Sunken battleships are the wrecks of large capital ships built from the 1880s to the mid-20th century that were either destroyed in battle, mined, deliberately destroyed in a weapons test, or scuttled. The battleship, as the might of a nation personified in a warship, played a vital role in the prestige, diplomacy, and military strategies of 20th century nations. The importance placed on battleships also meant massive arms races between the great powers of the 20th century such as the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, United States, France, Italy, Russia, and the Soviet Union.
The term "battleship" first entered common parlance to describe certain types of ironclad warships in the 1880s,Stoll, J. Steaming in the Dark?, Journal of Conflict Resolution Vol. 36 No. 2, June 1992. now referred to as pre-dreadnoughts. The commissioning and putting to sea of , in part inspired by the results of the Battle of Tsushima in May 1905, marked the dawn of a new era in naval warfare and defining an entire generation of warships: the battleships. This first generation, known as the "Dreadnoughts", came to be built in rapid succession in Europe, the Americas, and Japan with ever more tension growing between the major naval powers. However, despite the enormous sums of money and resources dedicated to the construction and maintenance of the increasing number of battleships in the world, they typically saw little combat. With the exception of the naval battles of the Russo-Japanese War and Jutland, which would be one of the last large-scale battles between capital ships,Jeremy Black, "Jutland's Place in History," Naval History (June 2016) 30#3 pp. 16–21. no decisive naval battles between battleships were fought. When the First World War ended in 1918, much of the German High Seas Fleet was escorted to Scapa Flow, where almost all of the fleet was scuttled to prevent its being divided amongst the victorious Allies. Numerous other battleships were scuttled for similar reasoning.
Between the wars, the Washington Naval Treaty and the subsequent London Naval Treaty limited the tonnage and firepower of capital ships permitted to the navies of the world. The United Kingdom and the United States scrapped many of their aging dreadnoughts, while the Japanese began converting battlecruisers into fast battleships in the 1930s. In 1936, Italy and Japan refused to sign the Second London Naval Treaty and withdrew from the earlier treaties, prompting the United States and the United Kingdom to invoke an escalator clause in the treaty that allowed them to increase the displacement and armament of planned ships. The naval combat of World War II saw many battleships belonging to the various nations destroyed as air power began to be realized as being crucial to naval warfare, rather than massive capital ships. As the battleship began to fall out of favor, some captured capital ships were decommissioned, stripped, and deliberately sunk in nuclear weapons tests.
Losses Much like battlecruisers, battleships typically sank with large loss of life if and when they were destroyed in battle. The first battleship to be sunk by gunfire alone, the , sank with half of her crew at the Battle of Tsushima when the ship was pummeled by a seemingly endless stream of Japanese shells striking the ship repeatedly, killing crew with direct hits to several guns, the conning tower, and the water line or below it, which became the cause of the ship's sinking. Battleships also proved to be very vulnerable to mines, as was evidenced in the Russo-Japanese War and both World Wars. After the Battle of Port Arthur, a number of Russian and Japanese vessels were struck by mines and either sank or were scuttled to prevent their capture. A decade later, the Marine Nationale and Royal Navy lost three battleships, , , and , to Turkish mines in the waters of the Dardanelles. Torpedoes were also very capable of sinking battleships. On 21 November 1944, sank with over 1200 casualties. was struck by three torpedoes fired from . Barham could not make an attempt to dodge the incoming torpedoes and sank with 862 fatalities as a result of several magazine explosions that occurred after she had initially been hit by U-331s torpedoes.
Although mines and torpedoes constantly threatened the battleship's dominance, it was the refinement of aerial technology and tactics that led to the replacement of the battleship with the aircraft carrier as the most important naval vessel. Initially, the large scale use of aircraft in naval combat was underrated and the idea that they could destroy battleships was dismissed. Still, the United States and the Japanese Empire experimented with offensive roles for aircraft carriers in their fleets.Grant 2008, p. 273 One pioneer of aviation in a naval role was US Army General Billy Mitchell, who commandeered for testing of his theory in July 1921. Though these tests did not impress his contemporaries, they forced the US Navy to begin diverting some of its budget towards researching the matter further.Reid, John Alden. "Bomb the Dread Noughts!" Air Classics, 2006. The belief that the aircraft carrier was junior to the battleship began to evaporate when the Imperial Japanese Navy, in a surprise attack, nearly destroyed the United States Pacific Fleet while it was at anchor at Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941. The captain of the , Ernst Lindemann, had almost dodged the Royal Navy until he was undone by British reconnaissance aircraft. Although almost every sea battle in World War II involved gunfire between surface warships to some degree, their time as the senior ship of a nation's fleet had run its course.
Those battleships belonging to the Central Powers that survived World War I often did not survive its aftermath. The German High Seas Fleet was scuttled at Scapa Flow by its sailors in June 1919 following their surrender and internment the previous November. On 1 November 1918, as the Austrian battleship was being transferred to the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs, she was mined and sunk at Pola by two Italian frogmen, and Raffaele Rossetti, who were unaware of the transfer.Franco Favre, La Marina nella Grande Guerra. Le operazioni navali, aeree, subacquee e terrestri in Adriatico, pp. 262–64. On 27 November 1942 the Vichy French government scuttled the majority of the French fleet at Toulon.
Sunk in combat NameNavyCasualtiesDate sunkLocationConditionRelicsImage5 December 1904Port ArthurScrapped7 December 1904Port ArthurScrapped470–514 killed27 May 1905Tsushima StraitUnknownLost with all hands27 May 1905Tsushima StraitUnknown854 killed, 1 captured27 May 1905Tsushima StraitUnknown908 killed, 20 captured27 May 1905Tsushima StraitUnknown741 killed, 1 captured28 May 1905Tsushima StraitUnknown47 killed, 613 captured28 May 1905Tsushima StraitUnknown547 killed1 January 1915 Off Portland Bill, English ChannelUnknown150 killed18 March 1915DardanellesUnknown570 killed13 May 1915DardanellesUnknown78 killed25 May 1915Near Gaba Tepe, Gallipoli PeninsulaUnknown40–49 killed27 May 1915 Cape Helles, Gallipoli PeninsulaUnknown258 killed8 August 1915DardanellesUnknownLost with all hands1 June 1916North SeaUnknownLost with all hands26 November 1916 Off Lisbon, PortugalUnknownFour killed27 December 1916 Off Cape Maleas, Aegean SeaUnknown15 killed9 January 1917 Off MaltaUnknown296 killed19 March 1917 Mediterranean SeaUpright under of water.89 killed10 June 1918 Premuda, Adriatic SeaCapsized under of water.300 killed1 November 1918 Pula, CroatiaUnknown50 killed, 80 injured9 November 1918 Off Cape Trafalgar, Strait of GibraltarUnknown833 killed14 October 1939 Scapa FlowCapsized under of water.Royal Oaks bell is the centerpiece to a memorial to those who died aboard Royal Oak at St Magnus' Cathedral in Kirkwall.977 killed3 July 1940Mers-el-Kébir, AlgeriaScrapped23 April 1941Salamis Naval Base, near SalamisScrapped23 April 1941Salamis Naval Base, near SalamisScrapped2086 killed, 115 captured.27 May 1941 from Brest, North AtlanticBismarck was found in great condition. She sank after being heavily bombarded by British ships. Bismarck sank stern first in her plunge to the ocean floor. Her bridge and stern ripped away as she spiraled downwards, and as she settled on the side of an extinct underwater volcano, the down blast from all the water she displaced hit her and caused her to slide down the volcano on a water avalanche of sorts. Soon a mud slide occurred due to the shifting of the soil caused by the massive ship and it began to carry her down. She finally settled upright under of water. She slid half a mile.326 killed23 September 1941LeningradScrapped862 killed25 November 1941 Off EgyptUnknown1177 killed7 December 1941 Pearl HarborHeavily damaged as a result of the attack on Pearl Harbor. After being struck off the Naval Vessel Register on 1 December 1942, Arizona was found to be in such terrible condition that she could not be made serviceable again even after salvaging. Arizonas surviving superstructure was removed in 1942, followed by her main armament over the next year and a half.The amidships section had served as a ceremonial platform on the wreck but was cut away to make room for today's overlying memorial. One of the ship's bells is at the University of Arizona, an anchor and a restored gun barrel is located at the Wesley Bolin Memorial Plaza, and several of her guns were later used aboard . Other artifacts from the ship, such as items from the ship's silver service, are on permanent exhibit in the Arizona State Capitol Museum.64 killed7 December 1941 Pearl HarborUtah capsized during the attack, and was partially salvaged but not recovered. Utahs wreck is almost completely submerged, with a small amount of highly corroded superstructure visible above the surface.In 1972, a memorial consisting of a walkway from nearby Ford Island that terminates in a platform with a flagpole and a plaque. Other relics of the Utah are preserved at the Utah State Capitol and are regularly on display.327 killed10 December 1941 South China SeaCapsized under of water. Reported to have been heavily salvaged.Prince of Wales bell was recovered, restored, and displayed in the Merseyside Maritime Museum in Liverpool.16 killed25 May 1942 from Cape Paderan, VietnamUnknown188 killed13 November 1942 Off GuadalcanalCapsized under of water.212 killed15 November 1942Off GuadalcanalCapsized under of water.1393 killed9 September 1943 north of SardiniaCapsized and blown in half under .1932 killed, 36 captured26 December 1943 near the Norwegian North CapeCapsized under .18 August 1944Bay of LazaretScrapped28 August 1944Toulon, FranceScrapped1023 killed24 October 1944 Sibuyan SeaHeavily damaged and in multiple pieces under of water.1620 killed25 October 1944Surigao StraitCapsized of water with pagoda mast snapped off.1626 killed25 October 1944Surigao StraitCapsized in of water with bow folded back over the keel of the rest of the hull, and engine room collapsed.950–1204 killed12 November 1944 Håkøybotn Bay, NorwaySomewhat salvaged after the Second World War.1250 killed21 November 1944 Taiwan StraitUnknown23 February 1945Taranto HarborScrapped3055 killed7 April 1945 East China SeaBroken in half under of water.65 killed24 July 1945Kure, JapanScrapped29 July 1945Kure, JapanScrapped50 killed28 July 1945Kure, JapanScrapped200+ killed1 August 1945 Kure, JapanScrapped
Converted battleships NameNavyCasualtiesDate sunkLocationConditionImage811 killed4 June 1942Unknown131 killed11 August 1942 near MallorcaUnknown1435 killed29 November 1944 south of mainland Japan.Unknown
Lost at sea