In regard to technical design, however, the Kirov is simply a supersized guided-missile cruiser with nuclear propulsion.Īn F/A-18C Hornet launching from the flight deck of a modern aircraft carrier
ĭuring the Cold War, a Soviet Kirov-class large missile cruiser had a displacement great enough to rival World War II-era battleships and battlecruisers, perhaps defining a new capital ship for that era. The American Alaska-class cruiser, Dutch Design 1047 battlecruiser and the Japanese Design B-65 cruiser, planned specifically to counter the heavy cruisers being built by their naval rivals, have been described as "super cruisers", "large cruisers" or even "unrestricted cruisers", with some advocating that they even be considered as battlecruisers, however they were never classified as capital ships. Though this class was technically similar to a heavy cruiser, albeit slower but with considerably heavier guns, they were regarded by some as capital ships (hence the British label "Pocket battleship") since they were one of the few heavy surface units of the Kriegsmarine. An exception to the above in World War II was the Deutschland-class cruiser. All of the above ships were close to 20,000 tons displacement or heavier, with large caliber guns and heavy armor protection.Ĭruisers, despite being important ships, were not considered capital ships. In the 20th century, especially in World Wars I and II, typical capital ships would be battleships and battlecruisers. This applied mainly to ships resulting from the dreadnought revolution dreadnought battleships (also known first as dreadnoughts and later as battleships) and battlecruisers. The term "capital ship" was first coined in 1909 and formally defined in the limitation treaties of the 1920s and 1930s in the Washington Naval Treaty, London Naval Treaty, and Second London Naval Treaty.
Towards the end of the Napoleonic Wars and into the late 19th century, some larger and more powerful frigates were classified as fourth rates. By 1756, these ships were acknowledged to be too weak to stand in the line of battle and were relegated to ancillary duties, although they also served in the shallow North Sea and American littorals where larger ships of the line could not sail.įrigates were ships of the fifth rate sixth rates comprised small frigates and corvettes. Third rate: 64 to 80 guns (although 64-gun third-raters were small and not very numerous in any era).Four-deckers suffered in rough seas, and the lowest deck could seldom fire except in calm conditions. First rate: 100 or more guns, typically carried on three or four decks.The war in Europe was primarily a land war consequently, Germany's surface fleet was small, and the escort ships used in the Battle of the Atlantic were mostly destroyers and destroyer escorts to counter the U-boat threat.īefore the advent of the all-steel navy in the late 19th century, a capital ship during the Age of Sail was generally understood as a ship that conformed to the Royal Navy's rating system of a ship of the line as being of the first, second, third or fourth rates: The naval nature of the Pacific Theater of Operations, more commonly referred to as the Pacific War, necessitated the United States Navy mostly deploying its battleships and aircraft carriers in the Pacific. The Mahanian doctrine was also applied by the Imperial Japanese Navy, leading to its preventive move to attack Pearl Harbor and the battleships of the U.S. There is usually no formal criterion for the classification, but it is a useful concept in naval strategy for example, it permits comparisons between relative naval strengths in a theatre of operations without the need for considering specific details of tonnage or gun diameters.Ī notable example of this is the Mahanian doctrine, which was applied in the planning of the defence of Singapore in World War II, where the Royal Navy had to decide the allocation of its battleships and battlecruisers between the Atlantic and Pacific theatres.