The dreadnought was the predominant type of battleship in the early 20th century. The first of the kind, the Royal Navy’s Dreadnought, had such an impact when launched in 1906 that similar battleships built after her were referred to as \”dreadnoughts,\” and earlier battleships became known as pre-dread noughts. Her design had two revolutionary features: an all-big-gun armament scheme, with an unprecedented number of heavy-calibre guns, and steam turbine propulsion.
About Dreadnought in brief
The dreadnought was the predominant type of battleship in the early 20th century. The first of the kind, the Royal Navy’s Dreadnought, had such an impact when launched in 1906 that similar battleships built after her were referred to as \”dreadnoughts,\” and earlier battleships became known as pre-dread noughts. Her design had two revolutionary features: an all-big-gun armament scheme, with an unprecedented number of heavy-calibre guns, and steam turbine propulsion. The arrival of these new warships renewed the naval arms race between the United Kingdom and Germany. Successive designs increased rapidly in size and made use of improvements in armament, armor, and propulsion. Within five years, new battleships outclassed Dreadnoughs herself. These more powerful vessels were known as \”super- dreadnought\”. Most of the original dreadnought designs were scrapped after the end of World War I under the terms of the Washington Naval Treaty, but many of the newer super-dreadingnoughts continued serving throughout World War II. The term ‘dreadNought’ was gradually dropped from use after World WarI, especially after the Washington naval Treaty. It can also be used to describe battlecruisers, the other type of ship resulting from the dreadnower revolution. The move to all- big-gun designs offered advantages in both firepower and fire control, and the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905 showed that naval battles could, and likely would, be fought at long distances.
The typical battleship of the 1890s had a main armament of four heavy guns of 12-inch calibre, and a secondary armaments of six to eighteen quick-firing guns of between 4. 7 inches and 7. 5 inches calibre. This was in keeping with the prevailing theory of naval combat that battles would initially be fight at some distance, but the ships would then approach to close range for the final blows. At long ranges guns were aimed by observing the splashes caused by shells fired in salvoes, and it was difficult to interpret different splashes cause by different calibres of gun. There is still debate as to whether this feature was important. In naval battles the decisive weapon was the medium-calIBre, typically 6-inch firing gun firing at relatively short range. At the Battle of the Yalu River in 1894, the Japanese did not commence firing until the fighting occurred at 2,000 metres and most of the fighting happened at these ranges. For instance, in 1903, the US Navy had the lighter torpedo models of the Newer models of torpedo, known as the ‘hail of fire’, which delivered high volumes of ordnance on the target, too inaccurate to hit a target. By the early 21st century, the British and American admirals expected future battleships would engage at longer distances and would hit longer targets at a longer range.
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This page is based on the article Dreadnought published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 08, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
