In February 1906, the Royal Navy launched its newest battleship, HMS Dreadnought, and everything changed.

Dreadnought was faster, had better armor, and bigger guns than any other ship.

Oh yeah, and a bigger price tag, too.

In the blink of an eye, every other battleship in every other navy in the world became obsolete,

and the response across the world was a series of naval arms races. No one wanted to be caught

with fewer dreadnoughts than their enemy, no matter the cost.

And the cost was very high.

Welcome to the history of the 20th century.

Welcome. Episode 41. Fear God and Dreadnought. HMS Dreadnought was such a revolutionary ship that the very name Dreadnought became a synonym for battleship.

Today, when we talk about the history of naval warfare, we describe any battleship built before her as a pre-dreadnought battleship.

In fact, the word dreadnought has become so generic, it's sometimes easy to forget that it is a name.

It means dread not, as in fear nothing.

You got to love Royal Navy Ship names. Audacious, superb, conqueror, valiant, revenge,

invincible, indefatigable, furious, victorious, implacable, terrible, and, my personal favorite, vindictive.

Two episodes ago, we talked about battleships.

We saw how the number of battleships became the measure of a nation's sea power.

We saw how battleships of the arrow were equipped with a mix of different-sized guns for different ranges.

But there were two problems with battleship design.

One was that they were vulnerable to torpedoes. One good torpedo hit could sink the

mightiest battles of the day. And the naval battles of the Russo-Japanese War had exposed another

problem with battleship design. The 12-inch guns were so big and had such long range and were so

powerful that even though they

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