South American dreadnought race
A naval arms race among Argentina, Brazil and Chile—the wealthiest and most powerful countries in South America—began in the early twentieth century when the Brazilian government ordered three dreadnoughts, formidable battleships whose capabilities far outstripped older vessels in the world's navies.
The gun trials of the Brazilian dreadnought Minas Geraes, the ship that began the dreadnought race. Here, all guns capable of training to the port side were fired, forming what was at that time the heaviest broadside ever fired off a warship.
Moreno being painted in dry dock at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, October 1914
Plans of the Minas Geraes class, showing the armor values (fig. 1) and the theoretically possible radii of the main and secondary batteries (fig. 2 and 3)
Agincourt depicted prior to its British modifications, which included removing the flying bridge seen here
An arms race occurs when two or more groups compete in military superiority. It consists of a competition between two or more states to have superior armed forces, concerning production of weapons, the growth of a military, and the aim of superior military technology. Unlike a sporting race, which constitutes a specific event with winning interpretable as the outcome of a singular project, arms races constitute spiralling systems of on-going and potentially open-ended behavior.
1909 cartoon in Puck shows (clockwise) US, Germany, Britain, France and Japan engaged in naval race in a "no limit" game.
