Wars
Naval wars by era, from the age of sail to the present day. Pick one to see its fleet movements, battles and ships. Wars not yet charted are listed so you can see what's planned.
Showing 32 of 32 wars, and 29 not yet charted
Age of Sail
1775–1837
Wooden ships of the line fighting under sail, from the American War of Independence through the wars with Revolutionary and Napoleonic France to Navarino, the last great battle fought wholly under sail.
1775–1783
American War of IndependenceWhat began as a colonial rebellion became a world war at sea. The Continental Navy and the state navies could only raid, but France joined the Americans in 1778, Spain in 1779 and the Dutch Republic was dragged in in 1780, and for the first time in a century Britain faced the fleets of Europe without an ally. The war was fought from Lake Champlain to the Bay of Bengal. De Grasse's victory off the Chesapeake trapped Cornwallis at Yorktown and decided American independence; Rodney's victory at the Saintes the next spring saved Jamaica and let Britain make peace on better terms. Off India, Hughes and Suffren fought five hard battles in eighteen months without either losing a ship in action.
31 battles · 232 ships · 31 fleet movements
Not yet charted
1787–1792
Russo-Turkish War of 1787–1792
Ushakov's Black Sea Fleet beat the Ottomans at Fidonisi, Kerch Strait, Tendra and Kaliakra, and the Turkish flotilla was wrecked in the Dnieper Liman.
1788–1790
Russo-Swedish WarWith most of Russia's army fighting the Turks, Gustav III of Sweden saw a chance to win back the lands lost in Finland earlier in the century, and in June 1788 he attacked. His plan was to beat the Russian Baltic Fleet and land an army near St Petersburg, but Admiral Greig fought the Swedish battle fleet to a standstill at Hogland and then blockaded it in Sveaborg, while a mutiny among his officers in Finland stopped Gustav's army. The war was fought by two fleets on each side: a sailing battle fleet in the open Baltic, and an archipelago fleet of galleys, gunboats and shallow-draught frigates among the skerries of the Finnish coast. In 1790 the Swedish battle fleet was beaten at Reval and trapped in Vyborg Bay, and broke out on 3 July at heavy cost. Six days later Gustav's archipelago fleet destroyed the Russian galley fleet at the Second Battle of Svensksund, the largest naval battle ever fought in the Baltic, and the Treaty of Värälä in August left the borders as they had been.
7 battles · 65 ships · 11 fleet movements
1792–1802
French Revolutionary WarsRevolutionary France declared war on Britain and the Dutch Republic in February 1793. The French navy had lost most of its officers to the Revolution, and the Royal Navy, under Howe, Jervis and Nelson, won almost every fleet battle of the war. Howe beat the Brest fleet far out in the Atlantic on the Glorious First of June in 1794, though the grain convoy it was protecting got through to France. Spain changed sides in 1796 and the Dutch, conquered by France and remade as the Batavian Republic, were already enemies; Jervis beat the Spanish off Cape St Vincent in February 1797 and Duncan destroyed the Dutch fleet at Camperdown that October. In 1798 Bonaparte sailed for Egypt, and Nelson, after weeks of searching the Mediterranean, found his fleet at anchor in Aboukir Bay and all but annihilated it at the Nile. A French squadron carrying troops to Ireland was beaten off Tory Island the same year. In 1801 Britain broke up the Armed Neutrality of the North by attacking the Danish fleet at Copenhagen, and Saumarez, beaten at Algeciras, struck back in a night action in the Strait. The Peace of Amiens ended the war in March 1802.
10 battles · 189 ships · 11 fleet movements
Not yet charted
1798–1800
Quasi-War
An undeclared war at sea between the young United States Navy and France's frigates and privateers.
Not yet charted
1801–1805
First Barbary War
The US Navy against the corsairs of Tripoli, and the burning of the captured frigate Philadelphia.
1803–1815
Napoleonic WarsBritain went back to war with France in May 1803, and Spain joined France at the end of 1804. Napoleon gathered an army at Boulogne to invade England and needed his fleets to hold the Channel for a few days. Villeneuve led the Toulon fleet to the West Indies to draw the British away, with Nelson chasing him there and back. Calder caught him off Cape Finisterre on his return, and he went south to Cádiz instead of north to the Channel. In October he sailed again and met Nelson off Cape Trafalgar, where the Franco-Spanish fleet was destroyed and Nelson was killed. After Trafalgar Britain held the sea for the rest of the war. Its fleets seized the Danish fleet at Copenhagen in 1807 to keep it from Napoleon, attacked the French squadrons in their harbours with fireships at the Basque Roads, and fought frigate actions from Mauritius, where the French won their one victory at Grand Port, to the Adriatic, where Hoste beat a Franco-Venetian squadron at Lissa.
9 battles · 154 ships · 11 fleet movements
Not yet charted
1806–1812
Russo-Turkish War of 1806–1812
Senyavin's Russian squadron blockaded the Dardanelles and beat the Ottoman fleet at the Dardanelles and Athos in 1807.
Not yet charted
1807–1814
Gunboat War
After Britain seized the Danish fleet at Copenhagen, Denmark–Norway fought on with oared gunboats, and lost its last frigate, Najaden, at Lyngør in 1812.
Not yet charted
1808–1809
Finnish War
Sweden and Russia fought with galleys and gunboats among the skerries of Finland, at Sandöström and Palva Sound; Sweden lost Finland.
Not yet charted
1810–1823
Venezuelan War of Independence
Padilla's patriot flotilla destroyed the Spanish squadron at the Battle of Lake Maracaibo in 1823, ending Spanish rule in Venezuela.
1810–1826
Chilean War of IndependenceAfter San Martín's victory at Maipú in April 1818 made Chile independent in fact, Spain still held the sea and the Viceroyalty of Peru. Chile bought old East Indiamen and American-built corvettes to make a navy, and in October 1818 its first squadron, under Manuel Blanco Encalada, took the Spanish frigate Reina María Isabel and most of the troop convoy she was escorting. Lord Cochrane, dismissed from the Royal Navy after the Stock Exchange fraud, arrived at the end of that year to take command. He raided Callao twice in 1819, stormed the fortress of Valdivia in February 1820, carried San Martín's army to Peru later that year, and in November cut out the frigate Esmeralda from under the guns of Callao. Spain's last foothold, Chiloé, fell in 1826.
3 battles · 11 ships · 6 fleet movements
1812–1815
War of 1812The United States declared war on Britain in June 1812 over the impressment of American seamen and Britain's blockade of trade with Napoleonic France. The US Navy had only a handful of frigates and sloops against the hundreds of the Royal Navy, but its big 44-gun frigates were more powerful than any British frigate, and in 1812 Constitution and United States took or destroyed three of them in four months. The tide turned in 1813, when Shannon took Chesapeake off Boston and the British blockade closed the American coast. On the lakes both sides built fleets from nothing, and Perry's victory on Lake Erie in 1813 and Macdonough's on Lake Champlain in 1814 kept the British from invading the northern states. In 1814 British fleets burned Washington and bombarded Fort McHenry, and in December an expedition against New Orleans fought its way across Lake Borgne. A peace treaty was signed at Ghent on 24 December 1814, but news travelled slowly, and the last sea fights came weeks after it.
18 battles · 61 ships · 22 fleet movements
Not yet charted
1815
Second Barbary War
Decatur's squadron took the Algerian flagship Mashouda off Cape Gata and another brig off Cape Palos, and forced peace on Algiers.
Not yet charted
1816
Bombardment of Algiers
Lord Exmouth's British and Dutch fleet anchored under the Algiers batteries and shot them to pieces, freeing over a thousand Christian slaves.
Not yet charted
1821–1829
Greek War of Independence
At Navarino in 1827 a British, French and Russian fleet destroyed the Ottoman and Egyptian fleet: the last great battle fought wholly under sail.
1822–1824
Brazilian War of IndependenceWhen Pedro, the Portuguese prince regent, declared Brazil independent in September 1822, Portuguese garrisons still held Bahia, Maranhão, Pará and Montevideo, and could be supplied by sea. The new empire took over the Portuguese ships left at Rio, and in March 1823 hired Lord Cochrane, fresh from Chile, as its first admiral. Many of his sailors were Portuguese-born and would not fight their countrymen, and his first battle off Bahia on 4 May came to nothing. But his blockade starved Salvador, and on 2 July the Portuguese army sailed home in a great convoy, harried across the Atlantic by his ships. Cochrane then bluffed Maranhão into surrender, and his officer John Pascoe Grenfell did the same at Belém. By 1824 the last Portuguese troops had left, and Portugal recognised Brazil's independence in 1825.
2 battles · 9 ships · 5 fleet movements
Not yet charted
1825–1828
Cisplatine War
Brazil's blockading fleet against Admiral Brown's small Argentine squadron in the River Plate, at Los Pozos, Quilmes, Juncal and Monte Santiago.
Not yet charted
1828–1829
Russo-Turkish War of 1828–1829
The Russian Black Sea Fleet against the Ottomans after Navarino. In 1829 the brig Mercury fought off two Turkish ships of the line.
Not yet charted
1828–1834
Liberal Wars
Portugal's civil war. Charles Napier's small Liberal squadron captured most of the Miguelite fleet off Cape St Vincent in 1833.
Sail and Steam
1838–1860
Wooden fleets still rigged for sail, but now with steam engines, screw propellers and shell guns. Shell fire burned a wooden squadron at Sinop, France's armoured batteries shrugged off the forts at Kinburn, and by 1860 Gloire and Warrior had made every wooden battle fleet obsolete.
1839–1841
Egyptian–Ottoman WarMuhammad Ali, the Ottoman governor of Egypt, had taken Syria from the Sultan and in 1839 beat the Ottoman army again at Nezib. Weeks later the Ottoman fleet sailed to Alexandria and handed itself over to him. To prop up the Ottoman Empire, Britain and Austria sent their fleets to the Syrian coast in 1840. Steam warships landed troops and supplies along the coast, Beirut and Sidon fell, and at Acre a single afternoon's bombardment, ended by the explosion of the fortress's main magazine, took what had been thought one of the strongest fortresses in the east. Muhammad Ali gave up Syria and returned the Ottoman fleet.
3 battles · 19 ships · 5 fleet movements
1839–1842
First Opium WarBritain went to war with Qing China after Commissioner Lin Zexu seized and destroyed the British merchants' opium at Canton. The Qing coast was defended by forts and wooden war junks that were no match for British ships of the line and frigates, and the East India Company's iron paddle steamer Nemesis, drawing only five feet of water, took the war up rivers no warship had reached. After the fall of the forts at the Bogue, Amoy, Chinhai and Woosung, a British fleet sailed up the Yangtze to Nanking, and China signed away Hong Kong and opened five ports to foreign trade.
9 battles · 27 ships · 7 fleet movements
1845–1850
Anglo-French blockade of the Río de la PlataDuring the long Uruguayan Civil War, Juan Manuel de Rosas, ruler of the Argentine Confederation, backed the Blancos besieging Montevideo and closed the rivers Paraná and Uruguay to foreign shipping. Britain and France intervened: they seized the Argentine squadron blockading Montevideo, blockaded Buenos Aires, and in November 1845 fought their way up the Paraná past the chains and batteries at Vuelta de Obligado to open the river to trade. The steamers got the merchant convoys through, but the trade never paid, Rosas did not give way, and Britain (1849) and France (1850) made peace on terms that left him in power.
3 battles · 10 ships · 2 fleet movements
1846–1848
Mexican–American WarThe United States went to war with Mexico over Texas and the lands to the west. Mexico had almost no navy left, so the US Navy's war was one of blockade, river raids and landings. In the Gulf, Commodores David Conner and Matthew Perry blockaded the coast, sent steamers up the rivers to Tabasco and Tuxpan, and in March 1847 landed General Scott's army of 10,000 men on the beach outside Veracruz in a single day, the largest American amphibious landing until the Second World War. In the Pacific, the navy seized California and then the ports of western Mexico. Mexico gave up half its territory in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
8 battles · 14 ships · 6 fleet movements
1848–1851
First Schleswig WarIn the revolutions of 1848 the German-speaking duchies of Schleswig and Holstein rose against the Danish crown, backed by Prussia and the German Confederation. Denmark had the only real navy in the war and used it to blockade the German coast, which led the Frankfurt Parliament to found the Reichsflotte, the first all-German navy, on 14 June 1848. At Eckernförde in 1849 shore batteries destroyed a Danish ship of the line and captured a frigate. Prussia made peace in 1850, Denmark beat the Schleswig-Holsteiners on land at Isted, and the Reichsflotte was sold off at auction.
2 battles · 8 ships · 2 fleet movements
1853–1856
Crimean WarRussia against the Ottoman Empire, joined in 1854 by Britain and France. At Sinop, Russian shell guns set an Ottoman squadron of wooden ships on fire and destroyed it in an afternoon, and the Russian Black Sea Fleet then sank itself to block Sevastopol harbour rather than face the allied fleets. The allies carried their armies to the Crimea and kept them supplied by sea, bombarded Odessa and Sevastopol, and cut the Russian supply lines across the Sea of Azov. The war at sea reached far beyond the Black Sea: allied fleets destroyed Bomarsund and bombarded Sveaborg in the Baltic, shelled a monastery in the White Sea, and were beaten off at Petropavlovsk on Kamchatka. Steam gunboats, mortar vessels, mines and, at Kinburn, French armoured floating batteries pointed the way to the ironclad.
12 battles · 59 ships · 11 fleet movements
1856–1860
Second Opium WarBritain and France against Qing China, which was also fighting the Taiping rebellion. The war began after Chinese officials seized the crew of the Arrow, a Chinese ship with a lapsed British registration, at Canton. Shallow-draught steam gunboats, built for the Crimean War, fought it on the rivers: they destroyed the junk fleet at Fatshan Creek and took the Taku Forts at the mouth of the Peiho, forcing the Treaty of Tientsin in 1858. When the allies came back to ratify it in 1859 the rebuilt forts beat off their gunboats with heavy losses, the worst British naval defeat of the century. An Anglo-French army landed in 1860, took the forts from behind and marched on Peking, where it burned the Summer Palace.
5 battles · 15 ships · 5 fleet movements
Ironclad era
1861–1889
Armour plate, turrets and the ram. From the first fight between ironclads at Hampton Roads and the ramming at Lissa to the turret ships and torpedo boats of the 1880s.
1861–1865
American Civil WarThe first battle between ironclads, at Hampton Roads, made every wooden navy in the world obsolete overnight. The Union used its fleets to blockade the South and force its way past the forts guarding New Orleans and Mobile Bay, while Confederate raiders such as Alabama hunted Union merchant ships across the oceans.
5 battles · 44 ships · 5 fleet movements
1864
Second Schleswig WarPrussia and Austria against Denmark over the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein. Denmark's stronger navy blockaded the German coast and won off Jasmund in the Baltic. Austria sent a squadron from the Mediterranean under Wilhelm von Tegetthoff, which fought the Danes off Heligoland in the North Sea.
2 battles · 15 ships · 3 fleet movements
1864–1866
Chincha Islands WarSpain's Pacific squadron seized Peru's guano-rich Chincha Islands, and Peru and Chile went to war with Spain. Chile captured a Spanish schooner at Papudo; the Spanish fleet, led by the ironclad Numancia, shelled Valparaíso and fought the forts at Callao. Numancia then sailed home westward, the first ironclad to go round the world.
3 battles · 12 ships · 5 fleet movements
1864–1870
Paraguayan WarParaguay against the Triple Alliance of Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay, the bloodiest war in South American history. It was fought up the Paraná and Paraguay rivers. Brazil's navy won control of the rivers at Riachuelo in 1865, and in 1868 its ironclads ran past the great river fortress of Humaitá.
2 battles · 15 ships · 3 fleet movements
1866
Third Italian War of IndependenceThe first battle between fleets of ironclads. Italy had the bigger, newer fleet, but at Lissa in the Adriatic Tegetthoff led the Austrians straight into the Italian line and rammed and sank the flagship Re d'Italia. The battle convinced naval designers for a generation that the ram was a decisive weapon.
1 battle · 22 ships · 2 fleet movements
1877–1878
Russo-Turkish WarThe Ottoman navy had powerful ironclads; Russia's Black Sea fleet, still recovering from the Crimean War, had almost none. Russia answered with small torpedo craft. Spar-torpedo launches sank an Ottoman monitor on the Danube, and at Batum Stepan Makarov's boats made the first sinking of a ship by self-propelled torpedo.
2 battles · 7 ships · 1 fleet movements
1879–1884
War of the PacificChile against Peru and Bolivia, over the nitrate deserts of the Atacama. To move its armies north, Chile needed command of the sea. For five months Peru's single turret ship Huáscar, under Miguel Grau, held off the whole Chilean navy, until she was cornered and captured at Angamos.
3 battles · 11 ships · 4 fleet movements
1884–1885
Sino-French WarFrance and Qing China fought over Tonkin, in northern Vietnam. Admiral Courbet's squadron, already anchored in the Min River in peacetime, destroyed China's Fujian Fleet at Fuzhou in an afternoon. The next year his torpedo launches sank a Chinese frigate at Shipu.
2 battles · 9 ships · 3 fleet movements
Pre-dreadnought era
1890–1905
Steel battleships with mixed batteries of heavy and medium guns, torpedo boats and the first destroyers. The Yalu, Santiago and Tsushima were its great battles.
1891
Chilean Civil WarChile's navy sided with Congress against President Balmaceda and took the fleet north to the nitrate ports. The war's one naval battle, at Caldera Bay, saw the first sinking of an ironclad by a self-propelled torpedo.
1 battle · 9 ships · 3 fleet movements
1893–1894
Brazilian Naval RevoltMuch of Brazil's fleet mutinied against President Floriano Peixoto and held Rio de Janeiro's bay for six months. The government bought a makeshift fleet abroad, the revolt in Rio collapsed, and the rebel ironclad Aquidabã was torpedoed in the south.
2 battles · 5 ships · 2 fleet movements
1894–1895
First Sino-Japanese WarJapan's new navy against China's Beiyang Fleet, fought over control of Korea. Japanese cruisers won at Pungdo and the Yalu, and the war at sea ended with the siege of Weihaiwei and the surrender of the Chinese fleet.
3 battles · 28 ships · 6 fleet movements
1898
Spanish–American WarA short war fought in two oceans. Dewey destroyed the Spanish Pacific squadron at Manila Bay in a morning, and ten weeks later Cervera's squadron was wiped out trying to break out of Santiago de Cuba.
2 battles · 28 ships · 6 fleet movements
1904–1905
Russo-Japanese WarSix fleet actions between the Imperial Japanese and Imperial Russian navies, from the surprise attack at Port Arthur to the destruction of the Baltic Fleet at Tsushima after its voyage halfway round the world.
6 battles · 88 ships · 17 fleet movements
Dreadnought era
1906–1918
After HMS Dreadnought: all-big-gun battleships, battlecruisers and steam turbines, through the naval war of 1914–1918.
1911–1912
Italo-Turkish WarItaly's war to take Libya from the Ottoman Empire. The much stronger Italian fleet landed troops at Tripoli, sank Ottoman warships wherever it found them, from the coast of Epirus to Beirut and the Red Sea, and occupied the Dodecanese islands.
3 battles · 18 ships · 4 fleet movements
1912–1913
First Balkan WarGreece, Serbia, Bulgaria and Montenegro against the Ottoman Empire. From Moudros Bay the Greek fleet, led by the new armoured cruiser Averof, kept the Ottoman fleet inside the Dardanelles and took the Aegean islands. In the Black Sea, Bulgarian torpedo boats hit the cruiser Hamidiye, which later broke out for a long raid.
4 battles · 15 ships · 5 fleet movements
1914–1918
First World WarThe war at sea between the Allies and the Central Powers, fought in every ocean. Battlefleets met only once in full, at Jutland, but cruisers hunted raiders across the globe, mines and submarines sank battleships from the Dardanelles to the North Sea, and small torpedo craft proved they could sink dreadnoughts. It also saw the first naval codebreaking to decide battles and the first air raids launched from a ship.
29 battles · 298 ships · 26 fleet movements
Interwar years
1919–1938
The Washington Treaty of 1922 capped battleship building, and navies turned to cruisers, submarines and aircraft carriers. The wars of these years were small at sea but tried out the new weapons.
Not yet charted
1918–1920
Russian Civil War
Allied squadrons supported the Whites in the Baltic and Black Sea. In 1919 British coastal motor boats raided Kronstadt and torpedoed two Soviet battleships at their moorings.
1936–1939
Spanish Civil WarMost of the fleet stayed loyal to the Republic when the army rose in July 1936, but its crews had killed many of their officers and it was poorly led. The Nationalists held Ferrol, finished the new heavy cruisers Canarias and Baleares there, and with them broke the Republican hold on the Strait of Gibraltar. At Cape Palos in 1938 Republican destroyers torpedoed and sank Baleares. Germany and Italy backed the Nationalists at sea, and in March 1939 the Republican fleet sailed for internment at Bizerte.
8 battles · 22 ships · 3 fleet movements
Not yet charted
1937–1945
Second Sino-Japanese War
Japan's navy blockaded the Chinese coast, destroyed China's small fleets and flew its carrier aircraft against Chinese cities, a rehearsal for the Pacific War.
Second World War
1939–1945
The aircraft carrier replaced the battleship as the capital ship. Submarine wars in the Atlantic and Pacific, the Mediterranean convoys and the great carrier battles of the Pacific.
1939–1945
Second World WarThe aircraft carrier replaced the battleship as the capital ship, and radar and codebreaking decided battles fought at night and over the horizon. So far this covers the North Sea, Norway and the Baltic, the Atlantic convoys and the German raiders, the hunt for Bismarck, the Arctic and the long campaign against Tirpitz, the Channel and the Bay of Biscay, the Mediterranean and the war against Japan to early 1943. The first shots were fired by the old German battleship Schleswig-Holstein, at the Polish depot on the Westerplatte in Danzig, and within weeks a U-boat had sunk Royal Oak inside Scapa Flow. In April 1940 Germany invaded Norway, losing the cruiser Blücher to the guns of a Norwegian fortress and half its destroyers at Narvik, and in June Scharnhorst and Gneisenau caught and sank the carrier Glorious. In December 1939 three British cruisers drove Graf Spee into Montevideo, where she was scuttled, and disguised raiders roamed every ocean; one of them, Kormoran, sank HMAS Sydney with all hands. In May 1941 Bismarck broke out into the Atlantic and blew up Hood, the pride of the Royal Navy, and three days later was hunted down and sunk; the next February her consorts slipped home up the English Channel. In the Arctic the convoys to Russia fought through to Murmansk, the failure at the Barents Sea turned Hitler against his big ships, Scharnhorst was sunk off the North Cape, and Tirpitz, attacked by midget submarines, carrier aircraft and bombers, was finally capsized at Tromsø in November 1944. In the Baltic the Soviet fleet lost dozens of ships to mines fighting its way out of Tallinn in 1941, and in 1945 Soviet submarines sank the ships carrying Germans west from East Prussia, Wilhelm Gustloff among them: no single sinking has ever cost more lives. In the Mediterranean, Britain fought Italy for three years over the supply routes to North Africa and the island of Malta between them. The British struck first and hardest, at Taranto, Matapan and Cape Bon, but German aircraft and U-boats made the waters around Crete and Malta deadly, and Italian human torpedoes crippled two battleships in Alexandria harbour. Malta held out on a few convoys fought through at heavy cost, the last great one, Pedestal, in August 1942, and in September 1943 the Italian fleet sailed to surrender at Malta, losing the battleship Roma to German glide bombs on the way. In the Pacific, in its first six months Japan sank the American battle line at its moorings, sank Prince of Wales and Repulse from the air, and destroyed the Allied fleets in the East Indies, while its carriers raided as far as Ceylon. The Coral Sea checked it, and at Midway in June 1942 American dive bombers sank four Japanese carriers in a day. Two months later the Americans landed on Guadalcanal, and a six-month struggle began for the airfield they called Henderson Field. Japan ran troops and supplies down "the Slot" by night in the "Tokyo Express"; the US Navy tried to stop it. In six months the two navies fought seven major surface and carrier battles, and so many ships were sunk off Guadalcanal that the water became known as Ironbottom Sound. The Japanese won most of the night actions with their Long Lance torpedoes and their training, but could not win back control of the air, and in February 1943 they quietly took their last troops off the island. The loss of their aircrews and ships here was one Japan could not make good.
134 battles · 868 ships · 61 fleet movements
Not yet charted
1940–1941
Franco-Thai War
At Ko Chang in January 1941 a Vichy French squadron sank or disabled much of the Royal Thai Navy's coastal fleet in the war's one naval battle.
Cold War
1946–1989
Guided missiles, jet aircraft, nuclear submarines and the supercarrier. The big-gun battle was over; ships were now sunk by missiles fired from over the horizon.
Not yet charted
1950–1953
Korean War
United Nations carriers and battleships supported the war ashore, and the landing at Inchon turned it.
Not yet charted
1955–1975
Vietnam War
The Gulf of Tonkin incident of 1964, carrier strikes from Yankee Station, and the riverine war in the Mekong Delta.
Not yet charted
1956
Suez Crisis
British and French carriers struck Egypt and landed troops at Port Said, including the first helicopter assault made from ships.
Not yet charted
1967–1973
Arab–Israeli wars
Egyptian missile boats sank the Israeli destroyer Eilat in 1967, the first ship sunk by anti-ship missiles. At Latakia in 1973 missile boats fought missile boats for the first time.
Not yet charted
1971
Indo-Pakistani War of 1971
Indian missile boats attacked Karachi, the Pakistani submarine Ghazi was lost off Visakhapatnam, and the submarine Hangor sank the Indian frigate Khukri.
Not yet charted
1974
Battle of the Paracel Islands
China and South Vietnam fought over the Paracel Islands in the South China Sea.
Not yet charted
1980–1988
Iran–Iraq War
The Tanker War against Gulf shipping drew in the US Navy, ending in Operation Praying Mantis in 1988, its largest surface action since 1945.
Not yet charted
1982
Falklands War
Britain retook the Falklands 8,000 miles from home. The submarine Conqueror sank the cruiser General Belgrano; Exocet missiles sank Sheffield and Atlantic Conveyor.
Not yet charted
1983–2009
Sri Lankan Civil War
The Sri Lankan Navy against the Sea Tigers' fast attack craft and suicide boats.
Modern era
1990–present
After the Cold War: precision strikes from the sea, patrols against piracy, and a return to war at sea fought with anti-ship missiles and uncrewed drone boats.
Not yet charted
1990–1991
Gulf War
Coalition navies enforced the blockade of Iraq, fired the first Tomahawk cruise missiles used in war, and cleared mines off Kuwait.
Not yet charted
2008
Russo-Georgian War
Russia's Black Sea Fleet clashed with Georgian boats off Abkhazia.
Not yet charted
2014–present
Russo-Ukrainian War
Ukraine sank the cruiser Moskva with shore-based missiles in 2022, then pushed the Black Sea Fleet out of the western Black Sea with uncrewed drone boats.
Not yet charted
2023–present
Red Sea crisis
Houthi missile and drone attacks on merchant shipping, and the naval operations mounted to defend it.