High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The Second World War saw the end of the battleship as the dominant force in the world`s navies. On the outbreak of the War, large fleets of battleships—many inherited from the dreadnought era decades before—were one of the decisive forces in naval thinking. By the end of the War, battleship construction was all but halted, and almost every existing battleship was scrapped within a few years of its end.