The secondary armament of a capital ship are smaller, faster-firing weapons that are typically effective at a shorter range than the main (heavy) weapons. The nature, disposition, size and purpose of secondary weapons changed dramatically as the threat changed.

The Pre-Dreadnought Era

Pre-dreadnought

Pre-dreadnought

Pre-dreadnought battleship is the general term for all of the types of sea-going battleships built between the mid-1890s and 1905. Pre-dreadnoughts replaced the ironclad warships of the 1870s and 1880s...

s, from the period 1890 to 1905, were typically fitted with 3 or 4 different calibres of weapon. The main guns were usually approximately 12-inch caliber, secondary weapons usually 6-inch but typically in the range 5-inch to 7.5-inch. Guns smaller than 4.7-inch are usually considered "tertiary". (Many pre-dreadnoughts also carried 9.2 to 10-inch "secondary" guns, but these are usually treated instead as a mixed-caliber main armament.)

Secondary guns were "quick firers", and could fire 5 to 10 rounds per minute. It was this attribute, rather than their destructive power or accuracy, that provided the military value. Secondary guns were almost universally carried in "casemate

Casemate

A casemate, sometimes rendered casement, is a fortified gun emplacement or armored structure from which guns are fired. originally a vaulted chamber in a fortress.-Origin of the term:...

s", or a long armoured wall through which the battery of guns projected.

Such weapons were designed to fire at both capital ship targets and smaller targets such as torpedo craft

Torpedo boat

A torpedo boat is a relatively small and fast naval vessel designed to carry torpedoes into battle. The first designs rammed enemy ships with explosive spar torpedoes, and later designs launched self-propelled Whitehead torpedoes. They were created to counter battleships and other large, slow and...

 and destroyer

Destroyer

In naval terminology, a destroyer is a fast and maneuverable yet long-endurance warship intended to escort larger vessels in a fleet, convoy or battle group and defend them against smaller, powerful, short-range attackers. Destroyers, originally called torpedo-boat destroyers in 1892, evolved from...

s.

Small targets were of course vulnerable to 6-inch projectiles, and a high rate of fire was necessary to be able to hit a small and evasive target.

In this era, secondary weapons were also expected to engaged capital ships. Heavily-armoured areas of battleships would not be vulnerable to 6-inch fire, but there were large areas that could not be heavily protected. These lightly armoured and unarmoured areas would be "riddled" at the expected ranges of perhaps 3000 yards. This would knock out the enemy's secondary armament, punch holes in the lightly armoured bow and stern, perhaps knock down funnels and spotting tops, and destroy the bridge and command positions. In short, secondary guns were a very important factor in battleship combat.

Dreadnought Era

Dreadnoughts

HMS Dreadnought (1906)

HMS Dreadnought was a battleship of the British Royal Navy that revolutionised naval power. Her entry into service in 1906 represented such a marked advance in naval technology that her name came to be associated with an entire generation of battleships, the "dreadnoughts", as well as the class of...

 were characterized by an "all-big-gun" armament. Broadly, this era spans from 1906, through the super-dreadnought

Battleship

A battleship is a large armored warship with a main battery consisting of heavy caliber guns. Battleships were larger, better armed and armored than cruisers and destroyers. As the largest armed ships in a fleet, battleships were used to attain command of the sea and represented the apex of a...

 era, to the end of World War I.

During this period, there was some variation in the selection of secondary weapon. British practice, at first, was to mount very small guns (3-inch and 4-inch) that were considered a tertiary battery. These guns were often mounted unarmoured in the open, or later, in a casemate battery. Later, the guns grew to 6-inch size. In other navies, the 6-inch size was commonly mounted throughout the era as a casemate battery.

British doctrine at first held that the small guns were for anti-torpedo defense only. Other navies, with a larger secondary battery, held that they should also be used against capital ships. For instance, German doctrine, for fighting in the North Sea, held that poor visibility provided a good opportunity for the shorter ranges at which smaller guns would be effective. Britain later came around to this point of view, although the primary justification for mounting a 6-inch battery (in the Iron Duke class

Iron Duke class battleship

The Iron Duke-class was a group of four dreadnought battleships built for the British Royal Navy before the First World War. The class comprised four ships: , , , and...

) remained fighting against the increasingly large torpedo boats and destroyers.

Naval historians covering this period disagree on the value of the secondary battery. Arguing for, it provided protection against surface torpedo craft without needing a flotilla of supporting craft that smoked up the range and burdened the admiral with additional command, control and signalling. Arguing against, it consumed considerable displacement (2000 tons or more), were holes in the side close to the waterline that increased the risk of capsizing, and could not be heavily armoured yet were connected to magazine

Magazine (artillery)

Magazine is the name for an item or place within which ammunition is stored. It is taken from the Arabic word "makahazin" meaning "warehouse".-Ammunition storage areas:...

s that threatened the destruction of the ship. There were also considerable difficulties in bringing secondary weapons into action with the main guns; they too smoked up the range, splashed and obscured their target, and might required maneuvers to open secondary arcs that put the main guns at a disadvantage. Battle experience showed that capital ships were almost always accompanied by their flotillas, secondary batteries were ineffective against capital ships, and German battleship secondary batteries were very effective in the Jutland

Battle of Jutland

The Battle of Jutland was a naval battle between the British Royal Navy's Grand Fleet and the Imperial German Navy's High Seas Fleet during the First World War. The battle was fought on 31 May and 1 June 1916 in the North Sea near Jutland, Denmark. It was the largest naval battle and the only...

 night action against British destroyers.

World War II

With the emergence of the threat from air-delivered weapons, the nature of the secondary guns changed once more. Now they needed to be multi-purpose weapons, with a high-angle fire capability to engage aircraft, as well as the traditional use against destroyers. Although they were also used against capital ships, the extreme range of capital ship engagements (through superior optics and target prediction and, later, radar

Radar

Radar is an object-detection system which uses radio waves to determine the range, altitude, direction, or speed of objects. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, weather formations, and terrain. The radar dish or antenna transmits pulses of radio...

), meant they were not expected to achieve much.

High angle weapons could not be mounted in casemates. Thus, they migrated to small turrets mounted on the upper deck. In order to hit a fast-moving air target, a high rate of fire was required, thus secondary guns reverted slightly to the 5-inch to 6-inch size.