![]() The ships of the day required line-of-sight position relative to their target to be effective, and they needed to stay close together radios of the era weren’t reliable enough to coordinate formations of dozens of ships. Diagram from the rather wordy and Pro-Britannia 1921 History of the Great War by Sir Julian S Corbett Note how many ships are packed into a relatively small battlespace. A layout of a phase of the Battle of Jutland. The iconic fleet action of World War I- the Battle of Jutland in 1916 between the Royal Navy and the German navy in the North Sea- wasn’t the first battleship fight, but it did more to define the age of the battleship than any other. The Royal Navy’s technological success prodded other industrialized seafaring nations to respond in kind with bigger, faster and more lethal battleships. (It’s difficult to call any modern naval vessel a battleship since most do not meet the large guns and armor criteria, though they are ships and do engage in battle). The ship cemented the definition of battleship as a ship with very large guns and very heavy armor. ![]() Navy History and Heritage Command Photoĭreadnought was fast, had great range and bristled with 12-inch guns designed to punch holes in other armored ships. The shootout was a draw, but it emphasized an ongoing European trend of combining a steam engine (which unshackled navies from the tyranny of the fickle wind) with heavy iron armor to protect the crew and the ship.įrench ironclads had tangled with Russian artillery positions during the Crimean War and the French and the Britain’s Royal Navy had begun building armored ships when the Civil War broke out, according to this pretty great piece in Naval History magazine.Īrmored ships with increasingly larger guns became the measure of international military might at the dawn of the 20th century.Ī mere 44 years after the Monitor and the Virginia duked it out, the Royal Navy commissioned in 1906 what could be the first modern battleship-HMS Dreadnought. CSS Virginia and USS Monitor at the 1862 Battle of Hampton Roads The modern armored ship entered popular American culture with the 1862 ironclad battle between the Union’s USS Monitor and the Confederacy’s CSS Virginia (often referred to by its Union moniker Merrimack). (The 2012 summer movie spectacular Battleship may have reinvigorated some of the calls to reactivate the big ships following the glorious montage of the USS Missouri coming to life to fight maritime aliens).īefore killing the buzz of why bringing back the Iowa-class ships doesn’t make sense, let’s take a quick history tangent. The argument goes like this: The four remaining World War II Iowa-class battleships are cheaper to operate, cheaper than building new ships, and provide powerful and much-needed weapons (giant 16-inch guns-that’s the diameter of the shell, not the length of the barrel) to the U.S. Navy to get back into the battleship business. Those who cover the militarized aspects of the ocean eventually will encounter a group of people who want the U.S. A fantastic spectacle but anachronistic in 21st century warfare.
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