The early 20th Century design of a then new type of ship, featuring huge heavy gun turrets and steam turbine engines, launched in 1905 and known as the Dreadnought, sparked a major naval arms race which eventually resulted in possibly the greatest class of Battleship, known as the Iowa Class.
The original Dreadnought was a design built for the UK's Royal Navy, but eventually the term became Battleship, which was the class of Warship which denoted the power of any of the world's naval forces. Certain Naval treaties of the 1920-30 period were designed to limit the numbers of Battleships, though not research and development, which resulted in a number of distinctive types of ship by World War 2. Although by this time the Battleship was being superseded by the Aircraft Carrier. Even in the heyday of these ships, they needed at least some protection with other ships involved, as they could always be sunk in a variety of ways, with a variety of mines, torpedoes and various bombs and with a new German WW2 innovation, the Fritz X, a guided missile/bomb.
The US Navy with foresight looking to the potential future of difficulties in the Pacific waters decided upon a new design upon the old theme of the Battleship to deal with the threat of fast Capital ships. The original order was for six ships, four of which were built, the remaining two cancelled.
Their main purpose was to serve as fast escorts, which they did through WW2 and later in lesser but important roles in Korea, Vietnam and the operation of Desert Storm.
To this day all four ships still exist as floating museums.
