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135-701: Nixon, a cofounder of Crescent Shipyard was also the lead designer of America's first class of battleships at William Cramp & Sons Shipyard, in Philadelphia. He also built the Anstice yacht (1902) that was renamed the Sandy Hook . Isaac Rice 's Electric Launch Company , which was started to build electrically propelled launches and small craft, also began its operations here. 40°38′42.06″N 74°11′18.66″W  /  40.6450167°N 74.1885167°W  / 40.6450167; -74.1885167 . The Crescent Shipyard

270-503: A British victory. The German strategy was therefore to try to provoke an engagement on their terms: either to induce a part of the Grand Fleet to enter battle alone, or to fight a pitched battle near the German coastline, where friendly minefields, torpedo-boats and submarines could be used to even the odds. This did not happen, however, due in large part to the necessity to keep submarines for

405-515: A heavily armoured central citadel, with relatively unarmoured ends; however, by the era of HMS  Dreadnought , battleships were armoured over the length of the ship with varying zones of heavy, moderate or light armour. The U.S. Navy adopted what was formally called "all or nothing" armour in the Standard-type battleships , starting with the Nevada class laid down in 1912. "All or nothing" armour

540-629: A large armored warship of 17,000 tons, armed solely with a single calibre main battery (twelve 12-inch [305 mm] guns), carrying 300-millimetre (12 in) belt armor , and capable of 24 knots (44 km/h). The Russo-Japanese War provided operational experience to validate the "all-big-gun" concept. During the Battle of the Yellow Sea on August 10, 1904, Admiral Togo of the Imperial Japanese Navy commenced deliberate 12-inch gun fire at

675-585: A large block superstructure nicknamed the "Queen Anne's castle", such as in Queen Elizabeth and Warspite , which would be used in the new conning towers of the King George V -class fast battleships . External bulges were added to improve both buoyancy to counteract weight increase and provide underwater protection against mines and torpedoes. The Japanese rebuilt all of their battleships, plus their battlecruisers, with distinctive " pagoda " structures, though

810-449: A less important role than had been expected in that conflict. The value of the battleship has been questioned, even during their heyday. There were few of the decisive fleet battles that battleship proponents expected and used to justify the vast resources spent on building battlefleets. Even in spite of their huge firepower and protection, battleships were increasingly vulnerable to much smaller and relatively inexpensive weapons: initially

945-575: A mine laid by a German U-boat in October 1914 and sank. The threat that German U-boats posed to British dreadnoughts was enough to cause the Royal Navy to change their strategy and tactics in the North Sea to reduce the risk of U-boat attack. Further near-misses from submarine attacks on battleships and casualties amongst cruisers led to growing concern in the Royal Navy about the vulnerability of battleships. As

1080-483: A mine laid by friendly forces, and sank with little loss of life. In May 1937, Jaime I was damaged by Nationalist air attacks and a grounding incident. The ship was forced to go back to port to be repaired. There she was again hit by several aerial bombs. It was then decided to tow the battleship to a more secure port, but during the transport she suffered an internal explosion that caused 300 deaths and her total loss. Several Italian and German capital ships participated in

1215-562: A mixed-caliber secondary battery amidships around the superstructure. An early design with superficial similarity to the pre-dreadnought is the British Devastation class of 1871. The slow-firing 12-inch (305 mm) main guns were the principal weapons for battleship-to-battleship combat. The intermediate and secondary batteries had two roles. Against major ships, it was thought a 'hail of fire' from quick-firing secondary weapons could distract enemy gun crews by inflicting damage to

1350-418: A naval arms race with bigger, more heavily armed and armoured ironclads. Early experiments showed that wrought iron was superior to cast iron , and wrought iron was subsequently adopted for naval use. British efforts at perfecting iron armour were headed by a government Special Committee on Iron, formed in 1861 by War Secretary Lord Herbert for the continued research into naval armour. Among its members

1485-532: A naval engagement. The introduction of steam accelerated the growth in size of battleships. France and the United Kingdom were the only countries to develop fleets of wooden steam screw battleships although several other navies operated small numbers of screw battleships, including Russia (9), the Ottoman Empire (3), Sweden (2), Naples (1), Denmark (1) and Austria (1). The adoption of steam power

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1620-522: A new naval arms race. Three major fleet actions between steel battleships took place: the long-range gunnery duel at the Battle of the Yellow Sea in 1904, the decisive Battle of Tsushima in 1905 (both during the Russo-Japanese War ) and the inconclusive Battle of Jutland in 1916, during the First World War . Jutland was the largest naval battle and the only full-scale clash of dreadnoughts of

1755-450: A number of 12-pound (3-inch, 76 mm) quick-firing guns for use against destroyers and torpedo-boats. Her armor was heavy enough for her to go head-to-head with any other ship in a gun battle, and conceivably win. Dreadnought was to have been followed by three Invincible -class battlecruisers, their construction delayed to allow lessons from Dreadnought to be used in their design. While Fisher may have intended Dreadnought to be

1890-608: A part in major engagements in Atlantic, Pacific and Mediterranean theaters; in the Atlantic, the Germans used their battleships as independent commerce raiders. However, clashes between battleships were of little strategic importance. The Battle of the Atlantic was fought between destroyers and submarines, and most of the decisive fleet clashes of the Pacific war were determined by aircraft carriers . Naval armour Naval armor refers to

2025-563: A propeller, and her wooden hull was protected by a layer of thick iron armor. Gloire prompted further innovation from the Royal Navy , anxious to prevent France from gaining a technological lead. The superior armored frigate Warrior followed Gloire by only 14 months, and both nations embarked on a program of building new ironclads and converting existing screw ships of the line to armored frigates. Within two years, Italy, Austria, Spain and Russia had all ordered ironclad warships, and by

2160-479: A result of pressure from Admiral Sir John ("Jackie") Fisher , HMS Dreadnought rendered existing battleships obsolete. Combining an "all-big-gun" armament of ten 12-inch (305 mm) guns with unprecedented speed (from steam turbine engines) and protection, she prompted navies worldwide to re-evaluate their battleship building programs. While the Japanese had laid down an all-big-gun battleship, Satsuma , in 1904 and

2295-480: A ship while the rest of the ship receives significantly less armour. The "all or nothing" concept avoided light or moderate thicknesses of armour: armour was used in the greatest practicable thickness or not at all, thereby providing "either total or negligible protection". Compared to previous armouring systems, "all or nothing" ships had thicker armour covering a smaller proportion of the hull. The ironclad battleship HMS  Inflexible launched in 1876 had featured

2430-525: A similar design in the Bellerophon and St. Vincent classes . An American design, South Carolina , authorized in 1905 and laid down in December 1906, was another of the first dreadnoughts, but she and her sister, Michigan , were not launched until 1908. Both used triple-expansion engines and had a superior layout of the main battery, dispensing with Dreadnought ' s wing turrets. They thus retained

2565-625: A similar type of steel to Ducol in its Pugliese torpedo defence system . This underwater "bulge" system was introduced in the Italian Littorio-class battleships , and in the completely rebuilt versions of the Italian battleship Duilio and the Conte di Cavour-class battleships . The inboard-facing side was consisted of a layer of silicon-manganese high-tensile steel from 28–40 mm (1.1–1.6 in) thick called " Elevata Resistenza " (ER) steel, which

2700-429: A state of flux. Many ironclads were built to make use of the ram or the torpedo , which a number of naval designers considered the crucial weapons of naval combat. There is no clear end to the ironclad period, but towards the end of the 1890s the term ironclad dropped out of use. New ships were increasingly constructed to a standard pattern and known as battleships, protected cruisers or armoured cruisers . In turn

2835-488: A symbol of naval dominance and national might, and for decades were a major intimidation factor for power projection in both diplomacy and military strategy . A global arms race in battleship construction began in Europe in the 1890s and culminated at the decisive Battle of Tsushima in 1905, the outcome of which significantly influenced the design of HMS Dreadnought . The launch of Dreadnought in 1906 commenced

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2970-461: A triple-bottom. The innermost bulkhead is commonly referred to as the holding bulkhead , and often this bulkhead would be manufactured from high tensile steel that could deform and absorb the pressure pulse from a torpedo hit without breaking. If the final bulkhead was at least 37 mm thick, it may also be referred to as an armoured bulkhead , as it would be capable of stopping splinters and shells with low striking velocities. The torpedo belt

3105-617: A war scare with France and the build-up of the Russian navy gave added impetus to naval construction, and the British Naval Defence Act of 1889 laid down a new fleet including eight new battleships. The principle that Britain's navy should be more powerful than the two next most powerful fleets combined was established. This policy was designed to deter France and Russia from building more battleships, but both nations nevertheless expanded their fleets with more and better pre-dreadnoughts in

3240-595: A wooden hull, La Gloire , was launched by the French Navy in 1859 prompting the British Royal Navy to build a counter. The following year they launched HMS Warrior , which was twice the size and had 4.5 inches of wrought iron armour (with 18 inches of teak wood backing) over an iron hull. After the first battle between two ironclads took place in 1862 during the American Civil War , it became clear that

3375-463: Is a large, heavily armored warship with a main battery consisting of large- caliber guns , designed to serve as capital ships with the most intense firepower . Before the rise of supercarriers , battleships were among the largest and most formidable weapon systems ever built. The term battleship came into use in the late 1880s to describe a type of ironclad warship , now referred to by historians as pre-dreadnought battleships . In 1906,

3510-574: The Hiei received a more modern bridge tower that would influence the new Yamato class . Bulges were fitted, including steel tube arrays to improve both underwater and vertical protection along the waterline. The U.S. experimented with cage masts and later tripod masts , though after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor some of the most severely damaged ships (such as West Virginia and California ) were rebuilt with tower masts, for an appearance similar to their Iowa -class contemporaries. Radar, which

3645-714: The King George V class . It was in the Mediterranean that navies remained most committed to battleship warfare. France intended to build six battleships of the Dunkerque and Richelieu classes , and the Italians four Littorio -class ships. Neither navy built significant aircraft carriers. The U.S. preferred to spend limited funds on aircraft carriers until the South Dakota class . Japan, also prioritising aircraft carriers, nevertheless began work on three mammoth Yamato s (although

3780-839: The First Geneva Naval Conference (1927), the First London Naval Treaty (1930), the Second Geneva Naval Conference (1932), and finally the Second London Naval Treaty (1936), which all set limits on major warships. These treaties became effectively obsolete on September 1, 1939, at the beginning of World War II , but the ship classifications that had been agreed upon still apply. The treaty limitations meant that fewer new battleships were launched in 1919–1939 than in 1905–1914. The treaties also inhibited development by imposing upper limits on

3915-459: The Gulf War in 1991, and then struck from the U.S. Naval Vessel Register in the 2000s. Many World War II-era American battleships survive today as museum ships . A ship of the line was a large, unarmored wooden sailing ship which mounted a battery of up to 120 smoothbore guns and carronades , which came to prominence with the adoption of line of battle tactics in the early 17th century and

4050-551: The Royal Navy was able to use her imposing battleship and battlecruiser fleet to impose a strict and successful naval blockade of Germany and kept Germany's smaller battleship fleet bottled up in the North Sea : only narrow channels led to the Atlantic Ocean and these were guarded by British forces. Both sides were aware that, because of the greater number of British dreadnoughts, a full fleet engagement would be likely to result in

4185-477: The US Civil War used laminated armour but this was necessitated by lack of facilities for manufacturing single plates of proper thickness. Due to the ever increasing thickness of the armour, and the associated weight, proposals were made from an early date to faceharden the iron or weld steel plates to the front face of iron armour. Efforts to carry out these proposals failed for many reasons, primarily because

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4320-406: The alloy for additional hardness . Also, while Harveyized armour was carburized by heating the steel and placing charcoal on its surface for long periods (often several weeks), Krupp armour went a step further. Instead of inefficiently introducing carbon at the surface with coal, Krupp armour achieved greater depth of carbon cementation by applying carbon-bearing gases to the heated steel. Once

4455-463: The metallurgy at the time was not up to the task. By the mid-to-late 1870s, iron armour started to give way to steel armour , which promised to reduce the thickness, and therefore the weight, of the armour. Harvey armor was a type of steel armor developed in the early 1890s in which the front surfaces of the plates were case hardened . The method for doing this was known as the Harvey process, and

4590-577: The torpedo and the naval mine , and later attack aircraft and the guided missile . The growing range of naval engagements led to the aircraft carrier replacing the battleship as the leading capital ship during World War II, with the last battleship to be launched being HMS  Vanguard in 1944. Four battleships were retained by the United States Navy until the end of the Cold War for fire support purposes and were last used in combat during

4725-494: The "unsinkable" German World War I battleship SMS  Ostfriesland and the American pre-dreadnought Alabama . Although Mitchell had required "war-time conditions", the ships sunk were obsolete, stationary, defenseless and had no damage control. The sinking of Ostfriesland was accomplished by violating an agreement that would have allowed Navy engineers to examine the effects of various munitions: Mitchell's airmen disregarded

4860-406: The 1860s and 1870s, but steel armor began to take over because it was stronger, and thus less could be used. The technology behind steel armour went from simple carbon steel plates, to increasingly complex arrangements with variable alloys. Case-hardened Harvey armor was the first major development, followed by chromium alloyed and specially hardened Krupp armour . Ducol steel came into use in

4995-451: The 1890s. In the last years of the 19th century and the first years of the 20th, the escalation in the building of battleships became an arms race between Britain and Germany . The German naval laws of 1890 and 1898 authorized a fleet of 38 battleships, a vital threat to the balance of naval power. Britain answered with further shipbuilding, but by the end of the pre-dreadnought era, British supremacy at sea had markedly weakened. In 1883,

5130-416: The 1920s, and was widely used on World War II era ships. Futuristic armor designs include electric armour , which would use electric shielding to stop projectiles. Early ship armour probably had its origins in applying thin sheets of metal to ship undersides for preservative reasons. There are only a few exceptional examples of ships equipped with metal armor before Industrial Revolution . The Finis Belli

5265-399: The 8-inch battery being completely unusable, and the inability to train the primary and intermediate armaments on different targets led to significant tactical limitations. Even though such innovative designs saved weight (a key reason for their inception), they proved too cumbersome in practice. In 1906, the British Royal Navy launched the revolutionary HMS  Dreadnought . Created as

5400-602: The Atlantic campaign. Submarines were the only vessels in the Imperial German Navy able to break out and raid British commerce in force, but even though they sank many merchant ships, they could not successfully counter-blockade the United Kingdom; the Royal Navy successfully adopted convoy tactics to combat Germany's submarine counter-blockade and eventually defeated it. This was in stark contrast to Britain's successful blockade of Germany. The first two years of war saw

5535-597: The British and French blockade. And in the Mediterranean , the most important use of battleships was in support of the amphibious assault on Gallipoli . In September 1914, the threat posed to surface ships by German U-boats was confirmed by successful attacks on British cruisers, including the sinking of three British armored cruisers by the German submarine SM  U-9 in less than an hour. The British Super-dreadnought HMS  Audacious soon followed suit as she struck

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5670-520: The British fleet. Less than two months later, the Germans once again attempted to draw portions of the Grand Fleet into battle. The resulting Action of 19 August 1916 proved inconclusive. This reinforced German determination not to engage in a fleet to fleet battle. In the other naval theatres there were no decisive pitched battles. In the Black Sea , engagement between Russian and Ottoman battleships

5805-613: The Dardanelles Campaign and the destruction of the Austro-Hungarian dreadnought SMS  Szent István by Italian motor torpedo boats in June 1918. In large fleet actions, however, destroyers and torpedo boats were usually unable to get close enough to the battleships to damage them. The only battleship sunk in a fleet action by either torpedo boats or destroyers was the obsolescent German pre-dreadnought SMS  Pommern . She

5940-503: The German Navy, and prevented Germany from building or possessing any capital ships . The inter-war period saw the battleship subjected to strict international limitations to prevent a costly arms race breaking out. While the victors were not limited by the Treaty of Versailles, many of the major naval powers were crippled after the war. Faced with the prospect of a naval arms race against

6075-525: The High Seas Fleet be disarmed and interned in a neutral port; largely because no neutral port could be found, the ships remained in British custody in Scapa Flow , Scotland. The Treaty of Versailles specified that the ships should be handed over to the British. Instead, most of them were scuttled by their German crews on June 21, 1919, just before the signature of the peace treaty. The treaty also limited

6210-579: The Moray Firth. Whilst the escape of the German fleet from the superior British firepower at Jutland was effected by the German cruisers and destroyers successfully turning away the British battleships, the German attempt to rely on U-boat attacks on the British fleet failed. Torpedo boats did have some successes against battleships in World War I, as demonstrated by the sinking of the British pre-dreadnought HMS  Goliath by Muâvenet-i Millîye during

6345-576: The North Sea were battles including the Heligoland Bight and Dogger Bank and German raids on the English coast, all of which were attempts by the Germans to lure out portions of the Grand Fleet in an attempt to defeat the Royal Navy in detail. On May 31, 1916, a further attempt to draw British ships into battle on German terms resulted in a clash of the battlefleets in the Battle of Jutland . The German fleet withdrew to port after two short encounters with

6480-538: The Republic, killed their officers, who apparently supported Franco's attempted coup, and joined the Republican Navy. Thus each side had one battleship; however, the Republican Navy generally lacked experienced officers. The Spanish battleships mainly restricted themselves to mutual blockades, convoy escort duties, and shore bombardment, rarely in direct fighting against other surface units. In April 1937, España ran into

6615-496: The Royal Navy's battleships and battlecruisers regularly "sweep" the North Sea making sure that no German ships could get in or out. Only a few German surface ships that were already at sea, such as the famous light cruiser SMS  Emden , were able to raid commerce. Even some of those that did manage to get out were hunted down by battlecruisers, as in the Battle of the Falklands , December 7, 1914. The results of sweeping actions in

6750-502: The Russian flagship Tzesarevich at 14,200 yards (13,000 meters). At the Battle of Tsushima on May 27, 1905, Russian Admiral Rozhestvensky's flagship fired the first 12-inch guns at the Japanese flagship Mikasa at 7,000 meters. It is often held that these engagements demonstrated the importance of the 12-inch (305 mm) gun over its smaller counterparts, though some historians take the view that secondary batteries were just as important as

6885-551: The Scottish firm of David Colville & Sons, Motherwell. Applications have included warship hull construction and light armouring, road bridges, and pressure vessels including locomotive steam boilers and nuclear reactors. Ducol has been used for bulkheads in both general construction and against torpedoes , and for light armour in warships of several countries, including the British , Japanese and perhaps Italian navies. After WW2

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7020-655: The Special Committee tested both types of plate in 1863, it found that rolled iron was superior to hammered due to greater uniformity in quality. The committee and iron manufacturers worked together on how to more easily produce rolled plate, which became standard use in warships beginning in 1865. The committee addressed the use of wooden backing with iron armour. Early European iron armour consisted of between four and five inches (roughly 10 to 13 cm) of wrought iron backed by between 18 and 36 inches (roughly one-half to one metre) of solid wood . After considerable testing,

7155-496: The U.S. Navy's nascent aircraft carrier program. The Royal Navy , United States Navy , and Imperial Japanese Navy extensively upgraded and modernized their World War I–era battleships during the 1930s. Among the new features were an increased tower height and stability for the optical rangefinder equipment (for gunnery control), more armor (especially around turrets) to protect against plunging fire and aerial bombing, and additional anti-aircraft weapons. Some British ships received

7290-562: The United Kingdom and Japan, which would in turn have led to a possible Pacific war , the United States was keen to conclude the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922. This treaty limited the number and size of battleships that each major nation could possess, and required Britain to accept parity with the U.S. and to abandon the British alliance with Japan. The Washington treaty was followed by a series of other naval treaties, including

7425-683: The United Kingdom had 38 battleships, twice as many as France and almost as many as the rest of the world put together. In 1897, Britain's lead was far smaller due to competition from France, Germany, and Russia, as well as the development of pre-dreadnought fleets in Italy, the United States and Japan . The Ottoman Empire, Spain, Sweden, Denmark, Norway , the Netherlands , Chile and Brazil all had second-rate fleets led by armored cruisers , coastal defence ships or monitors . Pre-dreadnoughts continued

7560-514: The World Wars, an anti-torpedo bulge involves fitting (or retrofitting) partially water-filled compartmentalized sponsons on either side of a ship's hull, intended to detonate torpedoes, absorb their explosions, and contain flooding to damaged areas within the bulges. All or nothing is a design choice in armouring warships, best known for its employment on Dreadnought battleships . The concept involves concentrating armour on areas most important to

7695-440: The armoured deck , the waterline belt , and the transverse bulkheads . Simply sloping a piece of armour inherently increases its effectiveness by increasing the distance a projectile must travel to penetrate it. It also increases the odds that a projectile will ricochet off the target without causing damage. A torpedo bulkhead is common on the more heavily armoured warships , especially battleships and battlecruisers of

7830-475: The carburization process was complete, the metal was then transformed into face hardened steel by rapidly heating the cemented face, allowing the high heat to penetrate 30% to 40% of the steel's depth, then quickly quenching first the superheated side then both sides of the steel with powerful jets of either water or oil . Krupp armour was swiftly adopted by the world's major navies; ballistic tests showed that 10.2 in (260 mm) of Krupp armour offered

7965-446: The commissioning of HMS  Dreadnought into the United Kingdom 's Royal Navy heralded a revolution in the field of battleship design. Subsequent battleship designs, influenced by HMS Dreadnought , were referred to as " dreadnoughts ", though the term eventually became obsolete as dreadnoughts became the only type of battleship in common use. Battleships dominated naval warfare in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and were

8100-420: The committee found that wood prevented spalling , cushioned the shock of a hit from damaging the structure of the ship and distributed the force over a larger area, which prevented penetration. The drawback of using wood and iron was extreme weight. Experiments with reducing or eliminating wooden backing to save weight proved unsuccessful. The committee also tested steel as potential armour as its members felt that

8235-499: The concept of an all-big-gun ship had been in circulation for several years, it had yet to be validated in combat. Dreadnought sparked a new arms race , principally between Britain and Germany but reflected worldwide, as the new class of warships became a crucial element of national power. Technical development continued rapidly through the dreadnought era, with steep changes in armament, armor and propulsion. Ten years after Dreadnought ' s commissioning, much more powerful ships,

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8370-495: The defenses at the Battle of Kinburn . Nevertheless, wooden-hulled ships stood up comparatively well to shells, as shown in the 1866 Battle of Lissa , where the modern Austrian steam two-decker SMS  Kaiser ranged across a confused battlefield, rammed an Italian ironclad and took 80 hits from Italian ironclads, many of which were shells, but including at least one 300-pound shot at point-blank range. Despite losing her bowsprit and her foremast, and being set on fire, she

8505-459: The early 20th century. It is designed to keep the ship afloat even if the hull was struck underneath the belt armour by a shell or by a torpedo . After the lessons learned during World War I , many capital ships were refitted with double, triple, or even quadruple torpedo bulkheads, as well as anti-torpedo bulges to the exterior of the hull. For example, the last US battleship designs during World War II had up to four torpedo bulkheads and

8640-598: The end of World War I, aircraft had successfully adopted the torpedo as a weapon. In 1921 the Italian general and air theorist Giulio Douhet completed a hugely influential treatise on strategic bombing titled The Command of the Air , which foresaw the dominance of air power over naval units. In the 1920s, General Billy Mitchell of the United States Army Air Corps , believing that air forces had rendered navies around

8775-494: The end of the nineteenth century. It was developed by Germany's Krupp Arms Works in 1893 and quickly replaced Harvey armour as the primary method of protecting naval ships, before itself being supplanted by the improved "Krupp cemented armour". The initial manufacturing of Krupp armour was very similar to Harveyized armour; however, while the Harvey process generally used nickel-steel, the Krupp process added as much as 1% chromium to

8910-402: The end of the sailing battleship's heyday in the 1830s. From 1794, the alternative term 'line of battle ship' was contracted (informally at first) to 'battle ship' or 'battleship'. The sheer number of guns fired broadside meant a ship of the line could wreck any wooden enemy, holing her hull , knocking down masts , wrecking her rigging , and killing her crew. However, the effective range of

9045-403: The first commissioned submarine of the United States Navy , USS Holland (SS-1) . The Holland is considered technologically revolutionary in several respects. This submarine was considered a historic first, and revolutionary in a timeline of naval innovations in world history. Internationally, many "advanced" industrialized nations around the world took note – almost immediately – and some acquired

9180-508: The first shots of World War II with the bombardment of the Polish garrison at Westerplatte ; and the final surrender of the Japanese Empire took place aboard a United States Navy battleship, USS  Missouri . Between those two events, it had become clear that aircraft carriers were the new principal ships of the fleet and that battleships now performed a secondary role. Battleships played

9315-402: The guns was as little as a few hundred yards, so the battle tactics of sailing ships depended in part on the wind. Over time, ships of the line gradually became larger and carried more guns, but otherwise remained quite similar. The first major change to the ship of the line concept was the introduction of steam power as an auxiliary propulsion system . Steam power was gradually introduced to

9450-432: The hardened face of Krupp armour via the application of carbonized gases but also retained a much greater fibrous elasticity on the rear of the plate. This increased elasticity greatly reduced the incidence of spalling and cracking under incoming fire, a valuable quality during long engagements. Ballistic testing shows that KCA and Krupp armour were roughly equal in other respects. Developments in face-hardened armour in

9585-423: The harder the armour, the better it might deflect or resist shot. However, the steel being produced at that time proved too brittle to be effective. Iron, being softer, bent, dented and distorted but held together and remained an effective means of protection. Experiments were also carried out with laminated armour , but these did not lead to any improvements and single plates were preferred. Many ships made during

9720-477: The highest grades of the commercial shipbuilding steels were based on this type of steel. Welded Ducol was used in HMS ; Nelson and HMS  Rodney (1927), and may have contributed to initial structural damage when the big guns were fired. A solution was found by using rivets to attach the welded Ducol substructures to the hull rather than the original all-welded construction, allowing for some 'give'. It

9855-532: The introduction of 8-inch shell guns as part of the standard armament of French and American line-of-battle ships in 1841. In the Crimean War , six line-of-battle ships and two frigates of the Russian Black Sea Fleet destroyed seven Turkish frigates and three corvettes with explosive shells at the Battle of Sinop in 1853. Later in the war, French ironclad floating batteries used similar weapons against

9990-406: The ironclad had replaced the unarmoured line-of-battle ship as the most powerful warship afloat. Ironclads were designed for several roles, including as high seas battleships , coastal defence ships, and long-range cruisers . The rapid evolution of warship design in the late 19th century transformed the ironclad from a wooden-hulled vessel which carried sails to supplement its steam engines into

10125-481: The larger weapons when dealing with smaller fast-moving torpedo craft. Such was the case, albeit unsuccessfully, when the Russian battleship  Knyaz Suvorov at Tsushima had been sent to the bottom by destroyer -launched torpedoes. The 1903–04 design also retained traditional triple-expansion steam engines . As early as 1904, Jackie Fisher had been convinced of the need for fast, powerful ships with an all-big-gun armament. If Tsushima influenced his thinking, it

10260-412: The last Royal Navy battleship, the design was so successful he found little support for his plan to switch to a battlecruiser navy. Although there were some problems with the ship (the wing turrets had limited arcs of fire and strained the hull when firing a full broadside, and the top of the thickest armor belt lay below the waterline at full load), the Royal Navy promptly commissioned another six ships to

10395-728: The last part of the 20th century has greatly reduced the utility of armor, and most modern warships are now only lightly armored. Naval armour consists of many different designs, depending on what the armour is meant to protect against. Sloped armour and belt armour are designed to protect against shellfire ; torpedo belts , bulges , and bulkheads protect against underwater torpedoes or naval mines ; and armoured decks protect against air dropped bombs and long-range shellfire. The materials that make up naval armour have evolved over time, beginning with simply wood, then softer metals like lead or bronze, to harder metals such as iron, and finally steel and composites. Iron armour saw wide use in

10530-419: The late nineteenth and early to mid-twentieth centuries revealed that such armour was less effective against glancing oblique impacts. The hardened face layer's brittleness was counterproductive against such impacts. Consequently, alongside face hardened armour such as KCA, homogeneous armour types that combined ductility and tensile strength were developed to protect against glancing impacts. Homogeneous armour

10665-485: The length of guns, and the effective range of engagement. This meant that plunging fire became a serious concern, and lead to the strengthening of deck armor. Belt armor also became much thicker, surpassing 300 mm (12 in) on the largest battleships. One of the most heavily armored ships of all time, the Yamato -class battleship , had main belt of armour up to 410 millimetres (16.1 in) thick. The development of

10800-545: The material. One well known example of cast-iron armour for land use is the Gruson turret , first tested by the Prussian government in 1868. Armoured ships may have been built as early as 1203, in the far east . In the West, they first become common when France launched the first ocean-going ironclad La Gloire in 1859. The British Navy responded with HMS Warrior in 1860, triggering

10935-435: The metallurgy as then known, suggested ways for improving its production and quality and helped develop more effective shot against ironclad vessels. For instance, two processes were used in constructing iron armour. In the first, hammering, large lumps of iron of scrap or puddled iron were heated to welding temperature and placed under heavy steel hammers. Repeated blows welded these lumps into one solid plate and shaped it to

11070-415: The mid-1870s steel was used as a construction material alongside iron and wood. The French Navy's Redoutable , laid down in 1873 and launched in 1876, was a central battery and barbette warship which became the first battleship in the world to use steel as the principal building material. The term "battleship" was officially adopted by the Royal Navy in the re-classification of 1892. By the 1890s, there

11205-498: The modern Dreadnought battleship appeared and alongside it the battlecruiser ; the former protected by large amounts of armour which could protect it against all but guns of the largest calibre as found on other battleships, the latter carrying same size guns as a battleship but less armour in order to reach higher speeds. The turn of the 20th century saw a development towards battleships , with large guns and copious armour. In previous eras, large caliber guns had been able to fire on

11340-428: The navy in the first half of the 19th century, initially for small craft and later for frigates . The French Navy introduced steam to the line of battle with the 90-gun Napoléon in 1850 —the first true steam battleship. Napoléon was armed as a conventional ship-of-the-line, but her steam engines could give her a speed of 12 knots (22 km/h), regardless of the wind. This was a potentially decisive advantage in

11475-465: The non-intervention blockade. On May 29, 1937, two Republican aircraft managed to bomb the German pocket battleship Deutschland outside Ibiza , causing severe damage and loss of life. Admiral Scheer retaliated two days later by bombarding Almería , causing much destruction, and the resulting Deutschland incident meant the end of German and Italian participation in non-intervention. The Schleswig-Holstein —an obsolete pre-dreadnought —fired

11610-423: The order of minutes, and were unwieldy to aim. But the development of powered aiming systems and ammunition hoists increased the rate of fire up to twice a minute, which combined with other developments, made battleships a finally useful force. The increasing calibers and muzzle velocity of guns required increasingly protective armor to stop projectiles. The development of new, more effective gunpowders also increased

11745-449: The required form and dimensions. Hammered iron plate was the armour used in the earliest ironclad vessels, including HMS Warrior . The second method, rolling, involved stacking iron lumps atop one another, heating them to welding temperature and passing them between two iron rollers to become one plate of the required size. Rolled iron was difficult to produce initially, as it required machinery of immense size and great power. However, when

11880-546: The rights to build them soon after the purchase of the Holland VI on 11 April 1900. Busch, as shipyard construction chief and naval architect for Lewis Nixon, went on to supervise the building of the prototype "Fulton", which followed the USS Holland and was used as an example and template in development of America's A-class or Adder -class submarines . Busch reviewed the engineering plans of Fulton with Holland, who approved

12015-470: The rules, and sank the ship within minutes in a coordinated attack. The stunt made headlines, and Mitchell declared, "No surface vessels can exist wherever air forces acting from land bases are able to attack them." While far from conclusive, Mitchell's test was significant because it put proponents of the battleship against naval aviation on the defensive. Rear Admiral William A. Moffett used public relations against Mitchell to make headway toward expansion of

12150-439: The same broadside, despite having two fewer guns. In 1897, before the revolution in design brought about by HMS  Dreadnought , the Royal Navy had 62 battleships in commission or building, a lead of 26 over France and 50 over Germany. From the 1906 launching of Dreadnought , an arms race with major strategic consequences was prompted. Major naval powers raced to build their own dreadnoughts. Possession of modern battleships

12285-510: The same protection as 12 in (300 mm) of Harvey armour. By the early twentieth century, Krupp armour was rendered obsolete by the development of Krupp cemented armour (also "Krupp cemented steel", "K.C. armour" or "KCA"), an evolved variant of Krupp armour. The manufacturing process remained largely the same, with slight changes in the alloy composition: in % of total – carbon 0.35, nickel 3.90, chromium 2.00, manganese 0.35, silicon 0.07, phosphorus 0.025, sulfur 0.020. KCA retained

12420-444: The ship's hull. The resultant faults caused by electric welding used in the structural portions of the hull resulted in deformation, and the main gun turrets were unable to train properly. They were re-built with riveted construction, and the other two were redesigned. All of the following ships or classes (the list is not complete) used Ducol in structural bulkheads and protective plating: Lengerer differs considerably as to what

12555-525: The ships' propulsion machinery was protected by a 65-millimeter (2.6 in) deck of CNC armour. The Shōkaku s were the first Japanese carriers to incorporate a torpedo belt system. The torpedo bulkhead itself consisted of an outer Ducol plate 18–30 millimeters (0.71–1.18 in) thick that was riveted to a 12-millimeter (0.47 in) plate." In addition, the IJN's '25-ton' type river motor gun boat had an all-welded hull, protected by 4-5mm Ducol steel. The Italian Navy used

12690-511: The shipyard at Front and Marshall Streets is now Veterans Memorial Waterfront Park. John W. Sullivan Company from 1914 to 1926 built: cargo ships. tungboats, minesweepers , Ferry ships , tankers, fireboats and salvage ship . The New Jersey Dry Dock & Transportation Company from 1914 to 1916 built: tugs, a cutter , Fire Boat and a barge . Samuel L Moore & Company built from 1890 to 1893 tug, gunboat , ferry, lighthouse tender and yacht . Battleship A battleship

12825-608: The shipyard in 1904. Electric Boat had subcontracted with the Fore River Shipbuilding yard for some twenty years (since this time) before moving to their present location in Groton, CT. Bethlehem Elizabethport built United States Shipping Board cargo Ships , tugboats , reefer ships , tanker ships starting in 1918 for World War I. The ships were part of the Emergency Fleet Corporation program. The site of

12960-486: The steel-built, turreted battleships and cruisers familiar in the 20th century. This change was pushed forward by the development of heavier naval guns (the ironclads of the 1880s carried some of the heaviest guns ever mounted at sea) , more sophisticated steam engines, and advances in metallurgy which made steel shipbuilding possible. The rapid pace of change in the ironclad period meant that many ships were obsolete as soon as they were complete, and that naval tactics were in

13095-472: The strategic position had changed. In Germany , the ambitious Plan Z for naval rearmament was abandoned in favor of a strategy of submarine warfare supplemented by the use of battlecruisers and commerce raiding (in particular by Bismarck -class battleships). In Britain, the most pressing need was for air defenses and convoy escorts to safeguard the civilian population from bombing or starvation, and re-armament construction plans consisted of five ships of

13230-643: The super-dreadnoughts, were being built. In the first years of the 20th century, several navies worldwide experimented with the idea of a new type of battleship with a uniform armament of very heavy guns. Admiral Vittorio Cuniberti , the Italian Navy's chief naval architect, articulated the concept of an all-big-gun battleship in 1903. When the Regia Marina did not pursue his ideas, Cuniberti wrote an article in Jane ' s proposing an "ideal" future British battleship,

13365-516: The superstructure on war junks during the Song dynasty (960–1279) and that this tradition was carried on in the Korean turtle ships that defended against Japanese invasion of Korea in the 1590s. The use of iron plate armor on the turtle ships has been suggested in various sources from the 19th century onwards but is not attested in contemporary sources. The first ironclad battleship, with iron armour over

13500-528: The superstructure, and they would be more effective against smaller ships such as cruisers . Smaller guns (12-pounders and smaller) were reserved for protecting the battleship against the threat of torpedo attack from destroyers and torpedo boats . The beginning of the pre-dreadnought era coincided with Britain reasserting her naval dominance. For many years previously, Britain had taken naval supremacy for granted. Expensive naval projects were criticized by political leaders of all inclinations. However, in 1888

13635-479: The technical innovations of the ironclad. Turrets, armor plate, and steam engines were all improved over the years, and torpedo tubes were also introduced. A small number of designs, including the American Kearsarge and Virginia classes , experimented with all or part of the 8-inch intermediate battery superimposed over the 12-inch primary. Results were poor: recoil factors and blast effects resulted in

13770-418: The thickest of armor, and thus warships now focus more on anti-missile technology instead of armor. However, most modern warships retain 25 to 50 mm (0.98 to 1.97 in) of partial armor to protect missiles and aircraft from splinters and light weapons fire. Belt armour is the main side armor on a warship. An armoured citadel is an armoured box enclosing the machinery and magazine spaces, formed by

13905-589: The third, Shinano , was later completed as a carrier) and a planned fourth was cancelled. At the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War , the Spanish navy included only two small dreadnought battleships, España and Jaime I . España (originally named Alfonso XIII ), by then in reserve at the northwestern naval base of El Ferrol , fell into Nationalist hands in July 1936. The crew aboard Jaime I remained loyal to

14040-406: The threat posed to dreadnought battleships proved to have been largely a false alarm. HMS Audacious turned out to be the only dreadnought sunk by a submarine in World War I. While battleships were never intended for anti-submarine warfare, there was one instance of a submarine being sunk by a dreadnought battleship. HMS Dreadnought rammed and sank the German submarine U-29 on March 18, 1915, off

14175-580: The time of the famous clash of the USS ; Monitor and the CSS ; Virginia at the Battle of Hampton Roads at least eight navies possessed ironclad ships. Navies experimented with the positioning of guns, in turrets (like the USS Monitor ), central-batteries or barbettes , or with the ram as the principal weapon. As steam technology developed, masts were gradually removed from battleship designs. By

14310-444: The torpedo and effective naval mines required further considerations for underwater armor, which had not been given much thought in prior eras. The World War era also saw the emergence of the armoured cruiser , which traded some armor in exchange for speed as compared to a battleship. Since World War II, naval armour has been less important, due to the development of guided missiles . Missiles can be highly accurate and penetrate even

14445-440: The various protections schemes employed by warships . The first ironclad warship was created in 1859, and the pace of armour advancement accelerated quickly thereafter. The emergence of battleships around the turn of the 20th century saw ships become increasingly large and well armoured. Vast quantities of heavily armoured ships were used during the World Wars, and were crucial in the outcome. The emergence of guided missiles in

14580-478: The war wore on however, it turned out that whilst submarines did prove to be a very dangerous threat to older pre-dreadnought battleships, as shown by examples such as the sinking of Mesûdiye , which was caught in the Dardanelles by a British submarine and HMS  Majestic and HMS  Triumph were torpedoed by U-21 as well as HMS  Formidable , HMS  Cornwallis , HMS  Britannia etc.,

14715-448: The war, and it was the last major battle in naval history fought primarily by battleships. The Naval Treaties of the 1920s and 1930s limited the number of battleships, though technical innovation in battleship design continued. Both the Allied and Axis powers built battleships during World War II, though the increasing importance of the aircraft carrier meant that the battleship played

14850-618: The weather deck and the bulkheads." HMS  Ark Royal 's fully-enclosed armoured hangar and the armoured flight deck which it supported were constructed of Ducol. Other types of armour used on Navy ships: The Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) made considerable use of Ducol made under licence by Japan Steel Works in Muroran , Hokkaidō , Japan : the company was set up with investment from Vickers , Armstrong Whitworth and Mitsui . The Mogami -class cruisers were originally designed with all-welded Ducol bulkheads which were then welded to

14985-625: The weights of ships. Designs like the projected British N3-class battleship, the first American South Dakota class , and the Japanese Kii class —all of which continued the trend to larger ships with bigger guns and thicker armor—never got off the drawing board. Those designs which were commissioned during this period were referred to as treaty battleships . As early as 1914, the British Admiral Percy Scott predicted that battleships would soon be made irrelevant by aircraft . By

15120-833: The works of Busch. These pioneering submarines were built for the Holland Torpedo Boat Company named after this company's founder John Philip Holland . Work on these submarines began at this shipyard in the late fall of 1896 with the keel to the Holland VI being laid down by early December of that year. Holland's company evolved into the Electric Boat Company after this company was officially incorporated on 7 February 1899. Japan's first five submarines were developed under Busch's direction while working at Fore River Ship and Engine Company in Quincy, Massachutsetts for Electric Boat and Admiral Francis T. Bowles , President of

15255-468: The world obsolete, testified in front of Congress that "1,000 bombardment airplanes can be built and operated for about the price of one battleship" and that a squadron of these bombers could sink a battleship, making for more efficient use of government funds. This infuriated the U.S. Navy, but Mitchell was nevertheless allowed to conduct a careful series of bombing tests alongside Navy and Marine bombers. In 1921, he bombed and sank numerous ships, including

15390-487: Was Sir William Fairbairn , a noted civil and structural engineer who had also built over 80 iron vessels before retiring from shipbuilding. Other members included metallurgist John Percy , civil engineer William Pole and representatives of the Royal Engineers , Royal Artillery and Royal Navy . This committee worked four years, between 1861 and 1865, during which time it formulated the best performing armour with

15525-415: Was a type of armour used on warships and, to a limited degree, fortifications. The use of iron gave rise to the term ironclad as a reference to a ship 'clad' in iron. The earliest material available in sufficient quantities for armouring ships was iron , wrought or cast. While cast iron has never been used for naval armour, it did find a use in land fortifications , presumable due to the lower cost of

15660-462: Was an increasing similarity between battleship designs, and the type that later became known as the 'pre-dreadnought battleship' emerged. These were heavily armored ships, mounting a mixed battery of guns in turrets, and without sails. The typical first-class battleship of the pre-dreadnought era displaced 15,000 to 17,000  tons , had a speed of 16 knots (30 km/h), and an armament of four 12-inch (305 mm) guns in two turrets fore and aft with

15795-512: Was described as a possible candidate for "the first ironclad" by authors in the late 19th and early 20th century. The Finis Belli was a stationary floating fighting platform that was built by the Dutch during the Siege of Antwerp in 1585. It was supposedly equipped with iron plates but never actually saw action. According to science historian Joseph Needham , thin metal sheets were used as protection on

15930-399: Was effective because the very hard particles would deflect bullets which would then lodge between the plastic armour and the steel backing plate. Plastic armour could be applied by pouring it into a cavity formed by the steel backing plate and a temporary wooden form. Production of the armour was by road construction firms and was carried out in a similar way to the production of road coverings,

16065-411: Was effective beyond visual range and effective in complete darkness or adverse weather, was introduced to supplement optical fire control. Even when war threatened again in the late 1930s, battleship construction did not regain the level of importance it had held in the years before World War I. The "building holiday" imposed by the naval treaties meant the capacity of dockyards worldwide had shrunk, and

16200-559: Was invented by the American engineer Hayward Augustus Harvey . The Harvey United Steel Company was a steel cartel whose chairman was Albert Vickers . The year 1894 would see the ten main producers of armor plate, including Vickers , Armstrong , Krupp , Schneider , Carnegie and Bethlehem Steel , form the Harvey Syndicate. Krupp armour was a type of steel armour used in the construction of capital ships starting shortly before

16335-441: Was later adopted by other navies after the First World War , beginning with the Royal Navy in its Nelson class in combination with reducing the amount of ship that needed armouring by mounting all the main armament forward. The development of aircraft carriers necessitated new forms of protection. An armoured flight deck is an aircraft carrier flight deck that incorporates substantial armour in its design. Iron armour

16470-406: Was made of Ducol, perhaps because of the extensive refit in 1934–36? "The lower strake of the armour was backed by 50 millimeters (2.0 in) of Ducol steel. The magazines were protected by 165 millimeters (6.5 in) of New Vickers Non-Cemented (NVNC) armour, sloped at an inclination up to 25° and tapered to thicknesses of 55–75 millimeters (2.2–3.0 in). The flight and both hangar decks were unprotected and

16605-425: Was not only seen as vital to naval power, but also, as with nuclear weapons after World War II , represented a nation's standing in the world. Germany , France , Japan , Italy , Austria , and the United States all began dreadnought programmes; while the Ottoman Empire , Argentina , Russia , Brazil , and Chile commissioned dreadnoughts to be built in British and American yards. By virtue of geography,

16740-399: Was only one of a number of technological advances which revolutionized warship design in the 19th century. The ship of the line was overtaken by the ironclad : powered by steam, protected by metal armor, and armed with guns firing high-explosive shells . Guns that fired explosive or incendiary shells were a major threat to wooden ships, and these weapons quickly became widespread after

16875-517: Was operated by Nixon until 1904. In 1904 Crescent Shipyard was acquired by Bethlehem Steel in 1904. Bethlehem Steel leased the yard to John W. Sullivan and part to New Jersey Dry Dock & Transportation Company. In 1916, Bethlehem Steel took over operation of the shipyard. The yard was closed permanently shortly after the conclusion of World War I in 1921. Busch, as this shipyard's superintendent, supervised several classes of naval ships, including gunboats , monitors , and cruisers in addition to

17010-524: Was part of the armouring scheme in some warships between the 1920s and 1940s. It consisted of a series of lightly armoured compartments, extending laterally along a narrow belt that intersected the ship's waterline. In theory this belt would absorb the explosions from torpedoes, or any naval artillery shells that struck below the waterline, and thus minimize internal damage to the ship itself. Torpedo belts are also known as Side Protection Systems or SPS, or Torpedo Defense System or TDS. Developed for use during

17145-564: Was probably somewhat similar to the British Ducol ("D" or "Dl") Steel used for light armour and torpedo bulkheads in WWII. Plastic armour (also known as plastic protection) was a type of vehicle armour originally developed for merchant ships by Edward Terrell of the British Admiralty in 1940. It consisted of small, evenly sized aggregate in a matrix of bitumen, similar to asphalt concrete. It

17280-400: Was ready for action again the very next day. The development of high-explosive shells made the use of iron armor plate on warships necessary. In 1859 France launched Gloire , the first ocean-going ironclad warship. She had the profile of a ship of the line, cut to one deck due to weight considerations. Although made of wood and reliant on sail for most journeys, Gloire was fitted with

17415-506: Was restricted to skirmishes. In the Baltic Sea , action was largely limited to the raiding of convoys, and the laying of defensive minefields; the only significant clash of battleship squadrons there was the Battle of Moon Sound at which one Russian pre-dreadnought was lost. The Adriatic was in a sense the mirror of the North Sea: the Austro-Hungarian dreadnought fleet remained bottled up by

17550-425: Was sunk by destroyers during the night phase of the Battle of Jutland. The German High Seas Fleet, for their part, were determined not to engage the British without the assistance of submarines; and since the submarines were needed more for raiding commercial traffic, the fleet stayed in port for much of the war. For many years, Germany simply had no battleships. The Armistice with Germany required that most of

17685-441: Was to persuade him of the need to standardise on 12-inch (305 mm) guns. Fisher's concerns were submarines and destroyers equipped with torpedoes, then threatening to outrange battleship guns, making speed imperative for capital ships . Fisher's preferred option was his brainchild, the battlecruiser : lightly armored but heavily armed with eight 12-inch guns and propelled to 25 knots (46 km/h) by steam turbines . It

17820-497: Was to prove this revolutionary technology that Dreadnought was designed in January 1905, laid down in October 1905 and sped to completion by 1906. She carried ten 12-inch guns, had an 11-inch armor belt, and was the first large ship powered by turbines. She mounted her guns in five turrets; three on the centerline (one forward, two aft) and two on the wings , giving her at her launch twice the broadside of any other warship. She retained

17955-498: Was typically applied as a casting in situ in a layer about two inches (51 mm) thick on to existing ship structures made from one-quarter-inch-thick (6.4 mm) mild steel or formed in equally thick sections on a one-half-inch-thick (13 mm) steel plate for mounting as gun shields and the like. Plastic armour replaced the use of concrete slabs which, although expected to provide protection, were prone to cracking and breaking up when struck by armour-piercing bullets. Plastic armour

18090-412: Was typically used for deck armour, which is subject to more high-obliquity impacts and, on some warships such as Yamato class and Iowa class battleships, for lower belt armour below the waterline to protect against shells that land short and dive underwater. Ducol or "D"-steel is the name of a number of high-strength low-alloy steels of varying composition, first developed from the early 1920s by

18225-578: Was used in British anti-torpedo-system design practice in its last battleships. The internal hull and torpedo bulkheads and internal decks were made of Ducol or "D"-class steel, an extra-strong form of HTS . According to Nathan Okun, the King George V-class battleships had the simplest armour arrangement of all post-WWI capital ships. "Most of the load-bearing portions of the ship were constructed of British Ducol ("D" or "D.1") extra-high-strength silicon-manganese high-tensile construction steel, including

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