USS Monitor (Ironclad)

The USS Monitor was an ironclad warship built by the U.S. Navy during the War of Secession. In March 1862 it battled the CSS Virginia in the world's first battle between armored warships.

The Monitor was the first in its class, and dozens of Monitor-class ironclads were commissioned by the US fleet in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They were still effective warships on rivers in the Great War fifty-five years after the Monitor was commissioned. (By this point the Confederate States had copied the design, which was commonly known as a "cheesebox on a raft".)

In 1943, during the Second Great War, the Confederate military attempted to reintroduce monitors in the Second Great War as a way of moving heavy artillery into range of General Irving Morrell's invading army and then withdrawing them after a bombardment. By this point, however, the monitors were found to be obsolete, as they were far too small and graceless to escape dive-bombers.