List of sunken battleships

The commissioning and putting to sea of HMS Dreadnought, in part inspired by the results of the Battle of Tsushima in May 1905,[2] marked the dawn of a new era in naval warfare and defining an entire generation of warships: the battleships.

However, despite the enormous sums of money and resources dedicated to the construction and maintenance of the increasing number of battleships in the world, they typically saw little combat.

As the battleship began to fall out of favor, some captured capital ships were decommissioned, stripped, and deliberately sunk in nuclear weapons tests.

After the Battle of Port Arthur,[7] a number of Russian and Japanese vessels were struck by mines and either sank or were scuttled to prevent their capture.

[12] One pioneer of aviation in a naval role was US Army General Billy Mitchell, who commandeered SMS Ostfriesland for testing of his theory in July 1921.

[13] The belief that the aircraft carrier was junior to the battleship began to evaporate when the Imperial Japanese Navy, in a surprise attack, nearly destroyed the United States Pacific Fleet while it was at anchor at Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941.

Although almost every sea battle in World War II involved gunfire between surface warships to some degree, their time as the senior ship of a nation's fleet had run its course.