World War II saw the end of the battleship as the dominant force in the world's navies. At the outbreak of the war, large fleets of battleships—many inherited from the dreadnought era decades before—were one of the decisive forces in naval thinking. By the end of the war, battleship construction was all but halted, and almost every remaining battleship was retired or scrapped within a few years of its end.
Some pre-war commanders had seen the aircraft carrier as the capital ship of the future, a view which was reinforced by the devastating Pearl Harbor attack in 1941. The resultant Pacific War saw aircraft carriers and submarines take precedence. There were just two engagements in the Pacific Theater when battleships fought each other,The Pearl Harbor attack was a radical development of Japanese strategy that only occurred in 1941. It is also likely the American plan for the Pacific involved a prompt battleship engagement. Evans and Peattie, p.471-7 and only three such engagements in the Atlantic. Instead, they were used to add to fleet air defense, for shore bombardment, and in several cases as fixed port defense batteries.
Battleships remained the most heavily protected ships afloat; nonetheless, sixteen were sunk or crippled by bombs or torpedoes delivered by aircraft, while three more were sunk by submarine-launched torpedoes.The battleships , , , , , , , , , , , , , Marat, and were all put out of commission or destroyed by aerial attack including bombs, air-dropped torpedoes and missiles fired from aircraft. The war also saw the development of the first guided bombs, which would make it much easier for aircraft to sink battleships in the future.
Operations European theater Baltic and North Seas
The German pre-dreadnought battleship fired the first shots of World War II by initiating the bombardment of the Polish garrison at Westerplatte in the early hours on 1 September 1939. Over the course of the month, Schleswig-Holstein shelled Polish positions around the base, and was later joined there by her sister ship before the Poles eventually surrendered.
On 14 October 1939, the German U-boat entered the British Royal Navy's anchorage at Scapa Flow and torpedoed the battleship , sinking her with two torpedoes. In November, the German battleships and sortied to attack British vessels off the Faroe Islands, and encountered the auxiliary cruiser , which they sank before returning home.
After the Soviet Union attacked Finland in late 1939 in the Winter War, the Soviet battleships and bombarded a Finnish coastal artillery battery in December 1939. They inflicted little damage before being driven off by several near misses. The Gulf of Finland iced over soon thereafter, preventing any further operations.
During Operation Weserübung, the German invasion of Denmark and Norway in April 1940, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were sent as part of the covering force for the units targeting Narvik and Trondheim, Norway. On 9 April, they briefly skirmished with the British battlecruiser before fleeing. Later during the Norwegian campaign, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau caught the British aircraft carrier and a pair of escorting destroyers; they sank all three ships in a short action. Scharnhorst was hit by a torpedo launched by one of the destroyers, however, and had to return to Germany for repairs that lasted for six months.
After Germany invaded the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa in June 1941, Marat and Oktyabrskaya Revolutsiya withdrew to Leningrad, where they supported the Soviet defenses during the Siege of Leningrad that lasted from 1941 to 1944. In September 1941, German Junkers Ju 87 dive bombers sank Marat in the harbor, though her upper works were still above water and she remained in operation as a stationary artillery battery through the remainder of the siege. Oktyabrskaya Revolutsiya was also struck by German bombers several times throughout the siege, but she too remained in action.
After having returned to Germany for repairs in January 1942 (by way of the Channel Dash), Gneisenau was badly damaged by British heavy bombers in an air attack in March. The decision was made to replace the ship's guns with guns, but the project was postponed after Adolf Hitler forbade further naval construction after the Battle of the Barents Sea in December 1942. Gneisenau was eventually scuttled at the end of the war and was then broken up in the late 1940s.
Battle of the Atlantic
At the start of the war, Germany had deployed its large heavy cruisers of the as commerce raiders in the Atlantic, hoping to interrupt supplies from the Americas to Europe. Numerous British and French warships were deployed to try to catch them, including the two French s.
In January 1941, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau sortied again, this time breaking out into the north Atlantic in Operation Berlin, with the goal of attacking convoys bringing supplies to Britain. The ships had mixed success during the operation, which lasted into March, but two of the convoys they attempted to attack were escorted by British battleships— in one instance and in the other—which dissuaded them from attacking the merchant vessels. During a later attack, one of the merchant ships radioed for assistance, which brought the battleships and to the scene, prompting the Germans to flee. The Germans then sailed for Brest in occupied France, where they were subjected to numerous British air raids.
The Germans followed up Operation Berlin with Operation Rheinübung, a sortie by the recently completed battleship and the heavy cruiser , in May 1941. At the Battle of the Denmark Strait on 24 May, Bismarck and Prinz Eugen engaged the British battlecruiser and battleship ; Bismarck quickly destroyed Hood and damaged Prince of Wales, forcing her to temporarily withdraw, but was damaged by Prince of Wales in return. Other British forces eventually tracked Bismarck, and Swordfish torpedo-bombers from slowed her down enough that King George V and Rodney caught and destroyed Bismarck in her final action.
The loss of Bismarck and the threat of repeated air attacks on the two Scharnhorst-class battleships at Brest led the German naval command to forbid further sorties into the Atlantic and to return the ships to home waters. They made the Channel Dash in January 1942, successfully returning to Germany, though both were damaged by mines in the operation.
Mediterranean Sea
Following the fall of France in June 1940, most of France's battleships were based in ports in France's African colonies. The two Dunkerque-class battleships were stationed at Mers-el-Kébir, along with the old battleships and . Under the mistaken impression that Germany planned to seize the French battleships, Britain embarked on a campaign to either compel the French to defect to the Free French or scuttle their ships, and if the French refused, they would sink them. In the Attack on Mers-el-Kébir, the British battleships and and battlecruiser Hood inflicted serious damage to Dunkerque and Provence and sank Bretagne, though Strasbourg was able to escape to Toulon, France. The battleship was interned under British control. In September, the British battleships and Resolution attempted to sink the battleship in the Battle of Dakar, but they broke off the attempt after Resolution was badly damaged by a French submarine.
As the North African campaign intensified, British attention turned to its main opponent in the Mediterranean, the Italian . The Italians possessed a formidable fleet that included two and two s, both modernized World War I-era ships, and two modern s. Italian operations were hampered by a desire to protect their fleet, though they still undertook numerous operations to attack British supply convoys in the central Mediterranean. These resulted in several battles, including the inconclusive Battle of Calabria in July 1940, where the battleships and engaged the British , , and Malaya. In November, the British launched a nighttime carrier raid on the main Italian naval base at Taranto; in the Battle of Taranto, British torpedo-bombers sank Conte di Cavour and damaged and .
In March 1941, the Italians sortied to attack British forces, resulting in the Battle of Cape Matapan. The Italian battleship was torpedoed and damaged, as was the heavy cruiser . Vittorio Veneto returned to port, but Pola and two other heavy cruisers were caught by Valiant, Warspite, and Barham, which annihilated the cruisers in a close-range night fight. Littorio took part in the First and Second Battles of Sirte. In the latter engagement, she damaged several British destroyers.
During the Allied invasion of French North Africa in November 1942, the American battleship engaged the incomplete French battleship in the Naval Battle of Casablanca. Massachusetts disabled Jean Barts one operational gun turret, ending that phase of the battle. Later that month, when Germany occupied the rest of Vichy France in response to the French surrender in North Africa, the French scuttled the fleet in Toulon, by which time Dunkerque had been repaired and had rejoined her sister there. Both ships were sunk in the action. Provence had also been returned to Toulon, and she was scuttled as well. By that time, fuel shortages had severely curtailed the operations of the Italian surface fleet, and they saw little activity in late 1942 and early 1943. By that time, the battleship had been completed. After Italy exited the war with the Armistice of Cassibile in September 1943, German bombers using Fritz X guided bombs sank Roma and damaged Littorio on their way to internment at Malta.
Arctic operations
By 1942, combat operations had arrived in the Arctic Ocean, as the Western Allies had begun sending supply convoys to aid the Soviet Union fighting Germany on the Eastern Front. Battleships, including King George V and the American , were routinely deployed to escort the convoys to protect them from German surface ships.
Soon after the ship was completed, the German battleship was sent to occupied Norway to attack the Allied convoys to the Soviet Union, deter an Allied invasion of Norway, and to tie down British naval forces by acting as a fleet in being. The ship saw little activity, and only notable success came against Convoy PQ 17, though Tirpitz did not engage the convoy. Instead, when the Allies learned that Tirpitz had sortied, they dispersed the convoy, which allowed U-boats and Luftwaffe bombers to sink 21 of the 34 transports.
Scharnhorst was deployed to join Tirpitz in Norway in early 1943, but fuel shortages curtailed any offensive operations for much of the year. In December, the ship went to sea with several destroyers to attack one such convoy, and after briefly skirmishing with British cruisers in the Battle of the North Cape, Scharnhorst was attacked and disabled by the British battleship . Scharnhorst was then sunk by torpedoes from Allied destroyers.
Tirpitz was repeatedly attacked by British naval and air forces throughout 1943 and 1944, most notably by midget submarines in Operation Source in September 1943, which inflicted serious damage, and by Avro Lancaster heavy bombers in Operation Catechism, which sank the ship in December 1944. In the latter attack, the British used Tallboy bombs to destroy the ship.
Allied offensives in France