Battleships of World War Two
of the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, and Japan
By Stephen Sherman, June, 2007. Updated January 28, 2012.
Battleships of the 20th Century all descended from Jackie Fisher's Dreadnought of 1908 - fast, oil-burning, heavily-armored capital ships with main guns in turrets. Down to the ultimate battle-wagons like Iowa and Yamato, these ships were all developments of the Dreadnought type, not fundamentally different (although vastly more capable).
As the navies of the world competed with each other in the decades before WW2, they were constrained by the Washington and London naval treaties. Thus, no battleship could exceed 35,000 tons, and no guns could be larger than 16 inches. After specifying some exceptions for ships in current use and under construction, the treaty limited the total capital ship tonnage of each of the signatories. The tonnage was defined in the treaty to exclude fuel (and boiler water) because Britain argued that their global activities demanded higher fuel loads than other nations and they should not be penalized. The treaty resulted in oddities like the British Nelson and Rodney, with three forward turrets and anti-torpedo "armor" consisting of water tanks!
For convenience, I include Battle Cruisers, notably HMS Hood, on this section on battleships.
Using the pictures from the 1943-45 Naval Recognition Manual as a
base, I plan to cover four major powers of the war: United States,
United Kingdom, Japan, and Germany. As the manual was
designed specifically for recognition, it includes classes of warships,
not individual ships. Thus, all the ships presented here are lead ships
of their class.