I'd like to see this, particularly for Battleships. My top ten classes: 1. Iowa 2. Yamato 3. Vanguard 4. North Carolina 5. South Dakota 6. Bismarck 7. King George V 8. Nagato 9. Richelieu 10.Queen Elizabeth
Honorable mention: Colorado class, Littorio class, just because they were so good-looking, and rest of the US "Standards".
I think that you would need to change the topic to Top Ten Capitol Ships. This would have included Battleships, cruisers (heavy and light), battlecruisers and aircraft carriers. When you look at all of the American battleships that were constructed leading up to and during world war II, the North Carolina, South Dakota and Iowa classes weren't that different. I also believe that had any one of these twelve ships come up against the Bismark, that fight would have been brutal and fierce, and the American ship would have sailed away from it.
Realistically, there just aren't enough battleship classes to fill up a top ten, I don't think. You would have to reach DEEP to do this one. But here are a few suggestions (remember, reaching way back here): The Monitor and Merrimack classes from the Civil War. The Merrimack was one of the first heavily armored ships, while the Monitor had the first rotating turret. These two boats fought to a draw, but changed Naval combat for all times.
HMS Dreadnought changed ship design around the turn of the 20th century. It had rotating turrets, secondary batteries, and lead directly to the designs used for America's Great White Fleet.
You could probably include the Lexington-class battlecrusiers, although all three of them were converted into aircraft carriers during their construction (the Lexington, Saratoga and Yorktown, the rest were redesigned before construction began), and also, the Alaska class battlecruisers. They looked like a mini-Iowa, and mounted 12 inch guns.
Can people forget about Yamato. I have said this before, The battleship was useless. The Bismark did more in one mission then Yamato did in the WHOLE WAR. Yamato had 18in guns but US 16in guns were just as good with out the flaw that doomed the biggest battleship in the world. The gun has no core. It gun just hold up to firing its regular shells. If it fired like its sister Musashi, a anti-aircraft shell, it would BLOW UP THE GUN! The biggest battleship only fought against Destroyers, Destroyer-Escorts, and Escort Carriers. The Bismark fought agaist two carrier's air groups, three battleships, one Battle Cruiser, some cruisers, and destroyers. Yamato was a bragging ship. If you look the third Yamato ship was turned into Aircraft Carrier.