BATTLESHIP. It is the mistaken notion of an uninformed section of the Press and public that the battleship is a warship of a settled type and that, by reason of new forms of attack, this type is now, in great measure, obsolete. Actually the term "battleship" implies the "predominant surface ship," a warship which can hit harder, and better withstand all forms of attack than any other ship afloat. Logically, therefore, if the battleship is doomed any less powerful type of warship is doomed, because speed, the one quality in which lesser ships may be superior to the battleship, is obviously not an all-sufficient defence. If the battleship cannot keep the sea owing to the menace of the submarine or the aircraft, then neither can the cruiser, the destroyer, the aircraft-carrier nor patrol and escorting vessels. This can only lead to the conclusion that in a future war all surface vessels, especially unprotected merchant ships, are helpless, in which case the fate of the British Empire is already sealed. In reality this is very far from being the case and the conception of the battleship as a senile leviathan retained by a conservative Admiralty is ridiculous. The battleship of to-day is the lineal descendant of the ship of the line of the sailing ship era, just as the cruiser is that of the frigate. Her busi ness is to fight in company with ships of her own class and the battle fleet is really the fulcrum on which the whole of sea power hinges ; remove it, and the value of a surface fleet will be negligible in the face of an enemy with more powerful warships.
In the 18th century the standard "battleship" was the 74-gun two-decker and the "super-dreadnought" of that era was the go- to 100-gun three-decker. Steam as an auxiliary form of propulsion was installed in ships of the line about 18o; then the invention of shell, as distinct from solid shot, hastened the advent of the iron clad. The sailing navy died hard, owing to the conservatism of the times, and it was not until the tragic loss of the turret ship "Cap tain," which capsized in the Bay of Biscay, had proved the futility of combining the obsolete with the modern, that masts and sails finally disappeared from battleships. Already there had started the duel between guns and armour, a duel which continues to this day and which, in practice, necessitates a compromise with speed in all big warships.
From time to time the battleship has been declared to be useless and obsolete. The invention of the torpedo and the construction of the torpedo-boat were loudly proclaimed to have sounded her death-knell, but with these, as with all new forms of weapons, we see an example of the enduring principle that for every form of attack there is an effective form of defence. At the time, the answer to the torpedo was the crinoline-like net defence with which the battleship surrounded herself, coupled with batteries of quick firing guns, and better watertight sub-division. With experience, the limitations of the torpedo-boat, just as those of the submarine in later times, became more apparent. The torpedo-boat, like the submarine, had to count for its success mainly on surprise. This it secured by its speed and comparative invisibility, due to the diffi culty of seeing so small an object in the dark. But it was severely handicapped by bad weather, and it had no great radius of action; moreover, an antidote was found to this new menace in the de stroyer—the predominant type of surface torpedo craft.
The torpedo-boat, as a type, disappeared, and the destroyer be came her sea-going successor and, in turn, a yet more formidable challenge to the battleship. This new danger was met by equipping the battle fleet with attendant flotillas of destroyers, carrying a powerful armament of guns, to counter the enemy's flotilla. In addition these flotillas were given the support of fast light cruisers. It was found that, with the greatly increased speed of modern battleships, a net defence at sea was impracticable, while immunity from torpedo attack in harbour was far better secured by local booms, fixed nets and batteries to guard the entrance. On the other hand, the battleships' own defence was improved by better under water construction, including the system known as the "bulge" (see further TECHNICAL ASPECTS), and by a powerful secondary armament, more efficient fire-control and laying systems for the guns and searchlights, star-shells and a number of other technical appliances. In this connection it is interesting to note that the German battle fleet broke through the massed flotillas of the Grand Fleet the night after Jutland (q.v.) and reached harbour with the loss of only one battleship due to destroyer attack. In the numerous destroyer attacks made during the daylight action, no capital ship was lost on either. side. It may fairly be said, there fore, that the torpedo, fired from surface craft, has completely failed to render the battleship obsolete, but it should be noted that the mobility of a battle fleet is dependent on it being properly equipped with cruiser squadrons and destroyer flotillas.
Two new menaces to the surface ship generally have arisen in the shape of the elusive aeroplane capable of attacking with tor pedo or bomb, and the almost invisible submarine. These in their turn have been proclaimed as being so formidable that once again the battleship is doomed, but, as in the case of the torpedo boat, those who regard such new weapons as irresistible fail to per ceive their limitations, nor do they realize that the latest design of battleship is, both in its powers of resistance and in those of offence, as much an advance on the pre-war design as that was on the first iron-clad, or the latter on the wooden three-decker. Still less do they realize that, ultimately, an effective answer to both these new perils to sea security rests on the predominant surface warship, the so-called battleship.
The torpedo- or bomb-dropping aircraft is an untried weapon, save for experiments on material. Up to date, these give no indica tion that the modern battleship is at the mercy of the aeroplane. The aircraft has to hit a comparatively small target when flying at very high speed, probably in the teeth of a hail of anti-aircraft gunfire. It takes several torpedoes to sink a modern battleship; a bomb, to be most effective, must be dropped, not on the heavily armoured deck, but close alongside, and timed to explode under water to give the effect of a mine : a most difficult thing to accom plish. In practice, fleet aircraft and the anti-aircraft batteries of adjacent ships will assist in the defence, while the battleship, to-day, is so well armoured and protected under water that she can withstand such attacks just as well, if not better, than the gunfire which she has always had to endure.
In the World War the submarine signally failed against the battleship. Old battleships, unescorted, or lying stationary in the open, were naturally the victims of under-water attack; but no single battleship of the Grand Fleet was hit, much less sunk, by a submarine, even though they were constantly cruising in the narrow waters of the North Sea. On the other hand, an enemy submarine was rammed and sunk by H.M.S. "Dreadnought." Since the War, anti-submarine measures and devices have been further developed and, although the submarine, too, has become more formidable, it is no exaggeration to say it is less of a menace to the battleship now than it was during the War. Whatever inter national agreements may be signed in peace-time, there can be no absolute guarantee that a desperate enemy will not use both aero planes and submarines to attack shipping in war-time. Aircraft attack is met by escorting aircraft and by ships' anti-aircraft guns. Outside the range of air escort, working from a shore base, such defending aircraft may have to be launched from aircraft-carriers, possibly converted merchant ships fitted with catapults, while both the peaceful trader and her escort will have to be fitted with guns capable of being used against both aircraft and submarines.
The experience of the World War showed that the most effective form of defence against submarine attack was to sail shipping in convoys (q.v.), with armed escorts, but such passive defence had to be supplemented by active anti-submarine operations on a very large scale. Unlike the aeroplane, the main antidote to the sub marine is not the submarine, but the surface craft with detecting gear, depth charges, guns or mines. (See SUBMARINE CAMPAIGN.) In the World War, the submarine menace, which almost secured a strangle-hold on the Allies, was mainly defeated by an array of small surface craft. These could not have operated effectively and must have been continually driven from their work, but for the covering support of destroyers and cruisers; but the latter, in turn, would have been driven from the sea by the enemy's battle cruisers and battleships had it not been for the Grand Fleet which effectively contained the German High Sea Fleet and drove it back into harbour whenever it appeared. (See JUTLAND and DOGGER