"German Battlecruisers of World War One" by Gary Staff

[Subnuts]

Just thought I'd let everyone know that while I haven't written any full-length reviews for subsim in a while, I'm still writing reviews for Amazon.com. I'm afraid I have a bit of writer's block at the moment, and can't pump out 1,000 word book reviews on a monthly basis any more. Recently, I wrote a short (for me!) review of Gary Staff's German Battlecruisers of World War One. One of these days I'm gonna back to writing real reviews again...

http://www.amazon.com/gp/review/RO5W...SIN=1591141915

Being a huge fan of Dreadnought-era capital ships, I had to buy this book after it received a number of solid five star reviews here. Although it contains a large amount of detailed information, and makes a fine companion to R.A. Burt's recently revised trilogy on British Battleships, this book is a bit of mixed bag.

First, the positives. This book is an absolute goldmine for anyone looking for details of the seven German Panzerkreuzers operational during the war, along with the unfinished Mackensen-class. Each ship receives a brief history of it's development, descriptions of the armor scheme and armament, a brief biography of the ship's namesake, details of the sea trials, a detailed operational history with wartime combat reports, and descriptions of all the damage the ships received during the war. Several of the ships receive a full set of deck plans, while each receive a set of computer-rendered color plans and exterior closeups by Marsden Samuel.

Overall presentation is quite nice. This is a big, heavy book, very strongly bound, printed on thick, high quality paper. Many of the photographs are of superb quality, and appear to have been scanned directly from the original plate glass negatives. Although some of them pass through the binding, Seaforth has gotten smarter about making sure crucial details don't get lost in the gutter. The biggest surprise for me were the large number of drydock photographs, showing in detail the damage inflicted on these ships in battle and by British mines and torpedoes. More than anything, these images demonstrate the amount of damage German battlecruisers could receive and still return to port. There are also some original shipyard plans, diagrams showing the location of each hit received in battle, maps showing the ships' movements in battle, and plans of unbuilt ships and design sketches.

On the downside, this book could have used some careful polishing and editing. The operational histories are perhaps TOO detailed, and rather tedious as a result - expect to grind through pages of "Seydlitz left Schillig Roads at 1045, ran down course Yellow to Grid Square 182 epsilon, performed gunnery evolutions with 1AG, returned at 1445 the next morning and anchored at buoy 5B." The text frequently makes reference to German naval grids, although no maps are provided to assist the reader in locating them. Some of the maps are small and rather rough, making it difficult to differentiate between German and British mine fields. Finally, only a few paragraphs are devoted to the hull structure and machinery of each ship, making this a mainly "Guns 'n Armor" study.

Although It's probably the definitive English-language book on the subject, "German Battlecruisers of World War One" is merely very good, rather than the masterpiece many seem to be hailing it as. Compared with recent classics like John Jordan's books on French warships, and Bagnasco/de Toro's masterful "The Littorio Class," it falls a little short. A worthwhile buy for fans of the Dreadnought era, but the dryness of the operational histories, and the average quality of some of the plans and maps, prevents me from giving it five stars.