"Top Battleships of All Time" Topic

"Ranking the greatest battleships of all time is a tad easier than ranking naval battles. Both involve comparing apples with oranges. But at least taking the measure of individual men-of-war involves comparing one apple with one orange. That's a compact endeavor relative to sorting through history to discern how seesaw interactions shaped the destinies of peoples and civilizations.

Still, we need some standard for distinguishing between battlewagons. What makes a ship great? It makes sense, first of all, to exclude any ship before the reign of Henry VIII. There was no line-of-battle ship in the modern sense before England's "great sea-king" founded the sail-driven Royal Navy in the 16th century. Galley warfare was quite a different affair from lining up capital ships and pounding away with naval gunnery.

One inescapable chore is to compare ships' technical characteristics. A recent piece over at War Is Boring revisits an old debate among battleship and World War II enthusiasts. Namely, who would've prevailed in a tilt between a U.S. Navy Iowa-class dreadnought and the Imperial Japanese Navy's Yamato? Author Michael Peck restates the common wisdom from when I served in mighty Wisconsin, last of the battleships: it depends on who landed the first blow. Iowas commanded edges in speed and fire control, while Yamato and her sister Musashi outranged us and boasted heavier weight of shot. We would've made out fine had we closed the range before the enemy scored a lucky hit from afar. If not, things may have turned ugly…"
Full article here
link

Amicalement
Armand

So Warrior and Dreadnought don't get ba mention… but it's an impossible list. Function hasn't been mentioned. Compare a British and German WW1 Battleship. The German ship is designed to fight in the North Sea. The British ship is expected to patrol the world. Result? British ships need more fuel and living accomodation than the equivalent German ship. How do you compare? Ton for ton and looking at purely speed/armament/armour the German ship will always be superior – until it's asked to travel a few thousand miles to fight it's battles.

I seldom put much faith in these lists, but this one is the worst I've seen yet!

To rate the Victory as the best battleship of all time is clearly crazy, indeed she was over the hill when she secured her place in history at Trafalgar.

And where did that nonsense about the crew of the Bismarck deserting their posts unless forced to stay at gunpoint come from? This is one ship I know a little bit about; I've been interested in her for more years than I care to remember, have read every book and publication I could find on her, but am not one of those who refuse to acknowledge she had faults. However, never until today have I ever read that slur agaqinst her crew. Then again coming from someone who considers a torpedo hit that smashed her steering gear, demolished the decks in her stern, and damned near blew it completely off as "minor"..? I suppose if a torpedo had managed to find its way its way into one of her magazines, set it off and blew the ship apart, this guy would have said that torpedo caused the ship's crew a little concern!

My own personal opinion is that it is impossible to come up with a true list of the greatest battleships of all time. I don't think it's possible to not let a particular favourite of the judge(s) have some influence on the final result.

No mention of Warspite?

Thanks for sharing, however I have to agree with Cuchulainn this is one of the worst lists of "greatest battleship" I've seen in a long time. Why you could probably build a case, that these five ships are among the top "historic significant warships" of all time, I doubt that very few naval historians would list Victory and Mikasa among the top battleships.

Bismarck? Honestly? For this alone I'd place this as one of the worst "best of" lists so far.

Actually a "worst 'best of' list" would itself make an interesting article :)

> Missouri

Put above the New Jersey due to diplomacy? I thought he was talking about Battleship capabilities… Well, actually looking at the article I see that he was not.

Perhaps if he actually compared these ships to their contemporaries it would make some sense but this is really more a "famous" ships list than best of list.

Same as the "Best Submarines" list we saw a while back.

DM

Like all of these "best of" lists, this one is perfectly and absolutely useless and absurd.

There was an episode of "Ten Greatest" on what used to be the Military Channel a couple of years ago. It was much better IMHO. It included Missouri and Bismarck, but also included Warspite and Dreadnought. While a silly premise, it was entertaining and more accurate than this one.

Maybe she made the list?

YouTube link