The capital ships of a
navy
A navy, naval force, or maritime force is the branch of a nation's armed forces principally designated for naval and amphibious warfare; namely, lake-borne, riverine, littoral, or ocean-borne combat operations and related functions. It in ...
are its most important warships; they are generally the larger ships when compared to other warships in their respective fleet. A capital ship is generally a leading or a primary ship in a
naval fleet
A fleet or naval fleet is a large formation of warships – the largest formation in any navy – controlled by one leader. A fleet at sea is the direct equivalent of an army on land.
Purpose
In the modern sense, fleets are usually, but not ne ...
.
Strategic implications
There is usually no formal criterion for the classification, but it is a useful concept in naval strategy; for example, it permits comparisons between relative naval strengths in a
theatre of operations without the need for considering specific details of tonnage or gun diameters.
A notable example of this is the
Mahanian doctrine, which was applied in the
planning of the defence of Singapore in World War II, where the
Royal Navy
The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by English and Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against ...
had to decide the allocation of its battleships and battlecruisers between the Atlantic and Pacific theatres. The Mahanian doctrine was also applied by the
Imperial Japanese Navy
The Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN; Kyūjitai: Shinjitai: ' 'Navy of the Greater Japanese Empire', or ''Nippon Kaigun'', 'Japanese Navy') was the navy of the Empire of Japan from 1868 to 1945, when it was dissolved following Japan's surrend ...
, leading to its
preventive move to
attack Pearl Harbor and the battleships of the
U.S. Pacific Fleet
The United States Pacific Fleet (USPACFLT) is a theater-level component command of the United States Navy, located in the Pacific Ocean. It provides naval forces to the Indo-Pacific Command. Fleet headquarters is at Joint Base Pearl Harbor ...
. The naval nature of the
Pacific Theater of Operations, more commonly referred to as the
Pacific War, necessitated the
United States Navy
The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage ...
mostly deploying its battleships and aircraft carriers in the Pacific. The war in
Europe
Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located entirel ...
was primarily a land war; consequently, Germany's surface fleet was small, and the escort ships used in the
Battle of the Atlantic were mostly
destroyers and
destroyer escort
Destroyer escort (DE) was the United States Navy mid-20th-century classification for a warship designed with the endurance necessary to escort mid-ocean convoys of merchant marine ships.
Development of the destroyer escort was promoted by th ...
s to counter the
U-boat
U-boats were naval submarines operated by Germany, particularly in the First and Second World Wars. Although at times they were efficient fleet weapons against enemy naval warships, they were most effectively used in an economic warfare ro ...
threat.
Age of Sail
Before the advent of the all-steel navy in the late 19th century, a capital ship during the
Age of Sail was generally understood as a ship that conformed to the
Royal Navy
The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by English and Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against ...
's
rating system of a
ship of the line as being of the
first
First or 1st is the ordinal form of the number one (#1).
First or 1st may also refer to:
*World record, specifically the first instance of a particular achievement
Arts and media Music
* 1$T, American rapper, singer-songwriter, DJ, and rec ...
,
second,
third
Third or 3rd may refer to:
Numbers
* 3rd, the ordinal form of the cardinal number 3
* , a fraction of one third
* Second#Sexagesimal divisions of calendar time and day, 1⁄60 of a ''second'', or 1⁄3600 of a ''minute''
Places
* 3rd Street (d ...
or
fourth rates:
* First rate: 100 or more guns, typically carried on three or four
decks. Four-deckers suffered in rough seas, and the lowest deck could seldom fire except in calm conditions .
* Second rate: 90–98 guns.
* Third rate: 64 to 80 guns (although 64-gun third-raters were small and not very numerous in any era).
* Fourth rate: 46 to 60 guns. By 1756, these ships were acknowledged to be too weak to stand in the line of battle and were relegated to ancillary duties, although they also served in the shallow
North Sea
The North Sea lies between Great Britain, Norway, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium. An epeiric sea, epeiric sea on the European continental shelf, it connects to the Atlantic Ocean through the English Channel in the south and the ...
and American
littoral
The littoral zone or nearshore is the part of a sea, lake, or river that is close to the shore. In coastal ecology, the littoral zone includes the intertidal zone extending from the high water mark (which is rarely inundated), to coastal a ...
s where larger ships of the line could not sail.
Frigates were ships of the
fifth rate
In the rating system of the Royal Navy used to categorise sailing warships, a fifth rate was the second-smallest class of warships in a hierarchical system of six " ratings" based on size and firepower.
Rating
The rating system in the Royal ...
;
sixth rate
In the rating system of the Royal Navy used to categorise sailing warships, a sixth-rate was the designation for small warships mounting between 20 and 28 carriage-mounted guns on a single deck, sometimes with smaller guns on the upper works a ...
s comprised small frigates and
corvettes. Towards the end of the
Napoleonic Wars
The Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815) were a series of major global conflicts pitting the French Empire and its allies, led by Napoleon I, against a fluctuating array of European states formed into various coalitions. It produced a period of Fren ...
and into the late 19th century, some larger and more powerful frigates were classified as fourth rates.
Battleship / battlecruiser
The term "capital ship" was first coined in 1909 and formally defined in the limitation treaties of the 1920s and 1930s in the
Washington Naval Treaty
The Washington Naval Treaty, also known as the Five-Power Treaty, was a treaty signed during 1922 among the major Allies of World War I, which agreed to prevent an arms race by limiting naval construction. It was negotiated at the Washington Nav ...
,
London Naval Treaty, and
Second London Naval Treaty
The Second London Naval Treaty was an international treaty signed as a result of the Second London Naval Disarmament Conference held in London, the United Kingdom. The conference started on 9 December 1935 and the treaty was signed by the parti ...
. This applied mainly to ships resulting from the
dreadnought revolution; dreadnought battleships (also known first as dreadnoughts and later as battleships) and battlecruisers.
[
In the 20th century, especially in World Wars I and II, typical capital ships would be battleships and battlecruisers. All of the above ships were close to 20,000 tons displacement or heavier, with large caliber guns and heavy armor protection.
Cruisers, despite being important ships, were not considered capital ships. An exception to the above in World War II was the . Though this class was technically similar to a ]heavy cruiser
The heavy cruiser was a type of cruiser, a naval warship designed for long range and high speed, armed generally with naval guns of roughly 203 mm (8 inches) in caliber, whose design parameters were dictated by the Washington Naval T ...
, albeit slower but with considerably heavier guns, they were regarded by some as capital ships (hence the British label "Pocket battleship") since they were one of the few heavy surface units of the Kriegsmarine. The American , Dutch Design 1047 battlecruiser and the Japanese Design B-65 cruiser
Design B-65 was a class of Super Type A cruisersAccording to ''Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships 1922–1946'', p. 178, the Japanese classified Super Type A cruisers as heavy cruisers; however, Garzke and Dulin assert in ''Battleships: Axi ...
, planned specifically to counter the heavy cruisers being built by their naval rivals, have been described as "super cruisers", "large cruisers" or even "unrestricted cruisers", with some advocating that they even be considered as battlecruisers, however they were never classified as capital ships.
During the Cold War, a Soviet
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nation ...
large missile cruiser had a displacement great enough to rival World War II-era battleships and battlecruisers, perhaps defining a new capital ship for that era. In regard to technical design, however, the ''Kirov'' is simply a supersized guided-missile cruiser with nuclear propulsion.
Aircraft carrier
It took until late 1942 for aircraft carriers to be universally considered capital ships. Only full-size fleet carriers (whether purpose built, or converted from battleship/battlecruiser hulls) were regarded as capital ships, while light carrier
A light aircraft carrier, or light fleet carrier, is an aircraft carrier that is smaller than the standard carriers of a navy. The precise definition of the type varies by country; light carriers typically have a complement of aircraft only one-h ...
s (often using cruiser hulls) and escort carriers (often using merchant ship hulls) were not. The U.S. Navy was forced to rely primarily on its aircraft carriers after the attack on Pearl Harbor
The attack on Pearl HarborAlso known as the Battle of Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service upon the United States against the naval base at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Territory of Hawaii ...
sank or damaged eight of its Pacific-fleet battleships.
In the 21st century, the aircraft carrier is the last remaining capital ship, with capability defined in decks available and aircraft per deck rather than in guns and calibers. The United States possesses supremacy in both contemporary categories of aircraft carriers, possessing 11 active duty supercarrier
An aircraft carrier is a warship that serves as a seagoing airbase, equipped with a full-length flight deck and facilities for carrying, arming, deploying, and recovering aircraft. Typically, it is the capital ship of a fleet, as it allows a n ...
s each capable of carrying and launching nearly 100 tactical aircraft, and nine amphibious assault ship
An amphibious assault ship is a type of amphibious warfare ship employed to land and support ground forces on enemy territory by an amphibious assault. The design evolved from aircraft carriers converted for use as helicopter carriers (and, a ...
s which are equivalent in the "Sea Control Ship
The Sea Control Ship (SCS) was a small aircraft carrier developed and conceptualized by the United States Navy under Chief of Naval Operations Elmo Zumwalt during the 1970s. Currently the term refers to naval vessels that can perform similar d ...
" configuration to the light VSTOL
A vertical and/or short take-off and landing (V/STOL) aircraft is an airplane able to take-off or land vertically or on short runways. Vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) aircraft are a subset of V/STOL craft that do not require runways at al ...
carriers operated by other nations.[ James F. Amosbr>"Gen Amos' speech to Surface Navy Association."]
Nuclear submarines
Ballistic missile submarines (or "boomers"), while important ships and similar in tonnage to early battleships, are usually counted as part of a nation's nuclear deterrent
Nuclear strategy involves the development of doctrines and strategies for the production and use of nuclear weapons.
As a sub-branch of military strategy, nuclear strategy attempts to match nuclear weapons as means to political ends. In addit ...
force and do not share the sea control mission of traditional capital ships. Nevertheless, many navies, including the Royal Navy and the United States Navy
The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage ...
, consider these ships to be capital ships and have given some of them names previously used for battleships, e.g. ''Dreadnought'' and ''Vanguard''.
Naming
Some navies reserve specific names for their capital ships. Names reserved for capital ships include chiefs of state (e.g. ), important places, historically important naval officers or admiralty (e.g. ), historical events or objects (e.g. ), and traditional names (e.g. ). However, there are some exceptions to the rule.
Beginning with (the first U.S. battleship), U.S. capital ships were traditionally named after U.S. states. Cruisers are typically named after U.S. territories
Territories of the United States are sub-national administrative divisions overseen by the federal government of the United States. The various American territories differ from the U.S. states and tribal reservations as they are not sover ...
(e.g. Alaska-class cruisers just before and during World War II) or U.S. cities. Prior to and during World War II, the Imperial Japanese Navy also followed the practice of naming battleships after provinces (e.g. ).
Despite their significance to modern fleets, the U.S. Navy has never named aircraft carriers after U.S. states. Today, U.S. aircraft carriers are usually named after politicians and other individuals notable in US naval history such as Gerald R. Ford
Gerald Rudolph Ford Jr. ( ; born Leslie Lynch King Jr.; July 14, 1913December 26, 2006) was an American politician who served as the 38th president of the United States from 1974 to 1977. He was the only president never to have been elected ...
and Chester W. Nimitz.
Beginning with the first class of Trident
A trident is a three- pronged spear. It is used for spear fishing and historically as a polearm.
The trident is the weapon of Poseidon, or Neptune, the God of the Sea in classical mythology. The trident may occasionally be held by other mari ...
-equipped ballistic missile submarines (i.e. the ), state names have been applied to U.S. nuclear submarines. Previous ballistic missile submarines (e.g. Poseidon
Poseidon (; grc-gre, Ποσειδῶν) was one of the Twelve Olympians in ancient Greek religion and myth, god of the sea, storms, earthquakes and horses.Burkert 1985pp. 136–139 In pre-Olympian Bronze Age Greece, he was venerated as a ...
missile-equipped submarines) had not been named for states. After the completion of the last ''Ohio''-class ballistic missile submarine, state names were also applied to attack submarines (e.g. ). Earlier attack submarines had usually been named for marine animals or, commencing with the ), cities and towns.
See also
* Ship of the line
* Flagship
* Dreadnought
The dreadnought (alternatively spelled dreadnaught) was the predominant type of battleship in the early 20th century. The first of the kind, the Royal Navy's , had such an impact when launched in 1906 that similar battleships built after her ...
* Battleship
* Battlecruiser
* Aircraft carrier
* Nuclear submarine
A nuclear submarine is a submarine powered by a nuclear reactor, but not necessarily nuclear-armed. Nuclear submarines have considerable performance advantages over "conventional" (typically diesel-electric) submarines. Nuclear propulsion, ...
* List of sunken battleships
* List of sunken battlecruisers
* List of sunken aircraft carriers
With the advent of heavier-than-air flight, the aircraft carrier has become a decisive weapon at sea.Bishop & Chant, p. 1 In 1911 aircraft began to be successfully launched and landed on ships with the successful flight of a Curtiss Pusher aboa ...
* List of sunken nuclear submarines
Nine nuclear submarines have sunk, either by accident or scuttling. The Soviet Navy has lost five (one of which sank twice), the Russian Navy two, and the United States Navy (USN) two.
Three were lost with all hands - the two from the United Sta ...
Notes
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Capital Ship
Ship types