A battleship is a large armored warship with a main battery consisting of large caliber guns. Some of these guns were as large as 18″ and fired a shell the size of a Volkswagon over 20 miles and beyond the horizon. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries the battleship was the most powerful type of warship, and a fleet of battleships was considered vital for any nation that desired to maintain command of the sea.
The term battleship came into formal 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 into Britain’s Royal Navy heralded a revolution in battleship design. Subsequent battleship designs, influenced by HMS Dreadnought, were referred to as “dreadnoughts”, though the term eventually became obsolete as they became the only type of battleship in common use. At the end of World War 2 America and her incredible battleships reached the zenith in both battleship designs, propulsion and armament. Many of the US Navy’s battleships saw service into the late 70’s and early 80’s as well with missile systems and advanced technologies but the battleship layout and design was forever changed in World War 2 not to be seen again.
