Capital Ship

Capital Ship

The capital ships of a navy are its most important warships; they generally possess the heaviest firepower and armor and are traditionally much larger than other naval vessels. A capital ship is generally a leading or a primary ship in a naval fleet.

There is usually no formal criterion for the classification, but it is a useful concept in naval strategy; for example, it permits comparisons between relative naval strengths in a theatre of operations without the need for considering specific details of tonnage or gun diameters.

A notable example of this is the Mahanian doctrine, which was applied in the planning of the defence of Singapore in World War II, where the Royal Navy had to decide the allocation of their battleships and battlecruisers between the Atlantic and Pacific theatres. The Mahanian doctrine was also applied by the Imperial Japanese Navy, leading to their pre-emptive move to attack Pearl Harbor and the battleships of the U.S. Pacific Fleet. The United States Navy, on the other hand, deployed its battleships and aircraft carriers in the Pacific. Although the United States and the United Kingdom agreed upon a Germany-first grand strategy, Germany's surface fleet was small, and the escort ships used in the Second Battle of the Atlantic were mostly destroyers and destroyer escorts to counter the U-boat threat; only a few German capital ships, such as the Admiral Graf Spee, Scharnhorst and Bismarck were engaged by Allied ships.