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A battleship is a large armored warship with a main battery consisting of large caliber guns. It dominated naval warfare in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The term battleship came into 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 the United Kingdom's Royal Navy heralded a revolution in the field of battleship design. Subsequent battleship designs, influenced by HMS Dreadnought, were referred to as "dreadnoughts", though the term eventually became obsolete as dreadnoughts became the only type of battleship in common use.

Battleships were a symbol of naval dominance and national might, and for decades the battleship was a major factor in both diplomacy and military strategy. A global arms race in battleship construction began in Europe in the 1890s and culminated at the decisive Battle of Tsushima in 1905, the outcome of which significantly influenced the design of HMS Dreadnought. The launch of Dreadnought in 1906 commenced a new naval arms race. Three major fleet actions between steel battleships took place: the long-range gunnery duel at the Battle of the Yellow Sea in 1904, the decisive Battle of Tsushima in 1905 (both during the Russo-Japanese War) and the inconclusive Battle of Jutland in 1916, during the First World War. Jutland was the largest naval battle and the only full-scale clash of dreadnoughts of the war, and it was the last major battle in naval history fought primarily by battleships.

The Naval Treaties of the 1920s and 1930s limited the number of battleships, though technical innovation in battleship design continued. Both the Allied and Axis powers built battleships during World War II, though the increasing importance of the aircraft carrier meant that the battleship played a less important role than had been expected in that conflict. (Full article...)

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The dreadnought was the predominant type of 20th-century battleship. The first of the kind, the British HMS Dreadnought had such an impact when launched in 1906 that battleships built after her were referred to as 'dreadnoughts', and earlier battleships became known as pre-dreadnoughts. Her design had two revolutionary features: an 'all-big-gun' armament scheme and steam turbine propulsion. The arrival of the dreadnoughts renewed the naval arms race, principally between Britain and Germany but reflected worldwide, as the new class of warships became a crucial symbol of national power. The concept of an all-big-gun ship had been in development for several years before Dreadnought's construction. The Imperial Japanese Navy had begun work on an all-big-gun battleship in 1904, but finished the ship as a pre-dreadnought; the United States Navy was also building all-big-gun battleships. Technical development continued rapidly through the dreadnought era. Successive designs increased rapidly in size and made use of improvements in armament, armor, and propulsion. Within ten years, new battleships outclassed Dreadnought herself. These more powerful vessels were known as 'super-dreadnoughts'. Most of the dreadnoughts were scrapped after the end of World War I under the terms of the Washington Naval Treaty, but many of the newer super-dreadnoughts continued serving through World War II. While dreadnought building consumed vast resources in the early 20th century, there was only one pitched battle between dreadnought fleets. At the Battle of Jutland, the British and German navies clashed with no decisive result. The term 'dreadnought' gradually dropped from use after World War I, especially after the Washington Naval Treaty, as all remaining battleships shared dreadnought characteristics.

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Günther Lütjens (25 May 1889 - 27 May 1941) was a German admiral whose military service spanned almost three decades, most well known for his actions during World War II, especially his command of the Operation Rheinübung sortie. Joining the Kaiserliche Marine in 1907, he served aboard the SMS Freya, Elsass, and König Wilhelm, then commanded several torpedo boats until the end of World War I, earning the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross. In 1921, he joined the Reichsmarine, serving in and eventually commanding the 3rd Torpedo Boat Flotilla and Karlsruhe. In 1936, Lütjens was appointed Chief of Personnel of the Kriegsmarine, then assigned as Führer der Torpedoboote the next year.

When World War II erupted, he was Commander of Scouting Forces in Operation Weserübung, notably the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau (using the latter as his flagship), then promoted to Commander of Battleships and third Flottenchef. Rheinübung originally planned for all four battleships (Bismarck, Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, and Tirpitz) to make a raid into the Atlantic, but ultimately sailed with only Bismarck and Prinz Eugen on 19 May, 1941. On 24 May, his ships were intercepted by HMS Hood and HMS Prince of Wales at the Battle of the Denmark Strait, in which Hood was famously sunk. Furious at the loss of their most powerful ship, the Royal Navy began a dogged pursuit that ultimately sunk the Bismarck and killed Lütjens on 27 May. The German destroyer Lütjens (D185), lead ship of the Lütjens-class destroyers of the modern German Navy, would be named for him.

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The following are images from various battleship-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1
City-class ironclads off Cairo, Illinois, during the American Civil War
(from Ironclad warship)
Image 2The first battle between ironclads: CSS Virginia (left) vs. USS Monitor, in the March 1862 Battle of Hampton Roads (from Ironclad warship)
Image 3Gloire under sail (from Ironclad warship)
Image 4Retvizan sinks in Port Arthur, 1904 (from Pre-dreadnought battleship)
Image 5Napoléon (1850), the first steam battleship (from Ironclad warship)
Image 6Paris on speed trials (1914) (from Dreadnought)
Image 71904 illustration of H.G. Wells' December 1903 The Land Ironclads, showing huge armored land vessels, equipped with Pedrail wheels. (from Ironclad warship)
Image 8Mexican frigate Guadalupe 1842 (from Ironclad warship)
Image 9Animated diagram of gun turret loading and firing, based on the British 15-inch gun used on super-dreadnoughts (from Dreadnought)
Image 10HMS Agamemnon, an all-big-gun mixed-calibre ship of the Lord Nelson class. It carried four 12-inch (305 mm) and ten 9.2-inch (234 mm) guns. (from Dreadnought)
Image 11A Paixhans naval shell gun. 1860 engraving (from Ironclad warship)
Image 12The French battleship Justice at speed (from Pre-dreadnought battleship)
Image 13The Battle of Iquique, where Peruvian ironclad Huáscar sunk the Chilean wooden corvette Esmeralda (from Ironclad warship)
Image 14The appearance of HMS Dreadnought in 1906 rendered every other battleship obsolete (from Pre-dreadnought battleship)
Image 15The Confederate ironclad Atlanta on the James River in 1864–1865 after her capture by Union forces (from Ironclad warship)
Image 16A barbette of Redoutable (from Ironclad warship)
Image 17USS Indiana, an example of the intermediate battery principle with its forward 13-inch and forward port 8-inch gun turrets (from Pre-dreadnought battleship)
Image 18The working of a triple-expansion steam engine. High-pressure steam is used three times to produce motive power, gradually cooling as it goes. (from Pre-dreadnought battleship)
Image 19HMS Dominion of the King Edward VII class was launched towards the end of the pre-dreadnought era, in 1903 (from Pre-dreadnought battleship)
Image 20HMS Warrior (1860), Britain's first seagoing ironclad warship (from Ironclad warship)
Image 21The reloading mechanism onboard HMS Inflexible (from Ironclad warship)
Image 22HMS Inflexible, after the replacement of her sailing masts with military masts (from Ironclad warship)
Image 23The Argentine Rivadavia, first of its class, under construction in 1912 (from Dreadnought)
Image 24
Growth in size of battleship designs from 1905 onwards, showing the dreadnought's rapid growth between 1905 and 1920, prior to the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922
(from Dreadnought)
Image 25A plan of Bellerophon (1907) showing the armament distribution of early British dreadnoughts. The main battery is in twin turrets, with two on the "wings"; the light secondary battery is clustered around the superstructure. (from Dreadnought)
Image 26Barbette of the Vauban (from Ironclad warship)
Image 27USS California (BB-44), one of two Tennessee-class battleships, steaming at high speed in 1921 (from Dreadnought)
Image 28This section of SMS Bayern shows a typical dreadnought protection scheme, with very thick armour protecting the turrets, magazines and engine spaces tapering away in less vital areas (from Dreadnought)
Image 29A plan of HMS Dreadnought, showing the revolutionary design (from Dreadnought)
Image 30USS Massachusetts, a pre-dreadnought battleship launched in 1893 (from Pre-dreadnought battleship)
Image 31USS Texas, the only dreadnought still in existence, was launched in 1912 and is now a museum ship (from Dreadnought)
Image 32Japan's Admiral Togo on the bridge of Mikasa just before the Battle of Tsushima (from Pre-dreadnought battleship)
Image 33USS New York making full steam (1915) (from Dreadnought)
Image 34HMS Royal Sovereign (1891) was the first pre-dreadnought battleship of the Royal Navy. (from Pre-dreadnought battleship)
Image 35The Japanese battleship Settsu (1911) (from Dreadnought)
Image 36HMS Ocean was typical of pre-dreadnought battleships (from Pre-dreadnought battleship)
Image 37Unfinished Bayern-class battleship Württemberg (right) and the Mackensen-class battlecruiser Prinz Eitel Friedrich in Hamburg after the war, in about 1920 (from Dreadnought)
Image 38The conventional broadside of 68-pounders on HMS Warrior of 1860 (from Ironclad warship)
Image 39The heavy guns and forward barbette of Mikasa's main battery (from Pre-dreadnought battleship)
Image 40French armored floating battery Arrogante (1864) (from Ironclad warship)
Image 41The water-tube boiler was the most efficient method of producing high-pressure steam for pre-dreadnought engines. (from Pre-dreadnought battleship)
Image 42Schematic section of a typical pre-dreadnought battleship with an armoured upper and middle deck and side belt (red), lateral protective coal bunkers (grey), and a double-bottom of watertight compartments. The machinery was arranged in the protected internal void. (from Pre-dreadnought battleship)
Image 43HMS Ramillies was the fourth ship of the influential Royal Sovereign class. The diagonal tubes are spars for torpedo nets. (from Pre-dreadnought battleship)
Image 44The fleets engaging for the Battle of Lissa (from Ironclad warship)
Image 45Radetzky-class battleship, a pre-dreadnought class of the Austro-Hungarian Navy (from Pre-dreadnought battleship)
Image 46Provence, a Bretagne-class battleship, launched in 1913 (pictured in 1942) (from Dreadnought)
Image 47The Confederacy's French-built last ironclad was also Japan's first: Stonewall was later renamed Kōtetsu (from Ironclad warship)
Image 48Model of the French Gloire (1858), the first ocean-going ironclad (from Ironclad warship)
Image 49The obturator invented by de Bange allowed the effective sealing of breeches in breech-loading guns (from Ironclad warship)
Image 50Cross-section view amidships of USS Kearsarge, showing how the armour scheme relates to the innards of the ship (from Pre-dreadnought battleship)
Image 51Schlesien and Schleswig-Holstein in port around 1930. Both ships served into World War II. (from Pre-dreadnought battleship)
Image 52Punch cartoon from May 1876 showing Britannia dressed in the armor of an ironclad with the word Inflexible around her collar and addressing the sea god Neptune. Note the ram sticking out of Britannia's breast plate. The caption reads: OVER-WEIGHTED. Britannia. "Look here, Father Nep! I can't stand it much longer! Who's to 'rule the waves' in this sort of thing?" (from Ironclad warship)
Image 53HMS Agamemnon, an example of taking the intermediate battery principle to its ultimate expression with ten 9.2-inch guns (from Pre-dreadnought battleship)
Image 54Breech-loading 110-pounder Armstrong gun on HMS Warrior (from Ironclad warship)
Image 55The French Redoutable (1876), the first battleship to use steel as the main building material (from Ironclad warship)
Image 56HMS Canopus fires her 12-inch main guns at a Turkish shore battery (1915). Photo by Ernest Brooks. (from Pre-dreadnought battleship)
Image 57The gun trials of the Brazilian dreadnought Minas Geraes in 1910, where all the guns capable of training to the port side were fired, forming what was at that time the heaviest broadside ever fired from a warship (from Dreadnought)
Image 58King George V (left) inspects HMS Neptune (from Dreadnought)
Image 59Cross section of a German pre-dreadnought Wittelsbach-class battleship, circa 1914 (from Pre-dreadnought battleship)
Image 60Mikasa as a museum ship (from Pre-dreadnought battleship)
Image 61Postcard of USS Connecticut being used for troop transport in 1919 (from Pre-dreadnought battleship)
Image 6212-pounder anti-torpedo boat guns mounted on the roof of a turret on Dreadnought (1906) (from Dreadnought)
Image 63SMS Szent István begins to roll over after being torpedoed in 1918 (from Dreadnought)
Image 64French Navy ironclad floating battery Lave, 1854. This ironclad, together with the similar Tonnante and Dévastation, vanquished Russian land batteries at the Battle of Kinburn (1855). (from Ironclad warship)
Image 65The iron-and-wood armor of Warrior (from Ironclad warship)
Image 66Mikasa, a typical pre-dreadnought in many respects; note the positioning of secondary and tertiary batteries, and the concentration of armour on turrets and engineering spaces (from Pre-dreadnought battleship)
Image 67HMS Audacious sinks after hitting a mine, October 1914 (from Dreadnought)
Image 68The Royal Navy's revolutionary HMS Dreadnought, launched in 1906, gave its name to the type (from Dreadnought)
Image 69Canonicus-class monitor USS Mahopac on the Appomattox River, 1864 (from Ironclad warship)
Image 70Royal Navy Orion-class super-dreadnoughts in line c. 1914 (from Dreadnought)
Image 71Loa being fitted after its conversion in the Callao harbour, 1864 (from Ironclad warship)
Image 72HMS Dreadnought shows the low freeboard typical for early ironclad turret-ships. This ship, launched in 1875, should not be confused with her famous successor, launched in 1906, marking the end of the pre-dreadnought era. (from Pre-dreadnought battleship)

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Credit: Imperial War Museum Collections photo 2695 from collection 1900-01

The German battlecruiser Hindenburg, the third ship of the Derfflinger class, was interned at Scapa Flow in November 1918. The defeat of the German Empire in the First World War led to the High Seas Fleet's internment in Scapa Flow while the fate of the ships was decided, but on 21 July 1919 the fleet was scuttled. Hindenburg was raised in 1930 and broken up for scrap.

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... that countertenor Christopher Lowrey's voice has been described as "packed with enough character to sink a battleship"?
... that an attempted British-Norwegian attack on the German battleship Tirpitz was abandoned after two Chariot manned torpedoes were lost due to bad weather?
... that Ivan Beshoff, the last survivor of the mutiny on the Potemkin, emigrated to Ireland where he established a fish and chip shop that is still run by his descendants?

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... that the main guns of the canceled Greek battleship Salamis were bought by the British to arm the Abercrombie-class monitors during World War I?
... that SMS Weissenburg, a German pre-dreadnought battleship, was sold to the Ottoman Navy, and later came to the rescue of the battlecruiser Goeben, another former German warship in Ottoman service?
...that the incompleted Montana-class battleships would have had a heavier broadside than the Yamato-class battleships?
...that HMS Benbow's class, the Iron Dukes, were the first Royal Navy battleships to mount anti-aircraft guns?

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“

I'm not letting my ship get shot out from under my arse. Open fire!

”

— Impatient reaction from Kapitän zur See Ernst Lindemann during the Battle of the Denmark Strait on 24 May 1941. Two minutes into the battle the commander and Chief of Fleet Günther Lütjens had not given the order himself.

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Operation Majestic Titan is the code name for a long-term Wikipedian project with two primary objectives, the first of which is to create the single largest featured topic on Wikipedia, centered around the battleships considered, planned, built, operated, canceled, or otherwise recorded. There are probably a few hundred articles of this nature which will be included, from the earliest pre-dreadnoughts to the last of the dreadnoughts. Once all articles are featured this project will reorient to ensuring that the articles remain up to standard. If you're interested, please view the project page to familiarize yourself with the guidelines, and simply pick an article to improve! There is also ongoing discussion you can participate in.

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