Use of battleships during World War II
World War II saw the end of the battleship as the dominant force in the world's navies. At the outbreak of the war, large fleets of battleships—many inherited from the dreadnought era decades before—were one of the decisive forces in naval thinking. By the end of the war, battleship construction was all but halted, and almost every remaining battleship was retired or scrapped within a few years of its end.
Some pre-war commanders had seen the aircraft carrier as the capital ship of the future, a view which was reinforced by the devastating Pearl Harbor attack in 1941. The resultant Pacific War saw aircraft carriers and submarines take precedence. There were just two engagements in the Pacific Theater when battleships fought each other, and only three such engagements in the Atlantic. Instead, they were used to add to fleet air defense, for shore bombardment, and in several cases as fixed port defense batteries.
Battleships remained the most heavily protected ships afloat; nonetheless, sixteen were sunk or crippled by bombs or torpedoes delivered by aircraft, while three more were sunk by submarine-launched torpedoes. The war also saw the development of the first guided bombs, which would make it much easier for aircraft to sink battleships in the future.
Operations.
The German pre-dreadnought battleship 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 . Between the two events, it became clear that battleships were now essentially irrelevant, and aircraft carriers were the new principal ships of the fleet.
Still, battleships played a part in major engagements in Atlantic, Pacific and Mediterranean theatres. In the Atlantic, the Germans experimented with taking the battleship beyond conventional fleet action, using their fast battleships as independent commerce raiders. Although there were a few battleship-on-battleship engagements, battleships had little impact on the destroyer and submarine Battle of the Atlantic, and aircraft carriers determined the outcome of most of the decisive fleet clashes of the Pacific War.
In June 1940 and surprised and sank the lightly escorted aircraft carrier off western Norway This engagement marked the first and last time surface gunnery sank a fleet carrier. In the Attack on Mers-el-Kébir, British capital ships opened fire on the French battleships harboured in Algeria with their own heavy guns, and the fleeing French ships were then pursued by planes from aircraft carriers.
Taranto and Matapan.
In late 1940 and 1941, a range of engagements saw battleships attacked by carrier aircraft.
The first example of the power of naval aviation was the British air attack on the Italian naval base at Taranto that took place on the night of 11–12 November 1940. A small number of Royal Navy aircraft attacked the Italian fleet at harbour, succeeding in sinking one Italian battleship and damaging two others.
Importantly, the attack forced the Italian navy to change tactics and seek battle against the superior British Navy, which resulted in their defeat at the Battle of Cape Matapan. In that battle, British carrier-deployed torpedo bombers damaged an Italian battleship sufficiently to force it to withdraw from the main force, and then at night British battleships sank the Italian force's three heavy cruisers.
"Scharnhorst class".
The "Scharnhorst" class were the first capital ships, alternatively referred to as battlecruisers or battleships, built for Nazi Germany's "Kriegsmarine" after World War I. The class comprised two vessels: the lead ship and . "Scharnhorst" was launched first, and so she is considered to be the lead ship by some sources; however, they are also referred to as the "Gneisenau" class in some other sources, as "Gneisenau" was the first to be laid down and commissioned. They marked the beginning of German naval rearmament after the Treaty of Versailles. The ships were armed with nine 28 cm (11 in) SK C/34 guns in three triple turrets, though there were plans to replace these weapons with six 38 cm (15 in) SK C/34 guns in twin turrets.
The battleship war in the Atlantic was driven by the attempts of German capital ship commerce raiders to influence the Battle of the Atlantic by destroying convoys supplying the United Kingdom and later the Soviet Union. The superior numbers of British surface units devoted themselves to protecting the convoys, and to seek-and-destroy missions against the German ships, assisted by both naval and land-based aircraft and by sabotage attacks. "Scharnhorst" and "Gneisenau" conducted successful raids during Operation Berlin. While attempting to attack Arctic Convoys, "Scharnhorst" was sunk at the Battle of North Cape by a British force of destroyers, cruisers, and the battleship "Duke of York". "Gneisenau" was bombed while in dry dock and never repaired.
"Bismarck class".
Germany's next two capital ships were the and the , armed with eight 38 cm (15 in) SK C/34 in twin turrets. On 24 May 1941, during its attempt to break out into the North Atlantic as a commerce raider, "Bismarck" engaged the British battleship and the battlecruiser . Due in part to the "Bismarck"'s superior range-finding and accuracy, it soon sank "Hood" with an apparent hit to her magazines. "Bismarck" and "Prince of Wales" hit each other three times, the damage compelling "Prince of Wales" to withdraw and "Bismarck" to call off its commerce raiding operation, as part of its fuel reserve had been contaminated with salt water. While the "Bismarck" was heading for St. Nazaire, the Royal Navy continued to hunt it, and eventually an attack by Swordfish biplane torpedo bombers from the aircraft carrier disabled "Bismarck"'s rudder and significantly reduced her speed. This enabled two Royal Navy battleships ("HMS King George V" and "HMS Rodney"), cruisers and destroyers to close in for the kill.
"Tirpitz" was positioned in Norway to attack Arctic Convoys, but never managed to engage any ships and was sunk in port by British bombers.
Normandy.
Both British and American battleships participated in the Allied invasion of Normandy during Operation Overlord, being used to bombard German coastal defences. Battleships proved instrumental in destroying the heaviest and most inland fortifications that could not be neutralised by smaller warships such as destroyers due to their lesser firepower and range and which aircraft were less efficient at reducing due to frequent cloud cover and poor visibility in the English Channel. Additionally, the presence of Allied battleships effectively inhibited the movement of German reinforcements along the French coastline because of the suppressive potential of their main batteries. Battleships also proved their continued worth as vessels of sea control by deterring the sortie of the remaining heavy German warships into the North Atlantic during the operation.
The Pacific battles.
In many of the 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. The primary tasks for battleships in the Pacific became shore bombardment and anti-aircraft defense for the carriers. The two largest battleships ever constructed, Japan's , which carried a main battery of nine 18.1-inch (460 millimetre) guns were designed to be a principal strategic weapon, but "Yamato" fired her main guns at enemy warships in only one engagement, while "Musashi" never fired her main guns at enemy ships. They were hampered by technical deficiencies (slow battleships were incapable of operating with fast carriers), faulty military doctrine (the Japanese waited for a "decisive battle", which never came), and defective dispositions (as at Midway).
Pearl Harbor.
Before hostilities broke out in the Pacific Theatre, extensive pre-war planning centered around dreadnoughts. The Royal Navy could not achieve parity with the estimated nine Japanese capital ships in Southeast Asia, since doing so would leave only a handful of ships to use against Nazi Germany. However, Prime Minister Winston Churchill was optimistic about the improving situation in the North Atlantic and Mediterranean and allocating two ships to the defense of Singapore was seen as a compromise. Furthermore, the U.S. Navy later agreed to send its Pacific Fleet with its eight powerful battleships to Singapore in the event of hostilities with Japan.
On 7 December 1941 the Japanese launched a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. Five out of eight U.S. battleships were quickly either sunk or sinking, with the rest seriously damaged (of those sunk two were total losses). The Japanese thus neutralized the U.S. battleship force in the Pacific by an air attack and showed the vulnerability to air attack of warships lying at anchor, as at Taranto. The loss of the battleships led the US Navy to rely on aircraft carriers as capital ships to make counterattacks against the Japanese, such as the Doolittle Raid in April 1942, and to engage Japanese naval forces at the Battle of the Coral Sea in May 1942 and the Battle of Midway in June 1942.
The sinking of the British battleship and her escort, the battlecruiser , further demonstrated the vulnerability of a battleship to air attack, in this case while at sea without air cover. Both ships were on their way to assist in the defense of Singapore when Japanese land-based bombers and fighters found and sank them on 10 December 1941. "Prince of Wales" had the unwanted distinction of being the first modern battleship sunk by aircraft while underway and able to defend herself.
Midway.
Commonly understood as a victory of carriers, Midway showed up deficiencies in Japanese operational planning. Yamamoto, considering his battleships the most valuable units, kept them far to the rear, in line with traditional practice. This placed them too far away to assist Nagumo (and they would have been too slow to keep up with him in any case). Yet, when Nagumo's carriers were sunk, Yamamoto lost an opportunity to salvage something. Carriers, for all their evident potency, were virtually defenseless at night, and Fletcher might have been dealt a crushing blow by "Yamato" the night of 6–7 June, had Yamamoto stayed closer.
Guadalcanal.
Initially, when the U.S. entered the war in December 1941, none of the nine Pacific Fleet battleships were available. One was being overhauled at Puget Sound Navy Yard from June 1941 until March 1942. Of the eight at Pearl Harbor, two were total losses and six had been sunk or crippled and were sent to West Coast shipyards for repair and reconstruction. With a top speed of only 21 knots, they would not have been able to keep up with the fleet carriers in any case. The new fast battleships of the and were still undergoing trials. "North Carolina" and "South Dakota" were ready by summer of 1942 and provided anti-aircraft defense during the Eastern Solomons and Santa Cruz Islands carrier battles.
By contrast, the Imperial Japanese Navy had the advantage of a dozen operational battleships early in the war, but chose not to deploy them in any significant engagements. The two and two s, despite their extensive modernization and respectable speeds, were relegated to training and home defense, while the two and two were being saved due to fuel limitations for a "decisive battle", which never came. In fact, the only Japanese battleships to see much action in the early stages were the four s, which served mostly as carrier escorts due to their high speed and antiaircraft armament. U.S. fast battleships "North Carolina" and were available after the Battle of Midway and played key roles in defending U.S. carriers against air attacks, though "North Carolina" was temporarily put out of action by , which was credited with sinking escorting her.
During the later part of the Guadalcanal campaign in fall 1942, Japan and the U.S. were both forced to commit their battleships to surface combat, due to the need to carry out night operations, and because of the exhaustion of their carrier forces. The Japanese used battleships a single time for shore bombardment, sending and against Henderson Field. In the most successful Japanese battleship action of the war, this action killed 41 defenders and put the airfield out of action for about 12 hours. During the First Naval Battle of Guadalcanal, battleships and attempted a second bombardment of Henderson Field but were driven off by a force of U.S. cruisers and destroyers. Several USN ships were lost and others were crippled, but they inflicted critical damage on "Hiei", which was abandoned after being subject to repeated air attacks that made salvage impossible. The following evening, at the Second Naval Battle of Guadalcanal on 15 November 1942, the United