Battleship

The great battleship of the twentieth century was a paradox: the most powerful surface weapon ever built, made obsolete by aircraft it could not reach. The German Bismarck displaced forty-two thousand tons and mounted eight fifteen-inch guns; the Japanese Yamato carried nine eighteen-inch rifles so heavy no dry dock outside Japan could have handled them. At Jutland in 1916 the entire dreadnought concept reached its testing ground: two fleets of armored giants exchanged fire across the North Sea in the last great gun battle between battleships. The loss of HMS Hood — blown apart in eight minutes by Bismarck — and Bismarck's own sinking days later showed how vulnerable even the mightiest ships remained to concentrated attack. In the game the battleship is the supreme surface combatant of the Modern Age: devastating at range against all warships and coastal fortifications, but ponderous, enormously costly, and fatally exposed to air attack and torpedo salvos.