Still, Big Gun advocates continued to push the envelope. Why pay for a BB when you can buy 50 of these little beauties for half the price? BB’s in the background. But if they are not risked, then they are not used, so then why build them at all?Ĭritics said that cheap torpedo boats and mines were just as effective against battleships as other battleships, and they were about to be proven right.Ī pint-sized giant slayer: The Torpedo Boat. They were so expensive to build and maintain that they simply could not be risked. It was the same thing with Post-Dreadnaught battleships. Zee the problem? It is a problem with a doomsday machine, no? Like today’s nukes, you kind of have to have them, but you can’t exactly use them. The Big Gun race continued right up to WW1, where an unusual paradox evolved around the battleship. Someone could build a nice little navy with that core of starter ships. Kongo (from the British), Kirishima, Haruna, and Hiei. Here they are, in 1912ish.Ĥ Japanese Kongo Class Battleships. The Japanese quickly copied it three more times. In their enthusiasm to continue pushing the design envelope, British industry actually built a battleship for Japan that was superior to even British warships. Sometimes the battleship rush led to national embarrassment. The HMS Dreadnaught was soon surpassed in size, armament, and speed. And little navies, like Peru and Brazil, simply couldn’t keep up. Industrialized nations were basically building a battleship a year, sometimes two, at tremendous national cost. The Pre-Dreadnaught arms race was crazy, but the Post-Dreadnaught arms race was nothing short of insane. Last time in Battleship History we went from Civil War ironclads up to the pre-WW1 arms race. It turns out that everyone wants an indestructible Death Machine.Īnd as popular as rolling ones are, floating ones were just a popular.
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