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→World War I
==World War I==
==World War I==
Well-known representatives of this dreadnought era were the American USS ''Texas'' of 1911, which led ten 14-inch guns, the German SMS ''Friedrich the Great'' (1910), the French ''Courbet'' (1911), the Russian ''Imperatriza Marija'' (1913), and the British HMS ''Iron Duke'' (1912). The length of these battleships was over 500 feet.
These ships formed the nucleus of the war fleets in the [[First World War]]. On average, a battleship of this time displaced about 26,000 tons and had a crew of up to 1,400 men. The number of heavy guns varied between 10 and 14, with the caliber being between 12 and 14 inches. In addition, there was usually a medium artillery of eight to 14 casemated guns on board, usually installed on the sides of the ship, the caliber of varying between 4-5 inches. On average the heavy artillery of the ships had a distance of some 7 to 12 miles, although there were exceptions; the Russian battleship ''Imperatriza Marija'' and the German battlecruiser SMS ''Goeben'' fought in the Black Sea for a short time in a distance of up to 14 miles without a hit.
The disadvantage of these ships, however, was that they were extremely costly both in construction and maintenance (a dreadnought battleship cost an average of about two and a half times as much as a capitol ship built prior to 1900), as well as physical weaknesses found out usually in battle. The sinking of the British battleship HMS ''Audacious'' in 1914 was one such example, going down after striking a single mine.
In the course of the war, the belligerent nations also built the first so-called super-dreadnoughts. These ships already displaced well over 30,000 tons and were armed with guns of caliber 14 inches or larger. Representatives of this type were, for example, the British ''Queen Elizabeth''-class or the two ships of the German ''Bavarian''-class. In 1917, the keel to a Japanese battleship with 15-inch guns was laid, while in America the two ships of the ''Pennsylvania''-class were commissioned.
The only major encounter between British and German battleships took place during the [[Battle of Jutland]] on May 31, 1916, when 99 Germans fought against 151 British warships. Other notable missions of large combat ships occurred in the sea battle of the Falkland Islands in 1914 and in the Battle of Moon Sound in 1917. It was also noteworthy that battleships were used as gunfire support during the battles of the Dardanelles. However, it was shown that the battleships were not the decisive weapons they were meant to be; rather, there was a reluctance to use them at all, Jutland not withstanding. The German deep-sea fleet spent most of their time during the war in their bases as a fleet-in-being, while the British fleet on the other side of the North Sea waited in vain for a thrust of the German navy. It did not, however, undertake a separate advance in the direction of the German coasts. The British blockade of Germany, the German submarine war and the use of mines were of much greater influence on the course of the war. In the armistice of 1918, the most modern ships of the German deep sea fleet, including eleven battleships and five battle cruisers, were handed over to the victorious powers for internment at the British naval base at Scapa Flow; these ships in turn were deliberately scuttled by their own crews in 1919.
==Interwar==
==Interwar==