For centuries, battleships have been a significant part of a nation’s military, a symbol of its naval might. These vessels were hundreds of feet long, displaced tens of thousands of tons, bristled with massive guns, and were sheathed with the thickest armor. These large armored warships started in the 19th century, with the first steam-powered battleship, the Napoléon, followed by the first iron-clad battleship, the Gloire (both developed by France) .
The modern armored ship dates from the ironclad warships of the Civil War era, ships that had a great impact on early wars. It was in the early 1860s when the United States developed its first iron-clad battleship, the USS Monitor, which sank in a storm off Cape Hatteras in 1862 (although not a warship, another famous ship that sank due to weather conditions was the RMS Titanic of which there have been several documentaries and fictional retellings). It wasn’t until 1907 when President Theodore Roosevelt sent the so-called Great White Fleet of 16 American battleships around the world that the U.S. flexed its maritime muscle. It was the largest and most powerful flotilla to ever circle the globe.
The British and German empires were locked in a naval arms race that culminated in 1916 with the inconclusive Battle of Jutland during World War I (one of the biggest naval battles of all time ) and in the aftermath of that war, the world’s most powerful nations tried to limit the size of fleets in a treaty called The Washington Naval Treaty, or the Five-Power Treaty, that restricted the construction of battleships and battlecruisers (ships were limited to 35,000 tons, with guns with no more than a 16-inch caliber, while aircraft carriers were limited to 27,000 tons and could carry no more than 10 heavy guns, of a maximum caliber of 8 inches).
In 1934, Japan announced to the world that it intended to terminate the treaty, and its provisions, which allowed the nation to maintain existing fortifications in several regions, lapsed in 1936 and were not renewed. Battleships reached their peak during World War II with legendary ships like Germany’s pair of Bismarck-class vessels and Japan’s two titanic 71,659-ton Yamato-class ships, becoming the largest battleships ever constructed by far.
The battleship eventually surrendered its naval preeminence to aircraft carriers, submarines, and amphibious warships after World War II. The last U.S. battleship to be built was the USS Missouri – commissioned in 1944, and decommissioned in 1992 – and the last battleship of any nation worldwide to be built was from the United Kingdom, the HMS Vanguard, commissioned in 1946. Not only were they too costly to maintain, but they were also more susceptible to attack from both aircraft and subs.
Many of these WWII-era battleships remain today as museums, like the USS Iowa , currently docked in Los Angeles, and the USS Massachusetts docked at Battleship Cove in Fall River, Massachusetts.
24/7 Tempo consulted sources including Navy General Board , Largest.org , Militaryfactory , PearlHarbor , and others to compile a list of the largest battleships ever constructed, using displacement tonnage as a measure. Note that with three exceptions, the list is ordered not by individual ship but by battleship class, each class including two or more ships with different names. The exceptions are the U.K.’s HMS Agincourt, HMS Hood, and HMS Vanguard.
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