Defense Tech: Lessons of the <em>Dreadnought</em>


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Edited by Christian Lowe \| Contact

Lessons of the Dreadnought

John J. McKeon is the author of Demented Choirs, a novel set in 1905 during the building of HMS Dreadnought, the first revolutionary weapons system of the 20th century. This is his first post for Defense Tech.

When a nation has a big technological lead over its potential military rivals, how long can that lead be expected to last?

The United States enjoys such an edge today, with no other nation either willing or able to compete in firepower, communications or mobility. Other nations, at other times, have occupied similarly advanced positions.

Dreadnought pic.JPG History suggests these advantages don’t last long, and pursuing them can lead to unexpected places. For example:

It was in search of just such a long-lived war-fighting advantage that Great Britain set out in 1905 to build what was then the most extraordinary weapon in the world, the great battleship HMS Dreadnought.

Britain built Dreadnought in secrecy and with unprecedented speed. The haste itself was a signal to Imperial Germany that His Majesty could build more and bigger ships, and build them faster, than the Kaiser. In addition, German warships had to traverse the Kiel canal to reach open water, and bigger ships, with deeper drafts, could not do so.

If Germany wanted to keep pace, she would have to widen and deepen the canal, which would -- in theory -- make it cripplingly expensive to join in an arms race.

Dreadnought was the first "all big gun" ship; carrying ten 12-inch guns mounted in five turrets of a new design. Two were "wing turrets" on either side, another innovation. Dreadnought's propulsion system was also novel, and required by the emphasis her designers placed on speed.

Those designers forsook heavy iron plate armor, opting for lighter weight. "Speed is armor," said Admiral Jacky Fisher, then First Sea Lord and the driving force behind the modernization of the British navy. Dreadnought would simply outrun any other vessel it might encounter, and lob 850 pound shells from well out of the enemy’s firing range.

"Three 12-inch shells bursting on board every minute would be HELL!" Fisher declared.

New generations of American naval vessels, like the Zumwalt-class destroyers, put considerable emphasis on assets like radar-invisibility rather than the old, Industrial Revolution mantra of bigger/faster. Moreover, naval designers these days are creating platforms intended to evolve with new technology, rather than merely freezing in place the advantages of the moment.

Dreadnought gave its name to a whole class of ships, which soon included German vessels as well as British, Japanese and American. But Dreadnought itself was rapidly eclipsed. Within a decade after 1905, Britain had built more than 30 ships larger than Dreadnought, and Germany had built 28.

By August 1914, when Europe came to the precipice of war and leaped off, Dreadnought was already a relic.

-- John J. McKeon

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These expensive toys became so precious, both the Germans and the Brits became reluctant to risk them in combat. Only one major battleship action during the entire war was Jutland, an inconslusive and controversial battle.

Very good article and look forward to more of the same.

Posted by: Mike Burleson at November 17, 2006 03:25 PM

Well, the Two Power Standard gets tossed around very freely - but it really dated from 1889, and it was meant to apply to Britain and France. And it worked - Britain's naval superiority incentivized French acquiescence and foreclosed the alternative of war in 1898, when the two nearly came to blows over Fashoda. But the idea that the construction of a navy was meant to build a "superpower" is nonsense - the dreadnought race followed the Entente Cordial and the Dreadnought herself barely preceded the conciliation with Russia - because Britain had abandoned a policy of isolation in seeking to contain Germany long before the battleship competition became an issue. Britain adopted one strategy against one set of opponents, and another against another set.

So you'll have to look elsewhere for your analogies - and you'll have to look hard for great powers that spend 1.5% of their GDP on defense while successfully staking a claim to the title of "great power" that isn't so much hot air.

Posted by: Nanonymous at November 16, 2006 10:02 AM

Another aspect of British naval policy in that period possibly also has a certain relevance. I believe the British fleet was intended to be larger than the total of the next two largest fleets, so from a naval perspective at least, Britain was effectively attempting to maintain its status as the sole superpower. Which may remind you of something...

Posted by: John Lettice at November 16, 2006 09:07 AM

Which, like most "asymmetric" strategies, turned out to be atrocious and ultimately self-defeating. Britain's battleship-enforced blockade strangled Germany; Germany's unrestricted submarine warfare brought the U.S. into the war and guaranteed its outcome.

Posted by: Nanonymous at November 16, 2006 08:19 AM

More than this: Dreadnought stimulated German investment in asymetric platforms: The U-Boat.

Germany merely made the battleship irrelevant and expensively useless by finding another way to raid shipping.

Posted by: Strabo the Lesser at November 15, 2006 06:05 PM

Well, not such a relic - she was sent off to head up a detached battle squadron, but she did come back to the Grand Fleet for the last few months of the war - and six of her half-sisters fought at Jutland. Bunga bunga.

I think there's a bit of disingenuousness in this piece - the idea being that an advance on one side will necessarily mean a corresponding advance on the other. Advances, of course, aren't merely or entirely technological. Training is a good example: the US Army enjoys an edge on its opponents and all of its likely enemies, but the result of the success there has not been a race around the world to develop highly sophisticated and expensive training facilities.

Even in circumstances of serious competition, the inevitable result of superiority is not necessarily an arms race. The U.S. Navy has about a five-or-six-plus power standard in aircraft carriers, and has since the Royal Navy put theirs into mothballs in the 1950s - but nobody has ever really tried to challenge that, or the superiority it gives us. I know a lot of theorists are deeply invested in the doctrine that arms purchases lead inevitably to self-defeating arms races, but it's more complicated than that - nuanced, if you will.

Posted by: Nanonymous at November 15, 2006 05:05 PM

Lessons of the Dreadnought

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