Industrial warfare: Encyclopedia II - Industrial warfare - Naval warfare

Industrial warfare - Naval warfare

Industrial warfare - Ironclads and Dreadnoughts

The period after the Napoleonic Wars was one of intensive experimentation with new technology; steam power for ships appeared in the 1810s, improved metallurgy and machining technique produced larger and deadlier guns, and the development of explosive shells, capable of demolishing a wooden ship at a single blow, in turn required the addition of iron armor, which led to ironclads. The famous battle of the CSS Virginia and USS Monitor in the American Civil War was the duel of ironclads that symbolized the changing times. Although the battle was inconclusive, nations around the world subsequently raced to convert their fleets to iron, as ironclads had shown themselves to be clearly superior to wooden ships in their ability to withstand enemy fire.

In the late Nineteenth Century, naval warfare was revolutionized by Alfred Thayer Mahan's book The Influence of Sea Power upon History. Mahan argued that in the Anglo-French wars of the 18th century and 19th centuries, domination of the sea was the deciding factor in the outcome, and therefore control of seaborne commerce was critical to military victory. Mahan argued that the best way to achieve naval domination was through large fleets of concentrated capital ships, as opposed to commerce raiders. His books were closely studied in all the Great Powers, influencing their naval arms race in the years prior to World War I.

As the century came to a close, the familiar modern battleship began to emerge; a steel-armored ship, entirely dependent on steam, and sporting a number of large shell guns mounted in turrets arranged along the centerline of the main deck. The ultimate design was reached in 1906 with HMS Dreadnought which entirely dispensed with smaller guns, her main guns being sufficient to sink any existing ship of the time. The Russo-Japanese War and particularly the Battle of Tsushima in 1905 was the first test of the new concepts, resulting a stunning Japanese victory and the destruction of dozens of Russian ships. World War I pitted the old Royal Navy against the new navy of Imperial Germany, culminating in the 1916 Battle of Jutland. Following the war, many nations agreed to limit the size of their fleets in the Washington Naval Treaty and scrapped many of their battleships and cruisers. Growing tensions of the 1930s restarted the building programs, with even larger ships than before: The Japanese battleship Yamato, launched in 1941, displaced 72,000 tons and mounted 18.1-inch guns. However, this marked the climax of "big gun" warfare, as aircraft would gradually play a larger role in warfare. By the 1960s, battleships had all-but vanished from the fleets of the world.

Industrial warfare - Aircraft Carriers

Between the two world wars, the first aircraft carriers appeared, initially as a way to circumvent the tonnage limits of the Washington Naval Treaty (many of the first carriers were converted battlecruisers). Though several ships had previously been designed to launch and in some cases, the first true "flat-top" carrier was HMS Argus, launched in December 1917. By the start of the Second World War, aircraft carriers typically carried three types of aircraft: torpedo bombers, which could also be also used for conventional horizontal bombing and reconnaissance; dive bombers, also used for reconnaissance; and fighters for fleet defence and bomber escort duties. Because of the restricted space on aircraft carriers, these aircraft were almost always small, single-engined warplanes. The first true demonstration of naval air power was the victory of the Royal Navy at the Battle of Taranto in 1940, which set the stage for Japan's much larger and more famous attack on Pearl Harbor the following year. Two days after Pearl Harbor, the sinking of HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse, marked the beginning of the end for the battleship era. Following World War II, aircraft carriers continued to remain key to navies throughout the latter 20th century, moving in the 1950s to jets launched from Supercarriers, behemoths which could displace as much as 100,000 tons.

Industrial warfare - Submarines

Just as important was the development of submarines to travel underneath the sea, at first for short dives, then later to be able to spend weeks or months underwater powered by a nuclear reactor. The first successful submarine attack in wartime was in 1864 by the Confederate submarine CSS H.L. Hunley which sank the frigate USS Housatonic. In both World Wars, submarines (U-boats in Germany) primarily exerted their power by sinking merchant ships using torpedoes, as well as other warships. All nations practiced unrestricted submarine warfare in which submarines sank merchant ships without warning, but the only successful campaign during this period was America's submarine war against Japan during the Pacific War. In the 1950s the Cold War inspired the development of ballistic missile submarines, each one loaded with dozens of nuclear-armed missiles and with orders to launch them from sea should the other nation attack.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Naval warfare", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki