text:
BCPL

BCPL ("Basic Combined Programming Language") is a procedural, imperative, and structured programming language. Originally intended for writing compilers for other languages, BCPL is no longer in common use. However, its influence is still felt because a stripped down and syntactically changed version of BCPL, called B, was the language on which the C programming language was based. BCPL introduced several features of many modern programming languages, including using curly braces to delimit code blocks. BCPL was first implemented by Martin Richards of the University of Cambridge in 1967.

Design
BCPL was designed so that small and simple compilers could be written for it; reputedly some compilers could be run in 16 kilobytes. Furthermore, the original compiler, itself written in BCPL, was easily portable. BCPL was thus a popular choice for bootstrapping a system. A major reason for the compiler's portability lay in its structure. It was split into two parts: the front end parsed the source and generated O-code, an intermediate language. The back end took the O-code and translated it into the machine code for the target machine. Only $1/undefined$ of the compiler's code needed to be rewritten to support a new machine, a task that usually took between 2 and 5 person-months. This approach became common practice later (e.g. Pascal, Java).

The language is unusual in having only one data type: a word, a fixed number of bits, usually chosen to align with the architecture's machine word and of adequate capacity to represent any valid storage address. For many machines of the time, this data type was a 16-bit word. This choice later proved to be a significant problem when BCPL was used on machines in which the smallest addressable item was not a word but a byte or on machines with larger word sizes such as 32-bit or 64-bit.

The interpretation of any value was determined by the operators used to process the values. (For example,  added two values together, treating them as integers;   indirected through a value, effectively treating it as a pointer.) In order for this to work, the implementation provided no type checking.

The mismatch between BCPL's word orientation and byte-oriented hardware was addressed in several ways. One was by providing standard library routines for packing and unpacking words into byte strings. Later, two language features were added: the bit-field selection operator and the infix byte indirection operator (denoted by ).

BCPL handles bindings spanning separate compilation units in a unique way. There are no user-declarable global variables; instead, there is a global vector, similar to "blank common" in Fortran. All data shared between different compilation units comprises scalars and pointers to vectors stored in a pre-arranged place in the global vector. Thus, the header files (files included during compilation using the "GET" directive) become the primary means of synchronizing global data between compilation units, containing "GLOBAL" directives that present lists of symbolic names, each paired with a number that associates the name with the corresponding numerically addressed word in the global vector. As well as variables, the global vector contains bindings for external procedures. This makes dynamic loading of compilation units very simple to achieve. Instead of relying on the link loader of the underlying implementation, effectively, BCPL gives the programmer control of the linking process.

The global vector also made it very simple to replace or augment standard library routines. A program could save the pointer from the global vector to the original routine and replace it with a pointer to an alternative version. The alternative might call the original as part of its processing. This could be used as a quick ad hoc debugging aid.

BCPL was the first brace programming language and the braces survived the syntactical changes and have become a common means of denoting program source code statements. In practice, on limited keyboards of the day, source programs often used the sequences  and   in place of the symbols   and. The single-line  comments of BCPL, which were not adopted by C, reappeared in C++ and later in C99.

The book BCPL: The language and its compiler describes the philosophy of BCPL as follows: "The philosophy of BCPL is not one of the tyrant who thinks he knows best and lays down the law on what is and what is not allowed; rather, BCPL acts more as a servant offering his services to the best of his ability without complaint, even when confronted with apparent nonsense. The programmer is always assumed to know what he is doing and is not hemmed in by petty restrictions."

History
BCPL was first implemented by Martin Richards of the University of Cambridge in 1967. BCPL was a response to difficulties with its predecessor, Cambridge Programming Language, later renamed Combined Programming Language (CPL), which was designed during the early 1960s. Richards created BCPL by "removing those features of the full language which make compilation difficult". The first compiler implementation, for the IBM 7094 under Compatible Time-Sharing System, was written while Richards was visiting Project MAC at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the spring of 1967. The language was first described in a paper presented to the 1969 Spring Joint Computer Conference.

BCPL has been rumored to have originally stood for "Bootstrap Cambridge Programming Language", but CPL was never created since development stopped at BCPL, and the acronym was later reinterpreted for the BCPL book.

BCPL is the language in which the original "Hello, World!" program was written. The first MUD was also written in BCPL (MUD1).

Several operating systems were written partially or wholly in BCPL (for example, TRIPOS and the earliest versions of AmigaDOS). BCPL was also the initial language used in the Xerox PARC Alto project. Among other projects, the Bravo document preparation system was written in BCPL.

An early compiler, bootstrapped in 1969, by starting with a paper tape of the O-code of Richards's Atlas 2 compiler, targeted the ICT 1900 series. The two machines had different word-lengths (48 vs 24 bits), different character encodings, and different packed string representations—and the successful bootstrapping increased confidence in the practicality of the method.

By late 1970, implementations existed for the Honeywell 635 and Honeywell 645, IBM 360, PDP-10, TX-2, CDC 6400, UNIVAC 1108, PDP-9, KDF 9 and Atlas 2. In 1974 a dialect of BCPL was implemented at BBN without using the intermediate O-code. The initial implementation was a cross-compiler hosted on BBN's TENEX PDP-10s, and directly targeted the PDP-11s used in BBN's implementation of the second generation IMPs used in the ARPANET.

There was also a version produced for the BBC Micro in the mid-1980s, by Richards Computer Products, a company started by John Richards, the brother of Martin Richards. The BBC Domesday Project made use of the language. Versions of BCPL for the Amstrad CPC and Amstrad PCW computers were also released in 1986 by UK software house Arnor Ltd. MacBCPL was released for the Apple Macintosh in 1985 by Topexpress Ltd, of Kensington, England.

Both the design and philosophy of BCPL strongly influenced B, which in turn influenced C. Programmers at the time debated whether an eventual successor to C would be called "D", the next letter in the alphabet, or "P", the next letter in the parent language name. The language most accepted as being C's successor is C++ (with  being C's increment operator), although meanwhile, a D programming language also exists.

In 1979, implementations of BCPL existed for at least 25 architectures; the language gradually fell out of favour as C became popular on non-Unix systems.

Martin Richards maintains a modern version of BCPL on his website, last updated in 2018. This can be set up to run on various systems including Linux, FreeBSD, and Mac OS X. The latest distribution includes graphics and sound libraries, and there is a comprehensive manual. He continues to program in it, including for his research on musical automated score following.

A common informal MIME type for BCPL is text/x-bcpl.

Hello world
Richards and Whitby-Strevens provide an example of the "Hello, World!" program for BCPL using a standard system header, 'LIBHDR': GET "LIBHDR" LET START BE WRITES("Hello, World")

Further examples
If these programs are run using Richards' current version of Cintsys (December 2018), LIBHDR, START and WRITEF must be changed to lower case to avoid errors.

Print factorials: GET "LIBHDR"

LET START = VALOF $(	FOR I = 1 TO 5 DO		WRITEF("%N! = %I4*N", I, FACT(I))	RESULTIS 0 $)

AND FACT(N) = N = 0 -> 1, N * FACT(N - 1)

Count solutions to the N queens problem: GET "LIBHDR"

GLOBAL $(	COUNT: 200	ALL: 201 $)

LET TRY(LD, ROW, RD) BE	TEST ROW = ALL THEN COUNT := COUNT + 1 ELSE $(		LET POSS = ALL & ~(LD | ROW | RD)		UNTIL POSS = 0 DO $( LET P = POSS & -POSS POSS := POSS - P			TRY(LD + P << 1, ROW + P, RD + P >> 1) $)	$)

LET START = VALOF $(	ALL := 1	FOR I = 1 TO 12 DO $( COUNT := 0 TRY(0, 0, 0) WRITEF("%I2-QUEENS PROBLEM HAS %I5 SOLUTIONS*N", I, COUNT) ALL := 2 * ALL + 1 $)	RESULTIS 0 $)

title: BCPL


text:
Talk:Battle of Blenheim

Scotland should be on this
I understand the Kingdom of Great Britain did not exist until 1707, but the army fighting in Europe represented the Queen. Their was never an "English" army, it was the Queen's army. And the Monarch represented England, Ireland AND Scotland. Their were English, Irish and Scottish regiments at Blenheim, so it is very simplistic to put only England in the list of Belligerants. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.153.200.130 (talk) 08:12, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Vienna - Capital of the Holy Roman Empire
The page reads "Vienna – the capital of the Holy Roman Empire". Vienna was the capital of the Habsburgs, who were Holy Roman Emperors. However, I believe the capital of the Holy Roman Empire was Frankfurt-am-Main. Maproom 15:09, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
 * The capital of the Holy Roman Empire under the Habsburgs was Vienna. The seat of the Holy Roman Emperor was Vienna. 18:26, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Do you have evidence for this? The wiki page on Frankfurt reads "From 855 the German kings and emperors were elected in Frankfurt and crowned in Aachen. From 1562 the kings/emperors were also crowned in Frankfurt ... This tradition ended in 1792..." Maproom 14:45, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Tactic of Spoliation?
Is that destruction, pillage, etc? --AW 15:35, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Scottish or British
Scottish or British soldiers? There is some inconsistency in the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.214.58.31 (talk) 09:14, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

 * Until the Acts of Union in 1707, three years after the battle, England and Scotland were separate kingdoms under a common monarch, and "Britain" was just a geographical term for the islands, not a nationality (like the term "Peninsular" or "Iberian" for Portugal and Spain). David (talk) 15:49, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Marlborough crossed the Neckar near the small village of Heilbronn
Heilbronn was not a small village at that time, but a free imperial city with about 6000 inhabitants in the city walls, about the same size as Heidelberg. Numbers taken from pages on Wikipedia.de. lhttp://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bild:Heilbronn_1643_von_Matthaeus_Merian.jpg Flori121 20:35, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Was Blenheim then in Bavaria?
The info box states that the battle was fought in Bavaria. But the best sources I can find show that Blenheim (or Blindheim) and Höchstadt were then in the Principality of Palatinate-Neuburg, whose territories became part of Bavaria in 1808. Maproom (talk) 17:48, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Flag Icon
The flag for England, or more properly, Great Britain or United Kingdom is this flag: which shows the union of England and Scotland which occured when James VI of Scotland  became also James I of England in 1606. The red cross is a flag that precedes this see: http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/thumb/e/e2/240px-Flags_of_the_Union_Jack.png This 'union' flag combines the cross of St George with that of St. Andrew. The red cross refers only to England separately from Scotland, it is not the flag of Great Britain (England & Scotland) after 1606. see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_George's_Cross Tttom1 (talk) 06:15, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

 * Great Britain only came into existence with the 1707 Act of Union, while previously England and Scotland remained separate countries with the same monarch, much as the various Commonwealth contries are today. MartinMcCann (talk) 13:23, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
 * So after 1707 its this flag: and before 1707 it is this flag: 🏴. OK.  How are the Scots & Welsh contingents at Blenheim to be handled?Tttom1 (talk) 17:04, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Wales is part of the Kingdom of England, and technically there weren't any Scottish Regiments present - they were transfered to the English establishment for service overseas. MartinMcCann (talk) 18:19, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

removal of "Holy Roman Empire"
I am glad to see that Centurion Z1 has replaced references to the Holy Roman Empire, by references to the Habsburg Monarchy. I have done the same for what Vienna was capital of, in the first paragraph. Note that Bavaria was part of the Holy Roman Empire, but was fighting against the Habsburgs. Maproom (talk) 10:23, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.238.248.173 (talk) 04:54, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Confer the terms of the Westphalian Peace 1648. The members of the Empire were allowed to have own foreign relations and alliances. 78.49.3.120 (talk) 00:56, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

You have to distinguish between the territories of the Holy Roman Empire and the possesions of its members outside these territories. The risings in Hungary were never a problem for the Empire but for the House of Habsburg. The Hungarians wanted to get rid of the Habsburg rulers, not of any empire because they were not part of any until 1806, when the "old Empire" was disbanded by Napoleon and the Emperor called himself Emperor of Austira. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.49.3.120 (talk) 01:14, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Wiki problem
There seems to be something wrong with the Wiki. I wanted to edit 2.3 Final Positioning, but when I click Edit the source for 3. Battle comes up. Doesn't matter hugely, I only wanted to correct some English grammar; but if a Wikipedian can access the whole page perhaps the faulty source structure can be fixed? Edetic (talk) 14:05, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Blind/Blenheim
Any word on why the village of Blindheim is known "in English" as Blenheim? An 18th century typo? Sca (talk) 20:24, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

 * It's due to a mispronunciation by one of Marborough's officers. But there're more placename typos which made their way also into this article: Ober-/Unterglau (should be Ober-/Unterglauheim). - MfG Knut Grünitz —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.96.59.83 (talk) 16:40, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
 * They're not typos, merely Anglicisations. Munich, not München etc. Rebel Redcoat (talk) 22:46, 17 May 2008 (UTC)
 * In case of Blenheim/Blindheim this has become an international accepted "Anglicisation" - although due to wrong pronunciation. But the Glauheims are simple typos and "Anglicisation" is a very weak excuse for bad research. Also note that the full correct name should be Nebelbach (Engl. Nebel Stream) and not simply the "Nebel" ;-) - MfG Knut Grünitz  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.96.42.160 (talk) 13:09, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

 * Nebel being "fog." Sca (talk) 21:19, 22 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Not in this case. As far as I remember "Nebel" derives from an ancient word for "small". So "Nebelbach" simply means "Small Stream". Don't remember the source (so its not for this article ... just for information) but the explanation seems plausible. - MfG Knut Grünitz

 * It's not bad research, merely a reflection of the spelling conventions as used by the sources listed (all of them) in creating this article. Rebel Redcoat (talk) 15:57, 21 May 2008 (UTC)
 * It's bad research about a battle if you only rely on 2nd hand informations from several sources but don't refer to any actual map about the battlefield. By this way not only typos have been copied on and on ... I don't wanna start a flamewar here but I also don't like the usual strict anglocentric view about this battle ;-) - MfG Knut Grünitz

If this article is part of the WikiProject Germany, it would seem proper to state in the opening paragraph that the place the battle got its’ name from is misspelled/anglicisized. Also to state that "in some contries the battle is referred to as the second battle of höchstädt" is a little confusing, considering the fact that three out of four major participants call it höchstädt... MfG koookeee

"general de Coignies"
Under this sobriquet are we to recognize Lieutenant-General Robert Jean Antoine de Franquetot de Coigny (1652-1704)? The pronunciation is identical. His estate at Coigny was raised to a comté by Louis XIV as a mark of his father's service. The comte de Coigny entered the Mousquetaires in 1667 and had a distinguished military career up to his death at Koenigsmacker, Alsace, in August 1704. In 1680 he had been appointed Governor of Caen; he was Lieutenant-General of Louis XIV's armies in 1693, and Director-General of Cavalry in 1694. The Franquetot de Coigny papers are at the University of Nottingham. The family continued to produce Marshals of France through the C18. --Wetman (talk) 21:17, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, Coignies is an alternative spelling. I've changed it to the more common version. Thank you. Rebel Redcoat (talk) 14:47, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

 * Ha! it was just a hunch. Excellent; thank you. --Wetman (talk) 16:51, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

yes you are right Wetman —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jennafern95 (talk • contribs) 08:30, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

Use of protagonist
Does not the use of the word protagonist in 'protagonists march to the Danube' suggest that the army of Marlborough is the good side versus the evil France? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.78.219.59 (talk) 13:47, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Article's tone
The information and sources for this article seem good, but the tone of this article doesn't seem to fit Wikipedia's conventions of style. There is a lot of overt praise in certain sections of how masterful an achievement this victory was and how cunning Malborough's tactics were. Don't get me wrong, I definitely agree that this is a very famous battle and victory. However this is supposed to be non-biased. I would argue reading tbe facts and simply scanning the infobox would lead most people to draw similar conclusions as certain biased sections of this article, without having to break Wikipedia's style rules. SirMinkMay (talk) 06:53, 30 May 2014 (UTC)SirMinkMay

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 1 one external link on Battle of Blenheim. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20091005211235/http://war-and-battle.com:80/Blenheim..html to http://war-and-battle.com/Blenheim..html

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at ).

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 13:42, 28 October 2016 (UTC)

Also the Battle of Blindheim
The current articles states: what are the reliable sources that back that up? A search of Google books for the 21st century: So I am removing the phrase, if it is to be put back then see WP:BURDEN the onus is on the person who restores it to provide proof that is is fairly common name used in reliable sources. -- PBS (talk) 10:31, 4 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Returns 90+ for "Battle of Blenheim". Some of those will be unreliable sources, but the survey shows it is the common English language name for the battle.
 * Returns 5 books books only one of which could be considered reliable.
 * I'd be in favour of keeping it. I don't think there's any onus to prove that the name is used in recent works. Someone may have come across "Battle of Blindheim" in a 19th-century novel, and looked it up in Wikipedia to learn what it was. Maproom (talk) 20:07, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

FA in need of review
This is quite an old FA (from 2006) that has never been reviewed since its promotion. Problems spotted:

 * several "citation needed" tags in the text, and many other non-tagged sentences that need references;
 * prose seems flowery at times:
 * "Eugene, however, became exasperated with the performance of his Imperial cavalry whose third attack had failed: he had already shot two of his troopers to prevent a general flight. Then, declaring in disgust..."
 * "During these events Marlborough was still in the saddle conducting the pursuit of the broken enemy. Pausing for a moment he scribbled on the back of an old tavern bill a note addressed to his wife, Sarah: "I have no time to say more but to beg you will give my duty to the Queen, and let her know her army has had a glorious victory.""
 * "Moreover, the myth of French invincibility had been destroyed and Louis's hopes of an early and victorious peace had been wrenched from his grasp."
 * " To the consternation of the French, the Gens d'Armes were pushed back in terrible confusion, pursued well beyond the Maulweyer stream that flows through Blenheim.[66] "What? Is it possible?" exclaimed the Elector, "the gentlemen of France fleeing?"[67] "

 * Some citation clean-up needed, such as the bare url and the unsourced notes;
 * Some of the quotes seem a bit superfluous:
 * The French and Bavarians, however, were almost as disordered as their opponents, and they too were in need of inspiration from their commander, the Elector, who was seen " ... riding up and down, and inspiring his men with fresh courage."

Due to the lack of inline citations where appropriate, this article does not meet current FA criteria. RetiredDuke (talk) 22:31, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I've been through this as part of the FAR, and have conducted an extensive c/e. Others have also c/e'd, added citations, and the remaining uncited material has been deleted. I am wondering if might be willing to have a look at the image licensing and identify any issues? Otherwise I think we are done here. Peacemaker67  (click to talk to me) 05:01, 28 November 2020 (UTC)

These need a US PD tag: File:Duke-of-Marlborough-signing-Despatch-Blenheim-Bavaria-1704.jpg
 * Done. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 01:42, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

File:John_Churchill_Marlborough_porträtterad_av_Adriaen_van_der_Werff_(1659-1722).jpg
 * Done. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 01:42, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

File:Prinz_Eugene_of_Savoy.PNG
 * Done. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 01:42, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

File:Battle_of_Blenheim_Tapestry.jpg
 * Done. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 01:42, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

File:Camille_d'Hostun_duc_de_Tallard.png
 * This one is a problem, because it doesn't state who the author is (and therefore when they died), and I can't confirm it either. Not sure what licence would suffice in that case. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 03:01, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

File:Battle_of_Blenheim_(1704)@01.JPG
 * Done. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 03:11, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

These need a source: File:March_to_the_Danube_1704.png
 * This is problematic, because User:Rebel Redcoat is retired, so we don't know where the underlying map or the depicted movements come from. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 03:11, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

File:Allied_attack_on_Oberglau.png
 * Same problem with this one, User:Raymond Palmer has also departed. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 03:11, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

 * File:Battle_of_Blenheim_Diorama.jpg likely would not qualify for freedom of panorama. Nikkimaria (talk) 16:59, 28 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I have removed this image. Hog Farm Bacon 01:09, 29 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks Nikkimaria! I'll get onto it. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 21:47, 28 November 2020 (UTC)
 * G'day all, I think the Tallard portrait and the two maps have to go. Thoughts? Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 03:11, 30 November 2020 (UTC)
 * OK, they are now removed. So far as I am concerned, the article is now FA-compliant for image licensing. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 08:15, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Talk:Battle of Blenheim


text:
Battleship

A battleship 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, the commissioning of HMS Dreadnought (1906) 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 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 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 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 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 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 (23) 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 the Gulf War in 1991, and then struck from the U.S. Naval Vessel Register in the 2000s. Many World War II-era battleships remain today as museum ships.

Ships of the line

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 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 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 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 FRENCH SHIP 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 kn, regardless of the wind. This was a potentially decisive advantage in 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).

Ironclads

The adoption of steam power 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.

Explosive shells
Guns that fired explosive or incendiary shells were a major threat to wooden ships, and these weapons quickly became widespread after 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 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 (1858) 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 was ready for action again the very next day.

Iron armor and construction

The development of high-explosive shells made the use of iron armor plate on warships necessary. In 1859 France launched FRENCH IRONCLAD 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 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 HMS Warrior (1860) 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 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 the mid-1870s steel was used as a construction material alongside iron and wood. The French Navy's FRENCH IRONCLAD 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.

Pre-dreadnought battleship

The term "battleship" was officially adopted by the Royal Navy in the re-classification of 1892. By the 1890s, there 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 kn, and an armament of four 12 in guns in two turrets fore and aft with a mixed-caliber secondary battery amidships around the superstructure. An early design with superficial similarity to the pre-dreadnought is the British Devastation-class ironclad of 1871.

The slow-firing 12 in 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 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 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 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, 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 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-class battleship and Virginia-class battleshipes, 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 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.

Dreadnought era
In 1906, the British Royal Navy launched the revolutionary HMS Dreadnought (1906). Created as 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, JAPANESE BATTLESHIP Satsuma, in 1904 and 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, the super-dreadnoughts, were being built.

Origin

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, a large armored warship of 17,000 tons, armed solely with a single calibre main battery (twelve 12-inch [305 mm] guns), carrying 300 mm 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 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 in gun over its smaller counterparts, though some historians take the view that secondary batteries were just as important as 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 was to persuade him of the need to standardise on 12 in 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 kn by steam turbines.

It 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 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 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 a similar design in the Bellerophon-class battleship and St. Vincent-class battleshipes.

An American design, USS South Carolina (BB-26), authorized in 1905 and laid down in December 1906, was another of the first dreadnoughts, but she and her sister, USS Michigan (BB-27), 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 the same broadside, despite having two fewer guns.

Arms race
In 1897, before the revolution in design brought about by HMS Dreadnought (1906), 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 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.

World War I

By virtue of geography, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 SMU U-9 in less than an hour. The British Super-dreadnought HMS Audacious (1912) soon followed suit as she struck 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 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 OTTOMAN IRONCLAD Mesûdiye, which was caught in the Dardanelles by a British submarine and HMS Majestic (1895) and HMS Triumph (1903) were torpedoed by U-21 as well as HMS Formidable (1898), HMS Cornwallis (1901), HMS Britannia (1904) etc., 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 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 (1898) by OTTOMAN DESTROYER Muâvenet-i Millîye during 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 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.

Inter-war period
For many years, Germany simply had no battleships. The Armistice with Germany required that most of 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 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 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 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 the weights of ships. Designs like the projected British N3-class battleship, the first American South Dakota-class battleship, and the Japanese Kii-class battleship—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.

Rise of air power

As early as 1914, the British Admiral Percy Scott predicted that battleships would soon be made irrelevant by aircraft. By 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 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 the "unsinkable" German World War I battleship SMS Ostfriesland and the American pre-dreadnought USS Alabama (BB-8).

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 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 the U.S. Navy's nascent aircraft carrier program.

Rearmament
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 a large block superstructure nicknamed the "Queen Anne's castle", such as in HMS Queen Elizabeth (1913) and HMS Warspite (03), which would be used in the new conning towers of the King George V-class battleship (1939) 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 the JAPANESE BATTLESHIP Hiei received a more modern bridge tower that would influence the new Yamato-class battleship. 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 USS West Virginia (BB-48) and USS California (BB-44)) were rebuilt with tower masts, for an appearance similar to their Iowa-class battleship contemporaries. Radar, which 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 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 the King George V-class battleship (1939). It was in the Mediterranean that navies remained most committed to battleship warfare. France intended to build six battleships of the Dunkerque-class battleship and Richelieu-class battleshipes, and the Italians four Littorio-class battleship ships. Neither navy built significant aircraft carriers. The U.S. preferred to spend limited funds on aircraft carriers until the South Dakota-class battleship. Japan, also prioritising aircraft carriers, nevertheless began work on three mammoth Yamatos (although the third, JAPANESE AIRCRAFT CARRIER 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, SPANISH BATTLESHIP España and SPANISH BATTLESHIP 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 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 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 the non-intervention blockade. On May 29, 1937, two Republican aircraft managed to bomb the German pocket battleship GERMAN CRUISER Deutschland outside Ibiza, causing severe damage and loss of life. GERMAN CRUISER 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.

World War II

The GERMAN BATTLESHIP Schleswig-Holstein—an obsolete pre-dreadnought—fired 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 (BB-63). 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 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.

In the first year of the war, armored warships defied predictions that aircraft would dominate naval warfare. GERMAN BATTLESHIP Scharnhorst and GERMAN BATTLESHIP Gneisenau surprised and sank the aircraft carrier HMS Glorious off western Norway in June 1940. This engagement marked the only time a fleet carrier was sunk by surface gunnery. In the attack on Mers-el-Kébir, British battleships opened fire on the French battleships in the harbor near Oran in Algeria with their heavy guns. The fleeing French ships were then pursued by planes from aircraft carriers.

The subsequent years of the war saw many demonstrations of the maturity of the aircraft carrier as a strategic naval weapon and its effectiveness against battleships. The British air attack on the Italian naval base at Taranto sank one Italian battleship and damaged two more. The same Swordfish torpedo bombers played a crucial role in sinking the German battleship GERMAN BATTLESHIP Bismarck.

On December 7, 1941, the Japanese launched a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. Within a short time, five of eight U.S. battleships were sunk or sinking, with the rest damaged. All three American aircraft carriers were out to sea, however, and evaded destruction. The sinking of the British battleship HMS Prince of Wales (53) and battlecruiser HMS Repulse (1916), demonstrated the vulnerability of a battleship to air attack while at sea without sufficient air cover, settling the argument begun by Mitchell in 1921. Both warships were under way and en route to attack the Japanese amphibious force that had invaded Malaya when they were caught by Japanese land-based bombers and torpedo bombers on December 10, 1941.

At many of the early crucial battles of the Pacific, for instance Coral Sea and Midway, battleships were either absent or overshadowed as carriers launched wave after wave of planes into the attack at a range of hundreds of miles. In later battles in the Pacific, battleships primarily performed shore bombardment in support of amphibious landings and provided anti-aircraft defense as escort for the carriers. Even the largest battleships ever constructed, Japan's Yamato-class battleship, which carried a main battery of nine 18-inch (46 cm) guns and were designed as a principal strategic weapon, were never given a chance to show their potential in the decisive battleship action that figured in Japanese pre-war planning.

The last battleship confrontation in history was the Battle of Surigao Strait, on October 25, 1944, in which a numerically and technically superior American battleship group destroyed a lesser Japanese battleship group by gunfire after it had already been devastated by destroyer torpedo attacks. All but one of the American battleships in this confrontation had previously been sunk during the attack on Pearl Harbor and subsequently raised and repaired. USS Mississippi (BB-41) fired the last major-caliber salvo of this battle. In April 1945, during the battle for Okinawa, the world's most powerful battleship, the Yamato, was sent out on a suicide mission against a massive U.S. force and sunk by overwhelming pressure from carrier aircraft with nearly all hands lost. After that, Japanese fleet remaining in the mainland was also destroyed by the US naval air force.

Cold War

After World War II, several navies retained their existing battleships, but they were no longer strategically dominant military assets. It soon became apparent that they were no longer worth the considerable cost of construction and maintenance and only one new battleship was commissioned after the war, HMS Vanguard (23). During the war it had been demonstrated that battleship-on-battleship engagements like Leyte Gulf or the sinking of HMS Hood (51) were the exception and not the rule, and with the growing role of aircraft engagement ranges were becoming longer and longer, making heavy gun armament irrelevant. The armor of a battleship was equally irrelevant in the face of a nuclear attack as tactical missiles with a range of 100 km or more could be mounted on the Soviet Kildin-class destroyer and Whiskey-class submarines. By the end of the 1950s, smaller vessel classes such as destroyers, which formerly offered no noteworthy opposition to battleships, now were capable of eliminating battleships from outside the range of the ship's heavy guns.

The remaining battleships met a variety of ends. USS Arkansas (BB-33) and JAPANESE BATTLESHIP Nagato were sunk during the testing of nuclear weapons in Operation Crossroads in 1946. Both battleships proved resistant to nuclear air burst but vulnerable to underwater nuclear explosions(in the case of Arkansas, “vulnerable” due to her proximity to the bomb crushing, flipping, and sinking her in less than a second). The ITALIAN BATTLESHIP Giulio Cesare was taken by the Soviets as reparations and renamed Novorossiysk; she was sunk by a leftover German mine in the Black Sea on October 29, 1955. The two Andrea Doria-class battleship ships were scrapped in 1956. The French FRENCH BATTLESHIP Lorraine was scrapped in 1954, FRENCH BATTLESHIP Richelieu in 1968, and FRENCH BATTLESHIP Jean Bart in 1970.

The United Kingdom's four surviving King George V-class battleship (1939) ships were scrapped in 1957, and HMS Vanguard (23) followed in 1960. All other surviving British battleships had been sold or broken up by 1949. The Soviet Union's SOVIET BATTLESHIP Marat was scrapped in 1953, SOVIET BATTLESHIP Parizhskaya Kommuna in 1957 and SOVIET BATTLESHIP Oktyabrskaya Revolutsiya (back under her original name, RUSSIAN BATTLESHIP Gangut, since 1942) in 1956–57. Brazil's BRAZILIAN BATTLESHIP Minas Geraes was scrapped in Genoa in 1953, and her sister ship BRAZILIAN BATTLESHIP São Paulo sank during a storm in the Atlantic en route to the breakers in Italy in 1951.

Argentina kept its two Rivadavia-class battleship ships until 1956 and Chile kept CHILEAN BATTLESHIP Almirante Latorre (formerly HMS Canada (1913)) until 1959. The Turkish battlecruiser TCG Yavûz (formerly SMS Goeben, launched in 1911) was scrapped in 1976 after an offer to sell her back to Germany was refused. Sweden had several small coastal-defense battleships, one of which, HSWMS Gustav V, survived until 1970. The Soviets scrapped four large incomplete cruisers in the late 1950s, whilst plans to build a number of new Stalingrad-class battlecruisers were abandoned following the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953. The three old German battleships GERMAN BATTLESHIP Schleswig-Holstein, GERMAN BATTLESHIP Schlesien, and SMS Hessen all met similar ends. Hessen was taken over by the Soviet Union and renamed Tsel. She was scrapped in 1960. Schleswig-Holstein was renamed Borodino, and was used as a target ship until 1960. Schlesien, too, was used as a target ship. She was broken up between 1952 and 1957.

The Iowa-class battleships gained a new lease of life in the U.S. Navy as fire support ships. Radar and computer-controlled gunfire could be aimed with pinpoint accuracy to target. The U.S. recommissioned all four Iowa-class battleships for the Korean War and the USS New Jersey (BB-62) for the Vietnam War. These were primarily used for shore bombardment, New Jersey firing nearly 6,000 rounds of 16 inch shells and over 14,000 rounds of 5 inch projectiles during her tour on the gunline, seven times more rounds against shore targets in Vietnam than she had fired in the Second World War.

As part of Navy Secretary John F. Lehman's effort to build a 600-ship Navy in the 1980s, and in response to the commissioning of Kirov by the Soviet Union, the United States recommissioned all four Iowa-class battleships. On several occasions, battleships were support ships in carrier battle groups, or led their own battleship battle group. These were modernized to carry Tomahawk (TLAM) missiles, with New Jersey seeing action bombarding Lebanon in 1983 and 1984, while USS Missouri (BB-63) and USS Wisconsin (BB-64) fired their 16-inch (406 mm) guns at land targets and launched missiles during Operation Desert Storm in 1991. Wisconsin served as the TLAM strike commander for the Persian Gulf, directing the sequence of launches that marked the opening of Desert Storm, firing a total of 24 TLAMs during the first two days of the campaign. The primary threat to the battleships were Iraqi shore-based surface-to-surface missiles; Missouri was targeted by two Iraqi Silkworm missiles, with one missing and another being intercepted by the British destroyer HMS Gloucester (D96).

End of the battleship era

After USS Indiana (BB-58) was stricken in 1962, the four Iowa-class ships were the only battleships in commission or reserve anywhere in the world. There was an extended debate when the four Iowa ships were finally decommissioned in the early 1990s. USS Iowa (BB-61) and USS Wisconsin (BB-64) were maintained to a standard whereby they could be rapidly returned to service as fire support vessels, pending the development of a superior fire support vessel. These last two battleships were finally stricken from the U.S. Naval Vessel Register in 2006. The Military Balance and Russian Foreign Military Review states the U.S. Navy listed one battleship in the reserve (Naval Inactive Fleet/Reserve 2nd Turn) in 2010. The Military Balance states the U.S. Navy listed no battleships in the reserve in 2014.

When the last Iowa-class ship was finally stricken from the Naval Vessel Registry, no battleships remained in service or in reserve with any navy worldwide. A number are preserved as museum ships, either afloat or in drydock. The U.S. has eight battleships on display: USS Massachusetts (BB-59), USS North Carolina (BB-55), USS Alabama (BB-60), USS Iowa (BB-61), USS New Jersey (BB-62), USS Missouri (BB-63), USS Wisconsin (BB-64), and USS Texas (BB-35). Missouri and New Jersey are museums at Pearl Harbor and Camden, New Jersey, respectively. Iowa is on display as an educational attraction at the Los Angeles Waterfront in San Pedro, California. Wisconsin now serves as a museum ship in Norfolk, Virginia. Massachusetts, which has the distinction of never having lost a man during service, is on display at the Battleship Cove naval museum in Fall River, Massachusetts. Texas, the first battleship turned into a museum, is normally on display at the San Jacinto Battleground State Historic Site, near Houston, but as of 2021 is closed for repairs. North Carolina is on display in Wilmington, North Carolina. Alabama is on display in Mobile, Alabama. The wreck of USS Arizona (BB-39), sunk during the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941, is designated a historical landmark and national gravesite. The wreck of USS Utah (BB-31), also sunk during the attack, is a historic landmark.

The only other 20th-century battleship on display is the Japanese pre-dreadnought JAPANESE BATTLESHIP Mikasa. A replica of the ironclad battleship CHINESE IRONCLAD Dingyuan was built by the Weihai Port Bureau in 2003 and is on display in Weihai, China.

Former battleships that were previously used as museum ships included USS Oregon (BB-3), SMS Tegetthoff, and SMS Erzherzog Franz Ferdinand.

Doctrine

Battleships were the embodiment of sea power. For American naval officer Alfred Thayer Mahan and his followers, a strong navy was vital to the success of a nation, and control of the seas was vital for the projection of force on land and overseas. Mahan's theory, proposed in The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660–1783 of 1890, dictated the role of the battleship was to sweep the enemy from the seas. While the work of escorting, blockading, and raiding might be done by cruisers or smaller vessels, the presence of the battleship was a potential threat to any convoy escorted by any vessels other than capital ships. This concept of "potential threat" can be further generalized to the mere existence (as opposed to presence) of a powerful fleet tying the opposing fleet down. This concept came to be known as a "fleet in being"—an idle yet mighty fleet forcing others to spend time, resource and effort to actively guard against it.

Mahan went on to say victory could only be achieved by engagements between battleships, which came to be known as the decisive battle doctrine in some navies, while targeting merchant ships (commerce raiding or guerre de course, as posited by the Jeune École) could never succeed.

Mahan was highly influential in naval and political circles throughout the age of the battleship, calling for a large fleet of the most powerful battleships possible. Mahan's work developed in the late 1880s, and by the end of the 1890s it had acquired much international influence on naval strategy; in the end, it was adopted by many major navies (notably the British, American, German, and Japanese). The strength of Mahanian opinion was important in the development of the battleships arms races, and equally important in the agreement of the Powers to limit battleship numbers in the interwar era.

The "fleet in being" suggested battleships could simply by their existence tie down superior enemy resources. This in turn was believed to be able to tip the balance of a conflict even without a battle. This suggested even for inferior naval powers a battleship fleet could have important strategic effect.

Tactics
While the role of battleships in both World Wars reflected Mahanian doctrine, the details of battleship deployment were more complex. Unlike ships of the line, the battleships of the late 19th and early 20th centuries had significant vulnerability to torpedoes and mines—because efficient mines and torpedoes did not exist before that —which could be used by relatively small and inexpensive craft. The Jeune École doctrine of the 1870s and 1880s recommended placing torpedo boats alongside battleships; these would hide behind the larger ships until gun-smoke obscured visibility enough for them to dart out and fire their torpedoes. While this tactic was made less effective by the development of smokeless propellant, the threat from more capable torpedo craft (later including submarines) remained. By the 1890s, the Royal Navy had developed the first destroyers, which were initially designed to intercept and drive off any attacking torpedo boats. During the First World War and subsequently, battleships were rarely deployed without a protective screen of destroyers.

Battleship doctrine emphasized the concentration of the battlegroup. In order for this concentrated force to be able to bring its power to bear on a reluctant opponent (or to avoid an encounter with a stronger enemy fleet), battlefleets needed some means of locating enemy ships beyond horizon range. This was provided by scouting forces; at various stages battlecruisers, cruisers, destroyers, airships, submarines and aircraft were all used. (With the development of radio, direction finding and traffic analysis would come into play, as well, so even shore stations, broadly speaking, joined the battlegroup. ) So for most of their history, battleships operated surrounded by squadrons of destroyers and cruisers. The North Sea campaign of the First World War illustrates how, despite this support, the threat of mine and torpedo attack, and the failure to integrate or appreciate the capabilities of new techniques, seriously inhibited the operations of the Royal Navy Grand Fleet, the greatest battleship fleet of its time.

Strategic and diplomatic impact
The presence of battleships had a great psychological and diplomatic impact. Similar to possessing nuclear weapons today, the ownership of battleships served to enhance a nation's force projection.

Even during the Cold War, the psychological impact of a battleship was significant. In 1946, USS Missouri was dispatched to deliver the remains of the ambassador from Turkey, and her presence in Turkish and Greek waters staved off a possible Soviet thrust into the Balkan region. In September 1983, when Druze militia in Lebanon's Shouf Mountains fired upon U.S. Marine peacekeepers, the arrival of USS New Jersey stopped the firing. Gunfire from New Jersey later killed militia leaders.

Value for money
Battleships were the largest and most complex, and hence the most expensive warships of their time; as a result, the value of investment in battleships has always been contested. As the French politician Etienne Lamy wrote in 1879, "The construction of battleships is so costly, their effectiveness so uncertain and of such short duration, that the enterprise of creating an armored fleet seems to leave fruitless the perseverance of a people". The Jeune École school of thought of the 1870s and 1880s sought alternatives to the crippling expense and debatable utility of a conventional battlefleet. It proposed what would nowadays be termed a sea denial strategy, based on fast, long-ranged cruisers for commerce raiding and torpedo boat flotillas to attack enemy ships attempting to blockade French ports. The ideas of the Jeune École were ahead of their time; it was not until the 20th century that efficient mines, torpedoes, submarines, and aircraft were available that allowed similar ideas to be effectively implemented. The determination of powers such as Germany to build battlefleets with which to confront much stronger rivals has been criticized by historians, who emphasise the futility of investment in a battlefleet that has no chance of matching its opponent in an actual battle.

Former operators

 * : lost its two Dingyuan-class battleships Dingyuan and Zhenyuan during the Battle of Weihaiwei in 1895.
 * : lost its entire navy following the collapse of the Empire at the end of World War I.
 * : its only battleship, KB Jugoslavija, was sunk by Italian frogmen during the 1918 Raid on Pula.
 * : lost its entire navy upon its conquest by the Bolsheviks in 1921.
 * : sole surviving battleship TCG Turgut Reis was decommissioned in 1933.
 * : lost its two surviving España-class battleships during the Spanish Civil War, both in 1937.
 * : lost its two Mississippi-class battleships during the German bombing of Salamis in 1941.
 * : scuttled its two surviving Deutschland-class battleships in 1945, during the closing months of World War II.
 * : surrendered its sole surviving battleship, Nagato to the United States following World War II.
 * : decommissioned its last battleship Minas Geraes in 1952.
 * : decommissioned its two Andrea Doria-class battleships in 1953.
 * : decommissioned its last two Gangut-class battleships in 1956.
 * : decommissioned its last battleship ARA Rivadavia in 1957.
 * : decommissioned its last battleship, Almirante Latorre in 1958.
 * : decommissioned its last battleship, HMS Vanguard in 1960.
 * : decommissioned its last battleship, Jean Bart in 1970.
 * : decommissioned its last battleship USS Missouri in 1992. She was the last active battleship of any navy.

title: Battleship


text:
Bifröst

In Norse mythology, Bifröst, also called Bilröst, is a burning rainbow bridge that reaches between Midgard (Earth) and Asgard, the realm of the gods. The bridge is attested as Bilröst in the Poetic Edda, compiled in the 13th century from earlier traditional sources; as Bifröst in the Prose Edda, written in the 13th century by Snorri Sturluson; and in the poetry of skalds. Both the Poetic Edda and the Prose Edda alternately refer to the bridge as Ásbrú (Old Norse "Æsir's bridge").

According to the Prose Edda, the bridge ends in heaven at Himinbjörg, the residence of the god Heimdall, who guards it from the jötnar. The bridge's destruction during Ragnarök by the forces of Muspell is foretold. Scholars have proposed that the bridge may have originally represented the Milky Way and have noted parallels between the bridge and another bridge in Norse mythology, Gjallarbrú.

Etymology
Scholar Andy Orchard suggests that Bifröst may mean "shimmering path." He notes that the first element of Bilröst—bil (meaning "a moment")—"suggests the fleeting nature of the rainbow," which he connects to the first element of Bifröst—the Old Norse verb bifa (meaning "to shimmer" or "to shake")—noting that the element evokes notions of the "lustrous sheen" of the bridge. Austrian Germanist Rudolf Simek says that Bifröst either means "the swaying road to heaven" (also citing bifa) or, if Bilröst is the original form of the two (which Simek says is likely), "the fleetingly glimpsed rainbow" (possibly connected to bil, perhaps meaning "moment, weak point").

Attestations
Two poems in the Poetic Edda and two books in the Prose Edda provide information about the bridge:

Poetic Edda

In the Poetic Edda, the bridge is mentioned in the poems Grímnismál and Fáfnismál, where it is referred to as Bilröst. In one of two stanzas in the poem Grímnismál that mentions the bridge, Grímnir (the god Odin in disguise) provides the young Agnarr with cosmological knowledge, including that Bilröst is the best of bridges. Later in Grímnismál, Grímnir notes that Asbrú "burns all with flames" and that, every day, the god Thor wades through the waters of Körmt and Örmt and the two Kerlaugar:

In Fáfnismál, the dying wyrm Fafnir tells the hero Sigurd that, during the events of Ragnarök, bearing spears, gods will meet at Óskópnir. From there, the gods will cross Bilröst, which will break apart as they cross over it, causing their horses to dredge through an immense river.

Prose Edda

The bridge is mentioned in the Prose Edda books Gylfaginning and Skáldskaparmál, where it is referred to as Bifröst. In chapter 13 of Gylfaginning, Gangleri (King Gylfi in disguise) asks the enthroned figure of High what way exists between heaven and earth. Laughing, High replies that the question isn't an intelligent one, and goes on to explain that the gods built a bridge from heaven and earth. He incredulously asks Gangleri if he has not heard the story before. High says that Gangleri must have seen it, and notes that Gangleri may call it a rainbow. High says that the bridge consists of three colors, has great strength, "and is built with art and skill to a greater extent than other constructions."

High notes that, although the bridge is strong, it will break when "Muspell's lads" attempt to cross it, and their horses will have to make do with swimming over "great rivers." Gangleri says that it doesn't seem that the gods "built the bridge in good faith if it is liable to break, considering that they can do as they please." High responds that the gods do not deserve blame for the breaking of the bridge, for "there is nothing in this world that will be secure when Muspell's sons attack."

In chapter 15 of Gylfaginning, Just-As-High says that Bifröst is also called Asbrú, and that every day the gods ride their horses across it (with the exception of Thor, who instead wades through the boiling waters of the rivers Körmt and Örmt) to reach Urðarbrunnr, a holy well where the gods have their court. As a reference, Just-As-High quotes the second of the two stanzas in Grímnismál that mention the bridge (see above). Gangleri asks if fire burns over Bifröst. High says that the red in the bridge is burning fire, and, without it, the frost jotnar and mountain jotnar would "go up into heaven" if anyone who wanted could cross Bifröst. High adds that, in heaven, "there are many beautiful places" and that "everywhere there has divine protection around it."

In chapter 17, High tells Gangleri that the location of Himinbjörg "stands at the edge of heaven where Bifrost reaches heaven." While describing the god Heimdallr in chapter 27, High says that Heimdallr lives in Himinbjörg by Bifröst, and guards the bridge from mountain jotnar while sitting at the edge of heaven. In chapter 34, High quotes the first of the two Grímnismál stanzas that mention the bridge. In chapter 51, High foretells the events of Ragnarök. High says that, during Ragnarök, the sky will split open, and from the split will ride forth the "sons of Muspell". When the "sons of Muspell" ride over Bifröst it will break, "as was said above."

In the Prose Edda book Skáldskaparmál, the bridge receives a single mention. In chapter 16, a work by the 10th century skald Úlfr Uggason is provided, where Bifröst is referred to as "the powers' way."

Theories

In his translation of the Prose Edda, Henry Adams Bellows comments that the Grímnismál stanza mentioning Thor and the bridge stanza may mean that "Thor has to go on foot in the last days of the destruction, when the bridge is burning. Another interpretation, however, is that when Thor leaves the heavens (i.e., when a thunder-storm is over) the rainbow-bridge becomes hot in the sun."

John Lindow points to a parallel between Bifröst, which he notes is "a bridge between earth and heaven, or earth and the world of the gods", and the bridge Gjallarbrú, "a bridge between earth and the underworld, or earth and the world of the dead." Several scholars have proposed that Bifröst may represent the Milky Way.

Adaptations
In the final scene of Richard Wagner's 1869 opera Das Rheingold, the god Froh summons a rainbow bridge, over which the gods cross to enter Valhalla. In J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium, the "level bridge" of "The Fall of Númenor", an early version of the Akallabeth, recalls Bifröst. It departs from the earth at a tangent, allowing immortal Elves but not mortal Men to travel the Old Straight Road to the lost earthly paradise of Valinor after the world has been remade.

Bifröst appears in comic books associated with the Marvel Comics character Thor and in subsequent adaptations of those comic books. In the Marvel Cinematic Universe film Thor, Jane Foster describes the Bifröst as an Einstein–Rosen bridge, which functions as a means of transportation across space in a short period of time.

title: Bifröst


text:
Talk:Battleship

"Full Speed Ahead and Damn the Torpedoes"
This article states, "Unlike the ship of the line, the battleships of the late 19th and early 20th centuries had significant vulnerability to torpedoes and mines..." Wooden warships were indeed vulnerable to torpedoes (although they what we would call mines today). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.171.131.189 (talk) 17:38, 15 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Good point. I would take it to mean, before mines were invented, there was no hazard, but clarification would be good.  TREKphiler   any time you're ready, Uhura  17:44, 15 July 2015 (UTC)

HMS Agamemnon
the caption for the diagram of HMS Agamemnon says that she was typical of later predreadnoughts, which is not true. There was ONE other class of predreadnoughts with an intermediate battery of similar caliber, and it was british as well. American and Italian Vessels had 8" secondary while Japanese had 10", only england used 9.2" I think the caption should be changed to say that she was typical of later british predreadnoughts. Wandavianempire (talk) 20:43, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

“Major intimitation factor”
Is this a misspelling of intimidation? 2607:FEA8:8760:A900:1BE:E642:694E:8A15 (talk) 17:00, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

 * Yes, that looks like a typo or other error. It's fixed now. Thanks -Fnlayson (talk) 17:56, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

idk

213.1.218.58 (talk) 12:10, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

title: Talk:Battleship