Prelude. The naval arms race between Britain and Germany to build dreadnought battleships in the early 20th century is the subject of a number of books. Germany's attempt to build a battleship fleet to match that of the United Kingdom, the dominant naval power of the 20th-century and an island country that depended on seaborne trade for survival, is often listed as a major reason …

The Guadalcanal campaign, also known as the Battle of Guadalcanal and codenamed Operation Watchtower by American forces, was a military campaign fought between 7 August 1942 and 9 February 1943 on and around the island of Guadalcanal in the Pacific theater of World War II.It was the first major land offensive by Allied forces against the Empire of Japan.

The Battle of Tassafaronga, sometimes referred to as the Fourth Battle of Savo Island or, in Japanese sources, as the Battle of Lunga Point (ルンガ沖夜戦), was a nighttime naval battle that took place on November 30, 1942, between United States Navy and Imperial Japanese Navy warships during the Guadalcanal Campaign.The battle took place in Ironbottom Sound near …

The Battle of the Atlantic, the longest continuous military campaign in World War II, ran from 1939 to the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945, covering a major part of the naval history of World War II.At its core was the Allied naval blockade of Germany, announced the day after the declaration of war, and Germany's subsequent counter-blockade.The campaign peaked from …

The battlecruiser (also written as battle cruiser or battle-cruiser) was a type of capital ship of the first half of the 20th century. These were similar in displacement, armament and cost to battleships, but differed in form and balance of attributes.Battlecruisers typically had thinner armour (to a varying degree) and a somewhat lighter main gun battery than contemporary …

The Battle of Lissa (or Battle of Vis) (Croatian: Bitka kod Visa) took place on 20 July 1866 in the Adriatic Sea near the Dalmatian island of Vis (Italian: Lissa) and was a significant victory for an Austrian Empire force over a numerically superior Italian force. It was the first major sea battle between ironclads and one of the last to involve deliberate ramming.

A battleship is a large armored warship with a main battery consisting of large caliber guns. It dominated naval warfare in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The term battleship came into use in the late 1880s to describe a type of ironclad warship, now referred to by historians as pre-dreadnought battleships.In 1906, the commissioning of HMS Dreadnought into the United …

The Battle of Actium was a naval battle fought between a maritime fleet of Octavian led by Marcus Agrippa and the combined fleets of both Mark Antony and Cleopatra VII Philopator.The battle took place on 2 September 31 BC in the Ionian Sea, near the former Roman colony of Actium, Greece, and was the climax of over a decade of rivalry between Octavian and Antony.

There was considerable Axis naval activity in Australian waters during the Second World War, despite Australia being remote from the main battlefronts. German and Japanese warships and submarines entered Australian waters between 1940 and 1945 and attacked ships, ports and other targets. Among the best-known attacks are the sinking of HMAS Sydney by a German …

The Battle of the Paracel Islands (Chinese: 西沙海战, Pinyin: Xisha Haizhan；Vietnamese: Hải chiến Hoàng Sa) was a military engagement between the naval forces of China and South Vietnam in the Paracel Islands on January 19, 1974. The battle was an attempt by the South Vietnamese navy to expel the Chinese navy from the vicinity. The confrontation took place …