THE BADASS BATTLESHIPS HALL OF FAME

HMS DREADNOUGHT

The Royal Navy’s HMS Dreadnought, the first truly modern battleship, combined a single main gun battery, steam-turbine propulsion, and heavy armour into the most powerful warship of its time. The world’s first steam turbines gave her a top speed of 25 knots, and a main battery of 10 12-inch guns and 27 smaller 12pounders made her the most deadly warship afloat.

USS IOWA

The four Iowa-class fast battleships – Iowa, New Jersey, Missouri, and Wisconsin – were designed to quickly travel across the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and fight World War II in the enemy’s backyard. They were the only battleships fitted with a nuclear weapon: the W19 artillery shell, with an explosive yield equivalent to the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

YAMATO

The Imperial Japanese Navy warships Yamato and Musashi were the largest battleships ever built. The battlewagons, designed to make Japan the leading battleship power in the world, were each equipped with nine 18-inch guns and displaced a whopping 72 000 tons fully loaded. Aircraft-delivered torpedoes and bombs sunk both ships in the closing months of World War II.