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Title: Nelson to Vanguard: Warship Design 1923-1945 by D. K. Brown, David K. Brown ISBN: 1-55750-492-X Publisher: Naval Institute Press Pub. Date: 01 October, 2000 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $59.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.5 (2 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Little Nelson, not much Vanguard
Comment: When I was small I inherited my Father's WONDER BOOK OF THE NAVY. Written probably in the mid 1930's THE WONDER BOOK gave me a comprehensive overlook at a vanished fleet: lots of pictures, clear, comprehensive text covering every class of Royal Navy warship & all aspects of service life. I get the feeling that Brown may have tried to do a WONDER BOOK for grown-ups, and if so he has failed. What we have here is a nice "coffee-table book" with lots of black and white photos of a broad range of ships, but there is little in-depth coverage of anything (the two title warships are particularly slighted -NELSON gets one shot-from-a distance and two partial photos, VANGUARD maybe three or four) Battleships as a whole get only 15 pages of text and photos, destroyers by contrast get 20. While it can certainly be argued that neither NELSON nor VANGUARD had particularly stellar service records, they did represent important (and at least in the case of NELSON, peculiar) examples of warship design, and it would have been nice to hera a good deal more about them. Also missing from the text is any real discussion of the effectiveness and/or limitations of deign in action -we would have benefitted from hearing more about the fates of given warships. While there is a chapter on "battle damage" it tends to focus exclusively on physical damage to structures with little attention to crew or performance. Nowhere do I find much discussion of the human element, and, especially given the RN's remarkable ability to stay at sea for long periods under often hideous conditions it would have been very interesting to hear more about how the nature of the ships made this possible if not exactly "fun". The chapter on inter-war modification of existing ships is a real teaser -there are various coy references to what might or might not have been learned from WWI or post-war tests, but I felt that I would have to go elsewhere for any real understanding. Again, more detailed discussion of the fates of specific ships would have been most instructive. In summary: Interesting? yes. Comprehensive? by no means.
Rating: 4
Summary: Patented DK Brown
Comment: It's always a pleasure to see Brown's insider perspective on British design. In this book, he takes the opportunity to heap praise on some of his predecessors and nose about in their memoirs for hints of their thoughts on nascent designs. There is little effort here to provide a systematic survey of post-WWI designs--which I would like to have seen--but there is a sufficiency of substance and a liberal sprinkling of anecdotes. This is not a great book, but it is informative and enjoyable. My main complaint is that it tends toward the pricey.
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Title: Castles of Steel: Britain, Germany, and the Winning of the Great War at Sea by Robert K. Massie ISBN: 0679456716 Publisher: Random House Pub. Date: 28 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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Title: Luftwaffe Secret Projects: Ground Attack & Special Purpose Aircraft by Dieter Herwig, Heinz Rode ISBN: 1857801504 Publisher: Midland Publishing, Ltd. Pub. Date: 01 November, 2003 List Price(USD): $54.95 |
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Title: Russian and Soviet Battleships by Stephen McLaughlin ISBN: 1557504814 Publisher: Naval Institute Press Pub. Date: October, 2003 List Price(USD): $89.95 |
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Title: Warrior to Dreadnought: Warship Development 1860-1905 by D. K. Brown ISBN: 1840675292 Publisher: Book Sales Pub. Date: 01 January, 2004 List Price(USD): $22.99 |
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Title: Rebuilding the Royal Navy: Warship Design since 1945 by D. K. Brown, George Moore, John Roberts ISBN: 1591147050 Publisher: Naval Institute Press Pub. Date: 01 February, 2004 List Price(USD): $59.95 |
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