USS Iowa at San Francisco in drycock, 1945.
A fter the war, there was not the problem of the disposal of the fleets of the defeated countries, which had been so acute in 1919. The capital ship strength of Germany and Japan had ceased to exist, though the breaking up of those vessels sunk in shallow waters, including Tirpitz in Tromso Fjord, and Gneisenau, Lützow and Admiral Scheer in Baltic ports, as well as the three Japanese ships sunk in the Inland Sea, continued for some years. Nagato, the only Japanese battleship to survive the war, was sunk at Bikini Atoll in the atomic bomb tests of 1946, along with the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen, the largest German survivor.
The victors also quickly disposed of most of their ships. In Britain, all the remaining battleships were in reserve by 1955 and scrapped by 1960. The French navy discarded its two remaining ships by 1961, but the USN kept the four Iowa class in commission, employing them off Korea and Vietnam in the later wars in the Far East, and later in the Gulf.
First, however, came the cancellation of virtually all battleships, either building or on order, a recognition of the awareness that the type was obsolete, save for use in shore bombardment. In Britain these were the ships of the Lion class, two of which had been laid down in 1939 and two more were on order. Work on Lion and Temeraire was halted when it became apparent that the need for other types of ship was more urgent. A proposal in 1945 to upgrade the incomplete hulls from 40,000 to 50,000 tons with nine 16-inch guns was not implemented. The other ships, which were to have been named Conqueror and Thunderer were cancelled. Another ship, Vanguard, had already been launched, though she did not join the fleet until 1946. She had been laid down in 1941, and was armed with four of the well-tried 15-inch turrets taken out of Courageous and Glorious on their conversion to carriers. Of 45,000 tons, and with a secondary armament of sixteen QF 5.25-inch dual-purpose guns and no fewer than seventy-three Bofors guns of 40mm, she was, by all accounts, not only the last but also the best of her type.
The United States cancelled the last two of the Iowa class, ordered in 1942. Kentucky had reached a late stage in building and was in fact launched in 1950, after proposals to complete her as a missile-launching battleship were rejected, and her hull was broken up. The proposed Illinois had not even been laid down, though her engines had been completed and were used in other ships. The five ships of the Montana class were authorised in 1940, but were soon seen as superfluous in the new age of the fast carrier task force, and none were even laid down, the project being cancelled in 1943. Of 60,000 tons they were each to carry twelve 16-inch guns and were to have borne the names Montana, Ohio, Maine, New Hampshire and Louisiana.
Having eschewed the battle cruiser concept earlier in the century, the United States now did make plans for vessels of this type in their final ship building programme. They may be regarded as the culmination of the wartime development of the heavy cruiser, but as they mounted 12-inch guns they are often described as battle cruisers and rated as capital ships. They were to bear the names of US dependencies – Alaska, Guam, Hawaii, Philippines, Puerto Rico and Samoa, rather than the names of states, traditional in US battleships (though of course Alaska and Hawaii subsequently achieved statehood). Of these only Alaska and Guam entered service in 1944 but were broken up in 1961. Hawaii was launched, but never completed and her hull was broken up in 1960. The other three had been cancelled in 1943.
France had planned for two more ships of the Richelieu class, to be named Clemenceau and Gascoigne. The former was launched in 1943, but her hull was sunk by allied bombing the following year and the latter was cancelled. Two (unnamed) sisters were proposed in April 1940, but events soon overtook those plans.
Only the USSR of the victorious powers continued to contemplate further battleship construction. These were the three ships of the Sovetsky Soyuz class of 59,000 tons and with a main armament of nine 16-inch guns. Of these, the name ship was laid down in 1938, and her sisters, Sovetskaya Belorussiya and Sovetskaya Ukraina, in 1939 and 1938 respectively. Work was halted in 1940 and all three ships were disposed of by 1949, though the complexity of the Cold War prevented any detailed knowledge of any of them.
Of the British First World War vessels, four Queen Elizabeth class and four Royal Sovereign class had survived the war, along with the battle cruiser Renown. These were disposed of by 1949, having first given service as training or depot ships. First to go was Warspite which in a later era of increased awareness of history and less economic stringency, would have been a prime subject for preservation. Sold for scrap in 1946, she was being towed to a breaker’s yard on the Clyde when she broke her tow in a gale and grounded in Prussia Cove near Land’s End and was broken up there over the next three years. Queen Elizabeth, Valiant and Malaya along with Renown went less dramatically in 1948, as did Ramillies, Resolution and Revenge. Royal Sovereign survived one year longer, having been on loan to the USSR, where she had been known as Arkhangelsk. Of the newer ships, Nelson and Rodney also went to the breakers in 1948, but the King George V class remained in service until 1957. They had some training duties in reserve, before being deleted and scrapped, Vanguard following them in 1960. All that remains are the two gigantic 15-inch barrels outside the Imperial War Museum, one saved from HMS Ramillies and the other from the monitor HMS Roberts, (formerly on HMS Resolution).
France still had in commission three ships of First World War vintage, Ocean, Lorraine and Paris. Though Ocean was broken up in 1945, the other two survived until 1953 and 1955 respectively before they too were scrapped. The wrecks of the old Bretagne and Provence, and of the battle cruisers Dunkerque and Strasbourg were broken up, leaving only the two Richelieu class in service. Of these, Jean Bart had been the last battleship to be completed by any navy, after being a long time in building. She had been laid down in 1936 at Saint Nazaire, and the hull was floated in the building basin in March 1940. In June she made her way, under her own steam, to Casablanca to escape from the advancing Germans where she remained there for the rest of the war. Only one of her quadruple turrets had been fitted, but she used this to fire on USS Massachusetts supporting the US forces invading French North Africa in 1942, but herself sustained heavy damage from 16-inch shells and bombs. Taken to Brest for completion in 1945, she was not ready for trials until 1949, nor was she complete until 1952. She was in the support force for the Suez operation in 1956, but was sold for scrap in 1962. Richelieu had been placed in reserve in 1956, and went to the scrapyard in 1968.
Although the Italians had ended the war on the allied side, the losses inflicted during their Axis partnership were reflected in the postwar arrangements for their battle fleet. Littorio, renamed Italia, was allocated to the USA and Vittorio Veneto to Britain, for scrapping in each case, while the incomplete Impero was broken up at Trieste where she lay. The elderly Giulio Cesare was handed over to the Soviet Union, serving as Novorossiysk until 1956. She replaced the on-loan Resolution. This left Italy with only Caio Duilio and Andrea Doria which remained in service as training ships until 1956.
Around the same time the remaining South American battleships were disposed of: Brazil’s Sao Paolo sank near the Azores when on her way to the breakers in 1951, while Minas Gerais was scrapped in 1954. The Argentinian Rivadavia and Moreno, almost fifty years old, followed them in 1957. The last to go was the Chilean Almirante Latorre in 1959. She was the last survivor of Jutland, having fought there as HMS Canada, before being restored to her Chilean owners after the war. The last of the First World War dreadnoughts, the Turkish Yavuz Sultan Selim (ex SMS Goeben ) went as late as 1972, despite a lastminute attempt at preservation.
Three Russian dreadnoughts of the Gangut class of 1911 survived both world wars as well as two revolutions and a flurry of renaming and lasted until the 1950s. They saw little active service in either war and Gangut (renamed Oktyabrskaya Revolyutsiya in 1925) was in use as a training ship until 1959. Marat (ex- Petropavlovsk) was sunk in harbour in 1941, but remained partially afloat and was used as a gun battery. She remained in service after the war as the artillery ship Volkhov. Sevastopol (renamed Parizhskaya Kommuna) served in the Black Sea, reverting to her original name, but the fourth ship, originally, Poltava, (later Mikhail Frunze) was seriously damaged by fire and was cannibalised for spare parts before being scrapped in 1956.
Finally, the United States had ended the war with twenty-three battleships in commission. During the next few years she disposed of all the older (pre-1941) ships except Texas which was retained at San Jacinto as a museum ship. Arkansas was sunk at Bikini Atoll in atomic bomb tests, but New York, Nevada and Pennsylvania all survived the nuclear explosions, only to be sunk later as target ships. Oklahoma, deemed beyond repair after being sunk at Pearl Harbor, now sank while on tow to a breaker’s yard, but Wyoming (a training ship throughout the war) New Mexico and Idaho were all scrapped in 1947. Mississippi was used as a gunnery training vessel and then for testing missile systems until 1956, when she too was deleted, to be followed by Tennessee, California, Colorado, Maryland and West Virginia in 1959. These five had been in reserve since the war, together with the South Dakota class and the North Carolina class. Three of these have been preserved, but the others (Washington, South Dakota and Indiana) were all scrapped in 1961–3, leaving only the four Iowa class in commission.
These ships were deployed as fire support ships off Korea, and then went into reserve in 1955. New Jersey was refitted and reactivated for similar duty off the coasts on Vietnam in 1967–9 before again being decommissioned. Then all four ships were modernised and reequipped with Tomahawk cruise missiles and Harpoon SSMs from 1982. In this configuration, New Jersey and later Iowa saw action off Lebanon in 1983–4, an explosion in the latter ship’s B turret killing fifty of her crew. Wisconsin and Missouri gave fire support in the Arabian Gulf in 1991, after which all four were decommissioned.
USS Iowa at San Francisco in drycock, 1945.
Japanese pre-dreadnought Mikasa.
The remaining battleships are a rather unrepresentative selection. Apart from the four Iowas, those preserved in America owe as much to the location of their name-states as to any distinction they achieved in action. They comprise Texas (which joined the fleet in 1912), North Carolina (1941), Massachusetts (1942) and Alabama (1942). Additionally Arizona (1915) is preserved as a war grave at Pearl Harbor. Of the four Iowas, Missouri is moored as a memorial at Pearl Harbor, New Jersey in that state and Iowa at San Francisco. Wisconsin is at Norfolk Virginia, still nominally in reserve.
There were some missed opportunities: the preservation of Almirante Latorre (ex-Canada) would have been a link with Jutland and of Yavuz (ex-Goeben) with the Mediterranean in 1914. But the greatest loss was Warspite. She had been at Jutland, at Narvik and Cape Matapan, and had been fleet flagship in the Mediterranean and the Pacific, before giving fire support off the beaches of Salerno and Normandy. Mikasa, Admiral Togo’s flagship at Tsushima is a link with the emergence of Japan as a naval power
The other surviving battleships are relics of a much earlier age – Victory (1765) and Warrior (1860), both at Portsmouth.