Norman Friedman - The British Battleship 1906-1946

[Subnuts]

I thought that Sailor Steve (okay, not just him...but mostly him) would find this interesting.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-British-.../dp/1848322259

The British battleship is one of the most intensely studied of all naval topics, but it is also among the most popular. Norman Friedman is one of the most highly regarded of all naval writers, with an avid following for his work. Therefore, a new book on British battleships by Friedman is a major event, and has been eagerly awaited ever since knowledge of the project began to circulate among enthusiasts. Friedman has the ability to bring new ideas to even the most over-worked subjects, based on extensive original research and a talent for explaining technology in the wider context of politics, economics and strategy. His latest book covers the development of Royal Navy capital ships, including battlecruisers, from the pre-history of the revolutionary Dreadnought of 1906 to the last of the line, HMS Vanguard in 1946. Repleat with original insights, the story that emerges will enlighten and surprise even the most knowledgeable. The attraction of the book is enhanced by sets of specially commissioned plans of the important classes by John Roberts and A D Baker III, both renowned experts in their own right, plus a colour section featuring the original Admiralty draughts, including a spectacular double gatefold. For many with an interest in warships, this will be the book of the year.

No doubt that British Battleships of World War Two and R A Burt's trilogy are classics, but I'm genuinely curious if Norman Friedman can pull off a cohesive one-volume design history like his 1986 book on American battleships. I mostly enjoyed Fighting the Great War at Sea, but it seems like he's been pumping out book after book lately, with the readability suffering as a result.

[Sailor Steve]

Hmmm...interesting. Maybe by the time it's released I'll be able to afford a copy. On the other hand I've still got a long list of books I "need" to buy someday.

[Subnuts]

Not Friedman, but this upcoming book by John Jordan and Jean Moulin has caught my attention: French Destroyers: Torpilleurs D'escadre and Contre-Torpilleurs, 1922-1956. The section in Warships After Washington describing the French super-destroyers really raised my curiosity about these ships, so I'll be watching out for this one.

[Subnuts]

Apologies for the thread necro, but I finally got my copy the other day. Here are my first impressions after browsing through it and reading the first 60 pages.

This book is BIG. It's a ~470 page table-shaking hardcover divided into 19 chapters. Friedman has a reputation for being dry, but I've found it fairly easy and fascinating reading. The first two chapters do an excellent job summarizing certain aspects of Royal Navy organization, a history of British battleship bridge arrangements, armor, guns, fire control, torpedoes, and underwater protection in the period covered by the book, and the run-up to the Dreadnought revolution. I've read British Battleships of World War Two and the three books by R.A. Burt, but this one seems to add to them without totally replacing them. Again, I'm only about 1/7th of the way through, but I'm sure it'll keep on delivering.

There's a fairly lengthy chapter focusing on battleships designed for export. Raven/Roberts and Burt barely touched on this, so I'm looking forward to reading this part.

There's a color section in the middle reproducing a number of Admiralty draughts as fold-outs. They're really nicely reproduced, but you need a good magnifying glass to really appreciated them. There's a four-page fold-out showing a longitudinal section through Valiant in 1939 that's absolutely stunning. Wish Seaforth would offer it separately (hint, hint...)

The photos are generally of very good quality, although some of them have annoying gutter problems. The plans are a bit of a disappointment. They're nicely detailed, but reproduced at too small of scale (between 1:600 and 1:900), and look rather washed out. Good to see Alan Raven and John Roberts' work in the same book for the first time in decades, but the way it's presented here doesn't really do it justice.

Verdict so far: Better than British Cruisers of the Victorian Era, but not quite as good as the better books in Friedman's Illustrated Design History series. Extremely informative, has many new insights, but comes across as a bit of a Frankenstein affair at times.

[Sailor Steve]

Sounds interesting. Unfortunately (well, fortunately from my current viewpoint) I just spent my book money on German Battlecruisers of World War One, by Gary Staff. It was a volume I needed for work on my game, and well worth the price. A nice, close-up study of a specific type of ship.

[Subnuts]

I've posted my review to Amazon.com. I was thinking about giving the book four stars due to some annoying editing mistakes, but there's so much good stuff in this book I had to give it a full five stars.

https://www.amazon.com/review/R21M81...cm_cr_rdp_perm

Having previously read a number of standard works on British Battleships by R.A. Burt, Alan Raven, and David K. Brown, I seriously wondered what new information Norman Friedman would bring to the table. Rather than stepping on the toes of his predecessors, Dr. Friedman chooses to take a boardroom-level approach to the subject of British capital ship design from "Dreadnought" to "Vanguard." As with his previous books, he keeps the nitty-gritty details of warship design in the context of the political, economic, and military realities of the time. I've been a British warship fanatic for some time, but even I was impressed by the depth an extent of the research on display here. The bibliography lists a large number of Admiralty documents from the British National Archives, along with original Ship Covers, minutes from Churchill's tenure as First Lord, and design notebooks.

Friedman is Friedman - photo captions go on for paragraphs, and details are frequently thicker than your Grandma's pea soup. I've come to expect this, and it doesn't really bother me too much anymore. This book is ambitious even by his standards. People fascinated by the process of warship design will find much to love here, right down to the frustrating "can we make the ship two feet wider and gain a little metacentric height, but risk losing a half knot at deep displacement?" type questions that have plagued naval staffs and naval architects for decades. There is an enormous amount of information here on the design of the aborted Lion-class, G3 and N3 types, and 12-inch "treaty battleships" sketched before the 1930 London Naval Treaty of 1930, which I hadn't read before. Friedman's takes on the buildup to the "Dreadnought revolution," the origins of the battlecruiser, and the design of the Queen Elizabeth-class vary substantially from their "standard" telling. He also delivers an even-handed explanation for some of the more controversial design decisions, including the King George V-class' 14-inch main battery, the Nelsons' bridge arrangement, and Hood's armor scheme. There's even an entire chapter devoted to battleships designed and built for the export market during the pre-war Dreadnought craze, including ships intended for Greece and the Netherlands.

This book is BIG, and I feel like I'm not giving it the credit it deserves. I wouldn't recommend reading it you haven't read any of the classic works on the subject, or some of Norman Friedman's recent works, especially "Naval Firepower" and "Fighting the Great War at Sea." It covers an enormous amount of ground while still focusing on the titular subject. The text is immensely detailed, but still make effective use of plain language to describe complex concepts. In many ways, this book is a British analogue to Friedman's "illustrated design history" on American battleships. You could probably read both back-to-back and get two very different takes on a similar story.

Now, a little bad news. Like a lot of recent Seaforth titles, my issues with this book lie mainly in it's presentation and editing. A few of the double-page photographs have gutters which run through the ships' masts or funnels. The editing and sentence structure in the first chapter is frequently terrible, but thankfully much better in the rest of the book. The quality of the plans is all over the place. A.D Baker's and Alan Raven's work fares the best, although they are presented at too small a scale. Unfortunately, John Roberts' and George Richardson's drawings are frequently washed out and jittery looking. Comparing Roberts' crisply detailed, large-scale foldouts in "British Battleships of World War Two" with the plans in this book was rather depressing.

That said, this IS an excellent work, which can sit proudly on my shelf alongside my other table-shaking naval references. The color section, featuring a number of fold-out reproductions of Admiralty draughts, including a stunning gatefold depicting HMS Valiant in 1939, is an added bonus. Some nagging flaws in visual presentation aside, this is one of the finest naval histories I've read in a long time.