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Battleships! 2
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Jan 26, 2023, 11:21 AM
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It turns out that everyone wants an indestructible Death Machine.
And as popular as rolling ones are, floating ones were just a popular.
Last time in Battleship History we went from Civil War ironclads up to the pre-WW1 arms race.
The Pre-Dreadnaught arms race was crazy, but the Post-Dreadnaught arms race was nothing short of insane. Industrialized nations were basically building a battleship a year, sometimes two, at tremendous national cost. And little navies, like Peru and Brazil, simply couldn’t keep up.
Here's a chart of the madness. More, and bigger.
Keep ‘em coming, boys! The race is on!
Mo Big Guns!
The HMS Dreadnaught was soon surpassed in size, armament, and speed. But the formula remained a winner. All big guns, great speed, good armor.
Sometimes the battleship rush led to national embarrassment. In their enthusiasm to continue pushing the design envelope, British industry actually built a battleship for Japan that was superior to even British warships. That was a no no. The Japanese quickly copied it three more times. Here they are, in 1912ish.
4 Japanese Kongo Class Battleships. Kongo (from the British), Kirishima, Haruna, and Hiei. Courtesy of King George V of England. Ouch. Someone could build a nice little navy with that core of starter ships.
Why George, Why?
The Big Gun race continued right up to WW1, where an unusual paradox evolved around the battleship. Like today’s nukes, you kind of have to have them, but you can’t exactly use them.
Zee the problem? It is a problem with a doomsday machine, no?
It was the same thing with Post-Dreadnaught battleships. They were so expensive to build and maintain that they simply could not be risked. But if they are not risked, then they are not used, so then why build them at all?
Critics said that cheap torpedo boats and mines were just as effective against battleships as other battleships, and they were about to be proven right.
A pint-sized giant slayer: The Torpedo Boat. Why pay for a BB when you can buy 50 of these little beauties for half the price? BB’s in the background.
Still, Big Gun advocates continued to push the envelope. One US Senator in particular was enthralled by the potential of battleships. So he approached the US Navy and said “Design me the biggest battleship that can be built.”
His name was Pitchfork Ben Tillman.
Pitchfork Ben
Now, when a US Senator asks you to run the numbers, you run the numbers. And the results were the “Tillman Battleships”, or “Maximum Battleships”. The navy wasn’t particularly interested in crazy large battleships, but they knew who buttered their bread, and so here we have the results.
For comparison’s sake, the HMS Dreadnaught was 18,000 tons. The Tillman Battleships went up to 80,000 tons.
Ben just happened to sit on the Senate Committee for Naval Affairs back then. And in 1909 the Charleston Naval Yard opened. And in in 1910 America’s first Dreadnaught, the USS South Carolina, was commissioned. Go figure. Probably just coincidence.
The USS South Carolina. BB-26. We’re in the Dreadnaught business, boys!
Battleships had a lot of other uses besides pure combat. You could conduct diplomacy with them, and you could sail them around the world to show other nations how powerful you were. Pre-WW1 was probably the Golden Era of battleships. No real threats, and no real limits.
Great White Fleet World Tour, 1908. US military might on global display.
We’re on word tour, baby!
But no party lasts forever, and next time we’ll see what happens when these battlewagons actually have to live up to their name. That means trading body blows with equal foes, and not just intimidating 3rd world countries with industrial might.
The shortest war in recorded history: The Anglo-Zanzibar War. 1896.
British ships pull up to Zanzibar palace, British ships blow up palace, Zanzibar surrenders. Total elapsed time: 38 minutes. Big Gun Diplomacy.
But now the War To End All Wars is coming, and battleships are going to the front. Stay tuned to see what happens!
Battleships in battle formation. Be still my beating heart.
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