page_title: Naval warfare
section_title: 20th century
hierarchical_section_title: Naval warfare / History / Late Modern / 20th century
caption_attribution_description: English: The Japanese aircraft carrier Hiryu maneuvers to avoid bombs dropped by USAAF Boeing B-17E Flying Fortress bombers during the Battle of Midway on 4 June 1942.
context_page_description: Naval warfare is human combat in and on the sea, the ocean, or any other battlespace involving a major body of water such as a large lake or wide river.
context_section_description: In the early 20th century, the modern battleship emerged: a steel-armored ship, entirely dependent on steam propulsion, with a main battery of uniform caliber guns mounted in turrets on the main deck. This type was pioneered in 1906 with HMS Dreadnought which mounted a main battery of ten 12-inch (300 mm) guns instead of the mixed caliber main battery of previous designs.  Along with her main battery, Dreadnought and her successors retained a secondary battery for use against smaller ships like destroyers and torpedo boats and, later, aircraft.
  Dreadnought style battleships dominated fleets in the early 20th century leading into World War I, which pitted the old Royal Navy against the new Kaiserliche Marine of Imperial Germany, culminating in the 1916 Battle of Jutland. The future was heralded when the seaplane carrier HMS Engadine and her Short 184 seaplanes joined the battle. In the Black Sea, Russian seaplanes flying from a fleet of converted carriers interdicted Turkish maritime supply routes, Allied air patrols began to counter German U-boat activity in Britain's coastal waters, and a British Short 184 carried out the first successful torpedo attack on a ship.
  In 1918 the Royal Navy converted an Italian liner to create the first aircraft carrier, HMS Argus, and shortly after the war the first purpose-built carrier, HMS Hermes was launched. Many nations agreed to the Washington Naval Treaty and scrapped many of their battleships and cruisers while still in the shipyards, but the growing tensions of the 1930s restarted the building programs, with even larger ships. The Yamato-class battleships, the largest ever, displaced 72,000 tons and mounted 18.1-inch (460 mm) guns.
  The victory of the Royal Navy at the Battle of Taranto was a pivotal point as this was the first true demonstration of naval air power. The importance of naval air power was further reinforced by the Attack on Pearl Harbor, which forced the United States to enter World War II. Nevertheless, in both Taranto and Pearl Harbor, the aircraft mainly attacked stationary battleships. The sinking of the British battleships HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse, which were in full combat manoeuvring at the time of the attack, finally marked the end of the battleship era. Aircraft and their transportation, the aircraft carrier, came to the fore.
  During the Pacific War of World War II, battleships and cruisers spent most of their time escorting aircraft carriers and bombarding shore positions, while the carriers and their airplanes were the stars of the Battle of the Coral Sea, Battle of Midway, Battle of the Eastern Solomons, Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands and Battle of the Philippine Sea. The engagements between battleships and cruisers, such as the Battle of Savo Island and the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal, were limited to night-time actions in order to avoid exposure to air attacks. Nevetheless, battleships played the key role again in the Battle of Leyte Gulf, even though it happened after the major carrier battles, mainly because the Japanese carrier fleet was by then essentially depleted. It was the last naval battle between battleships in history. Air power remained key to navies throughout the 20th century, moving to jets launched from ever-larger carriers, and augmented by cruisers armed with guided missiles and cruise missiles.
  Roughly parallel to the development of naval aviation was the development of submarines to attack underneath the surface. At first, the ships were capable of only short dives, but they eventually developed the capability to spend weeks or months underwater powered by nuclear reactors. In both world wars, submarines (U-boats in Germany) primarily exerted their power by using torpedoes to sink merchant ships and other warships. In the 1950s, the Cold War inspired the development of ballistic missile submarines, each loaded with dozens of thermonuclear weapon-armed SLBMs and with orders to launch them from sea if the other nation attacked.
  Against the backdrop of those developments, World War II had seen the United States become the 
caption: Aircraft carrier Hiryū under air attack during the Battle of Midway.
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