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| The Japanese Battleship, IJN Kongo |
One of the key things that war does is to make previous weaponry and tactics obsolete. After all, rifles can shoot further, faster and more accurately than bows. Castle walls were build to deter nomadic invaders. Tanks were heavily armoured to repel the machine guns of the trenches.
In the Pacific theatre of World War 2, the battleship was made irrelevant by the aircraft carrier. Battleships are considered the most heavily armoured of ships, with typically 16-inch guns. They were designed to engage at long-range.
However, the aircraft carriers could easily outrange the battleships. In addition, using aircraft was more accurate than the guns of the battleships. Aircraft carriers proved to be critical in major naval battles of World War 2.
The British carriers crippled the Italian fleet at Taranto. The Japanese carriers had their own successes at Pearl Harbor (famously sinking the battleship USS Arizona), against HMS Prince of Wales and Operation C. The Americans themselves used carriers to great success at Midway and against the IJN Yamato.
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| Arizona memorial at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Note that the USS Missouri is on the left, and the memorial is on the right. |
There was one thing that battleships were better at: land bombardment. Battleships were able to dish out severe damage to shore fortifications without risking the lives of aircraft pilots.
Yet after World War 2, the Americans decided not to construct any new battleships. Everyone recognised that their time was done. The last significant World War 2 event involving a battleship was to act as a platform for the formal Japanese surrender (USS Missouri).
If you were to visit the Pearl Harbor Memorial today, you would see the USS Missouri facing the site of sunk USS Arizona. This seems to summarise the actions of the battleships during the war -- their irrelevancy in the light of aircraft carriers at the start of the war, and to serve as a support ship towards the end of the war.
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