What Is A Battleship?

That's actually a fairly tricky question. The term is notoriously difficult to define. The term evolved from "Line of battle ship", or "ship of the line", a term from earlier centuries which referred to large sailing ships with guns on three decks, firing through ports in the sides of the ships.

Ship technology changed significantly in the 19th century. Steam power, iron and steel hulls, and revolving gun mounts completely changed the nature of large warships. By the late 19th century, the old sail-powerd wooden ships and their iron hulled descendents were obsolete. We therefore include battleships from the late 19th century onward.

This still doesn't explain what a battleship is. There are two important criteria which make a ship a battleship: big guns and heavy armor. This of course, leads to two the questions: how big is big, and how heavy is heavy? We chose a semi-arbitrary standards :

• The main guns must be 10 inch (bore) or larger. Guns smaller than this became totally ineffective against battleships as battle ranges increased in the early 20th century.
• The armor must be heavy enough for the ship to withstand hits from guns equivalent to her own.
• The heavy guns must be in rotating mounts. These may be Monitor style turrets, barbettes, or the more modern combination of the two.
• It must be an oceangoing (as opposed to coastal) ship. This rules out monitors.
• The hull must be steel.

Pre-Dreadnoughts vs Dreadnoughts

In 1906, the British launched the revolutionary battleship HMS Dreadnought. This ship changed battleship design so completely that all previous battleships were thereafter called "pre-dreadnoughts", and battleships of similar or subsequent designs were called "dreadnoughts". The word dreadnaught has become a synonym for battleship.

HMS Dreadnought had two major innovations:

• All "Big Gun" armament. Previous battleships had a mixture of light, medium, and heavy guns. HMS Dreadnought did away with the medium calibre guns, and increased the number of heavy guns. Typical pre-dreadnoughts had four large guns. HMS Dreadnought had ten. This made her significantly more powerful than her contemporaries, more than the number of guns alone would indicate. It was much easier to direct the fire from the single caliber main armament than for the earlier mixed caliber armament, and this in turn permitted accurate fire at much longer ranges. All battleships classified as dreadnoughts have all big gun armament. Light guns were eventually installed on dreadnought type battleships, but they were intended to defend against torpedo boats (and later aircraft) rather than to attack other battleships.
• Steam turbine engines. Previous battleships were all powered by reciprocating steam engines. Steam turbines were smoother running and more reliable than the reciprocating engines, which made higher power practical. Steam turbines thus made HMS Dreadnought significantly faster than the pre-dreadnoughts. Some early dreadnoughts (notably American and German) had reciprocating steam engines, but were still classified as dreadnoughts.

As Americans, we are obliged to point out that the US designed an all big gun battleship, USS South Carolina (BB-26), before HMS Dreadnought was designed, but by taking guns from several incomplete pre-dreadnoughts the British were able to complete HMS Dreadnought first. The USS South Carolina had the added advantage of superimposed turrets, a technology which the British did not master for several more years. The superimposed turrets saved considerable weight, and provided better arcs of fire.

We should also note that the idea for the "all big gun" battleship was published by Italian Gen. Vittorio Cuniberti in the 1904 edition of Jane's Fighting Ships, which proposed an "Ideal Battleship for the British Navy". Apparently, though, the designs for both the South Carolina and Dreadnought were already well underway by this point.

The Japanese also designed the "all big gun" Settsu class at about the same time, but we do not consider these to be true dreadnoughts because the 12 inch guns were of two substantially different types. This made dreadnought style gunfire control more difficult and reduced effectiveness. In any case the Settsu class ships were completed well after the Dreadnought.

Battlecruisers

Battlecruisers were an attempt to combine the firepower of a battleship with the speed of a cruiser. The first battlecruiser was HMS Invincible. She and her British successors had battleship-sized guns on an enlarged cruiser style hull. British battlecruisers tended to sacrifice the number of guns and armor to get more speed. German battlecruisers traded off the number and size of the main guns while retaining more armor, and often accepted slightly lower top speed than their British counterparts. German battlecruisers benefitted greatly from more advanced boiler design, which made their propulsion system significantly lighter than their British equivalents.

The original purpose of the battlecruisers was to hunt and overwhelm cruisers. When used for that purpose, as in the Battle of the Falklands (7 December 1914), they were quite successful. Problems arose because they were often used as fast battleships instead. When battlecruisers were used as against battleships, the results were usually disasterous. The most famous disaster was at the Battle of Jutland (May 31-June 1 1916) when the battlecruisers HMS Invincible, HMS Indefatigable, and HMS Queen Mary exploded and sank, killing almost everyone in all three crews. HMS Lion only narrowly escaped the same fate. Almost exactly 25 years later, the battlecruiser HMS Hood exploded and sank at the Battle of the Denmark Strait during an action with the German battleship Bismarck and heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen. All but three of her crew were killed. In fairness the catastrophic losses at Jutland were primarily due to dangerously unstable ammunition, but the British battlecruisers' light armor was certainly a contributing factor. Ironically the Hood may have been lost because she had too much armor in the wrong place: The explosion probably started in her torpedo room, and the surrounding medium armor may have concentrated the blast.

German battlecruisers fared a little better, but they didn't have the firepower to face an enemy battleship. Only one German battlecruiser was sunk during the Battle of Jutland, and that after taking considerable damage. This does not change the fact that the Germans had to run away from the superior firepower of Jellicoe's fleet of battleships. During World War II, the battlecruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau had explicit orders not to attack any convoy guarded by any battleship, no matter how old. The Allies quickly learned to keep an obsolescent battleship with convoys to scare off surface raiders.

Japan only completed four battlecruisers, which were based on a British design with several improvements. Only one, Kirishima, ever faced battleships. At Guadalcanal she crippled the USS South Dakota (BB-57) but was then sunk by the USS Washington (BB-56). Both the US battleships she faced were over twenty years newer and far more powerfully armed. Japan designed many other battlecruisers, but they were not completed.

Italy built no dreadnought battlecruisers, though the Vittorio Emanuele class ships could be described as pre-dreadnought battlecruisers.

France designed some battlecruisers during World War I, but didn't build them. Two others, built to a new design, were completed in the interwar years.

The US designed a class of large battlecruisers during World War I, but they were either scrapped incomplete or completed as aircraft carriers. A second class was designed during the World War II era, but only two were completed. They were much smaller than contemporary US battleships, and were officially described as "large cruisers" rather than battlecruisers. The pre-World War I Tennesee class armored cruisers carried armament equivalent to a small battleship, and could be considered pre-dreadnought battlecruisers.

The Russians designed numerous battlecruisers throughout the 20th century, but only the missile armed Kirov class nuclear powered battlecruisers were completed, and these are very different from earlier gun armed battlecruisers.





Copyright © 2000 Lawrence H. Wells and David R. Wells. All rights reserved.