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A battleship is a large armored warship with a main battery consisting of heavy caliber guns. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries the battleship was the most powerful type of warship, and a fleet of battleships was vital for any nation that desired to maintain command of the sea. The word ''battleship'' was coined around 1794 and is a contraction of the phrase ''line-of-battle ship,'' the dominant wooden warship during the Age of Sail.〔"battleship" The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. 1989. OED Online. Oxford University Press. April 4, 2000.〕 The term came into formal use in the late 1880s to describe a type of ironclad warship,〔Stoll, J. ''Steaming in the Dark?'', Journal of Conflict Resolution Vol. 36 No. 2, June 1992.〕 now referred to by historians as pre-dreadnought battleships. In 1906, the commissioning of heralded a revolution in battleship design. Following battleship designs, influenced by HMS ''Dreadnought'', were referred to as "dreadnoughts". Battleships were a symbol of naval dominance and national might, and for decades the battleship was a major factor in both diplomacy and military strategy.〔Sondhaus, L. ''Naval Warfare 1815–1914'', ISBN 0-415-21478-5.〕 The global arms race in battleship construction began in Europe, following the 1890 publication of Alfred Thayer Mahan's ''The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660–1783''.〔Herwig pp. 35, 41, 42.〕 This arms race culminated at the decisive Battle of Tsushima in 1905;〔Mahan 1890/Dover 1987 pp. 2, 3.〕〔Preston (1982) p. 24.〕 the outcome of which significantly influenced the design of HMS ''Dreadnought''.〔Breyer p. 115.〕〔Massie (1991) p. 471.〕 The launch of ''Dreadnought'' in 1906 commenced a new naval arms race which was widely considered to have been an indirect cause of World War I.〔Sondhaus 2004, p. 207.〕 The Naval Treaties of the 1920s and 1930s limited the number of battleships, though technical innovation in battleship design continued. Both the Allies and the Axis powers deployed battleships during World War II. The value of the battleship has been questioned, even during the period of their prominence.〔 〕 In spite of the immense resources spent on battleships, there were few pitched battleship clashes. Even with their enormous firepower and protection, battleships were increasingly vulnerable to much smaller, cheaper weapons: initially the torpedo and the naval mine, and later aircraft and the guided missile.〔Lenton, H. T.: ''Krigsfartyg efter 1860''〕 The growing range of naval engagements led to the aircraft carrier replacing the battleship as the leading capital ship during World War II, with the last battleship to be launched being in 1944. Battleships were retained by the United States Navy into the Cold War for fire support purposes before being stricken from the U.S. Naval Vessel Register in the 2000s. ==Ships of the line== (詳細はwooden sailing ship on which was mounted a battery of up to 120 smoothbore guns and carronades. It was a gradual evolution of a basic design that dates back to the 15th century, and, apart from growing in size, it changed little between the adoption of line of battle tactics in the early 17th century and the end of the sailing battleship's heyday in the 1830s. From 1794, the alternative term 'line of battle ship' was contracted (informally at first) to 'battle ship' or 'battleship'.〔 The sheer number of guns fired broadside meant a sail battleship could wreck any wooden enemy, holing her hull, knocking down masts, wrecking her rigging, and killing her crew. However, the effective range of the guns was as little as a few hundred yards, so the battle tactics of sailing ships depended in part on the wind. The first major change to the ship of the line concept was the introduction of steam power as an auxiliary propulsion system. Steam power was gradually introduced to the navy in the first half of the 19th century, initially for small craft and later for frigates. The French Navy introduced steam to the line of battle with the 90-gun in 1850〔"Napoleon (90 guns), the first purpose-designed screw line of battleships", ''Steam, Steel and Shellfire'', ''Conway's History of the Ship'', p. 39.〕—the first true steam battleship.〔''"Hastened to completion Le Napoleon was launched on May 16, 1850, to become the world's first true steam battleship"'', ''Steam, Steel and Shellfire'', Conway's History of the Ship, p. 39.〕 ''Napoléon'' was armed as a conventional ship-of-the-line, but her steam engines could give her a speed of , regardless of the wind conditions: a potentially decisive advantage in a naval engagement. The introduction of steam accelerated the growth in size of battleships. France and the United Kingdom were the only countries to develop fleets of wooden steam screw battleships, although several other navies operated small numbers of screw battleships, including Russia (9), Turkey (3), Sweden (2), Naples (1), Denmark (1) and Austria (1).〔Lambert, Andrew, ''Battleships in Transition'', pub Conway1984, ISBN 0-85177-315-X pages 144–147. In addition, the Navy of the North Germany Confederacy (which included Prussia) bought from Britain in 1870 for use as a gunnery training ship.〕〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「battleship」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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