Battleship Books

Not ground-breaking by any means, but did have some unusual photos, i.e. the Nevada after being A-bombed, battlecruiser casualties at Jutland, etc. A good survey or gift for a budding battleship nut.

GREAT BOOK. SUPERB ARTWORK WITH MANY DOUBLE PAGE AND 3 VIEW (TOP, FRONT, AND PROFILE)ILLUSTRATIONS OF THESE GREAT VESSELS. I BOUGHT IT FOR THE ARTWORK ALONE BUT THE TEXT IS ALSO HIGHLY INFORMATIVE THOUGHT NOT AS "DEEP" AS SOME OTHER BOOKS.

Seapower competition is history of strategic gambles and capital ships were the instruments to achieve control of sealanes. This volume presents a review of the most important units and classes that were the mainstays of fleets. Unfortunately this work is not organic because the author provides only a limited description of design and costruction evolution of battleships and battlecruisers.

The review of ship characteristics falls short of expectations since it fails to produce a good assessment of seakeeping features and of operational capabilities. Limited facts are reported to explain technical improvements implemented during ship life span to match the neverending changes in strategies. Just few hints are shown to reveal topmost aspects and defects of each design with some information on consequential wartime limitations imposed during active service. Interspersed with descriptions of most important naval engagements and with summaries of most significant doctrines for naval warfare, this work gives only a superficial insight of opposing requirements that had been involved in planning, designing and building a battleship; in facts a short study for each class is presented without giving details of research and innovations in naval architecture that earmarked the field. A missing part is a wide overview of naval artillery. Since guns were among the leading specifications in launching a new class, it is odd that a better explanation of armament development is not covered.

Good points in this book are the nice color profiles, sometimes completed with plan and bow views. Unfortunately no scales are indicated, so being of limited use for modelers.

This is my favourite reference book on battleships, just because it is so attractively balanced. Coloured diagrams of most classes mentioned, together with plentiful photographs, supplement very readable text descriptions. Before the end of the contents, the reader has been thrilled by photographs of Royal Sovereign, Resolution and Revenge (seen from the next ship ahead in line), the pre-dreadnought Agamemnon, and Malaya in company with Alabama and South Dakota off the coast of Norway.

The layout is a bit capricious, with some classes being relegated to brief mentions or telescoped into the sections on similar ships. Now and then, the author sees fit to pop in a "feature" - for instance the account of Heligoland Bight and the Falklands that appears opposite the text on the Invincible class battlecruisers. These are welcome, although they sometimes break up the logical progression of designs through the years.

I am not qualified to judge the book's accuracy, so I cannot dispute or confirm any statements made on this score. At least there were no errors gross enough to leap off the page at me.

Read the next 2 reviews; they're right on point on "missing" ships and classes of ships. The Author is also disppointed with the book; he complained that the book is a "committee" effort driven by graphic artists and a publisher who are targeting a mass audience (at an affordable price). The book has glossy pages, is well illustrated with photographs, Tony Gibbons' famous color drawings (I prefer line drawings; Gibbon's drawings are like paintings), and has only basic data (doesn't include gun length calibers, discussion of armor scheme, etc.). Bernard Ireland, the author, writes unique prose, but he seemed handcuffed by the publishing handlers. Ideal for "young readers" but all collectors will be disappointed.

This book examines fire control of battleships and lesser vessels, their development and use.

The book examines the problem of hitting a ship moving in two dimensions from a ship moving in three and how these problems were solved from just prior to WWI to just after WWII. The problem, it's associated terminology and solutions are examined from both a historical and developmental aspect with examinations of individual navy's systems and their use. Of particular value is the section on shell's and propellants.

On the negative side reading this work can be a bit of a slog as a lot of explanations are in the footnotes and for a novice a lot of page flipping results. Some of the sections will take someone new to the work a certain amount of re-reading (I am still re-reading the book!).

Overall this book is an excellent resource for big ship fire control and the related effects of the solutions. The historical description can give new insight in to some naval actions although some of the historical accounts do not agree with other histories. The effect of fire control systems on the Battle of the Denmark Straight are particularily interesting.

A lot of this information was available from a number of other sources but this book has a lot of it all in one volume and for that alone it is well worth the price and the time taken to read it. For any student of naval actions of WWI and WWII this is a must have! I would recommend this work unreservedly despite the previous paragraph's gripes.

Although I am not an expert on the subject matter, I have been reading naval history for 40 years, and I found this book to be well worth the purchase price. For one thing, it is full of interesting and useful pieces of information on the development and operation of naval fire control systems, both in general, and for most major navies up through through WWII. Most of this information I have not seen elsewhere, including information on non-anglo-saxon navies such as the Italians, French and Russians. Admittedly the level of detail is less on these latter navies. It would also have been nice to have more quantitive information on relative performance of these systems, but since the real navies didn't have this comparitive information either, I can't complain too much. The bibliography is mediocre, but the "Notes" section at the end is fascinating.

Naval Firepower: Battleship Guns and Gunnery in the Dreadnaught Era

The huge number of errors, the sloppy research, the poor editing, and the obvious biases not only make this book almost valueless, but detract from Friedman's previously high reputation.

The long anticipated "Naval Firepower" volume from Norman Friedman, has proved to be worse than an anticlimax. This is a shame, as Friedman's previous works set a very high standard. Unfortunately, this effort is more than disappointing. "Naval Firepower" cannot be reliably cited as a source in the face of its oversights, errors, and biases, without great care and discernment. In its present form, it is almost a complete waste of money.

Large numbers of the online community of warship interested people were looking forward to this book as a good compedium of comparative research based on Friedman's previous excellent works.

Unfortunately it has turned out to be rather disappointing, being both very unbalanced and full of "holes" in the presentation and comparison of the various navies' systems.

My own particular interest is in inter-war and WW2 Royal Navy gunnery and here the book is very weak. Friedman does not fully explain the development and implementation of such items as the "plot" and inclinometer. He does not, seemingly, understand and explain the development of Royal Naval tactics and with regards to WW2 does not quote from many, many sources, or cover, in any depth, the actual experiences and measures to improve fire control.

I look forward to a greatly enlarged and revised second edition.

A more appropriate title for this book might have been "Dreadnought Fire Control" as that represents at least 90% of the contents. Very little is devoted to "Gunnery" and almost nothing is said about "Guns" - and even that small amount is unreliable, even to the point of getting the caliber (bore size) of the weapons incorrect in at least two instances.

As in many of Dr. Friedman's works, this book has a good deal of nomenclature data on what model of equipment was carried by a particular warship, which may prove the most useful part of the work. It is in the area of how this equipment operated and worked with its crewmen that the work falls down. I now know what mark of rangefinder was used by British and USA battleships, for example, but if I relied totally upon this work I would know little about how well they performed under various conditions and what "sailor alts" were performed on them to rectify their faults.

I also have to note that secondary and AA fire control are virtually ignored, with the exception of listing what type/mark of rangefinders or analog computers were used to control them. However, there is pitifully little about how effective these were in performing their job.

In brief, this is a useful work for reference purposes, but it could have been much more.

Battleships of World War Two : An International Encyclopedia by Whitley is actually pretty good, especially compared to some of his other efforts. There seem to be fewer editorial errors compared to his book on cruisers and all in all the historical information is useful. Modelers should note that the drawings are pretty useless, which is consistent with the books in this series.

Fortunately, this book seems to be complete, especially if you have Whitley's cruiser book, which is missing the combat history of the British cruiser HMS Bermuda (and not HMS Jamaica, as was mentioned in my Amazon review of Cruisers of World War Two). A pretty good effort, but if you want completeness and better illustrations, go for the Garzke and Dulin series on battleships.

This is clearly the best book I have seen on battleships. The content level compared to cost was good enough that I ordered the authors books on cruisers and destroyers without seeing them.

This book gives two tales that justify some of the stars. First, you can use this book for proof of when the USA goes up to Chile and asks to purchase their only battleship, the "Almirante Latorre", to make good the losses of Pear Harbor after December 7, 1941. That's sort of weird because that battleship is not really much better than a "Texas" class ship. Second, Germany sinks the last battleship of WWII. The Russians were given an Italian battleship, the "Guido Cesare", as part of the war prizes given out after WWII. In 1955 the ex-Italian Soviet battleship, now called "Novorossik" sets off a German mine from WWII, started taking a list, the Soviets send in new sailors to hand pump out the ship, it rolls over, and was loss with a fantastic amount of life. Over 500 Soviet sailors died when the Novorossik sank in October of 1955.

Yes, the book has simple drawings of the battleships. But, it does a fairly good job of showing the simple lines of the ships. I scaled some of the drawings, the Graf Spee is about 1/1150 scale. The larger battleships scale out even smaller. You will have to use other books, like the Osprey book on Pocket battleships, if you want specific and detailed information on a particular ship.

Neither the German or Greek pre-dreadnoughts of WWII are in this book. The author gives a good reason why with an explanation of the USS Arkansas battleship. The Wyoming is a sistership of Arkansas. However, Wyoming was removed as a battleship in compliance with the Washington treaty of 1933. So she was not a battleship and her service life was of no matter in this book. The German and Greek pre-dreadnoughts were either training ships or fire support ships, not true battleships. Thus they are not a subject of this book.

However, I liked this book. It gives a good break down of the size of the ships, their tonnages, and the arms. Also, as in the case of the extensively rebuilt American ships, it gives rebuilt figures for tonnages, speed, range, and arms. One of the more interesting tales was a Soviet battleship was rebuilt to burn wood. Yes, while British and American ships burned oil in WWII a Soviet ship was modified to burn wood because all the Soviet coal was needed for their war effort. In addition, this book gives the reasons for the ships losses or their fates. The USS Texas and some other American ships are turned into war memorials. Last, it gives the fate of all the ships. The vast majority are scrapped from about 1947 until 1959. Since the book was written in '97 the USS Missouri and USS New Jersey have become war memorials. Iowa and Wisconsin will become museums but just where has not quite been decided as of the date of this review.

M. J. Whitley does a wonderful job following the American battleship development of pre-1935. The Pennsylvania to the New Mexico class are all very close in lines. Whitley does a masterful job showing how these ships are all evolved from one another. Indeed, the true ships that are the genesis of all American battleships are the Nevada class.

Whitley also shows the aborted German "H" class battleship, kind of like a super Bismarck class ship with 16" guns. This is done with both the British and the Soviets. However, since the American Montana class is never laid down it's not the subject of analysis of this book.

I use this book as a general reference tool. It has a nice and compact write up of all the world's battleships in world war two. It has the service records of the ships, modifications made in their use, and general write up of their designs.

This book is worth it's four stars if you can find it on discount or at your local used book store. I didn't pay much for the book and it now is a useful part of my library. A useful reference book is what we collectors want.

M. J. Whitley does his best to describe the world's capital ships of the WWII era but just does not devote enough material to adequately cover the rebuilt ships from the WWI era, the new designs laid down and completed in the 1930's and 1940's, and the designs planned but not laid down or completed. As with his book on Aircraft Carrier Development, the line drawings are crude and not particuarly accurate. Mr. Whitley includes descriptions of the Soviet dreadnoughts laid down in 1938-39-40 (Sovietskii Soyuz class) but indicates nothing about the U. S. Montana class, which were the first US design to be wider than the locks of the Panama Canal. Overall, the material contained here can be found to much better effect in other references.

I love the way Whitley compresses it all into one volume that won't chew a hole in your wallet. This is not the last word in battleship references, but it's among the best first words you can find. The one weakness is in its illustrations. Modelers can pass this one by. The line drawings look like the author did them himself, out of necessity--which is actually the case. And there are no armor schematics. However, Whitley goes beyond where other references (like Conway's) grind to a halt, and he goes to the trouble of describing the armor layout rather than simply slapping statistics onto the page. What it lacks in detail, it makes up for with its handiness and broad scope. I'm aware of its limitations, especially where the author was trying to pry information out of Russian and Japanese sources, but I find myself getting plenty of use out of it.

The decline of the battleship began on December 7, 1941 when carrier based aircraft attacked and sank the U.S. battleship fleet at Pearl Harbor. Three days later on December 10 Japanese
aircraft sank the British battleships HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse, this time the battleships were not sitting ducks like at Pearl, but were underway at full battle readiness. The reign of the battleship was over.

The Iowa class battleships of the U.S. Navy were under construction at this time, they would serve through the war, but after the guns fell silent what would become of them? The navy proposed several conversions to keep the battleship relevant, however none were carried out.
In his book, Iowa Class Battleships and Alaska Class Large Cruisers Conversion Projects, Wayne Scarpaci explores these conversions and illustrates them with his original artwork and line drawings of what the ships might have looked like. The 31 page book is a quick read and explores the proposed armament schemes and how the redesigned battleships would be employed. There has not been much written about this subject so this book should be of great interest to battleship fans around the world.

Michael W. Pocock

This is a very useful, consise book. In order to fully appreciate the full design processes behind the projects listed in the book it is best read in conjunction with Friedman's Illustrated Design History of US Battleships, which offers a 'fuller' design history and places the plans in context. The artwork and line drawings in Mr. Scarpaci's book are first rate and allow a very clear view as to what the ships may have looked like if ever built. One small critisim is the ommission of any plan views to accompany the excellent profile drawings. All in all, a very good work - I hope the first of many from this author on similar topics!

With 24 pages of real content (not counting index, title page, colophon, blank pages at the end) and a large typesize at that, I was very disappointed in this book.

Each conversion project was given at most two paragraphs of attention, while every other one got a nice piece of lineart and a full color painting. The projects themselves were interesting and informative, but there is only so much you can learn in a single paragraph.

Were it not for the illustrations and artwork (which are all beautiful) I would have given this one star. Were it half the price I would have given it three.

Anyone with an interest in Naval history would do themselves well to purchase this fine book. The artwork and line drawings are fantastic and the text is easy to understand, even for the lay person, who may not be totally versed in everything dealing with the subject. The artwork is as good as it gets... precise... crisp and the vessels are set in various scenes that depict a fantastic mood to each painting. Scarpaci has hit the nail on the head with this fine reference book!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

As someone with a newfound interest in battleships, I found this book most enjoyable. I doubt there are many people in the world with this level of knowledge in this area. Mr. Scarpasi writes in a way that is understanable even for a novice. One of the terrific attributes of the book is his artwork. It is truly beautiful and worth the price by itself.

This book reads easily and has some nice drawings. The earlier sailing ships are pretty well depicted, but as it got closer to WWII, there were many discrepancies, particularly to displacment (weight) of the ships depicted in the drawings. They run the gamut from quoting misleading "official" records at the time by the Germans for the Graf Spee (10,00 tons)for instance, when it was actually nearly 20% heavier. I thought anyone familiar with the subject matter would know that, to mixing standard and full load displacement for ships such as the Bismarck and Tirpitz, in two different drawings. A nod to the Tirpitz being a bit heavier, but 20-25%, they were sister ships ! In fact, standard and full load displacemt seem to be mixed without thought, shifting 10,000 tons one way or the other, making it very difficult to compare the ships of the same era. Very disconcerting to even a casual knowledge of the big gunned ships of the day. The text does read better and like I said is fun for a quick journey through some of the great ships of the past, just don't use it as a source for an important project.

This is a book obviously meant for the layman interested in the history of big gun warships, from the time of the Spanish Armada until the Gulf crisis. It's about battleships all right - little about cruisers or destroyers (the story of the Glowworm sinking is told here). I bought this book hoping it would help me as a modeler, but there are few good photos, and the illustrations are often cutaways showing the inside of a ship - not bad for a student though. It gives somewhat detailed history on warships, such as the Bismarck and Scharnhorst chases, but only the most well-known stuff are mentioned here. As a bonus though, the pic which supposedly shows the midget subs firing on the US battleships at Pearl Harbor is in here. All in all, it's quite an enjoyable read. Not a bad buy. But modelers should get something else.

Mr Jackson provides a good overview of battleship history starting at the very beginning of wooden ships equipped with heavy guns right through to the final deactivation of the Iowa-class battleships in the early 1990's.

However, the last page contains an annoying error and then the last paragraph has a rather shocking one.

First, the book misidentifies the Royal Navy warship that shoots down the Silkworm ASM that was fired at USS Missouri during the Gulf War (It was actually HMS Gloucester).

Merely an annoying error to be sure but the last paragraph reveals either bad research or really bad editing.

It notes the final disposition of the Iowa-class saying something to the effect of "The Navy's homeporting plan puts [this battleship] stationed at [this base]."

So what's the problem? Ships that have been decommisioned do not get "homeported" by the Navy. The ships and ports provided are the homeports while the ships were in commission, not their "final resting places"!

It does get USS Missouri's finaly location correct but it was odd for a good book to fall apart like that in the last paragraph.

This book reads well but their just is not that much in the way of useful information or details to interest anyone beyond the typical interest of the ordinary coffee table book. Nice looking book with some nice illustrations and an attractive oversized format. Some of the information appears to be inaccurate, especially pertaining to the battlewships of WW 2. A valuable edition if one's basis for value is a books weight and appearance.

I was lucky enough to find this book at a local book store for $12.50 and it would be well worth many times that amount. While the book does not delve too deeply into technical detail, the number of photos and anecdotes about the history of each ship is immense. I especially enjoy the large coverage given ships and navies not commonly seen in books or on video. An excellent book for any naval history nut (such as myself!).

I ENJOY REFERING TO THIS BOOK EVERY NOW AND THEN. EACH TIME I READ THE BOOK, I FIND SOME NEW POINTS TO LOOK INTO. VERY GOOD SCATCHES.

Unlike Breyer's Classic Battleships and Battlecruisers 1905-1970, this book will never make the top 50 list of books about its subject. Breyer put this volume together because readers had complained that his great previous work had no pictures; they are cretins. He dutifully responded with this effort. The only real value here is that the pictures themselves are unusual and interesting; even some very familiar ships seem unrecognizable because of the angle of the shot.I originally rejected this book when it was first published and then came across it years later in a second hand shop and added it to my collection only for the sake of completeness. That should be your only objective too; don't get your expectations up with this one. Just Thank God Breyer didn't ruin his first book trying to please everyone.

I bought this book in 1968 and have re-read it several times. While it may lack the technical details of other studies on battleships it is an excellent overview of the battleship. It is an easy read, well illustrated, and interesting. If Mr. Hough would add a chapter that discusses the upgrades and deployment of the Iowa class battleships during the Gulf War I would by the book in a minute. I will admit I am no scholar of naval history or ship design, but I did and still do like this book. Fred Gage, Citrus Heights, CA

Hough's book was one of the earliest books on the subject and does contain some erroneous information. However, as a former Navy Commander who served on a DDG, I can tell you that the thrust of his analysis, the division of BBs into three generations, works quite well. The book is well-written, intelligent, and is a quick and good read. It is NOT a substitute for the increasingly detailed design studies that now abound. It is a good introduction or overview to a fascinating subject.

Bad reviews by self-appointed experts should be taken with a grain of salt. This book is for the intelligent reader, not folks who want to know how many 14" shells the KGVII class carried for each gun (the answer is: 100, or so they say!)

This book was first published in 1964 and unless it has been updated, it is very inaccurate and misleading. Mr. Hough divides the categories of battleships into three generations of dreadnoughts, first (Dreadnought, herself), second (Queen Elizabeth class, and third, the German pocket battleships onwards. This in itself is not misleading but he depends on old volumes of Janes Fighting Ships for individual class data and the line drawings found at the end of the book. Janes Fighting Ships was known to include data provided by different Navy Admiralties and this information was often deliberately inaccurate. Hough credits the Italian Littorio class with a speed of 35 knots when their sea speed was actually about 28 knots. The appendix with line drawings in the back credits the American Iowa class with 19 inch belt armor when they actually had inclined plates of 12.2 inches. Hough pursues the history of the dreadnought battleship from the building of HMS Dreadnought in 1906, to the British/German naval arms race prior to WWI, the events of WWI, the postwar naval building competition leading to the Washington Naval Conference of 1922 and the resulting modifications to existing ships as new construction was prohibited. He then proceeds to begin discussion of the last types of fast battleships, including the French Dunkerque, Richelieu, the British King George V, the US North Carolina and South Dakota, the Italian Littorio and German Bismarck. Finally, he describes the US Iowa class and the Japanese Yamato class. He states that there was no record of the Yamato ever having fired a full broadside due to concussive effects. Where he got that information I will never know. Yamato could and did fire full nine gun broadsides with no structural problems. In sum, this book is good for a high school student but the errors contained make it more than useless for the serious naval historian or warship enthusiast.

I like this book first one I've seen with so many historical pictures of the ship. Well worth the money

This book is both a history and a photo album of the famous German battleship, and the photos are particularly useful in showing both the construction stages of the ship and for the many interior shots. That said, this book has a couple of problems. One is its age; it was originally published in 1975, and the authors appear not to have taken advantage of the information that appears in Ludovic Kennedy's "Pursuit," published the previous year. As a result, there are statements in this book, particularly concerning the Bismarck's chronology, that have been disproved by more recent discoveries. The other big problem is the translation, which appears to have been done very literally by someone with little knowledge of naval nomenclature. Thus, "Seekriegsleitung" gets translated as "sea-war-leadership," which may be a literal translation, but ignores the more generic term "naval operations," which is what this really means. This problem becomes particularly aggravating in trying to follow the time-line of events surrounding the destruction of the Hood and the Bismarck, which, as translated, make almost no sense. The diagrams, which are in German and are not translated, seem fairly accurate, although during the destruction of the Bismarck they appear to show the King George V firing torpedos at the Bismarck, when in fact the King George V had no torpedo tubes. It's also puzzling that the translator, according to the note at the end of the book, was unaware until 1989, with the publication of Robert Ballard's book on the discovery of the Bismarck, of the number of German sailors rescued after the sinking of the Bismarck. Even here, his figures are wrong--he states that 115 men were rescued by the British. In fact, British warships rescued 111 men (one later died and was buried at sea) while a German submarine and a German weather ship rescued the other five. A marginally useful book, although much of its information has been supersceded by more recent discoveries and research.

Do not expect the detail of a Jane's nor the wonderful photos you would usually expect from a coffee table book, so do not be deceived by the cover.

This book is skimming over a BBC TV series. Whilst it has a few nice pictures, it is just that, a picture book, and not for the serious enthuiast. It consists of many frequently published photos and a few artist's renditions to fill up space.

From the first truely famous British warship, the Mary Rose, to the HMS Victory, graduating to steel vessels, Dreadnoughts and to great battleships such as the Yamato and the American Iowa class ships; It only provides a brief Synopsis of a bygone era.

for those who have not seen the 3 tv shows called the battleships it is something to watch for and a lot better than most crap on television today. The companion book at first did not impress me a lot. I have a number of ww1 and ww2 era warship books in my collection. It starts with a brief section on wooden warships. It quickly progresses to predreadnoughts and moves to the end of the era. There are better books for deck by deck breakdowns of the ships. This book deals with the why did they do things this way and politics and strategy and ecomomics. There are excellent photos of these ships and top view and side view diagrams. The text is very substantial and well thought out. the technical specs on each series of ships was informative and at medium detail considering the scope of the book.
This book in summary covered a lot on naval action theory plus the politics and economics and personalities and is light on heavy technical detail. Coffee table book BS

An outstanding book!!!! Written very well with great pictures. Peter Hore knows his stuff!!! I highly recommend it.

I found this book having very good illustrations but being otherwise rather superficial. It also contains quite a number of errors or inconsistencies, such as using the Weimar Republic flag as "header" for ships built and used by the Kaiserliche Marine; likewise for ships built during the Czarist era the national designation USSR and the Red flag are used. These points may be minor but they reflect on the vetting of the book. I also find the complete lack of line drawings making it harder to appreciate the designs of the various ships.

All in all, those wanting more detailed and reliable information on this interesting subject should look elsewhere.