. However,
they had been slightly modified and equipped with cruise missiles. During this time,
Navy Secretary John F. Lehman launched a program to build a 600-ship Navy to combat
the everpresent Soviet threat. In fact, when the U.S. found out that the Soviet Union was
commissioning a new type of nuclear-powered guided-missile battlecruisers called
the Kirov Class, all four American battleships were recommissioned. They acted as support ships
in carrier groups and even led their own battlegroups. The Iowa-class battleships
now carried Tomahawk TLAM missiles. During the Lebanese Civil War in the 1980s the New
Jersey bombarded the coast throughout Operation Blue Bat. The Missouri and Wisconsin also both
fired shells and missiles at land targets during Operation Desert Storm in 1991.
After Desert Storm came to an end, the Wisconsin and Missouri would both be decommissioned
marking the last time a battleship would be used in a naval mission. Now, all four
Iowa-class battleships are museums. The Missouri is in Honolulu, Hawaii; the Iowa in Los Angeles,
California; the New Jersey in Camden, New Jersey.; and the Wisconsin in Norfolk,
Virginia. In 2006, the battleship was finally removed from the U.S. Naval Vessel Register,
and in 2014, no battleships were listed in the U.S. Navy reserve.
Let’s now look at the main reasons why battleships ended up being obsolete and
eventually decommissioned following World War II. The first has already been touched upon and
has to do with a shift in technology. Pearl Harbor and the Battle of Midway solidified
the aircraft carrier as the dominant vessel in maritime warfare. Major naval conflicts were
no longer being fought ship-to-ship but from the air to sea as well. The aircraft launched
from carriers could travel vast distances, meaning that the battleships would never see
the vessels from which the attack was coming and thus could not hope to fire their guns at
them. With the shifting of naval warfare and the advancement of several other technologies,
battleships just didn’t make sense in the grand scheme of things.
On top of the shift in naval tactics, there were two other main reasons why battleships
in navies across the world were decommissioned and scrapped for parts following World War II.
The first had to do with the number of sailors required to operate the floating fortresses and
the second had to do with the technological advances being made in warfare in general.
Building a battleship is expensive. It’s estimated that each Iowa-class battleship cost the United
States approximately $100 million to build, which is around $1.65 billion in today’s money. However,
it actually was the sailors on board that made battleships one of the costliest vessels
to operate. As the years progressed and the world was no longer at war, many countries,
including the United States, looked for ways to reduce costs within their militaries.
Some countries decreased the amount of money allocated to defense spending,
while others decommissioned or sold large numbers of ships, planes, and vehicles.
However, when it came to cutting naval costs, the best way to do so was to have fewer sailors
operating the ships. Therefore, over the years, the United States has built different types of
ships to reduce crew size while still retaining the firepower necessary to achieve mission
goals. The U.S. battleship New Jersey required a crew of close to 2,000 sailors. By comparison,
a typical cruiser operates with somewhere between 300 and 400 men,
with destroyers having a crew complement slightly lower. This means that the crew
of a battleship can be up to 5 times higher than other large naval vessels.
Aircraft carriers have crews of around 5,000, but this is because they are the equivalent
of floating cities. They also need to carry pilots and mechanics aboard to operate and
maintain the planes. So, for the limited operational capabilities of a battleship,
the number of crew needed to operate the vessel just doesn’t make sense, especially when you
bring money into the equation. This is the main reason why the U.S. continuously decommissioned
their battleships after each conflict they partook in. To continue using them in naval
fleets was just too expensive due to the huge crew compliment needed to keep the ships running.
The second major factor that led to the retirement of battleships was because their main guns fired
unguided ammunition. The shells fired from the turrets on a battleship can cause massive damage
to targets on land. However, once a shell is fired, there is no way to adjust its course.
Even if the gunner has the target lined up perfectly, there are a lot of variables that
can influence the shell's trajectory while in flight. To put this into perspective, when a
skilled gunner sighted an enemy ship from 9 miles away, they only had around a 32 percent chance of
hitting their mark. This was in World War II, and sighting systems have advanced greatly since then,
but even still, during noncombat tests of the 1980s and 1990s, upgraded battleships could only
be expected to land shells somewhere in a 150-yard radius around their intended target. If the U.S.
military needed to hit something precisely, the guns of a battleship were not the way to go.
As missiles and other projectile weapons became more accurate, militaries were expected to
minimize collateral damage. Unfortunately for battleships, this was not possible in the same
way it was for destroyers or cruisers that employed missiles that could detonate within
feet of their intended targets. The inability to precisely strike targets, along with the high
cost to man and operate battleships, were two very compelling reasons that led the United States Navy
to decommission and eventually completely retire battleships from their fleets.
That being said, these aren’t the only reasons battleships no longer patrol the waters of Earth’s
oceans. In a couple of decades, the battleships of World War II will have been around for a century.
The parts required to maintain them are no longer made. A whole new group of sailors would also
need to be trained to operate the vessels. And the maintenance to keep these old naval relics
going would be more costly than ever. Therefore, it is highly unlikely these once state-of-the-art
wartime vessels will ever sail the seas again. Instead, they will remain floating monuments for
civilians to enjoy and learn more about the legacy of the age of battleships.
Now watch “The Evolution of an Aircraft Carrier.” Or check
out “Kursk Submarine Disaster - Russian Navy's Biggest Mistake.”