How did battleships influence the US Civil War?

Answer 1

Battleships influenced history greatly before 1900. From the ancientMediteranean fleets of Egypt,Rome, Persia and others to the great explorers of Portugal and Spain they were tools used to project naval power and subdue unknown lands. In our own Civil War they were one of the primary reason the South lost the war.The Northern Navy blockaded southern ports depriving the south of the raw materials that never made it to southern shores. As a famous show of force,President Teddy Roosevelt had theUS fleet of battleships painted white and had them sail around the globe as a visual demonstration of American naval power. About 1910 The design of the battleship was changed to a form known as the dreadnought. Low,sleek,heavily armored and bristling with big guns it was the standard "look" of the battleship until the last (the Wisconsin)was built in 1945. During WW2 the carrier group became the focus of the US navy and the battleship slipped out of the spotlight. As mighty as battleships were ,they were no match for torpedoes boring in from swarms of carrier based warplanes. Her day in the sun was over, and her great structures were cut up by the welder's torch.The battlehip will never influence future naval warefare.Today you can still visit several that are open to tourist. As you stand on the solid teak decks and feel the steel around you, you may go back mentally in time when their flags were flying high and these behemoths ruled the 7 seas!

What we currently think of as a "battleship" derives from the "line-of-battle" ship in the Age of Sail. That is, it is a direct descendant of the 1st to 3rd-rate (70+ gun) wooden sailing warships from the 12th to 19th centuries.

Tactically speaking, battleships differ little in their employment from their sailing ship predecessors. They were used in the same manner, and, if they were faster, better armed, and more destructive than their ancestors, they nonetheless were nothing revolutionary in concept. Indeed, the tactics Nelson used at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 are almost identical to those still being used by Togo at the Battle of Tsushima in 1905.

What battleships had changed, however, was two things: Grand Strategy and Economics.

In the field of Grand Strategy, the new Bible was Alfred Thayer Mahan's The Influence of Sea Power on History, in which Mahan espoused the theory that naval power defined a country's ultimate power. The heavily armored, fast, heavy-hitting battleship concept fit directly into Mahan's theories of power projection and empire. It is no coincidence that Mahan's treatise comes along shortly after the development of the true battleship (rather than the armored or protected ironclad), and it really drives the Age of the Battleship (1880-1939). Mahan's theory said that to maintain an empire and be a dominant economic force, a country most both protect its own maritime merchant fleet and also be able to deny that ability to its enemies. At the time, this meant a large number of powerful ships, able to defeat collections of any enemy vessels it encountered. The battleship concept fit like a glove.

As most large countries and empires immediately became disciples of Mahan, battleships became the primary measure of a country's naval power. Unfortunately, battleships were massively expensive, and difficult to construct. Few nations could afford either the money or the shipbuilding capability, and those costs inevitably took funding from the other portions of the military budget (most specifically, the budget for smaller warhips).

In addition, the worship of Mahan led to the ignoring of several other theories of naval warfare - primarily, the concept of guerre de course (or, commerce raiding). These other theories advocated the idea that a larger number of smaller, faster ships could both protect and attack merchant shipping better than battleships. Overall, Mahan's theory of "battleships and more battleships" led to serious blind spots in naval strategy, particularly in properly assessing the capability of new technology. The torpedo, submarine, and aircraft were all seriously underestimated by the acolytes of the battleship, and caused huge problems when actually encountered in warfare.

Overall, it is likely that battleships had a negativeaffect on naval warfare. In only one real instance (the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5) were they useful in the role they were intended. In WW1, they played a sideshow role, with the majority of naval action being submarine warfare or the blockade of Germany (accomplished via mostly smaller warships). In WW2, the complete obsolescence of the battleship by the events of 1940-41 came as a rude shock to most navies, despite the fact that more forward-thinking persons had been demonstrating the vulnerability of the battleship for over a decade. Thus, in both wars, huge economic investments in battleships were wastes. It is telling that NO new class of battleships was ordered after 1940 (those few battleships built during WW2 were either ordered before the war, or were conversions of convenience).

As to how the use of battleships actually influenced the outcome of warfare, the answer is: it varied. There are really only three wars where battleships play any role at all: the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5, World War One, and World War Two.

In the first war where battleships were employed, the aforementioned Russo-Japanese war, the war's outcome was primarily determined by naval conflict, where the Japanese fleet (consisting of many new-design battleships, courtesy of the U.K.'s Royal Navy) repeatedly defeated the mostly-obsolete Russian Imperial Fleet, with the IJN's battleships playing major roles.

In World War One, battleships played mostly a negative role. The huge investment represented by the battleship fleets of Britain and Germany made both sides extremely reluctant to risk them in any sort of combat, so both fleets remained at port virtually the entire war. Naval combat focused around the German submarine offensives, and the British naval blockade. Both of the latter were a response to the battleship stalemate, and, in the end, it was these two naval arenas where the outcome of WW1 was decided. The sole battleship-on-battleship engagement resulted in a draw, while in several other locations, the Royal Navy discovered that its battleships were very vulnerable to two newer weapons: the torpedo (usually as used by the submarine), and the naval mine. Overall, the utility of battleships in WW1 was poor.

If WW1 battleships saw little action, or generally showed poor results when in action, WW2 was the death knell for the battleship. Torpedoes took a toll on battleships, but, more importantly, the advancement of aircraft technology quickly shoved battleships back into history's dustbin. In virtually all cases, battleships without proper air cover died (and died rapidly) in the presence of attacking aircraft. This was quickly recognized, and battleships were relegated to shore-bombardment roles and generally kept far away from serious naval combat. In WW2, the only significant role battleships played was a reminder that times had changed. Had no battleships been involved in WW2, it would have impacted the outcome not a single bit.

Answer 2

The term of "battleships" as we know of the type of naval warships in the 20th century are now obsolete. The last major usage of these large ships was in the second world war. They had no influence in the US Civil War because they had not been "invented". There were a number of small warships in the Civil War, some were made of wood and some were "ironclads" in that they used protective metal to shield them from enemy cannon fire. A comparison to a 19th or 20th century battleship cannot be made as battleships were huge war vessels with many types of powerful cannons. And petroleum fuels powered their massive engines.