with, for example, Vice-Admiral Holland and Captain Kerr commanding Hood during the Battle of the Denmark Strait from her unarmoured bridge. Even in the United States Navy (USN), battleship captains and admirals preferred to use the unarmoured bridge positions during combat. The USN had mixed opinions of the conning tower, pointing out that its weight, high above the ship's center of gravity, did not contribute directly to fighting ability. Beginning in the late 1930s, as radar surpassed visual sighting as the primary method of detecting other ships, battleships began reducing or eliminating the conning tower. The Naval Battle of Guadalcanal during World War II briefly slowed this trend: when the hit on the superstructure, many exposed crewmen were killed or wounded; yet Admiral Lee and Captain Davis of declined to use the armoured conning tower during the battle. Soon the heavy battleship conning towers were removed from , , , and during their post-Pearl Harbor attack reconstructions and replaced with much lighter cruiser-style conning towers. By the end of World War II, US ships were designed with expanded weather bridges enclosing the armoured conning towers. On s, the conning tower is a thick vertical armour-plated cylinder with slit windows located in the middle of the bridge, climbing from the 03 level all the way up to the flying bridge on the 05 level. With the demise of battleships after World War II, along with the advent of missiles and nuclear weapons during the Cold War, modern warships no longer feature conning towers. Submarines Early naval submarines were typically fitted with a small watertight protrusion on top of their hulls, from which the boat's crew could observe their surroundings through a number of viewports. As larger and larger submarines were made, and eventually fitted with periscopes, this protrusion grew into a small pressure-hull of its own, typically connected to the control room inside the boat's main pressure-hull via a watertight hatch to mitigate the risk of flooding if the viewports or periscopes were damaged. Thus, the conning tower effectively became the boat's dedicated attack center, from which the commanding officer would command the boat whilst submerged. Some late 1930s designs even located their hydrophone and RADAR operators' stations inside this compartment to maximize the commander's situational awareness. In addition to their primary purpose, conning towers also served as elevated attachment points for air intakes, magnetic compasses, and even collapsible open air