Hello everyone, and thank you once again for listening to the saga of World War II,

a Cassus Belly project. This week, we'll be covering the war at sea and so be using a lot of

jargon specific to naval operations. Considering that naval terminology can be a little confusing,

I'd like to do an extended preamble for this episode in which I explain some of this.

First, we should cover ship classes.

The largest and most powerful ships afloat during the Second World War were the mighty battleships.

The term battleship dates back to at least the 18th century, but generally refers to capital ships consisting of large caliber guns mounted on rotating turrets without sails.

In 1906, battleship design was revolutionized with the commissioning of the HMS Dreadnought by the Royal Navy.

The Dreadnought had 10 12-inch guns, a powerful engine, an impressive armor making it the greatest ship afloat,

12-inch guns referring to the width of the barrel.

With that, an arms race would begin that would continue to beef up the battleship until the aircraft

carrier came to replace it as the main capital ship at the end of World War II.

After the First World War, a wrinkle would be thrown in battleship design, though.

With heavy restrictions on tonnage,

a measure of tons of water were displaced by a vessel, Germany had to find a way to pack more weaponry into a smaller hull. This resulted in the pocket battleship. Though technically

heavy cruisers in order to meet Versailles restrictions, the vessels were clearly intended to

operate in the role of a battleship. They carried six 11-inch guns,

utilized modern diesel engines, and were welded together in order to save weight that bolts would have added.

The next tier down, if you will, is the cruiser.

Initially, cruisers were meant to be large vessels meant for long voyages that operated mostly independent of the main fleet.

They were usually fast and carried moderately powerful guns of up to eight inches.

They oftentimes patrolled commerce lanes or were dispatched to hotspots around the world.

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