Gibbons, Tony (1983). The Complete Encyclopedia of Battleships and Battlecruisers: A Technical Directory of all the World's Capital Ships from 1860 to the Present Day. London: Salamander Books. ISBN 978-0-517-37810-6. The Italian Regia Marina had received proposals for an all-big-gun battleship from Cuniberti well before Dreadnought was launched, but it took until 1909 for Italy to lay down one of its own. The construction of Dante Alighieri was prompted by rumours of Austro-Hungarian dreadnought-building. A further five dreadnoughts of the Conte di Cavour and Andrea Doria classes followed as Italy sought to maintain its lead over Austria-Hungary. These ships remained the core of Italian naval strength until World War II. The subsequent Francesco Caracciolo-class battleship were suspended (and later cancelled) on the outbreak of World War I. [109]

Dreadnought designs experimented with different layouts. The British Neptune-class battleship staggered the wing turrets, so all ten guns could fire on the broadside, a feature also used by the German Kaiser class. This risked blast damage to parts of the ship over which the guns fired, and put great stress on the ship's frames. [41] Cuniberti, Vittorio (1903). "An Ideal Battleship for the British Fleet". All The World's Fighting Ships. London: F.T. Jane.Some World War II-era designs were drawn up proposing another move towards gigantic armament. The German H-43 and H-44 designs proposed 20-inch (508mm) guns, and there is evidence Hitler wanted calibres as high as 24-inch (609mm); [53] the Japanese ' Super Yamato' design also called for 20-inch guns. [54] None of these proposals went further than very preliminary design work. This process was well under way before the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty. Sixteen pre-dreadnoughts served during World War II in such roles as hulks, accommodation ships, and training vessels; two of the German training vessels Schlesien and Schleswig-Holstein undertook naval gunfire support in the Baltic.

Greger, René (1993). Schlachtschiffe der Welt (in German). Stuttgart: Motorbuch Verlag. ISBN 978-3-613-01459-6. All-big-gun mixed-calibre ships [ edit ] HMS Agamemnon, an all-big-gun mixed-calibre ship of the Lord Nelson class. It carried four 12-inch (305mm) and ten 9.2-inch (234mm) guns. Gray, Randal (1985). Gardiner, Robert (ed.). Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships 1906–1921. Naval Institute Press. ISBN 978-0-87021-907-8.

Battleship Game Rules (PDF Instructions)

The USS North Carolina (BB-55), or Showboat, was one of the last battleships commissioned prior to America’s entry into World War II in 1941. Originally scheduled to be sent to Pearl Harbor with the rest of the Pacific fleet, it narrowly avoided that disaster by being assigned to patrol duty on the east Coast instead. It was rushed to the Pacific theater to relieve the devastated fleet at Pearl Harbor in 1942. The North Carolina was the first American battleship to go on the offensive against the Japanese, and participated in countless engagements from Guadalcanal in 1942 to Tokyo Bay in 1945. The North Carolina’s service ended almost immediately after the war, and she was permanently decommissioned in 1947. Gardiner, Robert, ed. (1980). Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships 1922–1946. London: Conway Maritime Press. ISBN 978-0-85177-146-5. The effectiveness of the guns depended in part on the layout of the turrets. Dreadnought, and the British ships which immediately followed it, carried five turrets: one forward, one aft and one amidships on the centreline of the ship, and two in the 'wings' next to the superstructure. This allowed three turrets to fire ahead and four on the broadside. The Nassau and Helgoland classes of German dreadnoughts adopted a 'hexagonal' layout, with one turret each fore and aft and four wing turrets; this meant more guns were mounted in total, but the same number could fire ahead or broadside as with Dreadnought. [40]

Over time the calibre of guns tended to increase. In the Royal Navy, the Orion class, launched 1910, had ten 13.5-inch guns, all on the centreline; the Queen Elizabeth class, launched in 1913, had eight 15-inch (381mm) guns. In all navies, fewer guns of larger calibre came to be used. The smaller number of guns simplified their distribution, and centreline turrets became the norm. [48]

Maiolo, Joseph (1998). The Royal Navy and Nazi Germany, 1933–39 A Study in Appeasement and the Origins of the Second World War. London: Macmillan Press. ISBN 978-0-312-21456-2. These Battleship board game templates can be played with a pencil and paper or you can laminate them and use dry erase markers to play. Either way, I seriously love that I don’t have to search all over the house for the pieces so that we can actually play the game. How do you play a printable Battleship? A uniform calibre of gun also helped streamline fire control. The designers of Dreadnought preferred an all-big-gun design because it would mean only one set of calculations about adjustments to the range of the guns. [e] Some historians today hold that a uniform calibre was particularly important because the risk of confusion between shell-splashes of 12-inch and lighter guns made accurate ranging difficult. This viewpoint is controversial, as fire control in 1905 was not advanced enough to use the salvo-firing technique where this confusion might be important, [24] and confusion of shell-splashes does not seem to have been a concern of those working on all-big-gun designs. [f] Nevertheless, the likelihood of engagements at longer ranges was important in deciding that the heaviest possible guns should become standard, hence 12-inch rather than 10-inch. [g] Gröner, Erich (1990). German Warships: 1815–1945. Vol.I: Major Surface Vessels. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press. ISBN 978-0-87021-790-6.