Entering service between 1937 and 1939, the ten British “Town” class cruisers were the most modern vessels of their type in the Royal Navy when World War II began. Built in response to large 6-inch gunned cruisers in the U.S. and Japanese navies and primarily designed for the defense of trade, they saw arduous service in a wide range of ...
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British Town Class Cruisers
"Southampton and Belfast Classes: Design, Development and Performance"
Available Formats: Hardcover
Cruiser Birmingham
Detailed in the Original Builders' Plans
The technical details of British warships were recorded in a set of plans produced by the builders on completion of every ship. Known as the “as fitted” general arrangements, these drawings documented the exact appearance and fitting of the ship as it entered service.
Today these plans form part of the incomparable collection of the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich ...
Available Formats: Hardcover
German Battleship Helgoland
Detailed in the Original Builders' Plans
This book is the latest in a series based entirely on original draughts which depict famous warships in an unprecedented degree of detail. Using the latest scanning technology to make digital copies of the highest quality, it reproduces complete sets in full color, with many close-ups and enlargements that make every aspect clear and comprehensible. The result is a novel ...
Available Formats: Hardcover
Utmost Savagery
The Three Days of Tarawa
Marine combat veteran and award-winning military historian Joseph Alexander takes a fresh look at one of the bloodiest battles of the Pacific War. His gripping narrative, first published in 1995, has won him many prizes, with critics lauding his use of Japanese documents and his interpretation of the significance of what happened. The first trial by fire of America's fledgling ...
Available Formats: Softcover
Rules of Game
Jutland and British Naval Command
Foreword by Admiral Sir John Woodward. When published in hardcover in 1997, this book was praised for providing an engrossing education not only in naval strategy and tactics but in Victorian social attitudes and the influence of character on history. In juxtaposing an operational with a cultural theme, the author comes closer than any historian yet to explaining what was ...
Available Formats: Softcover
British Fiji Class Cruisers and their Derivatives
The Fiji-class, often called the “Colony” class, cruisers were a class of eleven light cruisers of the Royal Navy that saw extensive service throughout World War II. They were an attempt to incorporate the characteristics of the preceding “Town” class within the reduced 8,000-ton limit agreed under the 1936 London Treaty. In general layout, Colony class resembled the earlier ...
Available Formats: Hardcover
Super Destroyers
From the Torpedo Boat Era to the Dominant Surface Warship of Today
From the very beginnings of torpedo craft, all naval powers have seen the occasional need for larger, more powerful or in other respects special designs that stand outside the contemporary norms for flotilla craft. The driving forces were often different from country to country and varied over time, but all the resulting ships may be conveniently defined as ‘super destroyers’ ...
Available Formats: Hardcover
The Battleship Holiday
The Naval Treaties and Capital Ship Design
Available for sale only in the U.S. and Canada. Exceptions made for USNI Members.
Even as World War I was ending, the victorious great powers were already embarked on a potentially ruinous new naval arms race, competing to incorporate the wartime lessons and technology into ever-larger and costlier capital ships. This competition was curtailed by the Washington Naval Treaty of ...
Available Formats: Hardcover
Eleven Months to Freedom
A German POW's Unlikely Escape from Siberia in 1915
Eleven Months to Freedom recounts the daring World War I escape of German midshipman Erich Killinger. Falsely accused of bombing a railway station after crashing his plane at sea, he was sentenced to life in the Sakhalin coal mines.
Shipped by rail with several other POWs across Russia, Killinger was determined to return home. In order to do this, though ...
Available Formats: Hardcover
Before the Battlecruiser
"The Big Cruiser in the World’s Navies, 1865-1910"
The battlecruiser is perceived by many as the most glamorous of warships, remembered for its triumphs and tragedies in both world wars. Often forgotten are its lineal ancestors, the big cruisers that were constructed as capital ships for distant waters, as commerce raiders, and as fast scouts for the battle fleet during the last decades of the nineteenth century and ...
Available Formats: Hardcover