What technologies or ideas rewrote the book of war?

[GreatestAlive]

radar, gunpowder, rifling

 

[A Can of Man]

CSS Virginia was not a great leap in technology. As stated before steam & iron cladding was already in use, & the casemate layout isn't much different than ships of the Age of fighting sail. The USS Monitor on the other hand intro'd the revolving gun turret. All the following designs up through Yamato would be traceable back to the Monitor.

Yeah that revolving gun turret was a work of genius, especially if you consider how low in the water the Monitor was and they had to deal with water leakages!