THE MOVIE

The Battleships is a four-part documentary series which recounts the history and evolution of sea bound vessels whose primary use was for warfare. The battleship has undergone significant change, the once elegant wind-powered sailing ships were quickly replaced with faster steam driven vessels not reliant on weather conditions for forward motion. Timber was quickly replaced by steel and canons superseded by rocket launchers and missiles.

Each episode runs for around 50 minutes and features interviews with people who have a naval background such as Peter Goodwin (Keeper and Curator, HMS Victory), Alexandra Hildred (Curator of Ordnance, Mary Rose Trust), Colin White (Royal Naval Museum), Eric Grove (Naval strategist). Then there are a number of naval historians including Ian Johnston, Michal Epkenhans, Werner Rahn, Norman Friedman, as well as Mark Peattie (Stanford University), Paul Stillwell (US Naval Institute) and Gary Weir (US Historian). Here is a brief look at each of the episodes.

Episode 1 - A Thirst for Blood and Iron (1800-1906)
Long before the nuclear bomb, the battleship was the most expensive and feared weapon in existence. In it’s day, the battleship was the biggest, most complicated piece of machinery ever built. In the beginning, battleships were all timber and canvas. And probably one of the grandest battleships of this era was the HMS Victory. It was literally a floating gun platform, with 50 guns on either side of the ship spread across three decks, it could fire half a tonne of metal out one side in one go and carried some 800 crew. This British battleship fought in the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, off the SW coast of Spain, the British fleet defeating both the Spanish and French.

Then in the 1830’s, paddle steamers came along but these were easily damaged by enemy fire. The paddles took up too much deck space as well, meaning less guns. In the mid 1840’s, the screw propeller was invented, this was a more efficient method of propulsion and proved much less vulnerable to enemy fire. Timber was replaced by iron and iron was soon replaced by steel. Armament was also changing, the 1860’s vessel HMS Warrior had breach loaders, which fired explosive shells. Then came gun turrets, which allowed rapid target acquisition without having to turn the boat around. Sea bound vessels were also faster. The HMS Warrior was capable of a maximum speed of 40 knots.

Episode 2 - Clash of the Dreadnoughts (1906-1916)
In 1906, Britain launched HMS Dreadnought, the first ship to be powered by steam turbines. This ship also had ten 12-inch guns, and was more deadly than all of its predecessors. It would mean that Britain would rule the seas for some time to come. However, Germany was in the process of building a new fleet of battleships, and in 1907, the German fleet had surpassed the United States as the second largest in the world. They took up the challenge of rebuilding their fleet with big gun vessels like the Dreadnought.

Winston Churchill’s most significant achievement was to encourage the design and construction of the Queen Elizabeth class of super-Dreadnoughts. these battleships featured eight 15-inch guns which shot 2000 pound shells. They were also the first oil-powered battleships and marked an end to coal-powered vessels. Germany struck back though. They had U-boats (short for Unterseeboot), also known as submarines, and with the U-boats they sunk five British cruisers and one pre-Dreadnought battleship and numerous merchant ships. However, in 1915, when a U-boat sunk the passenger liner Lusitania, killing 1200 innocent passengers, the U-boat campaign ceased. Eventually the Germans and the British Dreadnought battleships engaged in what would be the largest naval battle of World War I (The Battle of Jutland) which took place off the western coast of Jutland, Denmark on May 31, 1916. The Germans claimed victory but the British remained in control of the seas.

Episode 3 - The Darkness of the Future (1916-1939)
After the Battle of Jutland, the German High Command abandoned the battleship in favour of their U-boats, and by 1917 more than 2000 British merchant ships had been destroyed. The British were facing the prospect of being starved into submission. Then Germany started another U-boat campaign, sinking ships indiscriminately. The attacks on neutral merchant ships from the United States, saw the United States Government declare war on Germany. The United States contributed some of their best battleships such as the USS Texas. Packing ten 14-inch guns, it was one of their first super-Dreadnoughts. A floating city, with a crew complement of more than 1000 men.

When the war finally ended, the peace treaty meant the German fleet was restricted to pre-Dreadnought battleships. So the Germans scuttled many of their ships (52 to be exact) at Scapa Flow, the chief British naval base off the coast of northern Scotland. The British fleet was also too large for peace time, and scaled back. Even the once dreaded Dreadnought was sold for scrap, along with many other battleships. The United States, the leading industrial nation, then set out to displace Britain as the dominant naval power. In 1921, they had six battleships in construction. An arms race quickly developed between Britain, the United States and Japan, so a treaty was drawn up between these naval superpowers. Both Britain and the United States agreed to scrap a number of superseded battleships, and even several ships that were only half built. Japan agreed to keep their fleet 60% the size of the US and British fleets.

However, it wasn’t long before the arms race started again. In 1937, Japan planned and began construction of two new battleships called Yamato and Musashi. Battleships that could out-range and out-gun (nine 18-inch guns) any other battleship in history. The United States tried to match Japan, commissioning 10 new battleships in 1937. The British tried their best to keep up, but their rush to build came at the cost of firepower, they only had 14-inch guns, as they didn’t want to wait another year for 16-inch guns to be manufactured. When Hitler came to power, he instantly sought to strengthen the German fleet, and oversaw the launch of the Bismark, one of the most powerful ships, it had eight 15-inch guns, weighed 42,000 tonnes and was one of the best protected ships ever. Then in 1938, he authorised the construction of 8 super battleships, 5 battle cruisers and 2 aircraft carriers, all to be completed by 1944, a year he had earmarked for war.

Episode 4 - Terror From Above (1939-now)
In 1939, a German battleship opened fire upon fortifications in Poland, signalling the start of the second World War. Once again, the German U-boats wreaked havoc, sinking British battleships, and together with German battleships, they destroyed many merchant ships as well. Britain was not ready for war. They had only twelve battleships in service and five in construction, just a small portion of their once majestic fleet of seventy battleships. Britain were quite vulnerable so they went and threatened France. They asked France to become their ally and join them in the war against Germany and Italy. France didn’t join with the British, so the British destroyed the battleships of the French.

The British still had to take on the Italians though, but they defeated the Italian battleships a little differently. In 1940, a newly built British aircraft carrier called Illustrious bought a new dimension to the war at sea. Aircraft carriers changed forever the way that wars were to be fought at sea now that distance could be traversed quickly by planes laden with bombs. However, when the German ship Bismark sunk HMS Hood, Winston Churchill sent every available warship, 4 British battleships and 2 aircraft carriers were sent to sink the Bismark, whatever the cost.

The evolution of war at sea now meant that battleships were no longer the hunters, but the hunted, sitting ducks at the mercy of aircraft and submarine attacks. This is probably best illustrated by the bombing of the US Pacific fleet in Pearl Harbour on December 7, 1941 by 360 Japanese planes transported upon six aircraft carriers. During the attack, 21 US vessels were either destroyed or badly damaged, including 8 battleships. For Britain, it meant a powerful new ally. From around 1942, the aircraft carrier became the major warship, the core of the naval fleet. Battleships continued to be an important component of the fleet, but they served a secondary role, escorting and protecting the aircraft carrier fleet from aerial attacks. The Gulf War was the final appearance of the battleship. At the turn of the century, no battleships were left in commission.

THE TRANSFER

Video:

The Battleships is presented in 1.33:1 full frame. As you can probably imagine, this documentary series has a visual transfer which is sometimes very good and at other times very bad. It is a real mix of material, with black and white footage, aged colour footage and modern day sharp as nails footage, which looks as though it’s been collected specifically for this documentary series.

In general the visual quality tends to get better as the episodes progress, and I think this is related to the fact that there is less and less aged footage (which suffers the most from film grain and artefacts) in the later episodes. Understandably, the black and white footage in the early episodes is full of grain and film artefacts, with huge scratches from the top to the bottom of frame. There is also a bit of aliasing present in this series. For example, the shots of the ship yards suffer a bit, all those parallel lines being particularly susceptible. Then, on the other side of the spectrum, recently shot footage of British, German and United States landmarks look amazingly detailed, as does the replica of the HMS Victory in dry dock. There are also some nice computer generated simulations of the important sea battles that have taken place in the past.

Audio:

The Battleships comes with a Dolby Digital 2.0 channel soundtrack. This soundtrack does the job quite nicely with dialogue (both narration and interviews) clearly audible in all episodes. There didn’t appear to be any audio synch problems either. It looks as though sound has been remastered or new audio overlaid on the historical footage as I didn’t observe any gastly audio cracks or distracting static. Interestingly, low frequency in this documentary series is quite noticeable, especially when the canons on the battleships are fired. I also found that this soundtrack sounds not to bad in Dolby Pro Logic.

THE EXTRAS

The only extras on this disc are credits and a photo gallery. The photo gallery is actually very good. There is a mixture of paintings and photos of 11 battleships including Mary Rose, HMS Victory, Gloire, HMS Warrior, HMS Dreadnought, HMS Invincible, HMS Queen Elizabeth, HMS Hood, USS Iowa, IJN Yamato and Bismark. For each ship you can then access an information page and find out the statistics for the ship such as dimensions, displacement, construction, machinery, speed, armament and the number of crew.

SUMMARY

The Battleships provides an interesting insight into the history and evolution of sea bound vessels of war. From timber to steel and canons to missiles, this four-part documentary covers ships from the 1800’s to present day. Despite the mixture of film stock used in this series, the visual transfer is acceptable and the audio is clear and easy to listen to. There aren’t many extras, just a photo gallery, but this is a nice inclusion. A great DVD if you’re at all interested in ships or war.