Ahoy, Sea Dogs and Battleship Historians! Here's a book you're bound to love. The Encyclopedia of Warships is an exciting compendium of more than 300 of the finest battleships, aircraft carriers, submarines, destroyers, and cruisers ever built.
Each ship is described in great detail and is illustrated with full-color artwork and photographs of the ship in action. You'll learn all about each vessel's design, development, and service record.
It's arranged in chronological order by type of vessel and provides a selective guide to the most important fighting vessels from WWII onward. Naval buffs will especially enjoy the meticulous specification tables featuring information on dimensions, powerplant, performance, armament, speed, and complement. This requisite reference includes legendary grey ladies like the Bismarck and the U.S.S. Enterprise.
Customer Reviews:
My opinion September 30, 2008 Overall it was excellent. There is a lot of information. It was interesting that ships were divided by era. It didn't have a lot about Chinese warships but that information is hard to get. I would recomend it.
Avid Navy Historian get a big suprise for fathers day July 14, 2008 I purchased this book for my Father law for Fathers day. When he picked up the book he couldn't put it down until he had read every page. Major Score.
Great pictures, describes every class of warship June 3, 2008 This book is quite entertaining when it comes to the quality of pictures. Its covers most of the warship classes in different type such as Submarines, frigates, destroyers, cruisers, battleship, and aircraft carrier.
You will get brief description on each class and also history of the ship it self.
The writer devide the time line : 1. World War 2 2. Cold War 3. Modern
Each time line come with explanation on different type of warship and classes. However, not everyship are covered. This book is not intended for details reference.
I like this book because of the simplicity, not too heavy and come with great pictures. I gave 4 stars instead of 5, because this book more focus on the coldwar rather than WW2.
Warships Painted With a Wide Brush March 31, 2007 10 out of 15 found this review helpful
As a history buff, especially U.S Naval history in the Second World World, I dug into this book with great expectations. However, after finding a glaring error in the book, I find myself somewhat skeptical of the entire work. The book, written and edited in the United Kingdom, does a remarkable job of covering all types of warships -- from escorts to destroyers to cruisers to battleships to aircraft carriers. The book is divided into three sections; Second World War, Cold War and Modern Day. The descriptions, albeit short, should be interesting to the casual reader.
But, to the serious historian, BEWARE! As I said earlier, there is at least one glaring error. Several pages after a glowing review of the Nelson and Rodney classes -- proving the authors are British -- there is a section on the U.S. Iowa class battleships. In this section, the authors claim that the Iowa class battleships -- the Iowa, New Jersey, Missouri and Wisconsin -- were not battleships. Instead, they state to the effect that the Iowa class ships were nothing more than battlecruisers, incapable of taking other battleships. As a docent aboard the Battleship New Jersey Museum and Memorial, I want to be the first to say this is dead wrong! Although none of the Iowa class batleships arrived in the Pacific in time to participate in battleship vs battleship fights, they were certainly stong enough to have carried the day.
The Battleship New Jersey BB-62, when she sailed in 1943 was 887'7" long, 57,353 tons in weight, sported nine 16 inch main guns, ten dual 5" secondary gun mounts, twenty four-barrel Bofors 40mm AA guns and 42 20mm Oerlikon AA guns. Its armor included 17" main gun armor, 17 1/2" armor in the conning tower, and an armored side belt starting at 12" slanting to nine inches at the keel, with an air and liquid void system outside the armor belt. How anyone can say that this is a batlecruiser is beyond me.
Although this may just be an example of the Brits trying to play up the Royal Navy over the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Navy considers the Iowa clas to be the biggest and best battleships built by the U.S. Therefor, to me, this goes down as a glaring error and I am currently searching for more.
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