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The oldest remaining dreadnought, USS Texas, was launched in 1912

The dreadnought was the predominant type of battleship of the 20th century. Modelled after the revolutionary HMS Dreadnought of 1906, dreadnoughts were distinguished from previous battleships, known as pre-dreadnoughts, by an 'all-big-gun' armament.

Within a few years of HMS Dreadnought's launch, all navies were building ships inspired by her design. The product of British technical superiority and the willpower of Admiral Jackie Fisher, Dreadnought was no bolt from the blue. The concept of an all-big-gun ship had been in circulation for several years, and the Japanese had even laid down an all-big-gun battleship in 1904.^[1] The arrival of the Dreadnoughts sparked a new arms race, principally between Britain and Germany but reflected worldwide, as the new class of warships became a crucial symbol of national power.

Technical development continued rapidly through the dreadnought era, with step changes in armament, armor, and propulsion, meaning that ten years after Dreadnought's commissioning much more powerful ships were being built. These more powerful vessels were known as super-dreadnoughts.

The only pitched battle between fleets of dreadnoughts was the Battle of Jutland, an indecisive clash that reflected Britain's continuing strategic dominance. Most of the dreadnoughts were scrapped or scuttled after the end of World War I, though some of the most advanced super-dreadnoughts continued in service through World War II.

The term "dreadnought" gradually dropped from use after World War I, as the pre-dreadnoughts and the first generations of dreadnoughts were scrapped. However, all battleships built since then shared the characteristics of the dreadnought.

The Imperial Japanese Navy's Satsuma; the first ship designed as an 'all-big-gun' battleship

The distinctive all-big-gun design of the dreadnought battleship was developed almost simultaneously in three different navies. The Imperial Japanese Navy authorised Satsuma, designed with twelve 12-inch guns, in 1904, and she was laid down in May 1905^[2]. The Royal Navy began the design of HMS Dreadnought in January 1905 and she was laid down in October 1905^[3]. The United States Navy gained authorisation for USS Michigan, carrying eight 12-inch guns, in March 1905^[4] and she was laid down in May 1906^[5]. However, the precise background to the development of these ships is a matter of some controversy amongst naval historians.

During the 1890s battleship design stabilised on a type now known as pre-dreadnoughts. Most pre-dreadnoughts had a main armament of four heavy guns, typically of 12-inch calibre mounted in twin turrets fore and aft. They had a secondary armament of between six and eighteen 4.7-7.5 inch (12-19 cm) guns, supplemented by a range of smaller weapons. . Pre-dreadnoughts were powered by triple-expansion steam engines, which gave them a top speed of 18 or 19 knots. The pre-dreadnoughts had a combination of a thick belt of armour on the waterline, an armoured deck, and coal bunkers protecting their buoyancy and their magazines. ^[6][7]

The March 1902 issue of Proceedings of the US Naval Institute contained an article by Lt Matt H. Signor proposing battleships with two triple 12-inch turrets at the ends, two triple 10-inch turrets in the waist, and a secondary battery of 5-inch guns.^[8] The June issue contained a response by the US Navy's leading gunnery expert Prof P.R Alger proposing a main battery of eight 12-inch guns in twin turrets. The future chief constructor David W Taylor also responded suggesting that battleships of the future would be powered with steam turbines.^[8] In May 1902, the Bureau of Construction and Repair submitted a design for the Mississippi class battleship with twelve 10-inch guns in twin turrets, two at the ends and four in the wings. This was not accepted.^[8] Lt. Cdr. H. C. Poundstone submitted a paper to President Roosevelt in December 1902 arguing the case for larger battleships. In an appendix to his paper, Poundstone suggested a greater number of 11-inch and 9-inch guns was preferable to a smaller number of 12-inch and 9-inch. ^[9] The Naval War College and C&R developed these ideas in studies between 1903 and 1905. War game studies begun in July 1903 "showed that a battleship armed with twelve 11- or 12-inch guns hexagonally arranged would be equal to three or more of the conventional type."^[10]

In October 1903, the naval architect Col Vittorio Cuniberti had published a paper in Jane's Fighting Ships entitled "An Ideal Battleship for the British Navy", which called for a 17,000 ton ship carrying a main armament of twelve 12-in guns, protected by 12-inch armour, and having a speed of 24 knots (44 km/h).^[11] Cuniberti had already proposed the idea to his own navy, the Regia Marina, which rejected it.

In the British navy, too, there was a trend towards carrying more heavy guns. ^[12] The King Edward VII class, launched starting 1903, carried four 9.2-inch (234 mm) and ten 6-inch guns alongside their four 12-inch.^[13] A design had also been circulated in 1902-03 for "a powerful 'all big-gun' armament of two calibres, viz. four 12-inch and twelve 9.2-inch guns."^[14] However, the Admiralty decided to build three more King Edwards in the 1903-04 programme instead.^[15] The concept was revived for the 1904-05 programme, the Lord Nelson class. Restrictions on length and beam meant that the midships 9.2-inch turrets became single instead of twin, thus giving an armament of four 12-inch, ten 9.2-inch, and no 6-inch. The constructor for this design, J.H. Narbeth, submitted an alternative drawing showing an armament of twelve 12-inch guns, but the Admiralty was not prepared to accept this.^[16]

The pre-dreadnought battleships combined heavy-calibre potentially ship-killing guns, with a secondary and tertiary armament that could generate a hail of fire destroying the less protected parts of enemy ships. At the Battle of the Yalu River (1894) and the Battle of Santiago de Cuba (1898], this hail of fire destroyed most of the vessels of the defeated side. At Santiago, none of the four US battleships present scored a single hit with their 12- and 13-inch guns.^[17][18] At the Battle of the Yalu River, the victorious Japanese did not open fire until the range had closed to 3,000 yards.^[17]

By the early 1900s, British and American admirals expected that in the future battleships would engage at considerably longer ranges than had been British and US practice in the 1890s.^[19] They would need to do so, because of the longer range of the torpedo. "The addition of a gyroscope to the torpedo guidance mechanism in 1896, an invention perfected by 1900, overnight transformed the existing torpedo from a weapon accurate only at ranges up to 600 yards into one that could hit at three times this distance."^[20] Torpedo ranges continued to increase; for example, in 1903, the US Bureau of Ordnance "contracted for a 21-inch torpedo which could run 4,000 yards at 25 knots, and 3,000 at 29 knots."^[21] Both British and American admirals concluded that they needed to engage the enemy at longer ranges.^[22][21] In 1900, Mediterranean Sir John A. Fisher commanding the Royal Navy Mediterranean Fleet ordered gunnery practice, with the 6-inch guns, at a range of 6,000 yards.^[22] By 1904, the US Naval War College was considering the effects on battleship tactics of 7-8,000 yard range torpedoes.^[21]

At short ranges, lighter guns had good accuracy and very high rates of fire. As ranges increased, the accuracy of lighter guns declined more rapidly than heavier weapons.^[23] "Moreover at long ranges gunners had to 'spot' the fall of shot to correct their aim... The longer the range, the lower the maximum theoretical rate of spotted fire."^[24]

"By 1904, the gunnery of the largest weapons had improved to the point where decisive hits could be made at the greatest ranges. This conclusion was confirmed by battle experience in the Russo-Japanese War, but serious planning for all-big-gun ships came considerably earlier in the major navies, based on peacetime gunnery experiments."^[24]

Some nations built ships with mixed calibre main armaments (e.g. 9.2- or 10-inch and 12-inch guns).^[25] When the US were considering whether to have a mixed-calibre main armament for the South Carolina class, "the possibility of gunnery confusion due to two calibres as close as 10 and 12 inches was never raised. For example, Sims and Poundstone stressed the advantages of homogeneity in terms of ammunition supply ad the transfer of crews from the disengaged guns to replace wounded gunners. In October W.L Rogers of the Naval War College wrote a long and detailed memorandum on this question, pointing out that as ranges became longer the difference in accuracy between even 10- and 12-inch guns became enormous."^[26]

The British Committee on Naval Designs started by Fisher met for the first time in January 1905. After considering a range of designs, particularly arrangements of the turrets, the Committee settled on a design carrying ten 12-inch guns as her main armament, along with twenty-seven 12-pounders (3 inch, 76 mm) as her secondary armament. Not content with a revolutionary armament, the Royal Navy also introduced steam turbine propulsion, unprecedented in a large warship.^[27] The turbines promised a speed of 21 knots (39 km/h); the 2 to 3 knot (4 to 6 km/h) advantage over the typical pre-dreadnought and other major ships was a significant tactical advantage.

Construction took place at a remarkable rate; her keel was laid on 2 October 1905, she was launched on 10 February 1906, and she was completed on 3 October 1906—an impressive demonstration of British industrial might.^[28] The new ship was named Dreadnought; the previous Dreadnought, having been stricken from the effective list in 1905.^[29]

The first US dreadnoughts were the South Carolina class. Detailed plans for these were worked out in July-November 1905, and approved by the Board of Construction on 23 November 1905.^[30] However building progress was slow; specifications for bidders were issued on 21 March 1906, and the two ships were laid down in December 1906, after the completion of the British Dreadnought.^[31]

A plan of Bellerophon showing the armament distribution of a typical early British dreadnoughts; main battery is in twin turrets, with two on the 'wings'; secondary battery is clustered around the superstructure.

The defining characteristic of the dreadnought was the 'all-big-gun' armament: a large number of very heavy guns. The number and size of guns in the main battery could vary. Dreadnought herself mounted ten 12-inch guns; 12-inch armament had been standard in the pre-dreadnought and this continued the first generation of dreadnought battleships, though the German Navy continued to use 11.1-inch guns for some time. While the power of the main guns continued to grow over time, the weakest armament of any dreadnought came on the Spanish España class, which carried only eight 12-inch guns, the same as an early British battlecruiser.

The positioning of the main battery also varied between classes. Dreadnought, and the British ships which immediately followed her, carried five turrets: one ahead and two astern on the centreline of the ship, and two in the 'wings' next to the superstructure. This allowed four turrets - eight guns - to fire broadside. The advantage of the wing turrets was, like the fore and aft turrets, they had good a arcs of fire; the disadvantage was that wing turrets are wasteful in terms of weight and space, as they need to be duplicated on each side of the ship. The first German dreadnoughts adopted a 'hexagonal' layout with one turret fore and aft and two wing-turrets on each side of the superstructure; while this meant more guns could be mounted, it also meant only four turrets could fire on each broadside. Since the naval tactics of the early 1900s made use of the line of battle, the weight of broadside was one of the most important characteristics of a ship.^[32]

The workings of a dreadnought's main armament, based on the British 15-inch gun used on super-dreadnoughts

A number of steps could be taken to get the greatest broadside from the fewest guns. The Neptune class staggered the wing turrets, so all ten guns could fire on the broadside, a feature copied by the German Kaiser class. A problem with this is the wing turret's arc of fire on on the opposite beam was very limited due to blast problems. However, the natural solution, and one which imposed the least stress on the ship's hull, was to put all the turrets on the centreline. These could either all be on the same deck, as in some Italian and Russian designs, or with some turrets raised (superfiring), which in theory gave them the ability to shoot over the turret in front. The US South Carolina class were the first dreadnoughts to have this feature. HMS Agincourt, designed for Brazil and sold before completion to Turkey, before being confiscated by the Royal Navy at the start of World War I, managed to fit fourteen 12-inch guns into a record seven centreline turrets. This ultimately raised issues of armour distribution and handiness,^[33] and to maintain the weight of broadside would lead to triple and even quadruple turrets, in the King George Vs and (as designed) Colorados.^[34]

The calibre of guns grew in the super-dreadnoughts constructed before and during World War I. In the Royal Navy, the Orion class, launched 1910, used ten 13.5-inch guns, all on the centreline; the Queen Elizabeth class, launched 1913, used eight 15-inch guns. In all navies, the calibre of guns increased and the number of guns tended to decrease to compensate. The fewer guns needed meant distributing them became less of an issue, and centreline turrets became entirely the norm.

A further step change was planned for battleships designed and laid down at the end of World War I. The Japanese Nagato class in 1917 carried 16-inch guns, matched by the US Navy's Colorado class. Some designs went still further: the British "N3" class would have carried nine 18-inch guns, and the Japanese planned an un-named class, also with 18-inch armament. However, the Washington Naval Treaty meant these mammoth battleships never got off the drawing board.

The trend towards larger calibres was arrested by the Naval Treaties. The Second London Naval Treaty placed a formal limit of 14 inches on battleship guns; the only class to ship to be affected by this was the British KGVs.

A 14-inch naval gun, as fitted to the King George V class treaty battleships

This section of Bellerophon shows a typical dreadnought protection scheme, with very thick armour protecting the turrets, magazines and engine spaces tapering away in less vital areas; also note the subdivided underwater compartments to prevent sinking.

Dreadnoughts were protected by thick steel armour around their most vital areas. An armoured warship like a battleship was only of any use in a pitched battle if it could withstand seveal hits from the heaviest weapons it was likely to face and still be able to fight. The critical areas to defend were the engines, main armament and magazines; a hit to the magazines could result in the ship blowing up, while damage to the engines could stop the battleship in the water, making it tactically useless and a sitting duck for further attacks. The question dreadnought designers faced was how to get the most effective protection for their vessels without the weight of armour critically slowing the ship.

The earliest dreadnoughts were intended to take part in a pitched battle against other battleships at ranges of up to 10,000 yards. In such an encounter, shells would fly on a relatively flat trajectory. For this reason, the early dreadnoughts' armour was concentrated in a thick belt around the waterline; this had a thickness of 11 in in Dreadnought. Behind this belt were arranged the ship's coal bunkers, to further protect the engineering spaces. To protect the innards of the ship from fragments of shells which detonated on the superstructure, much thinner steel armour was applied to the decks of the ship. Dreadnought carried a total f 2.5 in of deck armour on two decks.

The final element of the protection scheme of the first dreadnoughts was the subdivision of the ship below the waterline into several watertight compartments. If the hull was holed - by shellfire, mine, torpedo, or collision - then, in theory, only one area would flood and the ship could survive. To make this precaution even more effective, many dreadnoughts had no hatches between different underwater sections, so that even a surprise hole below the waterline need not sink the ship. However, there were still a number of instances where flooding spread between underwater compartments.

During the evolution of the dreadnought, armour schemes changed to reflect the greater risk of plunging shells from long-range gunfire, the increasing threat from both bombs dropped by aircraft and the need to protect battleships more adequately from torpedos and mines.

The threat of plunging fire and bombing meant a greater thickness of steel on the armoured deck, and the amont of protection devoted to the deck increased much more rapidly than did the amount in the main belt. For instance, the Japanese superbattleship Yamato carried a 16.5 in main belt, as opposed to Dreadnought's 11  but a deck as thick as 9 in against Dreadnought's 2 in. The main belt itself was increasingly angled inwards to give a greater effective thickness against low-angle shells.

The greatest evolution in dreadnought protection came with the development of the torpedo bulge and torpedo belt, both attempts to protect against underwater damage by mines and torpedos.

Naval steam turbine blades, in this case from the Polish destroyer Wicher

Dreadnoughts were propelled by two to four screw propellors. Dreadnought herself, and all British dreadnoughts, had screw shafts driven by steam turbines. However, the turbine was a very experimental technology; the first generation of dreadnoughts built in other nations used the slower triple-expansion steam engine which had been standard in pre-dreadnought battleships. Within a few years, the turbine was standard for new battleship construction.

Turbines were more powerful and more reliable than the older steam engine. They were, however, less fuel-efficient at slower, cruising speeds. To address this, some navies adopted the turbo-electric drive where the steam tubine genereated electrical power whcih then drove the propellors; and ultimately the geared turbine which used mechanical means to get greater efficiency at higher speeds. Turbines were never replaced in battleship design.

The first generation of dreadnoughts used coal to fire the boilers which fed steam to the turbines. Coal had been in use since the very first steam warships, but had many disadvantages; it was labour-intensive to pack coal into the ship's bunkers and then feed it into the boilers, which became clogged with ash; coal produced thick black smoke which gave away the position of a fleet. In addition, coal was very bulky and had comparatively low thermal efficiency, meaning navies had to have numerous coaling stations at strategic points around the globe; control of these could, and did, provoke naval battles. The alternative, oil, had many advantages for naval architects and officers at sea alike. It reduced smoke, making ships less vulnerable. It could be fed into boilers automatically, rather than by hand. And it had had higher thermal efficiency and less bulk than coal. For comparable range, much less oil was needed, saving space; using the same volume, much more oil could be carried (much greater bunkerage, technically), providing significantly greater range. The only problem with oil was, every nation except the USA had to import it, a strategic concern which meant oil was only gradually adopted through the First World War and after. Oil's advantages outweighed its drawbacks, and it was not long before all battleships were oil-fired.^[35]

Paris on speed trials

In 1897 the Royal Navy had 62 battleships in commission or building, a lead of 26 over France and of 50 over Germany,^[36] and nations as distant (and unlikely to be met in combat) as Brazil could (in theory) match the best Britain had. In November 1906, Dreadnought had the field to herself; there were no challengers. The new class prompted an arms race with serious strategic and economic consequences. Major naval powers raced to build their own dreadnoughts to catch up with the United Kingdom. Possession of modern battleships was not only vital to naval power, but as with nuclear weapons today, represented a nation's standing in the world.^[37] Germany, France, Russia, Italy, Austria and the United States all began dreadnought programmes; and second-rank powers including Turkey, Argentina, Brazil and Chile commissioned dreadnoughts to be built in British and American yards.^[38]

See also: Causes of World War I

Britain and Germany had for some years been locked into a strategic struggle, as Germany asserted herself as a colonial as well as a European power. It was this threat which prompted the building of Dreadnought and made a naval arms race between the two nations inevitable.

While Fisher's reorganisation of the Navy in 1904 and 1905 actually cut the Naval Estimates,^[39] the pressing need for more and better ships to ensure naval superiority caused friction in the British government. The costs of maintaining the Royal Navy at a level capable of taking on the next two navies at the same time were immense.^[40]

The first German response to Dreadnought came with the Nassau-class, laid down in 1907, followed by the Helgoland-class in 1909. Together with two battlecruisers — a type for which the Germans had less admiration than Fisher, but which could be built under authorisation for armored cruisers, rather than capital ships — these classes gave Germany a total of ten modern capital ships built or building in 1909. While the British ships were somewhat faster and more powerful than their German equivalents, a 12:10 ratio fell very short of the 2:1 ratio that the Royal Navy wanted to maintain.^[37]

In 1909, the British Parliament authorised an additional four capital ships, holding out hope Germany would be willing to negotiate a treaty about battleship numbers. If no such solution could be found, an additional four ships would be laid down in 1910. Even this compromise solution meant (when taken together with some social reforms) raising taxes enough to prompt a constitutional crisis in Britain in 1909-10.

In 1910, the British eight-ship construction plan went ahead, including four Orion-class super-dreadnoughts, and augmented by battlecruisers purchased by Australia and New Zealand. In the same period of time, Germany laid down only three ships, giving Britain a superiority of 22 ships to 13. The British resolve demonstrated by their construction programme led the Germans to seek a negotiated end to the arms race. While the Admiralty's new target of a 60% lead over Germany was near enough to Tirpitz's goal of cutting the British lead to 50%, talks foundered on the question on whether British Commonwealth battlecruisers should be included in the count, as well as non-naval matters like the German demands for recognition of her ownership of Alsace-Lorraine.^[37]

The pace of the dreadnought race stepped up in both nations' 1910 and 1911 budgets, with Germany laying down four capital ships each year and Britain five. The tensions came to a head following the German Naval Law of 1912. This proposed a fleet of 33 German battleships and battlecruisers, outnumbering the Royal Navy in home waters. To make matters worse, the Austro-Hungarian Fleet was building 4 dreadnoughts, while the Italians had four and were building two more. Against such threats, the Royal Navy could no longer guarantee vital British interests. Britain was faced with a choice of building more battleships, withdrawing from the Mediterranean, or seeking an alliance with France. Further naval construction was unacceptably expensive at a time when social welfare provision was making calls on the budget. Withdrawing from the Mediterranean would mean a huge loss of influence, weakening British diplomacy in the Mediterranean and shaking the stability of the British Empire. The only acceptable option, and the one taken by First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill, was to overturn a hundred years of splendid isolation and seek an alliance with France.^[41]

In spite of these important strategic consequences, the 1912 Naval Law had little bearing on the battleship force ratios. Britain responded by laying down ten new super-dreadnoughts in her 1912 and 1913 budgets—ships of the Queen Elizabeth and Revenge classes, which introduced a further step change in armament, speed and protection—while Germany laid down only five, focusing resources on the Army.^[37]

The American South Carolina-class battleships were the first all-big-gun ships to be completed by one of Britain's rivals. The planning for the type had begun before the Dreadnought was launched, perhaps aided by secret briefing by sympathetic Royal Navy officials.^[37] Construction began in 1906, after the completion of the Dreadnought, and the type had no turbines.

Smaller than Dreadnought at 16,000 tons standard displacement, they carried eight 12-inch (305 mm) guns in four twin turrets arranged in superfiring pairs fore and aft along the centerline of the keel. This arrangement gave South Carolina and her sister Michigan a broadside equal to Dreadnought's without requiring the cumbersome wing turrets of the first few British dreadnought classes. The superfiring or superimposed arrangement had not been proven until after South Carolina went to sea, and it was initially feared the weakness of the previous Virginia-class would recur. Half of the first ten U.S. dreadnoughts used the older and less efficient reciprocating engines rather than turbines, which made many U.S. battleships slower than their British counterparts, but gave them much greater range, something of great importance in the Pacific.

The Japanese battleship Settsu

With the defeat of the Russians, the Japanese navy became concerned about the potential for conflict with the USA. Japanese theorist Sato Tetsutaro developed the concept of a fleet at a minimum 70% of the U.S.'s. This would enable the Japanese navy to win two decisive battles, the first early in a war, against the US Pacific Fleet, and the second against the US Atlantic Fleet which would inevitably be despatched as reinforcements. ^[42]

Japan's first priority was to refit the pre-dreadnoughts she had captured from Russia, and to complete Satsuma and Aki. Like the South Carolinas, the Satsumas were designed before Dreadnought, but gun shortages in Britain (which supplied them) delayed her completion and resulted in her carrying a mixed armament, so she was known as a semi-dreadnought. These were followed by a modified Aki-type: Kawachi and Settsu, which were laid down in 1909 and complete in 1912, and were armed with four 12-inch/50, eight 12-inch/45, ten 6-inch/45, and eight 4.7-inch/40. "Although nominally dreadnoughts, these ships did not have a really uniform main battery, since the guns differed in length, and therefore in performance, particularly at very long range."^[43] This would have made fire control very difficult.

Provence, a Bretagne-class battleship.

Compared to the other major naval powers, France was slow to start building dreadnoughts, instead finishing the planned Danton-class of pre-dreadnoughts, laying down five in 1907 and 1908. It was not until September 1910 the first of the Courbet-class was laid down, making France the eleventh nation to enter the dreadnought race. The dreadnought race saw France drop from second to fifth in terms of naval power; however, the closer alliance with Britain made these reduced forces more than adequate for French needs.^[37]

Even though Cuniberti had promoted the idea of an all-big-gun battleship in Italy well before Dreadnought, it took until 1909 for Italy to lay down one of her own. The construction of Dante Alighieri was prompted by rumours of Austro-Hungarian dreadnought building. A further five Dreadnoughts of the Cavour- and Andrea Doria-class followed as Italy sought to maintain its lead over Austria-Hungary. These ships remained the core of Italian naval strength until World War II. The subsequent Caracciolo-class were cancelled on the outbreak of WWI.

In January 1909, Austro-Hungarian admirals circulated a document calling for a fleet of four dreadnoughts. However, a constitutional crisis in 1909-10 meant no construction could be approved. In spite of this, two dreadnoughts were laid down by shipyards on a speculative basis, and later approved along with an additional two. The resulting ships, all Tegetthoff-class, were to be accompanied by a further four ships, but these were cancelled on the outbreak of World War I.

In June 1909, the Russian Empire laid down four dreadnoughts of the Gangut-class for the Baltic Fleet and in 1911 three more Imperatritsa Mariya-class dreadnoughts for the Black Sea.^[44] Taking lessons from Tsushima and influenced by Cuniberti, they ended up more closely resembling Fisher's battlecruisers than Dreadnought and proved badly flawed.^[45]

Spain commissioned three dreadnoughts of the España-class, laying the first down in 1909. The Españas were the lightest dreadnoughts ever built. While built in Spain, the construction was reliant on British assistance.^[46]

Brazil managed the remarkable achievement of being the third country with a dreadnought under construction, laying down two in British shipyards in 1907. This sparked off a small-scale arms race in South America, as Argentina and then Chile commissioned dreadnoughts. Argentina placed orders in American yards and Chile in Britain, meaning that both of Chile's two battleships were purchased by the British on the outbreak of war. One of them was later returned to the Chilean government.

Turkey ordered two dreadnoughts from British yards which were seized by the British while Greece's, ordered from Germany, was taken over by the Germans. The main armament, ordered in the United States, consequently equipped a class of British monitors. Greece in 1914 purchased two pre-dreadnoughts from the United States Navy, renaming them Kilkis and Limnos in Royal Hellenic Navy service.

The seizure of the two Turkish dreadnoughts, Reshadiye and Sultan Osman I(HMS Erin and Agincourt) nearing completion in 1914 in Britain, resulted in far-reaching international repercussions. The Turks were outraged by the British move and the Germans saw an opening. Through skillful diplomacy and by handing over the battlecruiser Goeben and the cruiser Breslau, the Germans maneuvered the Ottoman Empire into the Central Powers.^[47]

Orion class battleships in line

Even after Dreadnought's commission, battleships continued to grow in size, guns, and technical proficiency as countries vied to have the best ships. By 1914 Dreadnought was obsolete.

The arrival of super–Dreadnoughts is not as clearly identified with a single ship in the same way that the Dreadnought era was initiated by HMS Dreadnought. However, it is commonly held to start with the British Orion-class, and for the German navy with the König. What made them "super" was the unprecedented jump in displacement of 2,000–tons over the previous class, the introduction of the heavier 13.5inch (343 mm) gun, and the distribution of all the main armament on the centreline. Thus, in the four years between the laying down of Dreadnought and Orion, displacement had increased by 25%, and weight of broadside had doubled.

British super-dreadnoughts were joined by other nations as well. In Japan, two Fuso-class super-dreadnoughts were laid down in 1912, followed by the Ises in 1914, with both classes carrying twelve 14-inch (356 mm) guns. In 1917, the Nagato-class was ordered, the first dreadnoughts to mount 16-inch (406 mm) guns, possibly making them the most powerful warships in the world. All were increasingly built from Japanese rather than imported components. In France, the Courbets were followed by three super-dreadnoughts of the Bretagne-class; another five Normandies were cancelled on the outbreak of World War One.

The later super-dreadnoughts, principally the Queen Elizabeth-class, dispensed with the "Q" turret amidships, so weight and volume were freed up for larger, oil-fired boilers. Oil had many advantages as a fuel over coal. It had more energy density than coal, and its liquid form vastly simplified refuelling arrangements; oil required no stokers, and emitted much less smoke, aiding gun laying and making the ships less visible on the horizon. The new 15 inch gun (381 mm) gave greater firepower in spite of the loss of a turret, and there was a thicker armour belt and improved underwater protection. The class had a 25 knot (46 km/h) design speed and they were considered the first fast battleships.

The design weakness of super-dreadnoughts, which distinguished them from post-World War I designs, was armor disposition. Their design placed emphasis on vertical protection, needed in short range battles. These ships were capable of engaging the enemy at 20,000 metres, but were vulnerable to the high angle ("plunging") fire at such ranges. Post-war designs typically had 5 to 6 inches (130 to 150 mm) of deck armor to defend against this. The concept of zone of immunity became a major part of the thinking behind battleship design. Lack of underwater protection was also a weakness of these pre-World War I designs which were developed only as the threat of the torpedo became real.

The United States Navy's "standard"-type battleships, beginning with the Nevada-class, or "Battleship 1912", were designed with long-range engagements and plunging fire in mind; the first of these was laid down in 1912, five years before the Battle of Jutland taught the dangers of long-range fire to European navies. Important features of the standard battleships were "all or nothing" armor and "raft" construction, a philosophy under which only the parts of the ship worth giving the thickest possible protection were worth armoring at all, and enough reserve buoyancy should be contained within the resulting armored "raft" to keep afloat the entire ship in the event the unarmored bow and stern were thoroughly riddled and flooded. This design was proven in battle at the Battle of Guadalcanal, when an ill-timed turn by USS South Dakota (BB-57) silhouetted her to Japanese guns. Though she suffered a terrible battering and her bow and stern were riddled and thoroughly flooded, her "raft" remained untouched and she remained both afloat and fully operational at the end of action.

Main article: Naval Warfare of World War I

British Grand Fleet during World War I

The First World War was almost an anticlimax for the great Dreadnought fleets. There was no decisive clash of modern battlefleets to compare with the Battle of Tsushima. The role of battleships was marginal to the great land struggle in France and Russia; and it was equally marginal to the First Battle of the Atlantic, the battle between German submarines and British merchant shipping.

By virtue of geography, the Royal Navy could keep the German High Seas Fleet bottled up in the North Sea with relative ease. Both sides were aware that, because of the greater number of British Dreadnoughts, a full fleet engagement would result in a British victory. The German strategy was therefore to try to provoke an engagement on favourable terms: either inducing a part of the Grand Fleet to enter battle alone, or to fight a pitched battle near the German coastline, where friendly fields, torpedo-boats and submarines could be used to even the odds.^[48]

The first two years of war saw conflict in the North Sea limited to skirmishes by battlecruisers at the Battle of Heligoland Bight and Battle of Dogger Bank and raids on the English coast. In the summer of 1916, a further attempt to draw British ships into battle on favourable terms resulted in a clash of the battlefleets in the Battle of Jutland: an indecisive engagement.^[49]

In the other naval theatres there were no decisive pitched battles. In the Black Sea, Russian and Turkish battleships skirmished, but nothing more. In the Baltic, action was largely limited to convoy raiding and the laying of defensive minefields; the only significant clash of battleship squadrons 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 British and French blockading fleets. And in the Mediterranean, the most important use of battleships was in support of the amphibious assault on Gallipoli.

The course of the war also illustrated the vulnerability of battleships to cheaper weapons. In September 1914, the U-boat threat to capital ships was demonstrated by successful attacks on British cruisers, including the sinking of three British armored cruisers by the German submarine U-9 in less than an hour. Sea mines proved a threat the next month, when the recently commissioned British super-Dreadnought Audacious struck a mine. By the end of October, British strategy and tactics in the North Sea had changed to reduce the risk of U-boat attack.^[50] While Jutland was the only major clash of battleship fleets in history, the German plan for the battle relied on U-boat attacks on the British fleet; and the escape of the German fleet from the superior British firepower was effected by the German cruisers and destroyers closing on British battleships, causing them to turn away to avoid the threat of torpedo attack. Further near-misses from submarine attacks on battleships and casualties amongst cruisers led to growing paranoia in the Royal Navy about the vulnerability of battleships. By October 1916, the Royal Navy had essentially abandoned the North Sea, instructing the Grand Fleet not to go south of the Farne Islands unless adequately protected by destroyers.

For the German part, the High Seas Fleet determined not to engage the British without the assistance of submarines; and since the submarines were more needed for commerce raiding, the fleet stayed in port for the remainder of the war.^[51] Other theatres equally showed the role of small craft in damaging or destroying Dreadnoughts. The two Austrian Dreadnoughts lost in 1918 were the casualties of torpedo boats and of frogmen.

The great dreadnought fleets came to an end a few years after World War I. The German dreadnought fleet was scuttled in its entirety Scapa Flow by its crew in 1919. Britain, the USA and Japan planned another bout of naval expansion including bigger and more powerful battleships than ever before: 'N3', Kii, and South Dakota classes.

Instead of this cripplingly expensive expansion programme, the major naval powers concluded the Washington Naval Treaty in 1922. The Treaty laid out a list of ships, including most of the older dreadnoughts and almost all the newer ships under construction, which were to be scrapped or otherwise put out of use. It furthermore declared a 'building holiday' during which no new battleships or battlecruisers were to be laid down. The ships which survived the treaty, including the most modern super-dreadnoughts of all three navies, formed the bulk of international capital ship strength through the 1920s and 1930s and, with some modernisation, into World War II.

From this point on, 'dreadnought' became less widely used. The pre-dreadnought battleships, long obsolete, were almost without exception scrapped in the 1920s to comply with the Washington Treaty, so the term 'dreadnought' became less necessary. Many capital ships, both battleships and battlecruisers, were rebuilt as 'fast battleships'. While still sometimes referred to as dreadnoughts, these ships were the battleships which came to be used in World War II.

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