The development of the steam ironclad firing explosive shells in the mid-19th century rendered sailing ship tactics obsolete.
New tactics were developed for the big-gun Dreadnought battleships. The mine, torpedo, submarine and aircraft posed new threats, each of which had to be countered, leading to tactical developments such as anti-submarine warfare and the use of dazzle camouflage. By the end of the steam age, aircraft carriers had replaced battleships as the principal unit of the fleet.
Beginnings in the 19th century
The interval of 89 years between the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 and the beginning of the Russo-Japanese War in 1904 was marked by no major naval war. There was fighting at sea, and there were prolonged blockades, but there were no campaigns between large and well-appointed navies.
During this period an entire revolution took place in the means of propulsion, armament and construction of ships. Steam was applied to warships, at first to auxiliary forces, in the second quarter of the 19th century. The Crimean War gave a great stimulus to the development of the guns, and brought about the application of iron to ships as armour-plate. Very soon metal was adopted as the material of which ships were made. The extended use of shells, by immensely increasing the danger of fire, rendered wood so inflammable that it was too dangerous for employment in a warship. Changes so sweeping as these could not take place without affecting all the established ideas as to propulsion, armament and construction.
Revival of ramming Steam allowed the ship herself to be used as a projectile. Many thought that the use of the ram would again become common and the sinking of Re d'Italia by the Austrian Erzherzog Ferdinand Max at the Battle of Lissa in 1866 seemed to give force to this supposition. Accidental collisions such as those between the British warships Vanguard and Iron Duke, Victoria and Camperdown showed how fatal a wound could be given by the ram of a steam warship. But even the sinking of Re d'Italia was largely an accident, and steam-powered ramming turned out to be impractical.
Between vessels both under full control, a collision was easily avoided where there was space to move. In a mêlée, or pell-mell battle (as at Lissa), opportunities would occur for the use of the ram, but the torpedo and the mine soon made it very dangerous for one fleet to rush at another. The torpedo may be said therefore to have excluded the pell-mell battle and the use of the ram except on rare occasions.
Ramming as a tactic also invalidated the former need to concentrate guns on the broadside, which in any case was being made obsolete by the larger guns developed as a consequence of the Industrial Revolution and made necessary by the iron or steel armour now being used. Fewer of the large guns could be carried or mounted, and a wider arc of fire was required to compensate.
Since ships would be required to fight "end-on" when attempting to ram (or to rush into a pell-mell battle), many ships were designed to give as much fire ahead (and sometimes astern) as on the broadside. This was usually at the expense of seaworthiness, and in many cases firing directly ahead caused blast damage to superstructure, decks and fittings. This was another factor which made ramming invalid as a tactic.
Furthermore, a ship designed to have a ramming capability typically had a tumblehome hull design which would allow the ram to strike below the waterline. This design of hull is inherently slower than almost any other hull design, giving an additional disadvantage to ships employing rams.
Development of the torpedo As the 19th century drew to a close, another element of uncertainty was introduced by the development of the torpedo. A weapon which is a floating and moving mine, capable up to a certain point of being directed on its course, invisible or very hard to trace, and able to deliver its blow beneath the water-line, was so complete a novelty that its action was hard to foresee. The new weapon scored its first success in the 1891 Chilean Civil War, when the old Congressional battleship "Blanco Encalada" was sunk at anchor by the Balmacedist torpedo gunboat "Almirante Lynch" in the Battle of Caldera Bay.
The question arose whether the torpedo itself would not become the decisive weapon in naval warfare. It was undoubtedly capable of producing a great effect when its power could be fully exerted. A school arose, having its most convinced partisans in France, which argued that, as a small vessel could destroy a great battleship with a single torpedo, the first would drive the second off the sea. The battleship was to give place to the torpedo boat or torpedo-boat destroyer, which was itself only a torpedo boat of larger size.
But the early torpedo was subject to some disadvantages. It could not be used with effect at more than 2,000 yards. Water resistance rendered its course uncertain and comparatively slow, so that a moving opponent could avoid it, which was comparatively easy given that most early torpedoes left behind a tell-tale trail of bubbles in their wake. Torpedo boats were small and could easily be sunk by gunfire. By night the risk from gunfire was less, but the invention of the searchlight made it possible to keep the waters round a ship under observation all night.
From the torpedo sprang too the submarine, which aimed at striking below the surface, where it itself was, like its weapon, invisible, or nearly so.
The Russo-Japanese War The Russo-Japanese War was the first test of the new concepts. The war was a stunning victory for Japan, opening with the blockade and gradual immobilization of the Russian Pacific Fleet at Port Arthur and culminating in the destruction of the Russian Baltic Fleet at the Battle of Tsushima in 1905.
First use of torpedoes in battle
In the war between Russia and Japan the torpedo was at first used with success, but the injury it produced fell below expectations, even when allowance is made for the fact that the Russian squadron at Port Arthur had the means of repair close at hand. In the sea fights of the war it was of subordinate use, and indeed was not employed except to give the final stroke to, or force the surrender of, an already crippled ship.
Effectiveness of mines The war also saw the first use of mines as an offensive, rather than purely defensive, weapon when the Japanese laid a minefield outside Port Arthur. On April 12, 1904, the Russian flagship Petropavlovsk ran into the minefield off Port Arthur and was sunk, while the battleship Pobieda was badly damaged. The Russians turned the same tactic on the Japanese who lost two of their six battleships, the Yashima and the Hatsuse, in a newly laid Russian minefield off Port Arthur a month later.
Sinking ships to block harbours The Russo-Japanese War (and as much may be said for the war between the United States and Spain) confirmed an old experience. A resolute attempt was made by the Americans to block the entrance to Santiago de Cuba with a blockship. The Japanese renewed the attempt on a great scale and with utmost intrepidity, at Port Arthur; but though a steamship can move with a speed and precision impossible to a sailing ship, and can therefore be sunk more surely at a chosen spot, the experiment failed. Neither Americans nor Japanese succeeded in preventing their enemy from coming out when it wished.
Development of Dreadnoughts As the 19th century came to a close, the familiar modern battleship began to emerge; a steel-armoured ship, entirely dependent on steam and carrying a relatively small number of large guns mounted in turrets, typically arranged along the centreline of the main deck. The revolutionary Dreadnought of 1906 was the first battleship to almost entirely dispense with smaller guns and used steam turbines for her main propulsion. The Dreadnought rendered all existing battleships obsolete, because she was larger, faster, more powerfully armed and more strongly protected than existing battleships, which came to be known as pre-Dreadnoughts. This sudden levelling of the field led to a naval arms race as Britain and Germany and, to a lesser extent, other powers like the United States, France, Russia, Japan, Italy, Austria-Hungary, Turkey, Brazil, Argentina and Chile all rushed to build or acquire Dreadnoughts.
The First World War The introduction of mines, torpedoes and submarines greatly increased the complexity of naval tactics during the First World War. Even so, the gun remained the principal naval weapon. It could still deliver its blows at the greatest distance in the greatest variety of circumstances.
Fleet tactics The development of long-range guns mounted in turrets changed the nature of naval tactics. While concentration remained a fundamental objective of tactics, the increased range and field of fire of naval guns meant that admirals now sought to achieve concentration of fire, rather than concentration of ships. The aim of a skilful officer was to concentrate a superior force on a part of his opponent's formation.
In the age of sail, when the range of effective fire was a thousand or twelve hundred yards and guns could only be trained over a small arc because they were fired out of ports, concentration could only be effected by bringing a larger number of ships into close action with a smaller. By the early 20th century, when gunfire was effective at 7,000 yards or more, and when guns fired from turrets and barbettes had a far wider sweep, concentration could be effected from a distance. The power to effect it had to be sought by a judicious choice of position.
The "line ahead" had been imposed on sailing fleets by the need to bring each ship's broadsides into action. Experiments made during manoeuvres by steam navies, combined with the experience gained in the war of 1904–05 in the Far East, showed that no material change had taken place in this respect. It was still as necessary as ever that all the guns should be so placed as to be capable of being brought to bear, and it was still a condition imposed by the physical necessities of the case that this freedom could only be obtained when ships followed one another in a line. This allowed each ship to fire over wide arcs without firing over friendly ships. Steaming with the enemy off to the side enabled a ship to fire salvoes with both the forward and rear turrets, maximizing the chances for a hit.
When in pursuit or flight, or when steaming on the look-out for a still unseen enemy, a fleet may be arranged in the "line abreast". A pursuing fleet would have to run the risk of being struck by torpedoes dropped by a retreating enemy. But it would have the advantage of being able to bring all its guns which can fire ahead to bear on the rear ship of the enemy. When an opponent was prepared to give battle, and turns his broadside so as to bring the maximum of his gunfire to bear, he must be answered by a similar display of force – in other words, the line ahead must be formed to meet the line ahead. Each ship in the line generally engaged its opposite number in the enemy battle line.
The layout of gun turrets on a deck affects their permissible sectors of fire. The most common configuration of warship with gun turrets on its longitudinal axis severely limits gunfire directly ahead (forward) or abaft (backward). This was reflected in the standard naval tactic of crossing the T.
Introduction of camouflage