Thursday, December 26, 2013

The Top 5 Battleships of All Time



Top 5 Battleships of All Time -- James Holmes, National Interest

Ranking the greatest battleships of all time is a tad easier than ranking naval battles. Both involve comparing apples with oranges. But at least taking the measure of individual men-of-war involves comparing one apple with one orange. That's a compact endeavor relative to sorting through history to discern how seesaw interactions shaped the destinies of peoples and civilizations.

Still, we need some standard for distinguishing between battlewagons. What makes a ship great? It makes sense, first of all, to exclude any ship before the reign of Henry VIII. There was no line-of-battle ship in the modern sense before England's "great sea-king" founded the sail-driven Royal Navy in the 16th century. Galley warfare was quite a different affair from lining up capital ships and pounding away with naval gunnery.

Read more ....

My Comment: Bottom line .... technology has always changed how wars are fought .... and for battleships, their end happened with the introduction of coordinated aircraft attacks.

No comments: